Have you ever thought of what’s going on in the world we live in? If not, you should start a big problem in the world is global warming. Dealing with the climate change and along with that animals having to survive against it even more because of the fact (more details) that it’s becoming more of a threat than we know it. Animal Welfare is a term not used often, but global warming is very known in the world, mix those two together and it becomes a whole different topic.
Animal welfare combined with global warming is more about how because the world climate is changing animals who live in topical areas and in very cold climates are being effected to the point of extinction. Global warming effect on animals is an issue that can be fixed along with the help of the human race, recycling is a start, but it’s more to it than that if we can limit how much pollution and trash we put on this earth then we should be able to control the climate change which will slowly eliminated it.
But global warming is not only effecting animals; but also humans; because of this it’s especially important that humans do the required step to address global warming. Like said before most people know a little over global warming but the science behind it makes it’s a lot more acceptable to understand. Global warming is the gradual heating of Earth’s surface, oceans and atmosphere. Scientists have documented the rise in average temperatures worldwide since the late 1800s. Earth’s average temperature has risen by 1. 4 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Temperatures are projected to rise another 2 to 11. 5 degrees F over the next 100 years. A Term by the name Greenhouse effect is solar radiation that passes through the atmosphere to the surface of Earth, where it is absorbed and then radiated upward as heat. Gases in Earth’s atmosphere absorb about 90 percent of this heat and radiate it back to the surface, which is warmed to a life-supporting average of 59 F. which is how Humans partly become the blame of global warming, when human activity introduces too much of certain types of gas into the atmosphere.
More of this gas equals more warming. The atmospheric gases are primarily responsible for the greenhouse effect which is known as “greenhouse gases” and which includes water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. The most prevalent greenhouse gas is CO2. In recent years, record-breaking cold weather has made some wonder if global warming is actually happening. “First, we need to understand the difference between ‘weather’ and ‘climate,'” said Peterman and Foy. Weather is atmospheric activity over a short time period, like a cold winter snap or a hot spell.
Climate is the “average weather,” meaning the sum of weather events averaged over decades, centuries or even thousands of years. According to NASA these are some facts over global warming from the past years. “Carbon dioxide levels are at 399. 2 ppm as of November 2014, the global temperature has risen 14 F since 1880, the global Arctic ice minimum is decreasing by 13. 3 percent each decade also Land ice is decreasing by 258 billion tons each year and Due to melting ice the sea level has risen by 0. 12 inches per year. ”
Giving you facts and history over global warming might seem less of a challenge to someone who knows a lot over the situation. But giving the fact that most people don’t understand it and wonder what this has to do with animals in particular it helps to understand what global warming is actually doing to cause harm to them. There’s has been multiple cases dealing with animal welfare such as an article over how polar bears are slowly become extinct over the fact that there food supplies is scarce. A polar bear was found dead in Norway, it was just skin and bones due to the fact that there is a lack of sea ice which is to hunt seals.
Ian Stirling has studied polar bears for almost over 40 years and examined them also and said “the lack of ice forced the bear into ranging far and wide in an ultimately unsuccessful search for food. ” Because of that happening the result of bear ended up walking in to an area that barely had snow covering the ground. The climate change has made the sea ice in the arctic areas to become drastically low in the last two years. Polar bears eat almost solely on seals but to catch seals you need sea ice but because of the climate change sea ice is slowly melting away as records show in 2012.
Prond Robertson has said “The sea ice break up around Svalbard in 2013 was both fast and very early, recent years has been poor for ice around the islands. Warm water entered the western fjords in 2005-06 and since then has not shifted. ” The lost in sea ice for polar bears merely results in reduced access to food, drop in body condition, lower cub survival rates, increase in drowning, increase in cannibalism and sadly loss of access to denning areas. These are the likely the steps the bears go throughout before coming to their death.
A great sum of the human race does not recognize that the fact of this happening is because of us, two-thirds of the world’s polar bears could disappear within this century. But polar bears aren’t the only animals effected but climate change topical animals are to. “Scientist are realizing that the impact of rising temperature on tropical forest is just as dramatic. ” Miles Silman has studied tropical forests in Peru for more than 20 years. He got his PhD as a student at Duke, and has founded the Andres Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group along with ten of his other colleagues.
The wild life is nothing like the cold climates in the artic, to give an example of what I mean the tress live in very narrow temperature ranges. The tress are migrating upslope, ken Feeley who is a tropical biologist at the Florida international university in Miami, has researched which has established for the first time that these tropical species are migrating in response to global warming. Global warming has already been linked to the extinction of some tropical species of amphibians, and is predicted to put many more animals’ species at risk of complete disappearance in the 21st century.
There has been cases over the topical forest in danger because of the climate change but there’s one particular species that has been effected the most. Peter Hudson said “we are currently in the midst of a sixth mass extinction event. ” The Willaman professor of biology at Penn State and co-author of the research study has explained that on an average 32 percent of amphibians which are most likely know as frogs and toads are threatened. More than 43 percent face a steep decline in numbers, there appear to be centered in places such as Central America and Australia.
In result of the high climate change a fungus called Batrachochytrium dendrobatids (Be-Tray-Koh-Kit-ri-um, Den-droh-be-teye-dis) which is Chytrid Fungus started to appear. Hudson adds that it wasn’t know that it affected frogs, this type of fungus was triggered by the climate change which pushed daytime and nighttime temperature to converge to levels that are resulting in this growth. The amphibian decrease in life were simply driven by the subsequent spread of the fungus from certain locations.
The researchers say their findings show the pitfalls of drawing conclusions from multi-decadal correlations between climatic factors and extinctions, and underscores the need for more data on the fungus to understand from where and how it’s spreading among the rainforest. From the artic to the tropical rainforest there shown to be two completely opposite climates, but global warming has managed to effect the both of them. People could argue that what’s the purpose of saving these animals, because of the fact that it’s not shown to benefit us such as bees and cows are.
Troy Solberg thinks all animals are worth saving whether or not they benefit us as humans. The Youth volunteer Manager at the Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium says With the effect global warming has on this earth many scientists say that reversal is not possible and that certain types of destruction, such as the melting of the polar ice caps, have already gone past the point of no return. Others say that the planet Earth has the ability to heal itself. This takes time, though.
The natural processes for removing this human-caused CO2 from the atmosphere work on the timescale of hundreds of thousands to millions of years,” Werne said. “So, yes, the Earth will heal itself, but not in time for our cultural institutions to be preserved as they are. Therefore, in our own self-interests, we must act in one way or another to deal with the changes in climate we are causing. ” There are many steps humans can take to lessen the effects of global warming. NASA is committed to a two-pronged approach such as reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and stabilizing the levels of these gases in the atmosphere.
Which can be done by reducing your carbon footprint, “a person’s carbon footprint is the amount of carbon he or she is responsible for releasing into the atmosphere as a result of his and her daily habits” (WikiHow). For example, someone who walks to work then someone who takes the bus to work you tend to not have a bigger carbon footprint compared to the person who happened to take the bus. To keep the gases at a steady medium carpool such as a bus can keep ten times more gases going into the atmosphere. •Adapting to the climate change already happening
