CLIMATE CHANGE and NEW YORK

ARE THE LAND BASED ICE-CAPS MELTING?

KISS – KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID

Mayor Bloomberg’s critique of Senator Mitt Romney’s denial of Climate Change – and of Romney’s other about-face reversals of previously sane policies – still fudges and allows obfuscation of the sharp edges of the debate. Michael Bloomberg writes “…while the increase in extreme weather …may or may not be the result (of climate change)…”

For all of us five billion souls who live on the coastal margins, whether in New York, California, Florida, London, Europe, Bangladesh, Asia, Brazil or wherever, we need a clear, simple and reliable guide. We, The People, don’t much care who or what causes global warming /climate change; we do care to know if we should move from, say, currently flooded Lower Manhattan to higher ground.

Scientists who collect and analyse the highly complex data are bullied by every pressure group in the world to publish biased conclusions – or else! And, even if they were not bullied; the information changes month to month, is very complicated and is beyond the wit of most of us to assess. The simplest common sense measure as to whether the sea level (there is only one global sea-level, irrespective of our class, creed, colour or credit-rating) is rising and the ocean temperature is rising (which causes bigger storms) is to ask “Are the land based polar ice caps melting?”

                

All the reports from the past fifteen years consistently tell us YES, the ice caps are melting. There is enough land ice piled up at the North and South Poles, on Greenland and on Antarctica, to raise the global sea-level by about 300 feet (91 metres), if it all melts. Senator Mitt Romney, Mayor Bloomberg and President Obama could take their school set-squares and their high-school maths to the sea-shore and gauge the 300 feet above sea-level line on the New York skyscrapers – and command it to be painted on the buildings in red. Then we’ll know where to relocate ourselves and our power generators. All the data of ocean temperatures consistently show the waters are warming – which melts the sea-ice – which opens the North West Passage – which accelerates the melting – etc. Even Republicans and Sarah Palin know that warmer oceans make bigger hurricanes.

So, KISS can be applied to Climate Change and the data is simple to understand. The great unknown is WHEN and how fast? Nobody knows; because such a meltdown is unprecedented in our written history.  You can as easily pile up some ice and watch it melt as can our best scientists. And you can extrapolate from your home experiments to the trillions of tons at the ice-caps. Or if you can’t be bothered to do that – ask a Republican.

Read the migration patterns in OUT OF THE DEPTHS as we back away from the rising tide.

 

FLOODS, POLAR ICE CAPS - BLOG ARCHIVE