THE SONG to all CLIMATE DENIERS -SHUT YOUR MOUTH GO AWAY--
A DEFINITION FOR CLIMATE CHANGE:ACD
anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) Climate change caused by man.
This is the most inckusiveI have ever read. Trust me you won't feel better but you need to read this, understand report , and take whatever actions you can do. All of us can't go out to raise hell , but we all can type and email and phone our supposed leaders to take action.
The statistics and data accompanying this report point out all the troubling events currently happening around the world. The new normal regarding climate disruption is that, for the planet, today is better than tomorrow.
Deniers obviously have their collective heads up their asses or up the oil kings asses to not be able to see the changes happening before their lying eyes. To see for yourself one example of glacier melt
GO TO THE MAIN LINK AND DOWN IN THE BODY IS A PICTURE OF A GLACIER -PLACE YOUR CURSOR ON THE PICTURE AND SCROOL RIGHT TO LEFT TO SEE THE GLACIER MELT RIGHT BEFORE YOUR EYS
Glacier ARE just one example of melt going on and glaciers aren't the only thing melting, The Artic and Antarctic are melting at ever increasing rates. The ice melt is so bad that predictions that polar bears numbers will be greatly reduced by the absence of ice to hunt from. Glaciers all over the world are melted or melting. Greenland glaciers are shedding ice bergs big enough to cause 5.0 earth quakes and is sliding towards the sea at the rate of 17 miles per year, which is twice the rate of a few years ago.
The changes occurring as we speak are so serious and so wide spread that it is difficult to put it all down in one post. I will try to hit on ones particularly of interest to me.
First :THE SEAS.. Many problems are underway. The PH of the ocean is becoming more acidic do to the accumulation of co2 which it absorbs. As the co2 concentration builds, reefs die, hard shelled critters loose shell, plankton dies, fish species disappear or survive in greatly reduced numbers.
Sea life is moving with the rising temps in attempts to stay alive. The food chain in the ocean is a complicated network of interrelated species dependent on one another for survival. Kill off of just one species can trigger results up and down the food chain. A lot of the world is dependent on the sea for their food supply , if it disappears they disappear.
Perhaps the most serious effect of climate change is the killing off of some plankton , while allowing other forms to thrive... Plankton supplies half the earths oxygen, something a little hard to do without.
One other big seaborne event is the slowing of the Great Conveyor which has in the past brought a nuclear winter to Europe. The slowing is caused by fresh water from ice melt weighing more that salt water causes the conveyor to slow and perhaps stop.
No matter where you look the oceans are changing everywhere. One of the most serious consequences is the killing off of plankton the bottom of the food change , kill the bottom of the food change you know what happens up the chain.
Strange die offs of all kinds are happening throughout the oceans of the world. On the West Coast we have lost entire runs of anchovies, and other small food fishes. The salmon runs are either not happening or are showing small numbers in the return from sea. Up north they are trucking salmon for to northern hatcheries that have colder waters. Seals, sea birds and a few whales have been found. Large algae bloom span the whole west coast from San Diego to British Columbia causing fisheries in the effected areas to be closed.
The one effect no one wants to talk about is the rise in sea level. The immediate goal is to limit warming to 2 degrees and if we achieve that will still put some low lying cities under water. Most claim we have less than 10 years to bring the climate in bounds but as of now there is no indication that the US is doing anything but impede others from making the change.
The above are just some of the changes now taking place in our oceans. There are many many more events occurring , some we haven't caught on to yet. If we allow the fisheries to collapse a lot of society will be hard pressed for food. We seem unable to bring our selves and fellow humans to do anything about any of the problems our seas are experiencing. 90% of the major species of the sea have been reduced to 10% of their historic numbers.
AIR:
Wherever you look you see air that is not clear and clean. Depending on where you are , determines just how bad you air is. The worst can been seen on almost every day in China where there are days when the people are advised to stay indoors. The burning of fossil fuels is the culprit behind all this pollution. China is putting a new coal fired power plant on the line each week. So the worst air in the world is getting worse each day. They talk about reducing their pollution output but nothing ever seems to happen.
