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!
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arctic ice melt | Global Warming | Northwest passage
A lotta little...
Submitted by mole333 on 6 September 2007 - 10:28am.
A lotta little can add up to huge.
I calculated that, given that we already buy our energy from green sources (for 50 extra cents a month on our bill), use compact fluorescent light bulbs and don't own a car (we live in NYC), it only takes planting about 6 trees a year to offset my family's carbon foot print. Now I consider that a dubious figure, but if I can donate to plant about 20 trees a year or something like that, then I can feel like my family has done it's minimum effort to better the world. Is it enough? Alone it isn't. But it is part of what I can only hope are many efforts around the world that hopefully will add up.
If it doesn't, history and our descendents will not be kind to our memories.
Scary stuff :(
10 years isn't very much time. I do what I can, personally, but it seems like such a small amount running up against a huge problem.
"Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane."
- Philip K. Dick
"A time comes when silence is a betrayal" ~~ Martin Luther King Jr.