Question

Solve this: it's urgent

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Answer 1

• Rising sea level
Sea-level rise is one of the most certain
impacts of global warming. During the
20th century, sea levels around the world
rose by an average of 4 to 8 inches (10 to
20 cm), ten times the average rate over the
last 3,000 years. That rise is projected to
continue or accelerate further, with pos-
sible catastrophic increases of many meters
if the ice sheets on Greenland and/or
Antarctica collapse. Already, one-third of
the marsh at Blackwater National Wild-
life Refuge in the Chesapeake Bay has
been submerged under the sea, and the
edges of mangrove forests in Bermuda are
lined with recently drowned trees. If sea
level continues to rise, thousands of square
miles of land in densely populated areas
such as the eastern U.S. and Bangladesh
may be lost, and flooding during storm
surges will worsen. Construction of
physical barriers such as seawalls would be
expensive and in some cases unfeasible.
• Shrinking snowpack and
vanishing glaciers
Mountain snowpack constitutes a criti-
cal reservoir of fresh water, as well as the
basis for the four-and-a-half billion
dollar U.S. ski industry. Over the past
50 years, spring snowpack has dimin-
ished by 16% in the Rocky Mountains
and 29% in the Cascade Range, due
mainly to rising temperatures. Further-
more, springtime snowmelt in the
western U.S. now begins 9 days earlier
on average, lowering stream levels
during the dry summer months. It will
be extremely difficult to solve the prob-
lem of crippling, long-term water short-
ages in the West without addressing
global warming.
In almost every mountainous region
across the world, glaciers are retreating
in response to the warming climate. The
shrinkage of glaciers is already creating
water shortages, and threatening tour-
ism in scenic parks. In one basin in
Glacier National Park in Montana, for
instance, two-thirds of the ice has dis-
appeared since 1850; with uncontrolled
warming, the remaining glaciers could
disappear by 2030. In the European
Alps, ice that had hidden and preserved
the remains of a Stone Age man melted
for the first time in 5,000 years. Vene-
zuela had six glaciers in 1972, but now
has only two; these too will melt away
in the next ten years. In the Peruvi.an
Andes, glacial retreat has accelerated
sevenfold over the past four decades.
In Africa, 82 percent of the ice on
Mt. Kilimanjaro has disappeared since
1912, with about one-third melting
in just the last dozen years. In Asia,
glaciers are retreating at a record pace in
the Indian Himalaya, and two glaciers
in New Guinea will be gone in a decade.
• Disintegrating polar ice and
melting permafrost
Since 1950, the Antarctic Peninsula
has warmed by 4°F (2°C), four times
the global average increase. In 2002,
a Rhode Island-sized section of the
Larsen B ice shelf, which sits offshore