Global warming is still subject to dispute and the main arguments seem to be (a) whether it is occurring at all, and (b) whether man is to blame for it. The first question is pretty much answered in the affirmative. Global warming is a bit like putting on weight. Once the pounds are on you do not start back at your ideal weight next year. Global warming is even harder to ignore, not so much because it is increasingly omnipresent in the media but because the evidence for it is starting to be manifest in daily life. Everybody see the evidence that the world is a getting warmer than it was.

Global warming is an average increase in the earth’s temperature, which affects the climate. A rise in overall temperature could lead to changes in rainfall patterns creating more extreme weather conditions, both hot and cold, and an increase in sea level. Global warming is going to cause an increase in the rate of melting of the world’s glaciers. Research on Glacier melting is currently going on. Global warming is the greenhouse effect on the earth surface. The infra red rays are trapped and reflected back to the earth surface by gases like CO2, CH4 and aerosols thus increasing the heat on earth surface.

Scientists believe that if the sea level increase at the present rate, all the cities near the sea shore from Boston to Bombay will be under water within next fifty years. Many of the islands in the world will be wiped out from the surface of the earth. Scientists are naturally cautious people, but a growing number fear that this may be the case. One ominous indicator comes from a US atmospheric sampling station 3,000 meters up on the northern flank of the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii.

Scientists say the discovery opens a host of future research questions over where they originated and how they ended up at opposite ends of the earth. Scientists are also investigating other methods of sequestration, such as locking carbon dioxide in the air pockets in sedimentary rocks or by putting it in liquid form at the bottom of the sea, or by pumping the CO2 back to oil wells. Either way the carbon dioxide is unable to reach the atmosphere. Scientists said that we needed to get to 60-80 percent below our 1990 emission levels in order to address the problem sufficiently to stop global warming. Instead we’ve been increasing it – we are way above the 1990 emission levels. Scientists have recently discovered that the average man produces a carbon footprint of over 120 tons in his lifetime.

Global warming is working a bit like this. The green house gases reflect the suns rays back down to Earth’s surface rather than letting them escape back into space as they would normally did, heating the planet as a consequence. Global warming is a threat to humans, societies and the world. New and old bacteria, viruses and infectious diseases will thrive to promote innumerable diseases that threaten the foods, food supply, lives, and habitats of communities and nations. Climate change could lead to famine, floods, new diseases and large movements of populations. Climate is notoriously variable. So can any event yet be labeled unequivocally as due to global warming? Climate change poses a big threat.
Indeed most of the literature either assumes or attempts to demonstrate that any and all change in average level of the global temperature is bad. What the current level is does not seem to matter much, is the change that is costly. Global warming has little to do with science and everything to do with politics. Those scientists who endorse the theory command the lion’s share of government-funded research grants. It stimulated some very interesting discussion regarding importance of questioning scientific models rather than accepting them as truths. Ongoing efforts regarding international co-operation to limit and reduce the production of CO2 culminated in the signing of the Kyoto Protocol by 38 industrialized nations on 10 November 2001. Some big industrialized countries refuse to endorse the Protocol.