CO2 is natural. The ammount being pumped into the atmosphere is def. not natural.
First off, our oceans are being affected. CO2 sequestration in the surface oceans is dropping the oceans pH level, making the water more acidic. As a result, the growth rates of calcium-secreating animals are being deminished.
Coral growth and repair rates are slowing down. Rupert Ormond, a marine biologist from Glasgow University, says that the world's coral reefs will be dead within 50 years because of global warming, and there is nothing we can do to save them.
Without the reefs acting as natural defences protecting our shorelines, we will be left vunerable.
Our oceans are also warming up as a result of global warming. This leads to the melting of ice sheets and caps, and inturn leads to rise in sea level.
Add water to a glass, it fills up. Drop ice cubes in it, it over flows. (the rate of sea-level rise has nearly tripled during the 1970s and since 1993)
The Arctic sea could be free of ice during summer months by 2100. (Average global temperatures are expected to rise 5 degrees by then). From 2002 to 2005, summer Arctic sea ice has covered 20 percent less area than its 1978-2000 summer average.
In Western Siberia, an area of permafrost covering a million square kilometers has recently begun to melt for the first time since it was formed over 11,000 years ago. This permafrost covers the world's largest frozen peat bog. If warming trends continue it will release billions of tons of stored carbon into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming.
Whats worse is that a paper published in 2005 linked a one-degree rise in sea surface temperature to the increase of hurricane intensity.
There were a recorded 26 tropical storms and 14 hurricanes last year, seven of them intense. The 2005 season was the most destructive in recorded history, with 27 named storms and 14 hurricanes, including Katrina, which devastated Louisiana and Mississippi and killed more than 1,300 people.
The forecast for 2006 Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30, calls for 17 tropical storms and 9 named hurricanes. Of those hurricanes, five should reach or exceed category 3 on the five-level Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Intensity Scale. There's no relief in sight for the next two decades, for either the number of hurricanes or of particularly intense hurricanes.
Then there is heat. 22 of the hottest years on record have occured since 1980. The six warmest years since the keeping of records began in 1880 have occurred in the past eight years, with 2005 being the hottest year in history.
Things are picking up, and fast. You don't need to be a scientist to see this. Why now? Why lately have things accelerated?
We are nearing a tipping point with our burning of fossil feul, among other things.
We are directly responsible for these effects and it is becoming more and more evident.
