And you thought the weather was weird now...

by: bloomingpol

Sat Mar 06, 2010 at 06:57:12 AM EST

One of the most dangerous aspects of global warming is the existence of positive feedback loops.  It's the same thing that causes a high-pitched screech when you set up speakers right behind a microphone: you speak into the mike, your voice is amplified by the speakers, your amplified voice is fed back into the mike, back into the speakers, etc. It gets louder with each loop, until eventually the whole system goes haywire.

Warming permafrost releases large amounts of methane, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.  

But the Republican Party continues to believe that if they just deny it's happening, then it's not happening. And since they, along with a small cadre of "centrist" Democrats, control the U.S. Senate, we remain unable to take even modest steps to address this. I'll probably be dead before the suffering starts in earnest, but lots of you have kids and grandkids who won't be. Even some of you Republicans. Just food for thought.

Which reminds me of comment interaction I had on the Monitor website with a person who claimed that even if the earth was warming, melting ice caps wouldn't cause the sea level to rise because if you put an ice cube in a glass of water and it melts, the level of water in the glass doesn't rise.  

But if you melt the ice cube outside of the glass and then add the water...?  While melting the sea ice does not cause water level to rise, melting the ice on the Greenland and Antarctic land masses, and glaciers wherever they are, adds that water to the oceans and does raise the water level by a substantial amount, enough to flood coasts and cities around the world.  There is a lot of water stored in those masses of ice!

When ice disappears from the Earth's surface there is no longer reflection of the sunlight.  Instead it is absorbed as heat by the surface, then radiated back into the atmosphere and trapped by the greenhouse gasses.  This is a massive multiple feedback loop and could raise the temperature enough to be truly disastrous.  And it can happen much faster than most Americans realize.

So if you haven't enjoyed the weather the past few years (In my town we have had floods, a tornado and a severe wind sheer, an ice storm and a wind storm, all of which destroyed much infrastructure and caused suffering to the inhabitants), it isn't going to get better.