Environment

Climate Change vs. Our Earth..

*With variations in the Earth’s temperature, thousands of square miles of snow and ice can accumulate or melt. Changes in snow and ice cover, in turn, affect air temperature, sea level, ocean currents, and storm patterns.

*Many species have specific ecological roles, and even small changes in climate may cause disruptions in habitat or food availability. In the past, animals could respond to these pressures by moving from one place to another. Today, however, land development has constrained ranges and travel routes, making species migration in response to climate change much more difficult.

*As part of a vast cycle of evaporation and rainfall, the oceans are also essential to the movement of water around the globe. Measuring changes in precipitation patterns, and understanding how they may lead to droughts in some regions and flooding in others, is a major part of predicting the potential effects of global climate change on human activities and natural ecosystems.

*So what are the possible implications of continued global climate change? Researchers are studying a variety of areas, from variations in the frequency and intensity of storms to changes in the incidence of mosquito-borne diseases. Rising sea levels can flood coastal areas, and habitat changes can cause the extinction of some species of plants and animals. Increases in precipitation can cause floods and landslides, while decreases may lead to droughts and wildfires.

The Sixth Extinction..

“The cause, in the case of the Sixth Extinction, is ourselves — Homo sapiens. This means we can continue on the path to our own extinction, or, preferably, we modify our behavior toward the global ecosystem of which we are still very much a part.”

*Scientists believe we have entered the Sixth Extinction here on Earth.

*This extinction is driven by humans with activities such as : transformation of the landscape, over exploitation of species, pollution, the introduction of nonnative species, and overpopulation.

*Humans began disrupting the environment as soon as they appeared on Earth; wherever early humans migrated, other species became extinct.

*Humans do not live with nature but outside it. Humans did not have to interact with other species for survival, and so could manipulate other species for their own use, and humans did not have to adhere to the ecosystem’s carrying capacity, and so could overpopulate.

*Bottom line, Earth can’t sustain the trend in human population growth.

*Only 10% of the world’s species survived the third mass extinction. Will any survive this one?

By 2050..

From the findings of Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Change -

*The number of people on the coast subject to flooding each year will rise from 5 million now to 100 million by 2050.

*Another 30 million people will be hungry because it will be too dry to grow crops in large parts of Africa.

*An extra 170 million people will live in countries with extreme water shortages.

*Malaria, one of the world's most dread diseases, will threaten much larger areas of the world - including Europe. The problem for doctors is that in 60% of the world where Malaria is currently unknown populations have little or no immunity to the disease and an epidemic could cause high death rates in adults and children.

The Runaway Greenhouse Effect..

*Basically, an unstoppable heating of the Earth.

*Greenpeace International polled 400 climate scientists and 45% believe the runaway greenhouse effect to be possible if emissions continued at their present rate.

*Worst case scenario - oceans with turn into water vapor, chemical reactions will begin to occur and drive the carbon dioxide from rocks into the atmosphere, the atmospheric temperature would be hundreds of degrees Celsius.

*The sobering warning - we have to be extremely concerned about processes such as burning of fossil fuels in large volumes that might have the potential to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect and produce on the Earth atmospheric conditions such as those found on Venus.