“Alaska’s Sea Ice Completely Melted for First Time in Recorded History” by Dahr Jamail
Starfire contributed this article. Thank you Starfire..
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People attend a monument unveiling at the site of Okjökull,
Iceland's first glacier lost to climate change, in the west of Iceland on
August 18, 2019.
“Even if we can’t escape its consequences, it is not too late to
escape the mindset that brought us here.” —Alice O’Keeffe, reviewing This Is
Not a Drill
The country of Iceland
has held a funeral for its first glacier lost to the climate crisis. The once
massive Okjökull glacier, now completely gone, has been commemorated with a
plaque that reads: “A letter to the future. Ok is the first Icelandic glacier
to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are
expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know
what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.”
This reality is
reverberating across the globe, far beyond Iceland. Even when no literal
funeral is being held, we are, in a sense, witnessing an ongoing funeral for
the world we once knew.
July was the hottest
month ever recorded on Earth since record keeping began in 1880. Nine out of
the 10 hottest Julys ever recorded have occurred since 2005, and July was the
43rd consecutive July to register temperatures above the 20th century average.
In Greenland, scientists
were stunned by how rapidly the ice sheet is melting, as it was revealed the
ice there was not expected to melt like this until 2070.
The melt rate has been called “unprecedented,” as the all-time single-day melt record was broken in
August as the ice sheet lost a mind-bending 12.5 billion tons of water in one
day. It is worth remembering that the Greenland ice sheet contains enough ice
to increase global sea levels by 20 feet, and it is now predicted that it will lose more ice
this year than ever before.
Also for the first time in recorded history, Alaska’s sea
ice has melted completely away. That means there was no sea ice whatsoever
within 150 miles of its shores, according to the National Weather Service, as
the northernmost state cooked under record-breaking heat through the summer.
Earth
A recent UN report estimates 2 billion
people are already facing moderate to severe food insecurity, due largely to
the warming planet. The other contributing factors are conflict and economic
stagnation, but extreme weather events and shifting weather patterns are a
large and growing contributor to this crisis, which is sure to escalate over
time.
Another recent study, titled “Adaptive responses of
animals to climate change are most likely insufficient,” showed that many
animals are no longer able to adjust quickly enough to the climate crisis.
While birds are laying their eggs earlier as temperatures and conditions
change, and are doing what they can to coax their chicks to hatch sooner, it is
still not enough to keep apace with the dramatically shifting climate. Many
more extinctions are on the horizon.
Speaking of, Beluga
whales in the Arctic are now clearly in a downward spiral toward their demise,
due largely to climate crisis impacts, according to another study. Warming waters, lack of food,
and pollution are taking their toll on the embattled whales. Over the past 20
years, their growth rates have been declining, which means their ability to
forage for food is now also compromised.
It is interesting to see
even mainstream outlets like People
Magazine now reporting on
climate grief, which the medical community has already been doing
for quite some time, and expects to see a dramatic ramping up of
climate-disruption-related mental health issues in the future.
In Greenland, residents
are already traumatized by climate impacts,
as they are coping with the reality that their traditional ways of life are
clearly on the way out. Courtney Howard, board president of the Canadian
Association of Physicians for the Environment, told The Guardian that
she believes the climate crisis is causing worsening states of mental and
physical health around the world, and says these issues will become some of the
most important of our time. “Temperature change is magnified in circumpolar
regions,” she told The Guardian. “There
is no question Arctic people are now showing symptoms of anxiety, ‘ecological
grief’ and even post-traumatic stress related to the effects of climate
change.”
In the financial realms,
a leading economic historian warned recentlythat the climate crisis could
very well become the trigger for the next global financial crisis by way of
causing instability and massive disruptions in markets.
Distressingly, a recently
published study warned that a new superbug which erupted at the
same time on three continents may well have been brought about from warming
temperatures. The study pointed out how a drug-resistant fungal disease has now
been made more prevalent by existing on a warming planet.
A recent report from Canada warned that
British Columbia could see “catastrophic” consequences from climate
disruption-related events in the next three decades. These include more severe
wildfire seasons, increasingly intense and longer heat waves, water shortages,
and storm surges across the province.
Speaking of Canada, that
country’s Pediatric Society recently warned that children’s health is
expected to be increasingly negatively affected by climate-disruption impacts,
including things like air pollution and heat stress.
Water
Drought-induced blackouts are now besetting
the people of Zimbabwe, where some places are seeing 18 hours per day without
electricity. Imagine that in the summer heat. Dams providing hydropower lack
water. Power blackouts are spreading.
In Harare, Zimbabwe’s
capital city, the taps have run dry, affecting more than 2
million people, who have been trying to cope with not having access to
municipal drinking water.
In India, a
stunning 1 million people were displaced and at least 270 killedby
severe flooding from heavier than usual monsoon rains.
Back in the U.S., New
York City’s summer has served as a preview of things to come, as an extreme heat
wave coupled with flash flooding beset the iconic city.
On the other end of the
water spectrum, a recent study published in Science
Advances warned that megadroughts will likely beset the U.S. Southwest
within decades. The study stated that the megadroughts are “almost assured,”
and will be on a scale not seen since medieval times.
