Shocking new research from the US predicts that the Arctic could be ice-free in summer as early as 2013, almost 30 years earlier than previously estimated.
The study, conducted by Professor Wieslaw Maslowski from the US Naval Postgraduate School in California, does not even incorporate data from the two worst summers for Arctic ice coverage, 2005 and this year, leaving Maslowski to believe that even this prediction may be conservative.
The professor told the BBC that he believes other previous climate models have underestimated the speed at which warm water is moving into the Arctic basin and that positive feedback mechanisms are contributing to faster levels of ice melt than previously thought.
More troubling than this, however, is the possibility that predictions on the Greenland Ice Sheet melting could be equally conservative and therefore inaccurate.
Current predictions say it won't melt until around 2100, but bring that forward a few decades and the apocalyptic scenes from the movie The Day After Tomorrow may not be too fanciful.
Scientists around the world agree that the disappearance of the 3km-thick Greenland Ice Sheet would cause about a 7m rise in global sea levels -- enough to inundate several major cities including London, New York, Bombay and Tokyo. Large parts of the Netherlands, Bangladesh and Florida would also disappear.
Such a rise in sea levels would also threaten low-lying areas of Taiwan, most notably the western plains where most of the population lives.
This startling news came as 190 countries from around the world gathered in Bali to try to thrash out a road map to a successor to the Kyoto Protocol that would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to levels that will hopefully minimize the effects of serious climate change.
But negotiations have stalled as the US has rejected a proposal that requires industrial nations to cut emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020. The prospects of a deal that would set cuts anywhere near what are needed seem gloomy, to say the least.
But despite the US government's intransigence, people and governments around the world are now becoming fully aware of the severity of the threat posed by climate change, and not just by rising sea levels -- everyone except Taiwan, that is. As the rest of the world tries desperately to work out solutions to this challenging problem, Taiwan remains locked in its own little "climate bubble."
Being excluded from the UN and other international bodies that deal with environmental issues like climate change severely hampers the green movement and means that Taiwan comes under no pressure whatsoever to reduce its shocking emissions levels. All we get from time to time is bluster about how we should "voluntarily" meet our "obligations." That didn't work too well with Kyoto, because the nation's emissions have doubled since 1990 -- the baseline year in the agreement.
In other countries, protecting the environment and reducing greenhouse gas emissions are hot topics and appear high -- if not at the very top -- of the agenda during election campaigns. The recent Australian elections are a good example.
Not so here. With legislative and presidential elections just round the corner and the UN talkfest in Bali in full swing, we have heard precious little about the environment from anyone, bar a surprising pledge yesterday by Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung cities -- again voluntary -- to cut emissions.
But even that will be an empty gesture as long as politicians of all stripes continue to put the business interests of the few over the future lives of the many.
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS