No ice at the North Pole

For most people, this will epitomize the phrase "Out of sight, out of mind." After all, only a vanishingly small number of people ever visit the polar regions, and since most of them are scientists it is all to easy to dismiss them as eggheads, and dismiss their observations.

Until drought and famine hits the heartland, most Americans will find it easy to just believe that this is a media hype. Yet once it does, those same people who have their heads stuck in the sand today will be the most vociferous in their cries to have someone take care of the situation, and demand that someone be held accountable for the lack of foresight and preparation.

I at least partially agree with npat here (a first I know), I don't think that the ice will beat last year's minimum or even close.

Also, the Antarctic ice is at a record high this year.

Here is the daily graph from NASA and it is not even close to last year's numbers.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg

Also, here is the record high Antarctic ice.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg

The southern hemisphere ice is almost 1.5 million square km greater in extent than last year.

Here is the composite of the north and south together. It looks like we are at about the average globally.

http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg

space guy, your graphs are about acres of ice cover. The problem isn't that there isn't a lot of icecover, it's that much of the North Pole the ice is thin "summer ice" and is expected to melt this summer, heating up the oceans even more, lee[omg i[ tje megative feedback loop (less ice reflecting back the sun, more warming because the oceans absorb what the ice refelects back, less ice by the end of the season, etc).

If that were the case then the rate of melting would be much higher than last year when supposedly there was all of this multiyear ice. Look at the rate of melting on the graph.

Also, record high ice is record high ice. That ice has to have a certain thickness to even show up as the waves would break it up.

got to say space guy i think you got it covered

this feels alot more like a seasonal shift for the earth than global catastrophe

maybe this has happened before we just were never there to see or record it like we are now

can anyone tell me if the earths orbit is moving into a phase where the southern hemisphere is going to be tilted farther than normal(away from the sun i mean)?

cause mild differences in tilt can have huge impacts like this

The problem with today's scientist is that they are looking for government grants, as long as the liberals seek global warming, they will get the "scientific results" they want. Until the liberal government stops this sky is falling approach, we will not have an nonobjective view.

How, pray tell, does this liberal government give us a nonobjective view? You are referring to the United States of American government, right?

Why are you turning a serious climate and science issue into a political issue? This "politicalization of science" has been part of the problem. Are you some kind of fundamentalist neocon? You're encouraging excatly what Allan talked aoubt above.

You're encouraging excatly what Allan talked aoubt above.

That's about as off base as I've ever heard. What in the world am I encouraging? I'm stating a situation, not encouraging anything, at least in that comment. : )

You may know what's going on with the planet, but I know what's going on with your rights. And I'll tell you this, your rights and liberties are going to be (being) changing way before any planetary shift is going to drastically effect your life, and if you think climate change has already done that more than the political landscape has affected you, you haven't been paying attention.

Are you some kind of fundamentalist neocon?

Priceless, I was Ron Paul's Virginia State Coordinator for a while, about as far from a Neocon as you can get. What in the world's going on in your head? You've misinterpreted something along the way.

Just an idea to ponder on: What chance do you see in changing the global response to climate change, be it man made or not, without changing the political situation?

It is complete bull@!$%#. During the Holocene maximum about 8,000 years ago temperatures were well above today's and the oceans were about a meter and a half higher. That is why Miami is built on top of a coral reef.

...so there is no problem with the ice cap melting?

...so there is no problem with the ice cap melting?

If the entire arctic ice cap melted it would not increase the level of the oceans one iota. There is a very interesting thing going on right now as the trade off between the arctic and antarctic ice levels. The south is at a record high and in the north we are not going to reach the low level of last year. Interesting that is. Follow the links that I provided above to the NASA data. Do you understand how to read the graphs?

Who do you work for or are you like this for free?

Spooky

I am one of these stupid people that do this for free. I do engineering work for NASA, commercial space enterprise and a little DoD work but all of this is on my own time and resources.

Earth's atmosphere is not too big of a system for us to see and predict that atmospheric CO2 will continue to rise for years, decades and centuries ahead. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.html

The carbon dioxide data ,..., Mauna Loa constitute the longest record of direct measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere. They were started by C. David Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in March of 1958 at a facility of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Keeling, 1976).

well as long as we all understand whats important here

LOL

maybe we could fashion a new ice cap useing slushie machines for the north pole

I FIXED GLOBAL WARMING

IM A GENIUS WOOT

what do you think red or blue?

Well we are talking about the NORTH pole so blue...........Duh!

LoL