Global climate change has started to make observable effects on our environment. Glaciers have started to shrink, ice on rivers and lakes is break up earlier than usual in cold regions, plant and animal ranges have been shifting and trees are flowering much sooner. Surprisingly a simple change like using environmental shopping bags can stop this.

In the past the effects that scientists had predicted would result from global climate change are already occurring, like for example, loss of sea ice, faster sea level rise and more intense heat waves that lasts much longer.

Scientists have definitely agreed on the fact that global temperatures will continue to rise for decades to come. This is mainly due to greenhouse gases produced by human activities. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), consisting of more than 1,300 scientists from the USA and other countries, forecasts a temperature rise of 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the time period of the next 100 years.

According to the IPCC, the extent of climate change effects on individual regions will vary through time. The ability of different societal and environmental systems to mitigate or adapt to change will become a crucial factor.

The IPCC predicts that increases in global mean temperature of less than 1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (1 to 3 degrees Celsius) above 1990 levels might lead to beneficial effects in some regions and harmful ones in others. According to them, the net annual costs will increase over time as global temperatures increase.

Future effects of this continuing change

According to the Third National Climate Assessment Report, some of the long-term effects of global climate change are the following:

Change will not stop through this century and beyond

Temperatures will keep rising

Frost-free season, as well as, growing season in colder climates will lengthen

Changes will happen in precipitation patterns

There will be more droughts and heat waves

Hurricanes will become much stronger and more intense

Sea level will likely to rise by 1-4 feet by 2100

Arctic will become an ice-free region

While these changes sound scary & there is almost nothing an individual can do to change it, we can certainly start the process of change right in our home. Some simple changes in lifestyle will definitely help stall this change if we all start to make these small changes in our living pattern, like for example, instead of using plastic bags while shopping, we can use environmental shopping bags made of jute, cotton or canvas. These are made of reusable bag material by jute bags manufacturers & jute products suppliers. While these changes won’t make any drastic change or sacrifice in our lifestyle, we can certainly help a bit to make the world a safer place to live for our future generations.