Monday, July 22, 2013

Speaking of Boiled Frogs, Here's Paul Beckwith

Just in case you're not familiar with the blog, PostArctica, there you'll find a piece written by Paul Beckwith, a climate scientist at the University of Ottawa.

Paul has just put up a post, "The Great Arctic Flush" which, if you haven't read it, you really should.  Beckwith introduces us to a new weather phenomenon in the Artic Ocean, massive, mid-summer cyclones that churn up many hundreds of thousands of kms. of Arctic sea ice even as they draw in warm southern water from both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

Paul finishes with this summation:

"The Arctic is melting, it’s the most obvious in your face large scale climate change symptom, hell, it’s unimaginable, yet here we are as a species trying to carry on as if  it’s just some pain in the ass prank,  as if we wake up tomorrow and the nightmare is gone."

For an overview, here's a clip of Beckwith's climate change summary from 2012:



It's eleven o'clock.  Do you know where your chosen political leadership stands on this, how they intend to respond?  If not, why in hell are you supporting them?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My eldest is about to enter his second year at U of O in engineering. I will mention to him Paul Beckwith's climatology class.

Or maybe I'll just audit the class myself.

The Mound of Sound said...

Certainly if he's looking at civil or mechanical engineering, a working knowledge of climate change could be invaluable. With the infrastructure work that lies in the near future you son's career should be smooth sailing.