Effects of Global Warming

The projected global warming effects if we do not curb our use of dirty energy in exchange for green, renewable energy are quite frightening.

Here is a list of projected global warming effects compiled by the authoritative body of leading global scientists that make up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

• • By 2010 50 million people worldwide will become “environmental refugees,” with their livelihoods detrimentally effected by desertification, depleted aquifers, river flooding and rising sea levels.


• • Approximately 20 to 30% of plant and animal species so far assessed are likely to be at increased risk of extinction.


• • With another rise of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, 97% of the worlds coral reefs will be obliterated.


• • The coastal wetlands and barrier islands will disappear.


• • There will be grave risk of flooding in coastal communities.


• • Arctic summers could be ice-free by 2040.


• • One million of the earth’s species could be annihilated by 2050.


• • 2/3’s of the worlds polar bear population will be wiped out by 2050.


• • All of the glaciers at Glacier National Park will liquefy 2070.


• • Sea levels could rise by as much as 23 inches by 2100.


• • Drinking water supplies will be contaminated due to heavy rainfall events washing pathogens from contaminated soils, farms, and streets in the water supplies.


• • Foodborne illness outbreaks will increase because many foodborne illnesses, such as salmonella, reproduce more rapidly in higher outdoor temperatures.


• • 300,000 California residents in the Sacramento-San Joaquin river delta area will lose their homes to flooding and the flooding will contaminate the drinking water of potentially 24 million.

An important thing to keep in mind is that though you personally may not have had too much direct exposure to the effects of climate change, there are millions of people around the world who have confronted the harrowing effects of global warming thus far and many have lost their lives from it.

The impoverished will face the greatest threats as far as infectious diseases. Those who live in big polluted cities will experience the most dire health effects of pollution, and those who live in the most vulnerable regions, affected by glacial meltdown, droughts, wildfires, coastal flooding and deforestation will feel the most immense weather and ecosystem effects and the health effects that result from the often dramatic consequences.