Weather and Climate Part 1 of 2
Today is Blog Action Day. One day a year, thousands bloggers from around the world choose to blog about a single theme to millions of readers. Alone we can't make a difference but together, we can bring attention to climate change, a pressing problem for our planet.
Not only is the polar ice melting like crazy, glaciers everywhere are in rapid retreat. As they melt, new gemstones are revealed like the rubies in Greenland I wrote about before. A new type of rose quartz called Nirvana quartz or Himalayan ice quartz was discovered a few years ago at high altitudes in the Kullu region of India when the ice there thawed.
The quartz is either white or pale rose in color and look like chunks of ice. Shown here is a specimen from Crystal-wizard.com. This quartz is prized by New Agers for its ability to "remove stuck energies".
The Himalayan region is sometimes known as the "third pole" because they lock up the largest volume of ice after the polar regions. Huge freshwater lakes have appeared where there was once just solid ice. 27 of them are classified as dangerous because if the natural rock dams called moraines fail, the Sherpa population in those valleys are at risk from flooding and landslides. Far more catastrophic is the eventual loss of glacial water feeding major Asian rivers such as the Ganges and Indus in India, the Mekong in South East Asia and the Yangtze in China. The resulting droughts will affect 1.3 billion people in those areas.
Climate change is caused by industrialized areas in parts of the world. Scientists also worry about the extra and huge carbon load on the planet as methane is released when permafrost thaws. The effects are felt everywhere even in the most remote places. The consequence of not doing something to stop global warming over the long term is dire.
However the message getting out there is not quite right. It's not about saving the planet. It is about saving us.
The planet will endure but humans may not be around to see its eventual recovery. David Jablonski, a palaeontologist at the University of Chicago who studies mass extinctions of the distant past, says that the lifeforms which survive are usually small, breed quickly and best able to take advantage of the changed habitats. He says,"It's a rats, weeds and cockroaches kind of world."
References
Original Post by THE BEADING GEM
Jewelry Making Tips - Jewelry Business Tips
Today is Blog Action Day. One day a year, thousands bloggers from around the world choose to blog about a single theme to millions of readers. Alone we can't make a difference but together, we can bring attention to climate change, a pressing problem for our planet.
Not only is the polar ice melting like crazy, glaciers everywhere are in rapid retreat. As they melt, new gemstones are revealed like the rubies in Greenland I wrote about before. A new type of rose quartz called Nirvana quartz or Himalayan ice quartz was discovered a few years ago at high altitudes in the Kullu region of India when the ice there thawed.The quartz is either white or pale rose in color and look like chunks of ice. Shown here is a specimen from Crystal-wizard.com. This quartz is prized by New Agers for its ability to "remove stuck energies".
The Himalayan region is sometimes known as the "third pole" because they lock up the largest volume of ice after the polar regions. Huge freshwater lakes have appeared where there was once just solid ice. 27 of them are classified as dangerous because if the natural rock dams called moraines fail, the Sherpa population in those valleys are at risk from flooding and landslides. Far more catastrophic is the eventual loss of glacial water feeding major Asian rivers such as the Ganges and Indus in India, the Mekong in South East Asia and the Yangtze in China. The resulting droughts will affect 1.3 billion people in those areas.
Climate change is caused by industrialized areas in parts of the world. Scientists also worry about the extra and huge carbon load on the planet as methane is released when permafrost thaws. The effects are felt everywhere even in the most remote places. The consequence of not doing something to stop global warming over the long term is dire.
However the message getting out there is not quite right. It's not about saving the planet. It is about saving us.
The planet will endure but humans may not be around to see its eventual recovery. David Jablonski, a palaeontologist at the University of Chicago who studies mass extinctions of the distant past, says that the lifeforms which survive are usually small, breed quickly and best able to take advantage of the changed habitats. He says,"It's a rats, weeds and cockroaches kind of world."
References
- Captured on camera : 50 years of climate change in the Himalayas
- No rainforest, no monsoon, get ready for a warmer world
- Post-human Earth : How the planet will recover from us
Original Post by THE BEADING GEM
Jewelry Making Tips - Jewelry Business Tips
Fascinating stuff!
ReplyDelete-Stephanie
Wow, who would have thought that in the midst of our devastating glacial losses something beautiful, such as the Nirvana quartz, would be discovered!
ReplyDelete