Ice sheets in Greenland, Alaska, and Antarctica are melting right now. You might imagine that looks like a dripping faucet. You might imagine it looks like many dripping faucets. You would be wrong.
It looks like this:
That’s a moulin (from a French word meaning, “mill”), a vertical chute through which melt water on the top of a glacier falls through the glacier to its base, lubricating the glacier’s movement at the base and speeding its descent to the sea.
That moulin is on Gilkey Galcier in Alaska. Similar scenes are also occurring on the Greenland ice sheet:
The Greenland ice sheet is dumping about 300 gigatons of ice into the ocean each year, according to NASA, making it the current largest source of sea-level rise from melting ice.
The good news is, this process is expected to take a few hundred years, and we have time to escape much of that fate. The bad news is, it’s a slow-developing disaster. The ice sheets melt at a rate much slower than the rate at which we’re emitting the CO2 that causes their melting. Every single moment, we are committing ourselves to more future melting, and more sea level rise. The time for doubt and denial is over.
My very first blog post on this website, almost exactly a year ago, was about the then-recently released data from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that independently confirmed 2016 had become the third consecutive year to set the record for warmest global temperature. My 2017 New Year’s resolution had been to learn more about global warming, whether the science was settled or not, and how (in some detail) we know, and to post my learning journey on this site. Over the course of the past year, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned the science is very settled, and I’ve learned exactly how long we’ve known global warming is real; as it turns out, we’ve had reliable measurements since 1958 that confirm suspicions and preliminary data scientists had since the late 1800’s (read a brief history, with links to the original research, here). I’ve learned about a multitude of easily observable effects of climate change that are happening right Before Our Eyes (check them out here). I’ve learned that we have readily available technological solutions, but we are not using them with anything like the urgency we need to if we want to prevent terrible future consequences.
A year later, the data from 2017 is in, and it was either the 2nd (according to NASA’s analysis) or 3rd (according to NOAA’s analysis) warmest year on record. Check out the press release for more details, and watch the NASA video below.
This is despite the onset of La Niña, a cyclical cooling of sea surface temperature across the equatorial Eastern Central Pacific Ocean, during the latter part of 2017, which tended to make the atmospheric temperature during that time cooler than average. El Niño, the warmer part of that Pacific cycle, was in effect for most of 2015 and the first third of 2016.
Why the difference in rankings between NASA (2nd warmest year on record) and NOAA (3rd warmest year on record)? As I explained in some detail on another page, NASA and NOAA are among four scientific groups (the other two being a British group and a Japanese group) that independently track global average temperature trends. While NASA, NOAA, and the other groups’ analyses have agreed remarkably well over the entire period between 1880 and now, they each use slightly different data sets and analytical methods. Specifically, NASA’s methods weight measurements in the arctic slightly more heavily than NOAA’s methods, and the arctic atmosphere has been warming more quickly than the global atmosphere as a whole.
In any case, all analyses agree that the past 3 years — 2015, 2016, and 2017 — were the hottest 3 years at least since 1880, when global temperature measurement became possible.
I guess we’d better keep learning about this, huh?
Last week, I posted scientific findings regarding increased “sunny day” tidal flooding in U.S. coastal cities and its linkage to global sea level rise due to melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica. I went on to argue that the frequent assertion by our president and others, that increased investment in the fossil fuel industry creates jobs and has other economic benefits, ignores the devastating and surely greater economic costs that will occur if we continue to ignore climate change. Among those costs is the massive quantity of high-priced U.S. coastal real estate that will ultimately be immersed in the ocean if we continue with “business as usual.”
As it turns out, though much of our government is in denial about the economic realities of climate change, that denial is vanishing in the Florida real estate market. Both social scientists and real estate business insiders can measure the effect of this growing realization on coastal real estate prices in South Florida, a test case for highly valued coastal properties that ring the nation:
Figure 2 from this social science working paper, referenced in the Bloomberg article, by researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Pennsylvania State University. “Displays the proportion of exposed transactions in coastal counties within the continental United States. Exposure is measured as an indicator variable that takes a value of 1 if a property will be affected by 0-6 feet of sea level rise.”
