“The Polar Bears are Breeding Like Bunnies!”

With climate change, Copenhagen, and carping about stolen emails, I have been paying closer attention to global warming, even if it is about 10 degrees below tonight. It seems political passions create more lies, mis-and-disinformation than Tiger Woods at a fast food joint. I was listening to a C-Span discussion about climate change yesterday, formerly called “global warming” before the oil and coal companies paid millions to change it to “climate change,” when a Republican woman reeled off several methane whoppers before dropping this pearl to the Democratic swine: “There is so much Arctic ice now the polar bears are breeding like bunnies!” That did it.

I know a little about rabbits and I have a minor in math. We raised rabbits for food on our farm, being French. Regardless of how many we had for dinner the bunnies always managed to keep the cages full. By the way – better than chicken but harder to kill.

Anyway, this woman must have been educated at Yale with Lurch, because she demonstrates the same irrational tendencies. Contrary to her pearl of ignorance, polar bears mate about every three years, and only after the female has educated her young to survive in the Arctic. In her lifetime she may have four to eight offspring. Hardly like rabbits. A female rabbit has a gestation period of 31 days and may produce up to 300 sweet little bunnies in her reproductive lifetime.

I also learned while doing a little polar bear research that the black nose of a polar bear can be seen for long distances. Therefore, a polar bear will cover its black nose with one paw while stalking a seal on an ice pack. This woman should have covered her nose before opening her mouth and stalking climate change.

There is another sign that people are getting concerned about the effects of climate change. Drought-stricken farmers in the Indian state of Bihar are getting so concerned about the lateness of monsoons they are forcing their unmarried daughters to plow their fields in the nude. This unusual method of “cloud seeding” is a last ditch effort to embarrass the weather gods into sending rain so the women can put their clothes back on. No kidding. I think there is something to the proposition that science has done more for human life in the last 100 years than religion has done for it in 2,000 years.

What if Global Warming is a Hoax Perpetrated by 192 Countries and 2,500 Scientists?

NY Times columnist Tom Friedman, who has been writing about global warming for decades, asked a good question in his column on December 8: “If we prepare for climate change by building a clean-power economy, but climate change turns out to be a hoax, what would be the result? Well, during a transition period we would have higher energy prices. But we would be driving battery-powered electric cars and powering more of our homes and factories with wind, solar, nuclear, and second generation bio-fuels. We would be less dependent on oil dictators…our trade deficit would improve…the air we breathe would be cleaner…As a country we would be stronger, more innovative and more energy independent. But if we don’t prepare…life on this planet could become a living hell.”

So far climate change is a theory. Scientists define a theory as “systematically organized knowledge, a system of assumptions, accepted principles…to attempt to explain the nature or behavior of a specified set of phenomena.” In other words, it takes a lot of evidence to overturn a theory such as global warming. I have been collecting evidence of global warming for years. Let’s look at some of it:

***The ice at the North Pole has lost as much as half its thickness in the past seven years and is 25 percent smaller than it was 30 years ago. The ice is melting much faster than even climate experts predicted. In the Canadian Arctic the Serson Ice Shelf (they float but are connected to land) has shrunk by 47 square miles. Two huge chunks broke off recently, representing 60 percent of the total shelf. The 4,500 year-old Markham Ice Shelf is breaking up in the Arctic Ocean, with one iceberg as large as 19 square miles. The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf has lost over 15 square miles of ice in just two months last summer. For the first time in recorded history the fabled Northwest Passage was ice-free from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The Arctic ice cap has lost an area the size of Texas and New Mexico combined.

***Ice shelf breakups and glacier melting are happening around the world. A 160 square-mile section of Antarctic ice shelf completely disintegrated last summer. An iceberg of 54 square miles broke off from the Ross ice shelf ten years ago and is now about 1,000 miles west of Australia. Satellite measurements of Greenland’s mass show that it is losing an average of 52 cubic miles of ice per year now. If ice melt continues at this rate sea levels will rise 16 inches this century. But now the ice is melting at an ever-increasing rate, so computer models indicate that the sea may rise 39 inches instead of 16. The ice is over a mile and one-half thick in some parts of Greenland but it has lost an average of 150 million tons a year over the last four years.

***In that higher temperatures result in extreme weather, “100 year” storms are now hitting areas every 15 years. For every degree Celsius rise, rainfall from an Atlantic tropical storm increases 6 to 18 percent. Tornadoes and other severe weather have been on the increase in strength and occurrence since the 1970s, increasing about eight percent a year. The increasing amount of rain in the Midwest has also resulted in downpours of a magnitude to overwhelm levees and river banks. The Midwest used to suffer a deluge every 20 years. Now it is every five.

