Climate change always seems to get bumped out of the headlines by something else.
A 9.0 Earthquake in Japan following other huge quakes from New Zealand to Chile, A Tsunami,
A Nuclear Meltdown there implying it could happen here, The US Military evacuating dependents from Japan
For some reason whenever somebody keeps telling me repeatedly to be calm, don't panic, women and children first, be calm don't panic the situation is under control, be calm don't panic, God Bless America...I get apprehensive that I am not getting the whole story.
I go to Al Jazeera and realize I am hearing absolutely nothing about Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Haiti (member them), Saudi Arabia, Bamyan, Cote de Ivorie, Tunesia, and that what I do hear doesn't seem to be quite as focused on job creation as I might like.
Workers of the World Uniting from Egypt to Milwaukee, for the last Month !
Republicans trying to do away with collective bargaining and overthrow child labor laws, Libya, Charlie Sheen... I guess the Cyclones, flooding, drought, brushfires, and mudslides are done for the moment. Don't Worry, Be Happy, Whoops, wait a minute, Now NASA informs us that icecaps are overtaking glaciers as the biggest contributors to Rising Sea Levels. That wasn't supposed to happen for another thousand years. Apparently East coast cities from Boston to Delaware are starting to realize that Houston we may have a problem here.
Beyond the headlines of the moment there are some seriously disturbing trends that I like to just go back and check on every once in a while. The synergy of running off the cliff of peak oil, climate change, global warming, resource wars, crumbling urban infrastructure, and no real progress on jobs, healthcare, human and civil rights, government transparency, is giving me a serious case of outrage fatigue.
It seems obvious that if nuclear and coal are what we were depending on to pick up the slack as oil production declines our running out of energy and no longer being able to commute to work is going to happen sooner rather than later. With Republicans continuing to vigorously and viciously reject every effort at building wind and solar infrastructure and protecting the environment, climate change mediation isn't going to happen. Our crumbling infrastructure isn't going to get the attention it needs. The people wanting to do something about protecting our cities from rising sea levels are wasting their time, the Nuke plants along our coasts are going to end up underwater where it appears that maintaining them gets really hard.
A new NASA-funded satellite study shows that the two biggest ice sheets on Earth - Greenland and Antarctica - are losing mass at an accelerating rate.
When the rate of change begins to accelerate or increase at an increasing rate, that gets defined mathematically as an exponential curve rather than a linear function.
Over the length of the study, the ice caps have lost an average combined mass of 475 gigatons per year (1 gigaton = 1 billion metric tons). Over the course of the study, that number has risen by 36.3 gigatons for each consecutive year on average. In comparison, the loss of mountain glaciers was estimated at 402 gigatons per year on average. However, the rate of acceleration for mountain glacier loss is three times smaller than that of the ice caps.
Note that there is a big difference between things continuing at their present rate and things accelerating. If gas prices continued to increase at their present rate, how long before we are paying $10 a gallon for gas and everything else we buy reflects that inflation? How about if we were to lose the 20% of our energy that comes from nuclear and our share of production from the Near East were to be dramatically slowed by say somebody deciding to get a better price by selling the oil to China?
Over the next four decades, the researchers conclude that if ice sheets keep melting at their current rate, sea levels could rise by 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) by 2050. However, they caution that there are number of uncertainties remaining in accurately predicting future ice loss acceleration.
What if instead of melting at their current rate their melting continues to accelerate?