The year is 2017, and it is virtually impossible to turn on the television or go online without having the term “climate change” come up. Whether you are one to believe in climate change, such as myself, or think of it as a mere hoax created by politicians and environmentalists, it is hard to deny the profound facts laid out by the global scientific community that indicate the realities of climate change. Many argue that climate change is attributed to the direct interaction that humans have with the environment, yet not all know that climate change is a natural phenomenon. In the 4.5 billion years that the Earth has existed, it has undergone drastic changed in its climate without any intrusion by humans -from a brutally hot surface covered in volcanoes, to a bitter frosty one brought on by the ice age-the Earth is no stranger to change. Though the planet undergoes natural cycles of climatic change, the anthropogenic release of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide that’s brought on by the burning of fossil fuels, speeds up the process of climate change. Greenhouse gases, such as carbon, have a long atmospheric lifetime-unfortunately for us-this gives the gases the opportunity to trap any outgoing radiation from the Earth, consequently warming the planet (Karl, 2003, p.1719).
As humans going about our day, we might not feel the impacts that climate change has on the environment surrounding us, yet if one were to venture to the glacier and ice rich areas throughout the globe, the impacts of climate change would be more than evident. One of the unfortunate victims from the wrath of climate change are the Alps and more specifically the impacts the heating of the Earth has on the permafrost. The permafrost, snow and glacier found on cold mountains such as the Alps are especially susceptible to any changes in the atmospheric temperatures, thus making it easy for researchers to prove climate change (Haeberli, 1998, p. 258). Per past findings, the 20th century saw major changes in the glacierized structure of the Alps, and further research concluded that the glaciers found on the mountain range seem to be slowly retreating, some even close to completely vanishing. The vanishing of ice can lead to disequilibria in the water cycle and cause mass changes in the Alpine environment, affecting all life surrounding them.
Perhaps the greatest impacts of global warming can be seen in the ice-shelf melting around the Antarctic, where basal melting and calving cause a tremendous loss of ice. “Ice shelves cover an area >1.561 million km2, and fringe 75% of Antarctica’s coastline while collecting 20% of its snowfall over 11% of its area. These features are nourished by the inflow of continental ice from grounded glaciers, surface accumulation, and freezing of marine ice on their undersides” (Rignot, 2013, p.266). These ice shelves are a necessity to the stability of the entire glacier, yet they are jeopardized by the rise in the oceans temperatures, brought on by global warming, As the temperatures in the ocean and air begin to rise, the structure of the molecules found in the ice begin to loosen, and eventually have no structure left-crumbling into the ocean. As clearly seen in the film, “Chasing Ice”, global warming is not a hoax, and major ice shelves can attest to that. The film follows a National Geographic photographer, James Balog, as him and his team travel to different parts of the globe such as Alaska and Greenland, to complete the Extreme Ice Survey, which chronicles the Earth’s rapidly melting glaciers. Setting up cameras that photographed the same glaciers every day, Balog was able to show the world how the changes in the Earth’s temperature caused powerful structures, such as glaciers, to crumble, and retreat helplessly into the ocean. Based on Balog’s evidence, it has been concluded that the ice shelves have retreated more in the past few years than they have in the last one hundred years, just as the Earth’s temperatures have been rising- a direct correlation. Glaciers are an essential player to the Earth’s equilibrium, one should fear what the future will be without them. “Glaciers matter because they are the canary in the global coalmine” (Balog).
Along with glaciers, another region in the world most greatly affected by the increase in temperatures is the Great Barrier Reef of the coast of Australia. Coral reefs are vital to the marine ecosystem; offering food, protection, and nutrients to thousands of different species of oceanic life-as well as being one of the most beautiful places in the world. Unfortunately, the Great Barrier Reef is not what it used to be-reefs are in serious decline, 30% are damaged beyond repair, and close to 60% are said to be lost by 2030 (Hughes, 2003, p.929). Research done in the past 20 years has concluded that greenhouse gases, climate change, and bleaching are all linked to the decline of the Barrier Reefs health. The increase of carbon causes the skeletal frame of the coral to weaken, reducing the accretion of the reefs, while the frequent and powerful hurricanes, caused by climate change, also damages the reef and leaves a short recovery time. If this weren’t enough, the greatest danger posing the reef is coral bleaching, which is strongly associated with the rise in temperatures. “Stressed, overheated corals expel most of their pigmented microalgal endosymbionts, called zooxanthellae, and become pale or white. If thermal stress is severe and prolonged, most of the corals on a reef may bleach, and many may die” (Baird, 2003, p.930). Bleaching is the leading cause of death in coral reefs, and it is said that the rise in temperatures will cause frequent and intense bleaching events over the next one hundred years. The Great Barrier Reef is one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet, yet it can all disappear within this century if the warming of the Earth’s oceans continues to increase due to climate change.