One of the worst effects of global warming is nearer than we think. The world’s coastlines are going to change in as little as a few years. We have been hearing this cry for so long that most of us have become numb to the warnings. We think this change will happen so far in the future, certainly not in our lifetimes, that we don’t need to take the warnings seriously. Chicken Little ran around crying ‘the sky is falling’ and no one believed. Scientists have been telling us that global warming is real and no one believes.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published predictions this year that sea level rise will drastically alter coastlines around the world. Their predictions, based on data that was two years old, said the sea rise could total 20 to 60 centimeters, and we want to believe it won’t happen in our lifetimes. This estimate has turned out to be conservative. The Bush administration dismisses scientific conclusions as the stuff of science fiction stories and ‘blue-sky’ voodoo. This way he doesn’t have to deal with it. These scientists know their stuff. They are not given to exaggeration and hysteria. The rest of us cannot afford to stick our heads in the sand any longer.
On a recent visit to the Greenland ice cap in September of this year, scientists were shocked to learn that ice is melting at a far faster rate than previously thought. It seems that what we have been told, that it would take centuries of ice melt to change the worlds coastlines, needs to be adjusted to taking only decades or years.
If you have ever witnessed a large sheet of ice melting in the sun, either on a lake or in your backyard, you undoubtedly have noticed that it doesn’t just melt around the edges. Holes also form across the surface of the ice that allows melted water to flow down through the ice to the ground below. As enough water flows down those holes and underneath the ice sheet it acts as a lubricant to allow the ice sheet to move. The Greenland ice sheet has already developed thousands of these holes and it is moving. With an ice sheet that large you can imagine that the amount of water flowing down those holes have become very large waterfalls. Several are as big as Niagara Falls.
The front of this glacier is five kilometers long and 1,500 meters deep. Robert Correll, chairman of the Artic Climate Impact Assessment, tries to put it into perspective this way, “That means that this one glacier puts enough fresh water into the sea in one day to provide drinking water for a city the size of New York or London for a year." And this glacier is currently moving at three times the rate it did 10 years ago. This is very significant indeed.
As the glacier moves, chunks of ice, the size of small mountains, are breaking off and causing small earthquakes and creating waves that can sink small ships if they happen to wander too close.
Add the melting effects of this one glacier to all the other glaciers around the world such as Antarctic, the glaciers of Alaska, the Rockies, the Himalayas, or the ocean water itself expanding as it warms, and the magnitude should become clear. Hurricane surges, as we saw during Katrina, will be even more devastating as flood waters will reach even further inland. Whole cities and towns could be wiped from the face of the earth.
Bush can be decisive in using the military to take Iraq for his profit but he can’t use military might to stop climate change, therefore he is totally lost as to what to do. Too bad none of his cronies are scientists, then, maybe, he would believe them. Too bad there is no profit to be made for him to take global warming seriously, then we would stand a better chance at seeing some action taken to stop or slow down global warning.
All he has done so far is spout rhetoric in front of 16 of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in Washington last month about how, along with terrorism, climate change is the biggest threat to the earth. But when it comes down to demanding something be done about it, he would rather put it off onto the next president by suggesting voluntary cuts in emissions. Since when does any corporation or nation do anything voluntary that will cost them money even if it is to help save our species?
America is the biggest user of fossil fuel in the world and creates more greenhouse gas emissions than anyone else. Therefore, we need to lead the way in curbing these emissions. Bush will not demand anything be done, because implementing the necessary policies to force his cronies corporations to clean up their act would damage his political party’s standings. Again, it would not be profitable enough for him to do anything, even if it means the very survival of our species.
Science tells us we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% if we are to stave off catastrophic climate change, Bush doesn’t understand science and so he chooses not to give it any importance. This way, by his narrow, feeble minded thinking, if it isn’t real it can’t hurt him.
He puts more faith in creationism than in science and his narrow view-point is once again endangering us all. He cannot hide from facts behind his faith. This threat of dramatic sea level rise is as real as he is blind to it.
So all of you who are living on the coastlines better trade in your homes for what will certainly become the new oceanfront property.
To learn more about climate change click here.
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