Global warming is pushing Arctic Sea ice cover towards new record lows:The area of ocean covered by ice shrank to 4.93 million square kilometers (1.9 million square miles) on average for the five days through Aug. 15, according to the latest data from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. With as many as five weeks of the annual melt season left, it’s already the fourth-lowest annual minimum ever measured.Needless to say, the combination of melting ice and new drilling would be double trouble for America's polar bears.
“Unless the melting really, really slows down, there’s a very real chance of a record,” Walt Meier, a research scientist at the NSIDC, said in a telephone interview. “In the last week or so it’s dropped precipitously. There’s definitely a chance it’ll dip below 4 million square kilometers.”
The shrinkage is the most visible sign of global warming according to Meier, and raises the prospect that the Arctic Ocean may become largely ice free in the summer. That opens up new shipping routes and is sparking a race for resources that’s led to Cairn Energy Plc (CNE) and Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA) exploring waters off Greenland for oil and gas.
So to recap, global warming driven by carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels is melting the Arctic ice cap, and how do we react? By letting the oil companies that have made huge profits from their ability to release unlimited carbon pollution (and used those profits to fight climate science) move into the melted areas to drill for more fossil fuels.
Meanwhile, Congress is reacting to drought conditions approaching Dust Bowl levels by moving to gut post-Dust Bowl soil conservation programs. If Jared Diamond wants to write a sequel to Collapse
we're giving him plenty of material.As CREDO Action says, "The Arctic has never been drilled for oil, not even under President George W. Bush." Will President Barack Obama be the one to sign the order? Tell President Obama to say no to Arctic drilling.
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For anyone who wants to know why 97% of climate scientists think that global warming is currently being caused by human activity:
10 lines of evidence that humans are causing global warming / climate change by burning carbon
(taken from http://www.skepticalscience.com/10-Indicators-of-a-Human-Fingerprint-on-Climate-Change.html )
1. Humans are currently emitting around 30 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year.
2. Oxygen levels are falling as if carbon is being burned to create carbon dioxide.
3. Fossil carbon is building up in the atmosphere. (We know this because the two types of carbon have different chemical properties.)
4. Corals show that fossil carbon has recently risen sharply.
5. Satellites measure less heat escaping to space at the precise wavelengths which CO2 absorbs.
6. Surface measurements find this heat is returning to Earth to warm the surface.
7. An increased greenhouse effect would make nights warm faster than days, and this is what has been observed.
8. If the warming is due to solar activity, then the upper atmosphere (the stratosphere) should warm along with the rest of the atmosphere. But if the warming is due to the greenhouse effect, the stratosphere should cool because of the heat being trapped in the lower atmosphere (the troposphere). Satellite measurements show that the stratosphere is cooling.
9. This combination of a warming troposphere and cooling stratosphere should cause the tropopause, which separates them, to rise. This has also been observed.
10.It was predicted that the ionosphere would shrink, and it is indeed shrinking.
Please visit http://skepticalscience.com/argument.php to see what is wrong with the arguments of those who think climate change (which includes global warming) is not real.
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