Glacier Melt // Current TV

"Glacier Man" does nature's work to mitigate climate change

Innovative, but sad it has come to this.

JanforGore
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Melting glaciers jolt smokestack China

AS an expedition from Chinese state television worked its way across the remote... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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SHOCKING NEW GLOBAL-WARMING DATA / TIPPING-POINT REACHED ! = PERMAFROST MELTING IN ARCTIC !

SHOCKING NEW NASA DATA / NEW PREDICTION = "3 TO 5 YEARS NO ICE IN ARCTIC"... more

gerardange
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2 years ago
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THE TRUTH ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING... THE REALLY~ INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Global warming... is much worse that you think. PLEASE SELECT: "WATCH FULL... more

gerardange
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2 years ago
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Water evaporates from the climate change negotiating text

To not include water as part of these negotiations will prove the parties involved are... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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Multiyear ice in the Arctic gone

The multiyear ice covering the Arctic Ocean has effectively vanished, a startling... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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Kashmir glaciers shrinking at alarming speed

Rising winter temperatures are shrinking Himalayan glaciers in Indian Kashmir at... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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U.S. says climate bill might not pass in time

You know, at this point I say, SO WHAT? It isn't as if this Congress is even going to give us a bill that the Earth NEEDS. 17% reductions of GHGs by 2020 is PITIFUL. Dragging your feet on giving us REAL fuel emissions standards is PITIFUL when scientists have already stated we could be getting 80 miles to the gallon in our cars. And where are the subsidies for the AFFORDABLE hybrid plug- ins for the middle class? Ignoring Arctic melt because you want to secure sea routes for the resources there is PITIFUL. Ignoring the effects your cronyism in the agricultural sector are having on the environment is PITIFUL. Continuing to allow the practice of mountaintop removal is CRIMINAL.

So by all means, U.S. Congress, show the world your true colors and just how bought and sold to the coal and oil industries you really are even at a time of planetary crisis. Then go to Copenhagen hanging your heads in shame. Approving the Alberta Clipper pipeline to pipe in dirty bitumen tarsands while trying to tell the world the U.S Is ready to tackle climate change is also an insult to our intelligence. But go ahead, continue to think you can rickroll the American people with your doubletalk and ignorance. The day will come when your decades of inaction will have the full effect and your petty, selfish, politically partisan drivel will be seen for the irrelevance it is.

This also proves their level of consciousness about this is nil. It is not now a question of them having the luxury of a CHOICE as to whether they can pass this in time or not. This is a moral imperative that scientists state must be done and done right to stave off the worst effects of a crisis that will change our way of life. This in essence IS our healthcare bill, because without a sustainable planet we have nothing else, including health.
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Excerpt:

The fate of U.S. legislation capping carbon emissions weighed heavily on delegates at U.N. climate talks starting Monday in Bangkok, with the Americans saying delays in passing the bill could deter commitments from other nations.

Negotiations on a new U.N. climate pact have been bogged down by a broad unwillingness to commit to firm emissions targets, and a refusal by developing countries to sign a deal until the West guarantees tens of billions of dollars in financial assistance — something rich countries have so far refused to do.

"The more specific we can be, the easier it is to press others to be equally specific," Jonathan Pershing, the chief U.S. negotiator at the talks, told The Associated Press. "We have a lot of things we want from countries. ... The less we can put on the table, the harder it is to achieve that outcome."

The two weeks of U.N. climate talks in the Thai capital are drawing some 1,500 delegates from 180 countries to boil down a 200-page draft agreement to something more manageable, aiming for a new international climate pact this year.

In June, the U.S. House of Representatives passed its first bill to cap carbon emissions. The Senate, currently embroiled in debate on health care, is expected to take up the legislation as early as this week.

But Pershing said he doubted there's enough time to pass a climate bill in Congress before the year's biggest climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December, which aims to reach a deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol expiring in 2012.
end of excerptYou know, at this point I say, SO WHAT? It isn't as if this Congress is even... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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Awe Inspiring pictures from space of glacial melt

Seen from space these new images show us how the future of sea levels MAY rise when we... more

GreenhouseNeutralFoundation
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Europeans say US lacks will on climate

As world leaders gather in New York for the highest-level conference yet on climate change, European leaders are expressing growing unease about the United States’ stance in international talks aimed at reaching a global agreement in Copenhagen in December.

