Deeper Shade of Green

Today I read an article on the Tyee, a first-rate online daily publication. What I read made me very, and I mean very scared. Global Climate Change is here, now.

Arctic’s a sort of ‘mine canary’ of global warming? Asks the reporter. “‘Mine canary’ is dead“, answers a top tundra scientist. “What we thought was happening 25 years ago is happening. We’re into full-fledged climate change. We’re quite a species. We’ve altered the planet’s climate in two or three generations. It’s not going to stop. It’s going to get worse and worse”. The news is not just bad. It indicates a worldwide catastrophe is at hand.

Since the first aerial photographs in 1959, the total amount of ice lost from the land in northernmost Canada (not the floating Arctic Ocean sea ice) is a staggering 3000 square kilometres. In Greenland, many glaciers are retreating [read: melting into ocean] at a rate of 10 to 15 kilometres a year.

This is an anthropogenic event. We humans have done it. We’re like lemmings. We don’t want to admit we’re responsible. We’re throwing ourselves off a cliff! But the fact is… lemmings don’t throw themselves off cliffs. They’re not that stupid! – John England, a professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta

• The year 2005 was announced as the warmest on record in the Arctic, only to be surpassed by a warmer 2006. Across the Ellesmere region, temperatures are averaging 6 C higher than 30 years ago. (In the western Arctic, it’s now averaging 8 C warmer than in the 70s.) In Iqaluit on Baffin Island, where it’s normally -25 C in February, in February 2006 it rained.
• The normal 1980s sea ice cover in July on the Arctic Ocean was 10.1 million square kilometres. In July 2006, sea ice cover was 8.7 million square kilometres — a loss of sea ice as large as the area of Peru. All current projections conclude that permanent summer sea ice will be gone from the Arctic Ocean by 2100; pessimists say it will be gone by 2030.
• Greenland shed its glacial ice 2.5 times faster in 2006 as it did in 2004. Forecasts vary, but were the Greenland ice to disappear entirely, ocean levels would rise seven metres.
• Predictions are that levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere will double — from today’s figures — by 2050. This will be the result of both human energy consumption and the melting of methane-bearing permafrost. Worldwide, carbon dioxide levels are now already higher than at any time in the past 325,000 years.
• One-third of the world’s croplands and 1.5 billion coastal-dwelling people will be adversely affected — the land inundated — in the next century if the ocean were to rise, as many predict, three or four metres.

At this point, I am desperate for some good news – Peter

Read the whole article on the tyee here.