Facts About Global Warming - strangefacts

• The warmest year on record was 2005. If things keep going like this, your children and grandchildren will inherit a world with a far less hospitable climate.

• In the past 100 years, sea level has already risen between 5 and 9 inches and it is still going up. You may think that’s not a lot, but it is. Even a few feet of rise would put many US coastal cities and a large portion of Florida underwater.

• There were 27 named storms in 2005, a higher number of severe storms and hurricanes than ever before in a single year. The high storm volume may be connected to warmer temperatures in the Atlantic.

• Within the last decade, there were outbreaks of both malaria and dengue fever in the US. Other tropical diseases will undoubtedly spread north as the temperature rises.

• Heat waves are gaining in intensity and frequency. Europe’s 2003 heat wave caused an estimated 35,000 deaths. If you have older relatives, especially if they live alone, increases in heat waves could pose a deadly risk.

• Global warming causes crop failures, especially in the tropics, where temperatures are already on the edge of what is tolerable for many food crops. These failures could lead to famines if warming continues.

• That’s really scary when you consider that automobiles are one of the major sources of global carbon emissions.

• There is a broad scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming by burning fossil fuels when we drive, fly, and use electricity.

• Your use of fossil fuels is actually changing the composition of the atmosphere. The US and China are the two biggest emitters of carbon dioxide worldwide.