Dear Fellow Americans.
We have now had one major American City and one of our most productive farm states completely messed up by global warming (remember the last 500 year flood we had in 1993…yea). So I ask you, what else do you need to see before you get up off your collective apathy and do something? Perhaps this will change your mind. Because, frankly is scares the hell out of me….
What you are seeing is the break up of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, which has experienced further break-up with an area of about 160 km² breaking off. This animation, comprised of images acquired by Envisat’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) between 30 May and 9 June 2008, highlights the rapidly dwindling strip of ice that is protecting thousands of kilometres of the ice shelf from further break-up. This is the first ever-documented episode to occur in winter.
The second one is an animation comprised of images acquired by Envisat’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR). It highlights the rapid loss of ice on the Wilkins Ice Shelf from 26 February to 7 March 2008. Between 28 and 29 February, an area of about 400 sq km disintegrated into large and small icebergs within 24 hours.
Thats right in the middle of the COLDEST place on earth during the darkest coldest part of the year, giant pieces of ice sheet are breaking off, if that little bridge breaks it will release thousands of square miles of ice out into the ocean.
While it is true that this ice is already floating on the ocean, and therefor will not cause ocean levels to rise, it does have another consequence. Without the giant Wilkins Ice Shelf to clog up the land, the ice on land is free to slough off and plunge into the sea. This would be, to put it mildly, a bad thing.
How many more American cities will have to be put under the blade of global warming, how much more of our most productive farm land will have to be destroyed, how many more thousands of acres will have to be destroyed by invasive beetles, how many more fishing grounds must collapse from bad management, how much more must we suffer before we start changing? I don’t know, but I hope we are reaching some kind of turning point cause I don’t really want to fathom what will happen if the rest of the ice caps melt…
Sincerely
The Naib
The second series of photos is more of the Antarctic fall than winter. Not the coldest time of the year. February is the end of summer in the Antarctic. Think of it, their fall is our spring and spring starts on March 21.
First series is at the end of their fall. Winter starts in the middle of June. Just like our winter starts in December. So the effect is actually part of the fall, not winter.
It is no different than ice calving off of Greenland in the fall after the end of summer.