We have a climate denier in the White House just as latest research shows Arctic sea ice collapse

ByMartyn Bradbury

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We have a climate denier like Trump in the White House just as the latest research shows us that Arctic sea ice is collapsing when it should be building…

‘Things are getting weird in the polar regions’

As extraordinarily warm temperatures continue in the Arctic — temperatures tens of degrees Fahrenheit above normal for this time of year in some locations — Arctic sea ice, a key indicator of the overall state of this system, seems to be responding in kind.

It is kind of unbelievable: On Nov. 19, the extent of Arctic sea ice was nearly 1 million square kilometers lower (8.633 million vs 9.504 million) than it was on that date during the prior record low year of 2012, according to data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. On Nov. 20, the gap widened further, with 8.625 million square kilometers in 2016 versus 9.632 million in 2012.

This is happening in a time of year when ice is supposed to be spreading across the polar ocean — yet instead, it is flat or even declining a little lately.

…we are in deep trouble on the climate front. We have passed tipping points that we will not be able to come back from which will radically and rapidly change the climate. We must be on a war footing in terms of research and radical policy shifts to start living with the consequences of a rapidly heating planet and all the challenges that adaptation demands.

A climate denier who thinks climate change is a Chinese Hoax is the diametric opposite of what we require.

Meanwhile, closer to home, ECan joins Christchurch City Council, Auckland City Council and Dunedin City Council in voting to oppose deep sea oil drilling – with all three of them rejecting lease block offers in the last fortnight.

Climate Change must be addressed in the 2017 election, it will be interesting to see what Gareth Morgan suggests as policy.

 

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12 Comments

  1. Actually I think we have a guy in the White House who has no convictions at all. It all depends on who gets his ear. (See NYT meeting today). If true, that may not be such a bad thing. He may be open to persuasion. However, currently he is surrounded and used by people who do. And that, given the typical profile of his acolytes, is definitely not good. However, let’s see how this plays out over the next month or so. We’ll have a better idea of what’s to come then and will be able to air-strategize accordingly. Because of course, being here in New Zealand, so far from the action, this will have more in common with Fantasy Football than Politics, but that won’t stop us, will it?

  2. There is no hope for humanity as long as coal and oil are used to make Halloween costumes and inflatable Santas, as long oil is used to transport such items from factories in China to shops in the ‘developed’ world, and as long as people in the ‘developed’ world buy such items.

    There is no hope for humanity as long as governments keep pushing for more ‘trade deals’, more tourism, and more consumerism.

    There is no hope for humanity as long as the debt-based financial system predicated on infinite growth on a finite planet remains operational.

    There is no hope for humanity as long as GDP growth is regarded as beneficial and is continually promoted.

    I see no indication that any of the aforementioned (or dozens of unmentioned idiotic forms of behaviour) are going to change any time soon.

    The Arctic ice cover will undoubtedly increase over the coming months (since almost zero heat reaches the polar region in the middle of winter). The root cause of the predicament -unprecedented atmospheric CO2 levels that result from outlandishly high CO2 emissions- will undoubtedly rise (probably to around 412 ppm next May)

    https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp-content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/mlo_two_years.png

    causing an even lower Arctic ice cover in 2017 or 2018.

    Many aspects of our environmental predicament are unknown -such as the effect of self-reinforcing and mutually-reinforcing feedbacks- but we can be certain that governments will make pledges to cut emissions that they have no intention of keeping whilst they promote policies that increase emissions, thereby bringing forward planetary meltdown.

  3. I doesn’t matter who is in the white house. even if we had President Martyn Bradbury the future would still be the same, maybe a tad worse with Clinton, though you can’t get much worse than total species annihilation. No matter how we get there, ie nuclear or just driving to work.
    The bullet left the barrel maybe 100 ppm CO2 ago. There is nothing on scale that humans can do to change the fucking fact that 400 ppm CO2 = the extinction of most life on this planet.
    Ho hum, the question isn’t IF, it is WHEN, the only thing between extinction and now ….. is time! And as ‘we’ have done this damage in such a short time, there is nothing to compare it to, unprecedented times means everything the environment dose is ‘new’, the ice is heading to no ice, faster than it has ever done before, the oceans are going to rise faster than before, all the forests are going to burn faster ie Boreal Forests emitting more CO2 now than the USA.
    The only thing we can do now, is try and die off with dignity

    1. Actually, Robert, saying that “it doesn’t matter who is in the white house” is rubbish. Of course it matters!! Only a defeatist willing to bow down to the One Percent and accept our lot as 21st century peasants could utter such drivel.

      Betsy DeVos is Trump’s latest appointee, as Education Secretary,. She is a hard-line advocate for Charter Schools, which pushes for the neo-liberal colonisation of the education system.

      If you think that “doesn’t matter”, then you’re part of the problem.

      Far from being anti-establishment, Trump’s Republican cronies have moved the US to the right of the established political spectrum.

  5. Trump seems to be having a ‘road to Damascus’ conversion on Climate Change as we speak – but it really doesn’t matter if a denier is in the Whitehouse or not, after all Obama oversaw a massive expansion of fracking in the US and even signed off on Arctic drilling (although he is scrambling to stymie that before the ‘regime change’).

    The real issue is that any real change that would affect the crisis would involve a massive roll back of industrial society – something no Government would implement (and few voters would vote for).

    So all that remains is to wait for the current situation to become uneconomic in the sense of “The Stone Age did not end for lack of stones”.

    Unfortunately the Arctic is in a speedy decline and rapid warming is already baked in (so to speak). If the fossil fuel industry had become uneconomic 30-50 years ago then maybe we would have got out by the skin of our teeth. Sadly it didn’t.

  7. Andrew, do you seriously question the science around climate change? Do you really think we should do nothing at all? How is that a good idea?

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