Landmarks That Could Disappear In Your Lifetime
from the Eiffel Tower to Big Ben and Lady Liberty our globe is full of iconic monuments however for some pretty earth-shattering reasons it seems that many of our world's legendary landmarks that once seemed Invincible could be at risk of being lost forever from the crumbling Wall of China to the teetering Tower of Pisa come join me as we take a look at some landmarks that could disappear in our lifetimes thank you the Eiffel Tower ah Pele the fashion the food the romance the Parisian culture is certainly among the world's most iconic but besides croissants and floods of red wine there's one thing that undeniably defines France the Eiffel Tower constructed in 1889 the tower marks the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution interestingly it was only intended to stand for 20 years however given its height scientists recognized its value as a radio Telegraph station so it was kept but how long can a tower that was built to survive just 20 years really last well according to some not much longer at 135 years old this Mademoiselle isn't doing terrible though due to being made from wrought iron the future could be Troublesome for the Eiffel Tower you see see when exposed to moisture or oxygen a chemical process known as oxidation happens to iron during this process iron is converted into iron oxide which is typically reddish and Flaky something we commonly know as rust if left unattended the rust will progressively corrode the iron weakening its physical Integrity for years now rust has plagued the Eiffel Tower in fact in 2022 leaked reports carried out by the tower's management revealed how rust is eating away at the iron like termites at wood and if nothing is done we could be saying au revoir to the Eiffel Tower within the next decade or so this is because left untreated the corrosion will eventually weaken certain parts of the structure so much so that they inevitably collapse but with a somewhat laissez-faire attitude the French government reportedly just keep painting over the damage every seven years rather than actually fixing it expert opinion has it that this is only worsening the corrosion and if it isn't stripped to the metal and repaired at a deeper level its structural Integrity will become a genuine Hazard so will the Eiffel Tower disappear in our lifetimes well it's certainly possible after all merely covering up your problems with paint won't make them go away I learned that the hard way foreign the Great Wall of China at a staggering 2 241 years old the Great Wall of China is so iconic that it's officially one of the seven wonders of the world but long before being a tourist trap for Instagram snaps it was actually conceived to protect the country from violent invading tribes and while it might have been strong enough to protect ancient China is it strong enough to stand the test of time looking at recent snaps like these it may seem as if the wall is still in good condition and true that over two thousand years old the old girl ain't looking too shabby however according to UNESCO aka the United Nations education scientific and cultural organization about 30 percent of the wall has disappeared how well firstly natural erosion from the elements has certainly taken a toll on the wall after all rain water is typically acidic and naturally dissolves rock over time but there is one thing or rather 10 million things destroying the wall worse than anything else tourists sure tourists innocently strolling along the wall taking Snaps sounds completely harmless however it's reported by numerous sources including the guardian that many visitors actually take bricks from the wall as a souvenir needless to say that is a slight issue according to report by the global times new Chinese regulations state that anyone caught stealing from or defacing the wall could be fined up to 5 000 Yuan which is roughly 720 dollars but despite the destruction by tourists there's still another type of erosion to consider in recent years an increasing number of abrasive sandstorms have taken a toll on Western sections of the wall so much so that according to China's official state news agency the wall is being reduced to mounds of dirt and vast expanses may be completely gone in 20 years so better go visit it while you can just don't steal any bricks the Taj Mahal India is a huge country brimming with culture from food to fashion and everything in between there's plenty to enthrall a visitor however when it comes to landmarks there seems to be one standout yep I'm talking of course about the Taj Mahal like China's Great Wall this A-list Landmark also finds itself a member of the Seven Wonders of the World Club but that membership could soon be past tense that's because astoundingly there are plans for its demolition being discussed at the highest echelons of the Indian government built in 1632 the mausoleum was created by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan to immortalize his wife mumtaz Mahal but thanks to its opulent White marble facade and pointed domes the stunning Mausoleum quickly became World recognized and today attracts around 8 million visitors annually but that could could all be about to change thanks to excessive Vehicles burning of coal dust storms and forest fires India is said to be the third most polluted country in the world as a result of this alongside smatterings of algae and insect waste the once pearly white Taj Mahal has gradually been turning sickly shades of green and yellow even so it seems the local authorities responsible the government of uttar Pradesh have turned a blind eye much to India's Supreme Court's disapproval in fact the rapidly deteriorating quality of India's most prized Monument has become such a concern for the Indian Supreme Court that they have actually presented the government of uttar Pradesh and ultimatum either they restore the monument or they have it shut down and potentially even demolished safe to say this would be catastrophic to the city of agra's economy and