Global Warming

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer
Disappearing Islands, Rampaging Icebergs, Tiny Glaciers, And Amateur Scientists

First we had global warming. Then we had climate change. Now we have global weirding. I wonder what the politicians, talkshow hosts, and pundits will come up with next. The weather has been rather weird all over the globe. If the Red River Valley in the future continues to have snow every other winter day valley residents will have to build personal arks or rent houseboats for the spring trip to Manitoba. Devil’s Lake will really become the lake from Hell. North Dakota will certainly have plenty of water to “frack” all those poor-producing oil wells.

Perhaps some climate scientists should work harder to determine what in Hell is going on. Washington, D.C. has had record snowfalls but we all know what happens when hot air meets cold air. Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who vents his hot air continuously for Tea Parties, now admits that “It is going to keep snowing until Al Gore cries ‘uncle’.” Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who was chairman of the Environmental and Public Works Committee for George Bush when he didn’t believe a single word of it and couldn’t spell “environment,” had his grandchildren build an igloo next to the Capitol with a street sign, “Al Gore’s New Home.” Inhofe said: “If the Republicans ever take the Senate we will stop wasting our time on all that silly stuff, all the hearings on global warming.” The Virginia Republican Party put out an ad last winter: “12 Inches of Global Warming” to cover the D.C. situation. Of course, they were only following the research and conclusions of those eminent global weirding scientists Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Michele Bachmann. So much for weird political humor when there might be an inconvenient truth around the corner.

Will It Rain In The Sahara And Death Valley?
It is now appropriate to examine why weird things happen when hot air and cold air meet over different places.

:: Why is the continent of Australia suffering the worst droughts and floods in their recorded history?

:: Why did Iqalit, the capital of Nunavut in Canada, have to cancel their New Year’s snowmobile parade for lack of snow? Nunavut is the only Canadian province Corky and I have never visited. The new province is north of Ontario, has no roads, and normally has a summer of a few weeks. It’s population of 27,000 is basically Eskimo who depend upon temperatures cold enough to sustain seal and walrus populations; the source of their living.

:: For the last two winters, December temperatures in northeastern Canada and Greenland have run 15 to 20 degrees warmer than usual. Arctic ocean ice in September, as measured by satellite, has declined more than 30 percent since 1979. Dark ocean water absorbs more heat because snow and ice reflect heat.

:: The year 2010 was one of the hottest years on record, featuring deadly heat waves in Russia, record high temperatures in Europe and New York City, and terrible floods in Pakistan, Australia, China, and many other countries. In total the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest ever recorded. Remember all of the rains in British Columbia during the last Winter Olympics?

:: For nearly 30 years India and Bangladesh have fought over who would control New Moore Island in the Bay of Bengal. They don’t have to argue about it anymore. The waters in the Bay of Bengal have risen so much during the “weird weather” period the island has disappeared.  Climate models suggest that sea levels will rise 3.3 ft. by 2050 in low-lying Bangladesh, thus displacing 20 million people and 18 percent of the land area along the coast. Norfolk, Va. Is now having problems of encroachment from the Atlantic. Almost 70 feet of East Coast beach has been lost since the last century. The country of Maldives, composed of 1,200 islands occupied by 440,000 people, may entirely disappear into the waves by as early as 2020. The country averages about five feet above sea level now. This is what happens when Arctic and Antarctic white turns to black.

:: Icebergs of almost 2,000 square miles have broken off from the Antarctica ice pack recently and have then broken into 1,000 square mile chunks. These are so large they affect the global air circulation. An iceberg four times the size of Manhattan broke off from Greenland glaciers last summer.

:: Hemispheric studies indicate that 95 percent of the world’s alpine glaciers are retreating.  Glacier National Park in Montana had 150 glaciers in 1850. Only 26 are left, and if this trend continues all will be gone in nine years. The glaciers in the Himalayas, feeding the major rivers of India, Vietnam, and China (Mekong, Indus, Ganges, Yellow, and Yangtze), are receding rapidly, threatening the water supplies of about three billion people.

Either God Or The Republicans Will Take Care Of Us During Weird Weather

Republican Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois thinks God will handle global warming. He quotes Genesis 8:22: “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” Shimkus added: “I believe that’s the infallible word of God, and that’s the way it’s going to be for his creation.”

Shimkus should talk to God about the mountain pine beetle that is killing millions of acres of pines in the West, particularly in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. The pine bark beetle never bothered pine trees in higher elevations before, but now that temperatures have modified, the beetle has moved up the mountains and is destroying millions of acres of prime pine. Corky’s sister lives on mountainous acreage outside of Homer, Alaska that used to be covered with thousands of great, ancient pines. Now all the huge pines are gone, killed by the voraciousness of the bark beetle. We have driven by millions of acres of brown and dead pines on the mountains and hillsides of Alaska and British Columbia. It’s a heart-rending sight.

