NO MORE DENIAL. It is here.
More below.
No more denial. This is REAL. It is coming. It is already here. And if we don't get truly serious about doing all in our Earthly power to stem this tide, it will be the mother of all terrorist attacks... by Mother Nature. And that is no joke.
For decades scientists, scholars, and a few brave public servants, including one who is still out here as a private citizen working hard to disseminate this truth, have been warning the world what will come from our own negligence, complacency, laziness, indifference, selfishness, and greed. And only now are more starting to listen... but is it too late? I don't think so... if we start getting serious about it from our own lifestyles to our government and economic policy NOW, hopefully we can reverse this enough to set this planet on the right course.
While Bush Republicans spew about "Personal responsibility and "Morality" however, they show NONE of those qualities when it comes to being stewards of a planet they claim their God created. Then in their own terms they have blasphemed against their own God by being immoral, irresponsible, and defiant to his will. And that will is to love this planet, respect this planet, and treat this planet with the respect it deserves for sustaining us.
I have been vocal about the environment as well for many years, although I am not someone who is in the public eye (nor do I desire to be,) like many of us out here who care about this issue but whose voices have been ignored. I started at 12 years old by writing a paper for my school, writing a letter to President Nixon which he responded to personally (I can elaborate on that in the comments if you want me to,) and then by getting involved in my community to clean it up, and my school in getting out information when it was then even talked about in our schools, which it really is not now on the scale it needs to be talked about now.
I have also spent my life living it the way I believe we should live it if we are going to talk about it, and yes, I'm proud to brag about that. And that is what I am here to say in response to this article below... This is happening because of us, and it is now scientific fact. Therefore, it is up to us as responsible and moral stewards of this planet to fix the mess we made.
Of course to many reading this article it will have no correlation to their own lives. They don't think that driving at hair burning speeds down a highway in their HUMMER, and burning gallons upon gallons of costly fossil fuels at a time over a long period of time here will have any effect on the Greenland or Arctic ice shelves... And they're wrong, and that is what we who walk the walk have to make people understand. Weather patterns, air flow, and their own behavior that is contributing to those patterns is contributing to this problem, that is now not only a problem but something that proves to be able to change this world as we know it.
And then some will say, so what? If these ice shelves and glaciers melt causing a 16 to 36 foot rise in sea levels in say, 80 years, I won't be here anyway. Well, good for you. But others will be here, perhaps your grandchildren or great grandchildren suffering from the effects of a cataclysm YOU contributed to. And this is really the crux of the moral question behind this issue to me. As stewards of this planet, is it not our duty to care about the future, even if it doesn't include us? Shouldn't we want to protect and preserve the planet as close to the way we got it as is humanly possible? Is that not showing "Personal Responsibility?" "Morality?"
I then suggest you read this report, look at the accompanying links, and truly reflect on just what it is you are doing to contribute to this, and what you can do to now change how you do some things even in the slightest that will make a difference.
In Al Gore's documentary movie, " An Inconvenient Truth", it is said that a picture of Bush is put up with the punchline, "Political will is a renewable resource."
Well, I will go one further than that and say, " HUMAN will is a renewable resource." And without it now, we, our children, and their children may be literally sunk. You can make a difference in that ending, even if you think you can't.
However, nothing will change policywise unless we change the partisan and selfish politics surrounding this issue. How about the Democratic Party actually getting serious about this in their leadership, and using their power to warn people about how serious the need to begin to change their own lifestyles is and directing the RNC to do the same damn thing and holding them accountable publicly for LYING to the public about it? How about we get serious about holding oil companies accountable instead of allowing them to fleece us and destroy this planet simply to use it as a campaign issue while we continue to use their products?
Does anyone here really believe that enough would boycott oil companies or buy hybrid cars at a pace that would do any good now with the current system we have in place even with a "tax?" Some have suggested a "carbon "tax" be excised. To me that already denotes something that many people would not want, especially those who are not educated on this issue enough to understand why it is even needed. It is just more money to be manipulated and misued. People won't show interest or urgency in this if we don't show the urgency of this to them, and hold political leaders accountable for their irresponsible actions and inactions on this issue.
And what good is a carbon tax as well if people will simply continue the same behaviors that have been instilled in them for decades? What good will it do if governments are still denying this exists, and we keep voting the same bastards into office (or letting them steal it) that have ties with the very industries that have continued to precipitate these conditions? We must change the political makeup of our country and hold companies accountable for their negligence to our planet...FOR REAL. And by all means, we need religious leaders to become much more involved in speaking out about this issue across the political spectrum, and I'm glad to see that is starting to happen.