maybe even wider India considering that since 2019 the mausoleum has generated over 16 and a half million dollars just from ticket sales alone so will the Taj Mahal continue to survive or will it be bulldozed into distant memory well there are discussions of bans on pollution causing vehicles and industries in the area but talks of these kinds have been going on for years without any real outcome so it seems for the iconic Taj only time will tell underwater cities climate change two other c words lots of people don't like to speak aloud yet the concept is becoming more and more real every day so real even that if something isn't done soon some iconic places on Earth might be underwater as soon as 2050 and in a disturbing existential realization for any gen xers and Millennials watching 2050 is closer in time to us than the early 90s is whoa according to the Goddard Institute for space studies since the Industrial Revolution we've pumped enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to raise the Earth's Global temperature by one degree Celsius and sure at their core greenhouse gases aren't inherently bad as they help retain the sun's heat keeping the planet at a useful temperature for life however thanks to us this natural and harmonious balance of greenhouse gases is now in Surplus less meaning that the Earth's natural cycles of climate change are being accelerated to a destructive level ice caps are melting fast and in doing so raising the sea levels which can only spell out trouble for we land dwellers a one degree Celsius increase might sound inconsequential but huge changes are already happening and scientists reckon that if Global temperature should increase by 2 degrees Celsius it'll bring around an Unstoppable process that could raise sea levels in certain coastal areas by an astounding 16 to 29 feet if this does happen it's believed that New York's surrounding waters for example would flow over and into the city causing Devastation of many areas of Manhattan's Waterfront districts iconic NYC landmarks could be at risk including Lady Liberty herself as the water would be firmly creeping up onto her Island Refuge by this point in the decades and centuries after that if ice caps were to melt almost entirely Lady Liberty could one day be almost fully immersed and while the statue's full immersion is a little unlikely in our lifetimes the costly rising sea levels are nonetheless expected to become a serious problem by 2050. there's currently a plan to build a Floodgate wall around the lower half of Manhattan however if the sea levels were to rise by the full 16 to 29 feet forecasted in some regions of the world they would need to build a wall around the entire city if not New York could become less of a concrete jungle and more of a concrete aquarium further south you'll find another Coastal U.S city at even greater risk of flooding Miami Florida currently at just three feet above sea level by 2060 the surrounding sea levels are expected to rise by around 31 inches according to research from the University of Miami and while this won't entirely wipe out Florida at least not in that time frame it is estimated that much of Miami Beach and its landmarks such as South Beach and the Art Deco hotels of Ocean Drive will be uninhabitable within three decades with these scary predictions Miami may be bye-bye Ami by the end of the century another major city in the firing line is none other than London just like Miami it's all about rising sea levels but wait London isn't a coastal city so how could this happen well the River Thames which currently runs through the city is actually tidal meaning its water level goes up and down with the tides just as the North Sea which it runs into 2 does so if Global sea levels do rise as projected according to an interactive map by climate Central huge chunks of the city would be left devastated by recurrent annual floods by 2060. even Big Ben would be left with his feet in the water while it had likely take upwards of a century for even certain iconic London landmarks like the tower bridge to be overwhelmed by flood waters London's relative flatness will still put a concerningly large portion of the city at flood risk in the next four decades however Sarah Smith an environmental agency flood risk manager in the UK is hopeful these Rising flood waters can be overcome not because the waters won't rise but because the British government is actually working on necessary defenses for when this does happen which Sarah is confident will save the Big Smoke named the Thames Estuary 2100 plan the initiative aims to combat flooding leading up to the year 2100 by building and improving the Thames barrier flood walls and embankments pumping stations and floodgates ultimately it's estimated this will save 320 billion pounds worth of property so will London Bridge fall down or will Britannia need to re-learn how to rule the waves I guess we'll have to wait and see the Dead Sea named due to its uninhabitable saltiness the Dead Sea is one of the saltiest Lakes on Earth however in an unfortunate yet ironic turn of events it would seem the Dead Sea is actually dying dying how well no surprise it's yet another man-made problem but not so much climate change this time it's actually to do with the Lake's tributary a tributary is essentially a river that flows into a much larger river or lake in this case the Jordan River flows into the Dead Sea providing it with water according to Professor Abu Jaber a specialist in the geochemistry of groundwater in Jordan the Dead Sea used to receive around 200 million cubic meters of water per year however during the 60s Israel began to divert the headwaters for various human uses later on Jordan and Syria got in on the action too and this alongside water evaporating mineral extraction processes in the area has left the Dead Sea with less than 100 million cubic meters of water today at this rate if no major action is taken the tributaries feeding the Dead Sea are at serious risk of completely drying up by the year 2050. if this