It was reported to today in the Guardian U.K. that British climate researcher, Peter Wadhams from Cambridge University has revised his estimate of the point when Climate change will cause the arctic ice pack to dissappear completely during summer months. He now expects it to happen in four years. Four years!
Some people think this is great. New sea lanes open to shipping... ease of access to offashore oil fields in the Arctic. You know what? I think we've managed just fine without either of those things.
According to Professor Wadham, who has spent many years collecting measurements and analyzing the arctic ice, the loss of the sea ice is most assuredly due to human induced global warming. In 2011, the arctic warmed seven degrees celsius above the historic norm.
For polar bears, no sea ice on which to hunt maay well spell doom. But the truly frightening implication of Wadham's findings lies far deeper. Just as the arctic surface warms, so does the sea bed, in which massive quantities of methane hydrate have been locked up frozen for millennia. The warming is likely to induce the release of this trapped methane hydrate into the atmosphere. As a greenhouse gas, methane hydrate is four times worse the carbon dioxide. We are looking at a runaway greenhouse condition, which would leave humanity with few or no options.
It is just stunning to me that this kind of phenomenon couild be looming, and very close at hand, yet our political eaders, in whose hands we have delivered our fate, are sitting on their hands.
Here is a link to the Guardian article...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/17/arctic-collapse-sea-ice?newsfeed=true
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