Two weeks ago, I visited the Arctic. I saw the remains of a glacier that just a few years ago was a majestic mass of ice. It had collapsed. Not slowly melted ”” collapsed. I traveled nine hours by ship from the world’s northernmost settlement to reach the polar ice rim. In just a few years, the same ship may be able to sail unimpeded all the way to the North Pole. The Arctic could be virtually ice-free by 2030.
Scientists told me their sobering findings. The Arctic is our canary in the coal mine for climate impacts that will affect us all.
I was alarmed by the rapid pace of change there. Worse still, changes in the Arctic are now accelerating global warming. Thawing permafrost is releasing methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Melting ice in Greenland threatens to raise sea levels.
Meanwhile, global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.
Gosh, do you think that there will be grapes in Greenland again? Wouldn’t that be nice! Boy, my heating bill this winter could sure use a break. This warming thing seems pretty swell, but it is probably too good to be true.
Maybe we can refurbish the shrines the vikings built there when they settled it?
Gosh, too bad the Antarctic is continuously growing, with record breaking amounts of ice… If it weren’t for those pesky scientific things that keep refuting man made global warming, or if there was any evidence besides computer models to substantiate it, we could get down to some serious redistribution of wealth….
There is a current article, available elsewhere on the web, that says that the arctic was ice-free in 1959. Does anyone know of this?
Yes, there is a photograph of the USS Skate (SSN-578), surfacing at the north pole and it’s all water:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/26/ice-at-the-north-pole-in-1958-not-so-thick/
http://www.c3headlines.com/2009/04/images-of-arctic-pole-icefree-march-1959-its-happened-before-preglobal-warming-hype.html
Third photo here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Skate_(SSN-578)
The picture was taken on March 17, 1959 at the North Pole itself and the vessel is surrounded by…water. The North Pole was virtually ice free. Not all of the arctic was, but the North Pole was definitely sans ice in March of that year.
Thank you for the information.
A far worse problem than arctic ice is the growing depletion of the fish in the oceans to feed the demands of a growing population. At the present rate, some species that were mainstays will be extinct in the next 20 to 30 years. Your cat is not going to have her nice tuna snack before long. What is the solution to that? Eliminating gasing cows and volcanoes will not solve that problem.
thanks for posting, but a bit of advice to mr/ms ki-moon; you would have a better chance of convincing everyone if you actually took them to see it first hand, otherwise they won’t be able to imagine it or worse to even believe it. there are a lot of people who never cared about what happens to whales either until they actually saw one diving next to them. experiencing God’s beautiful creation firsthand can be a soul moving force.