Oops, also forgot to include in my post that the Alaskan glaciers have been INCREASING in size the last two years, which was rather duplicitously ignored in the article as well... ;-)
Typical NASA scientific dodgeball.
Many miles inside the Arctic Circle, scientists have found elusive vents of scalding liquid rising out of the seafloor at temperatures that are more than twice the boiling point of water.
The cluster of five hydrothermal vents, also called black smokers, were discovered farther north than any others previously identified. The vents, one of which towers four stories high, are located on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between Greenland and Norway, more than 120 miles farther north than other known vents.
Remotely operated vehicles photographed the scene as part of an expedition led by Rolf Pedersen, a geologist at the University of Bergen in Norway.
Black smokers have been found in many deep-sea locations, including on the Juan de Fuca Ridge off Washington and British Columbia. Despite the lack of sunlight to power life in the abyss, the vents often support unique communities of creatures that live off their warmth and chemicals. Some scientists think the vents would have been great locales for the origin of life on Earth.
Dissolved sulfide minerals that solidify when vent water hits the icy cold of the deep sea have, over the years, accumulated around the newfound vent field in what is one of the most massive such deposits ever found on the seafloor, said expedition member Marvin Lilley, a University of Washington oceanographer.
The vents are created where the seafloor spreads apart. The farther north one goes along the ridge, the slower the spreading is.
“We hadn’t expected a lot of active venting on ultra-slow spreading ridges,” Lilley said.
Not to give the socialists another idea but I wonder how uneven ice mass changes affect Earth’s wobble. This would influence local climates. Using snow making technology we could probably change Earth’s wobble if we wanted to.