Warming Climate in The Deep Freeze?

As millions of people along the East Coast hole up in their snowbound homes, the two sides in the climate-change debate are seizing on the mounting drifts to bolster their arguments.” John M. Broder reports for the New York Times February 10, 2010.

The Web edition of SEJToday Headlines has links to other articles about climate, extreme weather, and the rhetorical war to manipulate public opinion on legislation before Congress.

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I’ll be posting  (TO A NEW PAGE: HABITAT-HOME see tabs at top) with or without comment links from the Society of Environmental Journalists that I get daily from the listserve. Credit for finding these links and providing introductory text goes to SEJ. I’m hoping that, from those pointers, this site might provide creditable links and possibly helpful discussion of these Earth Care issues that I will feature on this page of Fragments from Floyd.

One of those topics surely should be the role of reason and logic in the media, though I don’t think it is ignorance as much as an attempt to divert the ignorant when prominent media spokespeople seek to dismiss the trend of a warming planet by pointing at snowflakes outside their window.

For a lighter (though dead serious) take on the media circus, see John Stewart’s and Steve Colbert’s perspective on the coming DARKNESS!

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fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

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  1. “Global Climate Disruption” is a MUCH better name for the global climate change we are experiencing. Overall the planet’s atmosphere IS warming, but the local disruptions can be increased snowfall and lower temps, as we are seeing now, likely related to the melting of the Greenland Ice Cap, reducing the salinity of the North Atlantic, thus stalling the Atlantic Conveyor that brings the warmer temps to the MidAtlantic and NorthEastern States AND to Northern Europe, which has also been experiencing a record breaking severe winter this year. Global Climate Disruption. Droughts, floods, and extreme temperatures.

  2. I quite agree, and have used the term “climate chaos” over “global warming” as the latter is far too narrow an explanation for the complex changes arising from the seemingly small increase in average global temperature. The NA Conveyor bears keeping an eye on, though if salinity changes there progress, that will certainly add more European snowflakes as supposed contradictions to the chronic global trend of warming.

  6. If I had a choice I would vote for “climate chaos” as a fitting name for our present condition. Chaos emulates the unpredictable nature of this era in which we live, and how much it can change from year to year. Will the southeast and pacific become a semi-permanent home to hurricanes, the midwest to drought, the north and northeast to impending glaciers? Who knows, but the notion of “chaos” certainly goes a long way to identifying the nature of the the climate in which man has helped to create.

    Bill:www.wildramblings.com

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