Mother Nature to Man: “I’m Melting!”

The arctic is starting to feel like the Wicked Witch of the West, “I’m melting!”  A 19-square mile chunk of ice broke free from from the Arctic ice shelf in northern Canada in early August.  To put that in perspective, Manhattan, NY is roughly the same size. 

[From the Chicago Tribune] Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario, told The Associated Press that the 4,500-year-old Markham Ice Shelf separated in early August and the 19-square-mile shelf is now adrift in the Arctic Ocean.

“The Markham Ice Shelf was a big surprise because it suddenly disappeared. We went under cloud for a bit during our research and when the weather cleared up, all of a sudden there was no more ice shelf. It was a shocking event that underscores the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic,” said Muller.

The loss of these ice shelves means that rare ecosystems that depend on them are on the brink of extinction, said Warwick Vincent, director of Laval University’s Centre for Northern Studies and a researcher in the program ArcticNet.

“The Markham Ice Shelf had half the biomass for the entire Canadian Arctic Ice Shelf ecosystem as a habitat for cold, tolerant microbial life; algae that sit on top of the ice shelf and photosynthesis like plants would. Now that it’s disappeared, we’re looking at ecosystems on the verge of distinction,’ said Muller.

So when is mankind as a whole going to start to care?  It has yet to really effect the average person on a daily basis – but look at the drought maps – look at the temps – things are going to have to change – how screwed are my grandkids?  I hate to even think about it.

Source: Chicago Tribune