Environment Alarm: the Earth is eating up and in Iceland the corn ripens

Posted on June 4, 2009 by cinzia

Iceland, since ever considered the land of ice, this year has given the scientists one more reason to worry about the conditions of our Planet. It’s been a few years that the Glaciers of the island are carefully observed, because they’re considered the “indicator” to monitor the effects of the Earth temperature increase.

Among the different occurrences, the Vatnajokull worries the scientists: it is the biggest polar cap of Europe, the third in the world after the Antarctic and Greenland, and it is visibly diminishing. Its tongues of ice are relentless diminishing of a meter per year, leaving room to moraine valleys and lagoons, that, although very beautiful, they witness the destruction the man is doing against the environment.

But there’s more- a new warning arrives now from Iceland: for the first time ever, the Icelanders managed to grow corn! So far, the sub-arctic climate allowed only the grow of moss, lichens and small shrubs, but the temperatures during the summer in the past few years reached even 25-30°C, and as a consequence, in 2008 the Icelanders, for the first time in their life, have seen some fields covering of yellow, and the corn ears ripe.

If to the thaw, we got somehow used, as it’s been already announced time ago by all the media and in an alarming tone, now we cannot ignore this new warning of the Nature. The Icelandic Commission for the Climate Changes foresees that the ices will completely melt by the end of the current century, and the consequence will be the raising of the oceans level. Some coasts around the Pacific Ocean are already withdrawing because of the continuous push of the waves of the ocean, and if this phenomenon won’t stop, Venice- Italy will be the first city of the Mediterranean Sea to pay a high price!

We cannot remain impassive in front of these problems, as if they belonged only to “far away lands”: the Environment emergency is becoming every day more and more important and it involves everybody!