Climate Change Is Destroying Our Land

While there are still some naysayers who would claim that the warnings over climate change are just hot air, one of the direct consequences of climate change is the rise in sea levels and the reversal of productive agricultural regions into desert land. Climate change is leaving behind scars and marks in our environment and our nature.

Islands in Danger of Destruction

Observations since the mid-19th century, though convoluted, show a global average of about 20cm/8 inches in that time. Some coral atolls in the Pacific Island nations of Micronesia are already disappearing due to global warming. Some island nations that disappear beneath the waves within this century are: Maldives, Kiribati and Tuvalu.

The onsets of increasingly frequent and fierce cyclones or hurricanes are physically weakening the islands, causing them to sink bit-by-bit. To some island nations, even a 0.5cm/1/8 inch increase in sea level could half the nation. The most populous island threatened to be disappeared within the next 5 to 10 years is New Guinea and its mirror twin Papua New Guinea. Home to many of the last “undiscovered” tribes, many of their small islands are expected to be underwater by 2012.

Spreading Deserts In Agricultural Regions

The chaotic weather that typifies the direct impacts of climate change is causing worldwide weather transformation; leading to weather that is either far too wet or far too dry. There is no longer weather of a happy medium. As a result many areas are facing the threat of rapid and irreversible desertification.

The most evident of this is happening in China where the expansion of Gobi desert into formerly productive agricultural regions is taking place at uncontrollable speed. Even with a massive effort to stop the spread of sands, years of poor rainfall are enough to thwart these efforts.