Disaster for the Adelies
Business Week Magazine reports that 47 members of Congress – 11 U.S. Senators and 36 U.S. Representatives – share the blind ignorance of Republican Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, who declared that man-made global warming was the “greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American people.”
Inhofe’s willful ignorance may appeal to the good citizens of Oklahoma, but his grandchildren are going to curse his name. Global warming, and by that WC means anthropogenic global warming, is as real as taxes and far more deadly. Every week that goes by without our doing something about it increases the risk of catastrophe.
Everyone capable of rational thought knows that northern sea ice is melting; in fact, the eastern Arctic seems to be refusing to freeze this year. But the latest proof comes from the Antarctic Peninsula, and is documented in Fen Montaigne’s excellent book, Fraser’s Penguins. Antarctic scientist Bill Fraser didn’t set out to study global warming or climate change. He was researching Adelie Penguins. With the Emperor Penguin, their larger cousins, Adelies are true Antarctic species. Their lives, food and breeding cycles are intimately wrapped around sea ice. And as Bill Fraser has carefully, meticulously documented over the course of 35 years, the sea ice is melting earlier, with devastating consequences for the Adalie Penguins that depend upon it. Colonies of Adelies on and around the Antarctic Peninsula that have existed for tens of thousands of years are gone. The Antarctic Peninsula has warmed a full degree centigrade in 35 years. The cascade of consequences is frightening to anyone whose soul hasn’t been purchased by the fossil fuel industry. The coldest place the planet is thawing. The ice is going to melt. The oceans are going to rise.
The New York Times review of Fraser’s Penguins calls it “a tragedy in black and white.” Montaigne’s book does lay it out in black and white. The subtitle of the book is “A journey to the future in Antarctica.” And that future is a catastrophe.
WC has very low expectations of the new Congress, which is obsessed with the deficit and undoing health care reform. Clowns like Inhofe will keep man-made global warming from getting serious attention. Your children and grandchildren will pay the price.
Read Fraser’s Penguins. It’s a well-written, timely and frightening story.
Wickersham's Conscience 
Greetings WC –
Man made GW is an interesting topic, once you get past the tragedy of it. For years, in talking with friends I have framed the discussion around simply curbing our gluttonous appetites for energy and disposable junk, which by doing so actually increases your happiness and wealth. And even just talking about THAT, I mostly get blank stares. We have simply evolved to believe that more is better. period. This belief was clearly spawned from being weened on the media teat. So here we are where the vast majority of Americans think this way, and yet, we (Americans) produce very little except financial derivatives and food – While at the same time – gobble up enormous amounts of global resources.
The situation is truly dumbfounding to me. But here in America we manage and legislate via crisis management. And when you operate that way, you effectively guarantee one simple thing – more crisis.
Personally, I’m done with single minded, crisis management. I like to think I have evolved beyond the amoeba stage of a simple reactionary existence. Mabey so, mabey not. But I’m a lot less stressed and a lot more content nonetheless.
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