“At some point, we won’t be able to sell.” -Ross Hancock, homeowner in Biscayne Bay, FL, who faces a potential $60,000 repair bill for Irma damages to his condo not covered by insurance, and who has been trying for 2 months to sell it without success
“systemic fraudulent nondisclosure [of flood risk by real estate agents] … is pretty much what we have now.” -Albert Slap, owner of Coastal Risk Consulting, a South Florida flood risk assessment company (The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill in 2017 that would require agents to disclose flood risks, but the Senate has not taken it up.)
“They’re not going to live here while we spend two years raising the streets.”
-Dan Kipnis, Miami Beach homeowner who has been trying unsuccessfully to sell his house for 18 months despite dropping the price by a more than one-third from $3.2 million, worrying that sea-level related projects and the associated property taxes are scaring prospective buyers away
“Homes exposed to sea level rise (SLR) sell at a 7% discount relative to observably equivalent unexposed properties equidistant from the beach. This discount has grown over time and is driven by sophisticated buyers and communities worried about global warming.” -Asaf Bernstein, Matthew Gustafson & Ryan Lewis, authors of the cited social science working paper, summarizing their conclusions from a recent detailed study of the relationship between SLR exposure and U.S. coastal real estate prices
In previous posts, I’ve highlighted communities under ongoing assault by the direct effects of global climate change, including Shishmaref, Alaska and the nation of Fiji. And another nation, Kiribati, already doomed to submersion — in many of our lifetimes — beneath the rising Pacific Ocean. Make no mistake; in these cases we are talking about the preventable losses of the homes, livelihoods, and cultures of hundreds of thousands of fellow humans. These losses are happening right Before Our Eyes, by climate change driven processes that are well documented and obvious to anyone who cares to look. Softening permafrost. Shrinking beaches. Increasing storm damage. People suddenly erecting desperate sandbag seawalls around coastal communities that have persisted for thousands of years, until now. That we are continuing to contribute to these losses demonstrates a profound moral failing on the part of those of us who prioritize our continued ready access to cheap fossil energy (even though we have ready renewable alternatives) over the very viability of these distinct human cultures that have developed over thousands of years of people living in these locations.
But, for many readers of these posts, Shishmaref, Fiji, and Kiribati may seem like far-flung places. So let’s look at developments that may be closer to home.
You may be familiar with Miami, the 8th most populous metropolitan area in the U.S. and home to roughly 5.5 million people. What if I were to tell you that readily observable, direct consequences of climate change presently affect daily life in Miami, foreshadowing potentially existential challenges for that great U.S. city in the future?
In Miami, as any resident will attest (and as scientists have carefully studied and documented in peer reviewed journal articles), sometimes it floods on sunny days. It doesn’t require a hurricane, a storm, or even a rain cloud. Just a high tide and maybe a full moon. To see what that looks like, check out the photo at the top of this post, or simply search “sunny day flood Miami” in Google Images. That’s seawater flooding the city streets of Miami on a sunny day at high tide. It happens more and more frequently. Why? Because high tide has been getting higher since the streets of Miami were developed.
Brian McNoldy, an atmospheric scientist and Senior Research Associate at the University of Miami, has been tracking the high tide level at Virginia Key, a Miami barrier island, for two decades:
Clearly, high tides are getting higher. They are also getting higher at a rate that has been increasing over the past 20 years — nearly an inch a year, on average, over the past 5 years! An inch a year may not seem like much, until you consider that would result in a foot every 12 years, or over 6.5 feet in a typical American lifetime, and this is how the great city of Miami (built on porous limestone, so it can’t be protected by a seawall) is presently situated with respect to sea level:
The higher tides have resulted in a measured increase in incidents of “nuisance flooding” in the city (see inset bar chart in the graph above). More than just a “nuisance,” this comes at a real price; Miami Beach plans to spend $400 million over the next 20 years installing pump stations and raising the streets. “There is a lot of money going into these resiliency issues, so we are hoping to tap into that,” said City Manager Jimmy Morales, commenting on the city’s hopes of securing federal and state funds to pay for the improvements.
