Our Environment

A 2 year report of conditions in the Antarctic studying, ocean temperature and glacial change have stated the bleeding obvious yet again. I appreciate that all this fact finding is important, though we seem to do nothing but watch.

It is like a crowd watching a car accident, we are horrified by what we are witnessing though we seemed to mesmerised by the events that are unfolding before us.

The gust of the report is that Antarctica glaciers are melting much faster and across a much wider area than formerly thought.

This has the potential effect of raising the ocean levels high enough to force millions of people from low-lying areas all round the planet, scientists said Wednesday  25-Feb-2009).

Previously researchers believed that the melting was limited to the Antarctic Peninsula, a strip of land that protrudes toward South America. Satellite imagery and weather stations monitoring the region now indicate that the threat is far more widespread.

Scientists have conjectured that by the end of this century, the melting could cause sea levels to climb by 1 to 2 metres. These predictions are at odds with levels estimated by a major scientific group just two years ago.

Experts say that making matters worse is the ice shelves that help hold the glaciers back from sliding into the sea are also at risk.

The report Wednesday from Geneva was a broad summary of two years of research by scientists from 60 countries.

In Washington, as part of an overall update on global warming, top researchers on Wednesday sounded a similar warning to the U.S. Senate about rising temperatures in the Antarctic.

The head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told lawmakers that Earth has about six more years at current rates of carbon emission before it is locked into a future of severe global warming and a possible runaway Green House Effect.

The Pine Island Glacier (biggest of the western Antarctic Glaciers) is moving 40 percent faster than it was in the 70s and is also discharging water and ice into the ocean at a similar rate. The Smith Glacier, also in west Antarctica, is moving at a staggering 83% more quickly than it was in the early nineties.

Some people fear that this is the first signs of the collapse of the entire West Antarctic Ice Sheet. If the ice sheet does collapse, we’re looking at a sea level rise of between 3 to nearly 5 feet.

Total loss of mass on the combined west Antarctica glaciers is due to Global Warming is estimated at around 114 billion tons per year and they are melting much faster than the amount of new snow falling in the region.

One amazing finding was that oceans in the Antarctic region have been warming at a higher rate than the rest of the world.

On a personal note am I the only one who can see how obvious it is that the ocean that would experience the highest degree of warming would be the oceans that are the coldest.

It is really time to stop measuring how bad it is and pontificating over how bad things will be, when are we going to make significant changes that will start to reverse the damage we are doing every day.

Sometimes I get so frustrated I could spit…