Yes, we are experiencing global warming. Yes, it is effecting us, right now, affect you, where you live, whether you notice it or not. It is most telling in regards to wildlife: shifting migration patterns and territorial boundaries, changes in population and growth. For instance, where I live, we're seeing wildlife moving into areas they hadn't been in in decades--even a century or more. Moose and wolf are two species, drifting into the southern Adirondacks, which haven't been seen here, in a good many decades.
Some people attribute this to loss of habitat--true, but rising temperatures will not only change migration patterns, it also disrupts the long-established food chain, as well.
Now, global warming also is causing more wildfires in the American west, with longer periods between rain, causing forest and scrub land to become tinder-dry. Also, lakes and reservoirs to slowly dry up and water levels in the west are lowering at sometimes an alarming rate...in some cases lower than they've been since they were created. This is especially worrysome, in desert regions, where water is already scarce. Places like Las Vegas Nevada and Phoenix, Arizona, with their large urban populations, could be in for some tough times in the rest of this century.
And, it' just not the American west that will be having water problems. Between global warming, massive water pollution, and other problems, the world will most definitely see an massive increase in "water wars," as countries struggle to get clean, potable water to its people, and for agriculture. Ironically, in places like the US, agriculture is one of the polluters, with pesticides, manure and human waste (many commerical growers in the western US and Mexico, station outhouses right next to the fields, and guess where the waste is going?) Hence the massive e-coli scares within the United States.
Yet, the water situation isn't just about supply. Acid rain is a major issue in my part of the world. Midwestern coal burning plants who don't use the best scrubbers (thanks to George "Lets destroy the planet and make lots of cash in the process" Bush, they don't have to) send their pollution eastward, which comes down in the form of acid rain. Pollution from cars also contributes to this, though not on the scale of the coal-burning plants.
Acid rain kills. Period...trees, fish, aquatic plants, doesn't matter. This is what it does to high-peaks region lakes, here where I live:
LOOKS PRETTY--BUT CONTAINS NO LIFE! A lake effected by acid rain.
It even melts stone. This is what acid rain does to monuments and buildings, pretty soon, this angel won't be able to weep, as the eyes disappear, eaten away by the acid tears of mankind's folly:
technomist
I don't feel any warmer now than I did last week or last year. In fact, I'm told that the average temperature of the world has been the same for the last 10 years. I have no idea who to believe about this issue - it seems that only scientist who say they believe in global warming get any funding these days or get to sit on government policy and strategy committees. 'Global Warming' seems to have gone from being a scientific theory based on evidence 10 to 15 years ago and extrapolated into the future, to a new orthodoxy that can't be questioned at all.