Posted on 06/27/2008 7:26:34 AM PDT by rface
Global warming has caused the ice caps of the northern hemisphere to melt. This melting has occurred all the way to the North Pole – which is expected to be ice-free this year. It makes perfect sense to see the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers flooding over their banks, because this melted ice has to flow somewhere.
Look at it this way. If you look at a globe of Gaia (Planet Earth), then you will observe that that the Northern ice caps are at the top. When this ice melts, then the liquid water flows down….. towards the South It makes sense that the largest river drainages (the Mississippi river system) would quickly be overwhelmed by the melting ice. I think it would be safe to assume that all of North America’s rivers will soon be flooding large areas of the USA.
What is even worse is that many large American cities are located on the banks of these large river systems – so millions of people will probably drown in the coming floods. Its probably too late to save most of them.
Perhaps if we all cut our use of Fossil Fuels by 10%, then we could slow the flooding to an acceptable level. Maybe if low-income people could replace their Cadillacs and Buick Electra 225s with Federally provided Prius Hybrids then we could reverse this melting process and possibly save Gaia. It would probably be pretty expensive for the Federal government to buy so many Toyota Hybrids for all these low-income people, buy I think the Oil Companies could afford it – and I think they owe the World at least that much.
Scrappleface?
Funny!
Recent massive volcanoes have risen from the ocean floor deep under the Arctic ice cap, spewing plumes of fragmented magma into the sea, scientists who filmed the aftermath reported Wednesday.
The eruptions -- as big as the one that buried Pompei -- took place in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge, an underwater mountain chain snaking 1,800 kilometres (1,100 miles) from the northern tip of Greenland to Siberia.
Scientists suspected even at the time that a simultaneous series of earthquakes were linked to these volcanic spasms.
But when a team led of scientists led by Robert Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts finally got a first-ever glimpse of the ocean floor 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) beneath the Arctic pack ice, they were astonished.
What they saw was unmistakable evidence of explosive eruptions rather than the gradual secretion of lava bubbling up from Earth's mantle onto the ocean floor.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2037073/posts
From Ohio State University News, Dec 2007...
EARTH'S HEAT ADDS TO CLIMATE CHANGE TO MELT GREENLAND ICE
COLUMBUS , Ohio -- Scientists have discovered what they think may be another reason why Greenland 's ice is melting: a thin spot in Earth's crust is enabling underground magma to heat the ice.
They have found at least one “hotspot” in the northeast corner of Greenland -- just below a site where an ice stream was recently discovered.
The researchers don't yet know how warm the hotspot is. But if it is warm enough to melt the ice above it even a little, it could be lubricating the base of the ice sheet and enabling the ice to slide more rapidly out to sea.
"The environment is suffering damage that could be irreversible — global warming, the greenhouse effect, the melting of the polar ice caps, the rising sea level, hurricanes — with terrible social occurrences that will shake life on this planet."
"I believe this idea has a strong connection with reality. I don't think we have much time. Fidel Castro said in one of his speeches I read not so long ago, 'tomorrow could be too late, let's do now what we need to do'."
"I believe it is time that we take up with courage and clarity a political, social, collective and ideological offensive across the world — a real offensive that permits us to move progressively, over the next years, the next decades, leaving behind the perverse, destructive, destroyer, capitalist model and go forward in constructing the socialist model to avoid barbarism and beyond that the annihilation of life on this planet."
--Hugo Chavez, at the 16th World Festival of Youth and Students, held in Caracas on August 8-15, 2005
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/640/640p16.htm
"The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic."
The Cooling World
Newsweek, April 28, 1975
There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self- sufficient tropical areas – parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia – where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.
"A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale," warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, "because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century."
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth's average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven degrees lower than during its warmest eras – and that the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the "little ice age" conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900 – years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery. "Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data," concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. "Not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions."
Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases – all of which have a direct impact on food supplies.
"The world's food-producing system," warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA's Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, "is much more sensitive to the weather variable than it was even five years ago." Furthermore, the growth of world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.
[end]
The Cooling World:
http://denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm
Original Newsweek article with scary maps and graphs:
http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf
Is that the latest Obamy pic?
Have you all noticed that Cedar Rapids is under 10 feet of water? Thousands upon thousands of people are displaced?
Have you noticed that nobody is looting every empty property in sight?
Have you noticed that nobody is shooting at rescuers?
Have you noticed any victims on TV wondering where the federal government is to ‘take care of them’?
Or, have you noticed victims, who have lost everything, make comments like ‘life goes on’, ‘we’ll just need to pick up the pieces and start over’, and ‘at least we still have our life’.
Maybe Government could help make victims of these survivors as well, convince them that they aren’t strong enough to take care of themselves, they are not smart enough to survive. Maybe we should subsidize their lives for the next 2+ years, free housing, and $2000/month to not work.... Just food for thought.
Have you noticed?
Maybe if low-income people could replace their Cadillacs and Buick Electra 225s with Federally provided Prius Hybrids then we could reverse this melting process and possibly save Gaia.
Going green.
And I thought it was our collapsing infrastructure... caused by Bush!
So then, all that rain we had in the midwest had nothing to do with the flooding? Whew, what a relief!!
Where's my damn check?!
damn!
Maybe Government could help make victims of these survivors as well, convince them that they aren’t strong enough to take care of themselves, they are not smart enough to survive. Maybe we should subsidize their lives for the next 2+ years, free housing, and $2000/month to not work.... Just food for thought
I not only noticed, I lived it. What a thing to have to live down - if we ever can. NOLA is coming back but not without a huge black eye which all of LA has to share - liberal bleeding hearts excluded, of course.
LOL! Even the cops were looting in LA!
Katrina Cops caught looting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvlPlaX-IDM
Katrina: Looting cops probed
30/09/2005
New Orleans - The police department said it is investigating a dozen officers in connection with looting during the lawlessness that engulfed the city after Hurricane Katrina.
News reports in the aftermath of the storm put officers at the scene of some of the heaviest looting, at the Wal-Mart in the Lower Garden District. Some witnesses, including a Times-Picayune reporter, said police were taking items from shelves.
"Once we actually got the video, we started our investigation," said acting police superintendent Warren Riley on Thursday. "The investigation does in fact show police officers with some items."
Of the 12 officers under investigation, four have already been suspended for failing to stop looting, Riley said.
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Hurricane/0,,2-10-1942_1809026,00.html
I think someone with a DU troll account should post this at DU.
Not only will they agree with every word, but they will also accept it as The Gospel and blame Bush for it.
Ever since the Canadians created the underground deep tunnel system to carry melting arctic ice water to the US for bottling, the Mississippi has been flooding.
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