Slow Cooker Earth Part IV: How Global Warming is Changing the Face of Our Icons

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Today I finally return to an old series about the impact of global warming on our earth. If you’re new, I invite you to catch up on Parts 1, 2, and 3. This “Slow Cooker Earth” series is meant to give you some hard evidence of the harmful trends occurring in ecosystems and climate around the world and how it might begin to affect human life, to encourage you to make some conscious decisions to help turn the problem around. (It is NOT meant as a gloom and doom series at all!)

The following are just a few examples of iconic landmarks and travel destinations that are being given a drastic new face with the effects of climate change. Whether you believe global warming is a side-effect of human activities or a natural occurrence, the fact remains that it IS happening. And unless we want to lose our natural habitat, we should work together to adapt.

Amazon - Rainfall in the rainforest is much less predictable. “There’s less rain. The streams used to be pretty consistent. Now they’re ranging from neck-high flooding to completely dry,” said Peter English, an Ecuador tour guide. According to some projections, temperatures could rise 5° Celsius (9° Fahrenheit) in the tropics–plenty enough to wipe out the rainforests.
Amazon Rainforest Could Become a Desert [The Independent]

Glacier National Park - “Glacier National Park might soon need a new name,” says LiveScience staff writer Bjorn Carey, of the Montana Rockies’ landmark. Since 1850, about 125 out of 150 glaciers there have completely disappeared, and the rest are suspected to melt in the next twenty-five years.
Glaciers Melting in Montana Park [CBS News]

Great Barrier Reef - Pollution, disease, and overfishing were already doing a number on the world’s famous coral reef. Add to that much warmer water, and the coral polyps that bring barrier reefs around the world to colorful life are turned to hard white fossils. Caribbean reef ecosystems have already declined by about 30%, and the Great Barrier may be the last snorkeling spot to go.
Great Barrier Reef Dying [BBC News]

Kilimanjaro - The world’s tallest free-standing mountain, in Tanzania, attract about 30,000 climbers a year and many more onlookers, but the beloved “snows of Kilimanjaro” will disappear by 2020. Its glacier is quickly receding, and the massive ice blocks there are collapsing. Three American climbers were crushed in 2006 when the melting mountain sent huge rocks tumbling down on their campsite.
Mount Kilimanjaro’s Glacier is Crumbling [National Geographic]

Many of these famous landmarks already no longer resemble what our grandparents once recognized. As the habitats disappear, so will many of the species we love to see on the Nature Channel. And as more and more species become extinct, our relationship with the climate and with agriculture will be further jeopardized. Check back soon to see the next installment on how this will affect public policy, at which point you will no longer be able to ignore it.

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