We'll wait 'til Arctic waters boil

Oh - and there’s new money. Our government has committed $100 million over five years. That’s a small fraction of the cost of symbolic “feel-good” programs like kerbside recycling which have miniscule and sometimes negative environmental impacts. In fact it’s not quite two cents a week each. I guess it’s the thought that counts.

Meanwhile James Hansen, the NASA scientist who first focused the US Congress’s attention on climate change (to the horror of his bosses), recently had this to say.

Ocean levels will increase slowly at first, as [ice] losses at the fringes of Greenland and Antarctica … are nearly balanced by increased snowfall and ice sheet thickening ... But as Greenland and West Antarctic ice is softened and lubricated by meltwater … the balance will tip toward the rapid disintegration of ice sheets. Earth's history suggests that with warming of two to three degrees, the new sea level will include not only most of the ice from Greenland and West Antarctica, but a portion of East Antarctica, raising the sea level by 25 metres, or 80 feet.

I’m in no position to confirm these predictions. But they’re from the heart of the scientific mainstream. And the climate change denialists are moved more by a reflex animus towards environmental alarmism which, however legitimate on other issues, means they’re dwindling to a recalcitrant, crank-riddled rump.

I’d pay more than two cents a week for some insurance against James Hansen’s scenario. What about you?