The Ayles Ice Shelf, a 41-square mile floating sheet of ice, recently broke free from the coast of Ellesmere Island 500 miles south of the North Pole in Canada. Scientists cite climate change as a major reason for the breakage. According to Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who traveled to the island to view the conditions himself, "This is a dramatic and disturbing event. It shows that we are losing remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years. We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ahead."
Six such ice shelfs exist in the Canadian arctic, and are roughly 90 percent smaller than when first discovered in 1906. The breakage of the ice shelf was seen on seismic data machines 155 miles away.
As mentioned, scientists say that the breakage is consistent with climate change, of which the greenhouse gases exhausted by our automobiles has an effect. The Kyoto protocol, often mentioned on this site, is a pact that 165 nations currently have ratified since its introduction at the 1997 U.N. conference in Kyoto, Japan, and was created to reduce greenhouse gases emitted by developed countries. Carbon dioxide is the largest greenhouse gas contributing to global warming, if you believe that it exists (many don't). As many are aware, the main source of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere is the burning of fossil fuels. In the United States, emissions have gone up 16 pecent since 1990.
This news came shortly after the Indian Mountaineering Service indicated that "The melting of the ice sheets and the glaciers is a crisis in the Himalayas," according to H.P.S. Ahluwalia, who runs the service. Expeditions are on their way to investigate the source of flooding in the Himalayas, believed to be caused by the melting of the ice sheets due to global warming. The Himalayan glaciers are almost all retreating, due in part to the large scale burning of coal in China and India, where the populations are huge and the economies are growing fast.
[Source: msnbc.com]
Six such ice shelfs exist in the Canadian arctic, and are roughly 90 percent smaller than when first discovered in 1906. The breakage of the ice shelf was seen on seismic data machines 155 miles away.
As mentioned, scientists say that the breakage is consistent with climate change, of which the greenhouse gases exhausted by our automobiles has an effect. The Kyoto protocol, often mentioned on this site, is a pact that 165 nations currently have ratified since its introduction at the 1997 U.N. conference in Kyoto, Japan, and was created to reduce greenhouse gases emitted by developed countries. Carbon dioxide is the largest greenhouse gas contributing to global warming, if you believe that it exists (many don't). As many are aware, the main source of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere is the burning of fossil fuels. In the United States, emissions have gone up 16 pecent since 1990.
This news came shortly after the Indian Mountaineering Service indicated that "The melting of the ice sheets and the glaciers is a crisis in the Himalayas," according to H.P.S. Ahluwalia, who runs the service. Expeditions are on their way to investigate the source of flooding in the Himalayas, believed to be caused by the melting of the ice sheets due to global warming. The Himalayan glaciers are almost all retreating, due in part to the large scale burning of coal in China and India, where the populations are huge and the economies are growing fast.
[Source: msnbc.com]
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