Some Call Me Nature...

“Some call me Nature. Others call me Mother Nature.
I’ve been here for over 4 and a half billion years. 22.500 times longer than you.
I don’t really need people, but people need me.
Yes, your future depends on me.
When I thrive you thrive. When I falter you falter…Or worse.
But I’ve been here for eons.
I have fed species greater than you. And I have starved species greater than you.
My oceans, my soil, my flowing streams and my forests.
They all can take you—or leave you…
How you choose to live each day weather you regard or disregard me, doesn’t really matter to me.
One way or the other…Your actions will determine your fate. Not mine.
I’m Nature. I’ll go on. I am prepared to evolve.
Are you?”

Julia Robert’s and an other 9 A-list movie stars donated their time and intonations to a stunning public awareness movies evolving the human race dangers of suffering a massive die-off extinction.

The two minutes short films pretend to reach every human being and reflect on the several pure elements of our Planet. Water, Ice, Forests, asking globally why humans pay so little attention to the hazards posed by overpopulation, environmental pollution, deforestation, biodiversity degradation, overheated climate, and other ecological pressures.

Humans are asked here to pay attention to the alarming signs and react before it’s too late.
This is not about saving Nature.

This is about saving Ourselves. 

The Human Race.

PINE ISLAND Glacier

Changes in Pine Island Glacier over the last 2 weeks

Over the last 2 weeks, Pine Island Glacier, a major ice mass in Antartic, has been revelling an increasing crack which has been followed by NASA scientists.

A large iceberg, with approximately 35Km by 20km, roughly the size of Singapore, is forming and detaching from the main Pine Glacier heading to the Amundsen Sea, freely drifting away from the coast into the Antartic Ocean.

NASA published images, comparing the glacier last October 28th and November 13th, where changes on the ice crack are visible with an increasing open-water between the glacier and the detaching ice mass.

Named B-31, the iceberg will be followed by a team scientists from Sheffield and Southampton universities which will track the 700 square-kilometer chunk of ice and try to predict its path using satellite data.

The shelf of Pine Island Glacier has been moving forward at roughly 4 kilometers per year, so the calving of this iceberg is not necessarily a surprise, noted Tom Wagner, NASA’s cryosphere program manager.
Such events happen about every five or six years, though Iceberg B-31 is about 50 percent larger than previous ones in this area. Scientists have been studying Pine Island Glacier closely because there is evidence that warmer seawater below the shelf will cause the ice grounding line to retreat and the glacier to thin and speed up.

More here

October 28th, 2013

November 13th 2013

NASA Earth Observatory images by Holli Riebeek, using Landsat 8 data from the USGS Earth Explorer. Caption by Michael Carlowicz.

EARTH - A DYNAMIC PLANET 1941 - 2004

Alaska's Muir Glacier, like many Alaskan glaciers, has retreated and thinned dramatically since the 19th century. 

This particular pair of images shows the glacier's continued retreat and thinning in the second half of the 20th century. From 1941 to 2004, the front of the glacier moved back about seven miles while its thickness decreased by more than 2,625 feet, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. 

While historical photos like these show change over many decades, satellites are giving us a better understanding of how Earth's ice cover has changed in the more recent past. The satellite era, beginning in the 1970s, has given us a picture of accelerating ice changes in places like Alaska, Greenland and Antarctica, where the loss of land-based ice is contributing to global sea level rise. 

Forty-six gigatons of ice from Alaskan glaciers was lost on average each year from 2003 to 2010. That's according to data from NASA's GRACE satellite, as analyzed by a team of scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Their paper on global ice changes, as measured by GRACE, was published in Nature in February 2012.  from here

Hurricanes - SANDY in NEW YORK by Radcliff Roye

The Madonna sits in silent vigil ©Radcliff Roye

While some look for shelters during the storm, others try to capture the path of debris and destruction that SANDY - THE HURRICANE leaves behind.

RADCLIFF ROYE, a photographer from New York, is one of those that cares about capturing for posterity the day that SANDY passed through New York - from here

Breezy Point Beach, Brooklyn - © Radcliff Roye

Mexico - Life UNDER SEA

Jason de Cairos Taylor sculptures

Life is exploding on the reefs of Cancun, Mexico. By the hand of Jason de Cairos Taylor, an undersea museum is being shaped with the help of the Cancun community where many of its citizens have served as models for Taylor's sculptures. 

 Named, 'Man on Fire' (based on a local fisherman), the 'Collector of Lost Dreams' and 'Gardener of Hope', the first parts of this submarine museum was submerged in 2009. Later, the main group - which consists of 400 figures weighing over 120 tonnes - was submerged during the following years, off the coast of Mexico. When this occurs, the artist loses the 'aesthetic control' over his work, which will be in further on in charge of nature. 

"Ring of Children"

The idea is connected with prevention measures given the environmental decline of coral reefs, originated by natural disasters as well as for drastic climate changes which caused the disappearance of some significant coral reef areas. 

The sculptures made of a chemical composition of cement promote the colonization of marine life, which in time will cover the carvings in different colors. 

Taylor's sculptures have been listed, by National Geographic, as one of the top 25 Wonders of the World.

"Silent Evolution"

Are We Getting Back to a Little Ice Age?

Hendrick Avercamp - Winter Landscape - 1605

In the late 13th century, massive volcanic explosions in the tropics destroyed mountain villages in northern Europe—not by burying them in lava and mudflows, mind you, but by triggering a cold spell that engulfed the towns in ice.

By that time, Europe was plagued by waves of cold that turned out the major rivers in Europe in thick layers of ice. Painters like Hendrick Avercamp (who I've mentioned on my blog Manifesto Surrealista regarding an exhibition about the "Little Ice Age", which I've visited in Amsterdam) was one of the artists that came to outdoors depicting the white scenarios given by those frozen years.

Scientists have always debated about the causes that have lead to this ice age. Many were the theories advanced but, according to a group of geologists, led by Gifford Miller of the University of Colorado, Boulder, has identified an abrupt start for the cool spell, sometime between 1275 and 1300 A.D and causes, related with the volcanic activity has been considered a sustainable explanation for the cause.

Explosive volcanism cooled the climate and set off a self-perpetuating feedback cycle involving sea ice in the North Atlantic Ocean that sustained the cool spell into the 19th century, they reported this week in the "Journal Geophysical Research Letters". Miller said in a press release:

“This is the first time anyone has clearly identified the specific onset of the cold times marking the start of the Little Ice Age. We also have provided an understandable climate feedback system that explains how this cold period could be sustained for a long period of time.”

In the first part of the study, Miller and his colleagues collected roughly 150 dead plants from the receding ice margins of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic. Radiocarbon dating back in the lab reveled a large cluster of “kill dates” between 1275 and 1300 A.D., indicating the plants had been frozen and engulfed by ice during a relatively sudden event. 

Miller and his team admitted that only sudden volcanic eruptions may be the explanation for major climate changes. Particles spread in the air make a thick layer around Earth atmosphere that blocks some of the sun's incoming energy. The timing jibed with a period of intense volcanic activity already known from the rock record.

Looking at this analysis it's interesting to point out if we aren't facing, once again, the prelude of another Little Ice Age with the major Earth volcanoes splitting lava and emerging earth on thick sun blocks.  more here