The North Pole Is Melting

So, maybe some of those climate models were wrong, after all.

 

Looks like we'll eventually have a "northwest" passage whether we want one or not.

 

I think we hit that point about 20 years ago. Still, it's never too late to reduce our impact, because the echoes will reverberate for a very long time.

 

That should make it a lot easier to get at all that oil under the polar ice cap!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Sep 22 2007, 03:53 PM) [snapback]516288[/snapback]</div>

We are so screwed.

 

The North Pole ice melting is like ice cubes melting in your gin & tonic; meaningless. Start to worry if the South Pole ice starts melting!

 

The turning point for me, personally, was reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring as a teenager, which was...um...yeah, definitely more than twenty years ago. It was nothing to do with global warming, I know, but it opened my mind to the whole 'environment' idea. What I find most infuriating is that people still don't get it.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(BuddyL @ Sep 22 2007, 04:41 PM) [snapback]516315[/snapback]</div>

Ice in the water, sure. But see all that ice on Greenland? Where do you think all that water will go?

Someone should inform the polar ice cap that global warming is a hoax so it will know to stop melting.

Yeah, I've used that joke before. And I'll keep using it until the deniers get it through their heads that despite what spokesmodels from the oil industry say, it's real.

 

The NSIDC (mentioned in Sci Am article) is well worth a visit.

Don't know the current magnitude of freshwater outputs from Antartica vs. Greenland. However, a big melt from the latter would slow the "Gulf Stream/salt conveyor" and then we would see if the (rather bleak) climate models for N. Europe in particular are accurate.

 

I'd like to dee spme satalite photos from before the 1950 to 1970 cooling period. How do we know that the ice in 1979 wasn't abnormally high? How about the condition of the ice after the medieval warming? Picking your baseline at the highest point of recorded ice isn't very scientific.

 

I don't think Scientific American is a peer reviewed periodical so we may want to look further into this subject for information that is. Or was this a paper submitted to another source like Nature then used by Scientific American?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(BuddyL @ Sep 22 2007, 02:41 PM) [snapback]516315[/snapback]</div>

That is a rather ignorant statement. It is defiantely not meaningless. That much freshwater input has an impact on circulation paterns as well as the extra area that will soak up more heat due to reduced albedo.

Even in your gin and tonic the melting of ice has a chemical, taste, and temperature effect. lol

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Devil's Advocate @ Sep 22 2007, 06:53 PM) [snapback]516380[/snapback]</div>

My guess is there is a lot of written data from explorers throughout the 1900s-on and more scientific data collected by the Navy. My oceanography teach would tell us about his exploits and those he knew of concerning Naval operations in the far north under sea ice. Hell if it were not for the Navy we might still think the continents don't move.

 

Yes, but even going back a few hundred years may not be enough.

http://www.livescience.com/history/070809_aqua_dig.html

I wonder what SUV's these guys were driving aound???

 

Time to buy beach property on the Northwest Passage.

I wish some of that melting water went into the Great Lakes. We could use a few more feet. The last few years have been unusually dry, which is reflected in the low Lake Levels.

Tom

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Devil's Advocate @ Sep 24 2007, 02:34 PM) [snapback]517006[/snapback]</div>

I don't really care for the jest...
Reread the article - the earth was COLD enough for the sea level to be low enough for the english channel to be exposed and open to human settlement. The site of settlement was at the end of the last Ice Age when more water was locked in glaciers and ice caps. The site was settled in between the time when the english channel was glaciated and the time that sea levels were high enough to swamp it. There is nothing you know that the IPCC scientists don't know about; in fact, consider the possibility that they know a lot more than you on the subject.

As for the computer models -- They aren't perfect and there are a lot of variances in them, but generally they point to a very bleak picture. We really are changing the world we live in and DEPEND on. It is unfortunate that a great deal of Americans and others in the world are too selfish and egotistical to listen to the scientific body that researches the climate.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TonyPSchaefer @ Sep 22 2007, 12:38 PM) [snapback]516213[/snapback]</div>

Remember that ice at one time covered much of Canada and a good chunk of the United States, how does 1979 become the baseline for comparison?
I have read several posts on here over the last couple of years about how "AGW" was contributing to more intense and frequent hurricanes and the "Katrina" -like events were to become commonplace. I realize it has only been two years since Katrina, but the hurricane forecasters and doomsayers have struck out two years in a row now. I guess if they are consistent in their gloomy high hurricane forecasts they will be right one of these years.