THE DANGER AHEAD

By CHRIS BUNTING

April 26, 2005 -- FORGET “skeptical” oil tycoons and automobile lobbyists who’ll go to their graves denying that global warming exists.

        The phenomenon is still a gigantic pink elephant in the room for those who embrace the veritable science behind it but can’t bring themselves to, say, swap the Hummer for a hybrid car.

        But the consequences of global warming are becoming more and more visible and thus harder and harder to ignore - especially as some of the planet’s most cherished destination draws like the coral of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and the snow on Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro find themselves on the endangered species list.

        A quick “rocks-for-jocks” tutorial: Global warming refers to the increasing temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans - irrefutably happening right now. The average temperature of the earth’s surface has risen 0.6 degrees Celsius since the late 1800s and is expected to rise another 1.4 - 5.8 degrees C by the year 2100, according to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Web site.

        What’s controversial is what exactly is causing temperatures to increase. Solar flares? Volcanism? The end of the so-called “Little Ice Age”? Increased greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels?

        We’re not here to weigh in on that heated debate (though we certainly believe there’s a front runner of the group, as does overwhelming world opinion), but rather to highlight the unfortunate and undeniable effects global warming has had on some of the places we hold near and dear and what the future may hold. 

            We also don’t mean to ascribe to any these locations an imminent death sentence – scientists, government agencies and environmental groups are working hard to prevent further damage and dreaming up ways to one day reverse the ill effects global warming has wrought upon the planet. 

We simply wish to report that as it stands, these locations are sick and in need of help. A bedside visit now to any of these places will not have been in vain if either the best or the worst case scenarios play out.
        
        AUSTRALIA
        A crisis of coral genocide could happen at the hands of global warming along the world’s largest reef that attracts over 1 million visitors each year.

        In 1998 and 2002, “coral bleaching” - an event where warmer, stressing waters force coral to cast off the algae needed to perform photosynthesis, thus leaving coral colorless, skeletal and ultimately dead if the stress is prolonged - was noted along the usually vibrant Great Barrier Reef and attributed to global warming by the marine biology community.

          “In 2002, between 60-95% of the reefs in the park were bleached, however, most sites recovered,” Lara Hansen, a senior scientist with the World Wildlife Fund, said. “But in some locations 95% of the reef died. 5% of the reefs are described as being ‘severley damaged.’”

        The birds aren’t faring too well down under, either. Australia’s rising land and sea temps (the country warmed by 0.7 degrees Celsius last century) are changing their breeding and migratory patterns for the worse, according to a recent report released by the Bureau of Meteorology Research Center in Melbourne.

        The unusually warm seawater in 2002 around the GBR, for example, lowered the amount of would-be-prey for wedge-tailed shearwater chicks so they, in turn, died off in higher than usual numbers.

        Birds are migrating to far more remote parts of the country to escape the heat, making bird watching a more difficult task. The pitta, known for its loud squawk and bright colors, used to hang out in beachy Queensland during winter (when it’s hot in the southern hemisphere) – now, because of the unbearable heat, it spends the entire year in mountains where the air is cooler.

        AFRICA  
        As the butt of one of nature’s cruelest jokes, Africa will suffer more from global warming than any developed nation despite the continent being only responsible for about 5% of the world’s greenhouse gas (the US, by comparison, pumps out about 25%).

        That’s because Africa’s already burdened by intense heat and severe droughts -- global warming can only make a bad situation worse.

        And worsen it did. Standing nearly 20,000 feet tall, majestic Kilimanjaro – Swahili for “the mountain that glitters” – is fast becoming glitterless, stripped nearly bare of its signature snow caps which have melted away for the first time in 11,000 years.

        “Kilimanjaro is a fragment of its former self - it’s such an iconic picture postcard of Africa,” a WWF spokesman said. “But besides the aesthetic loss, Kilimanjaro losing its glaciers affects the kinds of plants you have on the mountain, and consequentially, the animals. It’s a domino effect.”

        Scientists warn the entirety of its ice and snow will likely be gone from Africa’s tallest peak by the year 2020.

              
        MALDIVES
        Last year’s killer tsunami could have harmed the Maldives - situated in the Indian Ocean - a great deal worse, possibly even submerging the flattest country on record all together.

        Luckily, only 82 people died and the country has dried out. Compared with other nearby countries, the Maldives got off easy - this time.

        But the islands, best known to tourists for their incredible dive sites, are hardly out of harm’s way. Global warming, responsible for glacial and polar ice cap melting and the thermal expansion of water, is raising the level of the oceans.

