From Warren Richardson's Home/Office Desktop
Hello, Thank you very much to those whom had input an questions about glacier loss causing ocean rise in present time in response to an earlier post of mine. Your kind words of encouragement were and are appreciated, as well. I'll protect your anonymity by just making passing references to your responses.
Attached is a picture of an Inuit Village slipping into the sea, taken last summer by an eco-reporter whose name I don't have on file. The rise in sea level has caused permafrost three feet below the surface to melt and then normal wave surge from an elevated sea takes away the remaining sand. The links below are to a sampling of other distressed areas.
El Niño Sea-Level Rise Wreaks Havoc in California's San Francisco Bay Region
Sea Levels For North Carolina Rising 3 Times Faster Than In Previous 500 Years
When Climatologists and Glaciologists shared information and plugged it into the world community grid, a multiple voluntarily shared computer network which is a first rate substitute for super computers, their models showed that 1) there is enough heat now stored in the ocean to melt all glaciers that end up in oceans; making the process of their accelerated melting already irreversible... 2) The only variable that is beyond accurate prediction power is the one in which human green house gases effect the weather that steers ocean currents, specifically the equatorial band of warm water, to the north and south polar regions where the primary glaciers abide. How soon these glaciers melt (not IF) has a 50 to 80 year prediction, best case, worst case spread, before those glaciers are gone. Those glaciers contain over 3 inches of sea level rise but they are not the only glacier loss where water has been stored up for centuries, since the last ice age. (Glacier National Park in the Western United States is now all but glacier ice free at the end of summer; with only a thin snow pack remaining on the shaded north sides of mountain peaks. The Ogallala Aquifer in the Western Central U.S., which is recharged from Rocky Mountain Glaciers is experiencing significant draw down, with the disappearance of that area's glaciers, as well.) Link to Ogallala Aquifer Depletion website http://www.livescience.com/environment/060324_glacier_melt.html
One bright correspondent disagreed about the conclusions I voiced in the previous post about human caused greenhouse gases and glacier melt. They pointed out that glaciers float and as such don't change the sea level when they melt. Actually that is only partly true. All the coastal glaciers in Iceland, and Antarctica start out grounded on the sea bed. Unlike ice burgs which have calved from these glaciers in which they displace sea water such that 90% of their mass is submerged in the ocean; bedrock supported glaciers start out with one hundred percent of their weight on bedrock and gradually feed at an incline into the ocean. Which means that they only gradually are supported by the open ocean. Worse, the underbelly melting actually acts like greasing the skids for a large ship, and by thus reducing their friction, cause them to dump into the sea at a much faster than normal rate. In Iceland, there are glaciers sliding at three times their historacal rates of travel.. Only after years of erosion under water, by 34.7 degree Fahrenheit (and rising) sea water, does a coastal glacier begin to float. As they melt, their upper body settles back down to the bedrock presenting fresh ice for melting. That is the reason for the sudden and spectacular disappearance of ice sheets hundreds of square miles in area sudden break up and disappearance almost overnight. Almost all the loss is invisible up till the last few weeks or days before they just break off and disappear into the sea as iceburgs. (Refer to: Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapse http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080210100441.htm )
Meanwhile continental sea coasts and low lying island nations are already experiencing massive sea rise disruptions and having to move to their poor central governmental islands where they are not wanted due to lack of funds to help them; the governments of poor nations have no means to deal with the the influx of refugees; even as their own ocean port areas are also being encroached by the steady sea level rise. Current estimates stand at 2.8 billion human beings which are or will be displaced due to sea level rise (if it does not further accelerate) by the year 2080; with over half of that number disrupted by the year 2050. In the U.S., high dollar value real estate and businesses in the coastal and gulf states are going to produce economic collapse due to denial of this problem in present time. When they wake up to the reality, it will simply be too late to pull up stakes in an orderly fashion and relocate to higher elevations. After hurricane Katrina, Houston and Dallas thrived with the welfare cash from dislocated Louisiana citizens forced to relocate. However, we are all experiencing the pinch from that rubber money printed by a caring administration. There simply won't be enough energy, money, resources when the likes of Galveston, Houston, New Orleans, etc are forced to move all of a rush as the already expensive levee systems are breached during storms born by higher sea levels start breaching into high density residential and business centers.
The die off of weaker, less salt tolerant, older and very young inhabitants has already started in third world island areas due to salt incursion into fresh water aquifers in many Indian and Pacific Ocean regions. Many of the oldsters just refuse to leave when the main body migrates off their home islands and gradually die of salt poisoning or starvation because their crops and gardens fail do to sea water encroachment.. There are no hard numbers but estimates are that several hundreds per year are already on this dwindling survival spiral.
Again, the Inuit village not pictured with the attached photo - has already been forced to leave their centuries old summer village and set up on the mainland, much remove and away from their fishing grounds. Consider these folks our mining canary warning of things to come. The effects of global warming are at hand, not somewhere off in the distant future.
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