A recent landmark study of massive ice loss in Antarctica and Greenland fulfills the “worst case” prognosis, as outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It’s a nightmare come true, as the impact of global warming on the planet’s most significant/biggest masses of ice multiplied six-fold in only 30 years. It wasn’t supposed to happen so unexpectedly, so suddenly.
Global warming is not waiting around for the signatories to the Paris climate accord ‘15 to go to net zero emissions 2030/50. Sorry, those bold plans are way too little way too late. Already, across the board, the planet is on a hot streak that defies all projections. It’s starting to look downright scary!
Earth Day & Capitalism Like Vinegar and Oil?
Continuously, discussions focusing on degraded ecosystems and tipping points forcing climate change to ramp up to chaos many times center around the “C” word.
Not “c” as in “cancer.”
“Capitalism is destroying the planet,” said Pat DeLaquil, an energy policy expert working with various governments, NGO’s and the private sector to “help achieve economic development and combating climate change.”
Something is causing the world’s glaciers and mountain ice fields to melt. And, despite your first thought, it is not the ongoing climate catastrophe.
It does not matter where on Earth the glaciers and mountain ice fields are located, they are all melting. Moreover, the projected time frame for some of them to disappear altogether is ‘imminently’; that is, within years. And for the rest: a few decades (although that projection is being routinely revised downwards, depending on the glacier).
by Thomas NeuburgerIn a new book, The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption, author Dahr Jamail writes about the coming world without any standing glacial ice anywhere on earth.
A new study from researchers at Princeton University and published in Science has confirmed that the earth is losing oxygen. According to their data, over the past 800,000 years, the earth has lost 0.07% of its oxygen. This isn’t enough to cause harm to life, though scientists are still wondering why this drop occurred.
Ice, Heat, Rain, Drought
How can someone in the Inland Northwest not think about weather, the future of our valley, what the aquifer will look like in decades and the potential impacts of some scenario unfolding that is twice (or four times) more extreme/devastating than the windstorm event Spokane, Washington, experienced late last year?
Sleepless nights bring on drowsy days, and for those experiencing this disorder because of heightened concerns about global warming, awakening in the middle of the night, screaming, there is a remedy. Read Gaia Vince’s Adventures in the Anthropocene –A Journey to the Heart of the Planet We Made, Milkweed Editions, 2014.
