Your Money of Your Life
Ted Folkert
August 21, 2019
Some who are my age may remember the Jack Benny Show in the early days of television. Part of his stage image was as a tightwad or skinflint. On one of his shows he posed as an individual confronted by a robber with a gun who stated: “your money or your life.” Benny hesitated in replying, so the robber repeated: “I said your money or your life,” to which Benny said: “I’m thinking about it.”
As we deal with life’s everyday issues, the myriad of daily concerns, such as – health, jobs, family, living conditions, religion, safety, retirement, recreation, etc., etc. – it is easy to lose sight of the big picture, the future of the planet for supporting human habitation. In fact, such a concern rarely occupies a large portion of mind-consumption for most of us, and naturally so. The reason being that it is long range compared to our other daily concerns and perhaps because we feel we can do little to placate such a travesty as individuals anyway.
It’s kind of like “your money of your life,” and it’s kind of like, “I’m thinking about it”.
Our climate scientists who focus on the impacts on the air and the ocean which are created by weather conditions concern themselves with the big picture, the projected lifespan of the necessary conditions to support human habitation of Planet Earth.
The big question is whether there is anyway of lessening such a travesty caused by global warming and how soon we may realize any life-threatening impacts from this festering and fatalistic reality.
One of the evidentiary measures that our scientists follow in analyzing, projecting, and predicting an ultimate demise for humankind is glacial ice melting, which is seen as troubling of late, particularly over the last few decades.
Seth Gorenstein of the Associated Press has published an article “Earth’s future being written in fast melting Greenland.” He follows the tracking of conditions by David Holland, New York University air and ocean scientist.
Some facts they share with us:
“Summer this year is hitting Greenland hard with record-shattering heat and extreme melt. By the end of the summer, about 440 billion tons of ice – maybe more – will have melted or calved off Greenland’s giant ice sheet, scientists estimate. That’s enough water to flood Pennsylvania or the country of Greece about a foot deep.”
“In just the five days from July 31 to Aug. 3, more than 58 billion tons melted from the surface. That’s over 40 billion tons more than the average for this time of year. And that 58 billion tons doesn’t even count the huge calving events or the warm water eating away at the glaciers from below, which may be a huge factor.”
“Helheim, one of Greenland’s fastest-retreating glaciers, has shrunk about 6 miles since scientists came here in 2005.”
“Summit Station, a research camp nearly 2 miles high and far north, warmed to above freezing twice this year for a record total of 16.5 hours. Before this year, that station was above zero for only 6.5 hours in 2012, once in 1889, also in the Middle Ages.”
“This year is coming near but not quite passing the extreme summer of 2012 – Greenland’s worst year in modern history for melting, scientists report.”
“A NASA satellite found that Greenland’s ice sheet lost about 255 billion metric tons of ice a year between 2003 and 2016, with the loss rate generally getting worse over that period. Nearly all of the 28 Greenland glaciers that Danish climate scientist Ruth Mottram measured are retreating, especially Helheim.”
“It takes a really long time to grow an ice sheet, thousands and thousands of years, but they can be broken up or destroyed quite rapidly,” Holland said.”’
“Greenland particularly takes notice today since our ignorant and arrogant president decided that we should buy Greenland even though it isn’t for sale. He must see personal financial benefits in such an acquisition. Otherwise. It wouldn’t interest him whatsoever. And then he calls a Danish spokesperson rude for refusing his ridiculous indication of interest.”
“The Danish spokesperson didn’t even say: “I’m thinking about it.”’