Smoke'm if you Got'em

Sharon Begley just put an environmental Freddy Kreuger in my dreams with her post in Newsweek. When a major news source reports some real stats and with the sense of urgency they deserve it makes my heart flutter.

Here's scary quote #1:

The loss of Arctic sea ice "is well ahead of" what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast, largely because emissions of carbon dioxide have topped what the panel—which foolishly expected nations to care enough about global warming to do something about it—projected. "The models just aren't keeping up"

Right now climate change is "off" everything: radar, charts, the hook, the chain, the wall. Everything.

Scary quote #2:

So while the IPCC projected that sea level would rise 16 inches this century, "now a more likely figure is one meter [39 inches] at the least," says Carlson. "Chest high instead of knee high, with half to two thirds of that due to Greenland." Hence the "no idea how bad it was."

Let's reiterate: No Idea How Bad It Was. That's probably one epitaph that's underused.

And because bad things come in three's, Scary quote #3:

But estimates of how much carbon is locked into Arctic permafrost were, it turns out, woefully off. "It's about three times as much as was thought, about 1.6
trillion metric tons, which has surprised a lot of people," says Edward Schuur of the University of Florida. "It means the potential for positive feedbacks is greatly increased." That 1.6 trillion tons is about twice the amount now in the atmosphere. And Schuur's measurements of how quickly CO2 can come out of permafrost, reported in May, were also a surprise: 1 billion to 2 billion tons per year. Cars and light trucks in the U.S. emit about 300 million tons per year.

So this is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an incapable species.

And just to further my point that the U.S. government and just about all other governments are walking zombie epic fails:

In an insightful observation in The Guardian this month, Jim Watson of the University of Sussex wrote that "a new breed of climate sceptic is becoming more common": someone who doubts not the science but the policy response. Given the pathetic (non)action on global warming at the G8 summit, and the fact that the energy/climate bill passed by the House of Representatives is so full of holes and escape hatches that it has barely a prayer of averting dangerous climate change, skepticism that the world will get its act together seems appropriate.

We are literally looking extinction in the face and we are worried about the 4 year presidential cycle. May shame be cast upon all our souls.