Global Warming

World glaciers melting at rapid rate

Part of the worries about global warming is about the loss of glaciers, with increasing melting and lower mass covered by the glaciers. Recent reports have confirmed the data, that glaciers are indeed getting impacted. Since glaciers are one of the primary source of water for the world’s rivers, which are in turn are the primary sources of fresh water, water for irrigation purposes, and also energy generation through dams, such reports can only increase the alarm levels for the future of the world’s population. Availability of fresh water is already problematic for huge chunks of the world’s population, and these confirmation by scientists can only confirm that we are headed in for more trouble (link to article):

U.S. scientists monitoring shrinking glaciers in Washington and Alaska reported this week that a major meltdown is under way. A 50-year government study found that the world’s glaciers are melting at a rapid and alarming rate. The ongoing study is the latest in a series of reports that found glaciers worldwide are melting faster than anyone had predicted they would just a few years ago. It offers a clear indication of an accelerating climate change and warming earth, according to the authors.

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Climate change and impact on coral reefs and fishing

Climate change, and the efforts needed to counter it, are among some of the hottest topics in the last 1-2 decades; it is also easy to see that the effort to discuss the needs for combating climate change is more than actual work being done to reduce emissions (climate change needs quick action and some aggressive goals of reducing emissions, and they are nowhere near happening). Nations get into political arguments when discussions start; the main major polluter (the United States) refuses to take action because of the feared effect on its economy, Europe looks to somebody for taking the lead on this, and the fast developing nations such as China, India, Brazil, etc who are still current low contributors but will have a much higher impact on emissions going forward want to get funding from the rich before taking action.
And in the middle of all this, the world keeps getting hotter, and the changes that are being made due to the global warming phenomenon keeps on working to its own cycle. Global warming is supposed to affect poor nations much more than it will affect the richer nations (and it will affect nations that are more sea based much more than nations that are bigger land masses) since some of the changes being caused due to global warming are higher sea levels and changes in weather patterns that affect crop cycles. Another way in which global warming directly affects the world food economy is due to the impact on fishing, and a study points out that the rich fishing waters near Southeast Asia will get severely impacted (link to article):

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