Antarctica, the coldest place on Earth. With many glaciers and icebergs, it’s a cool place! There are many diverse organisms that live in Antarctica. Humans are changing the ecosystem in the worst ways. From oil spills to global warming, humans are harming not only Antarctica, but the animals and plants that call Antarctica home. People are dumping raw sewage and trash in the oceans. Although we may not realize it, Antarctica is being affected in negative ways. Humans do multiple things that affect the continent. For example, oil spills are becoming a major concern. More ship accidents are occurring, and although now we are able to contain oil spills, oil travels. A ship accident might occur thousands of miles far from Antarctica, but the oil does find it’s way to the Antarctic Ocean, affecting sea life. Global warming is also an issue. Antarctica is very sensitive to climate change. Thus, temperatures increase faster. As a result, ice is thinning, which is important for the wildlife. Lastly, dumping things in the ocean can affect sea life negatively. People dump all sorts of things in the oceans: trash, sewage, and useless items. Like oil, trash can travel the sea’s currents and wind up in the Southern Ocean. These items can harm wildlife. …show more content…
There is now regulations in place, such as special permits to set foot in Antarctica. Visitors aren’t allowed to take organisms away unless granted another permit. These kinds of permits help protect the wildlife that thrives in Antarctica. Also, there are regulations for sewage and trash dumping. Sewage passes special treatment that is checked before dumped. As for trash, it is either burned, shredded, compacted, frozen, or dumped at another place. To add on, the oil must be discharged at special ports, and ships are now required to be checked often to prevent accidents. To wrap it up, people are trying to fix what they did to
The author of “The Last Wilderness Preserve” has a stronger, negative opinion about how human behavior affects antarctica's economy using diction and other word choice to display these negative emotions in quotes such as, “scientific explorations can be done more easily in other locations, and those in antarctica threaten the natural state of the land.”and also, “...Humans have still contributed to massive problems there (Antarctica) Global warming, a gradual heating of the planet thought to be caused by pollution, has melted most of Antarctica's ancient ice and may soon lead
In “The Last Wilderness Preserve” the author talks about how people should not go to Antarctica. There are dangers and people going there would create some of those dangers. In “A New Land of Opportunity” the author talks about how people should start making trips to Antarctica while they still can. The only issue that would take place would be ice falling and melting making everything wet. The falling ice poses a threat as well.
Antarctica is certainly the most pristine environment left on the earth. Unfortunately this is no longer the case because of multiple human activities that have led to environmental issues and concerns such as pollution, ozone layer thinning, global warming etc. Human impact is a serious threat to ecosystem and food chain of Antarctica.
The picture shows Antarctic, the ice is usually covering all of the water but climate change caused some of the ice to melt. This is impacting living organisms because it is changing their natural habitat to something very different. If the ice melts it will flood homes and animals habitats around it.
In the first passage, “The Last Wilderness Preserve”, the author argues that Antarctica should be kept away from humans, so the continent can preserve in its natural splendor. In the passage it states, “Global warming, a gradual heating of the planet thought
Antarctica is the coldest, driest, and most inhospitable continent on Earth. Yet it is yields some 90 percent of the Earth most precious natural resource: water. But behind this pristine exterior, Antarctica is fighting a losing battle. New data suggests that the continent as a whole is warming at an alarming rate. According to recent studies gathered from Nature Magazine, the western half of the continent is warming five times faster than any other place
Antarctica is a cold, frozen, and mostly empty land found at the South Pole of the earth. Humans go there mostly for research and occasional tourism, though it's incredibly inhospitable, especially in the colder months. Due to the harsh environment, it remains the last true wilderness on earth and is protected by an international agreement called the Antarctic Treaty of 1961. In this Treaty, world leaders agreed that everywhere south of 60° south latitude would remain unclaimable by any country.
Global warming also has an impact on the African penguins such as the adults have to travel further and expend more energy in order to find adequate food for themselves and their chicks which means more die from starvation.
One clear factor are runoffs.Clearly this is one major issue that needs to addressed since we keep having to address this issue whenever we discuss our oceans. Dangerous chemicals are reaching our water impacting the ecosystem at each level. Sea Otters were once near-extinction by the early 20th century due human hunting. Since then we have put in place numerous acts to prevent this from occurring. Although these changes helped bring populations numer back up we are witnessing a weather rapid decline once more in their population due to the number of kale farms decreasing. The reason for kale’s decrease seems to be the warming of our ocean seas. Both these issues are recurring whenever we discuss our ocean's decline.
Some of the special efforts that are required when spending time in Antarctica is to not take anything for granted, conserve water, and to save fuel and cargo. The first special effort is, don’t take anything for granted while in Antarctica. The reason you can’t take anything for granted is because “Everything you depend on has to be shipped or flown into the continent(Bjerklie paragraph 1).” The next special effort is you have to conserve water. You have to conserve water because, “there is only 45,000 gallons of water you can use a day(Bjerklie paragraph 4).” Along with that, “you can only take two minute showers twice a week(Bjerklie paragraph 4).” The last special effort is, always save your fuel and cargo. The reason you have to save
This is important because there have been some volcanoes found under some ice sheets located in Antarctica and if they erupt it will change the climate even more than global warming is. It is also important because it could solve the issue of where we can put all 284 tons of trash we throw out each year. Volcanoes are also powerful enough to cause earthquakes landslides flooding destroying many things in its path. We should protect ourselves by evacuating the moment you here of one and help people who have lost their home a place to stay.
Just like we threaten the ocean with trash our ocean it could threaten us too! Think about it all that trash we put in the ocean could affect our sealife. The ocean could carry infectious diseases and harmful algal bloom toxins. Well Did you know if you let go of a helium filled balloon there is a 90% chance it will end up in the ocean. That is terrible for animals.
The polar ice and climate change is not only affecting the arctic, but it is affecting the human race, too. The ice melting as we all know, but what we don’t know is what is the after affect of ice melting. While the ice is melting it thins out and that causes the ice to spread. The ice has gone through Russia and now to Canada in four- five years. This distance of ice spreading used to take six-seven years. This means the ice is now melting more pushing the other ice faster! What some people may not know is that as the ice moves it carries pollution, and when it is spring and summer all the ice melts and pollution goes into the ocean.
My world problem is climate changes effect on Antarctica. The cause of this world wide issue is an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide enters our atmosphere through burning fossil fuels. Carbon Dioxide levels have risen just nineteen percent since 1987-337 parts per million then to just over 400 parts per million now (Atkin). Ozone depletion high above Antarctica is due to chlorofluorocarbons and other greenhouse gases (Atkin). High carbon dioxide levels in earth’s atmosphere
“Our findings show that if we do not want to melt Antarctica, we can’t keep taking fossil fuel carbon out of the ground and just dumping it into the atmosphere as CO2 like we’ve been doing,” Caldeira