First Global Climate Change Casualty: The PB & J

Despite what the Tea Party and other conservatives assert, global climate change is underway. Whether it is manmade or not, it is a fact that glaciers are in retreat, sea ice is melting, and Antarctica is losing its ice shelves as they calve off into the surrounding ocean.

My point has always been that yes, climate fluctuations is a fact. The seas came in, the seas went out. Go to coastal southern California, the Palos Verdes Peninsula to be precise, and look at the multiple wave-cut terraces that decorate the coastal hills.

Go to Crete and observe submerged harbor wharves.

Or google this: Haq, Hardenbol and Vail (or just click on the hypertext).

But my point is also this: in the event that a natural global climate change is underway, is it really within the realm of sanity to continue to pump greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, something that will only exacerbate the situation?

No one really knows why the climate has fluctuated over geologic time, only that it has.

But everyone who works in climatology knows that industrialized civilization is a contributing factor.

And now we have our first casualty of global climate change: the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

According to this AP article, this past summer’s blistering heat has been a contributing factor in a decline in this year’s peanut harvest. A decline that means that the cost of a jar of peanut butter in your local grocery store is set to rise.

Not known, at this time is whether Georgia’s new anti-immigrant law has contributed to the problem, as farm workers fled the state that threatened to arrest and deport them.

But we can all count on this: the price of a PB and J sandwich is going up, and one of the root causes of that is melting ice.