Listen to the podcast.

Global Warming Today

Global warming isn’t something that might happen down the road off in the distant future.

It’s already at our doorstep.

For several years now, scientists from around the world have agreed that global warming is real, and that it’s happening as a result of human activity – specifically, the burning of fossil fuels. A recent survey of the scientific literature by the nonprofit group Clear the Air turned up numerous studies showing how global warming is already affecting our planet and disrupting the rhythms of nature.

Season Creep: How Global Warming is Already Affecting the WorldAround Us notes that scientists from around the globe are attributing to global warming such changes as the early blooming of spring flowers, the increasingly early arrival of migrating birds, the delayed freezing of lakes and rivers and substantially earlier snow melts in the western United States.

Scientists have also discovered that the polar ice caps – which play a vital role in deflecting the sun’s rays from our planet – are melting at a rate much faster than climate change researchers initially predicted. The melting of the ice caps is perhaps the most serious effect of global warming recorded yet, and the one with the furthest reaching consequences.

Some researchers also attribute the increasing ferocity and longevity of hurricane seasons to warming ocean waters resulting from global climate change. Others attribute an increase in mosquito-borne illnesses to increasingly warmer climes that allow mosquito populations to grow and thrive at elevations that would have once killed them.

For more information on climate change, its consequences, and what you can do to www.cleartheair.org and www.fightglobalwarming.com.

For more background on global warming, click here.

To read more about this and other environmental health issues, go to: www.environmentalhealthnews.org, www.ourstolenfuture.org, or www.healthandenvironment.org