Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Massive ice shelf on verge of breakup
This story was on the front page of cnn.com today and I found it to be quite alarming. I feel like this article encompasses everything that people talk about in regards to global warming, but it has never felt so real to me until I saw this article. The article describes how a piece of Antarctic ice shelf (220 square miles) has just recently collapsed. The pictures of the ice shelf "hanging by a thread" is extremely unsettling. The scientists interviewed discuss how this is just the beginning of the drastic consequences of global warming. This article also reminded me of the first paper we had to write for this class because it dealt with issues of global warming, as well as the newfound difficulties that the affected plants and animals are now facing.
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4 comments:
It seemed to me that this article trivialized the effect of global climate change and the effects it has on wildlife. The exact words were "Wildlife will be impacted, but they are pretty adept at dealing with a topsy-turvy world," and "The ecosystem is pretty resilient." I'm not claiming to be well-read on the environment of this area, however, I know I have seen information on birds that are definitely not adapting well to the results of climate changes in the Antarctic. Moreover, I think this quote might lead some people to generalize that animals in all areas can adapt easily to the ecosystem alterations caused by global climate changes. Contrary to this, many animals are not adapting and are facing significant population declines as a result of even very minute climate changes. ( I took a class on birds and climate change that spent an entire semester examining the problems that birds are facing due to global climate change...if anyone is interested in the book we used, it was called 'Birds and Climate Change' and one of the authors was Moller.)
Although the article may trivialize wildlife, it does provide a specific, and daunting example of the effects of global warming. An ice shelf “seven times the size of Manhattan” is certainly not chump change in terms of ice break ups. Unfortunately, while articles like this are informing the public about the negative impacts of global warming, there are also those who also believe global warming is a hoax. CNN recently covered the Heartland Institutes conference for global warming skeptics. The term skeptic in this context is irrelevant and misleading. All scientists are trained to use skepticism in their research. It was not an arbitrary decision when the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, composed of hundreds of scientists from around the world, came to the consensus that global warming was indeed a very real and man-made problem. Hopefully, messages like the story above (an ice shelf seven times the size of Manhattan!) will resonate with the public, as opposed to the fringe movement to discount global warming as a “hoax.”
A similar article was on the front page of the Washington Post website. In regards to what keminkkm said, I agree that the scientists quote could be misconstrued. However, it is located pretty far into the article, and a lot of people don't read articles in their entirety. As result, many readers may not read the quote at all. I think that the author did a good job of conveying all of the important information and the seriousness of what was happening to the environment at the beginning of the article.
I definitely agree with the previous comments. Some of the terminology was extremely vague and didn’t give the public a good idea at all of the severity of the situation, yet other language used in this article did indeed provide sufficient examples of just how serious the situation is. However, I feel that the article on the whole, though a little “flip-floppy” at some parts, used mostly strong examples to explain the situation in a way that accurately portrayed global warming consequences and was easy to understand for the general public. The prime example was probably the opening quote: “an ice shelf about seven times the size of Manhattan is ‘hanging by a thread’”.
Some sections that were not as effective were the parts that used the norm of Disinterestedness described by Merton with statements such as: “Even though they seem far away, changes in the polar regions could have an impact on both hemispheres, with sea level rise and changes in climate patterns,", as well as the statements quoted in an earlier post about wildlife being able to “adapt” to the changing climate.
That being said, however, I think that this article was mostly effective. The few examples it gave to explain the situation in my opinion outweigh the vague examples that it also includes. Furthermore, on a personal level, it opened my eyes to just how fast some of the climate change consequences are actually occurring and the picture it provided also helped to reinforce my own uneasiness about the situation and my motivation to continue to keep up with sustainable practices and living.
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