A study led by Rutgers Prof. Kenneth G. Miller
says that sea levels may rise 40-70 feet:
“You don’t need to sell your beach real estate yet, because melting of these large ice sheets will take from centuries to a few thousand years,” Miller said. “The current trajectory for the 21st century global rise of sea level is 2 to 3 feet (0.8 to1 meter) due to warming of the oceans, partial melting of mountain glaciers, and partial melting of Greenland and Antarctica.”
So while you can breathe easy about that, there's plenty happening right now to ponder and
experience.
Joe Romm writes:
How hot is it? Seasoned meteorologists have said of the current super-charged heat wave, “it’s surreal” and “this is not the atmosphere I grew up with” and it’s “not just breaking but obliterating records” and “OFF THE SCALE WEIRD; even for Minnesota.”
How hot is it? ABC ran a story on extreme weather that linked it to global warming for the second time in 12 days — see “ABC News (3/7/12) Explains Warm Winter, ‘Wild Swings In Weather’, Driven by Global Warming, Only Going to Get Worse.” Here is last night’s story, which quotes Masters and NOAA on global warming:
Like a baseball player on steroids, our climate system is breaking records at an unnatural pace. As Weather Channel meteorologist Stu Ostro says of the current heat wave, “there is a high probability that global warming is having an influence upon its extremity.”
Of all the kinds of extreme weather linked to global warming, the most obvious — the extreme events that climate scientists and the scientific literature have said for decades is the most inevitable — are longer and stronger and geographically bigger heat waves. [...]
Williams says “it has confused plants and animals and a good many humans.” That apparently includes the folks at NBC, whose meteorologist asks “has the weather lost its cool?” and then asks “what is causing these extremes?” and answers, “it’s the jet stream”:
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2003:
If Bush's Iraq war goes as well as his War on the Economy, we're in for an easy ride.
In yet another stunning victory for Bush and his economic team, first-time jobless claims remained above the magic 400,000 mark for the fifth straight week. In the week of March 15, 421,000 lost their jobs. Even better news for Bush (and bad news for his enemy -- the American working people) was the more salient 4-week moving average.
Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits have now remained above the key 400,000 watermark -- a level that economists consider the sign of a beleaguered jobs market -- for five straight weeks.
The closely watched four-week moving average -- a more reliable barometer of employment market trends -- rose for the seventh consecutive week to 424,750 from 421,000 in the previous week and to its highest since measuring 429,500 in the May 4, 2002 week.
Bush is confident he can continue to fight this three-front war: against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, against Iraq, and against the nation's economy.
Tweet of the Day:
Go ahead. Object to spending tax dollars on protecting the president's children. That won't make you look like assholes.
— @SimonMaloy via web
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