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'Antarctica on the Edge' a must see
To the editor, I disagree completely with Judith Parish on global warming. The fact is that the disastrous effects of man's actions on the planet since the Industrial Revolution are already evident. One only has to watch NOVA's "Warning from the Ice" or Humanities and Science's "Antarctica on the Edge" to see for one's self that the Antarctic ice shelves that have been frozen for over 10,000 years are melting. Entire glaciers that once supported the ice shelf are gone, leaving exposed brown rock which absorbs heat, rather than reflecting it. According to the Argentinean Antarctic Institute and Greenpeace, "If the warming trend continues, the ice shelves will collapse rapidly. The interplay that has kept the climate stable for millennia is breaking apart. If it continues, weather patterns will disintegrate; order will descend into chaos. Over the next two decades, large ice shelves the size of Spain will melt. If the west Antarctica shelf melts, sea levels will rise by 6 meters, swamping coastal cities. If the whole Antarctica shelf melts, sea levels will rise by 60 meters and entire nations will vanish. Unless emissions are cut by 50%, temperatures will continue to rise, and the pace will accelerate." Conserving energy and using alternative sources is not going to promote social disruption, it will prevent it. And reducing greenhouse gases is not something that governments can do, but something that individuals can, and must, do. There are thousands of ways to reduce greenhouse gases: Reduce dependence on coal-generated electricity (in Tucson over 95% of electricity is produced by burning coal), use solar and wind power, reduce use of electricity, solarize our computers, buy smaller refrigerators and solarize them, support mass transit, walk, bicycle, car pool, van pool, shuttle, drive very small cars, build up and around workplaces and walk to work, design communities around mass transit, build eco-cities, use tree-free paper, study solar-electric engineering, invent a battery that will store 2,000 amp hours of electricity without weighing a ton . . . . I urge everyone to view the film "Antarctica on the Edge." This video is available in the media section of the university library. After that, ask a friend to view it. This film leaves no doubt in one's mind about the catastrophic effects of global warming.
Barbara Kausen
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