Arctic sea ice at record low
... and still meltingWASHINGTON (AP) 8/17/07 - There was less sea ice in the Arctic on Friday than ever before on record, and the melting is continuing, the Colorado-based National Snow and Ice Data Center reported.
"Today is a historic day," said Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the center. "This is the least sea ice we've ever seen in the satellite record and we have another month left to go in the melt season this year."
Satellite measurements showed 2.02 million square miles of ice in the Arctic, falling below the Sept. 21, 2005, record minimum of 2.05 million square miles, the agency said.
Sea ice is particularly low in the East Siberian side of the Arctic and the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska, the center reported.
Ice in the Canadian Archipelago is also quite low. Along the Atlantic side of the Arctic Ocean, sea ice extent is not as unusually low, but there is still less than normal, according to the center located in Boulder, Colo.
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The puzzling thing, he said, is that the melting is actually occurring faster than computer climate models have predicted.
Several years ago he would have predicted a complete melt of Arctic sea ice in summer would occur by the year 2070 to 2100, Serreze said. But at the rates now occurring, a complete melt could happen by 2030, he said Friday.
Population pressure, continued
The cause of these delays is a world in which nearly 11,000 people are added every hour, creating a new population the size of Newark NJ each day. If we continue to grow at the same rate as in the past decade, America will double in population by about 2058. As Gaylord Nelson pointed out that means we will have or need twice as much as everything we had at the turn of the century. Twice as many cars, trucks, planes, airports, parking lots, streets, bridges, tunnels, freeways, houses, apartment buildings, grade schools, high schools, colleges, trade schools, hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons.
Twice as much water and food if you can find it. Twice as many chemicals and other pollutants in the air and water, twice as much heat radiation from all the new construction, twice as much crime, twice as many fires, twice as big traffic jams, and twice as many walls with graffiti on them. In Japan, there is already not enough room for pets in some cities, so people rent dogs just for the pleasure of walking them around the block.
Whenever I hear of another school shooting or other youthful violence, the first thing I think about is Dr. Calhoun and his mice. Dr. John Calhoun put four pairs of white mice in a steel cage eight and a half feet on a side. Within two years the mice had increased to 2,200. The adult mice began excluding young mice from their company and the young began biting, attacking, and slashing one another. Finally social and sexual intercourse became impossible without violence. The mice stopped reproducing and eventually all died out.Sam Smith
Losing time, losing space
posted by Tom Nadeau at 7:34 AM
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