Ruskin and the Great Meltdown

RUSKIN, THE PROPHETIC PROPHET AND THE GREAT
MELTDOWN

(Add Drawing of Penguins ? )



THE TYNDALL CENTRE AT THE WHITE HOUSE

Robert Walmsley

In the Preface to The Queen of the Air, published in 1869, Ruskin writes :

‘This first day of May, 1869, I am writing where my work was begun thirty-five years ago, within sight of the snows of the higher Alps. In that half of the permitted life of man, I have seen strange evil brought upon every scene that I best loved, or tried to make beloved by others. The light which once flushed those pale summits with its rose at dawn, and purple at sunset, is now umbered and faint; the air which once inlaid the clefts of all their golden crags with azure is now defiled with languid coils of smoke, belched from worse than volcanic fires; their very glacier waves are ebbing, and their snows fading, as if Hell had breathed on them…’(LE19.293)

He comes back to this question in Fors, Letter 34, La Douce Dame, of oct 1873, §11, (LE27.635) , where he writes : ‘More than the life of Switzerland,—its very snows,—eternal, as one foolishly called them,—are passing away, as if in omen of evil. One-third, at least, in the depth of all the ice of the Alps has been lost in the last twenty years; and the change of climate thus indicated is without any parallel in authentic history. In its bearings on the water supply and atmospheric conditions of central Europe, it is the most
important phenomenon, by far, of all that offer themselves to the study of living men of science: yet in Professor Tyndall’s recent work on the glaciers 1 though he notices the change as one which, “if continued, will reduce the Swiss glaciers to the mere spectres of their former selves,” he offers no evidence, nor even suggestion, as to the causes of the change itself.’


In fact Tyndall attributed the phenomenon to natural climatic variations.

Ruskin certainly attributed the change to human activity related to the Industrial Revolution, though he seems to attribute the cause directly to the heat emanating from these activities, rather than to the artificial increase in the greenhouse effect, of which he seems not to have had any knowledge.

This seems to make him the first to have suggested that human activity related to the Industrial Revolution was having a negative effect on the environment to the point of modifying the climate.

In this respect he was ahead of the scientists of the day.

The exactitude of theses observations of Tyndall’s and Ruskin’s has been confirmed by modern scientific observation.



1 The Forms of Water, 1872. [Preface.]







According to the latest report the World Glacier Monitoring Service
(WGMS) in Zurich, Europe's Alps could lose three quarters of their glaciers to climate
change during the coming century.

In the 1850s, according to the WGMS report, nearly 4,474 sq km of the Alps were glaciated.
By the 1970s, the area covered had fallen to just under 2,903 sq km, and in 2000, it was down to 2,272 sq km.
From 1850 to the 1970s, there is an average loss of 2.9% per decade.

This has become now a world wide mind boggling phenomenon.
I. WATER SUPPLY PROBLEMS
The Himalayas contain the world's third largest ice mass — after Antarctica and Greenland. Most Himalayan glaciers have been thinning and retreating over the past 30 years, with losses accelerating to alarming levels in the past decade.
As the glaciers melt, they are rapidly filling glacial lakes, creating a flood risk. An international team of scientists has warned that, with current melt rates, at least 44 glacial lakes in the Himalayas could burst their banks in as little as five years.
Glaciers themselves store vast quantities of water. More than half of the world's population relies on water that originates in mountains, coming from rainfall runoff or ice melt.
In some areas, glaciers help sustain a constant water supply. In others, meltwater from glaciers is a primary water source during the dry season.
In the short term, accelerated melting means that more water feeds rivers. Yet as glaciers disappear, dry season river flow declines.
The Himalayan glaciers feed the seven major rivers of Asia — the Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze and Huang He (Yellow) — and thus contribute to the year-round water supply of a vast population.
In India alone, some 500 million people, including those in New Delhi and Calcutta, depend on glacier meltwater that feeds into the Ganges River system.
Glaciers in Central Asia's Tien Shan Mountains have shrunk by nearly 30% between 1955 and 1990. In arid western China, shrinking glaciers account for at least 10% of freshwater supplies.
II. RISING SEA LEVEL

On the opposite end of the globe, Southern Ocean sea ice floating near Antarctica has shrunk by some 20% since 1950.
This unprecedented melting of sea ice corroborates records showing that the regional air temperature has increased by 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1950.

