So many of the 20th century believed that climate change is such a gradual process, where human-made greenhouse gases aren’t dominant climate change factor. “it becomes impractical” says the NASA’s (Columbia) paper. As the problem is complicated by a mix of political, social, environmental and economic realities, the danger point comes closer than thought from warming. The Cambridge-based British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have discovered that a massive Antarctic ice sheet previously assumed to be stable may be starting to disintegrate,as it was announced to the world’s public.Professor Chris Rapley, the BAS director, told the conference at the UK Meteorological Office in Exeter that their discovery had reactivated worries about the ice sheet’s collapse. In November, a multi-year study by 300 scientists concluded that the Arctic goes warmer twice as fast as the rest of the world and that its ice-cap had shrunk by up to 20 per cent in the past three decades!!The ice is near by 40 per cent thinner than it was in the 1970s in pure ciphers!
That latest NASA release emphasizes the danger of “strong amplifying feedbacks” pushing Earth past “dangerous tipping points.” The NASA research also reasserts the importance of the disappearing Arctic sea ice and snow, whose reflectivity has helped cool the planet by bouncing warm sunlight straight back. “An ecological time bomb is ticking away,” said Stephen Byers, who was co-chairman of the task force with U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. “World leaders need to recognize that climate change is the single most important long-term issue that the planet faces.” As the Atlantic warms, ice caps melt, diluting the ocean and potentially shutting down its thermohaline circulation (THC), the oceanic river currently delivering the thermal equivalent of 500,000 power stations’ worth of warmth to Europe.
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