It seems to have slipped from the active American memory that just a few years ago the air in LA was very bad , not quite as bad as China but bad non the less. The few times I was in LA during that time , you had to wait till noon to see if the sun was shinning. LA stands today as an example of what can be done to fix a problem if you can find the political will to fix it. They issued new laws that limited power plant pollution to clean the air and limit acid rain.. It worked. But enough has not been done to limit the heating of the planet. As demonstrated of late their is no political will to sequester carbon from plant emissions, if fact if the republicans had their way they would remove all EPA laws and let industry have their way with us.
ON LAND:
All over the globe species are migrating north to find more suitable environment , sometimes this leave the critters in territory they cannot adapt too. There are so many variables to the health of earths creatures it is hard to know how far to take ones examples. The bees in the US are in terrible trouble from multiple sources, warming temps, GMO crops, removal of natural habitat such as milkweed which is the food source for Monarch butterfly's which are dying off a little more each year . Bees are being killed by pesticides embedded in seed stock or sprayed directly on to plants that bees , butterfly's and hummingbirds sup.
Glaciers all over the world are melting at ever increasing rates. In Turkey half of all their ice cover has melted, 5 areas have lost 100% of their glaciers and 3 have lost half. These glaciers are the prime water supply for the region and they are not the only place experiencing huge changes in their glaciers.
Alaska is loosing enough ice each year making it the biggest contributor to sea level change. Add up just the big glaciers we know are involved, Greenland, the Arctics, Alaska. Turkey and more non of which will stop melting if we cannot make the changes required.
In closing I do not hold much hope for this planet driven by the greed of corporations for ever more profit. I can't see an existing force to bring them to heal. So we will plod along till it is too late to change. Big question I'll leave you with is this: Where do the 1% think they will live after they have successfully destroyed the planet.
Only one prominent scientist agrees with me (publicly at least)...I believe it is to late to stop the environmental collapse. Not that we shouldn't do anything to try and lessen our impact. The less severe the collapse, the more species can survive. Nature is already in a feed back loop of destruction. Just two examples: The warming seas are melting the ice caps. The cold water from the melted ice caps create a cold area in the sea that clashes with warmer water creating catastrophic storms on land and changing the PH balance of the ocean faster than sea life can adapt. Rinse and repeat. FUKUshima: The Japanese have to continually cool the meltdown. They cannot store that much radioactive water. They are continually releasing it into the ocean. Fish are dying in large numbers with sores on them. Sores? Fish? The great die-offs washing up on the U.S. West Coast started after FUKUshima...just saying.
ReplyDeleteRepeatedly, the scientists predictions of our impacts on the environment have been wrong in their scope and timing. It is always much worse and sooner than they expected (at least publicly). One example is glacier melts. Greenland is melting way faster than any scientists predicted. So is Alaska.
Then there is the Arctic. The largest ice mass in the world. Scientists just discovered it is melting MUCH faster then they previously thought because their models did not take into account the ice melt from below from the warming seas.
Scientists have a new concern in the Arctic. That the warming ocean melting the glaciers from underneath will eventually cause them to slide off the land mass and melt much faster once again.
Methane (many times more damaging than CO2) is in the permafrost now being exposed by melting glaciers and released into the atmosphere. The warming oceans may release catastrophic amounts of methane from the sea beds as the ocean warms. It is already starting to bubble to the surface. Primarily near Siberia. Again, scientists are only guessing when/if and how much could be released as the ocean floor changes.
A brand new report states fracking releases huge amounts of methane that has not been properly regulated by the EPA. I guess my point here is we have not stopped increasing the damage we are causing even now.
It seems to me that most people sense we are heading off an environmental cliff but don't want to face it. In my circle, a very progressive one, people don't want to talk about it. I think they feel hopeless. As if they are a passenger looking out a window of a long bullet train heading for the edge.
~Heidi