While most ask the question, what will the future be like for us, we should also ask, what will the future be like for the animals? They are also dealing with the effects of global warming and some sort of attention should be put onto them.
A article from an Australian newspaper pointed out that the arctic is shrinking five times faster than the rest of the world. Penguins are a large part of the arctics animal population. Populations have dropped significantly for all of the penguin species ranging between 30-70%. The warmer temperatures and stronger winds mean that the penguins have to raise their chicks on thinner sea ice and many of the eggs were blown off before hatching.
Global warming may not just be killing off species, it can also bring unwanted species to different areas of the world. Antarticas waters remain too cold for sharks to live in and is dominated by soft-bodied, slow moving invertebrates. However, global warming has pushed these temperatures up by 3 degrees in the past 50 years and eventually the water will be warm enough for the sharks. Crabs are already beginning to move closer to the continent for the first time in millions of years and will disrupt the composition of archaic marine communities. The article warned that a return of these shell cracking predators would be a tragic loss for biodiversity in one of the last wild places on earth.
While these little changes don’t seem like a huge deal, in the long run they could cause serious problems. We need to keep focusing on the harm that we are doing to ourselves but also focus on the animals whose ancestors were here long before ours.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23223810-5005961,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22907432-5005961,00.html
March 26, 2008 at 3:48 pm
This article shows a really important, often overlooked, issue from global warming. We need to understand that animals are getting the effects of the heat badly, if not worse then us. Not to sound selfish, but if they die out, the chain will be disrupted and influence us just as much. I believe we should focus on both animals and ourselves in order to fix the world or counter the issues involving global warming.