Net-Cool
Honoring NP U.S. Nat'l Parks NP Photo TourA funny but sad video from the Second City Network about our favorite oil company: British Petroleum. By the way, regarding the mess in the Gulf… it’s payback for America seceding from the British empire.
As spring begins, more than 90 percent of Arctic sea ice is only 1 or 2 years old. That makes the ice thinner and more vulnerable than anytime in the past three decades, according to researchers with NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado. “We’re not set up well for summertime,” said Ice Data Center scientist Walt Meier. “We’re in a very precarious situation.”
Young Arctic sea ice often melts in summer. If it survives for two years, it becomes a more permanent type of thick sea ice. The amount of thick sea ice hit a record wintertime low of just 378,000 square miles this year, down 43 percent from last year. That means the Arctic lost a section of sea ice larger than the state of Texas.
Thick sea ice is critically important because it reflects sunlight away from Earth. The more the ice melts, the more heat is absorbed by the ocean, which heats up the planet even faster, causing a self-reinforcing loop of warming.
An international panel of scientists has warned that he world is facing an increasing risk of an “irreversible” climate shift because worst-case scenarios presented just a few years ago are now coming true.
Temperatures, sea levels, and acid levels in oceans and ice sheets were already moving “beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived,” scientists said in a new report. These are the conclusions from a three-day conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, where two thousand researchers gathered to discuss climate change.
“Recent observations show that societies are highly vulnerable to even modest levels of climate change, with poor nations and communities particularly at risk,” the report said.
The U.S. House of Representatives rejected an amended omnibus package containing significant conservation projects and advancements. This represents a major loss to the conservation movement in the United States.
The bill would have established:
“This is the most important piece of conservation legislation we will likely consider this year and possibly in this entire Congress,” House Natural Resources Chairman Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) said on the House floor before the bill was rejected.
As usual, the Republicans were the major obstacle to the land conservation and killed the bill for procedural reasons. There was also pressure by the National Rifle Association (NRA), which objected to items in the bill that would restrict hunting on some federal land.
