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| Melting ice lifts all floes |
Whether the world’s seas rise four or 12 feet depends on how long it takes for the entire West Antarctic ice sheet to fall into the ocean and how long that takes depends on how much we humans do to stop the warming process of the earth. The faster the earth warms, the faster the ice melts, get it?
Said Ian Joughin, a glaciologist, “[T]he longer it gets drawn out, the more time people will have to move inland.”
Said Benjamin Smith, who works with Joughin, “While we may not be able to prevent [ocean levels] from rising in the long run, we could make it a whole lot worse.”
Bill McKibbon shows up in Bellingham this week and I wonder how many jokes he’s going to tell? Environmentalists as a rule are a terribly serious bunch and seeing the earth of our children and their children crashing, burning and going down the toilet is no laughing matter.
The poisons will kill you, though, unless we laugh.
Well, check out Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Climate Change Debate
Moved some of those poisons out? Feel better?
There’s lots of material out there to riff on:
Upset ocean? Tums turum tum. Kilmer calls for competition to reduce ocean acidity
Remember McGruff? Meet McPoop. Dogs sniff out bacteria contamination in Kirkland waterways
C’mon, give it a try.
--Mike Sato
Yea, no laughs here. I'm still in the throes of being concerned about our wasteful overuse and production of plastic, and here's this HUGE scary global threat. And the starfish dissolving, and declines of lots of marine life at Tatoosh Island and and and...thanks for the links.
ReplyDeleteGallows Humor?
ReplyDeleteActually, we are preparing to form a group and write a grant proposal to begin building one of those space-elevator doo dads with a pipe in it and have it pump excess sea water to Mars. Once the crisis passes, we can use gravity to bring it back as we need it. Want to invest in the group we are forming? We will actually be needing a great publicist.
Am happy and excited to be your publicist and to carry your water.
DeleteTom Holz sez: "I am offering a free pizza to anybody who can halt global warming and reduce human population to a sustainable level. This is a large pizza from any pizza shop of your choice; up to 10 toppings. Bring evidence that C02 is below 350 ppm and global human population is below 0.5 billion. In the event that there are multiple winners, names of all those who qualify will put be placed in a 50 gallon container and the winner will be chosen at random. This offer ends on 31 December 2040."
ReplyDelete