Climate Change Essay

Intro

Climate change, or global warming, is a major issue affecting many species around the globe. Climate change can be caused by burning fossil fuels, breeding cattle that create methane, cutting down forests which absorb carbon dioxide, and the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere trapping the sunlight. These factors warm up the earth, and in the past century the earth has warmed by an average of about 1°. This doesn’t sound like much however on a global scale it’s huge and scientists predict a rise of up to 6°C in this century if greenhouse gasses are not cut drastically. Climate change is not just about the arctic sea ice melting, there are many other implications such as, severe storms, floods, and droughts; the sea becoming more acidic; rainforests dying, and drastic rise in sea levels. There are current strategies in place which are tackling climate change in general such as renewable energy and low carbon transport however there are also management strategies that are specific to species directly affected by climate change. When considering the species affected, many will think of the obvious species such as the polar bear and species living in cold habitats with snow and ice. This essay will address the impacts of climate change on an obvious species, the snow leopard, and a not so obvious species, sea turtles, and evaluate whether the current management of these species will be adequate to protect them in the future. It will also discuss alternative or additional management options that might help these species persist under a changing climate.

Impacts

Both the snow leopard and the green turtle are classified as endangered under the IUCN red list with decreasing population trends. Both live in very different habita...

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... of nesting beaches that produce a large proportion of males to try to maintain the sex ratio; planting native vegetation to provide shade to the beaches; move nests to other suitable areas or artificial nesting sites; and manipulate the temperature by adding beach sprinklers (Fuentes et al., 2011). The implications of all these strategies however would need to be extensively considered as for example, planting vegetation or creating artificial beaches could have detrimental effects on the existing flora and fauna. Additionally, areas that are suitable now, may not be suitable in years to come therefore many different obstacles need to be considered before implementing these strategies. Also creating shade may not be suitable as it is unknown whether it will create the correct temperature, and lots of tests would need to be done to keep temperature at the optimum.