I Didn't Care About Climate Change Until I Visited Greenland — Now I'm Freaking Out About It

[xchrom]

http://www.businessinsider.com/greenland-made-me-care-about-climate-2014-7


A helicopter flies over the Eqi Glacier near the town of Ilulissat in Greenland.

***SNIP

The speed at which the glacier moves has doubled relative to that in 1998. My scientist brain, accustomed to working with numbers and large scales, had a hard time absorbing this information. If I was rationally aware of the consequences of global warming from scientific reports before, now I felt it emotionally. This is what my trip to Greenland with a group of World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders did to us. It made us move from knowing and caring to be desperate to do something about it.

The experience also made us realize that all the international negotiations and agreements to date are not going to help avert the imminent catastrophe. Not even the boldest targets to reduce carbon pollution put forward by the smartest nations are going to move the dial. It’s all an illusion of movement, kind of like Alice in Wonderland’s Red Queen, running and running but not going anywhere.
Bob Corell, a reputed climate scientist who took part in the trip, made us simulate international negotiations to try and agree on bolder targets for carbon emission reductions. We were to input targets in a computer model that would show in real time how emissions would decline globally, and how global temperature was going to stabilize before increasing over 2 degrees Celsius – the threshold over which global warming will have dire and irreparable consequences for human life.

After our negotiations we came up with what we thought were improvements on the status quo. Bob entered the new agreed dates and reduction targets in his model; feeling like wise world leaders, we were expecting conspicuous reductions in global warming trends and a stabilization of the average global temperature. Bob entered the data and pressed ‘enter’. Our eyes were fixed on the screen. Nothing happened.




Ice floats near the town of Kulusuk, east Greenland.

Read more: http://forumblog.org/2014/07/visiting-greenland-made-realise-climate-change/#ixzz36P3jQqeb

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. Really?

Somebody who who refers to his 'scientific brain' didn't care about Climate Change until he went to Greenland?

I'm not sure his brain is as scientific as he thinks it is.

[yeoman6987]

2. Well the poster did change their mind

isn't that good?

[hatrack]

5. Yay. We're saved. A writer for Business Insider got a ticket for the Clue Bus.

A remarkably special moment for all of us.

[Chemisse]

3. I have always cared about climate change, but

I was at a workshop a couple of years ago and a scientist presented video of his trip to Greenland. The water was just pouring off the ice pack at a seasonal melt rate that was unprecedented. That visual sent me into a bit of a panic, and I have felt that urgency about climate change ever since.

I can believe that the simulations showed little change. I think we passed the tipping point some years ago and there is no way to stop it now. For example, warmer oceans cause more ice to melt. The ice reflected sunlight, but the water absorbs it, causing the oceans to become even warmer, etc.

And the melting of the ice packs is just one facet of the change that is happening around the globe.

Nevertheless, it is still imperative that we do everything we can to reduce the forces that are initiating climate change.

[pscot]

7. And yet

we'll put more CO2 into the atmosphere in 2014 than we did in 2013. The notion that we're making progress on the issue of greenhouse gases has no credibility at all.

[hatrack]

8. As someone on here said, "The Keeling Curve talks, bullshit walks."

It wasn't you, was it?

[pscot]

9. As a former attorney general once said

I have no specific memory of that statement. Let me ask my wife, and I'll get back to you.

[hatrack]

10. Yes, Dear. Yes. Yes, Dear.

I, too, am a proud and happy member of member of World's Biggest Cult.

[Historic NY]

4. Greenland is getting greener.

[FreakinDJ]

6. China and India ain't gonna reduce shit

and have been the largest polluters on the planet for decades

China's use of coal isn't even expected to peak until 2025

India's runaway population growth and industrialization of that country has No End in sight

[Nihil]

11. Salient quote: "It’s all an illusion of movement"

> The experience also made us realize that all the international negotiations
> and agreements to date are not going to help avert the imminent catastrophe.
> Not even the boldest targets to reduce carbon pollution put forward by the
> smartest nations are going to move the dial.
> It’s all an illusion of movement, kind of like Alice in Wonderland’s Red Queen,
> running and running but not going anywhere.