Climate Science News Update

"The northern polar ice cap has been showing the effects of global warming more rapidly than any other place on earth." So begins this video report that features NASA's Tom Wagner and a convincing eye-witness account of what's happening to Arctic sea ice from Arctic researcher David Barber. You can witness for yourself that there is little left to doubt as to whether or not the climate has changed and continues to do so in exactly the manner in which climate scientists long ago predicted. This week NASA reported that we've just experienced the hottest January to August period on record. And if you're the kind that's been paying attention you already know that in June NASA reported he 12-month running mean global temperature had reached a new record in 2010 — despite recent minimum of solar irradiance. That means that the deniers claims that the warming we're experiencing is all the sun's fault are hogwash.

   

      

I understand why producers and profiteers of fossil fuels deny Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC) and their efforts to muddy the science behind it and why they'll even fight anti-pollution laws. I don't get why right wingers go along though. I don't see how it profits them and why they wouldn't want to err on the side of caution. There's a report just today that hundreds of thousands of walruses pack Alaskan shores to get some rest, as the sea ice in the region has been reduced to near-record lows.

What's most troubling in all this anti-science nonsense is the lack of appreciation for the real impacts that this kind of rapid climate change will have on national security and international stability. Take a hard look at what's happening in Pakistan (seems nobody in the western press really wants to), the devastation this one in a thousand year flood has wrought and you'll begin to realize some of the untold consequences that await us if we do not act.