10: The Everglades Florida’s beloved Everglades is in serious
trouble.
The rivers of grass, the coastal plains, and the vast ecosystem of mangroves is being destroyed
right in front of our very eyes.
The Everglades in south-east Florida are threatened by rising sea level, with coastal communities
in danger of flooding.
The Everglades wetlands are on the verge of being completely erased by a rising, swelling
ocean.
According to a recent analysis from the Florida International University, much of the south-east
Florida Everglades will be submerged in the next 30 years.
Dr. Randall Parkinson says there’s nowhere left for them to go.
The sea will keep rising and there’s really nothing that can be done about it.
The mangrove wetlands have been moving west, away from the ocean.
But when they finally hit the L-31 levee, a floor barrier south of Miami, they ran out
of room to expand.
With nowhere to go, the mangroves will be eaten by the ocean.
Regardless of whether you believe in climate change or not, there is no arguing the scientific
fact that the ocean is rising three times faster than the global average at the Florida
coastline.
And once the mangroves are completely gone and the ocean is knocking on Florida's front
door, there will be nothing stopping more brutal storms from pounding Florida, since
the Everglades have been a kind of natural barrier protecting much of the state from
rampaging coastal storms.
9: Tuvalu Tuvalu is a sinking island.
Much like the Florida Everglades, it is about to be sucked into the ocean.
But you're probably wondering what Tuvalu is.
Tuvalu is a small Polynesian country, nothing more than a speck in the Pacific Ocean halfway
between Hawaii and Australia.
It's the 4th smallest country in the world with only 11,000 residents.
Most of the residents live on the large island of Fongafale.
On this island, they are losing almost all of their living space.
Two of the nine islands that make up the archipelago of Tuvalu are on the literal verge of sinking,
and the main island is next.
According to Leitu Frank, a lifelong resident of Tuvalu, the sand is literally being eaten
by the sea.
She is only 32 and yet she remembers a time when the sands stretched very far into the
distance.
Now there's barely any sand.
She also remembers a time when swimming, she could see the colorful coral and the sea floor.
Now, the sea is cloudy like mushroom soup and the coral is dead!
Things aren't looking good for the country of Tuvalu.
Eventually, they are going to need to be evacuated from their tiny island.
During storms, the waves get so brutal that the island is hit from the east and the west,
literally soaking the entire island.
At its narrowest point, Fongafale is only 60 feet(18m) across.
One big wave and everyone living on this island is going to be washed out to sea!
8: Timbuktu Timbuktu is an ancient city gradually being
turned to dust.
Timbuktu was once a bustling hub of trade between Africa and Arabia.
It's now sitting at the edge of a desert with a water supply that's quickly disappearing
and rebel fighters posing a serious threat to the area.
Timbuktu is in danger because of human neglect, because of the Sahara slowly blanketing the
old city in sand, and because of war and greed.
But a long time ago, Timbuktu was one of the jewels of Africa.
The desert metropolis was filled with mango trees and golden fruit, canals to keep the
air fresh, trading hubs where salt and gold were exchanged, and fabulous mosques that
displayed the immense wealth of the city.
It was a true marvel, with many European explorers dying just trying to find it during the 19th
century.
It was legendary throughout Europe and something of a myth among explorers.
Some people argued that Timbuktu was so extraordinary that it probably didn't even exist.
These days, Timbuktu is in rebel territory.
It was occupied in 2013 by Islamists linked to Al-Qaida.
You can't even reach the city unless you drive 600 miles(965km) north from the capital of
Mali, Bamako.
But alas, the city likely won't be around for much longer.
Even though Timbuktu had one of the first established universities in the world back
in the 12th century with at least 25,000 students, it's now nothing but dust and will soon be
completely erased by the encroaching desert.
7: The European Alps Europe's glaciers are almost gone.
The ice which covers the European Alps is set to disappear by 2100, according to Harry
Sekollari, a climate scientist from Zurich.
