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Discussion » Questions » Environment » Is climate change the cause to environmental degradation?

Is climate change the cause to environmental degradation?

Of its effect? 

Posted - July 24, 2016

Responses


  • 46117

    It is one of the ingredients in the mix.  If things are heating up or freezing over and not meant to, the escalation of such can wreak havoc.   It is only one ingredient.  But a chief concern.

    Over population is just as serious. 

      July 24, 2016 1:44 PM MDT
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  • 3

    Thank you D-RNQC2

      July 24, 2016 1:48 PM MDT
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  • Climate change is only one of many things damaging natural and human environments.

    The rise of one degree Celsius has caused a massive die-off and bleaching of two-thirds of the coral on the Great Barrier Reef and hence all the marine life that depended on it.

    Pacific Islanders on coral atolls are now forced to leave their homes as the land is swamped knee deep by the sea.

    Elk in the Tundra cannot escape mosquitos in the longer summers and their health is suffering.

    Glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating, less water in the spring melts each year, less irrigation for the rice paddies on the plains below.

    In Bangladesh, as the seas rise, thousands of people try to retreat inland into already overpopulated lands.

    The Sahara Desert grows larger and creeps 20 meters further south every year.

    An entire peninsula of ice, larger than many countries, has disappeared from the South Pole - the ecologies of animals there are starting to suffer.

    This is only a tiny proportion of the list of direct results of global warming, and the whole of that list only a minute fraction of what is highly probable to come within the next twenty to fifty years.

    Worst, each year the permafrost in the Arctic Tundra recedes by ten times the retreat of the previous year. Beneath it, as the ice and methane hydrates dissolve, methane is released into the atmosphere. Methane is roughly 50 times more potent than CO2 as a heat-trapping gas. The quantity of methane gas being released from the Tundra is massively exacerbating the problems caused by man-made pollution. The methane hydrates are distributed unevenly. In most places it clumps in tiny quantities, evenly and broadly distributed. But in some, randomly, there are huge concentrations. There is no way to predict where they are. When one of these is uncovered and reaches melting point, the effect on the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere will be as catastrophic as a nuclear bomb. The methane released will suddenly push global warming exponentially higher. There are thousands of these dense clusters. As the melting of the Tundra continues, it becomes increasingly inevitable that these clusters will be exposed and released.

    A former professor of environmental sciences at Arizona University, Guy McPherson, estimates that we have between 1 & 20 years before a catastrophic release of methane occurs.

      July 24, 2016 3:07 PM MDT
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