Evidence pointing to the reality of human caused environmental change is increasingly streaming through global media outlets and information sources. The pitch, volume and intensity are escalating, as are, the actual phenomena being reported. Changes are occurring far more rapidly and severely than scientists predicted. Natural events do not unfold or progress in a linear manner. They involve the interplay of, literally, an infinite number of variables, contributing to completely unpredictable, often unanticipated, outcomes.
For example: It is a fact that that warming ocean water has undermined and detached a huge segment of the Antarctic ice sheet from the underlying land mass causing it to begin sliding into the surrounding sea. It is a fact that the momentum of this massive glacial shift is now irreversible, unstoppable, inevitable and nonlinear.
(CNN) Tuesday May 13, 2014:
New research shows a major section of west Antarctica's ice sheet will completely melt in coming centuries and probably raise sea levels higher than previously predicted . . . warm ocean currents and geographic peculiarities have helped kick off a chain reaction at the Amundsen Sea-area glaciers, melting them faster than previously realized and pushing them "past the point of no return," NASA glaciologist Eric Rignot told reporters. "The system (becomes) a chain reaction that is unstoppable, (with) every process of retreat feeding the next one," Rignot said.
New variable: underground volcanoes. Researchers, Don Schroeder and co-author Don Blankenship at University of Texas at Austin, say: "It's the most complex thermal environment you might imagine," said Blankenship. "And then you plop the most critical dynamically unstable ice sheet on planet Earth in the middle of this thing, and then you try to model it. It's virtually impossible."
Then there is Greenland.
The New York Times, May 19, 2014:
Greenland, with 10 percent of the world's ice, has enough to raise sea level by 23 feet. Researchers from Dartmouth found that another side effect from global warming, forest fires, made the melting even worse. Soot from fires elsewhere in the world landed on Greenland snow, making it darker, causing it to absorb more heat. A new study of Greenland, published Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, paints an even bleaker picture. The melting is accelerated because many of the glaciers flow in the warming waters around Greenland.
Living species are becoming extinct at an alarming rate.
PBS NewsHour, June 1, 2014:
Hari Sreenivasan -
"Plant and animal extinctions are happening at a rate 1000 times greater than before humans walked the Earth. This according to new research published in the journal Science this week. The planet has been through five major extinctions before, and scientists now think we are on the cusp of a sixth."
Newsweek, Earth Heading for Another Mass Extinction, Scientists Warn- by Zoë Schlanger, Filed March 30, 2014:
Last year, a U.S. government study found that amphibians in the U.S. are dying off so quickly that they could disappear from half of their habitats within the next two decades. Warming oceans and acidification mean coral reefs may face extinction within the century, and in 2006, a study concluded that saltwater fish will be entirely extinct by 2048.
If you feel that the government might offer viable solutions to remedy the rapid disappearance of native species, check out this stunning example of their wisdom and vision.
Google News, (6/8/14):By Justin Beach, Daily Digest News, Sunday, June 08, 2014:
The U.S. Dept ofAgriculture Wildlife Service killed four million animals in 2013. Last year's cull included more than 300 wolves, 75,000 coyotes, 400 bears, 800 bobcats, 500 river otters, 3,500 foxes, 12,000 prairie dogs and four eagles. In total, since 2006, the program has killed 26 million native non-invasive animals.
"These numbers pull back the veil on a staggering killing campaign, bankrolled by taxpayers, that's happening every day beyond the view of most Americans," said Amy Atwood, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity.
UPI, By Brooks Hays, June 9, 2014:
"The majority of killed animals are native species, and most of them are killed to protect the assets of ranchers and farmers. Often, coyotes and foxes are killed en masse on the behest of an overprotective cattle-owner."
So, here we are, going about our daily business, as usual in a world whose ability to sustain life, as we know it, has been irreversibly unbalanced and diminished. The scientific world is in agreement. We have set in motion, irreversible, unstoppable, environmental change on a global scale.
If there is one impersonal law or rule that seems to prevail, as a constant, in nature, it is the tendency of all natural systems to seek and reestablish balance.The complex, interconnected factors and elements that make up the web of life or ecosystem on earth will inevitably seek balance. Wether or not that process will include items of the former cycle is unknowable, as is, the timetable for the unfolding of this scenario. What we do have, here and now, is a powerful and perhaps, final signal, to awaken from the delusional dream of human superiority and separateness to evolve.
Joseph Carlisi's book, Playing God on the Eve of Extinction, available from Amazon: provides a thorough examination of the topics of human behavior and evolution.