Miami is not the only U.S. coastal city facing chronic tidal flooding due to sea level rise. These are data on sea level rise since 1970, and associated increases in the frequency of tidal flooding events, measured in four other coastal cities:
Figure 4 from a summary report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, 2014. Sea level has risen by about 3.5 inches globally since 1970, but more along the U.S. East Coast as shown in the upper left graph. This has resulted in a measured increase in the yearly number of days of tidal flooding — flooding caused only by high tide — in 4 U.S. cities.Image credits: Union of Concerned Scientists, 2014.
The President loves to highlight present signs of strength of the U.S. economy. Presidents have been taking credit for good economic performance, when it occurs, since the dawn of our Republic. And, the economy (for many of us) is performing great right now!
There is always a rich debate about whether presidents can rightly take much credit for a good economy. I say, go for it! All presidents claim credit when the economy is good.
But, I think we should think very carefully about claims of causality between deregulation of the fossil fuel industry and economic and job growth, particularly from a president and administration with a history of ignoring and denying climate science.
Dow just crashes through 25,000. Congrats! Big cuts in unnecessary regulations continuing.
In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!
First, it’s highly debatable that the recent broad economic growth could not have been achieved, or even further enhanced, while investing aggressively in renewable energy sources as science says we need to if we want to avoid the most catastrophic outcomes of climate change. In fact, any suggestion of an obvious direct link between job creation in the fossil fuel industry and performance of the broader economy is demonstrably false. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the Department of Energy, the coal industry employed 160,119 Americans in 2016 while generating 30.4% of U.S. electricity. Meanwhile, the solar industry employed 373,807 Americans while generating only 0.9% of U.S. electricity. If the strategy is about creating jobs, clearly expansion of the solar industry is a far better tactic than creating artificial advantages for a coal industry that is already dying of natural market-driven causes!
And, that tactic also happens to be consistent with what we need to do to prevent substantial economic harms in the long term. Whether Miami will get federal and/or state funding of the $400 million it needs to deal with flooding over the next 20 years remains to be seen, but I think we have recently observed there may be limits to federal spending on climate change driven problems:
Texas & Florida are doing great but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble..
Projected coastline of the Miami metropolitan area now (left) and with 6 feet of sea level rise (right). Shades of blue indicate depths of seawater coverage. I created these images myself using this nifty NOAA tool, which enables you to map many parts of the U.S. coast with various projected sea levels.
Image credit: NASA/NOAA GOES Project. Photo of our unique home captured from space on Sept. 2, 2017. Hurricane Irma is visible near the middle of the Atlantic Ocean tracking west. Irma would later traverse unusually warm surface waters greater than 86 degrees F, setting multiple records for intensity, time at high intensity, and intensity at its landfall on a multitude of Caribbean islands and Florida, where it reached an uncommon size twice the width of that state.
I highly recommend this short article, published this week, by Mark Kelly. A retired naval aviator and combat veteran, Mark made two deployments to the Persian Gulf and flew 39 combat missions as part of Operation Desert Storm. He then became a NASA astronaut and served as either pilot or commander of 4 space shuttle missions. As such, he has the rare perspective of having been in a position to look down upon the whole Earth during a total of 854 orbits over 54 days in space during the decade between 2001 and 2011.
Mark is an American patriot by any reckoning, and he has had an extraordinary opportunity to observe and contemplate our unique planet. I should think folks of any political persuasion would be interested in reading his reflections on 2017.
As we all reflect on the past year, I encourage you to read his article.
“Don’t worry about the planet, the Earth will be just fine. What you need to worry about is us — all of us. …we must lead the way in solving this problem. If we don’t do this, who will?”
-Captain Mark Kelly, retired naval aviator, combat veteran, and astronaut, 2017
Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas) is a Pacific nation comprising 33 atolls and islands and a population of about 110,000. When it gained its independence from the U.K. in 1979, it became the world’s only nation with residents in all four hemispheres. The atolls and islands of Kiribati have had permanent residents since they were settled by sea-going Micronesian explorers in canoes between 3,000 and 5,000 years ago.
The lands of Kiribati rise only 3-6 feet above a sea level that has been relatively stable for the last few thousand years, but less stable recently. The residents are now engaged in an ongoing battle with a rising sea that their president has already conceded they are destined to lose.
High tides flood and salinate farmland. Families erect sandbag walls in an effort to protect their homes.
