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August 11, 2006
Each year it gets worse
You may recall my fretting about the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps. Scientists are surprised over the past couple of years that the ice is melting quite a bit faster than climate change modeling had lead them to predict.
Check this link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/10/AR2006081001557.html
The brush off by Myron Ebell at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (can you say 'rampant capitalism'?) is pretty droll. And the popular press's fixation on sea level rise misses the point, as far as I'm concerned.
That point is that climate change will be inhospitable to humans and the flora and fauna that share the globe with us, for many reasons. Some of them, we are probably seeing today: hot, dry conditions. A cooling Europe would be a real kick in the head ('Hey! I thought you said global warming!') Add population pressure and increasing demands for higher level foods by societies that are developing economically, and we have a major mess on our hands.
So I'm back to my adaptation mantra. Let's visualize as best we can what our part of the world is going to be like as climate change and liquid petroleum depletion progress, and do the best we can to prepare for those effects.
Posted by aquacura.com at August 11, 2006 03:41 PM