Climate Change Is An Ongoing Problem

Climate change has affected us in many ways, but it was even more influential on organisms and their community. The Earth is gradually heating and we are left to deal with the consequences. Homes are being destroyed, organisms are dying, and resources are running low. Since 1880, Our Earth’s temperature had increased by about 0.8 degrees Celsius. Climate change is affecting the Earth and scientists say that one more degree will greatly affect people from all over the world. There are many consequences of climate change and each one has a great impact on all of us, but organisms’ homes are being destroyed and thousands of species are dying out. These organisms are imperative to our world and how it functions.

Global warming to date has certainly affected species’ geographical distributional ranges and the timing of breeding, migration, flowering, and so on. The most well known study to date, by a team from the UK, estimated that 18 and 35% of plant and animal species will be committed to extinction by 2050 due to climate change. (Can animals and plants adapt to global warming?, 2017 )

As stated in the previous section, climate change is not necessarily a new issue. However it’s been receiving the spotlight lately, as it should. The issue of the “Greenhouse Effect” has been around as early as 1820’s when scientist Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier theorized that the Earth should be colder than it is. His main idea was that the Earth technically had a blanket around it, trapping in heat and keeping us as warm as we are.

The climate change will affect an animal’s ecosystem in many ways. The Changes affect the richness, the range, the distribution and the biodiversity of a specific species environment. Northern Canada is home to many marine and land animals and climate change will have an effect of both sets of these animals. In northern Canada many of the animals have adapted to the cold temperatures, that being said as the temperature begins to increase certain animals will be unable to survive such changes which will eventually effect the food chain for other animals around the specific ecosystem in question. Although extinction of these animals in the north is not expected any time soon a large decrease in their population is possible (Prowse et al,

Shifts in temperature and precipitation will be a shock to fragile ecosystems which depend on specific climatic conditions. Many species will be unable to adapt as fast as their environment changes and face sharply reduced numbers or extinction. Scientists estimate that a warming of just 2 degree will put as many as 30% of the world's species at risk of extinction. Plants and animals aren’t the only ones feeling the pressure of changing ecosystems. Many regions will face severe water shortages in a warmer world, creating the potential for conflict. It is believed that the genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region is at least in part a response to water shortages resulting from global warming.

Climate change can results in animals and plants migrating north to escape the heat but in many cases suitable habitats became scare or even unavailable farther away from the species natural habitat. “Shannon Pelini, a graduate student at the University of Notre Dame conducted experiments revealing that warmer increased the survival ship and shape of caterpillar and most northern habitats.”As if the direct effects of rising temperature weren’t enough, climate change also has impacts that could make climate patterns less consistent over time. “Michael Notaro a scientist at the University of Wisconsin Madison used climate data from the past century model vegetation changes over time.” He found that variability in climates cause an increasing number and and intensity of fire and droughts, as well as extreme weather events like ice ages and even heat

Breeding is essential among all species but most species require ideal settings to breed. Climate change alters these ideal settings “A sea level rise of only 50cm could cause sea turtles to lose their nesting beaches - over 30% of Caribbean beaches are used by turtles during the nesting season and would be affected”(Ali Penman, Climate Change - Effects on Animals) the rise in sea levels due to an increase of heat can affect the ability of a species to produce offspring. As a result, the total population of said species would drastically decrease. In addition, the drastic decrease in one species would affect the food source of that species natural predators and further disrupt the food chain in that species ecosystem. The decrease in the species would not only affect the species natural predators but also the specific food source. The loss of that species

Climate change is something that affects our Earth many times in greater ways than we would like to acknowledge. Earth’s temperature has been steadily rising since the beginning of time, but we have seen a huge increase starting in the 20th century, when industrialization began to happen. The issues that arise from climate change are happening more often and at a greater scale. Recently we see the way that climate change affects biodiversity.

"We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words” (Anna Sewell). There is undeniable evidence that animals are being affected by climate change. Even though the effects are difficult to measure, there are many different ways animals are being affected. With the loss of predator and prey species it affects the life cycles in the food chain. The earth’s climate change causes habitats such as snow, ice, or forest areas to alter, resulting in loss of habitat and food accessibility as well as causing extinction.

There is an issue on this planet that will define this generation. The issue is climate change. Global warming. A world on the collapse as our oceans are acidified, our air polluted, our forests disappearing, and human rights issues getting worse. It seems that people are not aware of how big climate change actually is. It’s not something that only takes place on the ice caps or in the forests on the far corners of the world. This is an issue that happens here, and now. It’s real. It’s happening.

Take a deep breath and imagine it is Sunday morning. The birds are chirping, the air is crisp with freshness, and the sun is radiating at a perfect temperature of 62 degrees. The coast is a 6-minute drive away, and this is the perfect day to take a short journey to the rocky shore and splash in the water. However, there is one problem, an action such as driving to the beach front will almost certainly contribute to the destructive effects of climate change. Due to this claim, is it then morally obligatory to not go on this Sunday morning drive in an effort to prevent greenhouse gas emissions?

Climate change is a growing concern in today’s world. We often hear about worldwide temperature rises, and how they are caused by pollution. We are warned about some of the potentially catastrophic consequences of rising temperatures in the future. However, climate change has already begun to occur. (NASA, “Climate Change Effects: The consequences of Climate Change”). Therefore, there is significantly more talk about solutions to climate change. These solutions will reduce the causes of climate change, and also prevent any future damage or destruction caused by climate change. However, we must first understand how climate change is caused, and how it affects the Earth, in order to see how these solutions will help solve it.

Climate change is a common factor in what causes mammals to become endangered and later extinct. Climate change mostly caused extinction for two out of every three large mammals in the world. Some mammals that went into extinction because of global warming were: Mammoths, Arabian gazelle, Bulldog rat Central rock rat, Columbian hutia, Corozal rat, Corsican shrew, Cuban spider monkey, Curacao sloth, Dark flying fox, Darling Downs hopping mouse, Darwin’s Galapagos mouse, Dinosaurs… etc. Over the years climate change has increasingly been at fault for the massive loss of mammals dying off. Huge loses of mammals are occurring all over the world, or becoming endangered. It starts when the little mammals can’t adapt to the rapid changing of the weather then it slowly starts to affects the larger mammals. “Climate change affects the little guy first and then, through them, the bigger guys. Today we see humans taking out the bigger animals and climate change affecting the smaller animals. So we can expect to see some pretty dramatic changes in the ecosystem” (Barnosky 3).

Climate change poses a fundamental threat to hundreds of thousands of animal species and their survival on earth. Our planet is warming faster than at any time in the past 10,000 years ( Jones, K. (2015, July 05). Impact of climate change on species. Retrieved May 24, 2016, from http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/species/problems/climate_change/). As the earth is being affected, it is becoming harder for endangered species to adapt and survive; to prevent further environmental degradation and economic issues, we need to find viable solutions to climate change.

Climate change is one of the major issues surfacing earth over the past century. The earth’s temperature has increased over the years leading to detrimental effects on the economic and life sources of people, especially that of agricultural production and livestock. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary (2014), defined climate change as a change in global climate patterns apparent from the mid late 20th century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, (2007) predicts that by 2100 the increase in global average surface temperature may be between 1.8° C and 4.0° C. With increases of 1.5° C to 2.5° C, approximately 20 to 30 percent of plant and animal species are expected to be at risk of extinction. Moreover, the IPCC (2007)