Arctic Ice Cap 'Will Disappear Within The Century'

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 9-29-2005 | Roger Highfield

[HereInTheHeartland]

"The elusive NW Passage will be found. "

Cool, we can run those cargo containers from Japan directly to the East coast.

[Deb]

The Brits have global warming on the brain. They need to shut up and get bikinis.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[metmom]

We lived in the snowbelt south of Lake Ontario and we moved. The only thing I'll miss about it is watching it snow 5" an hour. There's nothing quite like it. In Jan '04 we had 11 FEET of snow. It made me really glad that it was our last winter there.

[metmom]

Walt Meier, of NSIDC, said: "Having four years in a row with such low ice extents has never been seen before in the satellite record. It indicates a downward trend, not just a short-term anomaly."


In climate prediction land I would say that 4 years is rather short term, especially when compared to say, 4 BILLION. Now he's done it... we're gonna have 4 years in a row with an upward trend in increased ice extent. Is this guy supposed to be smart?

[LasVegasMac]

Damn.

Doomed.....again.

LVM

[William Terrell]

I figure the most the ocean would rise if everything melted is about 250 ft.

[El Gato]

Will that make it easier to drill for oil there? :p

Probably, we've got lots of experience drilling in marshes and bogs.

Actually, if this holds up, it could be a precursor to the next ice age. There is some evidence that during an ice age, the arctic ocean is relatively free of ice and that clearing , caused by a long term warming trend, might be the trigger for ice age, which seem to come on rather quickly, at least in geological terms. I remember reading about this well before anyone used the term "Global Warming", at least in the sense that it was something caused by mankind. This sort of thing has happened before, when mankind was a mere pimple on the face of the earth, and likely it will happen again, maybe soon.

[El Gato]

My house in central Florida is now ocean front property.

More likely it's the new Atlantis, or a coastal marsh. The sea level doesn't need to rise much to inundate most of the Florida peninsula, and a good chuck of gulf coast, from Key West to Merida (Mexico) (IOW all of it). That whole coast is very shallow, as is the southern portion of the eastern seaboard. OTOH, the coastal plain in California is so thin in most places as to be nearly nonexistent. For example, Orlando is only 106 feet above sea level (city center).

[El Gato]

I hate to disappoint, but when floating ice melts, the liquid level does not change.

That's true. but the Greenland portion of the artic ice cap is not floating. Is it melting as well?

However if a new ice age results from the effect of a clear arctic ocean, the increase in the snow/ice pack would decrease sea level. We might need the extra land, as all the Canucks, Russians, Finns, et. al. flee the ice.

[El Gato]

So you mean the ice cap will naturally restore itself? Cool.,

Depends on how long you wait. When it's happened before the ice age, and the open arctic ocean, lasted for a good long time.

From 21st Century Science and Technology.:

Our current understanding of the long-term climate cycles shows that for the past 800,000 years, periods of approximately 100,000 years’ duration, called Ice Ages, have been interrupted by periods of approximately 10,000 years, known as Interglacials. (We are now about 10,500 years into the present Interglacial.)

So get out your long johns and hunker down. Fortunately with the increase in CO2 (Green house gas) there should be plenty of wood to burn.

[El Gato]

I wonder if these are the same people who were predicting in the 1970s, with absolute certainty, that an Ice Age was coming.

Based on the historical record, it is. Maybe soon, maybe in few thousand years (At most!).

[reg45]

Good! It will be easier to ship stuff between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean via the Arctic Ocean.

[reg45]

New York, Miami, LA, San Francisco and others would look like New Orleans does today

Good riddance.

[El Gato]

All right, who let Ted Kennedy and Michael Moore do cannon balls off Teddy's boat anchored off Martha's Vineyard?

[El Gato]

In climate prediction land I would say that 4 years is rather short term, especially when compared to say, 4 BILLION

The ice age cycle, at least the last 8, is about 110,000 years. With only 10,000 of that being non-ice age or interglacial. And we're overdue by about 500 years.

[Daaave]

Thanks for the laugh. I was reading posts, in a thread about Delay, and getting steamed.

[RightWhale]

Thanks. This one had a black beak. The dog lets the gray jays hop all over the porch, he even sets out food for them. But not the magpie, not 'family'.

[r9etb]

Not to suggest that it's happening but if it did, New York, Miami, LA, San Francisco and others would look like New Orleans does today.

Nope. Arctic ice floats. Just as the liquid level in your glass of ice water doesn't change as the ice melts, the liquid level in the oceans won't change in response to melting Arctic ice.

[RightWhale]

There is global warming on the ground this morning. Not quite an inch of it. Perhaps another inch today, perhaps another inch tonight. At this rate there will be 20 feet of global warming on the ground by next May, which is when it melts.