The North Pole is melting

www.socc.ca...


intothegreyzone.blogspot.com...

The sea ice minimum in the 1970s was 5.5 million square kilometers. Then in the 1980s it was 5.0 million square kilometers. Then in the 1990s it reached 4.5 million square kilometers. Then by 2005 we touched 4.01 million square kilometers as the prior record.

Then comes 2007. Oh my, does 2007 come roaring by! On August 9, 2007 we set a new record low of 3.98 million square kilometers! But just 19 days later we set a new minimum of 2.99 million square kilometers.
Did you get that yet? We lost one million square kilometers of sea ice in 19 days.

unv.net...
The more ice free sea there is , the more heat is absorbed - which leads to more ice melting and more ice free sea, and so on. It's a "positive feedback loop", the melting is not linear.
I don't know if global warming is all our fault but I think this is significant news.

reply to post by pai mei


Well it's a tought one ain't it? On one hand we haven't been around that long to witness a complete cycle of planetary weather (or atleast it hasn't been accounted for in a modern day scientific way) and on the other hand we can measure small things like exhausts from cars, our cutting down of trees and what else we've been doing.

But what if this is just another party in the cycle of earths life? Could be our emissions of CO2 aren't the cause, it could be that that it's helping the global warming along the way... but that issue should be declared dead in my humble oppinion.
I think we are too late and we should probably just start worrying about how to overcome the climatic changes instead of trying to place the blame.

A danish company is beginning to develop modern day houses on poles to fit the anticipated changes along lowerly situated coastlines. Now that is action instead of talk... and even if nothing happens you're still safe and sound.

www.nasa.gov...
If floating ice melts ,the sea level does not rise. Only if land ice melts the sea level rises. Just a 1 meter rise is enough to cause problems for Bangladesh.
Greenland and the Antarctic peninsula are the areas that could melt, each would add 6 meters to the sea level.
But with ice melting at the North Pole the Gulf Stream could stop and a new ice age could begin before serious melting occurs
What I think : the ice free sea will heat up and the gulf stream stopping will not cause an ice age. The Gulf Stream heats the northern Europe, but if the North Pole will be free of ice, it will be heating up by itself

[edit on 5-9-2007 by pai mei]

news.bbc.co.uk...

The Northwest Passage is one of the most fabled sea routes in the world - a short cut from Europe to Asia through the high Arctic.

Recent years have seen a marked shrinkage in its ice cover, but this year it was extreme, Esa says.

It says this made the passage "fully navigable" for the first time since monitoring began in 1978.

I find it interesting that back in the 70's, global cooling was the rage. Had a series of several severe winters across the US and the pet theory was "the new Ice Age".

I posted something on the ice-melting subject in another forum here at ATS and here is the link.

Around 1 1/2 years ago (I think it was 2004 or 2005 - it was the summer before the 9.0 EQ in Sumatra), I was just getting interested in climate change and somehow I found the page which was NOAA's North Pole live Web Cam feed; I kept an eye on it all summer and literally watched the ice puddle and melt and then one day the web cam feed was no longer functional. There was no explanation, whatsoever, and eventually I think the page and the archives either got moved or taken down altogether.

That web cam never has come back into operation, that I know of. I am going to search again, shortly, just to make sure. And the next couple of summers, I know that the it was a wee bit colder up there because there was no more drastic melting like I witnessed those few weeks.

I know I saved a few screenshots - they are somewhere buried in my overload of 'backup disks' - if I run across them I definitely will post them. But my point is, this is all related - the ice melting, the EQ's and the severe tropical storms, such as Katrina.

The Antarctic continent is full of igneous rock and old and new lava flows, etc! If you read the post I linked to, you will see that there is a lot of evidence toward the heat coming UP from the globe instead of down from the atmosphere. Global warming in the truest sense of 'global!'

Okay, I found NOAA's arctic web cam page here.

It is up and running and appears as if it always has been, but I know there was quite a time frame in which the page wasn't there, simply because I had the link saved and checked it every day. There are archives, though, and some articles about oddities during a couple of summers, etc. I think it must have been 2005 that I'm thinking of, from what I've seen on the website today.

I did a search to include all images of July of 2005 and the result was:

1 of 0 pages (total 0 images)
No More Images

Same results for June of 2005 as well as May.
Then I searched for all of August and got 5 images. Here is the first one:



Notice, there are two articles on the main page; one about the 'puzzling' summer of 2003 and the short summer of 2004. Not a word about the total absence of pictures in the summer of 2005. There might be something about it on the site, somewhere, but I can't look any more right now. If anyone goes there and runs across something, please post it.

