Workplace Calisthenics: Heavy snow can't bury global warming debate

Twenty-two inches of snow buried Columbus, Ohio, on March 8. The Rocky Mountains have been inundated with up to 250 inches of the white stuff. China has had its worst winter in the last 50 years with millions stranded the first two weeks of January. And here in the Ozarks, the landscape has become a paraplegic of nature with limbs akimbo.

After some serious winter weather maybe it is time to revisit the left-wing-Al Gore-tree-hugging fantasy that global warming is and has been a crock of – snow.

The problem we bring to the table when discussing global warming is that weather, like politics, is always local. We are myopic and sit on our recently stained wooden decks and stare at our blooming backyards but have neglected to check out the Arctic Ocean.

The canary we should be checking in our global warming cage is sea ice. That’s right, sea ice.

This is the way it works. Every year the vast expanse of the Arctic Ocean is littered with huge chunks of ice that quickly become a mottled frozen stew. By the end of summer, the ice will be sparsely splayed over the surface until the creeping cold once again claims the landscape.

Here is the problem. With the temperature rising in the Arctic, the summer sea ice is becoming harder to find. We keep counting on winter to roar back, but it keeps showing up as a whisper. The result is a quickly shrinking polar ice cap.

How quickly? Most scientists thought the summer sea ice would not disappear until 2040 at the earliest. Take another look.

This past summer, the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., reported there were 2.23 million square miles of ice remaining on Aug. 8 and that amount dropped to just 1.6 million square miles on Sept. 16. The message is clear: Half a million square miles of ice is permanently gone. And it is disappearing at an alarming rate.

So what is the big deal? What does all of this meteorological mumbo-jumbo mean to those of us walking our dogs around Lake Springfield, sailing our sports utility vehicles to the mall or planning our new shopping forays in Branson?

First, it means that nature’s feedback system is starting to go into a death-spiral – in warp speed.

The sea ice is reflective; it is a gigantic cosmic mirror. Without the mirror, the heat from the sun is being absorbed into the ocean. The temperature of the ocean is rising. More ice melts.

As the temperature of the oceans rise, the ability of the seawater to absorb carbon dioxide is reduced.

An increased level of carbon dioxide only accelerates global warming.

When global warming goes into overdrive, the land under the ice, the permafrost, begins to rot in the warming rays, releasing more carbon dioxide and methane gas.

And the beat goes on, but faster and faster.

Second, the majority of us will have to stop pressing the “easy button.” It is easy to ignore or argue with what we do not like hearing.

We could end the diatribes with this amazing question, “What will global warming mean to me in 300 years?” We all know our bodies will become a contributor to the permafrost so what is the big deal?

The big deal is our integrity. Will we buy the bull that what is going on in the Arctic is just the “normal cycle” on this spinning globe? Will we become the global Chamberlains who appeased our worst fears with massive doses of neglect? Will we chain our great-grandchildren to the fetid rack of a decaying and dying globe?

Finally, the disappearing act in the Arctic should question our silence. What concerns me most about this debate is the quietude that roars among us. The “Whatever!” is deafening.

I have never been one to walk around with the homemade poster that screams, “The End is Near!” At the same time, it seems to me smart people who live in the warm openness of democracy should be able to ask, “Shouldn’t we be doing something right now? … It is getting hot in here.”

Cal LeMon of Executive Enrichment Inc. solves organizational problems with customized training and consulting. He can be reached at execenrichment@aol.com.[[In-content Ad]]