Bleak news for the Maldives where 80% of its landmass is less than three feet above sea level (its highest point is a mere 10 feet above).

        As the Indian Ocean rises at about 2 - 3 millimeters annually, the majority of the Maldives could be under water in 30 years - completely so by 2100, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

          According to the WWF, in 1998, The Maldives, along with Sri Lanka, Kenya, Tanzania and Seychelles and islands in the Caribbean were all victims of a global coral bleaching event in which 90% of coral cover was lost.

                   
        EUROPEAN ALPS
        “Matterhorn Mountain” can survive just fine in Disneyland’s southern California heat. But the real Matterhorn on which it’s based, and the rest of Europe’s Alpine peaks, cannot.

        Warming temps are cooking away the precious snow in the Alps, and fast. They’ve lost about half their volume of ice since the 1850s and the ICPP claims that for every 1 degree Celsius increase, the snowline is pushed upwards by about 490 feet.

        This factoid could spell disaster for ski resorts in the area, especially those at low altitudes. According to a 2003 report released by the United Nations Environment Programme, up to 56 percent of Swiss ski resorts will be facing “acute difficulties” in attracting skiers in the next half century. This could mean a loss of up to $1.6 billion in tourist revenue every year.

        The same report expects Austria’s snow line to rise between 650 to 980 feet over the next 30 to 50 years, meaning the end of many village’s winter industries. And Italy would lose low level skiing entirely if the altitude for snow reliability rises to 4,900 feet (half of the county’s resorts are below 4,300 feet).

                CANADA
        On the pristine shore of the Hudson Bay in Churchill, Manitoba, gregarious polar bears have delighted eco-tourists for years -- but something has gone awry in bear city.

        Although massive ursine deaths have yet to take place, the polar bears are losing pounds – precious pounds they need to survive the severely frigid climate of northern Manitba.
         The cause? Polar bears in the area require ice platforms to form on the Hudson to catch ringed seal during the western Hudson’s ice season. But the warming temperatures are breaking up the ice sooner and sooner, shortening the time the bears can effectively hunt by nearly three weeks in the last 20 years, as well as decreasing the size of the seal populations, thus putting bears at risk of starvation two-fold.

“For every week earlier the ice breaks up in Hudson Bay, bears come ashore roughly 10 kg (22 lbs) lighter and in poorer condition,” WWF’s senior scientist, Lara Hansen, said.

The population of polar bears is also at risk of decline because, as a result of having less to eat, females are having fewer cubs. “Estimates are that by 2012 polar bears will be below the weight at which they stop reproducing,” Hansen said.

  FLORIDA
 Floridians are learning first hand that bad news comes in threes -- especially as the sunshine state grapples with the problem global warming (and we’re not even counting last year’s deadly hurricane attacks which some link directly to warmer ocean and air temperatures).

Number one, the ocean level is rising which, like the Maldives, is the last thing the Florida Keys need as they’re situated just barely above sea level.

          “For Florida specifically there have been some local studies. They indicate that in the past century the rise has been between 7 - 9 inches. By the end of this century we expect 18 - 20 inches,” Lara Hansen, a senior WWF scientist, explained.

          “The general rule in the Florida Keys regarding sea level rise is that for every one foot increase in sea level rise, there is 100 to 1000 feet of coastal erosion associated,” she went on to say. “Keep in mind that the Florida Keys are almost all below 6 feet in elevation.”

Secondly, the Everglades – already at risk of extinction from human development and the reluctant carrier of the title “the most endangered national park in the nation” – are threatened by invasive salt water which interferes with ecosystems, like the wood stork population, that rely on purely freshwater marshes.

            At the moment, the freshwater Everglades are separated from the sea by a ring of mangroves. But, the Environmental Protection Agency warns, “if the sea rises faster than the mangroves, or if large tracts of mangrove forest are damaged by hurricanes and fail to recover, much of the freshwater Everglades might disappear during the next 100 years, replaced by saltwater wetlands and shallow bays.”
         Thirdly, Florida’s coral reefs – which span more than 130 miles in length, the third largest in the word -- also suffer from bleaching when waters warm and force the necessary algae necessary for photosynthesis off the coral.

“There was extensive bleaching in the Keys in 1998. In some species up to 90% bleached,” Hansen said.

Even a water temperature change of 1 degree Fahrenheit can be enough stress to initiate bleaching. And hotter temps is exactly what Florida has in store.

