In a recent Gallup poll, 66% of Americans said they wanted to see something done about global warming. Scientific studies have long cried “Wolf!” about the impending climate change, caused by global warming, and reversible, we thought, up until 2020—DoomsDay, according to a 2014 Field Museum documentary.
But developments are heating up, in more ways than one. Rising temperatures are wreaking havoc in the Arctic and Antarctic and melting ice sheets that were thought to be impregnable, like the Vincennes Bay glaciers just south of Australia, crucial because they block the inland Aurora and Wilkes ice basins from falling into the sea.
If both basins collapsed, sea levels could rise by up to 92 feet, submerging coastal communities across the globe (this means you, Miami! And New York City might become the Little Apple if part of it goes under due to a catastrophic event like this.
Lately, Donald Trump has been on his Twitter feed ignorantly trumpeting his complete indifference to this life-threatening scenario while a study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that 2018 was the second-warmest year on record and the second-worst year for sea ice.
The Bering Sea lost an area of ice the size of Idaho in 2 weeks’ time in February, 2018. Toxic algae blooms, a warm weather phenomenon, are also becoming common and all manner of wildlife are threatened, including 80% of the krill on which walruses and penguins in the Antarctic feed. Global warming causes unusual weather patterns, like the polar vortex currently causing -40 to -60 temperatures in the Midwest or the forest fires that swept California.
It’s time to wise up and join other nations in combating human effects on global warming; we don’t have time to wait around to do it!