Impact of Global Warming on our Environment

• Increase vulnerability to storms with the loss of natural and man made levees.
• Economic loss to businesses relying on coastal sea life.
• Valuable ecosystems to be destroyed or damaged.

Increased temperatures may cause -

• Animals to migrate for longer stretches in search of water, resulting in many dying off.
• Changes in the growing season, by over extending it beyond normal or damaging crops due to poor rainfall and snowfall.
• Improved growth conditions for disease bearing insects (such as mosquitoes that carry malaria), letting them live longer and travel further, infecting more people.
• Droughts brought about by low rainfall which damages crops and contributes to wild fires.
• More elderly and young children dying due to heatstroke and heat related stress.

• Polar animals such as seals and bears being unable to live, affecting the food source of native peoples.
• Increased water levels around the Earth and the destruction and flooding of coastal areas.
• Less ice to deflect the Sun’s rays, with more dark ocean to absorb heat, which would accelerate global temperatures.

Ancient glaciers melting and disappearing may cause -

• Lack of fresh water for inhabitants that rely on melt run-off.
• Loss of economic income from tourism, such as the example of diminishing snows of Kilimanjaro.
• The loss of habitat and food sources that result with normal spring runoff of glaciers, and also the animal life that depend on these food sources.

Increase of major intense storms which may cause -

• Economic disasters.
• Loss of human and animal life.
• Damage and destruction of forests and plants.

Dramatic changes in eco-systems which may cause -

• Larger animals to migrate or die if their food source dwindles (for example, the lack of plankton can affect the food chain all the way up to whales).
• Damage to animal and plant life that communities rely upon for their living and economic survival.