Canadian scientists joined a military expedition to the Arctic. What the scientists found is quite disturbing.
Scientists travelling with the troops found major new fractures during an assessment of the state of giant ice shelves in Canada’s far north.
The team found a network of cracks that stretched for more than 10 miles (16km) on Ward Hunt, the area’s largest shelf.
There is a satellite image at the link provided above. 10 mile cracks in sea ice is not indicative of a stable system. Unstable systems don’t move gradually from one state to another. Typically, changes are quick. Don’t be surprised if the break up occurs with minimal signals: the notice has already been given.
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A popular line from the free-markeeter crowd is that Democrats are responsible for the run-up in oil and gas prices because they won’t allow drilling in the Arctic. According to their dogma, we can drill our way to oil independence. Except we can’t. According to a report ordered by Sen. Ted “Tubes” Stevens, R-Alaska, oil production from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would only ease oil prices by $0.75 per barrel. That wouldn’t be very impressive if oil was selling for $20.00 per barrel, as they did throughout the 1990s. Unfortunately for the free-marketeers, oil now sells for over $130.00 per barrel. $0.75 is 0.6% of that price. Put another way: drilling in ANWR won’t ease oil or gas prices, neither now nor in the future.
“I’m coming away from it saying that this is yet another an indicator that opening ANWR is important to this country and to our energy future,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.
Keep wasting time in the Senate, Sen. Murkowski. There are solutions that can be implemented that don’t include wrecking an entire ecosystem. It’s up to people who are actually responsible to lead us out of the corner Big Energy and its supporters have pinned us in.
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Finally, I’ve been looking for the following example to further emphasize the poor journalistic job the corporate media performs. To set the table, let me state that it is obvious that the media would rather publish “he-said, she-said” type pieces than anything that actually informs the public. Few subjects demonstrate this like climate change. No matter how overwhelming the scientific evidence is in favor of a dramatic shift in the climate that has already been detected, the media always inserts a non-scientists’ viewpoint, typically calling studies “junk science”, into their articles, etc. It’s to fulfill their warped perception of balance. A subject such as climate change doesn’t need to balanced by non-experts, but that hasn’t stopped the right-wing fringe from forcing itself into the spotlight.
An article by Jim Kuhnhenn, an AP “reporter” yesterday demonstrates that the opposite certainly isn’t true. “Conservative group hits Senators on climate bill” is the headline. The article does fill in information based on the headline, a rarity in the corporate press. As far as quotes go, lines from a commercial are presented, as are two snippets from Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. Is there any other viewpoint in the article? Nope. Let’s look at his quotes:
Pat Toomey, a former Republican congressman form Pennsylvania, called the legislation a “massive redistribution of wealth.”
“This would be extremely destructive to economic growth,” he said. “If it dies here in June, we will be very alert to any prospects of its revival.”
“The fundamentals that Senator McCain seems to support are badly misguided,” Toomey said.
The first one is very easy to counter: under Republican control of three branches of government, one of the largest redistributions of wealth has already occurred: from the poor to the rich. Remember Bush’s tax breaks? They broke disproportionately towards the top 1% of the wealth pile. The vast majority of us aren’t making as much in real wages as we were before Bush took office. So let’s call Pat out on his b.s. quickly and forcefully. The legislation in question, which is a small step toward working toward a climate change solution, would in no way redistribute wealth. Big Energy might have to play on a more level playing field with renewables than they ever have before. That’s likely what Pat is whining about here.
Economic growth will not suffer from developing renewable energy resources. That is a canard and it has been completely debunked time and time again. But where is the quote from someone who disagrees with Pat’s biased viewpoint? Nowhere to be found in this article. Liberal bias, indeed.
