World Wonders Threatened

With winters growing increasingly warm, and summers hot and dry, extreme weather will become commonplace in future years. Water shortages in regions around the world will be the norm, because glaciers and glacial runoff will shrink. This will affect more than one billion people, as rich and poor alike clamor for water. And according to new information, the news gets direr. Global warming now threatens to destroy some of the Earth's natural wonders, too.

The news comes at a time when world governments and environmental organizations are becoming somewhat more receptive to frank discussions on the changing climate. Evidence continues to mount on how much damage we have done to the environment. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Brussels recently issued its harshest words yet. It stated in a report that humankind's activities are cause number one for the warming experienced around the globe during the past half decade.

So just what will the impact of today be on the world of tomorrow? If the climate models hold true, then coral reefs everywhere will begin to lose their color and die, and that's with only a rise in water temperature of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (or a little more than 1 degree Celsius). As such, Australia's Great Barrier Reef, one of the world's natural wonders, will utterly disappear. In the Amazonian rain forest, much of the trees will die, as 60% of the area becomes dry savannah. The temperatures of the Amazon River will increase by 3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (about 2 to 3 degrees Celsius). In Chile and Argentina, melting glaciers will mean a drier climate, which will lead to increased forest fires in the region. And that is only the tip of the iceberg.

As the report also indicates, some of the damage is irreversible. Yet destruction of the coral reefs, as well as other ecosystems, could be limited, if not prevented.