The Guardian Newspaper reported last week (03/11/04) that the Arctic may be ice-free by 2070. The Arctic Icecap has shrunk by over 15% in the past 30 years, and this reduction is set to accelerate, as the change in climate (caused by increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases as a result of emissions from cars, factories and power plants) continues to escalate.
So why should this worry us?
In the short term, the harmful results of the disappearing Arctic Icecap include Inuit hunters falling through previously stable ice, and the homes of creatures like polar bears and seals melting away. In the more long term, according to Global Issues Website (http://globalissues.org/EnvIssues/GlobalWarming/Intro.asp), there are many more damaging results of this warming of the climate.
Depending on where you are in the world, you could experience differing extreme weather patterns. These include hurricanes or "super-storms" (like those which devastated parts of many Caribbean islands and parts of South Eastern United States in August and September), long periods of dry heat or intense rain, and colder weather in Northern Europe as the arctic begins to melt.
Because of the expansion of water as it heats, and the melting polar caps, sea levels are beginning to rise, with some Pacific low-lying islands already under threat of disappearing. (>http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=2428&newsdate=05-Nov-1998)
Climate change is also being blamed for the increase of wildlife diseases, as they are spread more easily in the environment that global warming creates.
Who is responsible?
We know that the change of climate is down to increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases, of which industrialised countries account for about 80%, although these same countries only account for 20% of global population.
What can be done?
There needs to be a massive reduction in greenhouse emissions (60% according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990). At the 1997 UN conference on greenhouse emissions in Kyoto, Japan, industrialised countries met to agree on a reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases to 5% below 1990 levels for the period 2008 to 2012. For more about the conference check out these websites:
http://www.una-uk.org/Environment/kyotoandafter.html
http://www.dismantle.org/kyoto.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1997/sci/tech/global_warming/32958.stm
The United States, the worlds largest emitter of greenhouse gases, pulled out of the UNs Kyoto Protocol on global warming in 2001, stating that it was too expensive.
"The big melt has begun," Jennifer Morgan, director of the WWF's global climate change campaign, said in a statement quoted in last week's article in the Guardian; "Life on Earth will change beyond recognition with the loss of the ice sheet at the north pole and higher sea levels threatening major global cities..."
Read the Guardian's full article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1341825,00.html
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