Greenland’s new island

April 25th, 2007  |  Published in Current Events, Nature, Ecology, Science  |  3 Comments

Greenland has a new island, which has been named “Warming Island.” Here’s an excerpt from the news article:

The map of Greenland will have to be redrawn. A new island has appeared off its coast, suddenly separated from the mainland by the melting of Greenland’s enormous ice sheet, a development that is being seen as the most alarming sign of global warming.

Several miles long, the island was once thought to be the tip of a peninsula halfway up Greenland’s remote east coast but a glacier joining it to the mainland has melted away completely, leaving it surrounded by sea….

As the satellite pictures and the main photo which we publish today make clear, Warming Island has been created by a quite undeniable, rapid and enormous physical transformation and is likely to be seen around the world as a potent symbol of the coming effects of climate change.

But it is only one more example of the disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet, that scientists have begun to realise, only very recently, is proceeding far more rapidly than anyone thought.

Whether humans are the “main cause” or not, would it really hurt for us to stop being wasteful and polluting our beautiful home?

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  1. Frank Martens says:

    April 26th, 2007 at 11:39 am (#)

    Josh,

    I never did answer your previous question/response to my outragouse statement that I didn’t think that Global Warming was more of an Alarmist thing then anything.

    Anyway… yea I agree, us humans do need to take care of our home better. I think some of that is being done and could be done better. But I also had another thought… if Global Warming happens and ICE sheets melt, etc… does that mean global catastrophic flood? My only question is… Didn’t God promise not to flood the earth in such a catastrophic way again?

    Just a thought.

    Grace and Peace to you!

  2. Josh Sowin says:

    April 26th, 2007 at 11:54 am (#)

    Frank,

    Yes, there would be global flooding if the ice sheets melted. In that article it says:

    The second-largest ice sheet in the world (after Antarctica), if its entire 2.5 million cubic kilometres of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 metres, or more than 23 feet.

    That would inundate most of the world’s coastal cities, including London, swamp vast areas of heavily-populated low-lying land in countries such as Bangladesh, and remove several island countries such as the Maldives from the face of the Earth. However, even a rise one tenth as great would have devastating consequences.

    Sea level rise is already accelerating. Sea levels are going up around the world by about 3.1mm per year - the average for the period 1993-2003. That is itself sharply up from an average of 1.8mm per year over the longer period 1961-2003. Greenland ice now accounts for about 0.5 millimetre of the total. (Much of the rest of the rise is coming from the expansion of the world’s sea water as it warms.)

    As for your question about God, he never promised there would never be floods again (there have been many through history!). In Genesis 8 God said “Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done.” In Genesis 9 God says, “And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.”

    So God doesn’t say he won’t send floods — he says he won’t send any more that destroy “all flesh.”

    Thanks for reading!

    Josh

  3. Frank Martens says:

    April 26th, 2007 at 12:04 pm (#)

    Josh,

    yes, this is true… I still need to put more thought into it, but my hesitancy comes in the “devastating consequences” part. How devistating? Would be the question, again I need to put more thought into it and maybe hashing this out with someone.

    Anyway, grace and peace and thanks for replying.

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