Major Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapses while the US Democratic Presidential Primary Process Self-Destructs

While the two US Democratic presidential candidates are wrapped up in the small and petty politics of mutually assured destruction for the Democratic Party in November (as new polls are indicating), a vast hunk of floating ice has broken away from the Antarctic peninsula, threatening the collapse of a much larger ice shelf behind it, in a development that has shocked climate scientists.

Satellite images show that about 160 square miles of the Wilkins ice shelf has been lost since the end of February. The collapsing shelf suggests that climate change could be forcing change much more quickly than scientists had predicted.

"The ice shelf is hanging by a thread," said Professor David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). "We'll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be." The Wilkins shelf covers an area of 5,600 square miles (14,500 square kilometers). It is now protected by just a thin thread of ice between two islands.

Vaughan was a member of the team that predicted in 1993 that global warming could cause the Wilkins shelf to collapse within 30 years.

Climate scientists around Antarctica were taken by surprise by the new find. "Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic peninsula yet to be threatened," said Vaughan. "I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. We predicted it would happen, but it's happened twice as fast as we predicted."

Six other Antarctic ice shelves have already been lost entirely - the Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and Jones shelves.

But Vaughan said the Wilkins Shelf is "bigger than any ice shelf we've seen retreating before, and in the long term it could be a taste of other things to come. It is another indication of the impact that climate change is having on the region."

In the face of the real problems the United States and the world are facing, all of us should be demanding and calling upon both the Democratic presidential candidates to focus on these real problems, and on what they will do to address them--instead of on what they can do to tear down their opponent with petty tactics that will only work to make a Republican victory more likely in November.

We should all be asking both candidates: How will history judge you, even if you win the primary, if in the process of winning you use tactics that help to insure a Republican victory this November?! In what is perhaps the most important election of this century for determining our ability to achieve the fundamental policy changes on global warming, war, and social spending that are needed IMMEDIATELY in the next five years?!!

Any candidate who cannot maintain focus on the real problems that face humanity and the citizens of the United States ought to drop out of the race NOW! For if the only way a particular candidate can win the Primary is by attacking and destroying the other Democratic candidate, what does that say about the desperate character of that candidacy and that candidate?! Have you no shame?! And the last thing the United States or the rest of the world needs now is another President who lacks shame and refuses to take responsibility for lies and errors of judgment!