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pharflung
Joined: 29 Mar 2007
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 Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 4:55 am Post subject: North polar ice pack vanishing faster than predicted |
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here we go again.
another report that measurements show the effects of global warming are moving faster than predicted. much faster.
this time it's the ice pack in the vicinity of the North Pole.
global warming is no longer a joke, and it is too far along to reverse the effects within our lifetime, or perhaps even our children's lifetimes.
"I have a message for future generations: Please accept our apologies."
-- Kurt Vonnegut.
http://www.adn.com/news/environment/story/9309987p-9224468c.html
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Passage opens up through Arctic ice, now at lowest level
MELTING: Satellite photos show a record retreat; nations jockey to secure their interests.
In this photo made available by the European Space Agency, McClure Strait in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, is shown Aug. 31, 2007. The McClure Strait is the most direct route of the Northwest Passage and has been fully open since early August 2007. The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos taken together in Sept. 2007 showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images were first taken in 1978. ( European Space Agency photo via The Associated Press)
By JAMEY KEATEN
The Associated Press
(Published: September 17, 2007)
PARIS -- Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.
The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images were first taken in 1978.
The waters are exposing unexplored resources, and vessels could trim thousands of miles from Europe to Asia by bypassing the Panama Canal. The seasonal ebb and flow of ice levels has already opened up a slim summer window for ships.
Leif Toudal Pedersen, of the Danish National Space Center, said that Arctic ice has shrunk to some 1 million square miles. The previous low was 1.5 million square miles, in 2005.
"The strong reduction in just one year certainly raises flags that the ice (in summer) may disappear much sooner than expected," Pedersen said in an ESA statement posted on its Web site Friday.
Pedersen said the extreme retreat this year suggested the passage could fully open sooner than expected -- but ESA did not say when that might be. Efforts to contact ESA officials in Paris and Noordwik, the Netherlands, were unsuccessful Saturday.
A U.N. panel on climate change has predicted that polar regions could be virtually free of ice by the summer of 2070 because of rising temperatures and sea ice decline, ESA noted.
Russia, Norway, Denmark, Canada and the United States are among countries in a race to secure rights to the Arctic that heated up last month when Russia sent two small submarines to plant its national flag under the North Pole. A U.S. study has suggested as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden in the area.
Environmentalists fear increased maritime traffic and efforts to tap natural resources in the area could one day lead to oil spills and harm regional wildlife.
Until now, the passage has been expected to remain closed even during reduced ice cover by multiyear ice pack -- sea ice that remains through one or more summers, ESA said.
Researcher Claes Ragner of Norway's Fridtjof Nansen Institute, which works on Arctic environmental and political issues, said for now, the new opening has only symbolic meaning for the future of sea transport.
"Routes between Scandinavia and Japan could be almost halved, and a stable and reliable route would mean a lot to certain regions," he said by phone. But even if the passage is opening up and polar ice continues to melt, it will take years for such routes to be regular, he said.
"It won't be ice-free all year around and it won't be a stable route all year," Ragner said. "The greatest wish for sea transportation is streamlined and stable routes."
"Shorter transport routes means less pollution if you can ship products from A to B on the shortest route," he said, "but the fact that the polar ice is melting away is not good for the world in that we're losing the Arctic and the animal life there."
The opening observed last week was not the most direct waterway, ESA said. That would be through northern Canada along the coast of Siberia, which remains partially blocked. |
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keane
Joined: 09 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 8:23 am Post subject: |
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| Posted HERE on the 15th. |
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pharflung
Joined: 29 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Mon Sep 17, 2007 3:08 pm Post subject: |
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keane
| Quote: |
| Posted HERE on the 15th. |
Not exactly.
Your link is to stories about ice in the Antarctic.
This story is about ice in the Arctic. It was published on Sept. 17.
The Antarctic is on the South Pole side.
The Arctic is on the North Pole side.
The arctic/antarctic is defined as the region above/below the latitude where the sun never sets on the summer solstice.
It is summer now in the Arctic. It is winter now in the Antarctic.
There is land in the antarctic; it is a continent called Antarctica.
There is no land in the central arctic around the North Pole.
But otherwise, yes, it is the same, give or take 8,000 miles. |
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pharflung
Joined: 29 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 6:18 pm Post subject: |
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Summer is over in the arctic, and here is the finally tally. The arctic is the region in the Northern Hemisphere above the latitude where the sun never sets for one day during summer.
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September 21, 2007
Scientists Report Severe Retreat of Arctic Ice
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
FAIRBANKS, Alaska, Sept. 20 � The cap of floating sea ice on the Arctic Ocean, which retreats under summer�s warmth, this year shrank more than one million square miles � or six Californias � below the average minimum area reached in recent decades, scientists reported Thursday.
The minimum ice area for this year, 1.59 million square miles, appeared to be reached Sunday. The ice is now spreading again under the influence of the deep Arctic chill that settles in as the sun drops below the horizon at the North Pole for six months, starting Friday.
