Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Bad news sells papers!-blogprompt number 2

How reliable do you think UK newspaper reports are about climate change? To what extent to UK newspaper reports link climate change to ‘sustainable development’?

In my oppinion, UK newspaper reports about climate change are satisfying. There are many different newspapers on the market, such as Guardian, Mirror, Sun, Telegraph, and many many more. In some of them we can find an aricle saying something about climate change.

Climate change 'making seas more salty
Scientists report that increased salinity in oceans can be attributed to manmade climate change


Sunset over the Mediterranean coast, Marmaris, Turkey

The Mediterranean area will become drier as a result of increased salinity in the water.

Global warming is making the sea more salty, according to new research that demonstrates the massive shifts in natural systems triggered by climate change.

Experts at the UK Met Office and Reading University say warmer temperatures over the Atlantic Ocean have significantly increased evaporation and reduced rainfall across a giant stretch of water from Africa to the Carribean in recent years. The change concentrates salt in the water left behind, and is predicted to make southern Europe and the Mediterranean much drier in future.

Peter Stott of the Met Office, who led the study, said: "With global warming we're talking about very big changes in the overall water cycle. This moisture is being evaporated and transported to higher latitudes."

The team wanted to see whether manmade climate change could be blamed for changes in salinity measured in the Atlantic. In 2003, experts reported that the north Atlantic waters were freshening, with salt levels decreasing – a mild version of the scenario depicted in the Hollywood film The Day After Tomorrow where massive amounts of fresh water shut down warm ocean currents and cause temperatures to plunge.

Meanwhile, further south towards the tropics, Atlantic waters have been getting saltier – about 0.5% more since the 1960s.

Using state-of-the-art climate models, the scientists simulated events over both parts of the ocean with and without increased levels of greenhouse gases. They found that the freshening of the north Atlantic could be explained by natural variations, a conclusion supported by a recent recovery of the salt levels there.

But for the mid Atlantic, the models showed that only human-driven global warming could explain the increase in saltiness – the first time such an explicit link has been made between climate change and salinity.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/27/climate-change-water

Because of climate change we have to face more natural dangerous than few years ago. Iam talking about more frequently storms, floods and hurricanes. I placed few links below reporting information about floods from 2007.

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Report-calls-for-34urgent34-review.3146391.jp
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1556544/Hull-is-'forgotten-city'-of-the-flooding-crisis.html
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2007/2007-07-24-03.asp

In conclusion, I believe it is connection between climate change raports and sustainable development. People are curious, want to know everything what is going around them, and basically want to improve their lifes, and in this case climate change is a big issue. From newspapers we can have a lot of information about it, see if things goes in good or bad way and try make them better.



Monday, October 13, 2008

Carbon dioxide


According to that article I absolutely agree that the carbon dioxide emissions has increased. And I am sure, it is still increasing. We can now ask the question, WHY? Why it is increasing? The answer is really easy. Basically, it’s because of us, people are involved in this process which has destructive impact for our planet. I am talking here about global warming and climate change. The climate of the Earth is always changing. In the past it has altered as a result of natural causes. Nowadays, however, the term climate change is generally used when referring to changes in our climate which have been identified since the early part of the 1900's. The changes we've seen over recent years and those which are predicted over the next 80 years are thought to be mainly as a result of human behaviour rather than due to natural changes in the atmosphere.

Burning fossil fuels releases the carbon dioxide stored millions of years ago. We use fossil fuels to run vehicles (petrol, diesel and kerosene), heat homes, businesses and power factories. Deforestation releases the carbon stored in trees and also results in less carbon dioxide being removed from the atmosphere.
The statistics shows, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased more in the northern hemisphere where more fossil fuel burning occurs. Since the Industrial Revolution the concentration globally has increased by 30%.

The future
The best case scenario for the increase in carbon dioxide emissions predicts that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will reach double the level of before the Industrial Revolution, in 2100. The worst case scenario brings this forward to 2045.