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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Scare of the Century |
| 2006-05-22 |
| JASON LEE STEORTS But what, oh what, would the earth do without Time magazine? “Suddenly and unexpectedly,” Time announced in a recent issue, “the crisis is upon us.” Haven’t noticed the crisis? You must not be looking very hard. “The climate is crashing, and global warming [what else?] is to blame.” Time accordingly devoted a special report to saving Mother Gaia. The report is half anti-Republican polemic, half catalogue of global warming’s supposed ills — and none receives greater emphasis than the melting of polar ice. We see a photograph of a polar bear, standing all by his lonesome at the water’s edge, and are told that the poor fellow might drown because “polar ice caps are melting faster than ever.” Later, we learn that “the journal Science published a study suggesting that by the end of the century, the world could be locked in to an eventual rise in sea levels of as much as 20 ft.” Science magazine has itself been prone to hysteria. The issue that Time mentions contains no fewer than eight studies and articles about the ice caps, and begins with a news story warning that “startling amounts of ice slipping into the sea have taken glaciologists by surprise; now they fear that this century’s greenhouse emissions could be committing the world to a catastrophic sea-level rise.” The policy implications of such reportage are clear, but in case you missed them, Time connects the dots: “Curbing global warming may be an order of magnitude harder than, say, eradicating smallpox or putting a man on the moon. But is it moral not to try?” The answer is, yes, it may indeed be moral not to try. What is not moral is to distort the truth for political ends — which is precisely what has been done with the ice-caps story. Here’s what you haven’t read. The world has two major ice sheets, one covering most of Greenland and the other covering most of Antarctica. While melting sea ice has captured its share of attention, it’s the land sheets that matter. Sea ice is already in the water, so its melting doesn’t raise ocean levels. But if land ice melts, the sea gets higher. Time wants you to be very worried about this: “By some estimates, the entire Greenland ice sheet would be enough to raise global sea levels 23 ft., swallowing up large parts of coastal Florida and most of Bangladesh. The Antarctic holds enough ice to raise sea levels more than 215 ft.” Farewell, Dhaka, we shall miss thee. Or not. Those numbers sound impressive, but the chances of the ice caps’ fully melting are about as high as the chances of Time’s giving you an honest story on global warming. The truth is that there’s no solid evidence supporting the conclusion that we’ve locked the ice caps in to a melting trend. Let’s look at Antarctica and Greenland in turn. About Antarctica, University of Virginia climate scientist Patrick J. Michaels is direct: “What has happened is that Antarctica has been gaining ice.” He explains that there has been a cooling trend over most of Antarctica for decades. At the same time, one tiny portion of the continent — the Antarctic Peninsula — has been warming, and its ice has been melting. The peninsula constitutes only about 2 percent of Antarctica’s total area, but almost every study of melting Antarctic ice you’ve heard of focuses on it. So what about the rest of the continent? In 2002, Nature published a study by Peter Doran that looked at Antarctic temperature trends from 1966 to 2000. What it found was that about two-thirds of Antarctica got colder over that period. At the same time, Antarctica has gotten snowier, and as the snow has accumulated the ice sheet has grown. Snowfall is probably rising because water temperatures around Antarctica have gotten slightly — repeat, slightly — warmer. As a result, there is more surface evaporation, making for higher humidity and more precipitation. Higher humidity also means more clouds, which might explain the cooler weather. How much ice has Antarctica gained? In a 2005 study published in Science, Curt Davis used satellite measurements to calculate changes in the ice sheet’s elevation, and found that it gained 45 billion tons of ice per year between 1992 and 2003. Far from flooding the coasts, that’s enough to lower sea levels by roughly 0.12 millimeters annually. |
| Posted by:mcsegeek1 |
| #19 It's all a conspiracy to shift our attention from the REAL threat - ManBearPig. |
