ive mirror,reflecting a large share of the sun’s heat back into space and keeping the planetcool”(Mastny 1). The most dramatic reports of this come from the polar regions wherethe Arctic sea ice has dropped 40% in thickness from 3.1m to 1.8m in less than 30years(1). The massive Antarctic ice cover which contains 91% of Earth’s ice is alsomelting, with glaciers as large as Delaware breaking off of it, it has already lost ice that islarger than Rhode Island since 1998 alone. With the ice melted, it would spark regionalflooding and raise sea levels. Michael D. Lemonick writes “There is a chance that globalwarming could plunge us into, of all things, an ice age”(Lemonick 1).Currently the Gulf stream brings warm surface water in and heats Europecausing the water to slowly evaporate and becomes saltier. The result is denser waterwhich sinks and is sent through a cycle, where then the cycle is just repeated. But withglobal warming, melting ice pumps freshwater into the northern Atlantic. The resultwould be less saltier water, hence disrupting the cycle making it unable to continue;therefore, “shutting off” the Gulf stream. Europe would then become very cold and theice or snowfall would continue to reflect the sun’s heat back into space causing the earthto remain cold. The effects have also been clearly seen on animals, birds, glaciers, and other partsof the world. Some changes noted in the USA were that “Tree swallowers are buildingnests earlier in the year. A western species of butterfly is moving farther up the coast.Flowers in Wisconsin are budding earlier in the spring”(Watson 1). The unbelievablepart is that we are not doing much about any of this.Dick Thompson writes “French researchers reported that heat-trappinggreenhouse gases are at their highest level in 420,000 years”(Thompson 1). AmericanGeophysical Union study director John Immerwahr says “T...
