Tuesday, April 7, 2009

New Stamps on ' Protection of the Polar regions & Glaciers '




Date of Issue - 27 March 2009



Hi ! Here are some recent stamps issued on the theme 'PROTECTION OF THE POLAR REGIONS AND GLACIERS'. All the issues on this theme are wonderful and amazing. I just love them all not because of huge glaciers depicted on them but beacuse of lovely cute Polar Bears and Penguins. I just want to see them again and again. Its a great message to all globally through these nice postage stamps and souvenir sheets to check climate change and global warming. I believe that all the issues being brought out by different nations of the World will have a certain impact and contribute to raising of awareness on the necessity of protection of the polar regions and glaciers. Here is the recent one issued by Croatia on 27 March 2009. Though it does not depict my favourite Polar bears but its beautiful. Some issues on this theme from other countries depict Polar Bears, Seals and Penguins which I am giving here. All the issues on this theme giving a very chilling effect and reminding me of the huge glacier of famous film 'Titanic'. Well, this is a cool post for today . Though it's very hot in most parts of India now as the temperature is rising day by day. But here in Kullu, we are still experiencing snow fall on the surrounding hills and its quite rainy here almost everyday . So its not giving us the experience of summer time. Its still cool here, and we are always in woollens & children still going to schools in their blazers ! This is how the cool weather over here. Beat the Heat of April month ! ...... &....Have a nice cooling effect with Today's Post..... Till Next Post.....Have a Nice Time !






When polar areas and their endangered condition due to climatic changes are mentioned, most people immediately think of a sad picture of a polar bear that is compelled to swim over large distances in search for an iceberg somewhere in the North Pole region. Although being excellent swimmers, polar bears are unable to survive in those regions without ice. Disappearance of the ice cap during summer months and the threat to ice bear habitats have become the symbol of endangered condition of the ice-covered regions caused by recent climatic changes.



My Most favorite Issues



The scientific community is unanimous in their confirmation of the existence of global warming, as well as of the responsibility of humans for recent changes, which has been confirmed also by the latest report of the United Nations’ committee on which several thousands of scientists worked. Of course, there are also natural exchanges of ice ages caused by the change of the Earth’s orbit or by the tipping of the Earth’s orbit, the so-called Milanković’s cycles. However, they do happen on time-scales of thousands of years and cannot be taken as an explanation for the recent accelerated increase of temperature. Although these changes are global, they do not affect equally all the regions. The most threatened ones are those in the polar circle.


In summertime, almost all ice melts in the North, whereas the coastal regions in the distant South experience one of the highest temperature increases on the Earth i.e. 2.5 °C in one hundred years, on the top of Antarctic Peninsula. For all the above mentioned reasons, the period 2007/2008 was proclaimed the International Polar Year, on the occasion of which the scientists carried out a number of projects and measurements, with the specific purpose of better understanding and protecting the polar areas and glaciers. In the last 125 years of modern science, it has been the third time that the world joined its forces in the research of the polar areas, the last time in the distant year 1957/1958 on the occasion of the World Geophysical Year.




The projects related to the Polar Year are due to be finished in March 2009 and therefore it is very convenient that the issue of a commemorative stamp on the protection of the polar areas coincides with the end of great effort in science to research and protect them better. An important issue has been left open: what we as individuals can do to protect the polar areas. Although we are very far away from them and our country is small, we can still make quite a difference.



The atmosphere is getting warmer and warmer under the influence of glasshouse gases and it is not irrelevant where they arise from. The Western world generates enormous quantities of these gases and a fair part of them is superfluous and their emission can be reduced. As a nation we can plan the sustainable development which will not be an additional threat to the Earth and as individuals we can save and more efficiently use the energy; we can plan better and reduce our "imprint" in the emission of glasshouse gases, in order to help everyone on the planet to keep their habitats.