Officials of several European countries have cited what they see as a lack of political will on the part of the United States to adequately address climate change. The American reluctance to accept any agreement that would require legally binding and internationally enforceable targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could doom the Copenhagen session, they said.

Ahead of this week’s climate talks at the United Nations, the Europeans also expressed little hope that the United States Senate would act on a climate bill before the Copenhagen talks begin. They said the lack of domestic consensus sows doubt about whether the United States can keep any pledges it makes at Copenhagen, either on the level of reductions in global warming emissions or on financial commitments to help developing nations adapt to a changing climate.

Inaction in the Senate also limits the flexibility of America’s chief climate negotiator, Todd Stern.

The Obama administration is trying to satisfy European demands for firm targets and timetables, while reassuring a wary Senate that it is not signing on to a system that would impose steep economic costs on the United States that are not shared by developing countries like China and India.

Although the administration and its allies in Congress say they are deeply committed to meaningful action on climate change, they do not want to repeat the experience of Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, when the Clinton administration signed an international agreement that was repudiated by the Senate because it made few demands on the developing world. The United States never ratified the agreement, called the Kyoto Protocol.

John Ashton, the British foreign secretary’s special representative for climate change, said several large gaps need to be closed among the major industrialized countries before there could be any hope of success in Copenhagen.

Chief among them, he said, is the “ambition gap” between the United States and the nations of the European Union. While the United States discusses the broad outlines of climate policy, the Europeans have already pledged to cut their emissions by 20 percent by 2020, and more deeply if there is an international agreement.

The Europeans say a bill passed by the House in June showed American goodwill but still fell short of the European target and what scientists say is necessary to limit global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius over the planet’s temperature early in the Industrial Revolution, which means limiting future changes to about 2 degrees Fahrenheit above current temperatures. This limit is the internationally accepted goal.

The Senate has yet to act, but its targets are likely to be less ambitious.

Mr. Ashton said that the path forward is clear, but that politics are hampering movement in the United States and several other large countries. “There is no technological obstacle. There is no macroeconomic obstacle,” said Mr. Ashton, in Washington late last week for a meeting of major industrial countries on climate change. “The barriers are political.”

end of excerptAs world leaders gather in New York for the highest-level conference yet on climate... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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Arctic ecosystems changing, may be irreversible

The dramatic changes sweeping the Arctic as a result of global warming aren't... more

JanforGore
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Explore Water

Man's impact on water is global. http://current.com/groups/water-is-life/

JanforGore
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Melting glaciers threaten 'Nepal tsunami'

For two decades, Funuru Sherpa has watched the lake above his native village of... more

JanforGore
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As Arctic Ocean warms, megatonnes of methane bubble up

It's been predicted for years, and now it's happening. Deep in the Arctic... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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Message from the melting Arctic

It's been a strange summer around here. We had the wettest, coldest June in memory. July and August weren't much better, and we're still waiting for our first official heat wave. But if you think this tells you anything about global warming, you're looking out the wrong window.

Instead, turn your gaze northward. Climate change is most visible at the extremes, the top and bottom of the earth. And the people who watch the poles most closely are more worried than ever.

That would be the consortium of scientists known as International Polar Year. Its latest findings indicate that some of the dire predictions of climate scientists were off - in the wrong direction. Things are trending worse than the "worst case scenarios" envisioned in the most recent reports of the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The melting of Arctic sea ice has been evident for years in NASA satellite photos and eyewitness accounts. CIA photos, classified under the Bush administration but declassified under President Obama, are even more dramatic, showing slushy ice - or no ice at all - in areas frozen solid not long ago.

The IPY repeated the measurements taken by an Arctic expedition in 1893, finding that the ice cap, which was typically 12 feet thick a century ago, is now between one and three feet thick. Summer sea ice could disappear completely by 2020, researchers say.

That's ahead of the models in the IPCC's 2007 report, mostly because the IPCC assumed the world would have begun to slow the growth of carbon dioxide emissions. No such luck.