“In the past century the temperature increased between 1 and 2 degrees Farenheit. This century it is expected to increase 3 - 7 degrees F,” according to Hansen. “But that's not the worst of it. Because it is warmer in this humid environment the heat index in July is expected to increase 15 to 20 degrees F.”

Adding insult to injury is that fact that not only is Florida’s coral reef “home to more than 5,500 marine species [and], it acts a natural buffer to protect the Keys against catastrophic storm surges from hurricanes,” according to the EPA.

SPAIN

            Spain’s famously wild southwestern beaches and islands may be bidding the world a sad adios, much to the chagrin of millions of European sun bunnies, if global warming continues to raise the level of its surrounding seas.   

The nation’s environment ministry released a report in February that clearly warns of both rising sea water and a shortage of rain caused by a push of summer temperatures into the realm of 50 degree Celsius (122 degree Fahrenheit) by 2070 – a horrific scenario for a country that has the only desert climate in Europe to begin with.

     Already Spain has had summer temps as high as 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit).

   Over the same forecasted period of time, the sea could rise by at a rate of 4 to 27 inches, flooding Spain’s beaches and the Balearic and Canary islands. That would be a disastrous result for Spain’s national economy for which beach tourism accounts for 11 percent.

The high temperatures would also mean a shortage of rain to parched areas of the country, punishing natural ecosystems of migrating birds and the endangered lynx and bear populations.

SCOTLAND
        Poor Nessie - the mythical and misunderstood yet crowd-drawing serpent of Loch Ness.
        Global warming is putting her life, and the lives of real endangered fish like the Arctic char, in peril as the beautiful freshwater lochs around Scotland heat up. Rising temperatures (2003 was Scotland’s warmest year on record) are especially threatening to Loch Lomond and Loch Doon in the Scottish lowlands and Loch Morar in the highlands, all having deep, “layered” waters, according to the local newspaper The Scotsman.

        In order for the bottom layers of the lochs (where fish eggs develop) to stay fresh, they must mix with the top layers of water - but this mixing can only occur when surface temps are cool.

        Glascow University biologists fear that without mixing with the surface, the bottom layers will become stagnant and likewise warmer, threatening Arctic char eggs that can’t hatch in waters above 7 degrees Celsius, the paper learned.

        Losing the Arctic char - a cousin of the trout known for its genetic variance and ability to adapt to hundreds of environments - would be tragic for Scotland because it serves as the best model of Darwinian evolution in the country.

        A lack of oxygen in stagnant bottom layers of the lochs can also cause crustaceans that dwell in those depths to suffocate.

        Traveling anglers are reeling from another problem: Fishable Atlantic trout, which swim in from the ocean and into Scotland’s normally cool rivers, are also ending up dead because their cold-blooded metabolism requires river water to stay under 20 degrees Celsius. Scotland hit the over 20 degree Celsius “many times” in 2003, according to the Worldwide Fund for Nature.    
MONTANA
        Unless Glacier National Park - established in the Rocky Mountains in 1910 by an act of Congress - changes its name very soon, we might have the biggest case of false advertising since Erik the Red dubbed a vast, barren ice desert “Greenland” to attract settlers.

        That’s because the park’s glaciers are rapidly disappearing before our eyes because of global warming. Since 1900, Glacier's average summer temperatures have increased by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Parks Conservation Association.

Park scientists warn that if nothing is done to curtail global warming, there won’t be a single glacier left in the park by the year 2050.

       Salamander glacier, named for its unique lizard-like shape and one of the most well known attractions in the park, is now “legless” because of its recession.

Of the 150 or so glaciers that existed in the over one million acre park in 1850, only 26 remain -- over an 80% drop. Researchers claim that since temperatures started drastically rising in 1968, most of the smaller glaciers are completely gone.  

HIMALAYAS
        As resourceful as they are, not even Sherpas can rescue the Himalayas from its extreme glacial decay due to increased atmospheric temperatures.

        According to a March report released by the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), the glaciers are receding at a rate of 33 to 50 feet per year - one of the fastest glacial recessions in the world.

 “There are mountain lakes in the Himalayas held back by glacial walls,” according to Lee Poston, spokesman for the WWF.

        “When these walls melt, the lakes flood into villages. There’s already been eye witness accounts of this happening,” Poston said.

        The mountains’ glaciers also feed Asia’s most visited, most used and most beautiful rivers - the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong Yangtze and Huange He. Glacial recession begets river recession and water shortages for the region’s residents.