Wednesday, September 17, 2008

At the End of the World

This one's for everyone who still thinks that global warming is a myth, and that we aren't causing any of it. Who am I kidding? They can't read, let alone do a google search "Al Gore".

While flying to the US from Dubai earlier this week, my flight path took me in over Norway, the artic circle and Greenland. Norway was just a study in lush green vegetation, and the article circle, well, blue. But I snapped this picture of Greenland, which is supposed to be an ironic icy wasteland:

If you look closely, you'll not only see three glaciers receding and spilling into what is now a melting river. You'll also see how much water those glaciers actually hold. That glacier on the left is over 4000 ft high - you see the cliff at the edge breaking off right in front of us.

This caught my interest because of something that I caught in the 5 minutes of an Inconvenient Truth that I've watched.

30 Years ago, everything blue in the top picture was a mile-deep sheet of ice, and you wouldn't even know there were mountains there.

An ice cube on your counter will melt in 5 minutes or so. Apparently, at the rate we're going, an ice cube a mile deep and two miles wide doesn't take much longer.So, to everyone out there who thinks that this problem will take forever to materialize, and "how can so much fresh water melt and raise the oceans?", we're all completely wrong.

1 comment:

udjim said...

No need to watch any more of Gore's movie. You got the picture, and it's not pretty, despite the spectacular photos.