Fiji is an island nation in the South Pacific Ocean comprising 332 islands, of which 106 are permanently inhabited by its population of about 900,000 people. They are the descendants of the Lapita people who settled the islands about 5,000 years ago, probably originating in Taiwan or southern China. Expert in seamanship and navigation, the Lapita people and their Polynesian descendants relied on a strong tradition of oral history and small wooden canoes to locate and ultimately settle the Pacific islands from Fiji to Hawaii across hundreds of miles of open ocean. This amazing feat of human exploration has been recently popularized in the movie, Moana.
Can you imagine the courage, faith, and skill it must have taken to set off from one tiny Pacific island to find another, across a hundred miles of open ocean in a small wooden boat, with only the stories of your parents and the stars as your guide? That’s what these folks did, around 5,000 years ago.
In just 3% of that time, since around 1850, the most industrialized among us have begun a process to rapidly deprive those brave folks of their homes, culture, and history. Their beaches are already vanishing due to climate change driven sea-level rise, as exemplified by the lonely tree pictured above. In fact, as discussed at the recent 23rd annual “conference of the parties” (COP) meeting under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bonn, Germany, a joint assessment of the World Bank and the Fijian government determined that Fiji will need to spend an amount equivalent to its entire yearly gross domestic product over the next 10 years to adequately prepare for higher sea levels and stronger storms due to climate change.
So the simple decision on the table is this.
Option A: Turn our backs on the 900,000 current citizens and the 5,000 year human history of Fiji. Blow off the descendants of the people who conducted their own version of the Space Race, before we did ours, by bravely exploring and settling the uncharted expanses of the South Pacific in tiny wooden boats. Enjoy our cheap fossil energy. Why challenge ourselves to do something new (solar, wind, batteries), even though engineers and economists now say those new things can sometimes be as cheap as fossil fuels? Drill, baby, drill!
Option B: Give those brave folks some respect and give ourselves a little bit of a healthy challenge. Revolutionize our relationship with energy and the earth. Replicate the glory of the last generation’s Space Race in that pursuit. We all just may be prouder, happier, and safer.
(After all, what’s been happening in Fiji is also beginning to happen in Houston and Miami. Or haven’t you heard?)
This “news story” is a work of satire. All linked quotes, however, are 100% real.
6 November 2017
AP – Hours after a gunman killed at least 26 church-goers in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and in the wake of a string of national tragedies over previous weeks including the depraved massacre of 58 people by a “lone wolf” gunman in Las Vegas only 35 days earlier and the Puerto Rican landfall of Hurricane Maria just 11 days before that, Americans widely acknowledged on Monday they had entered a new Great American Mourning Episode (GAME) observed by tradition following any such travesty on U.S. soil. Variously held for a period of weeks or months, the GAME features, by mutual agreement of all patriotic American citizens and in respectful observance of the suffering of the victims of the tragedy, a usually unspoken moratorium on any insensitive public discourse related to possible root causes of the disaster or potential methods of preventing similar travesties in the future.
These exemplary demonstrations of patriotism epitomized the vital principle of the GAME, that any misguided efforts to identify and discuss the merits of potential policy adjustments to prevent future calamities would only serve as distractions from the proper acknowledgement and consideration of the suffering of fellow Americans.
Indeed, the GAME demands, for all who love America, that terrestrial considerations of practical human action should rather be transcended by prayer, in the form of devout appeals to any of various higher deities to ease the suffering of the afflicted and grant relief from such tragedies in the future. Americans widely admit no documented evidence of any of the major deities obviously meddling significantly in natural events or the collective fortunes of large groups of people for thousands of years. Even in those ancient times, literary evidence suggests interference of deities only in the context of vigorous efforts on the part of a human population to improve its own fortunes. Nevertheless, the documented power wielded by the deities in those times was unquestionably awesome, so the Strategy of Prayer is widely considered a “Hail Mary play” that might eliminate future human tragedies without resorting to the sorts of terrestrial human actions forbidden by proper observation of the GAME.
