Re: No such thing?
Posted by bobbapink on Jan 28, 2002 at 13:34
nen169-173.nosc.mil (198.253.169.173)Re: No such thing? (Amaranth Rose)
Global Warming Already Taking Effect
Kwendo Openga
Scientists have long predicted that the first signs of changes caused by global warming would appear at the few fragile, high altitude ice caps and glaciers.
Which scientists?
According to the scientists, the retreat of the ice cap on Mount Kilimanjaro is the most dramatic evidence of this impact.
Really?
The anticipation in the press conference room was unmistakable. Journalists from all over the world waited anxiously as experts from Greenpeace, an international environmental organisation, prepared to bring the plight of the giant Mount Kilimanjaro into the world's focus.
[ROTFLMAO] Oh! Those scientists! [/ROTFLMAO]
The venue was the Palais du Congreis in Morocco's beautiful city of Marrakech. It was at the seventh Conference of the Parties (COP 7) on climate change last November where environment ministers from around the world were meeting to finalise the Kyoto Protocol.
The anticipation is killing me, unmistakably so.
Via a video camera, Greenpeace experts were broadcasting live from atop Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania the evidence of the impact of climatic change on Africa's highest mountain.
I wonder if the experts in the cooling Antarctic were listening to the broadcast.
"We are here to show government ministers coming to Marrakech that climate change is happening now and to remind them what is at risk if they fail to produce an environmentally sound protocol on climate change," said Greenpeace campaigner Joris Thiijseen from about 5,000 ft up the mountain.
Umm. What is at risk if the protocol is not economically sound, regardless of it’s inevitably environmentally [un]soundness Joris?The video clip showed Joris sitting on a patch of ice covering a relatively small area compared to several years back when snow and ice covered almost three quarters of the mountain.
Nothing like a little anecdotal evidence to warm the hands.
"This part where I am sitting used to be ice only 10 years ago but now the ice has retreated about 10 meters," said Joris. "It's gone, it's all melted away!"
:Sniff
According to Greenpeace, the entire ice cap is expected to disappear within 10 to 20 years.
Disappear or Reappear?
Kilimanjaro in 1976
Kilimanjaro in 1983This discovery by Greenpeace coincides with a research conducted by Lonnie Thompson, a professor of geological sciences at Ohio State University who reported that at least one-third of the ice field on Kilimanjaro has disappeared or melted in the last dozen years. About 82 per cent of the ice field has been lost since it was first mapped in 1912.
82% lost!? Did anyone look under the couch cushion? That’s where the TV remote usually is. Sure, the TV remote is nothing like an ice field but then again, I can’t watch the greenpeace broadcast without it.
The retreat and loss of these massive ice bodies make up part of the evidence Thompson presented that has convinced him global warming has begun to make its mark on the planet.
I couldn’t figure that paragraph out. If I could, I’d no doubt make fun of it too.
Thompson also acknowledges in his report that other researches have documented similar ice losses. For instance, the ice cap on Mount Kenya has shrunk by 40 per cent since 1963.
Acknowledged? Sounds like something you’d do reluctantly. And yet the entire African continent has experienced a slight cooling trend since 1979 at least, or so the evidence suggests. Perhaps there is a third variable there, ya think.
Two glaciers atop mountains in New Guinea are disappearing and should be gone in a decade. And in Venezuela in 1972, there were six such glaciers; now there are only two and they will have melted in the next 10 years.
So much for the ski season, eh?
Scientists from different parts of the world have long predicted that the first signs of changes caused by global warming would appear at the few fragile high altitude ice-caps and glaciers within the tropics.
Well, as long as they are from different parts of the world then I believe them.
"This is the price we pay if climate change is allowed to go unchecked. Here in Africa, we will not only lose glaciers, but will face more extreme droughts and floods, widespread agricultural loses, increased infectious diseases, all of which are felt hardest by people in developing nations," Joris cautions.
ROTFLMAO “Allowed to go unchecked” /ROTFLMAO