[MysticalMusings] Time magazine headline article: be worried, be very worried

March 27, 2006

LOL - when the "planet of the humanoid entity" has a virus - how else does he "shake it off" he has anti-biotics or herbs or some medicine for the most part, to eliminate the annoying bugs that crawl into his system - so don't be worried, rather nurture and love that little bit of the planet you tread on so as not to intrude, virus like, any further than you need and inspire those about you to do the same!

Love and Light

Jane

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Sherry

MysticalMusings

Monday, March 27, 2006 6:57 PM

[MysticalMusings] Time magazine headline article: be worried, be very worried

Be worried, be very worriedThe climate is crashing, and global warming is to blameNo one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot likeEarth. Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergencythat would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisisis upon us. >From heat waves to storms to floods to fires to massive glacial melts, theglobal climate seems to be crashing around us.The problem -- as scientists suspected but few others appreciated -- is thatglobal climate systems are booby-trapped with tipping points and feedbackloops, thresholds past which the slow creep of environmental decay gives wayto sudden and self-perpetuating collapse. That's just what's happening now.It's at the north and south poles -- where ice cover is crumbling to slush-- that the crisis is being felt the most acutely. Late last year, for example, researchers analyzed data from Canadian andEuropean satellites and found that the Greenland ice sheet is not onlymelting, but doing so faster and faster, with 53 cubic miles draining awayinto the sea last year alone, compared to 23 cubic miles in 1996.One of the reasons the loss of the planet's ice cover is accelerating isthat as the poles' bright white surface disappears it changes therelationship of the Earth and the sun. Polar ice is so reflective that 90percent of the sunlight that strikes it simply bounces back into space,taking its energy with it. Ocean water does just the opposite, absorbing 90percent of the light and heat it receives, meaning that each mile of icethat melts vanishes faster than the mile that preceded it.This is what scientists call a feedback loop, and a similar one is alsomelting the frozen land called permafrost, much of which has been frozen --since the end of last ice age in fact, or at least 8,000 years ago.Sealed inside that cryonic time capsule are layers of decaying organicmatter, thick with carbon, which itself can transform into CO2. In placeslike the southern boundary of Alaska the soil is now melting and softening.As fast as global warming is changing the oceans and ice caps, it's havingan even more immediate effect on land. Droughts are increasingly common ashigher temperatures also bake moisture out of soil faster, causing dryregions that live at the margins to tip into full-blown crisis. Wildfires in such sensitive regions as Indonesia, the western U.S. and eveninland Alaska have been occurring with increased frequency as timberlandsgrow more parched. Those forests that don't succumb to fire can simply diefrom thirst.With habitats crashing, the animals that call them home are succumbing too.In Alaska, salmon populations are faltering as melting permafrost pours mudinto rivers, burying the gravel the fish need for spawning. Small animalssuch as bushy tailed rats, chipmunks and pinion mice are being chasedupslope by rising temperatures, until they at last have no place to run. And with sea ice vanishing, polar bears are starting to turn up drowned."There will be no polar ice by 2060," says Larry Schweiger, president of theNational Wildlife Federation. "Somewhere along that path, the polar beardrops out."So much environmental collapse has at last awakened much of the world,particularly the 141 nations that have ratified the Kyoto treaty to reduceemissions. The Bush administration, however, has shown no willingness toaddress the warming crisis in a serious way and Congress has not been muchmore encouraging.Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman have twice been unable to get even mildmeasures to limit carbon emissions through a recalcitrant Senate. A 10-member House delegation did recently travel to Antarctica, Australiaand New Zealand to meet with scientists studying climate change. "Of the 10of us, only three were believers to begin with," says Rep. Sherman Boehlertof New York. "Every one of the others said this opened their eyes."But lawmakers who still applaud themselves for recognizing global warmingare hardly the same as lawmakers with the courage to reverse it, andincreasingly, state and local governments are stepping forward. The mayors of more than 200 cities have signed the U.S. Mayors ClimateProtection Agreement, pledging, among other things, that they will meet theKyoto goal of reducing greenhouse emissions in their own cities to 1990levels by 2012. Nine northeastern states have established the RegionalGreenhouse Gas Initiative for the purpose of developing a program to capgreenhouse gasses.Click here<http://www.cnn.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1176081,00.html?cnn=yes>for the entire cover story on Time.