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Friday, August 22, 2008

The Personification of Ice

The Associated Press Reports that a large chunk of ice is breaking off of some really cold ice cube in Greenland. Notice how the writer wants us to think that this giant snow cone is a living being with feelings:
In northern Greenland, a part of the Arctic that had seemed immune from global warming, new satellite images show a growing giant crack and an 11-square-mile chunk of ice hemorrhaging off a major glacier, scientists said Thursday. And that's led the university professor who spotted the wounds in the massive Petermann glacier to predict disintegration of a major portion of the Northern Hemisphere's largest floating glacier within the year. The crack is 7 miles long and about half a mile wide. It is about half the width of the 500 square mile floating part of the glacier. Other smaller fractures can be seen in images of the ice tongue, a long narrow sliver of the glacier... The question that now faces scientists is: Are the fractures part of normal glacier stress or are they the beginning of the effects of global warming?
The AP continues:
"Satellite images show that the Jakobshavn glacier, the fastest retreating glacier in the world, set new records for how far it has moved inland. That concerns Colorado's Abdalati: "It could go back for miles and miles and there's no real mechanism to stop it."
There's no mechanism to stop it? I have a suggestion. Maybe we could round up a few of those human shields that were lucky enough to survive the Iraq War and ship them up to Greenland. Their patriotic service is needed once again! Just like the Chinese Tank Man, the glacier would stop dead in its tracks at the very thought of grinding the human shields into fine powdery dust under the weight of 5 million tons of ice.

Or maybe Barry Obama can lead an expedition of shaamen and miracle workers to the iceberg. Does the ability to turn back the "rise of the oceans" and "heal the planet" also empower one to cure an iceberg? For the planet's sake, I hope so!

Update: Hopefully the glaciers in Greenland won't treat the human shields the same way the ones in Washington State did.

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