IMVA - Apocalypse Now - September 25, 2006

[Guest guest]

Apocalypse Now

International Medical Veritas Association

 

 

 

 

AP Photo This satellite image released by NASA

shows the concentration of Arctic sea ice in 2005.

 

 

 

I wish I could say that the tragedies unfolding with mercury and a

host of other toxic chemicals (including the Depleted Uranium nightmare) that I

have written about are the only major catastrophes we are facing. But beware and

take care: we are going to be hit on many fronts, not least of which is going to

be massive changes in weather patterns. What was science fiction in the movies a

few short years ago is looming ever closer as a reality. In Sept, 2006 the

Associated Press reported on two new NASA studies that confirmed how Arctic sea

ice in winter is melting far faster than ever before.

The current warming trends[ii] in the Arctic may

shove the Arctic system into a seasonally ice-free

state not seen for more than one million years.

Back on November 9, 2004 National Geographic reported that scientists

had already determined that the ice in Greenland and the Arctic is melting so

rapidly that much of it could be gone by the end of the century. The results

could be catastrophic for polar people and animals, while low-lying lands as far

flung as Florida could be significantly impacted by rising sea levels. It now

seems that this 100 year projection from only two years ago was somewhat

short-sighted. If the present accelerated pace of melting continues the Arctic

Ocean could lose all of its ice soon.

The 11 warmest years on record have all occurred

since 1990. In response, our planet has been

changing with warming winds and rising seas.

For more than 25 years Arctic sea ice has slowly diminished in winter

by about 1.5 percent per decade. But in the past two years the melting has

occurred at rates 10 to 15 times faster. From 2004 to 2005, the amount of ice

dropped 2.3 percent; and over the past year, it has declined by another 1.9

percent, according to senior NASA research scientist Dr. Josefino Comiso. A

second NASA study by other researchers found the winter sea ice melt in one

region of the eastern Arctic has shrunk about 40 percent in just the past two

years. This is partly because of local weather but also partly because of global

warming said Dr. Comiso.

The ice is melting even in subfreezing winter

temperatures because the water is warmer and

summer ice covers less area and is shorter-lived.

Dr. Josefino Comiso

" Record amounts of the Arctic ocean failed to freeze during the

recent winter, new figures show, spelling disaster for wildlife and

strengthening concerns that the region is locked into a destructive cycle of

irreversible climate change, " wrote the Guardian in the UK, which published back

in May of 2006 that satellite measurements show the area covered by Arctic

winter sea ice reached an all-time low in March, down some 300,000 square

kilometres on last year - an area bigger than the UK.

New measurements published in August of 2006 show that the

southeastern Greenland ice sheet has been melting five times more quickly over

the last two years than it did in the year and a half before that.[iii] Earlier

in 2006, another air- and space-based survey led by NASA's Jet Propulsion

Laboratory (JPL) used images to track the physical changes throughout Greenland.

That study revealed an abrupt northward glacial retreat, spilling vast amounts

of ice into the sea. That comes to about 54 cubic miles (225 cubic kilometers)

of icy water lost each year and dumped into the North Atlantic. The net rise in

global sea level from added glacier water comes to 0.56 millimeters per year,

which is about one-fiftieth of an inch, Jianli Chen of the University of Texas

in Austin reported. Put another way, if the melting in Greenland continued at

the same rate until the year 2056, it would add another inch to the already

rising sea level.

What's happening in Greenland now shows that

the glaciers can apparently hit a climate threshold

and disintegrate rapidly, not at all like a giant ice cube.

Dr. Gordon Hamilton

Greenland ice

expert at the University of Maine

Experts at the US Naval Postgraduate School in California think the

situation will deteriorate quickly. Their computer simulations show that the

current rate of melting, combined with increased access for warmer Pacific

water, could make the summertime Arctic ice-free within a decade. Dr. Meier

said: " For 800,000 to a million years, at least some of the Arctic has been

covered by ice throughout the year. That's an indication that, if we are heading

for an ice-free Arctic, it's a really dramatic change and something that is

unprecedented almost within the entire record of human species. "

Scientists had been watching what seemed to be a steady trend but

everything is coming much more quickly than expected. It's as if the scales have

suddenly tipped and the engines of change are working up major shakeups in the

environment, greatly threatening humanity. Many scientists, for example, have

suggested that hurricanes, especially in the North Atlantic, have gained

unprecedented intensity since the 1970s. Global warming is largely responsible

for heating hurricane-forming regions of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans,

increasing the intensity of the storms.[iv] Below is the result, New Orleans:

