Global Warming

The New York Times focuses on global warming today, with an article about the shrinking polar ice cap and an editorial on the necessity of staying focused on global warming. The first focuses on research showing a dramatic shrink in the size of the arctice ice cap this summer:

"The floating cap of sea ice on the Arctic Ocean shrank this summer to what is probably its smallest size in a century, continuing a trend toward less summer ice that is hard to explain without attributing it in part to human-caused global warming, various experts on the region said today."

"Other experts on Arctic ice and climate disagreed on details. For example, Ignatius G. Rigor at the University of Washington said that the change was likely due to a mix of factors, including residual influences from the atmospheric cycle. But he agreed with Dr. Serreze that the influence from greenhouse gases had to be involved. 'The global warming idea has to be a good part of the story,' Dr. Rigor said. 'I think we have a different climate state in the Arctic now.'"

Even scarier is that the trend may be becoming self-sustaining:

"It also appears that the change is becoming self sustaining, with the increased open water absorbing solar energy that would be reflected back into space by bright white ice, said Ted A. Scambos, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., which compiled the data along with NASA."

In other words, it's gotten to a point where the ice cap may continue melting, no matter what we do about it, or at the very least requiring much greater effort on our part to reverse the process.

To be blunt, this is scary shit. You can argue the details all you want, but scientist agree that to one degree or another, we are accelerating the process of warming the globe and melting the arctic ice cap, with resulting consequences the likes of which we have not experienced in recorded human history. The editorial discusses the consequences in fuller detail, from more powerful hurricanes to inundated seashores:

"The emerging hurricane problem is size, not quantity. The scientists who have studied the issue have not detected any increase in the number of hurricanes. Yet these same scientists - in research reports appearing in reputable journals like Science, Nature and The Journal of Climate - have detected increases of up to 70 percent in hurricane intensity, a measure that combines the power of a hurricane and its duration."

And:

"According to one government study, a 20-inch rise in sea level by 2100 could put 3,500 square miles of the southern coast of the United States underwater - rendering efforts to restore the Everglades and the Louisiana coastline essentially pointless. A large-scale breakup of the polar ice sheets would, of course, make matters much worse. Dikes could protect some regions, like Manhattan and the Netherlands, but most coastlines would be inundated."

These are incredibly serious, and increasingly real, consequences to our dismissal of the threat of global warming. Anyone who at this point can seriously deny that human activity has contributed to the warming of the globe is someone who probably cannot ever be convinced; they'll be trumpeting theories about ice-ages and warming of the sun long after our beaches are hundreds of feet underwater. But I think the vast majority of Americans, hearing near constant news from credible scientists about the known and unknown dangers of global warming, are starting to wake up to the fact that something must be done about it, even if against the will of the energy and automobile industries and their Republican (and even Democratic) allies in Congress. In the face of disasters the likes of Katrina, which we can only plan to see more of, it's more important then ever to try and begin the process of undoing the damage we've done.

UPDATE: Then there's this story on global warming's effect on Alaska.