Year 3, Month 3, Day 20: Dry Ice! We’ll Sprinkle Dry Ice All Around, And It’ll Freeze Everything Up Again!

The Boston Herald apparently had an empty spot on one of their pages, so they ran an article about climate change and ice melt:

LOS ANGELES — The Greenland ice sheet has a lower melting point than previously thought, with scientists saying not only that it could melt completely at a lower temperature than once believed, but also that the melting process could soon become irreversible.

“Once the process of melting the ice begins, it is very hard for it to change course even if we can lower temperatures in the future,” Alex Robertson, lead author of a new study, said in an interview by email with the Los Angeles Times on Monday.

“So even though melting the whole ice sheet could take a really long time, we will essentially decide the fate of Greenland within the next century.”

The study was published Sunday in Nature Climate Change.

How to criticize them without hurting their fee-fees? Sent March 14:

In a culture dominated by scandals du jour and the rapid-fire programming of a 24-hour news cycle, it’s no surprise that our nation seems to have a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder.  When electoral politics is carried out in sound bites and bumper-sticker slogans, our civilization’s long-term future is invariably trivialized.

Nowhere is this more problematic than in the intersection of scientific research and public policy.  By its nature, science requires rigor, attentiveness, and patience — three qualities notably lacking in our political and media environments.  The most recent study on the likely fate of the Greenland ice sheet is the result of many years of concentrated study and inquiry — and its findings likewise require more than superficial attention.  Politicians and pundits, however, will do their best to ignore its implications for our nation and our planet; it’s far, far easier just to mock what you don’t understand.

Warren Senders