Antarctica Global Warming Quotes

I want to visit the snow in Antarctica before global warming turns it into a tropical paradise.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas in the Earth's atmosphere that traps the sun's heat. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air has risen steadily since the nineteenth century and is now at it's highest levels in 800,000 years. As a result, global temperatures are also rising: 2020 was one of the hottest years on record. But the planet is not warming evenly. The polar regions are heating up five times faster than anywhere else on Earth. As a result, polar habitats are changing dramatically. Snow covers the Arctic for fewer days each decade, and the glaciers over Greenland and Antarctica are melting away. Sea ice is changing, too, getting thinner and covering less ocean. Polar bears depend on Arctic summer sea ice for hunting and traveling, but within a few decades, there might be none left. Changes in climate and habitat have other consequences for polar animals. Some adaptions that supported survival are becoming unhelpful or even harmful. For example, blubber keeps marine mammals warm in cold water (see page 13). As temperatures continue to rise, the same blubber could cause those animals to overheat. When days get longer, ptarmigan turn brown for camouflage when the snow melts (see page 20). If warmer spring temperatures melt snow before the days lengthen, birds that are still white will be more visible to predators. As climate chance continues, these and other polar species may find it harder to persist.

Fifteen miles above us, as was first discovered by the British Antarctic Survey nine years before, a hole in the ozone layer opened up at this time of the year (at its worst in November) and allowed dangerous levels of ultraviolet rays to descend unfiltered to Antarctica and southerly lands like Australasia and Patagonia. Every year the hole grows bigger and more animals, including humans, suffer the resulting cancers, blindness and weakened immune systems. In Australia and New Zealand malignant melanomas have taken over from other cancers and heart disease as man's chief killers. In Patagonia, where sheep outnumber humans, whole flocks are going blind.

The Antarctic Peninsula, the thin finger of land pointing north toward Argentina (and the equator) has been getting warmer. We've heard an inordinate amount of hoopla about the warming on the peninsula, which makes up less than 3 percent of the Antarctic's land area. That's because (1) that is where most of the scientists and thermometers are; and (2) it is the only part showing any agreement with the Greenhouse Theory. The other 97 percent of Antarctica has been cooling since the mid-1960s.