The findings were reported by the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., and posted online at www.nsidc.org.
While satellite tracking of polar sea ice has been done only since 1979, several ice experts who have studied Russian and Alaskan records going back many decades said the ice retreat this year was probably unmatched in the 20th century, including during a warm period in the 1930s. �I do not think that there was anything like we observe today� in the 1930s or 1940s, said Igor Polyakov, an ice expert at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.
The ice retreat has been particularly striking this year. The Alaskan side of the Arctic Ocean has stretches of thousands of square miles of open water; the fabled Northwest Passage through the islands of northern Canada was free of ice for weeks; and the sea route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans north of Russia was nearly clear a week ago, with one small clot of ice around a group of Siberian islands.
Mark Serreze, a senior researcher at the snow and ice center, said it was increasingly clear that climate change from the buildup of greenhouse gases was playing a role in the Arctic warming, which is seen not only in the floating ice but also in melting terrestrial ice sheets, thawing tundra and warming seawater.
�We understand the physics behind what�s going on,� Dr. Serreze said. �You can always find some aspect of natural variability that can explain some things. But now it seems patterns that used to help you don�t help as much anymore, and the ones that hurt you hurt you more.�
�You can�t dismiss this as natural variability,� he said. �We�re starting to see the system respond to global warming.�
Still, he and other scientists acknowledged that both poles were extraordinarily complicated systems of ice, water and land, and that the mix of human and natural influences was not easy to clarify.
Sea ice around Antarctica has seen unusual winter expansions recently, and this week is near a record high. |
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/21/science/21arctic.html |
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keane
Joined: 09 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 10:43 pm Post subject: |
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| pharflung wrote: |
keane
| Quote: |
| Posted HERE on the 15th. |
Not exactly. |
Yes, exactly. You didn't notice the post above the one you are referring to. When you follow my link, the fist post on the page is the one the URL takes you to, not the second. You looked at sundubu's post, not mine. Not sure how you mistook those two names.
Why the pissy attitude, by the way? It is your posting of already-posted info and, now, your mistaken identification of my post. If anyone should be pissy, it's me.
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Julius
Joined: 27 Jul 2006
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| Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 11:58 pm Post subject: |
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| When all the ice is gone, will people still be posting that global warming is a hoax? |
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pharflung
Joined: 29 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 1:21 am Post subject: |
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Thank you for clarifying that, keane.
When you wrote
| Quote: |
| Posted HERE on the 15th. |
I assumed you were referring to the post the link opened to. That's what "here" usually means. I was confused.
The news story you quoted was from the same news event, but not the exact same news story. You beat me.
There are some posters on Dave's who are easily confused. Just for the record, this does not include you.
Julius wrote:
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When all the ice is gone, will people still be posting that global warming is a hoax? |
Sure. Because the earth is flat, and the ice simply fell off the edges. |
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keane
Joined: 09 Jul 2007
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 3:06 am Post subject: |
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| pharflung wrote: |
Thank you for clarifying that, keane.
When you wrote
| Quote: |
| Posted HERE on the 15th. |
I assumed you were referring to the post the link opened to. That's what "here" usually means. I was confused. |
I was. Above I said "page," but should have said screen. FYI, when you click on the little page symbol in the upper left top in the title bar of any post it shifts the page so that you are at THAT post. The URL changes to reflect that so you can directly link to any given post. If you follow the link, the first item at the top of your screen will be the post in question.
No harm. Glad to have someone else on board kicking these neo-con/naysayer types in the proverbial arse. Our children's world is already going to be a very different one. That, in and of itself, is not the issue. The neo-cons/naysayers would have you believe otherwise. They try to paint the GW-concerned as nutballs claiming the end is nigh. This is bull shoot of the highest order. No, the issue is that we can have a smooth transition or we can one that is chaotic, thus more dangerous. I prefer the former, of course. One reason the nutballs prefer a chaotic one, I think, is that money can buy relative safety. The fact that people are already having their lives changed - and lost - means nothing to them. It's Darwinism, right? Partially true. But when one population is destroying the other population's lives with their profligacy, is that not equivalent to negligent manslaughter? A question worth asking.
The world is changing. Ice is melting, deserts are spreading, animals are moving or disappearing. Of course the opposites of these are all happ3ening, too. Again, not bad in and of itself. The fossil record is full of failure. Nothing but failure in a sense. But does that mean we are morally justified in bringing about a disaster and saying it's just too bad some people have to die? Better thee than me?
Some of us don't think so. We need to be more vocal in outing the foolishness, selfishness and bankrupt moral tendencies of those who would sacrifice others for their own comfort. |
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pharflung
Joined: 29 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 6:39 am Post subject: |
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Global warming? What global warming?
Just a huge wildfire burning out of control far above the Arctic Circle in tundra that is normally sopping wet. In late September.
