North Pole to remain frozen
By Bill Scanlon, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published August 29, 2008 at 2:57 p.m.
Santa can rest easy.
It’s looking like the ice at the North Pole won’t melt to water next month, as had been feared. It would have been the first time in thousands of years that the most northerly place on the planet would have been ice-free.
“It’s quite unlikely at this point,” Walt Meier a research scientist at the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center, said today.
The ice in the Arctic Ocean is at near historic lows, and breaks records every couple of years due to human-caused global warming, the scientists at NSIDC say.
This spring, it was looking like the ice might retreat so far that the North Pole itself would be ice-free for at least a day in September – the height of the ice-melt season.
The chances were great enough that the scientists at NSIDC were laying almost even odds on it in an office pool.
But while global warming is playing an important role, seasonal variability does, too. And this summer turned out to be a little cooler than last summer, when the record for ice retreat was set, Meier said.
“We only have about two or three weeks more of ice melt, and it’s not going to make it to the North Pole,” Meier said.
The Arctic Ocean has two types of ice. One type is the seasonal ice that starts forming in late September, typically reaches 10 to 15 feet thick, and may or may not survive the summer’s heat.
The second type is the perennial ice that lasts year after year -- at least it has until the last couple decades when so much of it has melted.
NSIDC scientists got interested in a possibly ice-free North Pole this year when they noticed that that perennial ice had retreated south of the North Pole. That left only the seasonal ice.
But the season was cooler than expected, so the seasonal ice is holding. “We’re not going to set a record every year,” Meier said.
Still, Meier noted that what scientists used to consider a normal year in the Arctic is now considered a cold year.
The proliferation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from auto emissions, coal plants and the like is making the Arctic Ocean less resistant to the warm periods. “And it is less likely to recover during cool periods,” Meier said.
“The long-term trend is still downward,” he said. “We’re continuing to have very low ice years. And the chances of setting records are greater now than in the past.
“The Arctic is more vulnerable to greater ice loss now,” Meier added. “Another warm summer and we will set another record.
“To recover to the ice levels of the 1980s would require many years in a row of cool conditions, and that isn’t going to happened under global warming conditions.”
NSIDC scientist use satellite data to catalog daily, monthly, seasonal and year-to-year changes in sea ice in the Arctic.
They back up those observations with ice-core analysis.
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August 29, 2008
3:08 p.m.
Suggest removal
BigSky182 writes:
NEWSFLASH:
The fear mongers screaming "GLOBAL WARMING" were wrong again.
Huh, Imagine that.
I wonder what's on cable.....
August 29, 2008
3:38 p.m.
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vendari01 writes:
Well, at least Santa's good to go for another year.
August 29, 2008
4:23 p.m.
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elmysterio writes:
BigSky182 said: "The fear mongers screaming "GLOBAL WARMING" were wrong again."
Wow... how uninformed you are. Climate Change is VERY real... it's not about to "scare the public"... it's about truth. Something you right-wing blowhards don't understand.
August 29, 2008
4:42 p.m.
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esarem writes:
Oh no! The North Pole didn't melt? But it has to! It just has to! Algore promised. Waaaaaaah!
August 29, 2008
4:58 p.m.
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transplant03 writes:
elmysterio: You are correct, Climate Change in very real, it is a very real cyclical event that occurs on earth with or without human intervention. Do your research, hundreds of well respected scientists and experts in the field Do Not believe it is a result of human behavior, those "right wing blowhards" are simply critical and rational thinkers that don't buy every alarmist claim that comes down the pike, otherwise 34 years ago when Time Magazine proclaimed Global Cooling (http://www.junkscience.com/mar06/Time...) was going to be our demise, we all would have been stocking up on mittens.
August 29, 2008
5:09 p.m.
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rage_against_the_stupid writes:
Whether there is Global Warming or not, the C.U. professor who predicted complete melting should be fired. Oh I forgot, he is not accountable to the public who pays his salary.
August 29, 2008
5:34 p.m.
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Lorraine writes:
The records they're referring to only began in 1979. That's hardly a timeline for the Arctic. The Northwest Passage was ice-free enough several times in the last century for clear passage:
http://hnsa.org/ships/stroch.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Am...
Ice in western Greenland has reached its highest level in 15 years:
http://sermitsiaq.gl/klima/article308...
In any case, the melting was caused by unusual winds, according to NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/look...
August 29, 2008
6:35 p.m.
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saveourplanet writes:
Personally, I don't care what you argue. I'm doing what I can to save our environment for my kids - even if it means just a tiny change. I found a great site that is reforresting our Colorado. (http://greenhousefix.com/index.htm) You can be for or against the environment - I don't care - but I'm still doing my part!
August 29, 2008
6:41 p.m.
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TankerDan writes:
"I think I'll get in my big bad SUV or F350 and go for a long drive now"
August 29, 2008
6:47 p.m.
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TankerDan writes:
Say saveourplanet worry about saving your soul because what is done is done there will be no turning back now. There is no future as we know it, in fact most of us will not survive what is soon to come. But you can laugh it off, brush it off, blow it off, or do what ever it is that you want with what I said. If you can't see the end coming your dumber than those who think there is no global warming going on.
August 29, 2008
9:31 p.m.
