A Repeating Headline

It’s not the kind of headline you should see more than once in a lifetime, but we do. “World’s Largest Iceberg Breaks Off From Antarctic Ice Shelf.” It seems to me I’ve seen the exact same headline 7 or 8 times now. Maybe some times it was Greenland, but no matter. The extra water, a large mountain of it at a time, all goes into the same ocean. And this one, they say, is 70 times the size of Manhattan. It’s sort of like “Record Breaking Temperatures in July,” “Most Devastating Forest Fire Ever,” which seems to happen almost every year, and “Worst Hurricane Ever” which comes along every few years.
Admittedly, the article did say that sometimes icebergs break off from the ice shelf naturally, and that this was one of those kind. Not due to global warming, just a huge iceberg which broke off. But the water from this one, plus all of those which were caused by global warming, gets counted together when it comes time to raise the level of the ocean, which leads to hurricanes, and floods.
Ditto with the fires. Some are caused by arson. Some are caused by drought (which makes arson much easier) but, large and small and whatever the cause, they all reduce the amount of trees on Earth, which means more carbon in the atmosphere, which means we’re all going to die.
Because it’s all connected. And it’s all cumulative.