The Greenland ice sheet is already falling into the sea. It doesn't have to all melt. It just needs to get into the ocean, and the latent heat of the ocean will melt it. All it needs to set that in motion is enough meltwater under the ice to lubricate the ice flow and increase the rate at which it flows to the ocean -- and that's already happened and is continuing to accelerate. The Greenland ice sheet is losing 220 cubic kilometers of water a year at the present rate. We don't have to do the work of melting it; once it's in the ocean and the icecap is gone, the sea and the sun will do that.
Yeah, natural processes have buffers. But a buffer can only take so much before it saturates, and once it saturates, you may get the unpleasant surprise that the buffer was hiding the extent of the damage you were doing from you.
The implication here is also that we puny humans could do anything big enough to actually influence that cycle.
This is the same fallacy, or mental block if you prefer, that has led to the crash of most of the major fisheries in the world -- cod on Newfoundland's Grand Banks, anchovy off the coast of Peru, halibut off Alaska. Yes, that's right, the halibut you get off the pier at the Ballard locks or in Pike Place Market. They're harvesting juvenile fish now, because there's nothing bigger left. But less than a hundred years ago -- and there were a lot less of us then -- we were so certain that the bounty of the sea was infinite, that nothing mortal man could ever do could ever deplete it.
We can't influence nature? The Three Gorges Dam isn't even fully filled yet, and the hyper-productive, high-fertility area offshore from the mouth of the Yangtse has shrunk from 114,000 square miles to 16,000 - and much of the phytoplankton even in that area has been replaced by dinoflagellates. You know, red tides? We can't influence nature? Village farmers in India with cheap electric pumps are pumping fossil water out of the ground three times faster than India's annual rainfall replenishes it. In Gujarat province, the water table is 150 meters down now, and dropping six meters a year. The same thing is happening in China. We can't influence nature? Look at the size of the dead zone off the mouth of the Mississippi. It extends several hundred miles out into the Gulf. Look at all the fertile land we destroyed in the Dust Bowl. Look at the changes in the Nile Valley as a result of the Aswan High Dam -- and as a result of Uganda stealing "just a little bit" of water from Lake Victoria for hydroelectric projects.
Oh, HELL YES we "puny" humans CAN influence nature, and we do. Just ask Pele next time you talk to her. Honestly, it continues to gobsmack me that you, of all people, buy into the Big Oil kool-aid on this one. Park your techno side in front of a good book for a while, and think about this: what does your shaman side tell you about the shape the world is in? Are we being good custodians of this world? Or are we screwing the pooch with all our technological might in the holy name of making a fast buck?
no subject
Yeah, natural processes have buffers. But a buffer can only take so much before it saturates, and once it saturates, you may get the unpleasant surprise that the buffer was hiding the extent of the damage you were doing from you.
This is the same fallacy, or mental block if you prefer, that has led to the crash of most of the major fisheries in the world -- cod on Newfoundland's Grand Banks, anchovy off the coast of Peru, halibut off Alaska. Yes, that's right, the halibut you get off the pier at the Ballard locks or in Pike Place Market. They're harvesting juvenile fish now, because there's nothing bigger left. But less than a hundred years ago -- and there were a lot less of us then -- we were so certain that the bounty of the sea was infinite, that nothing mortal man could ever do could ever deplete it.
We can't influence nature? The Three Gorges Dam isn't even fully filled yet, and the hyper-productive, high-fertility area offshore from the mouth of the Yangtse has shrunk from 114,000 square miles to 16,000 - and much of the phytoplankton even in that area has been replaced by dinoflagellates. You know, red tides?
We can't influence nature? Village farmers in India with cheap electric pumps are pumping fossil water out of the ground three times faster than India's annual rainfall replenishes it. In Gujarat province, the water table is 150 meters down now, and dropping six meters a year. The same thing is happening in China.
We can't influence nature? Look at the size of the dead zone off the mouth of the Mississippi. It extends several hundred miles out into the Gulf. Look at all the fertile land we destroyed in the Dust Bowl. Look at the changes in the Nile Valley as a result of the Aswan High Dam -- and as a result of Uganda stealing "just a little bit" of water from Lake Victoria for hydroelectric projects.
Oh, HELL YES we "puny" humans CAN influence nature, and we do. Just ask Pele next time you talk to her. Honestly, it continues to gobsmack me that you, of all people, buy into the Big Oil kool-aid on this one. Park your techno side in front of a good book for a while, and think about this: what does your shaman side tell you about the shape the world is in? Are we being good custodians of this world? Or are we screwing the pooch with all our technological might in the holy name of making a fast buck?