Navy Report Shows Polar Ice Cap Shrinking Fast

Anchorage Daily News ^ | 2/11/22002 | Doug O'harra

[ex-Texan]

The polar ice cap has been shrinking so fast that regular ships may be steaming through the Northwest Passage each summer by 2015, and along northern Russia even sooner, according to a new U.S. Navy report.

Global warming will open the Arctic Ocean to unprecedented commercial activity. The seasonal expansion of open water may draw commercial fishing fleets into the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska within a few decades. The summer ice cover could even disappear entirely by 2050 -- or be concentrated around northern Greenland and Ellesmere Island.For the U.S. Navy, this presents an unprecedented challenge: a new ocean. The nation's maritime military does not yet have the ships, training, technology and logistics in place to patrol or police a wide-open polar sea, according to the final report from a symposium on Naval Operations in an Ice-Free Arctic.

[ex-Texan]

I ;ove it ! Pretty soon we will be able to sail directly off the coast of Siberia and launch missles at Red China.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Right.

[COBOL2Java]

Guess we ought to start buying up all that beachfront property in Tennessee...

[spqrzilla9]

This report has been attacked already by a polar ice expert who points out that the ice is just being blown around.

[Diddle E. Squat]

OK, there is something here that I have never heard a satisfying explanation about: Just for the sake of argument assume that global warming is true, since 90% of an iceberg is below the surface, and ice takes up more volume than water, how can melting icecaps(they are floating) raise sea levels significantly?

[mad_as_he$$]

What! I thought that global warming would have all negative benefits!

[SGCOS]

Ever since global warming started, the water level in my toilet keeps rising.

Anybody else experiencing this phenomenon?

[Conan the Librarian]

Climate models have shown that should the icecap melt, we would go straight into an Iceage. (Increase of moisture in and dry environment, coupled with the cold would allow more freezing rain and snow) If this is true, then the coastline will grow and the seas will become more shallow. Futher study is needed in this new science before reports like this are published.

[Uncle Miltie]

"Ever since global warming started, the water level in my toilet keeps rising."

You gotta stop inviting over the liberal relatives; everyone knows their full of **it, and don't flush. ;)

[reality bytes]

yeah, and we can get together and drink sake with those crazy japs, oh, and while we are at it, we could loot those crazy ruskies oil supply. and don't even get me started on the canadian possibilities....

[E=MC²]

Ice melting in the Arctic should not affect sea levels (it is already displacing its weight in water)...it is ice on land (the Antarctic) melting that would affect sea levels.

[Consort]

We're all going to die when long dormant microbes, germs, bacteria, viruses, etc are freed from the ice become alive again.

[randog]

Anybody else experiencing this phenomenon?

Yeah, the water level in my toilet bowl rises dramatically a few hours after a heavy dinner at Miguel's Mexican Restaurant.
80

[TomGuy]

We cannot allow this to continue!
If the sea level rises, Oregon will be under water.
Then what's to become of the Spotted Owl?
Oh, my...[handwringing]
(end sarcasm)

[RightOnline]

"Late News Bulletin: It was also noted in this late report from the Navy that the "shrinkage" of the Polar ice cap seems to coincide, strangely enough, with the rapid approaching of "spring", typically accompanied by increased surface temperatures. Scientists continue to investigate this phenomenon."

[E=MC²]

Scientists continue to investigate this phenomenon."

No doubt requesting a huge taxpayer "grant" to do so.

[ex-Texan]

Hmmm.

I thought about that scenario already.

Amcient types of flu and other diseases ramapage across the modern world. 'Swine flu' from 10,000 years ago. 'Mastadon flu' and other diseases.

Oh, well .... pass me an Irish Coffee, and a light for my cigar and we will all swim for the horizon.

[Free the USA]

Check the Bump List folders for articles related to and descriptions of the above topic(s) or for other topics of interest.

[Labyrinthos]

Climate models have shown that should the icecap melt, we would go straight into an Iceage. (Increase of moisture in and dry environment, coupled with the cold would allow more freezing rain and snow) If this is true, then the coastline will grow and the seas will become more shallow. Futher study is needed in this new science before reports like this are published.

I can recall learning back in high school (or perhaps even junior high school) that the ice age was caused not by global cooling, but by global warming, which was obviously attributable to factors other than human activity. And since we have only been recording tempratures for a couple of hundred years, how do we know that the current global warming is nothing more than regression to the means.

[BearCub]

OK, there is something here that I have never heard a satisfying explanation about: Just for the sake of argument assume that global warming is true, since 90% of an iceberg is below the surface, and ice takes up more volume than water, how can melting icecaps(they are floating) raise sea levels significantly?

Like the earlier poster said, melting arctic ice won't raise sea levels at all but antarctic ice, if it all melted, would raise sea level by something like 200 feet. BUT, scientists do not think that will happen in the next few hundred years, if ever. Right now they are projectng a .29 to 2.88 foot rise in mean sea level between now and 2100.

-bc