happens the lake will rapidly deplete to a fraction of its size and be left to potentially fully evaporate under the increasingly hot Middle Eastern sun in the decades that follow so if we don't want this unique natural Landmark to evaporate like a pan of water left on the stove too long governments in the region better get their acts together Stonehenge thought to be around 5 000 years old Stonehenge is a formation of ancient blue stone and sarson rocks in Wiltshire England deliberately arranged in a circular Arrangement position theories for The Monument's purpose range from burial site to Ritual grounds and it intrigues over 1 million visitors annually but could stonehenge's days be numbered of course like anything exposed to the elements Stonehenge is slowly eroding away but erosion can take thousands to millions of years so why should we be worried about Stonehenge disappearing well since 1995 there have been multiple proposals for England's highways Authority for an underground tunnel that would connect Southeast and Southwest England problem is the tunnel would need to run beneath the foundations of Stonehenge potentially compromising its integral structure and defiling the sacred site the government-led project was actually approved by then British Chancellor now prime minister Rishi sunak in 2020 though this was met with outcry from concerned campaigners who feared the construction could potentially destroy Stonehenge alongside risking ruining other archaeological finds recently found in the area then with that the decision was deemed unlawful in 2021 by the high court even so the guardian reports that highways England are still cooking up alternative proposals to get their precious Tunnel built so it looks like this decades-long Saga isn't over and our lifetimes could conceivably see Stonehenge collapsing into the ground below as the tunnel is built now would be the time for the grand Return of the ancient people who Moved those colossal stones into Blaze given that they were presumably 10 feet tall with biceps like tree trunks those weedy British politicians don't stand a chance Great Barrier Reef did you know the Great Barrier Reef just off the coast of Queensland Australia is one of the largest living organisms on Earth in fact it's so big that it's even visible from space however in recent times its greatness has begun to decline with Australian researchers reporting that the reefs lost half of its corals since 1995. and at that rate it's certainly not unrealistic to say it could completely vanish within our lifetimes so what's the deal well aside from Oceanic pollution it's largely down to our old pal climate change as more greenhouse gases are emitted and the Earth warms not only do our oceans become more acidic the Corals in the water become too warm which triggers them to expel the algae living inside their tissues this causes the corals to turn completely white a process known as bleaching and while bleaching doesn't recently equate to death it does leave them vulnerable to disease stunts their growth and impacts reproduction leaving them more likely to die off as mentioned earlier we've raised the global temperature by one degree if that reaches 2 degrees Climate Change Specialists carbon brief predict that 98 of the Earth's coral reefs will be at risk of bleaching by 2050. and
researchers at the center of excellence for coral reef studies warned that we must quote sharply decrease greenhouse gas emissions ASAP if we can do so then slow the rise of global temperatures while reducing pollution and overfishing of coral supporting fish species it's proven that corals can return to health though it may take decades either way it's estimated that if action isn't taken in the next 10 years the damage could be irreparable and the Great Barrier Reef might become the late Barrier Reef please the Sphinx having been built around 4 500 years ago the Sphinx in Giza Egypt has certainly proven to stand the test of time and among all the relics of ancient Egypt is one of the most iconic that said being exposed to the elements isn't without its fair share of wear and tear in fact it's famously lacking a nose which depending on which sources are true was either broken during a French military battle in 1798 or removed in the 15th century by a Sufi Muslim named Muhammad saim aldar in protest of the worship of Idols but with centuries of erosion under its belt could the Sphinx disappear in our lifetimes well with the right combination of hazardous weather it's possible while rain is rare in Egypt meteorologist Jim Andrews notes there is the occasional torrential downpour which erodes naturally poorest blocks such as the Limestone that makes up the Sphinx not just that but According to Jim the salt Laden groundwater Beneath The Landmark Wicks up into the porous rocks further weakening the structure on top of that high winds and sand blasting are slowly but surely gnawing away at the giant feline structure while it stands strong today it's likely that these factors will eventually lead to crumbling and if that occurs inside the Sphinx the structure could collapse now granted it'd have to be a very unlucky specific combo of these factors to trigger this in the next few decades so I'm personally not too worried that the Sphinx will be disappearing in our lifetimes and while it's not impossible we can take comfort in the fact that cats have nine lives anyway right the Leaning Tower of Pisa from ancient Roman ruins to the Sistine Chapel Italy is brimming with landmarks and perhaps one of the most instagramable is none other than the Leaning Tower of Pisa beginning construction way back in 1173 the tower is actually a freestanding Bell Tower as part of pisa's Cathedral Square and no surprise was never actually intended to have its iconic lean so why does it lean and more importantly will it ever fall well the short answer is that when they began construction they didn't consider that they were building on alluvial soil a loose soil typically found near rivers inevitably this resulted in