When it comes to discussing global warming, glaciers melting, or oceans rising it’s sure to charge up some tempers. Pick a side and start firing across the fence. There’s an overwhelming ‘peek pressure’ to convict without a jury anyone who doesn’t see it a certain way! I try to present a balanced view, but we all have our prejudice and peeves.
VP Al Gore has a movie, Academy Award, & Nobel Prize and yet I’m not going to fall over backward, sorry. For anyone to question any point about Earth temperatures is like a crime equal in shame to calling the earth flat and asking for equal time to present that view. That’s just not the case. If you feel the evidence is compelling and indisputable I encourage you to do whatever you can. If you don’t think there is accelerated human impact it still makes total sense to support a cleaner planet and to recycle. For the middle-of-the-road folks I suggest a reasonable combination of these two approaches. Just don’t flip off the guy driving a Hummer because he may, in his way, be doing more than you!
MIT Technology Review (Nov - Dec 2007) stated that science has a POOR understanding of the ice sheets. With poor data it would be hard to predict how sea levels will respond. Scientists tend to agree sea levels are rising due to rising temperature, but the impact on the oceans is near impossible to determine with poor data.
Use of Stock Footage: I have the exact same shot used by Mr. Gore’s Academy Award film showing in slow motion as a chunk of glacier falls into the sea. Very emotional especially in slo-mo. That’s not uncommon. It’s what glaciers do - they constantly move - they recede - they retreat to the sea. All hope to resolve or understand Global Warming was lost forever when a United Nations’ formed a Panel to analyze and report. They predicted from 7 - 24 inches of ocean rise this century. What? Can they hit a barn with a snowball? Way to narrow it down for the rest of the world to comprehend and rest easy. But wait, there’s more; this same panel conceded the estimate “might be unreliable” because knowledge of how ice sheets disintegrate is limited. So they took a wild guess for the heck of it? Why not just say they can not make an accurate determination vs. guessing?
MIT Scientists (WJS - 11/02/007 Section: B6 The Informed Reader) will have data from an archaeological expedition setting out this summer to drill into an ice sheet in Greenland. They will study cores from glacier ice that formed 115,000 to 130,000 years ago, WHEN GREENLAND WAS ABOUT 12 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT WARMER THAN IT IS TODAY!
Did I miss Mr. Gore covering these thought-altering facts? He had to run across these studies just as easily as I did. After all, too much Political Science and not enough Natural Science don’t make him right. Not saying he’s wrong, but he doesn’t really know.
Tags: Categorized, Ocean Fun Facts, RANT
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