From the category archives:

Global Warming


Climate change is a hot button issue, but even without playing a blame game, there is weight to the data that has been collected. The Earth will warm as it has in the past, but the repercussions will be far reaching. Within North America, the Great Lakes and global warming will interact in a way that could change the region vastly.

Already dealing with the onslaught of invasive species, global warming will only add additional pressure to the Great Lakes region. These vast reservoirs of fresh water account for twenty percent of the total amount of fresh water on the planet, a resource that will become scarcer in the future.

The importance of the region cannot be downplayed. Outside of the manufacturing of drinking water, it is also a huge producer of hydroelectric power, is a thoroughfare for shipping routes, as well as being a tourist attraction. A variety of species, both plant and animal, make their home along the shore and within the lakes themselves.

With all of these positives, there is a flipside to use and land development including air and water pollution and urban encroachment into habitats. Because of these issues, the region is more susceptible to being affected by global warming. Something as innocuous as climate change can reap disastrous results.

Warming temperatures will increase the melting away of the ice cover that is already quite thin upon the lakes. This melting will result in an increased evaporation of the lakes themselves, bringing the water level down.

As recently as last year, the lake level of Lake Superior was at its lowest in seventy seven years and predictions for the future are estimating another three foot decrease. The effects of low water levels include restrictions to shipping and a concentration of pollutants which will damage the water quality greatly, as well as the industry for travel, leisure, and cruises.

At the present, there are preliminary measure being discussed to restore the grandeur to the Great Lakes, but it will require billions of dollars over a number of years. Updating antiquated sewage treatment systems and cleaning up the already polluted sediment will be coupled with a natural buildup of wetlands that will act as a natural filter and barrier from invasive species.

Climate change is not just increased temperature and decreased water levels, it can wreck havoc on weather systems. It is proposed that within the region there will be more storms, as well as more drought seasons. This will increase pollution run off, it will act as a viral incubator and the lakes could be littered with dead zones. Dead zones are the result of algae overgrowth that creates oxygen free zones.

The predicted future statistics are not encouraging. The temperature itself will be increased two to four degree centigrade with lake levels falling anywhere from 1.5 to 8 feet! Weather wise, the increase in storms may be 25%.

The future may seem to hold a number of destructive elements, but they can be tempered by being proactive in the present and working to make the Great Lakes as great as they once were.

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Global warming is real, the fact that ice are melting faster and faster each year in the North and South pole are no doubt a warning message to us human about the rate that the temperature is rising with each passing year. With that said, it is still one of the things which none of us would like to deal with, but like it or not it will most likely extinct us human if nothing is being done on our part.

So exactly what sort of dangers that global warming pose?

One of the first thing that will quickly hit us is a shortage of food. With the rising in sea level and causing a shift in the temperature, many marine animals will find it difficult to adapt to that habitat and will soon face extinction themselves. This is important because marine life is part of the food chain and when you take that out of the equation there will be a huge disturbance in terms of having enough food to eat.

With that in mind, can you imagine if the ice do not stop melting and the sea level just continue to rise? Within a short period of time, it’s not hard to predict that countries and island that are situated on lowly lands will be completely covered in sea. Currently, there are countries that are already reporting a rise in their sea level, as well as island sinking a couple of inches each year.

Severe hurricanes and thunderstorms are also predicted to happen as a result of that, and unfortunately not every country or every where are equipped with state of the art technology that can handle and take precaution against such happening, casualties will be inevitable.

With a change in climate and temperature, it could very well affect the chance of spreading new disease that were evolved from this climate change. Diseases and viruses evolves, can our technology and scientist keep up to combat them?

Another notable effect of global warming is the fact that it will affect our crops, higher temperature will make growing crops harder because of the increase in rain fall as well as the decline in snow fall. Crops that depends on cold weather will especially suffer.

Global warming is without a doubt, a real life scenario that are caused by human activities. Release of carbon monoxide into the atmosphere have picked up since the 1970s and we have seen some of our worst disaster happened since then. Therefore, we should definitely do what we can and afford, by cutting down emission of carbon monoxide and stopping the waste of earth resources, we can make a difference.

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