"Arctic warming at twice global rate"

[Pooeypants]

17:58 02 November 04

NewScientist.com news service


Global warming in the Arctic is happening now, warns the most comprehensive scientific report to date. The reports concludes that the northern ice cap is warming at twice the global rate and that this will lead to serious consequences for the planet.

These include substantial rises in sea level and an intensification of global warming via a positive feedback mechanism, although there may also be benefits. The four-year scientific assessment was conducted by an international team of 300 researchers for the Arctic Council, which is comprised of the eight nations - including the US - with Arctic territories.

“The projections for the future show a two to three times higher warming rate than for the rest of the world,” says Pål Prestrud, vice-chairman of the steering committee for the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) report. “That will have consequences for the physical, ecological and human systems.”

“The big melt has begun,” says Jennifer Morgan, climate change director of the campaign group WWF. “Industrialised countries are carrying out an uncontrolled experiment to study the effects of climate change and the Arctic is their first guinea pig. This is unethical and wrong. They must cut emissions of CO2 now.”

Isn't time our gov't did more to help curb this impending change? Shouldn't all major polluting countries ratify the Kyoto Treaty?

source

[Suburbanite]

When will this heavily effect us by?

[Nono]

Originally posted by Pooeypants Shouldn't all major polluting countries ratify the Kyoto Treaty?

Sure they should, but they're (mostly) run by politicians whose precious careers don't allow them to think in terms other than short-term political gain: on no account alarm your voters by suggesting that there's no such thing as a free lunch. Only when seawater starts lapping up over people's front doors will it suddenly occur to them to take action. But it will be too late. Probably already is.

The news ain't good. The Guardian recently had this cheery warning:

Some scientists (fear) that the greater than normal rises in C02 emissions mean that instead of decades to bring global warming under control we may have only a few years. At worst, the figures could be the first sign of the breakdown in the Earth's natural systems for absorbing the gas. That would herald the so-called "runaway greenhouse effect", where the planet's soaring temperature becomes impossible to contain. As the icecaps melt, less sunlight is refected back into space from ice and snow, and bare rocks begin to absorb more heat. This is already happening.

[Compugasm]

Better buy some suntan lotion then.

[Nono]

Better buy some suntan lotion then.

Naw, it's gonna rain-rain-rain.

[Samildanach]

What bare rocks? If the ice caps melt there aren't going to be many of them around the place. I also agree with the rain theory, its going to become one hell of a lot more tropical.

[Nono]

Originally posted by Samildanach What bare rocks? If the ice caps melt there aren't going to be many of them around the place

What do you think underlies Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets?

[Samildanach]

hmm...interesting you mean we will be creating land as well as destroying it? That might not be a bad thing. How do we know the sea level won't cover the rock?

[Nono]

Originally posted by samildanach we will be creating land as well as destroying it?

Huh?

How do we know the sea level won't cover the rock?

(making the charitable assumption this was a serious question) Some of it will. But there's plenty of more rock inland to store heat for later release and further heating.

[samsara15]

The Arctic Ice Sheet already has ocean under it. Antartica has mountains. Only Antartica would raise the sea level, since the ice in the Arctic would fill in for water. Also, how about Greenland? There's a lot of ice in Greenland, lying over land. Are we talking 60 feet, a hundred feet, two or three hundred feet? Has anybody here done any calculations, or have the data available on HOW to do them?

[gallo]

Greenland is essentially a ring of hills above sea level surrounding a big depression in the middle that is below sea level. I once went about a mile or so up onto the Greenland ice cap. There were several snow trains being loaded. We talked to one of the scientists about what they were doing. They were doing research up in the middle of the ice cap. They were extracting ice cores. This scientist said that the ice was about 9,000 ft thick where they were doing the research. It is my understanding that it is as thick as 12,000 ft in some places. All that ice and no scotch.

The Greenland Ice Sheet occupies stom 1,700,000 km^2. This is 80 percent of the area of the island of Greenland, where ice covers all but narrow land fringes. The ice sheet contains almost 3 million km^3 of ice. In a general way, the ice froms a single, broadly arched, doubly convex lens. The ice thickness measures close to 3 km at its greatest. The center of Greenland is actually depressed under the great ice load, in conformity with the principle of isostasy, because 3 km of glacial ice is roughly equivalent to a rock layer at least 1 km thick.

--Strahler, Arthur N. Science and Earth History. Prometheus Books. Amherst. 1987. p. 245.

[Nono]

All good points. There are also the humungous glaciers in the Canadian, Alaskan and Russian Arctic. Then there are the Himalayas. Then there's Norway, Chile, Switzerland, etc. etc. Hell, even Papua New Guinea has a glacier if memory serves correctly. Every square foot of rock that becomes exposed will be another square foot of the planet's surface that is absorbing rather than reflecting sunlight. Good luck.

[Compugasm]

Fat people are causing global warming.

