Arctic ice cap melting 30 years ahead of forecast

For all the non-believers out there...this just in...

Linky-bit

The Arctic ice cap is melting much faster than expected and is now about 30 years ahead of predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.S. ice expert said on Tuesday.

This means the ocean at the top of the world could be free or nearly free of summer ice by 2020, three decades sooner than the global panel's gloomiest forecast of 2050.

No ice on the Arctic Ocean during summer would be a major spur to global warming, said Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Center in Colorado.

"Right now ... the Arctic helps keep the Earth cool," Scambos said in a telephone interview. "Without that Arctic ice, or with much less of it, the Earth will warm much faster."

That is because the ice reflects light and heat; when it is gone, the much darker land or sea will absorb more light and heat, making it more difficult for the planet to cool down, even in winter, he said.

Scambos and co-authors of the study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, used satellite data and visual confirmation of Arctic ice to reach their conclusions, a far different picture than that obtained from computer models used by the scientists of the intergovernmental panel.

"The IPCC report was very careful, very thorough and cautious, so they erred on the side of what would certainly occur as opposed to what might occur," Scambos said in a telephone interview.

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"It appears we're on pace about 30 years earlier than expected to reach a state where we don't have sea ice or at least not very much in late summer in the Arctic Ocean," he said.

He discounted the notion that the sharp warming trend in the Arctic might be due to natural climate cycles. "There aren't many periods in history that are this dramatic in terms of natural variability," Scambos said.

He said he had no doubt that this was caused in large part by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which he said was the only thing capable of changing Earth on such a large scale over so many latitudes.

...snip...

"We just barely now, I think, have enough time and enough collective will to be able to get through this century in good shape, but it means we have to start acting now and in a big way."

Gag on Polar Bears, Arctic Ice, and Global Warming..

Some call it SCIENTIFIC CENSORSHIP. Others just call it SOUND POLICY. Whatever you call it, however, government officials and scientists are asked not to speak in any Public Forum on these particular topics.

Heaven forbid that the Public should hear what Scientists and our Government actually think and know on the topics.......we only pay the paychecks!


Full Article Here

Polar bears, sea ice and global warming are taboo subjects, at least in public, for some U.S. scientists attending meetings abroad, environmental groups and a top federal wildlife official said on Thursday.

Environmental activists called this scientific censorship, which they said was in line with the Bush administration's history of muzzling dissent over global climate change.

But H. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said this policy was a long-standing one, meant to honor international protocols for meetings where the topics of discussion are negotiated in advance.

The matter came to light in e-mails from the Fish and Wildlife Service that were distributed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Biological Diversity, both environmental groups.

Listed as a "new requirement" for foreign travelers on U.S. government business, the memo says that requests for foreign travel "involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice, and/or polar bears" require special handling, including notice of who will be the official spokesman for the trip.

The Fish and Wildlife Service top officials need assurance that the spokesman, "the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears" understands the administration's position on these topics.

Two accompanying memos were offered as examples of these kinds of assurance. Both included the line that the traveler "understands the administration's position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues."

ARE POLAR BEARS 'THREATENED'?

Polar bears are a hot topic for the Bush administration, which decided in December to consider whether to list the white-furred behemoths as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, because of scientific reports that the bears' icy habitat is melting due to global warming.

Hall said a decision is expected in January 2008. A "threatened" listing would bar the government from taking any action that jeopardizes the animal's existence, and might spur debate about tougher measures to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that spur global warming.

Hall defended the policy laid out in the memos, saying it was meant to keep scientists from straying from a set agenda at meetings in countries like Russia, Norway and Canada.

For example, he said, one meeting was about "human and polar bear interface." Receding Arctic sea ice where polar bears live and the global climate change that likely played a role in the melting were not proper discussion topics, he said.

"That's not a climate change discussion," Hall said at a telephone briefing. "That's a management, on-the-ground type discussion."

The prohibition on talking about these subjects only applies to public, formal situations, Hall said. Private scientific discussions outside the meeting and away from media are permitted and encouraged, he said.

"This administration has a long history of censoring speech and science on global warming," Eben Burnham-Snyder of the Natural Resources Defense Council said by telephone.

"Whenever we see an instance of the Bush administration restricting speech on global warming, it sends up a huge red flag that their commitment to the issue does not reflect their rhetoric," Burnham-Snyder said.

New Study of Polar Regions Begins

An iceberg carved from a glacier floats in the Jacobshavn fjord in south-west Greenland in this undated handout photograph released on September 20, 2006.(Konrad Steffen/University of Colorado/Handout/Reuters)

Full Article Here

Thousands of scientists from across the world join forces this week to investigate the effects of global warming on the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets.

The ice in both polar regions is melting more rapidly than anywhere else, leading to rises in sea levels and possibly to dramatic changes in ocean currents and food chains.

International Polar Year, which will run to 2009, will involve 50,000 people from 63 nations in 228 projects looking at and under the ice, in the sea and in the atmosphere in the biggest coordinated polar study for half a century.

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One estimate suggests that if the vast Greenland ice sheet disappears, sea levels around the world will rise by seven meters, drowning huge areas of the planet.

That fades into insignificance against the 200-meter sea level rise expected if all the Antarctic ice melts.

"Global warming is the most challenging problem our society has ever had to face up to," said Britain's chief scientist David King.

"Ice is the canary in the coal mine of global warming."

World scientists predicted this month that average world temperatures will rise by between 1.8 and 4.0 degrees Celsius this century due mainly to carbon gases from burning fossil fuels for power and transport.

This is a global average, however, and the temperature rises at the poles are expected to exceed that by a large margin.

Scientist Corinne Le Quere of the British Antarctic Survey said atmospheric concentrations of the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide had fluctuated between 180 and 280 parts per million (ppm) for 650,000 years.

Since 1850 they had shot up to over 380 ppm. "We are on an unsustainable path," she said.

The Antarctic ice sheet is up to 4.8 kilometres (3 miles) thick in places and it holds 90 percent of the world's fresh water. It is also crucial to the circulation of the world's ocean currents and therefore to planetary air circulation...