Peter H. Gleick: The new Katrinas: Naming climate change disasters after the deniers

If we act to slow climate change, and the impacts turn out to be less severe than we predict, all we've done is reduce our emissions of pollutants, cut our economic dependence on fossil fuels from countries that fund extremism and terror, and boosted our economy with new green technologies and jobs.
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There is growing evidence from the real world that climate changes are accelerating faster than we originally feared and that impacts -- already appearing -- will be more widespread and severe than expected.
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But to be a climate denier these days means sticking in earplugs, covering your head with a pillow, and then burying your head deeper and deeper in the sand. Why? Because new physical evidence comes in every day that climate extremes are piling up.
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So, I have a new proposal. Henceforth, just as we give names to hurricanes, I propose we name climate disasters after those who deny the reality of climate change in the face of incontrovertible scientific evidence.
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The Marano [sic] Greenland Ice Floe: A 100-square-mile ice island calved off from the Petermann Glacier - the largest ice island to break away in the Arctic in a half-century of observation.

Editor's letter: Ice story was a bit overdone

It may not for anybody who digs out an old encyclopedia, which may not measure up to today’s scientific exactitude but nevertheless remains a friend to the layman who wants to quick refresher on various topics that are otherwise obscure.

In a volume that came out in 1992, well before alarm about global warming had spread, it reminds us that icebergs and ice islands routinely break off from glaciers on the north coast of Greenland and Ellesmere Island.

An ice island, we learn from the author of that entry, a historian who also wrote about Arctic exploration if I’m not mistaken, may be as thick as 200 feet and cover as much as 200 square miles. (That’s a thickness of 61 meters and surface area of 520 square kilometers for metric fans.)