Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Glaciers Doing What All Life Does - Change

Researchers funded by NASA have been monitoring what you may've heard things about - Greenland's J-Isbrae glacier, and their latest report tells us a 7-square kilometer (that's 2.7 miles!) section has been broken to pieces as seen in above images.



W
e've been monitoring changes in the arctic glacial sheets for some time, and while this new one isn't unusual, the amount of ice lost is roughly 1/8th the size of Manhattan. Gives you a different outlook.

What makes this noteworthy is because it occurs on the heels of a warm winter which saw no ice forming. Also, it lends credence to the theory that the warming of the oceans is responsible for ice-loss. This is not unnatural for the planet as it's happened long before life got a foothold here. Heating and cooling, over and over. Complex life was billions of years in the future. But it exists now, so consider: When sheet ice from snow, or fresh water, mixes with salted sea water, ocean fish exposed to this mixture swell up and die.
Yet it's actually a good/bad condition. Some marine life will benefit for awhile from the thick pad of phytoplankton (food for whales among others) and animals from all over the globe feast on the salad bar. Yet it's out of natural order, which has handled the cycles of life and death in its perfect geological time for eons. Our marine life will be the first to be effected by the dangers of this imbalance in life and its food. Watching the seas is a wise predictor of what lies ahead for earth.

Life also exists because predators do. They exist because of prey, keeping herds healthy, numbers in balance. No life should have to starve because there's too many of them and not enough natural predation. Worse, when there is more life because of an over-abundance of a food source, a harmonious balance is disturbed. It will, of course, affect humans, for a very long time.



Saturday, July 3, 2010

Somebody Bless America Damn It!!

The next time I find myself whining and whimpering about all the crapola that's wrong with this country, purposefully spelling it Amerika and poking jive remarks about immigration and who should be speaking English if they live here, and on and on...when that happens again, and it will, I'm going to kick myself. And that's not easy. But here's why:

Whether the 4th of July is the birth of Columbia as this land was first named, whether it's been stripped and straddled and broken and bruised, whether people come here for a free lunch or not, THIS IS AND ALWAYS WILL BE THE LAND OF MY BIRTH AND THAT'S GOT TO MEAN SOMETHING.

Every God Bless America, Land of the Potential in us All.