Ryan Sauz

LE3

ENVIDIP

Melting Ice Caps

How can ice caps affect the world? The melting of ice caps is a
dangerous threat to the Earth. Ice caps help absorb the Suns heat and they
also reflect the rays of the sun, which in turn makes the world cooler. The
loss of ice sheets or ice caps can severely affect the environment to which if
without a proper reflective shield and a heat absorbing mechanism, the
troposphere would further rise in temperature and thus global warming
would accelerate at an alarming rate that will in turn, cause a rapid
meltdown of ice which can accelerate abrupt climate change in the world.

The melting of ice caps has a potential to affect countries like the
United Kingdom, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India and the United States. If the
caps have melted, the sea levels will rise and in turn, drown the countries. In
theory, if the caps melt, sea levels could rise 216 feet and drown the UK and
Venice and also leaving Denmark to be nothing but an island. Bangladesh
along with coastal India would be swallowed whole and only Cambodias
Cardamom Mountains would survive, being an island. In the case of the US,
the entire Atlantic Seaboard would vanish, along with Florida, San Francisco,
Central Valley and San Diego and the Maldives is also another island which is
prone to being swallowed by the sea. Lagos and Shanghai are also affected
by the rise of sea levels brought by the ice caps. The Marshall Islands and
Tuvalu have already succumbed to the rising sea levels brought by the
melting of ice caps. Polar Bears are losing their habitats across the arctic
while penguins, walruses and seals would also be extinct if this continues.

The only known solutions for this issue are basically reducing
greenhouse gases and also innovation in green technology to preserve the
ice caps for the sake of everyone in the biosphere. The only known actions
made by the international community are the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris
Convention on Climate Change.