The consensus among the world top scientists is that we have a climate crisis. The extensive global warming is human caused, which is causing our climate crisis.
Last month, the United nations gave an estimate that dire effects can occur as soon as 2050 if not soon corrected.
Bad….no, TERRIBLE news. Yesterday it was announced that the model previously used was for the ice melt in the Arctic was at a rate of 2.5 percent annually. But their study has revealed that the actual ice loss is at a rate of 7.8 percent annually. That means 3 times faster than the previous estimated 2050, brings us to around 2020.
“BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — Arctic sea ice is melting three times faster than many scientists project, U.S. researchers reported Monday, just days ahead of the next major international report on climate change.
Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado in Boulder concluded, using actual measurements, that Arctic sea ice has declined at an average rate of about 7.8% per decade between 1953 and 2006.
By contrast, 18 computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N.-sponsored climate research group, estimated an average rate of decline of 2.5% per decade over the same period, the researchers said.
International delegates are meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, this week to hammer out the final wording of the third IPCC report.”
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2007-04-30-arctic-ice-melt_N.htm
We need to start bold action very soon to stop this high paced melting and ever growing global warming. Not just that all those Polar Bears are dying and drowning. If we don’t act soon, life as we know it will be forever changed.
You can read many more articles from Environmental Health news here.
http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/archives.jsp?sm=fr13%3Bcurrentissues15%3B5Climate_change14%3B
Climate+change
Thirty years and no polar ice cap. Then what? That can’t be good. It has a bad feel to it. 7.8% each decade is a scary rate of melting. Is it my imagination or is the weather getting more violent more often? Has anyone seen any statistics that would back this up.
observations, as one who keeps records because I grow much of my own food…I’d say the weather is much more erratic and inpredictable, just in the most recent two years. Whether this is a hallmark of a tipping point or not i don’t know. I’ve only been keeping records of max/min temperatures and of my plantings for 9 years, but, for two decades prior I was an avid athlete, and very tuned into weather in terms of my outdoor exercise regimen, and the clothing layers required. My observation is thus: the weather is definitely more extreme, changeable and out of character for the season.
dotcommodity posted a diary at dailykos today, with links to articles forecasting a 90-year drought for the west and southwest: In Weather News From The Future: Town Evacuations. Already there are evacuations of towns, and possibly of Adelaide, in Australia, due to drought.
billlaurelMD also posted State of the Cryosphere at dK yesterday, corroborating this post: the Arctic ocean will be ice-free by 2020.
Based on my read of Elizabeth Kolbert’s New Yorker articles, a tipping point would seen quite plausible, in which methane burps from permafrost and deep ocean sediments; increased solar heat absorption in areas newly devoid of snow or ice cover; and glacier melt leading to increased lubrication by seepage through cracks which, then leads to accelerated slippage toward the sea…..
My question…How big will the tidal wave be??
that when they shift from one metastable state to another, the transition is preceded by wild fluctuations.
A familiar example: The extreme turbulence that marks the transition from subsonic to supersonic flow.
Extreme fluctuations are thus a hint, in that they may be true indicators that the system is about to change state.
That is: Increasingly wild weather may be a true indicator that the Earth is about to shift to a new and vastly warmer climate regime.
It does look like humans have already committed the Earth this change.
We can–and do–still hope for damage limitation. And it is worth doing: In the worst scenerios, humans do not survive at all.