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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (33131)	8/14/2005 4:35:09 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 361345

From Tim; courier hard at work today. Keep him busy, guys. Rat@jailslink2dawhirld ======================================== The BBC Online............... Icy Greenland turns green By Richard Hollingham BBC News, Greenland Greenland's ice is melting rapidly. In some places, glacial levels have been falling by 10 metres a year and ultimately contributing to rising sea levels. Travelling to Greenland, Richard Hollingham sees the impact of climate change for himself. The gleaming white executive jet taxied to a stop on the cracked concrete apron beside a couple of derelict hangers. Beyond the rusty barbed wire and crude prefabricated buildings surrounding the airport perimeter, cliffs of dark granite rose from the valley to blend with the equally ominous grey of the sky. No trees, no colour, no signs of life. The door of the private plane swung down. Onlookers, had there been any, might have caught a glimpse of the deep leather seats and walnut panelling of the interior. Perhaps a group of sharp suited executives would emerge looking dynamic and business-like. Or perhaps some sinister men-in-black types, here on covert government business. The first person to climb down was wearing oversized shorts, stout walking boots and a hat that looked like it had seen rather more of the world than it was perhaps designed for. Its enormous ice cap, a sea of white stretching seemingly forever, overflows into thousands of glaciers The next man was dressed in a clashing array of outdoor clothing and sported large tortoise-shell glasses and an unkempt beard. Each man muttered something about the landscape being bleak. I would like to be able to tell you that when the BBC descended from the plane we stood apart with our sartorial elegance. But if you have ever met any BBC types, particularly radio reporters, you would know that would be a lie. Research We had landed at Kangerlussuaq, a community whose existence depends solely on the airstrip. This used to be a bustling US base, servicing America's early warning system. These days it is somewhat self perpetuating. The airport brings in supplies for the people who live here who mostly work at the airport. I was tagging along with a group of eminent scientists, funded through the foundation of a billionaire philanthropist, Gary Comer. He has devoted his retirement to the science of global warming. The researchers all make regular visits to the Arctic to assess the impact of climate change, not, it should be said, always in such comfort. Retreating glaciers Greenland is a massive island locked in ice. And from the air there is little evidence that it is melting. Its enormous ice cap, a sea of white stretching seemingly forever, overflows into thousands of glaciers. These in turn carve their way through the mountains to the coast. It is only when you get near to the base of the glaciers that you can see how the landscape is changing. A few metres above the ice, the rock is totally bare. A scar running horizontally across the valleys. It is as if the ice has been drained away, like water in a bath, to leave a tide mark. Which is, in effect, what has happened. The ice has melted and the glaciers have retreated hundreds of metres over the past 150 years. New vegetation The weather cleared and with the edge of the glacier, a giant wall of ice behind us, glaciologist Richard Alley led me across the barren rock. This land was being exposed for the first time in millions of years As I tripped and stumbled behind him, he bounded through scree and leapt over crevasses. I have never seen a scientist more in his element as he pointed out deep grooves in the rock where the ice had raked the stone, or the giant boulders lifted by the glacier to balance precariously on top of tiny pebbles. This land was being exposed for the first time for millions of years. Even a century ago, where I stood would have been solid ice, and I was struck by just how much vegetation there was. Phillip, the biologist on the trip, was every bit as excited as Richard, identifying the dark brown lichens on the rocks, the grasses and beautiful purple flowers somehow managing to cling to just a few millimetres of soil. Agricultural return The Earth's climate has warmed before, albeit naturally. A ruined church on the banks of a fjord marks the remains of a Viking farming civilisation. The sun casts shadows through the arched window to the site of the altar, last used in the 1400s before the area was abandoned when it became too cold to support habitation. Today, the farmers are back. Sheep once again graze the surrounding hillside and shiny new tractors work the fields near the southern coast. Greenland is turning green, something the rest of us should be very worried about indeed. Story from BBC NEWS: news.bbc.co.uk Published: 2005/08/14 07:44:46 GMT

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (33131)	8/14/2005 4:38:18 PM
From: CalculatedRisk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361345

From Sioux: Park It By Dennis Roddy Space travel is a counterintuitive act. A creature not originally designed to walk upright doesn't merely become airborne, but loops beyond Earth and, in so doing, somehow finds out more about the planet it has exited. That is why, with the shuttle Discovery now safely on the ground, its astronauts deposited in their homes and NASA breathing a lucky sigh, it is time to listen to contrarians such as Freeman Dyson. Dyson is 81 now and still makes the daily trip to his office at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. In his youth he devised a plan to launch humans into deep space using a nuclear explosion. He is versed in both quantum mechanics and engineering, bridging the two with an ambitious philosophy that suggests humans reach beyond their boundaries because it's part of being human. He has won both the Max Planck Medal for theoretical physics and the Templeton Prize for progress in religion. Ordinary answers are not his habit. When the shuttle landed last week, he had a disarmingly brief message for its owners: park it and trade up. He spoke from the same impulse with which a man in his middle years disposes of the minivan and buys a Mini Cooper. Whim, at least as Dyson describes it, is what can save the space program: "It should be an international sporting event. That's what it was in the days of Apollo. That's what the public likes. It shouldn't be sold under the false pretenses of having anything to do with science." The thought of divorcing space travel from science borders on the irrational until we consider that we'd really be divorcing it from the shipping trade. Such science as is getting done onboard the shuttle is taking place in a vehicle designed for cargo transport. The shuttle, when first sold to Congress in the early 1970s, was a sort of half-rocket/half-airplane that was supposed to transport satellites and supplies to low-Earth orbit. Early estimates suggested it would fly on an almost weekly basis -- truly a shuttle to and from space, rearranging the ornaments on Earth's outer lawn. <MORE> commondreams.org