Arctic Ice cover at new record low

Continuing the trend which is visible on Satellite images, the permanent arctic ice cap reached a new record low this fall. (See the graphics on the NASA site.

The permanent, year round Arctic ice cap has been shrinking at an average rate of 9 per cent per decade over the last two and half decades. A NASA animation (MPEG) covers the period from 1979 to 2003. The rate of Arctic ice melt has increased in recent years, achieving new record lows in each of the last four years, and this can be clearly seen towards the very end of the animation, where there is a more dramatic decrease than in the previous years displayed in the animation. The melt continues to break previous records in everyone of the last four years, and there are indications that the rate of change is now increasing, which is raising concerns that the arctic is now locked into a self reinforcing feedback loop. Ice is bright white, and thus reflective, and bounces heat and light energy back into space, while water absorbs and stores heat energy. As the ice shrinks, the ability of heat to build in the arctic increases, which then increases the rate of melt, which exposes more water surface, storing more heat, and a feedback loop is then created which results in acceleration of the rate of change.

The water in the arctic has been 2 to 3 degrees warmer than usual this year. The trend to longer melt days also continued, as the spring came to the arctic 17 days earlier than usual this year. Another observable anomaly is the absence of sea ice around Greenland. The trend towards shrinkage in the Ice Cap is concurrent with thinning of the ice cap (seen in the graph on this page) with the downward trend beginning during the 1990s. There are also global anomalies in the data in that both the rate of melting and the decline in thickness are taking place at a greater rate on the part of the ice sheet over North America. (This can be seen best in the graphic showing shrinkage of the ice thickness, where the bright orange, denoting the greatest loss of thickness, occurs as a ring over North America.)

This is just speculation, but these interesting anomalies when combined with the fact that the United States uses 25 percent of the world's energy, makes one wonder if somehow it might be possible that global warming processes, while they are global in scope, can also have strong regional components, thus creating these differences in all the data coming in from arctic, which indicate that everything is at its worse in the Arctic bordering North America, and while the process is taking place over Europe and Russia as well, the rate of change is lower. Another example of the same sort of thing is that the melt season has increased by 12 days over Eurasia and by 17 days over North America. As I said this is just speculation based upon observance of these regional anomalies, and while they do require explanation, the explanation may be found elsewhere.

Concurrent with this accelerated decline in permanent ice cover, the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf began to collapse and split in two, draining all of the water out of Disraeli Fjord. The ice shelf had been in decline for decades before the collapse began to take place. It is a floating sheet of ice off of Ellesmere Island in the North American Arctic which has been in place for thousands of years. Due to Archimedes principle, an object floating in water already displaces an amount of water equal to its own mass, so the melting of floating ice caps will not raise the ocean level. However the melting of ice on land will result in an increase in the depths of the oceans. For example, the melting of the Greenland Ice Cap would raise the ocean level by up to seven meters (around 21 feet). This would mean that New Orleans and the Gulf Coast would be marine habitat and meanwhile people in cities in Tennessee would probably be lobbying for money to build levees to protect their city from storm surges caused by hurricanes...this is not a very good idea. The Greenland Ice Cap is just one example of an ice cap over land, and it is worth considering here that in the distant past what is now the Great Plains of the United States was once a great sea, bordered by swamps and marshes, which would indicate that Americans would either be living on houseboats out on the ocean, or they would be moving to the Rocky or Appalachian mountains, or any other part of the country they could find that would not be under water. Once again, not a good idea.

Concurrent with the melting of the arctic ice cap, the world's glaciers are also melting. The Himalayan glaciers supply the water for the Yangtze and Yellow rivers in China, the Ganga in India, the Indus in Pakistan, the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh and Burma's Irrawaddy river. 40 percent of the world's population depend on these rivers for drinking water, and the rate of decline indicates a major water crisis developing within decades from the present time. These glaciers are retreating at a rate of up to 75 feet per year. To compound the problem ground water levels are plunging in India due to heavy pumping, and for this reason water shortages have already become a big problem on the subcontinent as people are forced to walk for hours every day to find water as their wells have run dry, and they cannot afford to drill deep enough to find more water. Using satellite sensing data Indian scientists have already measured a drop by 23 percent of run off from the receding glaciers in two thirds of the glaciers for which they had measurement data. The monsoons have also become erratic leading to periodic droughts or bad flooding, and also affects river flow since the monsoons are the second source for river water and also help to replenish ground water, although the water is being extracted at a rate greater than it is being replenished, causing precipitous drops as so called ‘fossil water' is being pumped out the ground. South American glaciers are also melting and here the situation is more critical, since these glaciers are the only source of drinking water for millions of people and are retreating at such a rapid pace that a crisis point would be reached in only 15 or 20 years.


Some conclusions...

In 2001 George Bush pulled America out of the Kyoto accord, with suggestions that keeping this really modest accord (which really wasn't enough to make a real difference, being just a few percentage points) would be to expensive, the science wasn't good enough yet (wait until there is a big crisis and then act) and he also suggested that the accord was unfair since it did not place severe enough restrictions on ‘developing nations.' The last point was particularly hypocritical, for the United States, with only five percent of the world's population, uses 25 percent of the world's energy, and one would think with that level of profligate usage there must be a lot of fat to trim.