Antarctic ice shelves that existed for thousands of years are crumbling. One of the world's largest icebergs — named B-15 and measuring near 10,000 square kilometers (4,000 square miles) or half the size of New Jersey — calved off the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000.
In May 2002, the shelf lost another section measuring 31 kilometers (19 miles) wide and 200 kilometers (124 miles) long.
Elsewhere on Antarctica, the Larsen Ice Shelf has largely disintegrated within the last decade, shrinking to 40% of its previously stable size.
The Larsen ice shelf is a long, fringing ice shelf in the north west part of the Waddell sea.
The Larsen B ice shelf appears in the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow, and is referenced in A Gore’s environmental documentary film An Inconvenient Truth
Following the break-off of the Larsen A section in 1995 and the collapse of Larsen B in early 2002, melting of the nearby land-based glaciers that the ice shelves once supported has more than doubled.
Unlike the melting of sea ice or the floating ice shelves along coasts, the melting of ice on land raises the sea level.
Recent studies showing the worldwide acceleration of glacier melting indicate that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's estimate for sea level rise this century — ranging from 0.1 meters to 0.9 meters — will need to be revised upwards. (See http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update32_data.htm other for other examples of ice melt around the world)

On Greenland, an ice-covered island six times the size of Great Britain, once-stable glaciers are now melting at a quickening rate.
The Jakobshavn Glacier on the island's southwest coast, which is one of the major drainage outlets from the interior ice sheet, is now thinning four times faster than during most of the 20th century.

Each year, Greenland loses some 51 cubic kilometers of ice — enough to annually raise sea level 0.13 millimeters. Were Greenland's entire ice sheet to melt, global sea level could rise by a startling 7 meters (23 feet) — inundating most of the world's coastal cities.

Ruskin’s attribution of the cause of the diminution to the Industrial Revolution, in its correct form of the artificial greenhouse effect, has been confirmed, to the satisfaction of 99% of the scientific community, after the complex scientific research during the 19th and 20th centuries culminating in the 1950’s and 60’s 1.


1. See Spencer Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming, 2003, Harvard University Press

EARTH DAY, RIO DE JANEIRO, 1992,
KYOTO PROTOCOL, 1997


In 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, the United Nations held a Conference on Environment and Development, known as the Earth Summit.

This was described as “a historic moment for humanity”.

An important achievement was an agreement on the Framework Climate Change Convention, which led to the Kyoto Protocol, in 1997.


This assigned mandatory targets for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to signatory nations.
Countries that ratify the protocol commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases.
The object is the "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system", (art. 2 of the UNFCCC)
The USA, although a signatory to the protocol, has not ratified it. The signature alone is symbolic, as the protocol is non-binding over the United States unless ratified.
The Bush administration has refused modify this position taken up under the Clinton administration.


One of the reasons Bush puts forward to justify his position is that he considers that the evidence is still not totally conclusive concerning the anthropogenic origin of the increase

In a declaration made in 2001 just before a trip to meet with the disgruntled leaders of Europe, Bush agreed that there is warming of the climate, and that there has been an increase in greenhouse gases, especially CO2, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, in large part due to human activity, which undoubtedly contributes to this warming of the climate, but there is also argued Bush, a Natural greenhouse effect and we don’t know for sure what is the relative proportion of each of these two Greenhouse Effects in this warming of the climate, and moreover we don’t know at what point this warming becomes negative.
So, on this occasion, Bush announced that his administration was indeed going to do something on global warming. It would research the subject further.

PENTAGON REPORT

On the 22 february 2004 the Observer published an article, by Townsend and Harris entitled “ Now the Pentagon tells Bush : Climate Change will destroy us.”
· ‘Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
· Britain will be ‘Siberian’ in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism ”



Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural catastrophes, it declared
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism,
'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'
‘Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors ’ of the report.
‘An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be consideredimmediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions. ’
‘The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades’, who has become increasingly exasperated with the of the Bush administration over climate change problems.

VISIT OF EMINENT UK SCIENTIST FROM THE TYNDALL CENTRE TO THE WHITE HOUSE

As part of an intensifying drive by the scientific community to get the US to treat the issue seriously, the Observer article also mentions the visit of a group of UK scientists to the White House to voice their fears about global warming.
Among these scientists present at the White House talks were Professor John Schellnhuber, former environmental adviser to the German government and distinguished science advisor
at UK’s leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

He said that it was to be hoped that the Pentagon report might prove to be the tipping point in making Bush take the problem of (anthropogenic) human induced climate change seriously.

Neither the Pentagon report or the Tyndall Centre visit seem to have had any effect.
Perhaps some Ruskinian eloquence might have helped.
In any case we will probably have to wait till the next presidential elections in 2008 for the question to be seriously taken up again.

But time is running out.

Ruskin and the Great