CON GAMES: Double-Whammy Puts Right on Thin Ice
The ability of conservatives to remain numb and number to climate change runs into a cold hard slap in the face with a double dose of data from the ends of the earth.
Word that the ice bridge holding the Wilkins Ice Sheet to Antarctica had shattered would be damning enough within a normal news cycle, but it comes at the same time as a study from some of the same scientists showing that only ten percent of Arctic ice is more than two years old as of February 2009 -- an accelerated thinning that brings gloom and doom to scientists.
"We've been watching it all summer," said British Antarctic Survey glaciologist David Vaughan, "waiting for it to go, and bang -- now it's gone."
Data from NASA, the University of Colorado's (CU) National Snow and Ice Data Center, and other research organizations -- encompassing both Antartica and the Arctic -- is about as damning as can be to those who prefer to bury their heads in the snow.
"What we're seeing," Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at CU, said of the situation in the Arctic,
"is that more and more, in recent years, that ice cover is getting thinner and thinner, and really becoming dominated by the thinner, younger ice that has grown just since the previous summer, instead of the older, thicker ice that has been around for several years.... But the last couple of years, particularly, we've seen a real steep drop off in the older ice, ice that's older than two years old, that used to cover 30 per cent of the Arctic Ocean, the total ice at the end of winter. And even as late as 2006, it covered about 20 per cent, and now we're down below 10 per cent."
Meier said the pole "has already lost over one-third of our summer ice cover in the Arctic from where we used to be in the '80's and '90's, so there's already impacts. We don't have to wait for the sea ice to disappear in the summer before we experience impacts. We're already there."
In turn, the scientists say the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 1950s.
"With the collapse of an ice bridge that holds in place the Wilkins Ice Shelf," said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, "we are reminded that global warming has already had enormous affects on our planet and we have no time to lose in tackling this crisis."
"Well," said Steve Campbell from Greenpeace, "if the collapse of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in the last few days is not a huge wake-up call for our political leaders at a global level, I really don't know what is. Time for the international community to bite the bullet and come to the table in international climate negotiations, and make sure that particularly developed countries agree to deep emissions reductions, so we can start to really help to solve the climate crisis at the global level."
Conservatives, of course, tend to be all but immune to inconvenient data of climate change, citing marginal studies and anecdotal evidence scientifically proven by looking out your bedroom window. The difference now is not just the overwhelming data and the word of eminent scientists but the satellite video and computer renderings in your face of what's going down. Like watching a baby in the womb, the enhanced views visible in time-lapse photography render the skeptic all but defenseless, left to rely on rigor-mortis rhetoric and blowhard bluster in the face of fact after fact from those who actually know jack.
The upcoming Copenhagen will replace Kyoto as a climatological cuss word upon the lips of the Right: the conference will confuse the imminence of visible data and video evidence with the emotion of plain old geopolitics. If ice falling into the ocean represents a great hand for environmentalists, then the numb and number still have two aces in the hole -- the unwillingness of India and China to change a damn thing. Why should the United States bother to save the world, free or not, when these brutish civilizations seek to destroy it?
For the Right, the great irony here is that by foisting the Kyoto-Copenhagen burden on India and China, they are all but acknowledging the validity of the climate change arguments they were loathe to embrace. If they keep it up, there's nothing to keep conservatives from falling through the ice.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
I'm pretty sure most conservatives also haven't read 'Collapse' by Jared Diamond or visited many of the places there used to be glaciers in the US and Canadian Rockies. No snow, no glaciers, no water downstream. So long Lake Powell, Lake Mead, Las Vegas, Phoenix, LA, San Diego.
Mike, the ends of the earth are providing good news. The Antarctic sea ice extent is currently about a million sq.km. larger than the average for the 1979-2000 period, and appears to be moving further above this benchmark. The global sea ice extent is also above the 1979-2000 average. Last of all, the polar sea ice is only about 3.5% below the 1979-2000 average, for this date, and has closed over half the gap between it and the Arctic 1979-2000 average, over just the past three and a half months. The pattern of ice gain and loss looks entirely normal, despite all the imagined pressures from global warming.
Closer to home, how is the weather in the Rockies this year? Are the ski resorts open for business this year?
