This Summer: No Ice at the North Pole

(12:00AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

I’m not one of the resident global warming experts, or even amatures, on the blogs, and one of them should be writing this diary — but this story in the UK Independent calls for a diary.

Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole

Polar scientists reveal dramatic new evidence of climate change

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Friday, 27 June 2008

It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.

The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.

— snip —

Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally icefreeNorth Pole this summer are greater than 50:50 because the normally thick ice formed over many years at the Pole has been blown away and replaced by hugeswathes of thinner ice formed over a single year.

This one-year ice is highly vulnerable to melting during thesummer months and satellite data coming in over recent weeksshows that the rate of melting is faster than last year, when therewas an all-time record loss of summer sea ice at the Arctic.

“The issue is that, for the first time that I am aware of, the NorthPole is covered with extensive first-year ice – ice that formed last autumn and winter. I’d say it’s even-odds whether the North Pole melts out,” said Dr Serreze.

Last summer, the ice melted to within 700 miles of the pole.  In previous times,thick ice that had accumulated over years covered the North Pole.  But now, the ice there is all “one year” ice and much thinner and more vulnerable to melting, according to the article.

25 comments

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  1. Daily Kos.

  2. Or was that NASA?

    Or Ben Stein?

    I forget….I sent your link to a “teacher-friend” who thinks that Al Gore is a hoax….it is too late for him anyway. I don’t think he can read, never mind think….!

    • Edger on June 27, 2008 at 06:20

    Once the shores and the land in between here and there dries (and global warming should speed that process) we can build paved highways to the North Pole, open it up for development, and sell beach front properties.

    It’ll be great!

    Not only that, but with warmer weather we won’t need so much oil for heating homes, so we can refine all of it into gasoline to drive there with.

    And we’ll have so much cheap gasoline we can also use it to drive to all kinds of other interesting and exotic places.

    Named features on maps of Death Valley National Park include the Funeral Mountains, Coffin Peak, Hell’s Gate, Starvation Canyon and Dead Man Pass

    • geomoo on June 27, 2008 at 17:31

    I’m assuming that would be the permanent death knell for the species Ursus maritimus.  How far behind will homo sapiens be?

    How many times have I said, it’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

    train

  3. Iran retaliates against US bombing runs by shutting the Straights of Hormuz.

    Gas lines appear even at $8 a gallon.

    No food at the supermarket and armed thugs start leaving the cities.

    Beijing Olympics cancelled due to non-participation.

    Madcow disease in US covered up by FDA.

    Citizens are reminded to visit the local 666 Mark of the Beast microchip implant centers before the “election”.

    Big Al is however the biggest scam.  In the face to such imminent danger the obvious solution is to reward the most Satanically evil elite scumbags with piles upon piles of free cash.  Now if said Satanically evil elite scumbags happen to show up at my house with a solar system then and only then will I ever shut up about the Scam that is Al Gore.

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