INTERVIEW - Southern Ocean Current Faces Slowdown Threat

[RestoreGore]

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/41021/story.htm

INTERVIEW - Southern Ocean Current Faces Slowdown Threat
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AUSTRALIA: March 23, 2007

HOBART - The impact of global warming on the vast Southern Ocean around Antarctica is starting to pose a threat to ocean currents that distribute heat around the world, Australian scientists say, citing new deep-water data.
Melting ice-sheets and glaciers in Antarctica are releasing fresh water, interfering with the formation of dense "bottom water", which sinks 4-5 kilometres to the ocean floor and helps drive the world's ocean circulation system. A slowdown in the system known as "overturning circulation" would affect the way the ocean, which absorbs 85 percent of atmospheric heat, carries heat around the globe.

"If the water gets fresh enough ... then it won't matter how much ice we form, we won't be able to make this water cold and salty enough to sink," said Steve Rintoul, a senior scientist at the Australian government-funded CSIRO Marine Science. "Changes would be felt ... around the globe," said Rintoul, who recently led a multinational team of scientists on an expedition to sample deep-basin water south of Western Australia to the Antarctic.

Water dense enough to sink to the ocean floor is formed in polar regions by surface water freezing, which concentrates salt in very cold water beneath the ice. The dense water then sinks. Only a few places around Antarctica and in the northern Atlantic create water dense enough to sink to the ocean floor, making Antarctic "bottom water" crucial to global ocean currents. But the freshening of Antarctic deep water was a sign that the "overturning circulation" system in the world's oceans might be slowing down, Rintoul said, and similar trends are occurring in the North Atlantic. For the so-called Atlantic Conveyor, the surface warm water current meets the Greenland ice sheet then cools and sinks, heading south again and driving the conveyor belt process. But researchers fear increased melting of the Greenland ice sheet risks disrupting the conveyor. If it stops, temperatures in northern Europe would plunge. Rintoul, who has led teams tracking water density around the Antarctic through decades of readings, said his findings add to concerns about a "strangling" of the Southern Ocean by greenhouse gases and global warming.

Australian scientists warned last month that waters surrounding Antarctica were also becoming more acidic as they absorbed more carbon dioxide produced by nations burning fossil fuels. Acidification of the ocean is affecting the ability of plankton -- microscopic marine plants, animals and bacteria -- to absorb carbon dioxide, reducing the ocean's ability to sink greenhouse gases to the bottom of the sea. Rintoul said that global warming was also changing wind patterns in the Antarctic region, drawing them south away from the Australian mainland and causing declining rainfall in western and possibly eastern coastal areas. This was contributing to drought in Australia, one of the world's top agricultural producers, he said.



Story by Michael Byrnes


REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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This is very serious. This is what climate change refers to in that it isn't just about warming in the atmosphere, but that warming also causing patterns that can lead to freezes in other places due to the ocean conveyor belt stopping. This threatens all life on Earth and should it happen will, not may but will change life as we know it longer than this species would be able to survive it. And yet, here we sit waiting for Congress to pass some sort of legislation that will stop this from happening. The legislation would have to be passed yesterday, and the laws enforced now with 100% compliance to cut emissions by at least 80% within the next five years in my opinion.

We can't wait for them to stop their partisan bickering on the hill long enough to go from their mindset being changed to solutions being formed. Reading articles like this I can honestly say that I fear for the future because while many more people are waking up to this, ACTING on it and actually beating it seems absolutely above what we are able to accomplish at this point with people caring more about "debating it" rather than addressing it. We HAVE TO stop putting up so much in the way of GHGS into our atmosphere, and it has to happen NOW. Not by 2050, but now, and again, no one man will do it alone and no one election in any country will be the magic bullet. If we do not pull together globally as citizens of this planet to rise about the political fray and see the moral imperative, well, I think we all know already where we will lead ourselves.

[ananda]

1. agree

This is a critical issue and no one can be -alarmist- or -liberal- enough about it!

[jus_the_facts]

2. makes ALL other issues moot....yet nothing gets done....

....we.are.doomed. :argh:

[RestoreGore]

8. What have we done?

Congress appropriates funds for DEATH and DESTRUCTION and is silent on doing anything about bringing sustainability and balance. It is those who had the means to stop this who have brought this on, and they deserve our outrage. I am not giving up on this planet that I love with all my heart. This is our only home and if we don't fight for it with evey last breath we have we don't deserve her. I ma calling Senator Inhofe's office this week and telling him that. I am telling him that he is an accomplice to murdering this planet and that I am not going to allow people like him to take the beauty and balance of this world away from my child and that if they won't doing anything, that WE will.

[bonito]

3. Mother earth is having a heart attack

And it's too late to stop smoking. imho

[gulfcoastliberal]

4. We are so doomed. We've created in a couple of hundred years the geologic

equivalent of at least tens if not hundreds of thousands of years of change.

[bonito]

5. Long ,long time ago in a place far away

Our epitaph, maybe, does it matter, all we have, all we have ever had, is today.

[gulfcoastliberal]

6. Here's one with a good title - Climate doomsday approaching: report

The impact of global warming on the world is approaching a doomsday scenario, a new report shows.

cut

Tas van Ommen, a glaciologist at the Australian Antarctic Division, said: “There have been doomsday scenarios that west Antarctica could collapse quite quickly. And there’s six metres of sea level in west Antarctica.”

Even in east Antarctica — insulated from global warming by extreme cold and high-altitudes — new data shows the height of the Tottenham Glacier near Australia’s Casey Base has fallen by 10m over 15-16 years.

Scientists say massive glacier retreat at Heard Island, 1000km north of Antarctica, is an example of how fringe areas of the polar region are melting.

http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=29&ContentID=24302

Wow. Antarctic glacier reduced by over 30 feet in 15 years? Nuts.

[RestoreGore]

7. And even with that people on the whole will not MOVE

I truly feel like screaming sometimes. I just had a conversation with someone the other day who I met on the street who claimed that ice melting in the Arctic doesn't affect HIM. Needless to say I told him how it affects not only him but his children and grandchildren and I told him that he needs to understand that this is not some "schmeme" this is reality and we must act now. It was as if I had imparted something totally foreign to him. People need to turn off their reality tv shows and start reading. I am at least grateful that I have also had conversations with other people who totally understand this crisis however, they don't know HOW to help. We are destroying ourselves and it is as if we are frozen in time waiting for it to happen.

I really am at the point where I don't know what to say anymore. I can totally understand Mr. Gore's urgency on this and his travelling the world to tell people about this and not allowing anything to interfere with that focus and mission. How long will it take Congress to end their partisan bickering over this? There is no best bill there is only one bill... STOP carbon emissions now and give incentives to those who do now and FINE those who do not and use that revenue to allow the poor the tools they need to help in this.

Now, I know the movie The Day After Tomorrow was extreme, but the main character in it was also warning people and the government about what was coming and he was ignored as well. Down through history this has been the case as well. When do we learn? I really am beginning to believe that a catastrophe of a proportion even greater than Katrina has to happen, and I most certainly am praying that we do not see that because we are not ready for it... but then, even should that happen and hundreds of thousands become displaced or are killed, all some people will do is use it to a poltical advantage. Sorry for going on, but I am so very frustrated by all of this. I honestly think Mr. Gore should have been banging his fists on that table last week to make them understand. But then of course, this complicit media would only have called him nuts. Such is our dilemma.