And now you can direct people to go see Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth which premieres May 26 of this year. That may be a start, as well as starting with yourself, because whether people want to believe it or not this is the most important issue we will face in this century next to nuclear war. We are being challenged right now. Can we meet that challenge? That answer only lies in each of us.
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Greenland's glaciers losing ice at faster rate
Satellite observations add new factor to global-warming debate
J.A. Dowdeswell / Univ. of Cambridge
Large numbers of icebergs are calved each year from the fast-flowing terminus of the Kangerdlussuaq Glacier in East Greenland. Iceberg production is a major form of mass loss from ice sheets. The bergs add fresh water to surrounding seas when they melt.
ST. LOUIS - Satellite observations indicate that Greenland's glaciers have been dumping ice into the Atlantic Ocean at a rate that's doubled over the past five years, researchers reported here on Thursday. The findings add yet another factor to the long-running debate over the effect of climate change on the world's ice sheets and sea levels.
"The evolution of the ice sheet, in the context of climate warming, is more rapid than has been predicted by models," one of the researchers, Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told MSNBC.com. As a result, Greenland's ice sheet -- second only to Antarctica's ice sheet, with almost as much area as Mexico -- could contribute more than expected to rising sea levels in a warming world, he said.
Other climate experts said the study, which was revealed in St. Louis at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and published in Friday's issue of the journal Science, added an important piece to the climate puzzle.
"This is a big, major finding," said Gino Casassa, a glaciologist at Chile's Center for Scientific Studies. He noted that some glaciers in South America's Patagonia region have been shrinking faster than expected, and said "acceleration may be the missing link." Other scientists said a similar effect might be at work within glaciers in Alaska and Antarctica.
The Greenland Ice Sheet's role in climate predictions is not crystal-clear, however. Researchers have to account not only for the loss of ice around the edges of the sheet, but also for the buildup of ice in Greenland's interior. The influence of smaller-scale weather cycles on Greenland's waxing and waning ice adds to the complexity.
Climate skeptics point to the buildup of snow and ice in Greenland's interior as evidence that the ice sheet is not thawing out. But Rignot and others said that the buildup is taken into account in the computerized climate models, as a meteorological side effect of the global warming trend.
When all the effects are considered, the Greenland Ice Sheet's annual loss has risen from 21.6 cubic miles (90 cubic kilometers) in 1996 to 36 cubic miles (150 cubic kilometers) in 2005, according to Rignot and his co-author, Pannir Kanagaratnam of the University of Kansas. Their conclusions are based on nearly a decade's worth of radar data from the Radarsat-1, ERS-1, ERS-2 and Envisat satellites, as well as radio echo sounding experiments.
How much, and how fast?
Virtually everyone agrees that the complete disappearance of the 2-mile-thick (3-kilometer-thick) Greenland Ice Sheet would cause an estimated 23-foot (7-meter) rise in global sea levels. That would inundate coastal regions around the world. At the same time, virtually everyone also agrees that even under the worst-case scenario, it would take centuries of warmer weather for Greenland's ice to disappear completely.
It's the rate of change in the ice sheet, and its variability over time, that is at issue.
Rignot and Kanagaratnam say their calculations indicate that the Greenland melt currently contributes about two-hundredths of an inch (0.5 millimeters) to the annual 0.12-inch (3-millimeter) rise in global sea levels. The glacier speed-up is responsible for more than two-thirds of that contribution, they say.
Moreover, the type of speed-up seen in Greenland may be affecting glaciers elsewhere as well, Rignot said.
"We think something very similar is happening in the Antarctic Peninsula, where the ice shelves in front of these glaciers has collapsed," he told MSNBC.com, specifically pointing to 2002's demise of the Larsen B ice shelf.
Mark Chandler, a climate researcher at Columbia University, said the fate of the world's ice sheets is "probably the biggest concern that people are looking at right now" in the field of climate prediction.
"There's a lot of fear out there right now, even among scientists, that ice caps are not all that stable," he told MSNBC.com. If the pace of global ice loss accelerates, sea levels might conceivably rise 6 to 16 feet (2 to 5 meters) over the course of a century, which he said would be "devastating."
Bolding above my emphasis
Continued at this link:
Greenland Glaciers Losing Ice At Faster Rate
Make sure to also take a look at the photos with this report.
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Other Links:
Ratio of Greenland Temperature Change
Greenland Ice Sheet and Global Warming
Take part in this poll
The Day After Tomorrow
While not a masterpiece, this movie does at least attempt to show the effects of climate change that could occur over a long period of time. The best points made in it were showing the lack of political will and the denial of the public that led to the catastrophe.