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Some experts say that global warming is more serious than we could ever imagine. Other experts say it's being exaggerated. Let me ask you this, if you were standing on the street and someone screamed at you that you were about to be hit by a speeding car, would you stand still and wonder if they may be wrong, or would you at least turn around and take a look?" I say to you, "Take a look."

What is global warming? It's an increase in the earth's atmospheric and oceanic temperatures widely predicted to occur due to an increase in the greenhouse effect resulting from pollution.

Since the beginning of time, the sun's rays have been traveling down to earth through a thin layer called our atmosphere. They warm our oceans and help our trees grow as well as keep us warm. The rays are then sent back up through the thin layer of atmosphere. This keeps our earth's temperature exactly where it needs to be. The problem we now face is, because of auto emissions, factories, and other fossil fuels and pollutants, the sun's rays are not escaping and this is causing the earth to become much warmer.

This is very easy to see when you look at an aerial view of cities such as New York City, Tokyo, Shanghai, and Los Angeles. All you see is miles of cars on the highway, tall buildings, factories and smog.

The earth wasn't like this until the second half of this century. For millions of years the earth existed in much the same way, but now because of modern conveniences that didn't exist less than a hundred years ago, we are becoming as Al Gore said, "a force of nature".

We can't continue like this.

What global warming is doing to our formerly snow capped mountains such as the Himalayas and the Andes is shocking. They have gone from being snow covered to being nearly without snow in less than fifty years. Scientists say that Greenland is melting and if it continues to melt, they say it could break off into the Atlantic and cause sea levels around the globe to rise 5 feet. This would flood major cities such as New York and Amsterdam.

Why aren't more people worried?

For years the city officials in New Orleans knew that a disaster like Katrina could happen, but nobody took the situation too seriously because the reality was that when they looked out of their window, everything looked just fine. The weather was nice and there didn't seem to be any immediate danger so nobody really felt panic. I think these people are probably paying a lot more attention now.

Al Gore used a really good example

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