IGM Greenland Snuggie Blanket

Inter-Galactic Memo
To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt, Crypto-glaciologist
Re: Greenland Snuggie-Covers

According to an article in the London Telegraph this morning, a “Glaciologist” named Jason Box, from Ohio State University who is concerned—as we all are—about the shocking rise in sea levels, has come up with a clever idea to slow or even stop the melting of Greenland’s glaciers.
As a responsible pseudo-journalist I checked out the facts online. According to Wikipedia, that bastion of spurious information, sea levels have been rising about 1.8mm annually for the last century. That’s just under two millimeters per year. Which comes to about one-fourth meter ever fifty years. Other estimates vary by as much as 20 meters (see An Inconvenient Truth), which is well within accepted parameters for global warming enthusiasts and catastrophic climate-change watch-dogs. As we all know, forty centimeters per hundred years is cause for alarm. Why, at that rate, half of Florida is now inundated by the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. Who knew?
But Jason is here to rescue the situation. He and an intrepid team of experts (which makes a total of four people) are spreading special white, polypropylene blankets designed to cover 10,000 square meters of ice, over a “real” glacier in Greenland! Apparently this is off-the-shelf technology used in the Alps to save summer ski runs. They are testing the blankets resilience in the fierce Arctic winters and gathering data on how well the ice is insulated. Good for them—and I mean it.
But I have a couple thoughts. Not worries, not concerns really, just idle speculation. Let’s see if we can follow the logic here. According to Jason we are in the midst of “a climate catastrophe and glaciers are the epicentre of that problem.” (In England that’s how they spell epicentre—no one knows why.) According to every single person on the planet studying the problem, with the irrelevant exception of several thousand of them, We, us, human beings, are at the “epicentre” of the global warming catastrophe. We have inadvertently caused what is happening. The question can be asked; if we are the problem, exactly how much sense does it make for us to meddle further, without really knowing what we’ve done or are doing, to try and fix the problem? One recalls, in a moment like this, the famous words of the Hippocratic Oath; “first, do no harm.” As I have mentioned before, it is absolute folly to think we understand the dynamics of what is happening—even if we are involved. All these people constantly pound into our heads how fragile the environment is, how delicate the balances are, and how easily tipping points of one kind or another can be reached. Despite all this, Jason wants to cover the glaciers and stop the melting. Of course, glaciers have been melting and freezing for eons, even when we weren’t helping. Why, scientists actually surmise that the “Little Ice Age” of the eighteenth century was caused by humans burning wood for heat and cooking all over the planet. And we modern folks are dumping much more into the air and water than they did, right? So why exactly are we causing warming while they caused cooling? (That’s a legitimate question, by the way—I sincerely want to know. I know Sammons knows, and I know Isle will maniacally research it until he knows).
Is it not plausible to assume we will exacerbate the problem by increasing our meddling? What’s wrong with the idea the Gaia will fix it through natural means? What if the global climate systems are already evolving, have changed in response to our presence and are in the process of making adjustments and corrections on their own? And what if, as we meddle, we interrupt these changes and adjustments and send the entire system into a nose-dive? I’m just saying . . . .
The other thought. (two a day are plenty, don’t you think?) Let’s revisit that fragile-ecology idea. We have been inundated with the delicate nature and balance of the systems. We used to think it took centuries of bad luck to trigger an ice-age. Now, because of our superior understanding, we know it can happen within a few years, some say one or two. Which leads me to ask the following: If we cover all the glaciers (except the ones in Glacier National Park, because they’re already gone) with insulating, reflective blankets, what’s to stop that from taking us over the admittedly crumbling precipice into a full-fledged ice age? Just a couple years of accumulating ice is enough. Now someone will answer, “the warming will prevent runaway glaciations, resulting in no net loss or gain." Really? But if we let the ice build for a few years, that will decrease the ambient temperature (remember that spurious idea about an “average global temperature”?) which will stop the warming trend in its tracks, send it over the edge, and cover the planet in ice. Well, not the whole planet, but all the fun parts where food grows. Assuming there is a warming trend. And assuming we know anything about cooling trends. It’s a bit of a sticky wicket, wot?
Besides, what will we do with a few million square kilometers of non-biodegradable polypropylene once we are done and have to roll it all back up? Anybody think of that? (Imagine a brief “cha-ching” gesture here).
In conclusion, I want to thank my parents for having the foresight to create me, my wife for the tolerance necessary not to eliminate me, the academy for remaining loyal to the ancient tradition of bribery, and all those scientists for keeping life interesting. I will cherish this delusion always.