GLOBAL WARMING QUICK FACTS

- Temperatures around the world have increased by an average of 1.4 degrees since 1880. Most of the temperature increase has occurred in the past few decades.

- Many experts believe that the increase in severe weather conditions such as wildfires, heat waves and extreme storms is accredited in some measure to climate change.

- Ice is melting so rapidly in the Artic that the region may have an entirely ice-free summer before 2040. The lack of ice is causing hard times on polar bears and other indigenous creatures.

- According to climate studies the speed of warming is increasing. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are warmest since 1850.

- Extremely susceptible to even small changes in water temperature, coral reefs suffered the worst bleaching or demise in response to stress ever recorded in 1998. Some areas saw a 70 percent bleach rate. Experts are predicting that the pace will greatly increase as sea temperatures continue to rise.

- According to the multinational Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report released in 2004 average temperatures in Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia have risen at double the global average.

- Snow is rapidly melting in glacier and mountain areas. Thaws now come a complete week earlier and freezes begin a week later in all areas within the Northern Hemisphere.

- Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide) have been significantly increased due to industrialization, deforestation, and other pollutants.

- Plants and oceans cannot absorb the amount of carbon dioxide that humans are hammering into the atmosphere.

- A few studies suggest that some solar mechanisms could possibly be playing a partial role.

- Earth has experienced cooling and warming cycles due to orbital shifts roughly every hundred thousand years or so. These cycle changes took several centuries to run their course but today's changes have taken place in less than a hundred year span.

- Even if the offending greenhouse emissions were totally eliminated today, it would not immediately stop global warming since the gases endure in the atmosphere for years.