I had planned for today to be all about the coming of another (the 52nd, if memory serves!) Earth Day, this Friday. . . so we will now march toward that, but leave our masthead as is for a bit yet. Here's just one of many -- an archived story, from June of last year:
. . .[In] the journal Geology an international team describes how the largest remaining ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula, has been stable for the past ~10,000 years.
The vast Larsen Ice Shelf, twice the size of Wales, attracted global media attention, after a 5,800-square-kilometer iceberg weighing more than a trillion tons calved in 2017. Last month (April) it broke up completely, following a three year journey drifting from the Antarctic Peninsula to the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia.
Over the past 25 years, several of the region's ice shelves have collapsed, including the rapid disintegration of the Larsen B Ice Shelf in 2002. The sequential breakup of ice shelves along the eastern Antarctic Peninsula is linked to warmer atmospheric temperatures which have gradually moved southward over the past 50 years. At the same time, warm ocean currents have also increased, weakening the region's ice shelves from below. . . .
"We now have a much clearer picture of the pattern and extent of ice shelf break-ups, both past and present. It starts in the north and progresses southward as the atmosphere and ocean warms. Should collapse of Larsen C happen, it would confirm that the magnitudes of ice loss along the eastern Antarctic Peninsula and underlying climate change are unprecedented during the past 10,000 years" says Smith. . . .
We must do better, for our children -- and theirs. Truly, there really is no time left. . . to vacillate.
नमस्ते
