The Impact Of Global Warming
Some 20 years before I became a journalist, I was a geology major at the University of Arizona. Those courses have always stayed with me so I was doubly interested in a recent editorial I saw in Indian County Today headlined, ‘Global Heat Wave Bigger Killer Than Terrorism’.
The story reporting some 5,000 deaths in France during the July-August heat wave this summer also brought about destructive changes in climate for the Inuit in Alaska.
“Their world and lifestyle including an understanding and cultural appreciation for the natural world around them is disappearing. Unprecedented heat is bringing early snow melts, strange insect infestations and animal migrations that beget many losses: Freezing rain from midwinter thunderstorms and a loss of permafrost”
Reports from Iqaluit, A Baffin Island community on the edge of the Arctic Circle, describe this passing summer season. Days with temperatures 25 degrees above normal. Whole villages were washed away as the ocean ice turns to mush. The world the Inuit has known is disappearing and melting right before their eyes.
Seal pups drown as their ice platforms dissolve underneath them before they lean how to swim. Polar bears are going hungry from the diminishing seal population and attacks on human grow more frequent On Bathhurst Island in the High Arctic, a herd of 3,000 caribou have been virtually wiped out as freezing rains trap most of the vegetation and they are starving to death. Since 1993, the herd has dwindled to less than 75 animals.
If global warming is not stemmed, the entire world, as we know it, is going to be affected. Melt all the glaciers and ice packs on earth and the sea level will rise some 600 hundred feet or more - world wide. Good bye to all of the major sea port cities in the world. The entire state of Florida will be under water and my town of Yuma, Arizona would once again become part of the Sea of Cortez. Where will your community be?
While terrorism may be an immediate threat to humanity, the increase in global warming is even a greater one. Now is the time for the peoples of the world to join together in the fight against global warming as it involves the future generations of all races and creeds on earth. We can begin by decreasing our dependence on fossil fuels and halt the destruction of rain forests throughout the world.
The story reporting some 5,000 deaths in France during the July-August heat wave this summer also brought about destructive changes in climate for the Inuit in Alaska.
“Their world and lifestyle including an understanding and cultural appreciation for the natural world around them is disappearing. Unprecedented heat is bringing early snow melts, strange insect infestations and animal migrations that beget many losses: Freezing rain from midwinter thunderstorms and a loss of permafrost”
Reports from Iqaluit, A Baffin Island community on the edge of the Arctic Circle, describe this passing summer season. Days with temperatures 25 degrees above normal. Whole villages were washed away as the ocean ice turns to mush. The world the Inuit has known is disappearing and melting right before their eyes.
Seal pups drown as their ice platforms dissolve underneath them before they lean how to swim. Polar bears are going hungry from the diminishing seal population and attacks on human grow more frequent On Bathhurst Island in the High Arctic, a herd of 3,000 caribou have been virtually wiped out as freezing rains trap most of the vegetation and they are starving to death. Since 1993, the herd has dwindled to less than 75 animals.
If global warming is not stemmed, the entire world, as we know it, is going to be affected. Melt all the glaciers and ice packs on earth and the sea level will rise some 600 hundred feet or more - world wide. Good bye to all of the major sea port cities in the world. The entire state of Florida will be under water and my town of Yuma, Arizona would once again become part of the Sea of Cortez. Where will your community be?
While terrorism may be an immediate threat to humanity, the increase in global warming is even a greater one. Now is the time for the peoples of the world to join together in the fight against global warming as it involves the future generations of all races and creeds on earth. We can begin by decreasing our dependence on fossil fuels and halt the destruction of rain forests throughout the world.
posted by Bobbie Hart O'Neill @ 10:07 AM
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