Breaking Laws, Breaking Ice

A federal judge has ruled that the Bush administration illegally withheld global warming research, and ordered the administration to publish a summary of climate research for public comment by March 1, and send the completed report containing the scientific assessment of global warming and its effects to Congress by May 31.

As things are shaping up, that may be too late to affect the campaigns for the Democratic nomination for president, but there are other phenomena that may yet get the Climate Crisis higher on the political agenda. Like...the weather.

Hurricane Dean was just the first hurricane of the year, but it was the third most intense to ever make landfall, the strongest in the Atlantic since 2005, and the ninth strongest known in history. (There's already an excellent Wikipedia entry on it.) As predicted, it struck a relatively unpopulated area in Mexico as a Category 5, weakened and returned to shore as a Category 2. Though it didn't strike a highly populated region head-on, it caused at least $4 billion in damages and killed more than 20. Its second landfall is expected to spawn some 20 inches of rain, likely to cause flooding and mudslides.

Flooding caused by excessive rain has recently been the problem in the upper Midwestern U.S., especially in Ohio where hundreds have been driven from their homes.

Meanwhile, the melt of Arctic ice is so severe that new islands are appearing, and so unexpectedly immense that it suggests that the UN global heating predictions were too conservative. A British official told an European gathering of scientists and policymakers that the effort to confront the Climate Crisis will be at least as extensive and complex as the Cold War. But with the Arctic warming and access to its fossil fuels easing, the U.S. and Russia are both exploring the area with the intent of claiming territory. It may be the Cold War all over again. Only hotter.