Maybe it's just the fact I saw The 11th Hour (Leonardo diCaprio's excellent documentary on the climate crisis) last night, and the fact that, over the summer, I'd become lazy in my daily tracking of climate events around the world, but this is a wake-up call.
Loss of Arctic ice leaves experts stunned
David Adam, environment correspondent
Guardian Unlimited
Tuesday September 4 2007
The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and levels of sea ice in the region now stand at record lows, scientists have announced.
Experts say they are "stunned" by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big as the UK disappearing in the last week alone.
(more after the jump)
So much ice has melted this summer that the Northwest passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the Northeast passage along Russia's Arctic coast could open later this month.
If the increased rate of melting continues, the summertime Arctic could be totally free of ice by 2030.
The Arctic has now lost about a third of its ice since satellite measurements began thirty years ago, and the rate of loss has accelerated sharply since 2002.
As most of us know, this is very, very bad news. Not least because of the loss of the loss of albedo effect, which is the reflectivity of ice, which radiates heat from the sun back into space. This loss of reflectivity will only accelerate the warming of the ocean, which, because it is dark, absorbs heat.
I called this diary "Reality Check". Why? Because I don't see any damn candidate, whether Dem or other, making this a top-of-mind, top-of-stump-speech issue. HELLO???? People talk of Boy King Bush fiddling while the world is burning, but what about Hillary , Obama, Edwards and Co? When are they going to devote the kind of massive energy and attention this file demands? We are talking about the possibility of a mass extinction of species, including our own, such as has happened at least five times before in the history of our planet. We are like small children, distracted by baubles, with our parents too drunk to notice that our house is burning.. Our biosphere, our life-support, our only home in the cold, dark vastness of the universe is being destroyed, all the life-systems it supports are collapsing, entire species are disappearing from the face of our Earth, each and every day, and yet we fiddle, and fret about bombing Iran, or disallowing the next Iraq military appropriation bill, or securing the borders, or worrying about immighration, or how the Dems can stand strong on terrorism, and we resign ourselves to another beltway politician for president, whose coffers are opverflowing with corporate money, while the evidence mounts, and mounts, and mounts, that we are edging toward a precipice.
All the scientists are telling us that we have less than ten years to radically change "everything we do", to radically rethink and redesign the world economy, to save ourselves and future generations. LESS THAN TEN YEARS. That's barely 2 presidential terms, by the time the next president comes to office. Are any of the present candidates suited to lead such a herculean, mind-boggling endeavour? Have any of them thought about , and evolved a plan, or better, a global strategy, to achieve survival for all of us who are powerless, outside the pearly gates of wealth and privilege, out here in the world?
I beg you to consider the honest anwer to that question, because our survival and more importantly, to someone who has had sixty years already on this planet, the survival of our children and grandchildren and all who might come after them, if we wake up in time. Thanks for reading.