There is really nothing now that can stop the European Alps from turning into boring
old European mountains!
By 2050, the mountains will have lost at least 50% of their volume.
Scientists figured this out by using computer models and simulating over 4000 glaciers in
the European Alps.
In the worst-case scenario, 95% of the ice will be gone, leaving nothing but a few snowy
tips.
But even in the best-case scenario, the mountains will lose pretty much all of their ice.
This is because glaciers have a delayed response time to global warming.
What we've already done to change the temperature on Earth hasn't fully taken effect yet.
By the time the increased temperature catches up to the glaciers, it'll be too late to do
anything and they'll melt away.
What this means for you is that you better book your ski vacation to the Alps while you
still can!
The French Alps, the Swiss Alps, the Italian Alps – go and see all the alps and do all
the skiing before they're gone!
Have you ever been to any of these Alps?
Let me know in the comments below and while you’re it, like this video and subscribe
if you haven’t already!
6: The Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef, the most famous and
important reef in all of the world's oceans, is about to be dead.
According to an in-depth report from the BBC, Australia's Great Barrier Reef has lost over
half its coral since 1995 because of rising ocean temperatures.
That means in less than 30 years, half of the Great Barrier Reef has been killed.
Scientists also discovered that the steepest fall in coral happened in 2016 and 2017 during
mass bleaching events that basically wiped every living coral in the area off the map.
Today, corals in the Great Barrier Reef have a pretty grim outlook for the future.
Bleaching happens when corals get stressed out and the algae are driven away.
The algae are what give the coral their color.
Without the algae, they’re basically dead in the water.
Corals can recover eventually, but only if conditions in the Great Barrier Reef return
to normal.
This is unlikely to happen – and even if it did, healing the Great Barrier Reef would
take decades and we would never see the results in our lifetime.
It’s recommended that you visit the reef now while there are still a few corals and
fish left to see!
5: The Dead Sea The Dead Sea is currently shrinking.
It's also pocked with over 1000 sinkholes, some of them being up to 60 feet(18m) deep.
These sinkholes are the physical evidence of an environmental catastrophe.
The Dead Sea shrinks, and as it does, the fresh water aquifers recede too.
The fresh water interacts with salt deposits underground, causing the surface to collapse
with no warning.
In the past 15 years, hundreds of sinkholes have swallowed chunks of road, pieces of fields,
and even buildings.
Experts are saying that hotels along the shore of the Dead Sea are now in danger of being
the victim of sinkholes.
The only good news is that if you get swallowed by a sinkhole, they will name it after you!
The business moguls around the Dead Sea know exactly what's going on.
It's why they have created a huge artificial pool in front of the many hotels near the
Dead Sea.
A reservoir has been maintained since the 1980s, used for pumping water from the northern
part of the Dead Sea to the southern part, then extracting minerals like bromide.
This process has hastened the dead sea.
It also tricks tourists into not realizing how empty the lake is.
The Dead Sea was actually once part of a much larger lake that went all the way to the Sea
of Galilee, but the outlet evaporated about 18,000 years ago.
This left a very salty residue across the desert basin, creating the lowest point on
Earth at 1300 feet(396m) below the sea level.
This salty body of water has since been known as the Dead Sea and has maintained itself
relatively well for the past almost 20,000 years.
Freshwater is brought to the lake through rivers and streams, keeping it fairly level.
The Dead Sea began dying in the 1960s when Israel built a pumping station that diverted
all of the Dead Sea’s most precious water sources.
Ever since, it’s been shriveling up and dying..
4: Nauru Nauru is the smallest independent republic
in the world.
It's a Pacific island that has gone through many changes in the last few years.
Decades ago, the island republic had a wet season and dry season.
Today, the island is completely unpredictable with droughts lasting up to 8 years and storms
that are nearly intense enough to flip the island like a loose scrap of paper.
The coastline is gradually eroding and the sea has literally risen up to people’s front
doors!
Nauru is part of the Alliance of Small Island States.
