What a beautiful piece Ricky. Heartbreaking when we think about it- how we're wrecking the planet. There's just too many of us. But that might change soon as a new feedback loop kicks in that reduces our numbers.
It’s not so much the numbers of us, as it is the apparent inability of our still primitive brains (with some exceptions) to comprehend the situations into which we are putting ourselves and the planet.
Thank you for the elegant descriptive writing of climbing in Patagonia. Like you, for me, the wilderness experience is humbling. Nature is so vast and powerful, and we are so small. We enter such realms treading very carefully, knowing a misstep may cause injury. Having the right gear is everything. We accomplish the difficult only by working together with intense focus on the immediate.
Despite the ravages of climate change, your world remains the same as it was 34 years ago.
I and five others have sailed in a 100-foot ketch across Drake's Passage to Antarctica. Here, in the narrowest passage of the circumpolar ocean, the current freight-trains along at 182,000,000 cubic meters per second. For comparison, the Amazon River flows approximately 219,000 cubic meters of water per second. Through Drake’s Passage, the flow is equivalent to 831 Amazon Rivers, and we don’t care. These are the roughest waters in the world because the world turns and the current flows in a complete circle around the world unimpeded by anything. Elsewhere in the world’s ocean, water masses of different densities (temperature and salinity) rise and fall to drive currents around. But here, it is simple mechanics revved up by a spinning planet.
The massive calving ice sheets are found in McMurdo Sound and the Ross Sea, away from the Antarctic Current. They melt slowly during the three summer months and then sea water freezes. (no freshwater forcing) The largest berg was the size of Delaware. Icebergs do not represent a freshwater rush, as the article suggested. They contain streams of fresh water that do not have much time to puddle on the surface before mixing into the briny deep. Diving penguins assist in mixing the fresh water with salt water.
Note the fine print: in a high-emissions future run by Australia’s fastest supercomputer and climate simulator, the assumption is that in a worst-case emissions scenario, everything will stay the same, only amplified, for a century. However, things are not static. The simulator likely generated a range of scenarios. The authors cherry-picked the one that pleases their funders/publishers.
To get legislators to address climate change, their constituents must see the local effects and be vocal with their neighbors. The legislator will listen, not to mountaineers and sailors, but to people who are their own tip of icebergs with family, friends, social groups and colleagues, many in the legislator’s district.
Please climb on and keep on writing with more observations.
What a beautiful piece Ricky. Heartbreaking when we think about it- how we're wrecking the planet. There's just too many of us. But that might change soon as a new feedback loop kicks in that reduces our numbers.
It’s not so much the numbers of us, as it is the apparent inability of our still primitive brains (with some exceptions) to comprehend the situations into which we are putting ourselves and the planet.
Thank you because even though this is frightening, it must be known about in order to be acted on. Aren't I an optimist?
Thank you for the elegant descriptive writing of climbing in Patagonia. Like you, for me, the wilderness experience is humbling. Nature is so vast and powerful, and we are so small. We enter such realms treading very carefully, knowing a misstep may cause injury. Having the right gear is everything. We accomplish the difficult only by working together with intense focus on the immediate.
Despite the ravages of climate change, your world remains the same as it was 34 years ago.
I and five others have sailed in a 100-foot ketch across Drake's Passage to Antarctica. Here, in the narrowest passage of the circumpolar ocean, the current freight-trains along at 182,000,000 cubic meters per second. For comparison, the Amazon River flows approximately 219,000 cubic meters of water per second. Through Drake’s Passage, the flow is equivalent to 831 Amazon Rivers, and we don’t care. These are the roughest waters in the world because the world turns and the current flows in a complete circle around the world unimpeded by anything. Elsewhere in the world’s ocean, water masses of different densities (temperature and salinity) rise and fall to drive currents around. But here, it is simple mechanics revved up by a spinning planet.
The massive calving ice sheets are found in McMurdo Sound and the Ross Sea, away from the Antarctic Current. They melt slowly during the three summer months and then sea water freezes. (no freshwater forcing) The largest berg was the size of Delaware. Icebergs do not represent a freshwater rush, as the article suggested. They contain streams of fresh water that do not have much time to puddle on the surface before mixing into the briny deep. Diving penguins assist in mixing the fresh water with salt water.
Note the fine print: in a high-emissions future run by Australia’s fastest supercomputer and climate simulator, the assumption is that in a worst-case emissions scenario, everything will stay the same, only amplified, for a century. However, things are not static. The simulator likely generated a range of scenarios. The authors cherry-picked the one that pleases their funders/publishers.
To get legislators to address climate change, their constituents must see the local effects and be vocal with their neighbors. The legislator will listen, not to mountaineers and sailors, but to people who are their own tip of icebergs with family, friends, social groups and colleagues, many in the legislator’s district.
Please climb on and keep on writing with more observations.