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HopiMedicineMan writes:
TankerDan---Which is it, a big bad SUV or an F350? Personally I awaiting the F650. Now, in my mind, that's progress, a kitchen in a pickup.
Ice has been melting since the peak of the last ice age. There was a glacier on Green Mountain. What happened to it? Was it the victim of an F350?
Green Mountain is an Indian holy mound. There are petrified wood spear point caches all over GM in strategic places. People are finding tons of points because of the fire. (Anyone who removes those points will suffer a horrible end.)
What do you suppose is going on? Green Mountain was once forested!
I think you're well meaning. You don't want the atmosphere to fall off the earth. But this global warming is coming at you as the new ice age was professed in the 1970s. It was a certainty, no question, prepare or die.
An ice age favored the petroleum industry. Warming favors alternative energy. Follow the money, young man.
August 29, 2008
9:33 p.m.
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LazyR writes:
Oo Gore-lionni is not going to like this
August 29, 2008
10:09 p.m.
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FCZ writes:
"In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish."
- Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day 1970
August 29, 2008
10:13 p.m.
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Irightyouwrong writes:
I guess my carbon footprint is not nearly big enough.. I will have to work on that.
August 29, 2008
10:26 p.m.
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ColdShot writes:
Climate change is part of the natural evolution of Earth! Man has ZERO influence on it! I am happy to hear Santa's home will be spared another year! *rolls eyes*
August 29, 2008
10:30 p.m.
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rage_against_the_stupid writes:
HopiMedicineMan
Don't forget that there are many european holy grounds; our cities, farms and government. Pick up a Winston Churchill book and enter the 21st century.
August 29, 2008
10:40 p.m.
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LadyBird112 writes:
"Well, at least Santa's good to go for another year."
But my mommy said that she's Santa...
August 30, 2008
8:19 a.m.
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rwmorrisonjr writes:
Santa = MMCC/GW. They're both used to scare and control little children and mindless ignorant adults.
August 30, 2008
10:03 a.m.
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Keith43 writes:
This global warming issue is a bunch of bunk! I remember back in the 60s when there was a lot of hype about a massive global cooling. Well, that never happened either. There are constant inconsistent cycles all the time. And we humans don't have a thing to do with it. Many scientists agreed with the idea that we were at fault because their reputations were threatened. And hundreds of them reversed their position because they found out that it is only a lie of the globalists so they can impose a carbon tax on everyone.
If you believe in a creator and you believe we are His children, then you can't believe that man has anything much to do with it. God is in control, as much as the lier and hypocrit, Al Gore thinks otherwise.
August 30, 2008
1:53 p.m.
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Dusty_Piniella writes:
Ignorant adults is correct, especially if you think that your insignificant presence on a planetary body would have any affect on it's climate. Where are the Hummers and SUV's on Mars and the other planets where the same percentage of climate change is occurring? Hmm?
August 31, 2008
7:47 a.m.
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Rangerjoe1 writes:
Same scientist, same experts, same bulls^%#t. When I was in college they held "Global Cooling seminars". Will the looney toon Core refund our millions he scammed off of us. Just a bunch of illiterate morons. The sky is falling, the sky is falling
August 31, 2008
10:07 a.m.
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johnson writes:
" It would have been the first time in thousands of years that the most northerly place on the planet would have been ice-free."
So, apparently this is not the first "global warming". It happened "thousands of years ago". I wonder what impact man had on it then.
September 4, 2008
3:34 p.m.
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Markus writes:
Wow, I am seriously impressed with the number of non-lemmings who have posted here! Seems the truth is finally becoming clear that megalomanic Al Gore's agenda was not so much to heal the planet as it was to make millions and millions of dollars selling books and making movies. I mean, an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize go a long way to heal the planet!
On a more serious note, it's a scientific fact that sunspots are one of the root causes of the cycle of cooling/warming trends on planet Earth. The sunspot activity in the 80s caused the ozone layer in some areas to wax and wane... creating widespread panic in the mainstream moron media that we were all going to die of sun poisoning.
When it was determined the ozone layer was, in fact, intact, some found another way to gain on the hysteria by creating the global warming theory... which is about as accurate as the evolution theory. And now that global warming is on the verge of being proven inacurate, they change the wording to "climate change" -whatever that means - to try to dupe the lemmings. Doesn't the climate change every season anyway? Yes, it does.
The mainstream moron media feeds off of (i.e. makes thier money!!!) doom and gloom and misery and despair. This non-lemming rebel simply has more faith in my fellow human beings to fall for it. Sorry to burst your bubble, lemmings, but it's really NOT the end of the world as we know it! Although, with the lack of sunspot activity for the past ten years, we may have some pretty severe winters ahead of us... so... hmmmmm...
October 6, 2008
5:44 p.m.
Suggest removal
welshman54 writes:
well some are right and some are wrong. And we all, each and
every one of us must look in the mirror each and every day and
realize we are all.....guilt....we all drive cars or take mass transit,
we all have flown, or do regularly. We all eat like there is no tommorrow and watch sea food displayed in front of us at stores/res./superm. and don't blink an eye or think how much seafood is really out there to satify our urge. But, just think for a
moment, if there were a major or more than one major cat. in the world in the next 1500 days, in a city the size of say San Francisco; how long do you think the food would last on the shelves, and what would a man do to feed his family!!!
Where would you go!!!!!