Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Blathers-Who the hell was that John Jacob Niles? He only sang a bit of something like Don't Bother Me No More and he blew everybody away
here. It's obviously the start point for It An't Me Babe and the title line is in an '84 Euro Tour version of Simple Twist Of Fate.

Arctic ice 'disappearing fast'
By Richard Black
Environment Correspondent, BBC News website
...
Mark Serreze, NSIDC
The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk for a fourth consecutive year, according to new data released by US scientists.

They say that this month sees the lowest extent of ice cover for more than a century.
...

You misunderstand. I have neither the time nor the interest to ground myself sufficiently in the mathematics and the sciences necessary to evaluate whether the writer is doing a snowjob on himself or on me, or whether he might be mistaken but with benign intent. I certainly do have an interest in environment/climate matters, but wend my way through by sussing out, so well as I can, what the speaker's interests seem to be. If a group is funded by the energy industry, I am going to trust it exactly like I would trust a group of lung doctors who are being paid by the tobacco industry. Another group of such doctors, working independently at universities around the world, I'll trust rather more.

"Walk to the North Pole..." From where? It has never (during the last several milennia) been possible to walk to the North Pole From Europe (except possibly the island of Spitzbergen if you consider that Europe. Even northmost Siberia (Asia) is separated from the polar ice cap by seawater for most of the year.Apparently the spokesman in question is referring to the possibility that warming in the northern Canadian territories will leave year-round ice free areas separating Canada from the Arctic ice cap. This of course has occurred before, waned, and will likely occur again - not such a big deal. . How "soon" is hard to tell. A new "Northwest Passage" might prove beneficial to mankind.

Sept. 28, 2005

Arctic ice cap still shrinking

Experts suggest global warming is likely to blame for summer trend

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
New York Times

WASHINGTON - The floating cap of sea ice on the Arctic Ocean shrank this summer to what is probably its smallest size in at least a century, continuing a trend toward less summer ice, a team of climate experts reported Wednesday.

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That shift is hard to explain without attributing it in part to human-caused global warming, they and other experts on the region said.

The change also appears to be becoming self-sustaining: The increased open water absorbs solar energy that would otherwise be reflected back into space by bright-white ice, said Ted Scambos, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., which compiled the data along with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The data were released on www.nsidc.org, the center's Web site.

The findings are consistent with computer simulations showing that a buildup of greenhouse gases could lead to a profoundly transformed Arctic later this century.

Expanding areas of open water in summer could be a boon to whales and cod stocks, and the ice retreat could create summertime shipping shortcuts between the Atlantic and Pacific.

But a host of troubles lie ahead as well. One of the most important consequences of Arctic warming will be increased flows of meltwater and icebergs from glaciers and ice sheets, with rising sea levels threatening coastal areas.

The North Pole ice cap always grows in winter and shrinks in the summer. The average minimum area from 1979, when precise satellite mapping began, until 2000 was 2.69 million square miles, similar in size to the contiguous United States. The new summer low, measured Sept. 19, was 20 percent below that.

The difference between the average ice area and the area that persisted this summer was about 500,000 square miles, an area about twice the size of Texas, the scientists said.

An NSIDC analysis of historical records also suggests that ice cover is less this year than during the low periods of the 1930s and 40s.

A line is a conventional tool for analyzing a trend in statistical data with the Least Square Method (LSM).

The current rate of shrinkage they calculate at 8% per decade; at this rate there may be no ice at all during the summer of 2060.