Climate Conversation Group

The heroic Ross Ice Shelf. The tiny figures on top are people, 60 metres (200 feet) above the waves. Beneath the water, the ice cliff continues a further 1000 feet straight down. You might travel south from here for over 600 km before reaching land; you might go straight across the great shelf for over 800 km. At 500,000 km² it’s nearly twice the area of NZ. You won’t melt this with the smoke from your puny fires. This sucker’s not going anywhere in a hurry. Oh, and when it calves those bergs the size of Manhattan, it’s not from melting — they snap off.

Rob Fenwick, in Accelerating melt reason to worry (The Press, 21 May 2012), launches into a worry-fest about all the fabulous calamities said to be on the way with “continued” man-made global warming.

The astute reader will know that the word “fabulous” is derived from “fable”. It means unreal or imagined more than it means magnificent. I chose that word because all the disasters Mr Fenwick briefly catalogues are fantastic (cf. “fantasy”). But I should begin at the beginning of his niggle-gala. He says:

When the world’s polar scientists gathered in Montreal last month – all 3000 of them – it seemed like a case of preaching to the choir.

After 20 years of intense study of the effects of changing climate conditions at the poles, there is certainly no longer any debate over what is going on. Read more… »