***Temperatures in Alaska have increased by about six degrees, melting permafrost along barrier reefs where the Inupiat people live. In the last few years they have lost up to 80 feet off their coastline. The permafrost used to protect the reefs. Over 180 Alaskan villages are losing permafrost and may have to be relocated. Alaska has also lost tens of millions of acres of forests to the pine beetle because it is able to survive in areas that used to be too cold for them. British Columbia has lost at least 22 million acres and the United States about 6.5 million acres.

***There is a shocking picture in the latest Newsweek of a glacier in Glacier National Park in 1932. The glacier is at least 70 feet thick. The same glacier area was photographed in 1988. There is absolutely no ice visible. Estimates are that there will be no glaciers left in the park by 2030 because of global warming.

***The World Meteorological Organization released a study in Copenhagen indicating that, despite recent fluctuations in global temperatures, a “sustained global warming trend shows no signs of ending. The decade of the 2000s is very likely the warmest in the modern record, dating back 150 years.” Each new decade has been slightly warmer than the one before it. This assessment has been verified by both the United States National Climatic Data Center and the weather arm of NASA. Global temps have increased 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit in this decade. If there is no treaty on halting carbon dioxide emissions, computer models indicate that world temps could rise 7.2 degrees by 2100, resulting in rising seas, more deserts in tropical and temperate zones, and crop failures. A recent dust storm in Australia during a drought dropped five million tons of dust from the outback on Sydney. Scientists say we presently have a carbon dioxide concentration of 388 parts per million. If it hits 450 ppm, Earth’s temps will go up more than 3.6 degrees. That may be the tipping point. In 1273 when wood and coal fire smoke covered English villages, the concentration was 280 ppm. A thermal inversion in 1952 London with a high concentration of carbon dioxide killed 4,000 people. It took four more years to pass England’s Clean Air Act. Our current CO2 rate is at 390 and increasing, the highest it has been in 650,000 years.

***Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, a 20,000-foot volcano in eastern Africa, has lost 26 percent of its ice since 2000, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 85 percent of the ice cover present in 1912 has vanished. The authors are still debating whether the loss has been caused by humanity warming the climate or by other “influences.” Glaciologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State has taken core samples of ice from Kilimanjaro’s remaining glaciers. Recent higher layers are filled with elongated bubbles, indicating that freezing and thawing is relatively new. There were no bubbles in deep layer cores. Thompson reported he had observed similar results in samples taken from ice fields in South America, Indonesia, and the Himalayas. The government of Nepal is going to hold a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest to advertise the fact that they depend on the glaciers for their entire water supply.

***We have created huge “dead zones” at the mouths of rivers around the world because the runoff of fertilizer causes areas of hypoxia, or low oxygen content. Nothing can live in these zones. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico may equal an area as large as Massachusetts this year, equaling 8,500 square miles. At the same time we are developing “sea-mucus blobs” in the oceans because of global warming. Viruses and bacteria multiply faster in warm water, so these noxious, gooey globs can be 100 miles long, particularly in the warm Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas. This gunk smothers fish and other marine life and gives swimmers very nasty rashes.

Warm ocean currents have also formed what is called the Great Garbage Patch between Hawaii and the U.S. mainline. Tons of plastic and other refuse from ships and oil platforms swirling in currents have formed a huge toxic dump. Dead birds are found washed up on the shores of Midway Island with stomachs stuffed with light bulbs, cigarette lighters, toys, and syringes – complete with needles.

There are thousands of other pieces of evidence that global warming is occurring. 18 of the world’s most respected scientific organizations representing thousands of scientists who have completed thousands of studies support the idea that global warming is real. Critics often point out that both Canada and the U.S. had cooler temperatures than the year before. But the records of the rest of the world show that the average temperature of the world increased. The latest Pew Research Center Poll indicates that 56 percent of likely Republican and Democratic voters believe that global warming is happening now, while a further 21 percent believe it will happen in the near future. Only 16 percent think it will not happen. Likely voters are used because pollsters say they are better informed than the general populace.

Researchers have determined that climate changes often cause social unrest. In Tanzania unusual rainfall, or the lack of it, often doubles the killing of women as witches. Emily Oster, a Chicago economist, examined climate changes between 1520 and 1770 in Europe and found that witchcraft trials and executions of witches dramatically increased during long cold spells. In this country the Salem witch trials of the 17th century were held after a long, cold winter.

I do believe that the 20 North Dakota university and college scientists who agree with the principles of global warming should be presented with some kind of “Profiles of Courage” award before the N.D. Legislature meets. With a legislature that at one time agreed that a record of domestic violence was a pre-existing condition for denying health insurance to women – well, you never know when they might go on a witch hunt.

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