{"id":2523,"date":"2010-08-10T01:36:29","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T08:36:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=2523"},"modified":"2010-08-10T01:36:29","modified_gmt":"2010-08-10T08:36:29","slug":"an-ice-cube-for-inhofe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/08\/10\/an-ice-cube-for-inhofe\/","title":{"rendered":"An Ice Cube for Inhofe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let a single snowflake fall and James Inhofe, along with most of his Republican  colleagues, will claim that climate change does not exist.  Greenland has donated an ice cube that should have his name carved on it.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"10ice\"<\/a> University of Delaware climate researcher Andreas Muenchow said in a statement<\/a> last week that, according to NASA satellite data, a massive ice shelf four times the size of Manhattan<\/a> has broken off from north-western Greenland. Within hours, the Canadian Ice Service confirmed the report. \u201cThe new ice island has an area of at least 100 square miles and a thickness up to half the height of the Empire State Building<\/a>,\u201d Muenchow said. <\/p>\n

The Hill reports that on Saturday, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), who has been leading the legislative effort to confront climate change, used the occasion to chastise his obstructionist colleagues<\/a>: <\/p>\n

\u201cAn iceberg four times the size of Manhattan has broken off Greenland, creating plenty of room for global warming deniers to start their own country<\/span>,\u201d Markey said in a statement. \u201cSo far, 2010 has been the hottest year on record, and scientists agree arctic ice is a canary in a coal mine that provides clear warnings on climate.\u201d […]<\/p>\n

He said it was \u201cunclear how many giant blocks of ice it will take to break the block of Republican climate deniers in the US Senate who continue hold this critical clean energy and climate legislation hostage<\/span>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, the giant ice island highlights the need for Congress to act. An expert report on Arctic temperatures published in Science magazine last year found evidence \u201cthat the most recent 10-year interval (1999\u20132008) was the warmest of the past 200 decades<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

During the late 20th century, our proxy-inferred summer temperatures were the warmest of the past two millennia, with four of the five warmest decades of our 2000-year-long reconstruction occurring between 1950 and 2000. In recent years, the magnitude of the warming seems to have emerged above the natural variability, consistent with the sharp reduction in summer sea-ice cover<\/span>.<\/p>\n

According to a recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report, 2010 Arctic sea ice extent was the lowest on record<\/a> for the month of June: <\/p>\n

Arctic sea ice continued its annual decline, typically reaching a September minimum. Similar to May 2010, the Arctic sea ice continued to decline at a record rapid rate. \u2026 June 2010 Arctic sea ice extent was 10.9 million square kilometers (10.6 percent or 1.29 million square kilometers below the 1979\u20132000 average), resulting in the lowest June sea ice extent since records began in 1979\u2014the previous June record low was set in 2006<\/span>. <\/p>\n

And he National Snow and Ice Center said last week that \u201cArctic sea ice extent averaged for July was the second lowest in the satellite record<\/a>, after 2007\u2033 and the trend is continuing downward\u2026 [emphasis original<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n

There is no doubt that climate change is happening now.  Keith Olbermann and Dr. Jay Zwally discuss it.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Sadly this is not just a Republican problem.  The normal set of DINOs is goose-stepping with them, in addition to normally reliable Democrats from oil and coal states.  Eventually we can oust the Republicans and replace the DINOs, but will it be in time?  I fear it will not.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let a single snowflake fall and James Inhofe, along with most of his Republican  colleagues, will claim that climate change does not exist.  Greenland has donated an ice cube that should have his name carved on it. University of Delaware climate researcher Andreas Muenchow said in a statement last week that, according to NASA satellite […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}