There's more bad news coming out of Greenland, where the IPCC low-balled estimates of glacial melting. New, more sophisticated measurements show Greenland is now losing 52 cubic miles of ice every year. Since Greenland is a land mass with ice on top, its melting glaciers cause sea levels to rise, unlike the floating Arctic ice. While the IPCC estimated sea levels would rise 16 inches this century, Sharon Begley reports in Newsweek that IPY scientists now project a rise of at least 39 inches.

Even more disturbing is the news on Arctic permafrost, which is rapidly melting. As it melts, the permafrost releases carbon into the atmosphere, making global warming worse. New calculations project that, at its peak, the melting will put between 1 billion and 2 billion tons a year into the atmosphere, Begley reports - or up to six times as much carbon as generated each year by American cars and light trucks.

Another recalculation triples the estimate of CO2 locked in the permafrost: Experts now say there is two times as much carbon in the permafrost as is currently in the atmosphere.

These new findings are a reminder that climate change is a moving target, that scientists can get things wrong, and that projections can be off - on either the good side or the bad side. While many have hoped the doom and gloom projections would prove exaggerations, new data shows they were over-optimistic.

end of excerptIt's been a strange summer around here. We had the wettest, coldest June in... more

JanforGore
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A U.S. government study says three American Glaciers are melting at a rapid rate

A government study was started in 1959 to observe two glaciers in Alaska and one in... more

msaldate
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2 years ago
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Vast expanses of Arctic ice melt in summer heat

The Arctic Ocean has given up tens of thousands more square miles (square kilometers) of ice on Sunday in a relentless summer of melt, with scientists watching through satellite eyes for a possible record low polar ice cap.

From the barren Arctic shore of this village in Canada's far northwest, 1,500 miles (2,414 kilometers) north of Seattle, veteran observer Eddie Gruben has seen the summer ice retreating more each decade as the world has warmed. By this weekend the ice edge lay some 80 miles (128 kilometers) at sea.

"Forty years ago, it was 40 miles (64 kilometers) out," said Gruben, 89, patriarch of a local contracting business.

Global average temperatures rose 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degree Celsius) in the past century, but Arctic temperatures rose twice as much or even faster, almost certainly in good part because of manmade greenhouse gases, researchers say.

In late July the mercury soared to almost 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) in this settlement of 900 Inuvialuit, the name for western Arctic Eskimos.

"The water was really warm," Gruben said. "The kids were swimming in the ocean."

As of Thursday, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported, the polar ice cap extended over 2.61 million square miles (6.75 million square kilometers) after having shrunk an average 41,000 square miles (106,000 square kilometers) a day in July -- equivalent to one Indiana or three Belgiums daily.

The rate of melt was similar to that of July 2007, the year when the ice cap dwindled to a record low minimum extent of 1.7 million square miles (4.3 million square kilometers) in September.

In its latest analysis, the Colorado-based NSIDC said Arctic atmospheric conditions this summer have been similar to those of the summer of 2007, including a high-pressure ridge that produced clear skies and strong melt in the Beaufort Sea, the arm of the Arctic Ocean off northern Alaska and northwestern Canada.

In July, "we saw acceleration in loss of ice," the U.S. center's Walt Meier told The Associated Press. In recent days the pace has slowed, making a record-breaking final minimum "less likely but still possible," he said.

Scientists say the makeup of the frozen polar sea has shifted significantly the past few years, as thick multiyear ice has given way as the Arctic's dominant form to thin ice that comes and goes with each winter and summer.

The past few years have "signaled a fundamental change in the character of the ice and the Arctic climate," Meier said.

Ironically, the summer melts since 2007 appear to have allowed disintegrating but still thick multiyear ice to drift this year into the relatively narrow channels of the Northwest Passage, the east-west water route through Canada's Arctic islands. Usually impassable channels had been relatively ice-free the past two summers.The Arctic Ocean has given up tens of thousands more square miles (square kilometers)... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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USGS report shows a "dramatic" decline in U.S. glaciers

Alaska REALLY is melting. This isn't some illusory hoax or NWO conspiracy. The... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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7 comments

Study finds Northwest glaciers shrinking faster, gone by 2030

Climate change is shrinking three of the nation's most studied glaciers at an... more

WakeUpPeople
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2 years ago
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Scientists claim planet is heading for "irreversible" climate change by 2040

CARBON dioxide levels are rising at a faster rate than the worst-case scenario... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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