About me

My name is Ahmed Mohamed Al Shamsi. I am an HCT student. I’m married and I have two wives. From my first wife I have four children, and from the second one I just have one baby. I live in Shahama which is located 35km far from Abu Dhabi on the way to Dubai. Like many of us I have many hobbies, such as reading, watching movies, jogging, camping, traveling and racing which is my favorite hobby after traveling. I go to Badayer in Dubai for motorbike racing with my friends at the weekend, it’s a wonderful place for anyone who wants to race. Last year I bought a Banshi just for this purpose. As I said my favorite hobby is traveling. I have traveled to many places such as USA, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Europe, Oman, Thailand and Malaysia. Malaysia is the best country which I have ever visited in my life, because of the people and the weather of this country. I recommend every one who likes to travel to visit Malaysia. As I said in the beginning I’m an HCT student and I study Engineering. I am in the first year and I’m doing this blog because this is one of the tasks the college gives us to do to talk about Global Warming. The purpose of this task is to get us into the issue deeper and maybe try to make people cut back on doing things that cause it and maybe find a new solution for this problem.

Global Warming

Global warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans in recent decades and its projected continuation. Sunlight shines into the Earth's surface, where it is absorbed and then radiates back into the atmosphere as heat. In the atmosphere, “greenhouse” gases trap some of this heat, and the rest escapes into space. The more greenhouse gases are in the atmosphere, the more heat gets trapped. In another words, it is when heat tries to escape through the atmosphere but is blocked by “greenhouse” gases. Trapping heat causes the temperature to increase. An increase in global temperatures can in turn cause other changes, including sea level rise, and changes in the amount and pattern of precipitation. There may also be increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, though it is difficult to connect specific events to global warming. Other effects may include changes in agricultural yields, glacier retreat, reduced summer stream flows, species extinctions and increases in the ranges of disease vectors.

Causes of Global Warming

The increase of CO2 and other greenhouse gases like burning fossil fuels, land clearing and agriculture that lead to an increase in greenhouse effect is mainly the reason of global warming. CO2 remains stuck in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, and the increase of it warms the Earth's surface leading to melting of ice on land or open water taking place, when that happens, with both land and water being less reflective than ice, they absorbs more radiation causing even more warming. Compare the way of living a long time ago and nowadays, we will know where all this CO2 is coming from. It came from the new technology, for instance:
- Co2 from power plants, burning of fossil fuels.
- Co2 from cars, trucks and airplanes, burning of gasoline.
- Methane also acts as Co2, from flooded fields.
- Nitrous oxide from fertilizers, on agriculture.
- Deforestation, from burning and cutting trees, also throws Co2 to the atmosphere.














The graph on the right shows the Earth's surface temperature also over the last 1000 years. The temperature kept changing slightly until the year 1900 onwards where it increased rapidly.

CO2 From Power Plants

There are many causes of global warming and the major one is the CO2 that is produced from power plants. I chose this specific cause because in my opinion, this is the reason why a lot of CO2 is produced and proves a lot of facts. A long time ago, there weren't any power plants which explains why scientists have proven the difference of the amount of CO2 used nowadays than in the past. The burning of fossil fuels which are used for the purpose of electricity generation, means, the amount of CO2 produced these days outnumbers the amount that was used in the past. A lot of countries have power plants, so just imagine how much CO2 is being wasted. Every developing country does not use only one but many power plants and if this keeps going, then it will be a disaster. We cannot tell each country to stop using power plants because it is essential to have them. Instead, countries need to have a limit to the number of power plants to have so we can at least have a limit to the amount of CO2 each country produces.

Global Warming Effects

Global Warming is affecting life on Earth. As we all know, the main effect is the increase of temperature resulting in the rise of sea levels and severe weather changes. What you might not have known is global warming can and already did spread diseases in many places. Along with some other things.The following are some effects of what G.W is affecting or might in the future:

• Animals: They are getting affected mainly because of climate change. All living things on Earth depend on their habitat for shelter, food and water to survive. Therefore, when the climate changes, some are forced to migrate, putting them at risk.
• Houses: Hurricanes and floods can destroy houses, which forces people to pay alot of money in order to fix them back.
• Coral reefs: They can only survive in a narrow range of temperature, salinity and water quality. Therefore, high water temperatures and less sunlight because of sea rising can kill them.
• Alternative energy: a lot of money is being spent on projects, research,development, production and distribution to stop emissions.

It is said that many diseases will spread if global warming isn't solved as soon as possible. As temperature rises, disease-carrying mosquitoes and rodents spread, infecting people. It has already spread and the disease killed many people over the years. They seem to come out at high temperatures which means we will be expecting them a lot over the next years. The diseases they carry are Malaria,Dengue fever, Encephalitis, Yellow fever, Filariasis and West Nile virus.

The Effect on Coral Reefs

There are many effects of global warming (as it has for causes). Some of the effects include an increase of flooding, storms, and rising sea-levels. This will cause many animals to migrate and do a lot of damage to animals' habitats. Coral reefs is also one of what global warming affects, and I chose it because it is one of the major effects.Coral reefs serve as a home, feeding area, and shelter for many fish, plants and animals. The increase in surface temperature can kill them and global warming is the cause of the surface temperature increasing. Coral reefs are sensitive organisms and the CO2 we produce over the years can kill all of them in no time unless we do something about the amount of CO2 we produce.

Headlines in the U.A.E.

After researching and looking for articles/news published in the U.A.E, I was surprised to see many articles concerning global warming, I never thought that the U.A.E was looking into the issue deeply until I read some of the articles. It seems like some people are doing something about it but not as much as they should be, because the problem doesn't seem to be looked into seriously.We are causing this problem, as human beings, civilians living in this country, but whether the people or the government itself should do or should be doing something about it depends on people's decision on whether to think of their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren etc... in the future to have a good and healthy environment.Articles:
www.iht.com/articles/2001/02/07/edham.t.php
"The Middle East Is Setting an Environmental Example"
The article was published in 2001, even though the U.A.E was not a developed country at that time, they were still taking extra pre-cautions concerning global warming and 19 Arab countries were meeting in Abu Dhabi to find an easy strategy to reduce the cause of global warming. As I said, the main cause of global warming is new technology and not one country can deny having newer technologies given to them, but this is the point of these kinds of meetings, they don't have to reject being given this opportunity except for finding possible solutions to reduce this problem as much as they can.
www.ameinfo.com/117449.html
"Abu Dhabi Schools switch off to mark Earth Day"
the U.A.E is among the largest energy consuming countries in the world. This article was published recently and has the solution to global warming. Abu Dhabi government shut down the electricity of 20 schools one day for 1 hour to see how much carbon emissions were reduced in that particular time. This move didn't only benefit the U.A.E, the whole world benefited from it. A very nice way to reduce carbon emissions consumed everyday and it encourages other countries to do the same thing, or should be doing.
www.redorbit.com/news/science/801702/uae_beats_americans_environmental_harm/?source=r_science
"UAE Beats Americans' Environmental Harm"