External observers have questioned the wisdom of the GAME, saying it might delay sorely needed actions that could prevent future horrific events. Foreign analysts have often referenced the apparent incongruity of the GAME with pragmatic American reactions to other types of problems. Aidan O’Sullivan of Limerick, Ireland pointed out, “If’n a baseball cums crashin’ through yisser picture windy, Oi’m juicy sure yer open de door roi away ter see wha’ wee kid did it, even as you’re also mournin’ de loss of yisser windy.” While true, Aidan’s example misses the point of the GAME, which has to do with the sheer size and depth of tragedy that can result only from a category 5 Atlantic hurricane or a crazy loner wielding an AR-15 legally enhanced with an ARMATAC SAW-MAG 150 round dual drum magazine, a Slide Fire bump stock, a Black Rain silencer, and a Vortex Optics Crossfire II Riflescope purchased on Amazon Prime with free overnight shipping.
Immediate, pragmatic action is entirely appropriate for day-to-day setbacks like busted picture windows. A hurricane landfall on a major city or a gunman in an elevated firing position menacing a dense crowd of T-shirt and sandal clad concert-goers with 20 or more military grade firearms, however, is uniquely capable of generating a scale of mayhem – scores of dead and hundreds or thousands of human lives forever altered – that can only be properly observed by strict adherence to the GAME.
In private moments, several citizens quietly confessed some trepidation about the limits the GAME might place on Americans’ ability to engage in the collective discourse necessary to develop robust solutions to some of the nation’s most pressing problems. “It had been a full month since the Las Vegas shooting, and I‘d just gotten back to starting to think about whether some type of common-sense gun legislation might help reduce the body count when some nut becomes unhinged and decides to kill a bunch of innocent people in a school or at a concert,” explained Larry Swingvoater of Green Bay, Wisconsin. “Now, another maniac decided to open fire in a church, so of course I can’t think about policy while those poor people are suffering. But what I worry about is, if these hurricanes and mass shootings keep happening so close together, when WILL I think about that stuff? Anyway, I’m back to praying now – maybe that will eventually pay off.”
Others wondered aloud what the solutions from a supernatural deity might look like, should the Strategy of Prayer prove successful. Would future tragedies from climate change ultimately be averted by solutions resembling the “solar technology,” “wind technology,” or “battery technology” rumored to have been developed by human scientists and engineers? Or, might a deity prove capable of providing sustainable bioenergy derived from multitudes of burning bushes? Or, tidal energy afforded by repetitive parting of the earth’s seas? Might an entity akin to the Holy Spirit provide a bullet-proof energy field around the nation’s innocent civilians, enabling Americans to maintain casual public availability of thrilling, adrenaline-pumping battlefield style firearms without risk to young schoolchildren?
A handful of fringe citizens, who made their controversial remarks on condition of anonymity so as not to be identified as GAME-violators, expressed the cynical opinion that the GAME poorly serves American politics and is actually the result of a “cruel and selfish conspiracy” by a few well-funded special interests with outsized influence on U.S. legislative policy. “This is not patriotism, but simply a transparent political delay tactic,” claimed Jon Faiknaim, whose name has been changed in this article at his request. “Every time a hurricane or a gun-toting madman kills a bunch of people, politicians in the pockets of the fossil fuel industry and the National Rifle Association call it ‘insensitive’ to talk about policy changes that would solve some of our most urgent public problems but harm the narrow interests of those minority stakeholders. Then, everybody forgets about the problem the moment another issue of critical national interest demands consideration. Like the linguistic etymology of the word, ‘covfefe,’ or how football players arrange their limbs during pre-game performances of the National Anthem. Then, the next time one of these tragedies occurs, the irrational cycle repeats itself.” Fortunately, these cynical expressions of doubt were rare.
But our national leader’s statements were most inspirational as he bravely defended the sanctity of the GAME when questioned by an unruly member of the press pool about whether “we have a gun violence problem.”
I am a scientist. For me, most decisions about things involve a hypothesis and supporting evidence. I have had a particular political hypothesis for some time. Today, that hypothesis appears supported by evidence.
Political Hypothesis: The super rich guys who say climate change isn’t happening, or we shouldn’t be worried about climate change, or we can simply ADAPT to climate change, will vanish when the sh*t hits the fan.
Consider the following tweets from President Trump over the past few days:
Texas & Florida are doing great but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble..
“Ultimately, the government of Puerto Rico will have to work with us to determine how this massive rebuilding effort…will be funded.” [The effort] “will end up being one of the biggest ever” [and Puerto Rico already has] “a tremendous amount of debt.” -President Trump, in a press conference on Friday.