If the world continues with a " business as usual " scenario

temperatures will rise by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 7.2

degrees F) and " we will be producing a different planet.[v]

NASA scientist James Hansen

Warming Arctic landmasses; declining sea ice area, extent and

thickness; decreasing salinity; and major changes in Arctic and North Atlantic

air and ocean circulation all form part of the picture. The impact and effect

has already been observed on many scales: from Arctic ice algae and other

micro-organisms, to walrus and polar bear populations and Arctic human

inhabitants, such as the Inuit. Long term climate records suggest that most of

this warming, especially after 1920, is driven by increasing levels of

human-created greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Rapid climate change and its effects is fast

becoming one of the prime events of the 21st century.

It is real and it is accelerating across the globe.

Gary Braasch

Portage Glacier 1914 Portage

Glacier 2004

http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org

The Chinese Academy of Sciences - the country's top scientific body -

announced in May 2006 that the glaciers of the Tibetan plateau are vanishing so

fast that they will be reduced by 50 per cent every decade. Each year enough

water permanently melts from them to fill the entire Yellow River. They added

that the vast environmental changes brought about by the process will increase

droughts and sandstorms over the rest of the country, and devastate many of the

world's greatest rivers, in what experts warn will be an " ecological

catastrophe " . The plateau, says the academy, has a staggering 46,298 glaciers,

covering almost 60,000 square miles. At an average height of 13,000 feet above

sea level, they make up the largest area of ice outside the Polar Regions,

nearly a sixth of the world's total. The glaciers have been receding over the

past four decades, as the world has gradually warmed up, but the process has now

accelerated alarmingly. Average temperatures in Tibet have risen by 2 degrees

Fahrenheit over the past 20 years, causing the glaciers to shrink by 7 per cent

a year, which means that they will halve every 10 years.

This is a pattern being seen all over the world. Up and down the icy

spine of South America, the glaciers are melting, the white mantle of the Andes

Mountains washing away at an ever faster rate. The Patagonia glaciers of Chile

and Argentina are melting so fast they are making a significant contribution to

sea-level rise, say scientists. Scientists report ice is being lost at a rate

sufficient to push up ocean waters by 0.04 millimetres per year during the

period from 1975 through to 2000. This is equal, the researchers say, to 9% of

the total annual global sea-level rise from all mountain glaciers.[vi]

The New York Times reported in early 2005 that under the surface of

Antarctic ice profound and potentially troubling changes are taking place, and

at a quickened pace also. With temperatures climbing in parts of Antarctica in

recent years, melt water seems to be penetrating deeper and deeper into ice

crevices, weakening immense and seemingly impregnable formations that have

developed over thousands of years. As a result, huge glaciers in this and other

remote areas of Antarctica are thinning and ice shelves the size of American

states are either disintegrating or retreating

The accelerated Arctic warming that would result from the removal of

the permanent ice pack would significantly increase precipitation over the

Arctic Ocean and far North Atlantic. This precipitation, combined with

melt-water from sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet, would reduce the salinity

of the North Atlantic. Computer models suggest that these changes in salinity,

especially if they happen quickly, may severely reduce or completely switch off

the North Atlantic Conveyor, which is the major driving force for the Gulf

Stream and global ocean circulation. This may significantly cool the climate of

northern Europe, and is likely to severely disrupt global marine life and

fisheries, as well as reducing the ocean's ability to remove greenhouse gases

from the atmosphere. The impact of a current shutdown on northern Europe could

be disastrous and come quickly as the ocean circulation may halt much more

quickly than the planet warms, dropping Europe quickly into a deep freeze. But

meanwhile:

" Following a string of high heat days and meteorologists' warnings

that this summer could be another scorcher, European public health officials and

politicians are revisiting the devastating heat wave of 2003. The severely hot

weather that withered crops, dried up rivers, and fueled fires that summer took

a massive human toll. The full magnitude of this quiet catastrophe still remains

largely an untold story, as data revealing the continent-wide scale have only

slowly become available in the years since. All in all, more than 52,000

Europeans died from heat in the summer of 2003, making the heat wave one of the

deadliest climate-related disasters in Western history, " said Janet Larsen,

writing for the Earth Policy Institute.[vii]

During the peak of the heat, fatality rates topped 2,000 in a day.

Temperature records were broken in a number of countries in 2003

as Europe experienced its hottest weather in at least 500 years.