[Nono]

Yeah, all that extra internal combustion needed to haul their enormous asses around.

[indierockboy]

The Arctic Ice Sheet already has ocean under it. Antartica has mountains. Only Antartica would raise the sea level, since the ice in the Arctic would fill in for water.

That's not necessarily true. Water volume expands as it's heated, once it's more than 5 degrees celsius. If the subsequently melted ice becomes water with a temperature more than 5 degrees celsius, then it begins to raise the water level as it expands.

As such, the ice caps don't even need to melt for sea levels to rise. As the global temperature increases, water's volume naturally expands.

What is the problem? According to evolution theory, all creatures evolve to adapt to their environment so it doesn't matter it the temperature goes up a few degrees.

By the way, why is it that there is record cold in the northeast US last winter and again currently?

What environmental wackos used to call "global warming" has been changed to "climate change" as a result of these kinds of anamolies that refute their theories. That is not to say fat Americans should go out and buy more SUVs. On the contrary, the should be banned unless they have hybrid technology and the soccer mom's who drive them take a special course on how to drive.

[Nono]

Originally posted by Snouter According to evolution theory, all creatures evolve to adapt to their environment so it doesn't matter it the temperature goes up a few degrees.

A few degrees over millions of years, is that it Snout? Your sentence reveals the fact that you don't know a whole hell of a lot about evolutionary theory (and even less about fact).

Why is it that there is record cold in the northeast US last winter and again currently?

Weather has always been fairly chaotic (what counts are the trends). That's why it was weather that first got people thinking about chaos theory.

... fat Americans should go out and buy more SUVs ...

Debate doesn't interest you at all, does it S? You just pop in, rant, and pop out again.

[Pooeypants]

He neglects the fact that Global warming is about the world average temp, not localised areas which might experience either extremes of cold or hot.

[Nono]

There goes the neighbourhood (Independent, 11.11.04).

Polar bears, the biggest land carnivores on Earth, face extinction this century if the Arctic continues to melt at its present rate, a study into global warming has found. The sea ice around the North Pole on which the bears depend for hunting is shrinking so swiftly it could disappear during the summer months by the end of the century, the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ICIA) says. Scientists in the study believe the survival of the estimated 22,000 polar bears in the region is hanging by a slender thread as they suffer the double whammy of chemical pollution and dwindling feeding territories. Polar bears traditionally hunt on floating sea ice for seals and other quarry. But the ice has retreated significantly during summer, so the carnivores are having to swim further from one floe to another in search of quarry. As a result of this extra effort, many bears are failing to build up the necessary fat reserves during the important hunting period of spring and early summer to take them through the bitterly cold winter months when females nurse their young. The sea ice in the Hudson Bay area of Canada, for instance, breaks up about two and a half weeks earlier than it did 30 years ago, Ian Stirling of the Canadian Wildlife Service said. The rapid and unprecedented shrinkage of the ice, and the extra burden it places on the animals, has resulted in the polar bears here weighing, on average, 55lb less than they did in the 1970s. And the bears have long become more than a nuisance in Churchill, Manitoba, on the shore of Hudson Bay. They are frequently tranquilised and flown back north. Scientists at the World Wildlife Fund said that, if that continues, many of the polar bears in the Hudson Bay area will be so thin within the next 10 years that they could become infertile. Lara Hansen, chief scientist at the WWF, said: "If the population stops reproducing, that's the end of it." Separate studies have already shown that toxic pollutants are building up in the fat of polar bears in a way that could affect their ability to reproduce. WWF scientists say these toxins are affecting the bears' immunity to infections. The ACIA is the product of four years' work by more than 250 scientists from Britain, the United States and many other industrialised countries. Its 139-page report, presented to a scientific conference this week in Reykjavik, found climate change is affecting the Arctic more than many other regions. For instance, scientists estimate that the polar region is warming at up to 10 times the rate of the world as a whole.

[Sonart]

Originally posted by Compugasm+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Compugasm)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Better buy some suntan lotion then. [/b]

Originally posted by Compugasm+--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Compugasm)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>Fat people are causing global warming. [/b]

Attaboy, Comp. When the anti-global warming arguement falls flat on its ass, one liners are always a good substitute.

<!--QuoteBegin-Snouter@
What is the problem? According to evolution theory, all creatures evolve to adapt to their environment so it doesn't matter it the temperature goes up a few degrees.[/quote]Over TIME, as in millions of years. Humans have dramatically altered the environment in a mere 200 years. Did you imagine that Polar Bears will suddenly evolve into something else in the next 50 years?

<!--QuoteBegin-Snouter
By the way, why is it that there is record cold in the northeast US last winter and again currently? [/quote]Yeah, and I betcha looked out'cher winda and din't see none of them there greenhouse gases floatin' by neither. Gawd ferbid that global data contradict local anecdotal observations.