The message? You’re already in debt and it’s super costly to rebuild your stuff. You’re on your own.
This is a message that the town of Shishmaref, AK, I suspect, has already received loud and clear.
I am working on a draft article on the link between climate change and hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. Please look for it soon, but it takes some time. (Real research takes longer than impulsive tweets!) Suffice it to say, every expectation is that warmer oceans and atmosphere will bring us increasingly strong hurricanes (see evidence in my upcoming post!)
Please pay attention to that evidence, and consider where you, personally, come down on it. Because, …
When our leaders say, “don’t worry about climate change,” they are saying it with the exact attitude and intentions as the guy who encouraged you to steal the farmer’s apples, then took off when the farmer appeared with his shotgun. The same as the guy who encouraged you to drink while under-age, then ran off and left you with the keg when the cops rolled up. They are having their fun, lying to you while their rich fossil fuel executive buddies get richer off fossil fuel technologies that, if rationality governed, should be going the way of rotary dial phones right now. But they have NO INTENTION of taking responsibility for the predicted consequences of climate change.
AP — On Wednesday, with an air of confidence reminiscent of their controversial “climate change” allegations, the world’s scientists were apparently nearly unanimous in predicting a strange astrophysical event, during which they outrageously claimed portions of the Earth’s population will experience partial, or even nearly total, darkness in the middle of the day. During this event, which scientists dubbed a “solar eclipse,” astronomers and astrophysicists explained that the moon will pass directly between the Earth and the sun from the vantage point of some observers in North America and around the world, temporarily blocking, or “occulting” the sun’s light.
Image credit: NASA. Photograph purportedly showing the “shadow of the moon” falling on a portion of the Earth during a “total solar eclipse” that scientists say occurred in 2006. Scientists claim the photograph showing the “shadow” was captured by a camera on a “space station,” populated by “astronauts,” that has been orbiting the Earth since 1998. On the strength of previous experiences like this, as well as “mathematical calculations” not well understood by lay people, scientists predicted a similar event will occur on August 21, 2017.
“It’s a sort of weird and very cool phenomenon, but actually not as rare as many people think,” said University of California — Berkeley astrophysicist, Rhonda Rokitpantz, Ph.D. “In fact, a solar eclipse is visible somewhere on the Earth’s surface about once every 18 months. A total solar eclipse only occurs at a given location on the Earth about once every 360 years, though, so if you get a chance you should definitely check it out. You’ll be able to see stars in the middle of the day!”
As if these outlandish claims weren’t enough, scientists further claimed the ability to forecast exactly when this event will occur at any given point on the Earth. Indeed, NASA, an American organization dedicated to space and earth sciences, was found to have wantonly expended American taxpayer money on an entire webpage dedicated to the phenomenon and alleged upcoming event including, among other content, tables of calculated locations and times of “solar eclipses” as far into the future as the year 2100.
Many people and organizations worldwide, particularly in Europe, appeared to be taking the world’s scientists’ astrophysical forecasts at face value. A company based in Stavanger, Norway, timeanddate.com, was displaying on its website highly specific predictions. For example, a search on “Hudson, Wisconsin” on that website alleged the 2017 “solar eclipse” would commence at precisely 11:44 am on Monday, August 21, reaching maximum coverage of the sun at 1:07 pm and ending at 2:29 pm.
When questioned about how they could possibly have any confidence in such specific predictions, scientists widely referred to astronomical studies that have occurred since a mathematician and astronomer named Nicolaus Copernicus, a European, first proposed in the 1500’s that the Earth orbits the sun.
“The work of Copernicus was a breakthrough,” said NASA astronomer Morgan Meteorlicker. “It enabled the correct understanding of astronomical observations over the centuries since, and the development of mathematical equations that now empower us to predict a variety of astrophysical phenomena, like eclipses, with great accuracy.”
It was difficult to find scientists dissenting from the sensational view that darkness will occur in the afternoon next Monday in many American cities. In fact, even scientists in very different disciplines appeared to accept the claims with a high degree of confidence, citing a “scientific method” evidently discussed frequently in scientific circles. Scientists widely professed an almost religious faith in this “scientific method,” by which they claimed observations by scientists are reviewed by rival experts prior to detailed publication in “peer reviewed journals,” whereupon researchers in other disciplines perform related experiments to verify consistency with the published research, resulting in the correction of errors and emergent “scientific theories” widely held as revealed truths about the natural world.
