
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
The Ice Caps Are Melting!...in, er, three thousand years or so

Not all greens are crazy of course, but most of them are alarmists. I do believe that the planet has been getting warmer. The evidence is quite clear if you look at it, especially in long term weather monitoring sites. Its also clear to me that man has been responsible for much of this warming since the industrial revolution. What isnt clear at all is whether this will have any noticeable short term or medium term consequences. By short term I mean our lifetimes, by medium term I mean the lifetimes of our children or other people's children. I dont believe the Deep Greens when they claim that a one or two degree increase in global temperature over the next century will cause famines, hurricanes and the end of civilization. The CET record I link to above proves that it doesn't.
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A little story went largely unnoticed in the Guardian this week. It was about the Greenland Ice Cap, the one that Greens are always telling us is about to slide off Greenland into the north Atlantic and subsequently melt and flood the world. Apparently yes, it is melting as the planet warms but to disappear completely will take at least three thousand years. Of course in three thousand years our current holocene era may be over and a new Ice Age might well have begun. We are due for an Ice Age right about now if the cyclical evidence of history is to be believed and if it isn't to be believed can someone please tell me why not?