NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF: The Big Melt

[kevinmc]

If we learned that Al Qaeda was secretly developing a new terrorist technique that could disrupt water supplies around the globe, force tens of millions from their homes and potentially endanger our entire planet, we would be aroused into a frenzy and deploy every possible asset to neutralize the threat.

Yet that is precisely the threat that we’re creating ourselves, with our greenhouse gases. While there is still much uncertainty about the severity of the consequences, a series of new studies indicate that we’re cooking our favorite planet more quickly than experts had expected.

The newly published studies haven’t received much attention, because they’re not in English but in Scientese and hence drier than the Sahara Desert. But they suggest that ice is melting and our seas are rising more quickly than most experts had anticipated.

The latest source of alarm is the news, as reported by my Times colleague Andrew Revkin, that sea ice in the northern polar region just set a new low — and it still has another month of melting ahead of it. At this rate, the “permanent” north polar ice cap may disappear entirely in our lifetimes.

In case you missed the May edition of “Geophysical Research Letters,” an article by five scientists has the backdrop. They analyze the extent of Arctic sea ice each summer since 1953. The computer models anticipated a loss of ice of 2.5 percent per decade, but the actual loss was 7.8 percent per decade — three times greater.

The article notes that the extent of summer ice melting is 30 years ahead of where the models predict.........

http://freedemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/08/nicholas-d-kristof-big-melt.html

[twenty4blackbirds]

1. "Global warming boon to Al Qaeda?" n/t

[many a good man]

2. BREAKING: Bush Declares Climate is a Foreign Terrorist Organization!

Nukes on the table!

:sarcasm:

[Uncle Joe]

3. I wonder if their computer models took in to account, the loss of white ice and snow

reflecting heat away from the Earth and the subsequent increasing amount of dark ocean water which would absorb the heat? As this dynamic continues, I don't see any way, the loss will be set at a certain percent, such as 2.5 or even 7.8 if they didn't take this in to account. The percentage will only continue to accelerate to even higher numbers, until the ice and snow are gone.