Is global warming the least of our problems?

As I was mentioning the other day, the global warming debate is so convoluted that it’s hard to know who to believe. However, it may be that we have bigger issues to worry about.

From The Guardian:

Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role of Marx’s proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East increasing by 132%, while Europe’s drops as fertility falls. “Flashmobs” – groups rapidly mobilised by criminal gangs or terrorists groups.

This is the world in 30 years’ time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the “future strategic context” likely to face Britain’s armed forces. It includes an “analysis of the key risks and shocks”.

And here I thought that a warmer climate and higher sea levels were the big boys.

On the other hand, on some days I could see the advantage of using a little brain-booster chip…

State of Fear, or confusion?

It seems that I have a harder time making it through fiction novels as I get older. The same ol’ stories can only be presented in only so many ways it seems, and as I, err, acquire more experience in plot management techniques I have less tolerance for repeatedly traveling down the same fictional highway. At least that’s the excuse I’m using as to why my list of readable authors is getting shorter every year.

One book I thought I’d pick up from the local library was Michael Crichton’s State of Fear. I somewhat enjoyed Prey and Next, and had read a review that this book at least mixed in some interesting, yet controversial, facts about global warming.

One of the early “mis-truths” brought to light in State of Fear is that Antartica’s glaciers are being reduced in size. Mr. Crichton educates us with a different side of the story, pointing out that only a particular edge of the Antartic shelf is falling into the ocean–while the rest of the continentof ice is actually growing in size, and Mauna Loa and Law Dome ice cores show little, if any, temperature change over the last hundred and fifty years.

But something warm is happening down there. I read on Drudge that a new major iceberg about 8 miles wide and 15 miles long broke free of the Fimbul Ice Shelf just this week. A quick search on Drudge shows a history of these things happening–in addition to stories like “East Antarctica Puts on Weight.” So something cold is happening too.

Now I really am confused. But thanks, Michael–I’ll give this subject another look. Whether I’ll finish your book…