Arctic Ice at Record Low: Northwest Passage now open

Martin Frobisher in 1576 was one of the first navagators to try and find a Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He was 431 years too early.

This year, global warming has hit the Arctic sea ice harder than ever before, and the Arctic ice has melted to record lows...opening up the Northwest Passage to navagation.

From the Guardian:

The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and levels of sea ice in the region now stand at record lows, scientists have announced.

Experts say they are "stunned" by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big as the UK disappearing in the last week alone.

So much ice has melted this summer that the Northwest passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the Northeast passage along Russia's Arctic coast could open later this month.

Ummmm...let me just say holy shit!

I have been nudging everyone to get busy and get active because we only have 10 years to deal with global warming, according to the more optimistic climate scientists. Well, the more pessimistic climate scientists think we may already be irreversibly fucked, to use the technical term. For my son's sake I sure hope the 10 year window holds and that we start fucking doing something. But what is increasingly clear is that the consequences of global warming are coming on faster than the most expert scientists have predicted. The current debate among climate scientists is not whether global warming is happening, but whether it is coming fast or REALLY fast and whether we have any time left to deal with it.

Please folks. Don't let history look back at our generation and brand us the biggest fuck ups in human history. The warning signs are all there. It is all in place. Get busy at all levels, personal choices, government action, spending choices...get busy and let's all stop being history's biggest fuckups!


mole333's picture

| |

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • You may link to webpages through the weblinks registry
  • Web and e-mail addresses are automatically converted into links.
  • Textual smileys will be replaced with graphical ones.
  • Easily link to terms in various wikis. For help, see interwiki.
  • Images can be added to this post.
More information about formatting options

Visit our sponsors

Fill up our coffee fund

BlogAds

Visit our sponsors

Who's online

There are currently 3 users and 3563 guests online.

Get our Digestifs du jour

Nibble daily on our brainy goodness with our daily syndication digest. You'll receive an email with a list and links to the previous day's posts.



Powered by FeedBlitz

culturekitchens

The Publisher
Liza Sabater

Daily servings of political dissent
culturekitchen

Grassroots News and
Activism for New Yorkers

Daily Gotham

Feminist Bloggers
Network

BlogSheroes

A new kind of vouyerism
Voogling

Art + Code + Philosophy
Potatoland.blog

Got any dirt, tips, leads or money for us? Then drop us a line or two at editors [at] culturekitchen [dot] com or use our general contact form to reach everybody in the editorial team ASAP.


Member's articles and stories

More stories

Words to live by

Lying on my cot, I came to the point that many people reach in a situation where they stop what they’re doing and say, "Wait a second. This is bullshit. This isn’t right." Two guys in our battalion were dead, two families ruined. And try as I might, I couldn’t figure out what the purpose of that was.

Things that had been welling up inside me all summer suddenly exploded in my head like a dozen Roman candles. I hated the president for his ignorance. I hated Donald Rumsfeld for his appalling arrogance and his lack of judgment. I hated their agenda. I hated Colin Powell for abandoning the Army—for not taking care of his soldiers—when he could have done something to stop these people. I hated them because the Army had seen this insurgency coming. I hated them because they didn’t listen to the people who told them this was a bad plan. I hated them because now, it meant that my guys could be next. It meant that I could be next. And I didn’t want to die like this—not in a confusing mishmash of ideologies, purposes, and bullets.

I felt like we had been taken advantage of. We were professionals sent on a wild goose chase using a half-baked plan for political reasons. Lying there restlessly, I was reminded of a Schwarzenegger line in one of his movies—when, after being used and lied to, his muscle-bound character had expressed perfectly what was now on my mind: My men are not expendable. And I don’t do this kind of work.

I longed for the clarity of purpose we’d had in Afghanistan.


— Lieutenant Brandon Friedman, 101st Airborne, in his memoir, The War I Always Wanted: The Illusion of Glory and the Reality of War: A Screaming Eagle in Afghanistan and Iraq


Subscribe Buttons

Feed IconGoogleDeliciousYahoo!BloglinesNewsgatorMSNFeedsterAOLFurlRojoNewsburstPluckFeedFeedsAdd KinjaMultiRSSrMailRSSFwdBlogarithmSimplify