Drowned world

"Oh no.  Those addlepated 'warmers' are at it again.

"You know, that insidious herd of Chicken Littles who insist on spending all kinds of cash on safeguarding the environment, having clean drinking water, and protecting life on Earth for the upcoming generations and doing it all with falsified science just to line the pockets of the burgeoning 'green' technologies industry?

"Why, there is nothing to this report from the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  There really is no '2-in-3 probability' that climate extremes have worsened due to human-made greenhouse gases and that in turn has nothing to do with the crazy weather we've had in the past year.  The Northeast gets massive October snowstorms every so often and so what if Thailand is under record flooding?

Yeah, yeah.  Thailand is overpopulated, sprawling with urbanization, and they've messed up the flow of their rivers.  So I guess it all comes back to people, then.  Yeah.  Right."

At least that's what I would expect a climate change denier to say.  They cling desperately to the notion that our world has gone through a number of climate changes in its time.  It would be ludicrous to argue against that point.  It is equally ludicrous to believe that 100 plus years of heavy industry spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere has had next to no affect on the climate.  

Once again, let's try to set aside the politics and greed factors and realize that regardless of the reason, a change is occurring.  Temperatures are rising.  As taken from the article linked above:

"Weather Underground meteorology director Jeff Masters, who wasn't involved in the study, said in the United States from June to August this year, blistering heat set 2,703 daily high temperature records, compared with only 300 cold records during that period, making it the hottest summer in the U.S. since the Dust Bowl of 1936."

The poles are melting and sea level is rising.  Thailand is just one of the first to experience severe flooding.  There is a hit parade of coastal areas that could find themselves under water or at least losing significant real estate to encroaching oceans, including New York City, Miami, Tokyo, and Rotterdam.  For quite a while now, London has been very concerned about the rise of sea levels and the probability of flooding from the Thames.  This 2005 piece from the BBC compares what could happen to London with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  This page from around the same time has a video simulation of the flood levels London would face.

Like I quipped, the oceans are trying to kill us.  In case you like your messages more salient, this page has several chilling artistic renditions of major global areas under flood waters.  

Can we do anything to stop this?  Can we afford not to try?  For even if we somehow have the science of climate change wrong (and I think that highly unlikely), we still will only benefit from measures taken to preserve the environment.

It's either that or hope that Palin, Bachmann, and the fundy baggers can pray us out of the situation.  If that's the case, invest in scuba gear. 


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