S.Atlantic : Global Warming on the Other End of the Earth
Submitted by SARTMA.com (Juanita Brock) 18.08.2005 (Article Archived on 01.09.2005)

We equate Global Warming with what is happening in the Antarctic but think again. There is ice on the other end of the earth as well.

Photo (c) J. Brock (SARTMA - SG) - Unusual amounts of ice in Godthal Bay, South Georgia.

GLOBAL WARMING ON THE OTHER END OF THE EARTH

By J. Brock (FINN)

Unusually large amounts of ice, a result of Global Warming, appeared in Godthal Bay, South Georgia in 2004.

Interested people will be able to tell you the affects of global warming on the Antarctic ice sheet and some of the consequences we are experiencing right now.  However, on the other end of the earth in the high latitudes the same problem occurs but with different effect.  The impact of global warming in the north happens on the land, where tundra thaws earlier in the year thus changing the migratory patterns of animals that inhabit the land in the Arctic summer.  Plants are blooming earlier in the season, affecting the food sources of other animals. Some environmentalists warn that the ice sheet over the Arctic ocean could be gone within a century.

Ministers from 25 countries are attending a four-day conference on global warming held in Western Greenland at Disko Bay, 250km north of the Arctic Circle.  The purpose is not only to discuss global warming but to show the ministers first hand what it is doing to Greenland’s ice sheet.  With this in mind, the ministers were taken to the Ilulissat Ice Fjord, a World Heritage Site, and shown the extent of the melting and some of the environmental damage already caused by global warming in the region.

Greenland is a Danish Overseas Territory and their Minister for the Environment, Connie Hedegaard in her welcoming remarks said, “Climate change is not a theoretical threat.  We can already feel it in Greenland’s fragile nature.”

The informal conference will help ministers prepare for the 11^th United Nations Climate Conference that will take place in Canada in December.  During that conference all of the aspects of Global warming, including environmental damage it causes at the equator, will be discussed.