Mooretoons

This week the Larsen B ice shelf sloughed off the coast of Antartica, generating headlines proclaiming it the size of two Lake Eries, two Luxembourgs, Delaware, or whatever point of reference a target audience could recognize. At first it seemed alarming, given all of the other catastrophic climate change news, until scientists pointed out that such phenomena, known as “calving” are part of natural processes. Which is not to say global warming might not be a contributing factor, but not unto itself, and thus this new ice berg is not a cause for alarm. In fact, it won’t even add anything to sea levels, because the volume is already accounted for. Check out Scientific American for the more complex picture.The other big news is a recent report that human overpopulation and consumption of resources, along with global warming, is driving a six mass extinction on par with previous extinctions in the planet’s history. The scientists who wrote the paper call it “biological annihiliation,” because their findings are so alarming. “The situation has become so bad it would not be ethical not to use strong language.” Good on them.

Anyway, this and that article in New York Magazine about climate change in general really put the antics of Republicans in Washington in an even more petty light than they have seemed to occupy. Why do we vote for such terrible people?