Nothing to see here folks. Just move along now.
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Largest recorded tundra fire burning on Slope
220,000 ACRES: It is now the biggest fire ever in the region.
The Anaktuvuk River fire, the biggest in North Slope history, burns across the tundra Sept. 10, 2007. (Courtesy of Bureau of Land Management Fire Service)
(Published: September 28, 2007)
FAIRBANKS -- Alaska's largest wildfire of the year is now the biggest tundra fire ever recorded on the North Slope.
The blaze has covered more than 220,000 acres and could continue to burn for several more weeks, fire authorities said.
The Anaktuvuk River Fire began with a lightning strike July 16 during an unusually warm, dry summer that has nurtured the flames.
"We've seen periods of rapid growth interspersed with periods of the fire doing almost nothing," said Mike Butteri, a field specialist with Alaska Fire Service.
The nearest population center is Anaktuvuk Pass, population 300, about 50 miles south of the fire. There is little risk of the fire coming toward the village, but it was inundated by smoke when the wind changed direction several weeks ago.
The wind shift also resulted in "choking smoke" making its way toward researchers working at the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Toolik Field Station, according to station director Brian Barnes.
"It's a tremendous fire," he said. "It's visible from 50 miles away by its plumes, and it obscured a third of the northern sky."
The fire continues to show significant activity at its northern and southern perimeters, but authorities believe the blaze will go out by itself in the next few weeks as winter approaches.
"Fuel-wise, sure, there's plenty more tundra to burn," Butteri said. "Weather-wise, as we're getting closer to snowfall and colder weather, I don't see it lasting much longer."
It is possible for a tundra fire to sustain itself on peat beneath snow, but that's an unlikely scenario for this fire, Butteri said.
Since the area is mostly home to low, quick growing vegetation, there is little concern about major long-term changes to the environment, Butteri said. One exception is reindeer lichen, a key food source for caribou that can take decades to grow back.
The lack of lichen could drive caribou away from the area, said Perry Barboza, an associate professor of biology at UAF's Institute of Arctic Biology and a caribou expert.
"Either they'll shift to something else or they'll have to go somewhere less benign and more exposed," he said. |
http://www.adn.com/news/environment/story/9337376p-9252045c.html |
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SPINOZA
Joined: 10 Jun 2005
Location: $eoul
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| Posted: Fri Sep 28, 2007 8:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Julius wrote: |
| When all the ice is gone, will people still be posting that global warming is a hoax? |
Be fair. They dispute that human activities are responsible - not that it's occurring.
What tickles me - and why one is obliged to attack such utter plonkers - is that their opposition to the man-made climate change hypothesis is politically (and often nationalistically) driven and yet, since it's they who equate concern for the environment with Left Wing politics, these same buffoons argue that the scientific consensus on climate change is politically-driven (anti-Americanism and opposition to Capitalism).
Remember a while ago when I argued the above is logically fallacious? It breaks down like this:
1. Person A makes a claim (X)
2. Person B says we should doubt X because it is politically, ideologically-driven (Y)
3. Y is politically and ideologically driven by opposition to the alleged political and ideological principles in X. Therefore B says we should doubt Y (see 2)
Is this logical fallacy attributable to me, anyone? I'm quite the egotist, sorry.  |
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flummuxt
Joined: 15 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 3:03 am Post subject: |
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Spinoza says:
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1. Person A makes a claim (X)
2. Person B says we should doubt X because it is politically, ideologically-driven (Y)
3. Y is politically and ideologically driven by opposition to the alleged political and ideological principles in X. Therefore B says we should doubt Y (see 2) |
Yes and no.
You see, the world we live in is made up of a sort of monadic harmony, established at the very beginning of creation. The evolution, and uber-evolution of humanity is all a part of that pre-established harmony. Global warming was an inevitable consequence of that deterministic set of events. Perhaps every world, whether the best or not, was or is bound to experience global warming. Think about it.
So, does global warming make this the best of all possible worlds?
Not yet.
Global warming is the savior, ultimately, of humanity. By destroying humanity, global warming will save it. Or at least a small fraction of it.
Bye bye folks. One day we will meet again. One sunny day. Don't know where, don't know when.
But this planet is toast. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 3:16 am Post subject: |
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Ice is the culprit for the Titanic sinking. I had insomnia last night, woke up, and (for the first time) watched 'Titanic' in it's entirety on OCN. I had previously only seen segments (before falling asleep-my insomnia is a recent affliction).
I cried at the end. I now hate ice. |
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flummuxt
Joined: 15 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 3:20 am Post subject: |
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I love ice.
Scotch is much, much better with ice.
At least this Passport Scotch is.
But even Scotch on the rocks can't save Titanic.
Sorry. |
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 4:41 am Post subject: |
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Yes, ice in moderation is okay. Huge bergs that make me cry? I am straight out with that shit.  |
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