Black Hawk Down - I

Once these flood gates open and the climatic catastrophe strikes us, a rescue mission won't be possible. We aren't gettin a back up sergeant ! So what this new war US and other nations are worried about other then war on terror? Its climate change. Who's the Bin Laden here? It’s the greenhouse gases and global warming. So what's a climate change post doin on a management blog? If it has got top priority in every US presidential candidates agenda; why not our? In fact it should on everybody's agenda.

Global warming refers to the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans in recent decades and its projected continuation. The greenhouse effect was discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824 and was first investigated quantitatively by Svante Arrhenius in 1896. It is the process by which absorption and emission of infrared radiation by atmospheric gases warms a planet's atmosphere and surface. Of all the green house gases CO2 causes the most warming effect [9 to 26%]. Fossil fuel burning has produced about three-quarters of the increase in CO2 from human activity over the past 20 years. Most of the rest is due to land-use change, in particular deforestation.

So what are the effects of these gases?

• One of the most pronounced feedback effects relates to the evaporation of water. In the case of warming by the addition of long-lived greenhouse gases such as CO2, the initial warming will cause more water to be evaporated into the atmosphere. Since water vapor itself acts as a greenhouse gas, this causes still more warming; the warming causes more water vapor to be evaporated, and so forth until a new dynamic equilibrium concentration of water vapor is reached with a much larger greenhouse effect than that due to CO2 alone.
• Ice-albedo process - When global temperatures increase, ice near the poles melts at an increasing rate. As the ice melts, land or open water takes its place. Both land and open water are on average less reflective than ice, and thus absorb more solar radiation. This causes more warming, which in turn causes more melting, and this cycle continues.
• Clouds emit infrared radiation back to the surface, and so exert a warming effect.
• Global temperatures on both land and sea have increased by 0.75 °C (1.35 °F) relative to the period 1860–1900. Since 1979, land temperatures have increased about twice as fast as ocean temperatures (0.25 °C per decade against 0.13 °C per decade). [sea level rise of 110 to 770 millimeters (0.36 to 2.5 ft) between 1990 and 2100].
• Glacial retreat and worldwide sea level rise. Changes in the amount and pattern of precipitation may result in flooding and drought. There may also be changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.
• changes in agricultural yields, reduced summer stream flows, species extinctions and increases in the range of disease vectors.

Some economists have tried to estimate the aggregate net economic costs of damages from climate change across the globe.[US$43 per tonne of carbon ]. One widely-publicized report on potential economic impact is the Stern Review; it suggests that extreme weather might reduce global gross domestic product by up to 1%, and that in a worst case scenario global per capita consumption could fall 20%.The United Nations Environment Programme emphasizes the risks to insurers, reinsurers, and banks of increasingly traumatic and costly weather events. Other economic sectors likely to face difficulties related to climate change include agriculture and transport. Developing countries, rather than the developed world, are at greatest economic risk.

Its Mayday!!!

Source: Wikipedia