Timeline of Global Warming: Past and Future

It is now common knowledge that global warming is becoming a significant issue that humanity needs to confront as soon as possible. We should not address global warming from the standpoint of politics or economics, but rather for the survival of humanity. For those who still do not think that humans are not contributing to the climate change, think again. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says that there is a 90 percent chance that humans are the ones contributing to global warming. Internationally, scientists have claimed that the global average temperature could increase by as much as 2 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100, and that the sea level could rise up to 2 feet. Two degrees Fahrenheit may not seem like much, but the connotations from his number are dire, as it means diseases that previously could not survive in temperatures lower than that number, now has hundreds of miles by which to spread.

The catastrophe that scientists have predicted is a dire warning to society to get their act together. With a slight increase in Earth's rotation, disappearing glaciers, epic floods, intense droughts, widespread water shortages, famine, disease, mass extinction of plants and animals, as well as a changing landscape, are all obvious reasons to bring our efforts to saving Mother Earth. Nobody can really know what lies in the future, but according to recent events, these predictions paint a general idea of what Earth's future holds.

2007

The world population is now calculated to be at a staggering 6.6 billion people, many people now live in major cities all over the world. This changes the land through different usages. (Peter Crane, Royal Botanic Gardens, UK, Science; UN World Urbanization Prospectus: The 2003 Revision; U.S. Census Bureau)

2008