A
recent National Research Council report revealed the environmental
effect of every １ degree Celsius increase in global average
temperatures. These include up to a １0% rainfall reduction in arid
regions such as southwestern North America, the Mediterranean and
southern Africa, along with forest fires that would consume three times
more land in the United States alone.
River basins could
experience up to １0% less stream flow, and certain crop yields in the
US, Africa and India would be reduced by １5% for every degree of
temperature rise.
In addition, the scientists warned that because
the greenhouse gas CO2 dissipates so slowly, its concentrations in the
atmosphere, and thus its warming effects, would increase even with
emissions kept at current levels.
Dr. Susan Solomon of the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explained,
『Because carbon dioxide is so long-lived in the atmosphere, it could
effectively lock (the) Earth and future generations into warming not
just for decades and centuries, but literally for thousands of years.』
In
related research, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
scientists have reported on the significant global warming effect of the
greenhouse gas methane.
Updating the 2006 United Nations
report, 『Livestock’s Long Shadow,』 which estimated that livestock
creates 36% of human-caused methane, US researchers calculated these
numbers to be 57% higher.
As methane’s warming potential is
approximately 72 times more than CO2 when averaged over 20 years, and
its rate of dissipation much shorter at about １2 years, reducing levels
of this greenhouse gas would have a relatively immediate cooling effect.
Thank
you, Dr. Solomon, National Research Council and other scientists for
helping us to become better informed of the consequences of our choices.
Let us quickly heed such urgent information in making the optimal
changes to ensure a livable planet for future generations.
Supreme
Master Ching Hai has often addressed the detrimental tolls of global
warming, as during a September 2009 videoconference in South Korea in
which she also confirmed the importance of methane reduction as the most
efficient way to cool the planet.
Supreme Master Ching Hai:
The effects of global warming are already being felt on a daily basis
by the vulnerable throughout the world, the poor and the helpless
already, the children in every corner of our planet.
Scientists
are saying that the methane and other gases from livestock raising are
responsible for more than 50% of all global warming. So if we want to
stop the most contributor of all global warming, then we have to stop
meat production.
The good news is that methane is shorter lived,
so if we stop producing it, this gas will disappear quickly from the
atmosphere, unlike carbon dioxide, which can last for thousands of
years.
So there are many, many practical reasons to be veg,
aside from the compassionate nature that is cultivated by preserving all
life.
http://news.discovery.com/earth/new-study-charts-effects-of-each-degree-of-warming.html http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=12877
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_15532133
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