900,000-year-old ice may destroy US case on Kyoto

“An Italian expedition to the Antarctic,” reports today’s The Guardian, “has taken a sample of ice which is more than 900,000 years old and could give scientists evidence of past climate changes which would discredit global warming doubters.”


What would you like to do with that ice sample? I have an idea, below:
It’s completely juvenile, I admit! But I’d like to stuff it down the back of Bush’s suit, and short out his Karl Rove remote control.


Back to Bush’s BS on climate change:

President Bush used “uncertainties” in climate science, particularly the volume of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere during warm periods, to justify repudiating the Kyoto protocol when he was elected to office for the first time.


He said that cutting fossil fuel use would damage the US economy and that more scientific research was needed. Since then the science has become more certain, but this latest ice core could provide evidence that even hardliners would find hard to ignore.


Au contrare, Mssr. Bush:

The ice core, which is double the age of previous samples, will show how much carbon dioxide there was in the atmosphere during previous warm and cold phases in the climate and whether the current concentrations caused by burning fossil fuels are likely the lead to catastrophic global warming later this century.

The new core could be enough to discredit the fast diminishing band of climate sceptics, who have the ear of the Bush administration and who say that the climate has always fluctuated and man’s destruction of forests and use of oil has nothing to do with the current rising temperatures and increased storminess across the world.


Ice cores contain layer after layer of snow which has fallen over millennia, and provide evidence of past climate in the same way as the growth rings of a tree. Once the tiny air samples trapped in the ice are analysed they will give scientists clear evidence of the volumes of gases and the temperature at the time.


Current scientific belief is that in all that time concentrations of greenhouse gases have not been as high as they are now, but the proof should be in these new ice cores. … The Guardian


Let’s gear up for the Senate fight on the House’s horrific energy bill.

I was kind of surprised that there was so little interest at Daily Kos about the House energy debate this past week. I’m not sure why that is. Is it the sense that what the House votes on doesn’t matter, because the real shot to affect the bill is in the Senate?

Well, I disagree strongly. We need to rev up the national debate earlier on these major issues, not at the last minute — as happened with bankruptcy, etc.


Jumps off soapbox. Your turn.