Our World and Everything in It

 

I was watching a report on CNN from New Zealand this morning. In just 50 years the climate in Antarctica has risen 5 degrees. The ice sheets as part of the landmass of Antarctica are melting and cracking off at an accelerated rate. These ice sheets are uncertain in predicting sea level rise in the near future but the ice sheet in question that is breaking apart now has been there for 10,000 years!

 

For all those that keep saying everything is naturally cyclical and man plays no part in the quick climate changes we’re witnessing now, explain this. It would be quite a big cycle that encompasses 10,000 years, and I doubt highly the climate of such a cycle would accelerate at a rate of 1 degree per decade because that would mean a 1,000-degree increase over 10,000 years. A 1,000-degree increase, or even a 100-degree increase has never been documented for planet earth. Frozen core samples from the Arctic ascertained that the first global warming episode some 40 million years ago was caused from methane gas build up and the climate back then changed only a degree or more over a greater period of time than we’re seeing now.  

 

The pieces that are floating off into the ocean from Antarctic ice sheets are moving rapidly and the size of mega malls. One of them is the size of Jamaica. What this means is that the conservative estimate of 15 to 20 cm rise in sea level for our century that was previously predicted by a consensus of scientists may very well be way too conservative in light of these recent floating ice masses breaking apart.

 

The translation for the U.S. is that a 15-20 cm rise of seawater, which is just less than 6 inches to almost 8 inches and enough to swamp most of the coastline of Louisiana is probably wrong. It will be a whole lot worse before it’s better.

 

Understand that the ice sheets in Antarctica are not to be confused with regular glaciers that have been floating in the sea all along. A mass of floating glacier ice has already displaced its weight in water. So if a glacier melts it will not cause a rise in sea level any differently than it did as a frozen mass. However, some of the ice from Antarctica is entering the sea for the first time. It topped the land mass there. This ice will indeed raise the sea level, as is the ice that is melting in Siberia gorging rivers and eventually entering the sea.

 

Knowing this, we certainly do not want to see the Himalayas thawing any time soon. Considering the proximity of China to Tibet, and the fact that the Gobe desert is just 100 miles outside of Beijing now, melting Himalayas is not a stretch.