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North Pole Ice On Track To Melt By September?
phobos13013 writes "Recently released evidence is showing the North Pole ice is melting at the highest rate ever recorded. As a result, the Pole may be completely ice-free at the surface and composed of nothing but open water by September. As reported in September of last year, the Northwest Passage was ice-free for the first time known to man. The implications of this, as well as the causes, are still being debated. Are global warming experts just short-sighted alarmists? Are we heading for a global ice age? Or is the increase in global mean temperature having an effect on our planet?"
"The melt would be mostly symbolic--thicker ice, pushed against the Canadian continental shelf by weather and Earth's rotation, would still survive the summer."
So when we say the North Pole will melt we are talking about a point not the whole Artic ocean which is what impression one might get from the title.
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
Polar bears don't actually live 'at the pole':
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Polar_bear_range_map.png
They live in areas around which, according to the article, have plenty of ice...
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
That book was powerfully bitch-smacked it was so debunked after it came out.
I wouldn't take any details in it seriously... good book, interesting theory, but most of the evidence was fabricated or misinterpreted.
Maybe the melting ice could have something to do with this:
AFP Volcanic eruptions reshape Arctic ocean floor: study
Arctic Volcanoes Found Active at Unprecedented Depths
Some analysis at:
Global Warming - Or Simply Massive Under Sea Volcanoes?
Penguins are southern hemisphere.
Most of the 1421 theory revolves around a map that seems to detail North America in some fashion. However, that map was proven inaccurate as the mapping around the area it was purported to come from was WORSE than the mapping of North American, which makes no cartographic sense. People have better maps of where they come from and worse maps of where they just explored. Makes sense. Until somebody can find more proof to back up the 1421 claim, it is an undecidable as to its veracity.
You do realize that book is widely considered to be poppycock?
According to this article the information was really extended beyond what the reporter had received from the scientist.
It was also suggested that the ice may have been flushed out due to the movement of water rather than melting so much. This flow of water might be caused by greenhouse gasses though.
This is where I look to keep track of what's happening with the north pole:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
Best graph is :
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
My friends refer to it a climate-porn...
Can't say I strongly disagree since it has the feel of watching a loooong slow train wreck...
Arctic ice is floating, and thus already displacing water. It's the Antarctic and Greenland ice melting that would be a concern, since they rest on land.
The NY Times' environmental blogger has a bit of an analysis of this including a great animation of sea ice growth and melt from 1980 to 2007.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/whats-really-up-with-north-pole-sea-ice/index.html
From my read of his post, it sounds like the Independent may have over-stated its case and mis-represented the words of the experts they interviewed. Which isn't to say things aren't bad...
Polar bears already have problems. Ice freezes later and thaws sooner, so bears have to swim further and many drown. Seals, their primary food source, are also under pressure because they need the ice to birth. Your wiki source also includes this:
Finally, the National Geographic was a little glib, if not intentionally missleading, when it said:
Any reasonable person quickly realizes there will be no ice to "push" if it's all gone in the center. Models that have not predicted the rapidity of ice loss need to be recalibrated as do politicians who deny global warming and it's impact. The alarmists are alarmingly correct.
The Cryosphere Today is a web site run by the University of Illinois. It gives daily information on the extent of polar sea ice.
As shown here and here and here, the arctic ice extent is actually greater than last year, although lower than historical averages.
We seem to have conflicting data.
It does contain news -- the news that the current melting rate of the polar ice is the highest recorded.
It's just that the rest of it is speculation.
right now the cap is 10.5mm square kilometers, vs. 7.5mm this time last year. Hacks.
!#&*
Al Gore is just an environmentalist and a politician. In terms of delivering facts about climate change, he's not relevant. I'm not quite sure why he does so much speaking about it -- often scientific ideas are presented by non-scientists, but then, at least, they should be chosen for their charisma.
But at a scale a lot greater than the human one, our sun is growing fast. A couple hundredths of a percent every decade. So our faith is there. As the sun will grow larger and larger, our planet is going to heat more and more, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it.
Bzzzztt!!! I call Bullsh-t.