Mayo Clinic neurologist Georgina Graymattur, a scientist not expert in astronomy, explained, “I’m not an expert in astro-anything, but astronomers have been applying the scientific method to this since Copernicus and publishing their work in peer reviewed journals like Science and Nature. They have a long history of making accurate predictions with those equations of theirs. Heck, they’ve successfully landed remote control cars on Mars! At this point, if NASA says there’s going to be a solar eclipse next Monday, I’d say you can take that to the bank.”
Indeed, astronomers and scientists specializing in ophthalmology were teaming up on Wednesday to warn of potential health hazards arising from the impending astrophysical “eclipse” phenomenon.
“You do need to take care not to look directly at the occulted sun during the solar eclipse,” said ophthalmologist Bartholomew Beedyiyes. “The sun appears less bright during an eclipse, which prevents the normally unconscious things, like squinting, that you usually do to protect your eyes from the sun’s UV radiation. Because of that, your eye won’t properly protect its delicate retina when you look at an eclipse, and you could sustain permanent eye damage.”
For those interested in viewing the upcoming “eclipse,” scientists recommended wearing protective eye wear, so-called “eclipse glasses,” which were being offered for sale by many companies.
Many American leaders were more circumspect about the scientists’ alarmist claims. President Donald Tweety took to social media early Thursday morning, tweeting, “This is obviously yet another Chinese hoax aimed at tricking middle class Americans into spending their hard-earned wages on ridiculous Chinese-manufactured cardboard glasses.”
A Reuters poll revealed that a majority of Americans believed there was something to the scientists’ claims, though a minority of those polled believed it was likely to impact them directly. Some strenuously questioned the elitist scientists’ claims.
“The moon and the sun both shine, so it seems to me that if they teamed up they would only shine brighter together,” said Ronald Randumpurson of Sundusky, OH. This commonsense argument, apparently highlighting an obvious fact the egghead scientists had missed despite their years of college and self-important faith in complicated “equations,” cast substantial doubt about the scientists’ claims for many observers.
A web search on the issue revealed many dissenting views as well. Willard Wannabegeek, a self-described entrepreneur and blogger, wrote on his blog, “The moon has a diameter of only 2,159 miles, while the sun has a diameter of 864,576 miles. Since the area of a disc is proportional to the square of its diameter, this means the frontal area of the sun is 160,362 times that of the moon. It’s simply not mathematically possible for a disc to obscure another disc that is over 160,000 times larger.” This alternative explanation, involving numbers, mathematics, and technical language, was as convincing to many as the assertions of the “mainstream scientists.”
Still other Americans, including lawmakers, emphasized their inability to fully evaluate the claims. Senator Dirk Dumbutt (R-WI), said in a press interview, “Look, I’m not a scientist, so I can’t comment on whether it’s possible for the moon to pass in front of the sun, and I can’t recommend buying so-called eclipse glasses. The fact that the government, in which I have a leadership role, employs a multitude of expert scientists to study this stuff surprisingly turns out to be of no use to me in evaluating the issue one way or the other.”
Many lay people seemed to echo Senator Dumbutt’s views questioning the knowledge of so-called “experts.” “I know the Earth experiences frequent periods of darkness,” explained Athens, Georgia resident, Kenny Kluliss, “but I can’t say for sure the cause or whether the sun or moon is mainly responsible. It could just as well be primarily the luminosity of the blessed sap, as others have purported. Or, it could be that the UN just wants to control the glasses I put on my face.”
Our reporters asked NOAA climatologist, Doreen Damitshot, if the scientists’ sensational claims about the upcoming “eclipse” were analogous to their similarly outrageous assertions regarding “anthropogenic global warming.”
By and large, while largely sympathetic to the scientists’ point of view, Americans appeared to be taking a wait-and-see attitude with respect to the controversy. President Tweety offered one suggestion: “If you’re worried about the sun hurting your eyes, you’ll be safe from the sun mining coal underground. I love coal miners!”
Image credit: 
