Classmate Facts # 112 - Global Warming

1. Global Warming means living underwater (don’t forget to carry your oxygen masks)! If Greenland’s entire ice were to melt, global sea levels would rise by 7.2 metres.

2. Between 34 and 80 fish species have become extinct since the late 19^th century, 6 since 1970. The reason: global warming!

3. Some indoor plants can remove 87% of the indoor toxic air in just 24 hours!

4. Warmer temperatures mean malaria carrying mosquitoes are now able to live in climates beyond the tropics, in areas they were not found earlier.

5. India is the 4^th Largest producer of Windpower in the world.

Classmate Facts # 111 - Global Warming

1. Four out of Five of the world’s beaches are eroding away! The culprit? Global Warming!

2. The world’s richest countries, with 20 per cent of the global population, use about 80 percent of the world’s resources.

3. In Tibet, the ice records indicate that the last 50 years have been the warmest in 1,000 years.

4. Around half of all carbon dioxide produced by humans, since the industrial revolution, has dissolved into the world’s oceans.

5. Ice/snow cover cools the earth by reflecting sunlight.

6. The famous Indian River, the Ganges is beginning to run dry. Because the glacier from which the river gets its water, is shrinking at the rate of 34 metres per year, twice as fast as two years ago. The glacier could disappear by 2030!

7. A quarter of all the world’s coral reefs have been destroyed in the past 20 years, by the soaring sea temperatures. In the Indian Ocean and parts of the Pacific, more than three quarters coral reefs are thought to have died!

Classmate Facts # 110 - Global Warming

1. Igloos are no longer keeping the Eskimo warm! Rising temperatures in the Arctic are causing igloo walls to melt and re-freeze, thereby losing their heating properties!

2. Greenland is melting at a rate of 52 cubic miles per year. If Greenland’s entire 2.5 million cubic kilometers of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 metres, or more than 23 feet!

3. One hundred ton of ancient plant life is required to create just 3.8 litres of petrol.

4. Because of warming oceans sharks are coming closer to the shores.

Classmate Facts # 109 - Global Warming

1. For every one degree Celsius rise in temperature, Alaska’s boreal forests have been expanding northward by about 100 kms.

2. When shopping, use a reusable bag instead of a disposable one. Plastic bags pollute the air, groundwater and soil.

3. The major seal breeding grounds in the Bering Sea have seen fur-seal pup numbers fall by 50% between the 1950s and 1980s.

4. The extent of sea-ice in the Nordic seas have shrunk by 30% over the last 130 years.

5. Extreme weather conditions like heat waves and strong tropical storms will become more frequent, if temperatures continue to rise.

Classmate Facts # 108 - Global Warming

1. Humans send Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere much faster than plants and oceans can absorb it.

2. One 500 MW coal fired plant produces approximately 3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

3. Shortage of food, have made polar bears attack their own kind.

4. The concentration of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere has increased by 31% and 149% respectively above pre-industrial levels since 1750 – higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years!

Classmate Facts # 107 - Global Warming

1. Simply turning off your television, DVD player, stereo and computer when you’re not using them will stop the release of thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide a year.

2. Do you know, if the temperature of our Earth rises, almost 7 million people in India will have to move their homes, because the sea levels will rise and cover some parts of Chennai and Mumbai.

3. Making cans from recycled aluminum uses 90% less energy than making cans from scratch. We can watch TV for 3 hours from the energy saved from recycling one can!

4. The glacial lake in Southern Chile was sighted in March, but two months later it had completely disappeared! The culprit: global warming.

5. Take shorter hot water showers. Heating water uses energy.

6. It’s true – the oceans are turning to acid! Oceans absorbs CO2 which, when mixed with water, turns to weak Carbonic Acid!

Classmate Facts # 106 - Global Warming

1. Warmer temperatures are killing eucalyptus trees, the main food source for Koalas. It is feared that because of this Koalas could become extinct in the next few decades!

2. Lousiana, a state in USA, about the size of Orissa, is losing an acre of its land, to the rising sea levels, every 24 minutes!

3. Between 1961 and 1997, the world's glaciers lost 890 cubic miles of ice.

4. Global Warming means bad news for baseball lovers! Ash tree from which all baseball bats are made, is in the danger of disappearing because of warmer temperatures.

5. As rising ocean temperatures are killing off their food supply, more number of gray whales are being washed up on beaches after starving to death.