You just made his day by doing exactly what he said you would.
:-)
It is a simple falsehood to hint that all climate skeptics are political conservatives. First, Freeman Dyson, the great American physicist, certainly isn't a conservative. Second, many climate skeptics base their climate views primarily on their own advanced education in the various scientific fields, not on their political affiliation. It is likely that climate skeptics reflect the wide rainbow of political viewpoints in the world.
Some may have learned through their work experience, that the expression "garbage in, garbage out" is a significant observation regarding the accuracy of computer programs.
Many of the casual climate skeptics simply find AGW inconsistent with knowledge gained in their general college educations, with their own observations of the natural world, and with common sense.
Climate science isn't political science. It should be real science.
"what is that supposed to mean?" writes dctackett in response to my lengthy first post, which, itself, was a response to kungfublood's post where he writes, "As you may know the word algebra means gibberish."
My mistake, dctackett. My sentence "This, as one can see, "cancels" the 'y' is by "canceling" on "balancing" the two sides of the equation." should say "This, as one can see, "cancels" the 'y' by "canceling", or, "balancing" the two sides of the equation."
I garbled my example, no doubt leading to your confusion.
Actually, I wasn't even responding to you, I responded to kungfublood's post.
"what is that supposed to mean?" was a response to "As you may know the word algebra means gibberish."
Perhaps, it is, also, difficult for you to believe that "Western" mathematics actually was, in part, developed by Arabs (who were Muslims, unsurprisingly).
By the way, a modern English dictionary, generally, defines 'algebra' as "A branch of mathematics in which symbols, usually letters of the alphabet, represent numbers or members of a specified set and are used to represent quantities and to express general relationships that hold for all members of the set." (See the, The American Heritage Dictionary.)
To clarify, the above post is the second part of my posted response to kungfublood's post, wherein he says, "As you may know the word algebra means gibberish."
Of course, a continent-wide study shows the opposite trend:
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/04/12/closest-station-antarctic-reconstruction/
Are these changes outside of "normal variation"? How can we be sure that these changes would not have occurred without CO2 emissions?
The "normal" variability of the universe spans almost 100 orders of magnitude on many different physical scales. The "normal" variability that humans can survive is less than 10%. It therefor makes quite a bit of sense to throw a little bit more analytical rigor at the problem than you suggest is necessary. At least for those of us who do not have a hidden death wish.
Be sure to check out the "permanent glacier" -according to the former sign- at one of our National parks in the lower 48. (the one that is no longer permanent).
I think you underestimate the denialists. The sad fact is that millions of Americans get all of the climate views, and just about every thought in the heads, handed to them by Rush and Glen and consider all science and scientists to be liberal lies and liars.
About the only thing left to do is to just ignore these people and move forward in making the changes that are needed to address the crisis.
Let them howl all they want, but don't waste your time trying to convince them. You'll have better luck teaching your dog algebra.
As you may know the word algebra means gibberish.
what is that supposed to mean?
The origin of the word 'algebra' stems from the Arabic word 'al-jabr'.
That word is a shortened form of the word as it appears in the title of Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizm's classic mathematical treatise entitled, "Al-Kitāb al-mukhtaṣar fī hīsāb al-ğabr wa’l-muqābala", which is, sometimes transliterated as, "Hisab al-jabr w’al-muqabala", or, "Kitab al-Jabr wa-l-Muqabala".
The word 'al-jabr' is a shortened form of the word 'al-jabr w’al-muqabala', where the 'muqabala' has been dropped. (Eliminating the need for the 'w’al', as well.)
It referred to the use of transposition in order to eliminate terms common to both the left and the right sides of an equation.
'Jabr' means the step where the "x" is first used ("on the left"), ie., the "first" part of the transposition/equation.
'Muqabalah' the step that leads us to "balance" the initial equation by its use on the "right side" in the second step, eg., x + y = y + 7 to x = 7 . This, as one can see, "cancels" the 'y' is by "canceling" on "balancing" the two sides of the equation.
However, I can see how all that might seem to be "gibberish" to you because it presumes that one is intelligent and, thereby, capable of understanding what is commonly done in the first Algebra class a person takes in high school. (You remember, the one where the terms 'x' and 'y' are used.)
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