An Ugly Combination Of Religion, Ignorance, And Scientific Misinformation

Why are the Republicans so anti-science? Is it the ugly combination of religion, Darwinism, and ignorance? Is it the maelstrom of misinformation created by the millions of dollars supplied to “ unthink” tanks ( Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Works funded by the Koch brothers) and pseudo-scientists by oil, gas, and coal companies? Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, who is extremely well paid by Texas oil and gas companies, has simple solutions to global and weird warming:” When it rains, we find shelter. (Tell that to the thousands killed in Brazil and Pakistan by mudslides and floods.) When it’s hot we find shade. (Tell that to the dozens killed by heat in Moscow and Los Angeles last summer.) When it’s cold we find a warm place to stay.”  (Tell that to the homeless who died on the sidewalks of New York and Chicago.)

Ron Johnson, a new Republican Senator from Wisconsin, thinks climate change is “far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity.”  Isn’t that “scientific?” Senator John McCain has changed his mind about global warming. In 2004 he said: “The race is on. Are we going to have significant climate change and all its consequences, or are we going to do something early on?” But since he had to veer extreme right to beat a Tea Party candidate in the 2010 election, he’s “no longer sure it’s man-made or natural.” McCain has always had flexible principles and a flexible spine and not much else to work with. Both the political climate and the world’s climate have changed since 2004. If the Republicans had any guts they would stand up and say: “I think global warming is a hoax because my campaign treasurer told me to.”

What Happens When Atlanta And Houston Have 100 Straight Days Of 98 Degrees?

Six of the ten largest companies on earth are in the fossil-fuel business. Although they use science in finding deposits, they go anti-science in supporting global warming “denialism.” The Koch Brothers, ExxonMobil, and British Petroleum (Oh, I forgot–BE) supply millions of dollars to renegade scientists and “think” tanks looking for a buck in an attempt to deny climate change. But they can’t fight the fact that the average global temperature was 57 degrees for most of human history. But now our research led by the finest scientists using the finest equipment tells us that the average temperature is increasing and will rise to 61-63 degrees unless we can find substitutes for fossil fuels. How will Southerners react to every summer day being well over 90 degrees? Norman Dennison, founder of the Corydon, Indiana Tea Party, has the answer–-scripture: (Global warming) “It’s a flat-out lie. I read my Bible. He made this earth for us to utilize.”  Dennison also believes in the preaching of Rush Limbaugh, who he places at the far-right hand of God

There is a scientific answer for why countries in the temperate zones are having record snowfalls and low temperatures. Siberia, Canada, and many European countries have all had record snowfalls. With the Arctic 15-20 degrees warmer than usual because of the drastic loss of sea ice (sun warms dark ocean and melts ice creating more moisture in air), the pattern of Arctic air circulation has been disturbed, allowing very cold air normally “penned” in the Arctic to move south. When this very cold air meets very warm air from southern gulfs and oceans “weird” weather happens. To substantiate this theory, take a look at where the jet stream has been located. It has been moving farther south than usual for years.  Climate experts are predicting we will have more Force 4 and 5 hurricanes in the future because of global and weird warming.

How To Cut Fossil Fuel Use

Ninety-eight percent of the scientists alive believe that global warming is man-made. Most of the other two percent work for oil and gas companies. There are solutions. The city of Kristianstad, Sweden decided ten years ago to try to eliminate the use of fossil fuels. Instead of using oil, natural gas, and coal, this city uses garbage, manure, used cooking oil, and other refuse that is prepared in a biogas plant. It also burns methane gas from old landfills and sewage ponds. Sawdust and wood waste from several flooring factories is also used to heat buildings. The city has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions (the principal cause of global warming) by 25 percent over the last ten years. By 2020 they will be up to 40 percent. They used to spend $7 million just to heat the city buildings with fossil fuels. Now their costs are down to $3.2 million. To indicate how far behind we are in biogas technology, Germany has over 5,000 biogas systems operating, many of them producing all the power used on large farms. Currently we have only 151 biomass digesters working in this country.

What Will “The Best Congress Money Can Buy” Do In The Energy Field?

Since the Republican Supreme Court of Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, and Kennedy has decided that corporations are actually lovable “people” with charisma, empathy, character, souls, and benevolence carrying around huge checks for the purchase or lease of Congressmen, we know that Congress will do absolutely nothing about energy to interrupt the burning of fossil fuels.
But the individual states are not waiting for their bought and indentured brothers to act. Many states, even some completely red, are adopting strict, energy-saving building codes, passing laws limiting the pollution spread by coal plants, cutting carbon dioxide emissions, and insisting all electronics and appliances be more efficient.  Collectively, states doubled their spending on increasing energy efficiency last year. It’s interesting to note that when we rank states by energy efficiency, the top 25 are practically all Democratic, the bottom 25 Republican.

It looks like the Democrats are depending upon science to pull them through global weirding.  Evidently the Republicans are depending upon the Rapture.

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PULLQUOTE: “McCain has always had flexible principles and a flexible spine and not much else to work with.”

PULLQUOTE2: “The Koch Brothers, ExxonMobil, and British Petroleum (Oh, I forgot–BE) supply millions of dollars to renegade scientists and “think” tanks looking for a buck in an attempt to deny climate change.”