EnviroLink Forum

Talk privately to scientists involved in climate research and you find that they believe that almost everything is worse than they feared and accelerating dangerously. A clear example is in the melting of the Northern ice, now down in late summer by 30% from its recent 30-year average to 2005. It is at a level today (and last month was the least ice cover of any June ever) that was forecast 15 years ago for 2050! Dozens of ships last year made commercial voyages across the Northern waters where none had ever gone before 2008. A dangerously reinforcing cycle is at work: the dark ocean absorbs heat where ice reflects it, so the water warms and more ice melts. Other potentially more dangerous loops might also start: the Tundra contains vast methane reserves and methane acts like supercharged CO2. It warms the air and more Tundra melts and so on. For agriculture, which is very sensitive indeed to temperature shifts, it has become a very dangerous world. There is now no safety margin to absorb unexpected hits as we are seeing in the global crisis playing out in the Midwest today.

June 2008, Ted Alvarez, Backpacker Magazine Blogs, “you could potentially sail, kayak, or even swim to the North Pole by the end of the summer. Climate scientists say that the Arctic ice…is currently on track to melt sometime in 2008.” [Shortly after this prediction was made, a Russian icebreaker was trapped in the ice of the Northwest Passage for a week.]

I thought that the arctic was expected to be ice free by now?

It's a combination of three predicaments that's involved: permanent economic crisis due to debt, peak oil, and environmental damage.

It's a combination of three predicaments that's involved: permanent economic crisis due to debt, peak oil, and environmental damage.

Well you can rest easy about the peak oil idea. We currently have at least 64 years of the stuff. That's according to wikipedia.