January 23-24, 2019: Government Shutdown Continues - Greenland Melting Alarms Scientists

 

1/23-24/19: Sometimes there’s so much horrible news involving and revolving around President Trump, you can have a hard time knowing which stories to address first. 

 

Trump Temper Tantrum Shutdown: Days 33/34. 

We’ve now survived Days 33/34 of the Trump Tantrum Shutdown and still no resolution in sight. 

That means 800,000 federal workers are not being paid, even though half have been ordered to report for work, making it the no-pay-but-report-to-work-anyway-Trump-Temper-Tantrum-Shutdown, which could go on for years. 

Who said “years?” 

Trump.

 

And the damage spreads. The F.B.I. Agents Association warns the Agency’s ability to protect the nation from terrorists, MS-13 gang members and other nefarious types – such as pals of the president – has been impaired. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association is suing the Trump administration, warning of increasing safety concerns. The national parks are closed – although Trump doesn’t care because he’s never going to drag his lard butt out to a national park unless you tell him there’ll be strippers dressed up as park rangers. Trump has ordered 36,000 IRS workers to return to the office, but not to be paid, so he won’t look like a moron and tax refunds will go out on time.

 

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ON THE INTERNATIONAL FRONT, Trump is taking several well-deserved lumps because he congers up foreign policy via tweets. We have defeated ISIS he tweeted recently. A suicide bomber promptly killed four Americans in Syria. Lawmakers were so rattled by news that Twitter Thumbs might pull the U.S. out of NATO, the House of Representatives voted to strip him of the power to do so. The vote was 357-22. Sixty members of Trump’s own party decided to duck and cover rather than vote against him and didn’t vote at all. Only 22 Republicans offered support. That included Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas, a man we know is nuts. 

Speaking of threats to America, is there anything else happening that we need to worry about? 

Well, good news, of a sort. Trump and Kim Jong-un are scheduled to meet again next month. It could be our “favorite President,” as he styles himself, will simply declare the problem of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal solved and jet off to Mar-a-Lago for a rest. Getting Kim to “give up all his nukes,” Trump will tell reporters, was hard work!! But he will claim he did. 

Meanwhile, the North appears to be expanding its long-range missile bases. Trump may say he loves Kim, and Kim loves him, but so far Kim is cheating on Don the way Don cheats on wives. 

 

Oceans rise 0.03 inches per year. 

As if North Korea isn’t bad enough, scientists have released another ominous report outlining the growing threat of climate change. The ice cap atop Greenland, they warn, began melting seventeen years ago. Between 2002 and 2016 the cap lost an average of 280 billion tons of ice per year. 

If you’re a Trump fan, or the Science-Moron-in-Chief himself, you can read one sentence in the report and shrug off the rest. The melting so far has raised the level of the oceans “0.03 inches per year.” 

So, we’re not going to “drown” in that extra half inch rise since 2002. 

It’s the cumulative danger that has scientists sounding alarm. The ice, says Professor Michael Bevis, lead author of the report, is melting four times faster than a decade ago. “The only thing we can do is adapt and mitigate further global warming – it’s too late for there to be no effect. We are watching the ice sheet hit a tipping point [emphasis added unless otherwise noted].”

 

If you were the President of the United States, and not a dolt, you could read the report and note that if all the ice atop Greenland melted the oceans would rise 216 feet. You could read reports highlighting the problem of vanishing glaciers across the Himalayas and the long term threat to Southwest Asia’s water supplies. You could read about increased melting in Antarctica. You could read about 400,000 glaciers worldwide, including Iceland, and what happens if they melt. If you weren’t tweeting all the time, you might Google, “NASA climate change,” or “National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate change,” instead. You could study the report released two weeks ago by the Department of Defense, outlining future damage to U.S. military installations round the globe, as a result of rising temperatures. 

To do that, you’d have to have a level of intellectual curiosity that President Trump sadly lacks.

Greenland melting alarms scientists.