WTF are you talking about? The sun is growing larger? Why would you pull something so incredibly obviously wrong out of your arse, and why would anybody be dumb enough to mod this up?
The output of the sun is so even and so predictable, it's called the "Solar Constant". There is a variation of about 1 part per thousand over a 30-year cycle. In short, the idea that the sun is getting hotter every year is not just wrong, it's absurdly so.
Come back when you have some "facts" that reflect reality, mmmkay?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Actually, free-floating ice is displacing 100% of the volume it would displace once melted.
Changes in solar energy output (the "ringing" of the Sun)?
Well that's certainly a hypothesis worth investigating. Thankfully people other than yourself did actually think about that one, and have done a significant amunt of research on the amount of solar variation and how much of the change in global average temperature over the last century or so is attributable to those variations. The short answer is that, while solar variation has contributed (around 30% according to the IPCC) it can't fully account for the observed temperature changes. Indeed, solar variation flattened off in the last few decades, while temperature continued to rise see here.
Naturally occuring changes in the planetary atmosphere (as has happened before on this planet)?
An interesting hpothesis; perhapsthe dramatic rise in CO2 has nothing to do with humans. Fortunately, again, other people thought of this possibility and actually did the research. Since fossil fuels have rather distinctive isotope ratios we can gauge how much of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to fossil fuel burning by analysing the changing isotope ratios of atmospheric CO2. Unfortunately your hypothesis just isn't borne out; humans are responsible for the most recent dramatic rise in levels of atmospheric CO2.
But you get the point - when we at least have an educated guess as to the 'why'...
But we do have an educated guess as to why, significant amounts of research into that, and the alternative possibilities you suggest have been explored, and the results are that, to the very best of our current understanding, anthropogenic CO2 (and to a lesser degree other anthropogenic greenhouse gases) are a very significant factor -- indeed, the most significant -- in causing the observed increase in global average temperature. That rise in temperature is easily the prime candidate for blame with regard to melting arctic sea ice.
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Citation?
So many people toss around opinions without backup here I've given up on listening since the whole thing is such a hotpotato.
And anyways, massive coastal flooding only happens if the south pole melts (because it's actually on land). If you fill a glass with water and ice, just to the point of overflowing on the edges, and cubes are sticking out the top, when that ice melts, does your glass of water overflow? Same concept with the north pole here.
if by 100 years, you mean 750K years, the yes.
Ice core samples are wonderful things.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"China and India will do nothing to cut there emissions"
I used to read this propoganda all the time in Australian papers, less so since the change of government. In reality the US is now the only nation on Earth not willing to sign up to an international treaty. For the past several years China and India's simple negotiating strategy has been..."we want what the same deal as the US plus the compenstation for past emmisions the rest of the world has already ageed to".
Two basic ideas of the draft treaty...
1. Cap and trade (based on tonnage not GDP as the US wants) is the way to go, currently we emmit 10Gt/yr of GHG and the best scientific advise says it would be prudent to reduce that to 3-4Gt/yr by 2050-60. The best economic advise says the sooner we take our medicine the better. The obvious way to do this is start with 10Gt of permits in year 1 and reduce that to 3-4 by mid-century, the hard part is not the technology it's the allocation and accountability of permits. Permits are allocated to national governments once a year who then auction/sell/hoard them ( a decent government would use it to offset other taxes ). For those caught cheating sanctions/tarrifs are applied to their inputs/outputs. Estimated cost per ton of the permits varies between $20-200 depending on what global development senario you belive in.
2. The treaty is designed to account for the fact that early FF users (US/Russia/EU/Japan/Au) have already benifited from past emmisions. The per-capita emmission curves for different nations are drawn to account for these past emmisions and merge into a single curve by ~2030. Between now and 2030 China and India will have steep curves, OTOH if they can flatten out their curves by undertaking huge renewable efforts earlier rather than later then they will be compensated by auctioning their permits to other nations.
The basic problem with the draft treaty...
Creative accounting.
"How about giving up our panic attacks."
Agreed, but for a while there it looked like "the economy would be ruined".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.