Scary Global Warming Facts
Global warming has wide-ranging and frightening implications for people, animals, food sources and weather patterns. Here are seven scary global warming facts.1. Natural disasters linked to weather may be influenced by global warming, scientists say. Wildfires, tropical storms and heat waves could increase in frequency and intensity as global warming progresses. Heat waves might cause large drought areas, affecting crops, people and animals. There have been more hurricanes in recent years, and this may be linked to warmer weather in the Atlantic Ocean.
2. Especially in tropical areas, crops are already being affected by higher temperatures. Destruction of crops may lead to famine. Thaws and freezes occur at different times, killing off crops and making existing food more expensive. As global warming gets worse, the U.S. will be less able to grow crops, because it'll be too hot and dry: food production will move north. The U.S. will have to import more food, which means carbon emissions from planes and trucks will increase even more -- hence even more global warming.
3. Melting ice could increase sea levels, causing shore erosion and flooding. Even though many places in the world have structures in place to manage floods, the increased sea levels are likely to overwhelm and render useless these defense mechanisms.
4. As the climate changes and levels of ozone increase, people could suffer from increased respiratory illnesses, especially in urban areas.
5. Because global warming can affect migration patterns, diseases spread by certain kinds of birds could move into new areas. Diseases carried by insects, such as dengue fever and malaria, may also broaden in range, although there's scant evidence as yet that suggests climate change will have this effect.
6. Even if we manage to slow or completely stop carbon emissions, their impact on the Earth's amount of rainfall, temperature, and sea level will persist for around 1000 years.
7. Global warming disrupts ecosystems, and could kill off entire species of animals. Melting ice puts the world's population of krill under threat, which in turn means whales' food source is dwindling. The numbers of penguins and polar bears are declining. An imbalance in temperature also can lead to animals and insects running free without the usual predators and causing havoc: one example of this effect is that the warmer weather means the pine beetle doesn't die off in the winter as it normally would, and it's destroying the forests of the western United States.
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