Month 6, Day 11: Well, Now We Can Breathe A Great Big Sigh Of Relief.

Desperately hunting for something that isn’t about the Gulf of Mexico…found this article from the AP in the Washington Post. Some Dutch scientists think the original predictions of the impacts of glacial shrinkage were too severe. It is always fun to write the WaPo, because they’ve had such a terrible record on climate issues, and I get to mock them a bit.

What a relief! Only sixty million people (give or take a few hundred thousand) may be affected by droughts, water failures, and food shortages, as opposed to the hundreds of millions originally described in the IPCC study. Those of us who are paying attention to climate change must take our good news where we can, for there isn’t much of it. And the fact that a phrase like “only sixty million people may be affected” is somehow “good news” is bad news indeed. It is long past time for our politicians and our media to stop playing rhetorical games on climate issues, and start confronting the facts with clarity and respect for science. When the debate is whether climate change will destroy the livelihoods of sixty million vs. two hundred million people — that’s no longer a debate. We can no longer afford to remain ignorant of the facts.

Warren Senders