In France alone, 14,802 people died from the searing

temperatures-more than 19 times the death toll from the SARS epidemic worldwide.

In the worst heat spell in decades, temperatures in France soared to 104 degrees

Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) and remained unusually high for two weeks.

One of the greatest problems with melting ice is that the amount of

solar energy absorbed or reflected back into space will be directly affected.

The Earth's ice caps are like enormous mirrors; if they were to shrink, more of

the sun's energy would be absorbed by the sea. Experts are worried that warmer

weather melts ice and drives temperatures higher because the dark water beneath

absorbs more of the sun's radiation. This could make global warming run out of

control. " Ice is highly reflective to incoming solar radiation, and the days are

long in summer, " said Jim Swift, a researcher at Scripps Institution of

Oceanography near San Diego. " What if the ice cover began to severely retreat

each summer? With the long summer days, there could be a change in the heat

balance of the Polar Regions. This could affect the steering of and interactions

with the weather patterns in temperate latitudes. "

Such substantial additional melting of Arctic glaciers and

ice sheets will raise sea level worldwide, flooding

the coastal areas where many of the world's people live.

Mt. Hood Oregon August 1984 Mt. Hood Oregon late

summer 2002

http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org

Computer modeling suggests that, if warming and levels of greenhouse

gases continue to increase, most of the permanent ice pack is likely to melt and

be replaced by seasonal winter ice. This Arctic meltdown would threaten the

continued existence of many Arctic animals, including walrus, many seal species,

and polar bears. It would also threaten the traditional lifestyle of the Inuit,

the indigenous inhabitants of the Arctic coast.

Polar bears are drowning and receding Arctic glaciers

have uncovered previously unknown islands in a drastic

2006 summer thaw widely blamed on global warming.

" For most of the Earth's history, the planet has been either very

cold, by our standards, or very hot. Fifty million years ago there was no ice on

the poles and crocodiles lived in Wyoming. Eighteen thousand years ago there was

ice two miles thick in Scotland and, because of the size of the ice sheets, the

sea level was 130m lower. Ice-core studies show that in some places dramatic

changes happened remarkably swiftly: temperatures rose by as much as 20°C in a

decade. Then, 10,000 years ago, the wild fluctuations stopped, and the climate

settled down to the balmy, stable state that the world has enjoyed since then.

At about that time, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, mankind started to

progress, " reported the Economist in an article titled The Heat is On.[viii]

Slowly receding Arctic ice is presenting another serious problem.

Permafrost holds large reserves of greenhouse gases and heavy metals, especially

mercury, which all might get 'burped' into the atmosphere as the Arctic warms.

New data suggest wildfires release 15 times more of the poisonous element into

the air than previously thought and those emissions could increase even more as

forests grow hotter and drier. It is becoming clear that forest fires are much

larger contributors to mercury in the environment than scientists believed.

Scientists have long known that forest fires release mercury into the

atmosphere. Peatlands, which are widespread in the vast boreal forest stretching

across nearly every Canadian province and far into the territories, release huge

tonnages of mercury when burnt because, " As water flows through, peat filters

mercury out of the water, " said Mike Flannigan of the Canadian Forest Service.

When peatlands burn, mercury is released into the atmosphere, eventually falling

to earth where it combines with sulphur to form mercury's most toxic form.

Climate change could double the estimate that peat-burning forest fires

currently release 341 tonnes per year across the world's northern forests. That

compares with about 48 tonnes annually for all American power plants.

Mercury pollution is making its way into nearly every habitat in the

U.S., exposing countless species of wildlife to potentially harmful levels of

mercury, a September 2006 report from the National Wildlife Federation shows.

" From songbirds to alligators, turtles to bats, eagles to otters, mercury is

accumulating in nearly every corner of the food chain, " says Catherine Bowes,

Northeast Program Manager for the National Wildlife Federation and principal

author of the report. " This report paints a compelling picture of mercury

contamination in the U.S., and many more species are at risk than we previously

thought. Fish, long thought to be the key species affected by mercury, are just

the tip of the iceberg. " People forget all too easily that humanity is also an

animal species and the same thing that his happening to these animals is

happening to us. Not too many people are paying attention to the absolute

nightmare that is happening with mercury and even less how it relates to global

warming.

Mark Sircus Ac., OMD

Director International Medical Veritas Association

http://www.imva.info

http://www.magnesiumforlife.com

+55-83-3252-2195

www.skype.com ID: marksircus

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