Some food for thought...
"TIME" Magazine, 'Special Report: Global Warming', Canadian Edition, April 3, 2006
"During the last ice age, the atmosphere's CO2 concentration was just 180 p.p.m., putting Earth into a deep freeze. After the glaciers retreated but before the dawn of the modern era, the total had risen to a comfortable 280 p.p.m. In just the past century and a half, we have pushed the level to 381 p.p.m., and we're feeling the effects. Of the 20 hottest years on record, 19 occurred in the 1980s or later. According to NASA scientists, 2005 was one of the hottest years in more than a century"
"Late last year, glaciologist Eric Rignot of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory...and Pannir Kanagaratnam...at the University of Kansas...found that Greenland ice is not just melting but doing so more than twice as fast, with 220cu.km draining away into the sea last year alone, compared with 90 cu. km in 1996. A cubic kilometer of water is 25% more than the entire city of Los Angeles uses in a year."
There are all sorts of other items in the article, that when taken as a cohesive whole, spell a lot of upheaval...not in a 1000 or a 100 years...but now, and into the next 50 years. There are a number of things happening simultaneously that will warm the oceans, raise the water level, thaw permafrost, melt mountain ice-caps and glaciers, slow and possible start reversing the Gulf Stream (Alaska and England are on the same latitude, it is the Gulf Stream that keeps Europe's temperatures temperate), feedback loops and tipping points that make much of the effects amplified and faster than previously projected.
I dunno, it's not that I think that my small attempt at recycling is going to make the ice in Greenland melt slower, but, it seems odd to me that more people don't seem to even think about it, let alone give pause, to what is happening to Earth.
*ponders*
I can't even imagine how much water Los Angeles uses in a year, let alone add 25% more and then times it by 220, let alone imagining that much freshwater being dumped in the ocean every year. It boggles my mind a bit.
"Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children. We are more than the sum of our knowledge, we are the products of our imagination." - Ancient Native American Proverb
"Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find out that money cannot be eaten". - Cree Prophecy
"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect". - Chief Seattle (also Sealth, Seathl, See-ahth, or Siattle: pronounced See-at-la) Suquamish/Duwamish tribes, Puget Sound Indians, approx. 1786- 1866
"During the last ice age, the atmosphere's CO2 concentration was just 180 p.p.m., putting Earth into a deep freeze. After the glaciers retreated but before the dawn of the modern era, the total had risen to a comfortable 280 p.p.m. In just the past century and a half, we have pushed the level to 381 p.p.m., and we're feeling the effects. Of the 20 hottest years on record, 19 occurred in the 1980s or later. According to NASA scientists, 2005 was one of the hottest years in more than a century"
"Late last year, glaciologist Eric Rignot of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory...and Pannir Kanagaratnam...at the University of Kansas...found that Greenland ice is not just melting but doing so more than twice as fast, with 220cu.km draining away into the sea last year alone, compared with 90 cu. km in 1996. A cubic kilometer of water is 25% more than the entire city of Los Angeles uses in a year."
There are all sorts of other items in the article, that when taken as a cohesive whole, spell a lot of upheaval...not in a 1000 or a 100 years...but now, and into the next 50 years. There are a number of things happening simultaneously that will warm the oceans, raise the water level, thaw permafrost, melt mountain ice-caps and glaciers, slow and possible start reversing the Gulf Stream (Alaska and England are on the same latitude, it is the Gulf Stream that keeps Europe's temperatures temperate), feedback loops and tipping points that make much of the effects amplified and faster than previously projected.
I dunno, it's not that I think that my small attempt at recycling is going to make the ice in Greenland melt slower, but, it seems odd to me that more people don't seem to even think about it, let alone give pause, to what is happening to Earth.
*ponders*
I can't even imagine how much water Los Angeles uses in a year, let alone add 25% more and then times it by 220, let alone imagining that much freshwater being dumped in the ocean every year. It boggles my mind a bit.
"Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children. We are more than the sum of our knowledge, we are the products of our imagination." - Ancient Native American Proverb
"Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find out that money cannot be eaten". - Cree Prophecy
"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect". - Chief Seattle (also Sealth, Seathl, See-ahth, or Siattle: pronounced See-at-la) Suquamish/Duwamish tribes, Puget Sound Indians, approx. 1786- 1866