It is also worth noting here the failure of ‘neo-liberalism' and its corporate agenda of ‘the unrestricted free market' combined with individualism and ‘enterprise' which then demands the destruction of the social commons in the form of big tax cuts and the slashing of government programs. This failure was quite evident in the destruction of New Orleans and its associated metropolitan area, which required a government program of around one or two billion to build levees to protect the area, which is America's only deep water port, handling close to a quarter of its trade, which explains why it would be found located where it is, a point I bring up for the benefit of those who are proposing ‘bulldozing' the place, since it is in a ‘stupid location.' In addition the destruction of the wetlands to favor the short term interests of developers is another characteristic development of ‘neo-liberalism' and its ‘dog eat dog' individualism, and since wetlands are required in hurricane zones by natural law (since it is hurricanes that create the wetlands) and since wetlands absorb storm surges (about a foot per kilometer) we can also see how the uncontrolled degrading of the environment also contributed to this disaster.

Also worth noting is not only how the disaster was known ahead of time, but just happened anyway, and how people were then abandoned to their fate, for this is a model of how things work under that ‘neo-liberalism'. Another good example of the same agenda is found in the country of Niger, where the IMF forced the country to adhere to the neo-liberal agenda by getting rid of their emergency food stockpile, since that was not a free market policy, but rather a social policy, and thus had to go, and then when the locusts came in millions faced starvation, while the United Nations food program begged for aid for close to eight months and didn't get a dime, because once again that would be a social policy, which is wrong now, so they say.

Therefore it is quite clear that under ‘neo-liberalism' the disasters to come from climate change will come, just as these two mentioned disasters were predicted and then came, and as for the people whose lives are destroyed, they will simply be abandoned to their fate. Not a good idea. The process of globalization has also raised the capitalists of the world to a position of supreme power over the governments of the world, which is why you see every government and every party always promoting that neo-liberal agenda. For example in Germany voters had a choice between the SPD and the Hartz program (which is neo-liberalism, which means tax cuts and the gutting of the government programs) or they could vote for the CDU, which was also promoting neo-liberalism. Or perhaps they could vote for the Greens or the new Left party, in which case they would still get neo-liberalism, for you see, any national government which disobeys those capitalists and their large multinationals will have their economy just brutally trashed in so many different ways. Which explains why around the world the ‘Labor' parties are always found to be pushing ‘neo-liberalism' and explains why when Lula gets into office in Brazil, he promotes neo-liberalism.

In the 1960s Martin Luther King was becoming increasingly radicalized by the Vietnam War and was moving towards socialism, which most people do not know, and you might notice how in the 1960s, the Democratic party was suddenly energized you might say, and promoted the ‘War on Poverty' or ‘the Great Society', as they did that Democratic party thing of trying to co-opt and derail a revolutionary process. Martin Luther King was shot just before he could mount his next great march of the poor and the dispossessed, and you might notice how suddenly the Democrats forget about making war on poverty after that, and haven't had a word to say about it since then. There are those who will continue to attempt to exert pressure on the Democratic party, knowing full well that when the iron is the fire those Democrats have been known throughout history to get real busy, but there is no sign of the Democrats doing that today, nor will the Democrats ever do that again. Yes the country is being destroyed by neo-liberalism, as American jobs are shipped to sweat shops, because that is more profitable for individual investors, even if it wrecks society, and the Democrats are not stupid, and they can see that burgeoning trade deficit and the coming destruction of every social policy due to that bloating of the budget deficit, and even though the country is being destroyed, just as New Orleans was destroyed by neo-liberalism, those Democrats do not raise so much as a peep in protest. For you see, the Democrats are apparently a lot smarter than those who think of voting Democrat or pressuring Democrats, for those Democrats understand that it is a new world now, and under ‘globalization' you can no longer have that ‘reform capitalism' that Democrats used to peddle in the past. Therefore whether Bush gets into office or some Democrat, or whether the Greens or ‘Labor' gets into office, in every country in the world every party in every government will be forcing through that neo-liberal agenda. Which is why the Democrats support every policy of George Bush, and did not raise a peep of protest as the country is destroyed around them, even though they know the country is being destroyed around them, for they know they have to do what the really big globalized boss says.

To get to the main point here, there is no point in just having a good bitch about climate change, and then leaving it at that, while people either wonder what to do about it, or even worse, they start plotting to pressure the Democrats to do something about it, for you see under globalization the response must be global as well. Nationalism is obsolete. Factionalism is suicide. Patriotism and divisions and sectarianism and provincialism will prove to the ruin of everyone, and national governments, who have no solutions, will also be the ruin of everyone, as you can see, just by watching the disasters unfold, for national governments must obey the capitalist multinational corporations and the global capitalist investors, or face ruin, and they know that, which is why they are obeying the neo-liberal agenda all over the world. The only ones who do not seem to understand the new global reality are the voters, and there isn't much of a push to make them understand, for this would then discredit their national politicians and their national governments, and since these fossilized social structures are still in place, institutional inertia would dictate that the nationalist institutions work to preserve their own interests.

What this suggest then is that we, the people, must unite globally and seek global solutions and I bring this to attention here since I feel that it is about time that what capitalists know and that what all politicians in every country know so very well become something that the people know just as well, and also understand, since it will be ruinously destructive to have the people the only ones who still think nationally and thus devise solutions that lead to a dead end, followed by that ruinous destruction which we have seen is the end product of the wild global; rampage of anti- social behavior known as ‘neo-liberalism'.

So then, to make one final point, if you are an American, don't bother thinking about pressuring those Democrats anymore. Show that you, too, understand just as they understand. If you talk to a Democrat, talk about how impossible it is for the Democrats to do anything, how obsolete ‘nationalism' really is, get them to admit what they already know to be true and just come clean with you. Show them that you, too, understand the way the world really works today. Don't bother with that undeveloped and flawed perspective that insists that a way out can be found by ‘reclaiming' the Democratic party, for globalization is the new reality, and nationalism allows the new rising powers of the world to win victory after victory through the exploitation of that age old strategy of ‘divide and conquer'.

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