the tower infamously tilting to one side over the years there were attempts to correct the Tilt however nothing seemed to do the trick and besides after years of being known specifically for its tilt it was decided that it would be best to keep the lean that said by 1990 the tower was becoming increasingly tilted at 5.5 degrees and was deemed too much of a hazard and was closed in the end it took a 30 million dollar restoration that lasted until 2001 to save Pisa they managed to achieve the perfect Tilt at 3.9 degrees by extracting the Earth beneath the shallow side to create a cavity adding weights to that side which allowed the pressure to slowly partially reverse the Tilt with that the most optimistic estimators suggest that the tower may be able to stay put for upwards of another century however that is hugely dependent on it not being struck by extreme natural disasters like strong earthquakes even though the tower's low center of gravity makes it somewhat resistant to earthquakes they do occur in the area and one of sufficient strength could conceivably topple the vulnerable tower that said had Pisa not been restored it may well have toppled to the ground back in the 90s so I'm sure the famous leaner is just grateful for whatever extra time it can get foreign at 19 340 feet high Mount Kilimanjaro located in Tanzania is the tallest mountain in the whole of Africa Kilimanjaro is capped with snow and Glaciers on account of the reduced atmospheric pressure at those lofty Heights resulting in lower temperatures that being said the huge glaciers that once covered the top of Kilimanjaro are rapidly disappearing so much so that between 1912 and 2006 kilimanjaro's ice sheet shrank by a mind-blowing 85 percent as you can probably guess this is all to do with climate change as mentioned the increase of greenhouse gases since the industrial revolution has contributed to the Earth's temperature by Rising around one degree Celsius this rise in temperature has caused a combination of melting and evaporation of kilimanjaro's glacial ice though not in the way you might expect while some change has occurred directly from the increased heat upon the mountain most of the ice loss has occurred due to the effects of global warming on the Indian Ocean The increased Global temperature interacts with the ocean to produce more weather events like Cyclones which disturb weather patterns around Kilimanjaro these weather disturbances have resulted in less snowfall on the Mountain snow which usually serves the crucial purpose of reflecting the sun's warming energy away from the glacial ice with these circumstances as they are the American geophysics Union has claimed the glaciers could disappear entirely as soon as 2030. while more optimistic scientists believe they'll stay intact until 2060. either way it's sadly very probable that kilimanjaro's glaciers will disappear within our lifetimes it's a better climb up there quick if you want to catch a glimpse R.I.P USA brewing in the state of Wyoming sits the Yellowstone volcano or rather super volcano unlike the volcanoes you might typically imagine this one bubbles underground over an area of 30 by 45 miles wide in Yellowstone National Park some more alarmist scientists will tell you the Colossal volcano is overdue for an eruption based on the fact that three terrifyingly huge eruptions have occurred at relatively regular intervals in history each emitted more than an astonishing 250 cubic miles of magma with one eruption occurring 2.1 million
years ago another 1.2 million years ago and the most recent being 640 000 years ago the pattern spotters among you will be able to see why some are a little concerned were due another given the time since the last eruption is similar to the time period between the previous three however the truth is volcanoes are very unpredictable making it impossible to accurately predict when such an eruption will occur but if the pressure in the underground magma chambers does build to the point of eruption what exactly would happen to the America above ground well if such an event occurred with the same ferocity as those previous three it's likely that enormous amounts of volcanic ash gas magma and other volcanic debris would spew across most of the continental U.S reaching as far as Louisiana this fatal plume of hot ash and gases would blast Miles High into the atmosphere blocking sunlight and leaving a third of the continent in darkness crippling agriculture pyroclastic flows AKA fast-moving rivers of lava and scalding gas would race outwards into the 50-mile radius region around the volcano at speeds as fast as a commercial airliner burying burning or shattering anything in their path as the clouds of Ash settle they would leave parts of the U.S in as much as three
feet of Ash this ash would collapse roofs contaminate Water Supplies destroy power lines and poison the lungs of survivors in previous eruptions it's thought that in the aftermath the volcano collapsed into itself pulling with it trees mountains anything else unlucky enough to be nearby All That Remains afterwards is a large depression in the ground known as a cult therea if all this were to happen there's no saying which or how many U.S landmarks would be obliterated severely damaged or at the very least made to vanish under a blanket of Ash now before you start Panic buying survival supplies a good handful of scientists argue there's not enough fluid magma bubbling below Yellowstone to sustain an eruption comparable in scope to the previous Mega eruptions but the fact remains that truthfully an eruption of some kind can't be fully written off Yellowstone could indeed be brewing a storm that might not only happen within our lifetimes but in the worst case scenario would end our lifetimes we just have to hope that we're all gone before that happens oh okay looks like we made it out alive let me know which iconic Landmark you'd be saddest to see go in the comments below as always thanks for watching and I'll catch you on the flip side foreign [Music]
2023-03-17 03:16
