The Oceans and Climate Change

        So as I have been trying to look up new things to write about and add to my blog, I keep coming across articles and news reports on global warming and climate change over and over and over again.  I realized that this was a huge and important issue that we all need to become more knowledgeable on and that we need to do something about it because of all the things we have talked about in class and all the other blogs I’ve done on this issue this year.  But, I don’t think it really hit me until tonight.  I so wanted to find some new, exciting topic to write about, but this global warming thing is so hot right now, and it just made me realize just how much of an impact the results of it could have on our lives.  People wouldn’t be posting news articles about it constantly if it wasn’t that important of an issue.  Obviously people are trying to get the word out, and I have to believe that it is starting to catch on.  I now hear about global warming and climate change almost every day or at least every week.  I know I have said this before in other posts, but this really is an issue that we need to help put an end to.

Image from: http://www.dicander.com/pix/files/wave.jpg

    As I was looking around, I saw one article that started off with this sentence: “Wars will be fought over water, not oil, with the planet staring down the barrel of a global catastrophe driven by climate change.”  For some reason this thought just really struck me.  It seems ridiculous enough to me that we have to fight wars over oil because we use so much of that everyday, however, I can’t even imagine people having to fight wars over water because freshwater may become more scarce because of the effects of climate change and global warming.  If this is what the world is going to come to, then we have to take action now.  I don’t think that it’s smart for us to keep putting this off.  In this article I was reading, a scientist Jim Renwick said that “climate change would eventually lead to massive changes in the world’s freshwater distribution.” 

Ocean Water Circulation Conveyor Belt

Image from: http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/nationalassessment/images/COBelt2.jpg

    The ocean water and other freshwater sources are certainly not going to be the only things effected by the global climate change, but the changes that happen to the oceans and other water sources will greatly effect so many other aspects of how the Earth works.  As we just learned the oceans effect our weather patterns because of the way the ocean currents flow.  If the weather changes were drastic enough, then ecosystems around the globe would be greatly effected and often times they would be greatly harmed.  In the article it said that scientists are expecting “In New Zealand, more heavy dumps of rain, floods and landslides in western areas, and more severe droughts in the east.” Also, “Coastal infrastructure will come under greater pressure from rising sea levels and stronger storm surges.”  Since so many of the problems our Earth is experiencing is because of us humans, we have to be the ones to take action and try and fix our mistakes, or least make sure that things will not get any worse.  If we do this, there is no way that one person will not benefit.

If we don’t take action and try to reduce the chances of harmful effects from global warming, hurricanes and other strong storms such as this one may become more abundant occurances in our Earth.

Image from: http://www.elements.nb.ca/theme/oceans06/igor/hurricane-ritaLG.jpg

Source:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/dominionpost/3948973a7693.html