Tuesday, January 07, 2014

It's Just Physics, That's All

Did we really think we could warm the Arctic twice as much as the rest of the planet and not be directly affected ourselves?  Did we really think that the loss of Arctic sea ice wouldn't wreak havoc across the Northern Hemisphere? 

Maybe we thought that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) was just a theory, countless pages of statistics and algebra, that just might possibly turn into something tangible forty or sixty years down the road, or not.

Sadly, physics doesn't work that way.  Lag times between cause and effect are generally as brief as necessary to come into being.  It's sort of how we learn not to leave our hands on hot stoves.

We, with our unchecked greenhouse gas emissions, have warmed the Arctic and the Arctic has responded with a new, warmer atmosphere that's given us a new Polar Jet Stream.  This Polar Jet is a game changer even down where we live, as far down as Florida.  Rutgers prof, Jennifer Francis, lays it all out, nice and simple.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I like high school physics. The experiements are really enjoyable and fun. It's nice to incorporate learning with the applications. It could be tough but with more practice, it would become better.