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Climate change is already having "pervasive, wide-ranging" effects on "nearly every aspect of our society," a task force representing more than 20 federal agencies reported Tuesday.Seriously? I love how the author says "it's definitive." If the Bush White House had gotten all the same groups together 8 years ago to say that Islamic terrorism was the greatest threat ever faced by every Federal Agency, would that have been "definitive" too? (In fact, exactly this happened, as every department made a pitch for why they needed new security funds).
"These impacts will influence how and where we live and work as well as our cultures, health and environment," the report states. "It is therefore imperative to take action now to adapt to a changing climate."
Indeed, climate change has begun to affect the ability of government agencies to fulfill their missions, reports the White House Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force.
The group is led by the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
It is made up of representatives from more than 20 federal agencies, departments and offices, including the Department of Commerce, the National Intelligence Council, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Pentagon. That's diverse - and it's definitive.
"It's the size of North America. But although the patch itself is extremely large, it's only one very clear representation of the much bigger worldwide problem."
"The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States."Dr Eriksen said:
"The slowly rotating mass of rubbish-laden water poses a risk to human health, too. Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles - the raw materials for the plastic industry - are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain. What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It's that simple,"Additional articles about the ocean being the 'Biggest Dump in the World':
Comment: We covered this story in 2006 and are reposting it now along with these eyewitness photographs. As we outlined in our recent installment of Connecting the Dots, this undersea activity, including the birth of a whole new island, does not bode well for our planet because increased undersea volcanism means that the ocean water is being heated. This heating of the water can lead to increased evaporation and heat pockets of the lower atmosphere. At the same time, the upper atmosphere is cooling due to increased comet dust (or other cosmic dust entering the solar system from who knows where?) - the evidence for which is the increasing number of fireball sightings being reported over the past dozen years or so, not to mention reports of colourful snow and high-altitude noctilucent clouds. The cosmic dust is electrically charged and tends to create drag on the Earth's rotation, slowing it down marginally. This affects the magnetic field which then increases earthquakes and volcanism, and a feedback loop gets going.
When the increased moisture in the lower atmosphere hits the cooling upper atmosphere, the result is torrential rains and/or increased snowfall depending on location and season of the location. It can also produce odd effects like falling chunks of ice, extraordinary hail storms in the middle of summer, and so on. There have been many reports of these phenomena over the past dozen years or so.
In short, we are witnessing the process of the initiation of an ice age and while the drama reported in the above story is entertaining, it is also a grim reminder of what is really going on in our solar system.