Comment Period Still Open on Climate Change Report
For the first time in recorded history, 125,000 years, the North Pole has melted to the point where it is an island, opening a shipping mecca heretofore only imagined: the Northwest and Northeast Passages open, simultaneously. The London DailyMail quotes Professor Mark Serreze, National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, CO: "The passages are open. It is an historic event." Last month he said that the polar melt shows that "global warming is occurring far earlier than any of us expected."
Ice loss in 2007 totalled more than a million square kilometers, a record. The ice cover will not reach its minimum until mid-September; last week, it was 2 million square miles below the long-term average. In early August, the Guardian reported:
'When we did the first climate change computer models, we thought the Arctic's summer ice cover would last until around 2070,' said Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University. 'It is now clear we did not understand how thin the ice cap had already become - for Arctic ice cover has since been disappearing at ever increasing rates. Every few years we have to revise our estimates downwards. Now the most detailed computer models suggest the Arctic's summer ice is going to last for only a few more years - and given what we have seen happen last week, I think they are probably correct.'
And last month, Serreze told the Guardian:
'The trouble is that sea ice is now disappearing from the Arctic faster than our ability to develop new computer models and to understand what is happening there. We always knew it would be the first region on Earth to feel the impact of climate change, but not at anything like this speed. What is happening now indicates that global warming is occurring far earlier than any of us expected.'
SpiegelOnline notes that European shipping companies would love to be able to go north over the pole rather than south and through the Suez Canal: "From Hamburg to the Japanese port city of Yokohama, for example, the trip using the northern route is just 7,400 nautical miles -- just 40 percent of the 11,500 nautical mile haul through the Suez."
The shrinking icepack puts pressure on the region's polar bears. Last month, a federal survey found nine bears in the sea off Alaska; one was 60 miles from shore. To give you an idea of the magnitued of the change, from 1987 to 2003 (16 years), scientists spotted only 12 polar bears swimming in the open ocean. Period.
In May, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne listed polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
The federal Climate Change Science Program released a report on global warming in August; the comment period extends until 25 September.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) is part of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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Comments
This is very bad (especially in terms of light reflection at planetary level as well as endangered species), but still short term variation. The proverbial crap is going to really hit the fan only when Antarctica ice is going to melt at the same rate. Then, sea level rise will become a lethal threat for a lot more people than the current couple of millions.
This is crazy. The ice grew this year. It GREW, there is MORE because the EARTH is COLDER. ALL of the scientists agree. Nobody disputes the data, you can find it HERE
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/08/31/arctic-ice-has-actually-grown-all-the-data-agrees/
Absoulutely over the top. A HISTORIC EVENT, why the heck do you think they call it the NORTHWEST PASSAGE and a NORTHEAST PASSAGE because it is a WALL.
Be reasonable, this is nothing but scare tactics. The ice grew, the earth has cooled since before 2000 according to the UN IPCC itself, which has unfortunately become the distributor of so much of the kind of science in this article.
Even the director of the IPCC admits the earth has cooled this century, why can’t you do some research instead of promoting this rubbish.
Hi, Alphast — thanks for the European perspective. And you are right about the southern ice. :-/
Hi, Jeff — please show me where I called this event “global warming” … so that I can correct it. The correct description is “climate change” … because it involves both COOLING and WARMING, although not necessarily in the same place.
Kathy
It is right here in the article
Last month he said that the polar melt shows that “global warming is occurring far earlier than any of us expected.”
Sorry about the anger, this is not the only news outlet to post this story as I am sure you are aware. It is everywhere, it is designed to scare the uninformed victims like Alphast.
The statement in quotes is a lie. A lie is defined in this context as a non-truth known to be a non-truth by the individual and still stated as though it were truth!
Nearly every projection of global warming had us much warmer today yet it didn’t happen. This guy Mark Serreze knows that.
People are ready to throw away oil so they don’t drown in saltwater and science has not demonstrated man made global warming even exists.
Ignorance is our most expensive commodity.
What happened to my rebut?
There is data, and there is data. Jeff Id, I question the reliability of your data. Not every graph and set of numbers is equal to every other. The established, full-time, serious scientists have been concerned about a warming trend for many decades. Whatever we are doing, we are not heading for an ice age! And several nations have been squabbling over who owns those northern sea-passages for a few years now. This is serious business. You can verify the opening of the passages with satellite imagery and by sending ships through them! No joke!
The data I presented is the only data available as to sea ice extent, there are two satellite records to create the data. They correspond well to each other. The record is only 30 years old.
An odd statement about the ice age. Take a look at the Vostock ice core data on the link below. You can see clear periods of warming followed by cooling. The cool periods are the ice ages, when do you think we might head into the next one.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/agw-part-5-limitations-of-ice-core-data-or-the-smoking-gun-2/
Hi, Jeff … your post was automatically held by Wordpress and I missed it. Apologies.
Note that *I* did not call it global warming, the scientist did. I try to avoid quotes with this phrase, but it’s not always possible. I thought his point that climate change is happening faster than the models predicted was a valid one, even with the (IMO) erroneous sound bit.
AFA your point that we’ve only had satellite data for a short time … you are correct, we’ve only had a visual record for a short time. Consequently, I’ve struck the language from the Daily Mail that appeared in the lede.
But at least in known history, both the NW and NE passages have been closed to transport year-round. Based on the salivating going on in European shipping circles, if there were a chance the passages were open, those shipping interests would have jumped on it.
I’m going to write a followup.