The New York Times has a lengthy magazine article about the state of affairs in the Maldives, a low-lying archipelago in the Indian Ocean that is at risk from any sea level rise. The Times also reports on a new study that shows that if Antarctica's ice sheets melt, there won't be as much sea level rise as was anticipated although the average rise would be about 10-20 feet, catastrophic for the Maldives and other locations.
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I agree with the scientists that the Maldives which is an archipelago of 1190 islands in the Indian Ocean, with an average of four feet(1.20 m)elevation, will submerge by the end of this century if the rate of CO2 emissions is not controlled.All nations should work together to avoid this catastrophe with other more serious effects that will take place around the world.
With all the talk of human caused global warming, I don’t understand something.
I’ve seen stories about the glaciers in Greenland melting exposing land farmed by the Vikings from 900-1300, when the Earth was warmer than it is today. And covered by ice during the little ice age of the 14th century.
I recently saw a story on TV about Hannibal, 2000 years ago taking elephants across the Alps through passes that even with all the melting glaciers going on in the Alps today are covered in ice and impassable.
If human activity is causing the world to warm now, what caused the world to be so warm before the little ice age of the 14th century?
Is the world really warming, or is it just returning to the way it was 2000 years ago, and how thing are supposed to be?
Regarding the Medieval Warm Period, it seems it was warmer only in Europe, not all over the globe. (http://green.yahoo.com/blog/climate411/26/how-we-know-humans-cause-global-warming-part-4-of-5-medieval-warming-period.html).
There is no “way things are supposed to be”. Earth’s climate has always changed over centuries, millenia, and millions of years.
The thing is that Earth’s climate is warming so fast now that species do not have time to migrate or adapt their natural cycles. So flowers are in bloom while bees are still hibernating (if bees hibernate, but you get the idea), or polar bears give birth on ice that should be solid, but is melting earlier in the year.
The other thing is that as population grows and humans settle in more and more places, we destroy “buffer zones” such as wetlands around New Orleans, or mangroves around Thailand beaches, which make us increasingly vulnerable to more frequent, and more intense natural disasters brought on by climate change.
And changing rain patterns can wreak havoc on agriculture. A given region might get the same total amount of rain in a given year, but if it comes in 4 weeks of drought followed by a week of rain storms, crops are damaged and lost.
This is why much research on climate change now deals with how we can adapt to a changing and/or warmer and/or more extreme climate.
It seems the Medieval Warm Period was only a regional phenomenon, so it wasn’t “global” warming:
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/02/medieval-warm-period-was-just-as-warm.php
Are we exploding/testing nuclear bombs underwater still? Logically heat from explosions under the ocean can raise the ocean temperature and lead to changes in the ocean currents, winds and aggravate storms over land. Not to speak of global sea warming and glacier melt.
The whales are again beaching off Australia/ Pacific islands (hot waters?). Check the history of Marshall islands. Not again! The N. Arabian sea is seeing an explosion of phytoplankton by 350% due to warmer waters. Corals are disappearing.
Unless the cause is the solar flare or something out of our control in the solar system, then we may be still doing things on a gross scale and point the finger the other way. The common man may not be aware of nuclear testing as a reason for the accelerated warming. It may not be the car exhaust or the little gas furnace warming the globe.