Monday, August 28, 2006
CRUEL ICE IN RETREAT
Global warming is turning Greenland green again:
Stefan Magnusson lives at the foot of a giant, melting glacier. Some think he’s living on the brink of a cataclysm. He believes he’s on the cusp of creation.
The 49-year-old reindeer rancher says a warming trend in Greenland over the past decade has caused the glacier on his farm to retreat 300 feet, revealing land that hasn’t seen the light of day for hundreds of years, if not more. Where ice once gripped the earth, he says, his reindeer now graze on wild thyme amid the purple blooms of Niviarsiaq flowers ...
“We are seeing genesis by the edge of the glacier,” he says.
Genesis? The way Al Gore sees it, those happy reindeer and thriving vegetation represent the apocalypse:
In former Vice President Al Gore’s recent film “An Inconvenient Truth,” the melting of Greenland’s ice cap, along with a similar cap in the Antarctic, is portrayed as one of the greatest threats of global warming. If the layers of ice and snow holding billions of tons of water were to melt, scientists warn that global sea levels would rise by 40 feet, submerging lower Manhattan, the Netherlands and much of California.
But to many of the people who live here in Greenland, the warming trend is a boon, not a threat.
Lay off with the environmental imperialism, Al! Let the people of Greenland live ice-free! Meanwhile, Al warns that democracy is under attack, which isn’t exactly news. Except that Gore is more worried about TV networks than terrorism:
The former presidential candidate said television networks in the world’s biggest and most powerful democracies must do more to foster debate, which he said was crucial for democracy to flourish.
He may have a point; after all, the last time Al Gore was involved in a series of debates, it resulted in the election of George W. Bush.
UPDATE. Mr. Hackenbacker:
My God! All the polar bears will be dying of obesity! They’ll become a species of floe potatoes as they’ll only have to reach over to gnaw on a passing reindeer. Soon they’ll be too big to fit through all the ice-holes, and then the eskimos will all starve because their fish holes are all clogged with fat lazy bears.