{"id":1186,"date":"2011-12-10T12:38:37","date_gmt":"2011-12-10T12:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=1186"},"modified":"2011-12-10T12:38:37","modified_gmt":"2011-12-10T12:38:37","slug":"the-frozen-planet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=1186","title":{"rendered":"The Frozen Planet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a picture of one of the vast\u00a0Antarctic ice shelves breaking up and fracturing into huge icebergs that then float northwards and melt.\u00a0This happens\u00a0every Antarctic summer as the frozen surface of the sea thaws. It\u00a0refreezes\u00a0in the winter and completes a natural cycle that is driven by the\u00a0rotation of the Earth around the Sun.\u00a0 Clever as we see ourselves we\u00a0have no influence at the solar scale. The Earth has been circling the Sun for 4.5 billion years\u00a0so what is the issue?<\/p>\n

The\u00a0issue is that the\u00a0ice shelves are getting smaller each year.<\/p>\n

When they refreeze in winter they do not freeze as far;\u00a0and when they thaw in the summer the melting edge creeps ever\u00a0closer to the dry and barren land. This has immediate,\u00a0direct\u00a0and dire implications for the life that finds its food\u00a0in the well-stocked acquatic larder under the ice.\u00a0 It has delayed,\u00a0indirect, yet\u00a0equally dire implications for life that does not live there – and\u00a0that includes\u00a0us.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As each iceberg melts\u00a0the liberated water has to go somewhere – into the sea –\u00a0so the average sea level rises a fraction.\u00a0If enough volume of polar ice melts then the sea level\u00a0may rise enough to\u00a0flood\u00a0low-lying land and displace the people who make their living there. Is there enough ice in the melting shelf to do this?\u00a0No. That isn’t the problem. The problem is that the ice shelf does something else – it acts as a “plug” that\u00a0holds back\u00a0the vast ice sheet that covers the Antarctic continent.\u00a0And there is a lot of it – about 5 million square miles with an average depth of 1 mile;\u00a0that is about\u00a05 million cubic miles of\u00a0\u00a0water-in-progress (WIP).\u00a0The surface area of\u00a0our oceans is around 140 million square miles – so if\u00a0 all the Antarctic ice\u00a0slid down the hill into the sea, broke off as icebergs, floated north and melted then the sea level would rise by 5\/140 ths of a mile which is 63 yards or 188 feet.\u00a0 Oh dear! A large proportion\u00a0of our most densely populated areas\u00a0lie below that new\u00a0sea level.<\/p>\n

But let us not not worry about that too much – it won’t happen in the next ten or twenty years. The idealistic-optimist-academics can always hope that Science will\u00a0come to the rescue and provide innovative solutions that will avert the disaster. That is what we pay our scientists to do after all. The realistic-pessimist-pragmatists have a Plan B: we will just up sticks and move as the waters rise slowly higher.\u00a0We could do with some new beach side real estate opportunities anyway!\u00a0 We just need to plot the 60 yard contour line and stake our claim on it early! What is all the fuss about?<\/p>\n

It is not only the rising level of\u00a0water\u00a0that we need to worry about – it is something else – something\u00a0that is much less tangible. We need to worry about\u00a0the rising level of expectation.\u00a0 And we need to worry because it happens\u00a0over a much short time scale and by a much greater degree.<\/p>\n

On the\u00a0global scale we have short lives and even shorter memories.\u00a0 We see what others have and we want the same: we want e-quality and we want it now. In the affluent countries we expect universal health, education and\u00a0welfare almost as a right – in the less afflunet these are all luxuries. Those we assign the\u00a0power to\u00a0make\u00a0it happen,\u00a0our elected politicians,\u00a0have the same expectations – so they get what they want. As we race to grow our economies,\u00a0anyone\u00a0who cannot\u00a0keep up is labelled as a\u00a0loser.\u00a0\u00a0Flat economic growth is\u00a0perceived\u00a0as a warning sign;\u00a0and a shrinking economy is treated as a failure. The\u00a0growth-at-any-cost merchants fuel the national fear with emotionally charged\u00a0words\u00a0such as “recession”,\u00a0“depression” and “disaster”.\u00a0 We are brainwashed to believe that the only way to meet rising expectation is to grow bigger BUT\u00a0we are doing it\u00a0by\u00a0squandering our future needs\u00a0to satisfy our immediate wants. We are borrowing\u00a0our future wealth and spending it now – with no coherent plan for\u00a0settling the\u00a0loan.\u00a0 We are living in hope and in denial. Greece,\u00a0Italy and Ireland\u00a0are tangible examples.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is not sustainable:\u00a0there is economic chaos that threatens to drown\u00a0Europe\u00a0in a\u00a0rising tide of national structural debt, doubt, confusion and\u00a0legally enforced austerity\u00a0measures. It takes a brave person to stand up and say – this is not sustainable.<\/p>\n

If feels as though we are at a crossroads and we appear to \u00a0have only three choices:<\/p>\n

1. Discount the issue;\u00a0huddle to gether for security\u00a0on our melting iceberg and hope that someone or something comes to our rescue;<\/p>\n

2. Panic and adopt the every-man-for-himself approach,\u00a0leap into the sea and swim off in all directions in the\u00a0hope that some of use\u00a0find unknown dry land before we drown;<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0Learn to preserve what we have and\u00a0to search for new paradigms\u00a0that are sustainable into the future.\u00a0Learn to grow better\u00a0rather than bigger and learn to meet rising expectation within the limits of the finite\u00a0global resources. Learn how to\u00a0improve.<\/p>\n

Option 3 gets my vote!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a picture of one of the vast\u00a0Antarctic ice shelves breaking up and fracturing into huge icebergs that then float northwards and melt.\u00a0This happens\u00a0every Antarctic summer as the frozen surface of the sea thaws. It\u00a0refreezes\u00a0in the winter and completes a natural cycle that is driven by the\u00a0rotation of the Earth around the Sun.\u00a0 Clever … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The Frozen Planet”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}