Greenland is melting, melting…
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
CNN reports that President Bush has decided the globe is warming. Apparently he is going to talk about this in his State of the Union address.
Imagine that! I’ll bet we hear about switchgrass again. And I’ll bet he will continue to oppose mandatory carbon emission reductions.
Check out this article from yesterday’s Science section in the NY Times. The headline and photo covered the top fold, so there was no avoiding this one. And the news is positively dire.
New islands are being discovered around Greenland — because the ice sheet is receding and areas once thought to be solid land turn out to be islands, now sticking out in the open sea.
The sudden appearance of the islands is a symptom of an ice sheet going into retreat.
Got that? Know how much water we could be talking about if the Greenland ice sheet melts?
63,000 cubic miles of ice, enough to raise global sea levels by 23 feet.
Yikes! This would inundate coastal cities around the world. Will it all melt? No one knows for certain; at the same time, no one expected this much melt to happen this quickly. Scientists are truly astonished — and frightened.
Even a foot rise is a pretty horrible scenario.
Thus said Stephen Leatherman, a scientist based in Florida. He also said:
Here in Miami, we’re going to have an ocean on both sides of us.
And folks in Florida are having problems now getting insurance, what with more frequent and violent hurricanes and all. How do you insure a house destined to be under water in a few generations?
Well, let’s see what our fierceless leader has to say to us next week about this. Let’s see what his plan is to stop the heating of this planet. Let’s hope it is not like his plan in Iraq — more war on top of an already devastating war in the hope that escalating war will actually decrease the war.
This way of thinking ain’t working in Iraq, and sure ain’t going to work in the cause of saving the planet.
January 17th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
The sound of fiddles in Washington is becoming deafening these days. Will it be enough to drown out the sound of approaching surf? Watching Bush administration deal with climate changes is like seeing a train wreck in slow motion. Sigh. JMO –Doug
January 18th, 2007 at 12:34 am
Bush and his advisores are so infuriating. He’s a moron and a war monger. He’s a creationist and a denialist. But now lo! he sees a shaft of light (truth) through his tunnel vision just in time to pander Americans in his State of the Union Address. Good flipping grief! Far be it for me to wish any one dead but … well, enough said.