I’ve been seeing the word mitigate being used more and more as we expand the dialogue regarding what we can actually do about climate change. For example today, in an article about a UN report on the melting of ice all over the world from the BBC there is this statement:

“Without taking measures to mitigate sea level rise, an estimated 145 million people, primarily in Asia, would be exposed to the risk of flooding.”

Just what exactly do they think this means? With one sentence there is the implication that there are solutions to these kinds of catastrophic changes. We can’t ‘mitigate’ the effects of glaciers melting in the Himalaya. Millions of people will lose their only sources of water. We can’t mitigate the effects of the Greenland icecap melting and raising sea levels several feet. We simply cannot ward off these types of changes. They are too global and too irreversible.
The problem here is political. Saying things like mitigate avoids discussion of the very real and hard choices we will face in the next 40-50 years.
And that’s a conservative estimate. Ask the Alaskan villagers whose towns have been destroyed by melting permafrost about ‘mitigation’. There isn’t any. The ground was solid and now it’s not. How do you mitigate that?

Franke James is a genius and we have rocks in our heads. I can’t add any more to this because it is perfect.

According to a Times article, scientific consensus is now discounting the European instant ice age theory associated with the melting of the Greenland ice pack. That theory was that a very fast meltdown of the ice cap would dump a huge amount of cold fresh water into the North Atlantic. Because fresh water is heavier that salt it would sink and divert the North Atlantic current that funnels warm water towards Europe, moderating the climate. This is why European countries that are very far north compared to the US (for instance), like Britain, experience mild climates. If this flow were to be interrupted the theory predicted a cataclysmic drop in average temperatures creating a new ice age. New evidence suggests that current global warming is going to offset any meltdown effects in the perceivable future.
I always had a hard time recounciling the predictions that the Meditteranean would become a desert lake with the theory that northern Europe would experience an ice age- but that’s climate prediction for ya!

The Blue Economy is a blog devoted to the world’s oceans and how they are impacting the post climate change economy. Lots of good stuff here from an authoritative source.