Alicia Silverstone and PETA

Low Cost Flights? Part II

From time to time I have to refresh my memory respect to the harmful that flights are. Here I summarize you, because of royalties, a post sent by a reader to a spanish magazine whose name is CNR. You can find the writing in the 114th number in August 2006. I imagine you can find the report in the previous number.

OK, so, let's go.... The sender expressed her outrage when she realized that flying 1000 kms pollutes the equivalent to the bills of a whole year on electricity, heating and land transport during two and a half years. When she thought of the damage that an irrational usage of planes cause to the environment, she wondered whether it's worthy to live thinking about your daily acts to cause the smaller damage to the environment. Is it worthy to recycle, switch off lights or ride a bicycle? She compared the situation as giving aspirines to a terminal patient.....

By the way, the article had an excellent title: "Flying to the abyss". In the moment I wrote this post in Spanish, it was an update on CO2 emissions and those from the transport seemed to have increased. No long time ago, the transport emissions represented a 15% of the whole, in that moment it seemed that it got 25% even there was some survey which pointed to 40%. In any case, it seems that aviation was and is increasing its emissions year after year, so it should be a must for many people to get a plane as much once a year. By the way, domestic flights please do not. In Spain we could do it, perhaps... with an exception... Canarias Islands.

More about Canada's Slaughter

Faster than Expected

Just as we get more knowledge about past climate and how the biosphere works and just as we get more powerful computers to mix all these things and make them to run together, we realize once and another that changes are happening faster than we thought last time. The British Antartic Survey released the following information some days ago.

British Antarctic Survey has captured dramatic satellite and video images of an Antarctic ice shelf that looks set to be the latest to break out from the Antarctic Peninsula. A large part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula is now supported only by a thin strip of ice hanging between two islands. It is another identifiable impact of climate change on the

Antarctic environment.

Scientists monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf spotted that a huge (41 by 2.5 km) km2 berg the size of the Isle of Man appears to have broken away in recent days - it is still on the move.

Glaciologist Ted Scambos from the University of Colorado alerted colleagues Professor David Vaughan and Andrew Fleming of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) that the ice shelf looked at risk. After checking daily satellite pictures, BAS sent a Twin Otter aircraft on a reconnaissance mission to check out the extent of the breakout.

Professor Vaughan, who in 1993 predicted that the northern part of Wilkins Ice Shelf was likely to be lost within 30 years if climate warming on the Peninsula were to continue at the same rate, says, "Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened. I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread - we'll know

in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be."

Jim Elliott was onboard the BAS Twin Otter to capture video of the breakout for Vaughan and colleagues. He says, "I've never seen anything like this before - it was awesome. We flew along the main crack and observed the sheer scale of movement from the breakage. Big hefty chunks of ice, the size of small houses, look as though they've been thrown around like rubble - it's like an explosion."

The breakout is the latest drama in a region of Antarctica that has experienced unprecedented warming over the last 50 years. Several ice shelves have retreated in the past 30 years - six of them collapsing completely (Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and the Jones Ice Shelf.)

Professor Vaughan continues, "Climate warming in the Antarctic Peninsula has pushed the limit of viability for ice shelves further south - setting some of them that used to be stable on a course of retreat and eventual loss. The Wilkins breakout won't have any effect on sea-level because it is floating already, but it is another indication of the impact that climate change is having on the region." Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado says, "We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years. But warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing a break-up."

Here you have some things that were told on TV.