Thinning Ice (NY Times In Full-Panic Mode on "Global Warming")

NY Times ^ | September 25, 2003

[presidio9]

There has been no end of scholarly studies confirming the gradual rise in global temperatures over the past century. Yet nothing focuses the mind on global warming and its potential consequences quite so sharply as the occasional news flash from some remote corner of the globe documenting startling changes in landscapes once thought to be immutable. Two years ago, for instance, scientists told us that the snows of Kilimanjaro, which inspired Ernest Hemingway's famous short story, could vanish in 15 years, and that the seemingly indestructible glaciers in the Bolivian Andes might not last another 10. Last year brought evidence of disturbing and apparently irreversible changes in Alaska's environment — melting permafrost, sagging roads, dying forests — arising from an astonishing rise of 5.4 degrees in Alaska's average temperature over the past 30 years.

Now comes more unsettling news: a report from three scientists that the Arctic's largest ice shelf — a 150-square-mile, 100-foot-thick mass of ice that has been sitting more or less intact off the northern Canadian coast for 3,000 years — is disintegrating. The scientists say the breakup results from a century-long warming trend that has accelerated in the last two years. It is not yet possible, they say, to tie the melting directly to rising atmospheric concentrations of so-called greenhouse gases, or to the human activities — chiefly the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil — that create these gases. But they warn that a "critical threshold" has been breached, and that on the other side of this threshold lie abrupt changes in natural conditions we have long taken for granted.

There could be a bright side to all this, if it persuaded the Bush administration and Congress to take the issue of climate change more seriously. That is not happening. Mr. Bush remains fixated on a voluntary approach that offers little hope of meaningful reductions in industrial emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas. Congress, meanwhile, is fashioning an energy bill that will do little to reduce these emissions, and indeed could increase them by heaping new subsidies on the oil, gas and coal industries. Washington's carapace of denial seems sturdier than any glacier.

[joesnuffy]

They should start to use global warning tirades in the liberal media
as contra indicators of colder than normal winters
which is what seems to happen every fall
when they wind up
their greenie beenies

[Humvee]

To NYT - Climate change happens, get over it.

[joesnuffy]

They should start to use global warning tirades in the liberal media
as contra indicators of colder than normal winters
which is what seems to happen every fall
when they wind up
their greenie beenies

[tioga]

..the sky is falling, the sky is falling......

-sorry, can't get excited about this one, we all know how "honest" the NYT is.

[Rocket1968]

We had a five foot frost level in Maine last winter. We had pipes freeze that had never done so in the 13 years we have been in the house. We had an extended cold snap for a large part of the winter.

I keep hoping that my inland home will become expensive shore front property some day.

[sarasota]

Change is slow and steady, yet constant. That much is certain. The outcome is not. We'll know when we "get there".

[CJ Wolf]

This is a direct result from scientist drilling ice cores over and over again.

[RJL]

Who caused the global cooling that brought the Ice Ages in the past?

Who caused the global warming that brought the Earth out of the Ice ages?

Why do the computer models show the future environment so clearly, yet they can't "predict" the past environment, which we have a historic knowledge of?

[LibWhacker]

Total effing idiots! First they say, correctly, that neither greenhouse gases nor human activity are tied to the warming. Then they turn around and say that both Bush and Congress are in denial for refusing to act on junk science that denies that fact. Reading the Slimes will make you think you're living in a nuthouse.

[Iconoclast2]

No, it's our house, and the nuts have taken it over, with the help of the Slimes.

[randog]

LOL!!

[appalachian_dweller]

Okay, I admit it. It's me. Every morning, I wake up, open up my front door and spray 2 large cans of CFC containing hairspray into the atmosphere. I guess I'm just busted.

[Southack]

"Washington's carapace of denial seems sturdier than any glacier."

Ooooh, we can say "carapace" instead of "turtle shell" to prop up our own pedantic egos.

[b4its2late]

Looks to me like they are trying to sell more papers....

[ctlpdad]

"Women & Children Affected Most"

[Arrowhead1952]

Who caused the global cooling that brought the Ice Ages in the past?

Who caused the global warming that brought the Earth out of the Ice ages?

Not just that, but what did Bush know and when did he know it?

sarcasm off

[kidd]

...It is not yet possible, they say [the scientists], to tie the melting directly to rising atmospheric concentrations of so-called greenhouse gases, or to the human activities...

...but the politically-motivated, office-bound NY journalistic hacks (with no science credentials whatsoever) will go ahead and make that tie anyway.

[Bud Bundy]

They were just as certain 30 years ago that another ice age was just around the corner. I was watching an old episode of "In Search Of" with Leonard Nimoy the other day and he just flat out stated that scientists were absolutely certain that an ice age was coming. As evidence, 30 years ago, they'd had several very cold winters in a row. And they showed the video of people digging their cars out of great big snow banks.

[presidio9]

"Women & Children Affected Most"

Have you no sympathy for how Global Warming is affecting minorities?