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

To: SiouxPal who wrote (138693)	7/10/2008 6:17:25 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361494

Antarctic ice shelf 'hanging by thread': European scientists Thu Jul 10, 1:57 PM ET New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday. Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is "hanging by its last thread" to Charcot Island, one of the plate's key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release. "Since the connection to the island... helps stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk," it said. Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, covering around 16,000 square kilometres (6,000 square miles), or about the size of Northern Ireland, before it began to retreat in the 1990s. Since then several large areas have broken away, and two big breakoffs this year left only a narrow ice bridge about 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles) wide to connect the shelf to Charcot and nearby Latady Island. The latest images, taken by Envisat's radar, say fractures have now opened up in this bridge and adjacent areas of the plate are disintegrating, creating large icebergs. Scientists are puzzled and concerned by the event, ESA added. The Antarctic peninsula -- the tongue of land that juts northward from the white continent towards South America -- has had one of the highest rates of warming anywhere in the world in recent decades. But this latest stage of the breakup occurred during the Southern Hemisphere's winter, when atmospheric temperatures are at their lowest. One idea is that warmer water from the Southern Ocean is reaching the underside of the ice shelf and thinning it rapidly from underneath. "Wilkins Ice Shelf is the most recent in a long, and growing, list of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula that are responding to the rapid warming that has occurred in this area over the last fifty years," researcher David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said. "Current events are showing that we were being too conservative, when we made the prediction in the early 1990s that Wilkins Ice Shelf would be lost within 30 years. The truth is, it is going more quickly than we guessed." In the past three decades, six Antarctic ice shelves have collapsed completely -- Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and the Jones Ice Shelf.

To: SiouxPal who wrote (138693)	7/10/2008 6:21:05 PM
From: T L Comiskey	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361494

South Australia drought worsens A long-running drought in Australia's main food-growing region, the Murray-Darling river basin, has worsened, a new report says. Three months of dry weather and the driest June on record have plunged the area back into drought, the Murray-Darling Basin Commission says. Crossing much of south-east Australia, the Murray-Darling is the country's most important river system. The basin produces 40% of Australia's fruit, vegetables and grain. Experts say the drought will hit irrigated crops like rice and grapes the hardest, because other crops, such as wheat, depend more on rainfall during specific periods. Grim picture Corey Watts, of the Australian Conservation Foundation in Melbourne, told the BBC that drought was becoming a regular occurrence instead of happening once every 20 to 25 years. "We've had a string of reports, official reports, over the last fortnight painting a pretty grim picture for the climate and the future of our economy and our environment," he said. "So now we're looking at a future in the next few decades where drought will occur once every two years." The Chief Executive of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission, Wendy Craik, said that until there was significant rain and run-off, prospects for irrigation remained grim. Dr Craik warned that while human demand along the Murray Darling river would still be met, other water requirements might not. "If the sort of climatic regime we've had in the past couple of years becomes a feature of the future, it's pretty clear we don't have the volume of water available that we've had in the past. Clearly the basin is not going to be the same," she said. 'Absolute shocker' A spokesman for the Bureau of Meteorology National Climate Centre, Neil Plummer, added: "Autumn can only be described as an absolute shocker in terms of climate conditions for the basin". Government leaders recently agreed an Aus$3.7bn (US$3.6 bn) plan to conserve water in the area. Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. But scientists say that without sufficient water flow by October, the unique ecology of the lower reaches of the river system will be irreversibly damaged. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has already admitted that his government's new conservation plan will not produce results fast enough to meet this deadline. Large swathes of Australia have been affected by the worst drought in a century, hindering the country's economic growth. It is estimated that the parched conditions have forced 10,000 farming families off the land in the past five years, and many of those who have decided to stay have introduced more water efficient cropping methods. Story from BBC NEWS: news.bbc.co.uk Published: 2008/07/10 14:02:58 GMT © BBC MMVIII