This will likely be the least-viewed article I write all week, but it's difficult to over-emphasize the importance of the topic. This week, scientists from United States, Britain, France and Australia released the results of a study published in Nature Geoscience showing that the Totten Glacier in eastern Antarctica is melting much faster than previously known. The study showed that global warming above, and warmer ocean water below is rapidly decaying the glacier.
This news is lumped on top of a report last year showing that the ice sheet covering western Antarctica is melting as well. When it goes for good, the melted ice sheet could create 10-foot rise in the global sea level within 100 years. And now this. If the Totten Glacier melts completely, add another 11 feet to the sea level. That's 20-plus feet combined over the next 100 years. If that occurs, say goodbye to, among other places, every coastal region, all of lower Manhattan, all of southern Florida, all of San Diego -- everything from the current sea level on up to 20-feet in elevation.
The Totten Glacier is around 90 by 22 miles, but not for long as it's losing massive volumes of water every year, approximately 70 gigatons, which a representative from the Australian division of the study compared with the entire volume of the harbor in Sydney, Australia.
Here's exactly why nothing significant will be done to prevent it from happening. No one really cares. The scope is too massive, the time-frames are too lengthy and a sense of futility is almost universal, even among environmentalists. It's difficult to comprehend making the changes necessary to mitigate the impact of what's already happening -- chiefly because most people don't grasp that it is. And... CONTINUE READING