Icebergs and Global Warming

It is a fact that global warming affects the icebergs in a most dramatic way. The greenhouse effect is to be blamed, as it is the cause of global warming. How does that make the sea level rise? Well first of all when water is heated it expands. But also since an iceberg is 99% ice it starts to melt as soon as the temperature is over 0 degrees, making it just too easy for the icebergs to start melting.

Icebergs are huge, the largest one is 12,000 cubic miles. So, if you were to melt it you would get an awful lot of water. Also there are many, many icebergs on earth, so if all of them melted you would have millions of gallons of water. Icebergs won't melt completely, but enough to make the sea level rise quite a bit.

Scientists used to say that by the end of the century the sea may have risen up to three centimetres. That didn’t sound a lot, but it really is. And now, scientists have started to realise that their first calculation was far too positive for our case, since nothing is done to stop global warming and the process of melting ice becomes quicker and quicker.

Think how much ocean there is. Well, think with all of that water you add on another three centemeters worth. A lot isn't it? In three hundred years it is thought that the sea will have risen three to four meters! So what if the sea is rising so much? Think about what will happen if the sea level rises. The water isn't just going to fall off the earth. There is no place to put extra water in the sea,so it will have to go onto the land. Think about what a map will look like in, say the year 2500. There will probably be a tiny dot for each continent. Or will it? If you think one step further you will realize that might not be, because there are only a certain amount of icebergs in the world so once they have melted, there will be nothing left to melt. Nevertheless there will be an awful lot of water on the earth.

People already know what should be done to avoid this tragedy. A tragedy that doesn’t affect only humans (who would actually deserve it because of all the bad things they do to earth) but each and every living organism. These two last decades more than 50 species suddenly were found to be endangered. Those who were already known to be endangered face a really high possibility of extinction.

People have to understand that making money shouldn’t be their main concern. That protecting the environment is in fact their protection. If this article made you one of those people that know what they have to do, check this link for more stuff: green-blog.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=66

There are many ways of finding up ways to save our earth, but the real challenge is to do all those tips tell us to...

Image Credit: Public Domain. Suggested Credit: Courtesy: National Science Foundation [via Flickr].