Isn't this all a part of nature. I mean, what's 50 or 100 years of measuring ice thickness when the north pole's ice has been around for maybe millions of years? The concern of course is too many people in low-lying areas who weren't there in the past. But I don't think we can stop nature, or should.

I think its all part of the natural cycle. However much the sea raises it will happen over decades. Dont see this as being a "Noah Flood" type thing. Also, if ice is already in the ocean and it melts, it actually takes up less space. You see when water freezes it gets bigger (only liquid to do this), when it melts it will get smaller in volume or take up less mass. IF you donot believe me then pour some water in a cup, put it in the fridge but be sure to mark the water line with a pen, take it out after it freezes and you will notice the ice line is HIGHER. Multiply that a couple billion times and you have the great shrinking ocean. AS posted above, its the land ice to be worried about.

It's not that simple.

It's not a question of "who dunnit", humans or a natural cycle... it's both.

Yes, there is a natural cycle. But we've accellerated it WAY before it should have occured. And once it's original cycle time comes by, it will be alot hotter than it would have without us.

Essentially, the natural cycle would have been tough to live through, but the natural cycle with humans adding onto it is about to prove to be quite fatal for many species on earth.

Essentially, looking for a scapegoat is sheer stupidity.
We have a problem, we need to face it and resolve it, instead of running around like children pointing fingers.

Hypothetically...
If there was a gun pointing at your head, you wouldn't be saying "Not my problem, I'm not the one pulling the trigger" would you?!

Thanks to the extremely interesting information posted queenannie38 and the links.

I am with you. The melting has been much faster than they have informed us.
Even though, if you check the news, you will see that we are getting more and more news about a faster melting, mentioning that there will be no ice sooner... And the dates are getting closer and closer...

It is as if they did not wanted to worry us all in a sudden...

But if you stop to think about it... Why should tell say the truth?
Do you think that they would evacuate the low areas?
What would they do with the millions of evacuated? Give them a house, a job, a nation?
It is hard to say, but I think that many Governments will rather prefer not to unveil the real extent of the problem and the real day that the level will increase (ocean)...

Ever heard about the inhabitants of Tuvalu?
Take a look

[url=http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,505819,00.html] Tuvalu´s climate refugees

Who cares?
And they are just about 11.000 inhabitants.

What do you think would happen if they were millions?

Indeed, it is obviously an exponential process.

I think the main flaw in the way that the 'authorities' are handling the situation is that they are overly insistent regarding what they THINK is the cause...and because they are not understanding the true source of the warming, they are unable to understand just exactly what is going on. Which seems almost deliberately ignorant, considering that the information is out there and it is their very efforts and studies that provide the evidence, such as I have found.

But I don't think it is purposefully detrimental - no doubt it is something far more troubling than what humanity has had to deal with, in the past. Before, when major disruptions to Earthly life occurred, it was literally out of the blue. Now we know just enough to be totally stymied. And those who are in the positions of responsibility are probably so stressed out and also right in the thick of it; making it near impossible to have a realistic perspective.

There is one possible silver lining, concerning loss of human habitat. IF it IS originating under the Antarctic continent, then perhaps we will actually gain a whole continent in exchange for the low-lying coastal areas...

And if I had to bet on it, I would definitely put my money on volcanic activity at the South Pole.

Ptolomeo ~

Thanks for that link! I am totally appalled at such an imperialistic attitude! What in the world could be MORE important than PEOPLE?

'Territorial integrity?' What about human integrity? What about loving our neighbors?

There is a Buddhist proverb which says:

If you do not care for one another, who will care for you?

Although I do not think that the best desired outcome from taking pictures of the residents would be to cause the rich and mighty to cease various activities/behaviors believed to be the source of the global warming problem...more practical and ETHICAL would be if they were to do something to help those people, literally and directly!

These things that Mother Nature is doing are not only going to accomplish what I think of as 'Spring Cleaning' for her planet, but also teach (us), her children, some lessons about 'share and share alike.'

We are going to either work together, as the human race, or we are going to be the selfish cause of our own downfall. Things are probably going to happen that will be beyond anything any soul alive has ever experienced; yet still it seems that everything is happening with at least enough warning to allow us to get ourselves together and survive...

United we stand but divided we will fall - again!