The Ice Melts Into Water

[MichaelMcGuire]

Arctic Ice Melt, Psychopathic Capitalism And The Corporate Media

By David Cromwell and David Edwards



Last month, climate scientists announced that Arctic sea ice had shrunk to its smallest surface area since satellite observations began in 1979. An ice-free summer in the Arctic, once projected to be more than a century away, now looks possible just a few decades from now. Some scientists say it may happen within the next few years.

The loss is hugely significant because Arctic sea ice reflects most solar energy into space, helping to keep the Earth at a moderate temperature. But when the ice melts it reveals dark waters below, which absorb more than 90 per cent of the solar energy that hits them, leading to faster warming both locally and globally.

Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, warns that the Arctic may be ice-free in summer as soon as 2015. Such a massive loss would have a warming effect roughly equivalent to all human activity to date. In other words, a summer ice-free Arctic could double the rate of warming of the planet as a whole. No wonder that leading NASA climate scientist James Hansen says bluntly: ‘We are in a planetary emergency.’

In a comprehensive blog piece on the Scientific American website, Ramez Naam points out that:

‘The reality of changes to the Arctic has far outstripped most predictions. Only a few years ago, in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, the bulk of models showed the Arctic ice cap surviving in summer until well past 2100. Now it’s not clear that the ice will survive in summer past 2020. The level of sea ice we saw this September, in 2012, wasn’t expected by the mean of IPCC models until 2065. The melting Arctic has outpaced the predictions of almost everyone – everyone except the few who were called alarmists.’


http://www.medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=700:the-ice-melts-into-water&catid=25:alerts-2012&Itemid=69

[tama]

1. Link to earlier post of the article

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021490603

[MichaelMcGuire]

7. Was unaware a topic was started.

However mine links to the original piece and Medialens deserves a shout out.

[fasttense]

2. Allowing corporations to destroy our climate

for fun and profit. And in the process destroy millions of people's livelihood and food systems just so corporations can continue to rake in more money. There is something seriously schizoid about this.

[Raster]

3. but... but... Corporations are PEOPLE too. Don't they have a right to...

...do anything to make money? Because they are people too, we can trust them.

:sofuckingtragic,sarcasmdoesn'tevenbegintocoverit:

[tama]

5. Actually

from what I hear, in common law system you can deny the court power above you by stating you are not a 'person', which is artificial legal term, and say that you are a free human being.

[byeya]

4. We're at such an impasse that climate change can't be talked about during this

campaign season and the corporate press runs anti-science articles at the highest rate in the industrialized world. The power of venal people with unlimited money is a sorry spectacle and a cancer on humanity.

[Uncle Joe]

6. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, MichaelMcGuire.