The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame
Sunday, March 26, 2006;
The following is a summary of this week's Time magazine cover story.
No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth.
Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.
From heat waves to storms to floods to fires to massive glacial melts, the
global climate seems to be crashing around us.
The problem -- as scientists suspected but few others appreciated -- is that global climate systems are booby-trapped with tipping points and feedback loops, thresholds past which the slow creep of environmental decay gives way to sudden and self-perpetuating collapse. That's just what's happening now.
It's at the north and south poles -- where ice cover is crumbling to slush -- that the crisis is being felt the most acutely.
Late last year, for example, researchers analyzed data from Canadian and European satellites and found that the Greenland ice sheet is not only melting, but doing so faster and faster, with 53 cubic miles draining away into the sea last year alone, compared to 23 cubic miles in 1996.
One of the reasons the loss of the planet's ice cover is accelerating is that as the poles' bright white surface disappears it changes the relationship of the Earth and the sun. Polar ice is so reflective that 90 percent of the sunlight that strikes it simply bounces back into space, taking its energy with it. Ocean water does just the opposite, absorbing 90 percent of the light and heat it receives, meaning that each mile of ice that melts vanishes faster than the mile that preceded it.
This is what scientists call a feedback loop, and a similar one is also melting the frozen land called permafrost, much of which has been frozen -- since the end of last ice age in fact, or at least 8,000 years ago.
Sealed inside that cryonic time capsule are layers of decaying organic matter, thick with carbon, which itself can transform into CO2. In places like the southern boundary of Alaska the soil is now melting and softening.
As fast as global warming is changing the oceans and ice caps, it's having an even more immediate effect on land. Droughts are increasingly common as higher temperatures also bake moisture out of soil faster, causing dry regions that live at the margins to tip into full-blown crisis.
Wildfires in such sensitive regions as Indonesia, the western U.S. and even inland Alaska have been occurring with increased frequency as timberlands grow more parched. Those forests that don't succumb to fire can simply die from thirst.
With habitats crashing, the animals that call them home are succumbing too. In Alaska, salmon populations are faltering as melting permafrost pours mud into rivers, burying the gravel the fish need for spawning. Small animals such as bushy tailed rats, chipmunks and pinion mice are being chased upslope by rising temperatures, until they at last have no place to run.
And with sea ice vanishing, polar bears are starting to turn up drowned. "There will be no polar ice by 2060," says Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation. "Somewhere along that path, the polar bear drops out."
So much environmental collapse has at last awakened much of the world, particularly the 141 nations that have ratified the Kyoto treaty to reduce emissions. The Bush administration, however, has shown no willingness to address the warming crisis in a serious way and Congress has not been much more encouraging.
Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman have twice been unable to get even mild measures to limit carbon emissions through a recalcitrant Senate.
A 10-member House delegation did recently travel to Antarctica, Australia and New Zealand to meet with scientists studying climate change. "Of the 10 of us, only three were believers to begin with," says Rep. Sherman Boehlert of New York. "Every one of the others said this opened their eyes."
But lawmakers who still applaud themselves for recognizing global warming are hardly the same as lawmakers with the courage to reverse it, and increasingly, state and local governments are stepping forward.
The mayors of more than 200 cities have signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, pledging, among other things, that they will meet the Kyoto goal of reducing greenhouse emissions in their own cities to 1990 levels by 2012. Nine northeastern states have established the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative for the purpose of developing a program to cap greenhouse gasses.
So I guess these Guys are doomed just like us and many other animals that inhabit both Arctic regions on this earth; I applaud the 200 odd Mayors in the USA for at least trying; your head of state will not even sign the Kyoto agreement; to busy feathering his own nest etc, did I hear the word dollar? yeah well you got that spot on.
ALEXANDER Downer and Mark Vaile have been ordered to provide evidence to the Cole inquiry about their knowledge of the $290 million paid to Saddam Hussein's regime by the AWB, better get your stories right this time boys.
These are supposed to be loyal and honest ministers of the Crown.
I never like Vaille when he was first voted into our Federal Parliament he was a bit of a shonk I thought; but then he was appointed a minister, Downer on the other hand was a bit iffy But did get better although I think he is a weak Foreign minister myself; but it looked like he has now matured in a big way, a very big way and a lot of the taxpayer's money was used.
But it is ok to make us pay more for our medical treatment, and yet $290 million seems to have been paid to a dictator and then we wage war on him, something is not right here
The Foreign Minister and Trade Minister have been told to provide written statements and to prepare for a possible appearance in the witness box, to answer questions about the kickbacks scandal.
Downer bribe denials sunk.
The inquiry's senior counsel, John Agius SC, said the ministers would not be treated differently to other witnesses; "We have written to them and asked them for statements," he said. "If I need to call them, I will.
I suggest you subpoena them Mr. Agius much better than writing to them letters can get lost.
I figured it would all come out into the open in the end;all these denials for what? It has now become public knowledge as can be seen but the question remains still what about honest John will he deny this to he bitter end or not? No good arguing about it Mr.Howard the Buck stops with you.
PRIME Minister John Howard has angrily rejected suggestions that former AWB chairman Trevor Flugge had access to a $4-million slush fund in Iraq, Still $4 million is just a drop in the ocean compared to $290 million; no more tucked away is there Mr.Prime Minister? and then this " Quote" AUSTRALIAN spy agencies have known for eight years a trucking company that funnelled money to Iraq for the AWB was part-owned by Saddam Hussein's regime and breached UN sanctions; 8 years and old honest was still in charge then.
My oh my what a dishonest lot we have running our country; a bloody disgrace I reckon.
