Blowing Hot and Cold

If you're still worrying about global warming, you're a couple of worry beads behind.

I like to think that I'm a sensible person, not entirely immune to alarmist yellow journalism, but capable of identifying (and ignoring) junk science. I would, for instance, ignore a headline that ran "Scientists Now Believe Global Warming Caused by Alien X-Rays."

But I'm starting to sit up and take notice. For instance: The NY Times ran Big Perils Seen in Arctic Warming on October 30. It's an advance look (provided by a "leak") at a science report scheduled for release on November 9. 300 scientists from eight countries participated, along with the elders of native communities.

The Arctic "is now experiencing some of the most rapid and severe climate change on Earth," the report says, adding, "Over the next 100 years, climate change is expected to accelerate, contributing to major physical, ecological, social and economic changes, many of which have already begun."

Our current administration isn't likely to lose any sleep over polar bears and seals, but effects on permafrost might get even W to sit up and take notice:

Oil and gas deposits on land are likely to be harder to extract as tundra thaws, limiting the frozen season when drilling convoys can traverse the otherwise spongy ground, the report says. Alaska has already seen the "tundra travel" season on the North Slope shrink to 100 days from about 200 days a year in 1970.

Did you notice the reference to climate change? "Climate change" is about to replace "global warming" as a buzz word. Or worse, "abrupt climate change."