forum Global Warming
Started by Silja
tune

people_alt 25 followers

@Masterkey

When I lived in Saint Vincent (an island in the Caribbean), I talked to someone majoring in something to do with marine biology, and they told me that certain species of plants were going extinct because of warmer climates and pollution, creating a chain reaction where the fish that eat that plant start dying out. Except an animal that really thrives in hotter, more polluted water happens to be jelly fish. And since turtles (they eat jelly fish) are going extinct, jelly fish populations are getting larger and larger.

Basically, if the same trend keeps up, we'll have a different ecosystem in the Caribbean entirely hundreds of years from now. The world won't explode or anything, life will adapt. But life as we know it now will be gone.

@Masterkey

Well… I'm one of those people who thinks people are freaking out too much about "global warming" as THE thing. I think we should really worry about other effects of pollution. The earth used to be far warmer way back thousands of years ago, and the warmest spell actually recorded in history was back during the Roman Empire. Really the average temp hasn't increased by more than a degree or two. And who's to say the ice caps were ALWAYS ice caps? I think scientists kind of are mistaken in believing that humans are powerful enough to control the weather, much less decide how the Earth is going to arrange itself. And we were the ones who decided to build cities next to the ocean. New York City could have been covered by ocean thousands of years ago, you know? The Earth will continue to evolve, and there's nothing we can do about that.

But we can do something about pollution, THAT'S THE REAL PROBLEM HERE YA'LL. We can make a difference in that! I wish politicians would focus more on that rather than global warming. Not that the Earth isn't warming up, but that's NOT the biggest problem caused by pollution.

Kayli

Hey! I'm an environmental science student, and the thing is with global climate change is yes we are noticing it more recently but we still have our normal range of temperatures where it increases for the summer and is lower for winter; but the baseline for those temperatures are increasing every year. Because of this temperature increase, the polar ice caps are melting sooner each year, giving polar bears less time to hunt and collect food during the winter and can drive them to extinction. With this the glaciers are melting which is release oxygen that was being held and increasing the water table. For places like Russia and Alaska, they have a type of soil where it is frozen, and with the increasing temperature, and certain urbanization practices, this frozen soil could start to melt which can increase the chances for rapid erosion from the amount of water that will be suddenly present. Depending on where you are and what air quality standards you have to follow, the public will have to deal with more pollutants in the air such as ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, lead, and particulate matter. This can become an issue with nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide since these are two of the main causes for acid rain, which can decrease the pH of water and soil making it too acidic for wildlife and vegetation to grow.
There is a lot that can happen with global climate change, but there are other environmental factors that are of concern as well.