The Catlin Arctic Survey Team has returned after 73 days of intensive exploration and research of ice conditions at the Canadian Arctic.
The news isn’t good. .jpg)
According to team leader, Pen Hadow, they were expecting the thickness of the ice to be around three meters, but after a total of 1,400 measurements, the average thickness was just over half of what was expected at 1.777 meters.
Hadow warned that the ice could possibly disappear during the summer season, starting as early as this summer.
According to the Seattle Times, 5/13.2009, this could spell disastrous news for coastal cities and island nations. The World Wildlife Fund, which reported that as many as 100,000 people in Southeast Asia’s coral reefs, who make their homes and livelihoods off the sea, could be displaced, if drastic measures aren’t taken to curb carbon emissions by up to 40% prior to 2020.
Some experts are saying it needs to happen sooner.
Expansive marine ecosystems and coral reefs could be wiped out in a galactic blink of an eye. The World Ocean Conference presented a 220 page report that included 300 published scientific studies and 20 climate experts.
In addition, The latest Arctic sea ice data from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in April, 2009, show that the decade-long trend of shrinking sea ice cover is continuing. New evidence from satellite observations also shows that the ice cap is thinning as well.
NASA research analogy: arctic sea ice works like an air conditioner for the global climate system. Ice naturally cools air and water masses, plays a key role in ocean circulation, and reflects solar radiation back into space. In recent years, Arctic sea ice has been declining at a surprising rate.
Today’s Catlin Arctic Survey Team research lends credence for urgency in CO2 regulation. President Obama has asked congress for strong climate bill legislation and the sooner he gets it, the better, because melting sea ice will not be held at bay by political wrangling between Democrats and Republican.
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Comments
Well I'm sure Michele Bachmann would say, "That's natural."
This is very disturbing and I wish people would pay attention.
Almost every statement in this airhead piece is factually wrong.
Sigh...
Huh huh huh m yeah cuz you know uh we gotta faut this even if it drahves us into debt. Y'know ah took credit fur fixin the debt an everone sez I dicreesed it even though ah hardly did uh damm thing! Boy Sara Pallin is hot! Ah'd love to have her in mah next admisteration
Bill and Alec, real impressive.
Your standards of proof are impeccable. It's "factually wrong" based on what? Your wacko crystal ball?
People like you get your jollies crawling the Internet looking for places to post your condescending factually unfounded remarks of superiority, based on nothing more than ignorance and stupidity.
Sigh...double sigh...
I've given you idiots "scientists" to warn you of big problems before they get *too* big to solve. Listen to them, or I will have to start over on another planet...
Satan is never who you think he is. If you can't tell the difference, you deserve to die.
Wuht thar? Dammmit I wuz agreein with ya. We gotta spend way lots to faught this even if it taks us into det dat we mayt not pay off ever, but ah was the one who got riof that thar defcit, all by mahself. I'm the only presdent dat ever did.
But ahm not pres anymore so it dont matter, we need to faught this ah tell you wuht. And ahm so proud of mah vice pres, he invented the innernet. We make so much money off this scheme, ah mean importnat issue for the American people, ah mean we put it into lots of studies. Yeha that's it!
It always amazes me that the same people who can't fathom the fact of global warming's effects on the planet have been caused by humans are the same people who stocked up on guns and water for the Y2K crisis and believe the world will end in 2012 because the Aztec calendar creators ended their calendar that year. Jean, don't let the ignorantsia get you down. They don't know what to do with themselves these days other than listen to has-been Rush Limbaugh and lying liar Dick Cheney.
This whole article is a lie.
The sea ice is at 30 year average, see ASMR-E data for example. A recent arial survey by the German Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research revealed the ice to be twice as thick as anticipated.
Melting sea ice doesn't affect sea level - because it is floating. Try putting some ice cubes in a glass of water - if your third grade teacher failed to teach you this.
Somebody didn't pay attention to the Catlin Ex while it was happening. Pen chose a route that avoided multi-year ice. They froze their butts off and did not reach their objective. Their fancy ice thickness measuring device failed. Close inspection will reveal it was a scam.
Karen Harper @ 10:17:
Great list of non-sequiters there. Care to discuss any relevent facts?
Peter T @ 8:42:
Go do some fact checking. Arctic sea ice is whthin 1 sigma of average. Antarctic ice is growing. Global cryosphere is growing. All easily verifiable facts. You accuse others of being ignorant and condescending and spend half of your post demonstrating your own ignorance and making ad him attacks on others.
Karen Harper @ 10:17:
Great list of non-sequiturs there. Care to discuss any relevant facts?
Peter T @ 8:42:
Go do some fact checking. Arctic sea ice is within 1 sigma of average. Antarctic ice is growing. Global cryosphere is growing. All easily verifiable facts. You accuse others of being ignorant and condescending and spend half of your post demonstrating your own ignorance and making ad him attacks on others.
The Catlin group was nothing more than an enviromoonbat expedition sponsored by the WWF. The results were in the bag before they left.
Patrick, when you put ice cubes into a full glass of water, it overflows. When artic ice, glaciers, and ice shelves melt and collapse into the ocean; sea level rises. Bet your third grade teacher knew that.
All the people on this comment thread who are bashing Jean for citing the Catlin survey, are not mentioning the fact that she also includes reports and graphs from NASA. In addition, she includes statistics from the World Ocean Conference. Also, just because you don't agree with the information brought back by the Catlin expedition doesn't make it untrue.
Too many people on here trying to ring their own bell and are trying to descredit an article that uses several sources, as a good article should. Just because you don't agree with the sources, does not make the whole article a lie.
Grow up people. Get a life, go home, and pat yourself on the back somewhere else.
To learn more about the Arctic and its sea ice see these two links:
www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_Arctic.htm
www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/RS_ArcticIce_2007.htm
Very scary stuff and of course it's being largely ignored!
On a positive note - Congress is promising to come forward shortly with a legitimate climate change bill.
No Delilah, Patrick is correct. Melting shelf ice does not raise the sea level. And Jean is confusing the effect of a melting Arctic with melting continental ice of the Antartic or Greenland. But on another note the entire Catlin survey was a sham, they were looking for data to confirm their agenda so they only measured new (last years) ice, so of course it was thin. Look at the maps, they started and ended on an area that will be open water in the summer.
Patrick said, "Try putting some ice cubes in a glass of water - if your third grade teacher failed to teach you this."
Mike and Patrick: please go to the kitchen and get a glass of water,then put some ice cubes in the glass of water, and watch the water rise, as the cubes displace the water.
Now, if Patrick had said "icecubes melting in a glass of water doesn't make the level rise," he would have been correct, but that is not what he said.
And what part of the planet are you people from, when you blame the writer for reporting published facts. You may have an agenda against Catlin, but that is your problem and personal prejudice. It doesn't make Catlin or NASA or the World Ocen Conference wrong in their research, just because you challenge it.
Where is the evidence that anything Congress is proposing will make one bit of difference here, Karen? I mean, we're talking about a $ 650 billion tax. We better be sure that we're going to get some global cooling out of this thing.
I think if we were clearly in a mini-Ice Age and i stood up and told you that we needed to burn down forests and build coal power plants to keep from freezing to death, you would think I was crazy. Right, Karen?
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