The Guardian is reporting the conclusions of new research which has calculated the loss of ice on the planet over the last 30 years: “A total of 28 trillion tonnes of ice have disappeared from the surface of the Earth since 1994.” The researchers looked at satellite images of the poles and glacier ice to reach that conclusion. The implications of this process, which the researchers attribute to global warming caused by human activity, are potentially devastating to large numbers of people:
“The scientists – based at Leeds and Edinburgh universities and University College London – describe the level of ice loss as “staggering” and warn that their analysis indicates that sea level rises, triggered by melting glaciers and ice sheets, could reach a metre by the end of the century.
“’To put that in context, every centimetre of sea level rise means about a million people will be displaced from their low-lying homelands,’ said Professor Andy Shepherd, director of Leeds University’s Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling.”
According to the researchers: “The level of ice loss revealed by the group matches the worst-case-scenario predictions outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).” We are long past the time to think that climate change is sometime in the future. The wildfires in California and Colorado are clearly related to warming and dry temperatures. Texas and Louisiana are bracing for potential hurricanes Marco and Laura on Tuesday and Wednesday, hurricanes fueled by water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico close to 90F. Unfortunately, many of the worst emitters of greenhouse gases, such as the US, are unwilling to take any steps to avoid a desperate situation by mid-century.
World Politics News 
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