| Posted by: Algore 2006-05-22 23:35 |
| #18 Sun will explode circa 2009-2012 + Planet X is still a comin' - only Mother Hillary and OWG can save our Vaderian Male Brute male souls and honest Socialist Amerika from Rightism-based national Socialism. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2006-05-22 23:31 |
| #17 I blame the radiation in the atmosphere for Gore's stupidity! |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2006-05-22 21:38 |
| #16 The science is fake but accurate. |
| Posted by: Al Gore 2006-05-22 20:03 |
| #15 I propose a massive Get-Together and Feel-Good session regarding the Sun or Sol as some call it. The Consequences of Ignoring the Main Sequence A Case Study of UnHappy Times. This will be followed by a short sponsored symposium on How to Make A Fortune in the Upcoming Era of High Gravity. Dr. Fischer will present. Dr. Fischer is a Co-Author of the ground breaking The Shipman-Fischer Rum Paradox, which explores the casauality and quality of .79 Highballs and their alcohol content vis 2.99 well specials. Highly recommended. |
| Posted by: 6 2006-05-22 18:47 |
| #14 Maybe I'm stupid, but shouldn't we notice higher water lines ? Higher high tides and higher low tides and such ? Ships gettin closer to the bridges they pass under ? |
| Posted by: wxjames 2006-05-22 18:45 |
| #13 The author is correct about Greenland and Antartic ice caps. Arctic sea ice is melting. However this is a lagging indicator and results from the warming we saw in the 1980/90s, which has now stopped. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2006-05-22 17:59 |
| #12 I accepted global warming when the US Navy announced that it needed to create an Arctic ocean surface navigational system. This also means force structure changes to accomodate a US Arctic Ocean fleet. Check out this map with respect to military and civilian commerce needs and potentials, once a lot of that ice is gone. Canada, Russia, northern Europe and the US may be in for some very profitable times, all getting what amounts to a new coastline with respect to each other. The map |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2006-05-22 17:46 |
| #11 I seem to remember something about Ice Ages coming and going long before the arrival of the Industrial Age and Capitalism. Posted by: Mike N. Yeah, but since the rise of MAN where have all those glaciers gone to. Makes ya think, don't it? Where's the nurse with my meds?? |
| Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 2006-05-22 17:41 |
| #10 I seem to remember something about Ice Ages coming and going long before the arrival of the Industrial Age and Capitalism. |
| Posted by: Mike N. 2006-05-22 17:13 |
| #9 I don't dismiss the concept that human doings might affect the climate. Just as I accept that oil is not an infinite resource. But when somebody tells me glaciers are melting I find it hard to get overworked. It's the natural climate changes that are really scary. Not much you can do about Glaciers, volcanoes earthquakes, or solar minimum/maximums, not to mention axial tilts and pole shifts. |
| Posted by: Gene the Moron 2006-05-22 15:15 |
| #8 You're funny. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-05-22 15:14 |
| #7 That's thanks to all the Simpsons episodes I've taped. And besides, I'm fat, fat people are funny, I'm told, but this is bogus, because when I think about it, I'm not fat, I'm big-boned. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-05-22 15:11 |
| #6 anonymous5089, yer so funny...... |
| Posted by: mcsegeek1 2006-05-22 15:07 |
| #5 ooops ... sorry. should have read more carefully - that's what I get for commenting while doing other things too. It's actually a pretty good joke. ;-) |
| Posted by: lotp 2006-05-22 15:05 |
| #4 Actually, this was an attempted joke (winter-spring), my bad. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-05-22 15:03 |
| #3 For sure there are changes happening. The question is, how serious and due to what causes? |
| Posted by: lotp 2006-05-22 14:56 |
| #2 I'm not so sure it's a total myth, where I live it's been recently noticably warmer than in december-january, and all the snow has melted, so who knows?. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-05-22 14:39 |
| #1 Those of us who know that 'global warming' is a total myth are probably pissing in the wind with rants like these. But the Algore environazis can't go unchallenged. |
| Posted by: mcsegeek1 2006-05-22 14:31 |