The alliance has been trying to shame countries like India, China, and the United States for
contributing too much to global warming and causing their island nations to sink.
But alas, their pleas for help have mostly gone ignored.
And this is sad for the people of Nauru who don't have anywhere else to go.
It's like living on a deserted island and the deserted island keeps getting smaller
and smaller.
The highest point of Nauru is only 200 feet(61m) above sea level.
And considering how small the island is, it might be difficult for its 10,000 habitants
to shelter together on the highest point.
Eventually, the entire island will be gone and the few inhabitants will need to be put
in a boat and taken somewhere new.
3: The Pyramid of Saqqara The oldest pyramid in Egypt is being destroyed
by the very people who are trying to restore it to its former glory.
The oldest pyramid in Egypt is of course the Pyramid of Djoserat in Saqqara.
It is being ruined by the company hired by the Egyptian government to restore it.
This is shocking, seeing as the pyramid has been standing strong for 4600 years.
When an earthquake hit Egypt in 1992, the structure became compromised.
But it's still standing.
Egyptian activists are now claiming the company trying to preserve the pyramid does not have
the experience needed to be undertaking such important work.
In fact, the activists have launched a campaign against the Minister of Antiquities claiming
a crime is being committed.
There have been accusations thrown around of robberies.
And activists are saying that the company is trying to rebuild the pyramid as if it
were a modern structure, adding too much weight and putting it at risk of collapsing.
Right now, the Pyramid of Saqqara is still standing.
But for how much longer, nobody can truly say!
2: The Amazon Rainforest In 2020, the deforestation of Brazil's Amazon
rainforest surged to the highest ever since 2008.
From between August 2019 and July of 2020, 4281 square miles(11,000km) of rainforest
were destroyed, according to the report from the BBC.
This was an increase of 9.5% when compared to the previous year.
Scientists are saying the losses incurred in the Amazon jungle have accelerated ever
since Jair Bolsonaro became president of the country in 2019.
This guy has encouraged activities such as agriculture and mining to continue inside
the rainforest, and it is these very activities that cause the forest to be torn down.
Though of course, 2020 was nothing compared to 2004 when deforestation was almost three
times as bad, with nearly 12,000 square miles(31,000km) of rainforest being destroyed.
At the end of the day, the Amazon rainforest is not a renewable resource.
It will eventually collapse when enough of it is torn down, and by 2100, it won’t be
surprising if the Amazon jungle looks more like Central Park.
1: Flooded History Zeugma was an important city in the Roman
Empire.
It was also a very important hub on the Silk Road, linking the empire with its many trading
partners in Asia.
Unfortunately for all those living in Zeugma, it was invaded and destroyed by an earthquake,
then abandoned, then lost to time.
It was originally founded by the commander Seleucus I Nicator from Alexander the Great’s
army in 300 BC before being conquered by Rome in 64 BC, then being invaded by the Persians
in 253 AD, and ultimately being wiped out by the earthquake right after that.
What's really fascinating is that many of the buildings discovered in Zeugma, which
by the way is located in modern Turkey, look very similar to the buildings that were found
at Pompeii.
Both towns had been buried and preserved thanks to a natural disaster.
In 1987, smugglers of antiquities alerted the nearby museum that they had discovered
something special buried near a riverbank.
They had discovered a buried Roman villa with beautiful mosaics still intact and some household
goods still scattered around inside.
But then disaster struck.
Only a few small archaeological digs got started before the Turkish government decided they
were going to dam the River Euphrates, located around one mile(1.6km) from the ancient city.
The city was flooded, the mosaics were covered in water, and if it hadn't been for a rush
of help from institutions from America and Europe who quickly recovered the incredible
mosaics as the water flowed over them, they would have been lost forever.
Luckily, the emergency archaeologists did manage to get a lot of the ancient evidence
away from the water, preserving the 2000-year-old mosaics for posterity.
Though today, the site is completely flooded.
Thanks for watching!
Which of these places do you want to visit before they’re gone?
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