At the same time, by
2050, another report warned that “snow
droughts” will become far more common across the western U.S. This is critical,
in that it compounds the aforementioned impending drought crisis, as mountain
snowpack is vital to providing water into the spring and summer.
A recent and critically important studyshowed that one
quarter of the total global population across 17 countries is already affected
by extreme water stress. Lebanon, Qatar and Israel/Palestine top a list of
places with the worst water shortages, as the growing climate crisis threatens
more “day zeroes” — days where major cities will literally run out of water.
Meanwhile, sea levels continue
their inevitable and accelerating rise. In the U.S., a recent report showed how 21 beach towns,
including Miami Beach, Galveston, Atlantic City and Key West, will soon be
underwater.
Speaking of Galveston,
the state of Texas is looking toward Dutch expertise for
assistance in how to construct what would be the nation’s most expensive and
most ambitious coastal barrier for protection against intensifying hurricanes.
The Netherlands has been devising ways to protect massive parts of its
low-lying country against the ocean for centuries. Now the skills it has
cultivated are, soberingly, increasingly relevant worldwide.
Meanwhile, the oceans
continue to warm as they absorb the brunt of the heat human activity is adding
to the atmosphere, and the warming waters are literally pushing Pacific salmon
to the brink of their ability to survive, according to another report.
Distressingly, a recently
published study showed that unexpected marine heat
waves are now becoming the norm rather than the exception.
Alpine mountaineering routes are disintegrating as
glaciers and icefields melt in the Alps. The ice-reliant climbing routes in the
mountains are tumbling down and melting away faster than anyone expected.
Greenland experienced a
record heat wave in the middle of this summer, which dramatically accelerated
the melting of the ice sheet, meaning its contributions to sea level rise are
in the process of accelerating as well.
Meanwhile, scientists
have expressed alarm and shock about the fact that the permafrost across the
Canadian Arctic is thawing out 70 years sooner than previously
predicted.
Things are so dire in the
icy realms of Earth that the country of Iceland is now preparing for how it will cope without
any more ice … something that country relies upon for its
identity, businesses, government and very existence.
Fire
These stunning satellite photos show an Arctic
burning up in front of our eyes. In Alaska alone, at the time of this writing,
at least 1.6 million acres have burned from at least 100
wildfires this summer. Wildfires in Siberiacould
well burn into October when the first snows fall, as at least 6.7
million acres have burned across Russia.
Another report showed that, due to climate
disruption, wildfires in California have already become 500 percent larger than
they were since the 1970s.
Canadian media are reporting that forests
that have been scorched in the Pacific Northwest are not growing back as
expected. This brings into question numerous species of trees’ ability to
regenerate as the fires get increasingly hot, burn longer, and scorch longer
areas.
At the same time, another report reaffirmed the fact that
even the rainy Northwest is now facing the inevitable increased risk of
wildfires due to higher temperatures, increasing drought and lower humidity.
Air
By 2050, Florida will
have more days that feel like 100 degrees Fahrenheit (100°F) than any other
state in the U.S., according to a recent study. Washington D.C. currently
averages one week per year of 100-degree days, while by 2050 that could rise to
two months. The same study warned that climate disruption will expose millions
of people across the U.S. to “off-the-charts” extreme heat.
Meanwhile, Europe sizzled
under a record-breaking heat wave this summer, as
heat from the Sahara baked the continent and temperature records toppled en
masse. There are far too many records to name from that heatwave, but notable
was the fact that Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands recorded their highest temperatures ever during Europe’s
second major summer heatwave.
In Canada, the far northern
community of Nunavut saw warmer temperatures than the city of
Victoria, far to its south. According to CBC News, “the source of the Arctic
beach weather is a large current of air that somehow found its way north from
the U.S. southeast” — a much more common occurrence as warming intensifies.
Denial
and Reality
Ever busy denying the
crisis, in the last month the Trump administration buried a large climate disruption response plan,
as revealed by Politico. The outlet revealed how the Agriculture
Department prevented the release of an already completed and sweeping plan
about how the government should best respond to the climate crisis.
Meanwhile, in what could
have been a slip of the tongue, Trump’s Energy Secretary Rick Perry said during
a recent nationally televised interview, “The
climate is changing. Are we part of the reason? Yeah, it is. I’ll let people
debate on who’s the bigger problem here.”
It’s not just the Trump
administration that’s fueling denial. It was also revealed how DNC Chair Tom
Perez introduced a resolution in an attempt to
kill a climate debate among the Democratic presidential candidates.
Nevertheless, reality has
a way of not going away, despite human efforts at denial.
A recent report showed that the climate
crisis is already well along in causing childhood deaths and the stunting of
growth in Australia and across the Pacific. Other impacts on kids include lowered
cognitive capacity and higher susceptibility to the spread of diseases.
And, to keep all of this
in perspective, as a final reality check, the burning of fossil fuels reached
an all-time record last year, according to oil giant BP.
For perspective on the
rate of acceleration now baked into the system, half of all fossil fuels used
by humans have been burned since just 1990. Many more consequences are
lurking just around the corner: It takes at least 10 years before we begin to
see the impacts of the CO2 once the fuels are burned.
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