As we begin to head into fall (only a month away now), Antarctica is heading into spring – if you can call tons of ice and glaciers spring. But much of that ice is melting. One glacier in particularis beig closely watched. The Thwaites Glacier,called by some the “Doomsday Glacier,” for its potential to raise sea levels upon a melt.
Some scientists feared it would collapse like dominoes but even though it contributes to 4% of sea level rise, it is buttressed by the ice cliff stability of other glaciers, for the time being. The Thwaites bedrock sits below sea level, but it slopes inward; once the glacier begins losing more ice than it gets from snowfall, the slope becomes accentuated, so that the ice on top is not supported as well.
Both poles are warming faster than our temperate zones, though it won’t feel so temperate this weekend we have another heat wave. What we do here has a real effect on the rest of the globe, even Antarctica, a concept some politicians comprehend.
Prayer for the Day
Ah, Lord, how we view the world you have given us,
So often wondering what faraway places affect us;
In the cool of the morning, so much seems the same,
But insidiously, our neglect has its consequences.
We need more than rousing, O God, for in places we do not know,
Our future is being affected in ways we dot comprehend.
In the name of the One who is the Fount of Wisdom,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
The more we heat up the planet, the more it costs all of us, not Justin money, but in the colossal famines, displacements, deaths, and species extinctions, as well as in the loss of some things that make this planet a blue-green jewel, including its specialized habitats from the melting Arctic to bleaching coral reefs.
Rebecca Solnit, writer, historian, activist
Glaciers are almost gone from Glacier National Park
Donella Meadows, American environmental scientist (1941-2001)
By your strength you answer us with deliverance, O God of our salvation;
You are the hope of all the ends of the earth, and of the farthest seas.
By your strength you established the mountains; you are girded with might.
You silence the roaring of the seas the roaring of their waves,
The tumult of the peoples.
Psalm 65: 5-7
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