The planet's going to the crapper. Read this and I think you'll agree with me
]]> I came across this ABC News report on the rapid thawing of the Arctic region. And this is in a time and age where we can't ratify the Kyoto protocol. It really doesn't make any sense.Here's a quick grab....
Fears raised over fast Arctic thaw: report. 25/05/2004. ABC News Online
Global warming is hitting the Arctic more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet in what may be a portent of wider, catastrophic changes, the chairman of an eight-nation study says.
Inuit hunters are falling more frequently through the thinning ice with habitats for plants and animals also disrupted. The icy Hudson Bay in Canada could be uninhabitable for polar bears within just 20 years.
The melting is also destabilising buildings on permafrost and threatening an oil pipeline laid across Alaska.
Benefits, for human commerce, might accrue from the opening up of a now largely icebound short-cut sea route from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Russia might also win easier access to oil and gas as the icecap shrinks and permafrost retreats.
However, the broader consequences are disturbing.
"There is dramatic climate change happening in the Arctic right now...about two to three times the pace of the whole globe," Robert Corell, the chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA), an 1,800 page report to be handed to ministers in Iceland in November, said.
Yep, our planet is going to crap. When are we going to learn..? Especially here in Australia. It is generally though among climatologists that global warming will greatly affect Australia's climate. We already have suffered greatly due to the El Nino effect from the 1990s. Now urbanised Australia (i.e. almost all of us) is facing an urban water crisis!
It is time to start changing for the better.
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