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Stephanie

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Mon Mar-13-06 08:43 PM
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Edited on Mon Mar-13-06 09:20 PM by Stephanie

This is the very definition of insanity.

CHILLING
� Elizabeth Kolbert

Issue of 2006-03-20
Posted 2006-03-13

<snip>

The news from Antarctica follows a string of similarly grim discoveries. In September, satellite measurements showed that the extent of the Arctic ice cap had shrunk to the smallest area ever recorded, prompting a prediction that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer �well before the end of this century.� Around the same time, a group of British scientists reported that soils in England and Wales have been losing carbon at the rate of four million metric tons a year, a loss that is at once a symptom of warming and�as much of that carbon is released into the atmosphere�a likely cause of more. In January, researchers at NASA�s Goddard Institute for Space Studies concluded that 2005 had been the hottest year on record, and, in February, a team of scientists from NASA and the University of Kansas announced that the flow of ice from glaciers in Greenland had more than doubled over the past decade. Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported that the mountain pine beetle, a pest once kept in check by winter cold, has decimated huge swaths of forest in western Canada. Officials with the Canadian Forest Service say that the beetle has crossed the Rockies and they fear that it will soon start eating its way east. �People say climate change is something for our kids to worry about,� one official told the Post. �No. It�s now.�

***

But where there�s a will there is, indeed, always a way. The new argument making the rounds of conservative think tanks, like the National Center for Policy Analysis, and circulating through assorted sympathetic publications goes something like this: Yes, the planet may be warming up, but no one can be sure of why, and, in any case, it doesn�t matter�let�s stop quibbling about the causes of climate change and concentrate on dealing with the consequences. A recent column in the Wall Street Journal laid out the logic as follows: �The problems associated with climate change (whether man-made or natural) are the same old problems of poverty, disease, and natural hazards like floods, storms, and droughts.� Therefore �money spent directly on these problems is a much surer bet than money spent trying to control a climate change process that we don�t understand.� Sounding an eerily similar note, a column published a few days later in the National Review Online stated, �We can do more to help the poor by combating these problems now than we would by reducing carbon dioxide emissions.�

The beauty of this argument is its apparent high-mindedness, and this, of course, is also its danger. Carbon dioxide is a persistent gas�it lasts for about a century�and once released into the atmosphere it is, for all practical purposes, irrecoverable. Since every extra increment of CO2 leads to extra warming, addressing the effects of climate change without dealing with the cause is a bit like trying to treat diabetes with doughnuts. The climate isn�t going to change just once, and then settle down; unless CO2 concentrations are stabilized, it will keep on changing, producing, in addition to the �same old problems,� an ever-growing array of new ones. The head of the Goddard Institute, James Hansen, who first warned about the dangers of global warming back in the nineteen-seventies and recently made headlines by accusing the Bush Administration of censorship, has said that following the path of business-as-usual for the remainder of this century will lead to an earth so warm as to be �practically a different planet.� In a world thus transformed, the only sure bet is that there will be no sure bets.

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http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060320ta_talk_kolbert