By OcJim

Feckless Republicans and mealy-mouthed Democrats are willing to forsake the livelihood, indeed the future of the planet, for a comparatively few shekels and short-term comfort. To justify their impersonation of viable human beings, many say that climate change, supported by 99% of the world’s scientists, is a fraud.

Are you going to believe a politician who is on the payroll of the most crass corporations in the world, led by those who would trade the future viability of our planet for profit. If there are icons for such a group, it would have to be the CEOs of Koch Industries, David and Charles Koch, who not only inherited their money but also an apparent belief in divine right. An investment of a few million is enough to buy politicians, who give the Kochs a free path to exploit the rest of the world, and earn billions through a pittance of bribes.

Now due to the raucous voices of self-serving, in-denial neo-conservatives, the CO₂-in-our-atmosphere-is-no-biggie media, and the corruption of business profiteering, scientists are timid about climate and sea-level predictions their research might reveal. The most daring scientific study speaks of only a 17 inch rise in sea levels and an average 6 degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature by the year 2100.

But let’s look at the potentials. Ten percent of the earth is covered by glaciers. Ninety percent are in Antarctica and eight percent in Greenland. If Greenland melts, sea levels go up 23 feet worldwide. If Antarctica melts, sea level rises 230 feet.

Worldwide the temperature has risen an average of 1.8% since the start of our industrial age, most of the increase in the last 50 years. Greenland’s temperature has risen 5.4 degrees in the last 20 years, Antarctica’s 4.5 degrees in the last 50 years.

Ocean currents disperse heat from the Equator. Land warms much faster than water and the Northern Hemisphere has most of the land mass. Increase in sea levels and temperatures will most likely exceed all predictions we have seen, considering identified feedback mechanisms like the ice-reflectivity feedback (dark oceans absorb, white reflects), the nature of glacial melting, deforestation (trees capture carbon dioxide through photosynthesis), and the dynamics of ocean flows.

Melting glaciers exhibit expanding acceleration in their flow to the sea. In 2006, a study of the fastest melting glacier, Pine Island Glacier in western Antarctica, revealed a 22% increase in acceleration (melting ice toward the sea) of the retreating glacier since its melting began. By 2006 acceleration increased to 30%.  This glacier is a land-based giant, 124 miles long and 18 miles wide, and – fully melted — will cause oceans to rise 16 feet, just by itself.

Climate change signs work in extremes. It is no accident that the 12 warmest years have occurred since 1990, that Texas and Australia experienced wild fires, severe drought and record temperatures, that New Orleans was under water due to a brutal hurricane, that intense tornados are occurring in winter months and that port cities find themselves underwater due to storms and high tides (Venice, Italy flooding of 76 inches, 1966, 73 inches, 2008 and 40 inches in 2010).

Speaking of feeble attempts, even the failed Kyoto Treaty, which we rejected under Bush, would have allowed the building of over 850 new coal-fired plants in China, India, and the United States, which put an extra 2.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the last 8 years. Kyoto would have only cut about one-fifth of that.

If China’s carbon usage keeps pace with its economic growth, which would probably make gas masks in cities mandatory, the country’s carbon dioxide emissions will reach 8 gigatons a year by 2030, equal to the entire CO₂ production a few years ago[1].

Look at the potential for sea rises and temperature increases and note the increases in fossil-fuel burning throughout the world. Spend 4 days in Beijing choking in their smog events. Look at the impotence of the Obama administration in bridling rising greenhouse gas emissions. Look at the influence of unlimited spending (Thanks to the Supreme Court) by billionaires like the Koch brothers in buying Republican attacks on the EPA. Look at the cowardliness of Democrats in doing anything.

Tell me sea levels will only rise 17 inches by 2100 and temperatures will only increase by 6 degrees Fahrenheit by then!

I predict that those of us who are around in twenty years will see Wall Street flooding and extensive coastal flooding around the world. Add to that, violent weather we once watched in science fiction movies.

We all know that the joke (yoke) is on our children and grandchildren.

See a cartoonish depiction: http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e324/cybersipey/avatars/9oc9j9ij.gif