Green | September 25, 2011 | 12 comments

Melting ice is Earth's warning signal-and we cannot ignore it

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/25/ice-melt-himalayas-climate-change

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JanforGore
Ice is the white flag being waved by our planet, under fire from the atmospheric attack being mounted by humanity. From the frosted plains of the Arctic ice pack to the cool blue caverns of the mountain glaciers, the dripping away of frozen water is the most crystal clear of all the Earth's warning signals.

It relies on neither the painstaking compiling of temperature records back through history nor the devilish complexity of predicting the future with supercomputers. Ice on Earth is simply and unambiguously disappearing. Last week saw the annual summer minimum of the Arctic ice cap, which has now shrunk to the lowest level satellites have ever recorded. The ice at the roof of the human world is faring little better: mountain glaciers are diminishing at accelerating and historic rates.

The lower glaciers are doomed. Kilimanjaro may be bare within a decade, with the Pyrenees set to be ice-free by mid-century and three-quarters of the glaciers in the Alps gone by the same date. As you climb higher, and temperatures drop, global warming will take longer to erode the ice into extinction. But at the "third pole", in the Himalayas, the ice is melting as evidenced by dozens of swelling milky blue lakes that threaten to burst down on to villages when their ice dams melt.

The threat posed is far greater than even this terrifying prospect: a quarter of the world's people rely on Himalayan meltwater, which helps feed the great rivers that plunge down into Asia. The Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Brahmaputra, Ganges and Indus nourish billions and will eventually lose their spring surges.

Melting ice is the cause of another of the greatest long-term threats posed by climate change: rising sea level. The deep freezes of Greenland and west Antarctica store enough water to raise the oceans by 20 feet. That would flood many of the world's greatest cities from New York to Shanghai, but remains for now a distant prospect.

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12 comments // Melting ice is Earth's warning signal-and we cannot ignore it

  • WakeUpPeople
  • JanforGore
    • +2
      JanforGore  
    • WakeUpPeople:

      Yes, it's what they've been waiting for. So those who claim that we who fight climate change are part of some NWO conspiracy, don't even realize they are the ones supporting those with the agenda. Makes you wonder who they really are.

    • 8 months ago
  • ozzone
  • entropyincarnate
  • JanforGore
    • +1
      JanforGore  
    • entropyincarnate:

      Which is actually the point of talking about it. To change that. Many of the places around the globe feeling the worst effects of this because of what the industrialized world is doing don't even have electricity.

    • 8 months ago
  • entropyincarnate
    • +1
      entropyincarnate  
    • JanforGore:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmt97DAaE68
      I understand jan, and let me start by saying that your a sweetheart.

      We're "in too deep" so to speak. If all of us were to actually do what is necessary to save the world (starting right now), the economy would collapse, our fluff sector being way too big. I realize that's not what your saying, it's simply another point to be added.

      Bottom line: The solutions are simple, but the world is complicated, and there is great sorrow in understanding this. We are addicted to the internet and the amassing of information, with each amassing we grow more and more conceited and mistake knowledge for wisdom often. We want to change the world and those around us, frequently pushing them further in the opposite direction. Like tailgaters who think they're going to make the person in front of them go faster, experience telling us they usually slow down, but we'll keep doing it because that's our way now for the most part. Everyone likes to be in front, and there's always someone in front. The faster people drive, the faster their brakes wear out.

      The people on the opposing end of what you and others are saying need subject material to fire back at you. When one is simply silent, the opposing team finds themselves talking to themselves, and suddenly their purpose and identity is one of a void wherein they have nothing to go on anymore, they look into the abysmal emptiness of their own words and thoughts and find they have been betrayed by their own need for conflict and a paycheck, etc. People can't imagine doing this though.

      Always more to be said of course, not looking to argue. This isn't supposed to definitive or conclusive, there are many problems requiring many solutions.

    • 8 months ago
  • entropyincarnate
  • entropyincarnate
  • JanforGore
    • +1
      JanforGore  
    • entropyincarnate:

      I do understand your point. However, even though yes there is a sorrow to that reality that the world is complicated, it is we who have made it so. I tend to have faith in the belief that certain circumstances can bring about a fast and sweeping change because as complicated as this world has become there are still many people fighting the good fight. I can't say what the future will bring, I just know I will be one of them for as long as I live because as bad as we have made it there is still much beauty to this world and it's worth fighting for. I know that might sound like a line out of a movie, but it's how I feel. Thanks.

    • 8 months ago
  • entropyincarnate
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
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