Satellite Image Of Unprecedented Arctic Melting

i'm speechless. and angry.

this video is horrifying. and what's even scarier is that some people still don't get it.

how much of this melting can be attributed to the normal, yearly melting that happens?

The Arctic ice does melt during the summer months anyway, so some of that shrinkage in ice refreezes in the winter months. I think the video can be a little misleading in this way. This summer melt has been a record I believe, but it is important not to mislead people on the issue or the Mainstream press jump on the "green movement" with baited breath.

Here is another video showing the shrinkage..

this footage might give a little better perspective if we knew how big of a portion of ice we just saw sink into the ocean in under 10 monthes.

It looked like about 6 Greenland's worth of ice that melted in one thaw.

Does anybody know at what point in the precision of the earth are we?

you can use the northern part of Greenland as reference for size. northern canada and alaska wrap around the left side.

I wonder what other years they have on record from this perspective?

Well, I surely did not post this to mislead anyone. It is obvious there is some natural melting here and to my knowledge no scientist has either proposed that there wasn't or has ever totally disputed natural forcings upon this planet. However, the unprecedented rate of melting occurring now is something scientists are truly alarmed about and do acclaim to anthropogenic forcing. I recently read an article regarding winter refreeze which is also on the decline as "superwarming" is occurring. I will find it and post it here when I get a chance. Whatever your views on what is causing this however, there is no denying that the rate of melt in the past two years alone is something we all should be VERY concerned about, especially considering that it is unprecedented. I also think that those in the small group of "skeptics" who try to mislead people by saying it is ALL natural are misleading others into thinking those who have scientificallly proven man's impact on this planet do not realize that natural forcings have an impact as well... however, they could not alone have the impact that is causing all of this to unfold as it is now so rapidly.

Sabkl: I firmly believe some people don't want to get it.

Instead of pictures of melting ice sheets a better imagine would be of a child with cancer. I know it may sound dramatic, but Progressives need to reframe the debate away from ?melting ice? to the real and immediate problems of industrial pollution regadless of climate change. Every single time a climate change skeptics talks about the melting ice on Mars as an argument against curbing industrial pollution, the Progressives need to show them a picture of kids that are sick right now because of cancer causing toxins in the air and water! Conservatives love the fact that the industrial pollution debate is focused exclusively and solely on melting ice. That?s something that most people just don?t connect with on an emotional level. We need to reorient the debate back to cancer, drought, acid rain, asthma, etc. Every time someone in the Conservative movement screams ?Al Gore is a commie!? the Progressives need to ask them why they want to keep feeding their kids fish sticks loaded with cancer causing mercury? Every time one of the Conservative talking heads rants about how climate change is all an international hoax orchestrated by Al Gore and the Illuminati, we need to ask them why they want their kids to get leukemia from the toxic runoff from factory farms and power plants? The science may not be ?in? as far as the Conservatives are concerned when it comes to climate change, but the science is damn sure ?in? when it comes to the toxicity of everyday industrial pollution in our water, air and meat. Don?t believe in climate change? Fine. Give me your 5 point plan for eliminating MECURY from our fish supply? Don?t believe in climate change? No problem. Give me your PowerPoint presentation on how we as a nation are going to reduce coal fired power plant emission by 50 percent over the next 5 years? We need to change the debate from melting ice sheet back to old fashioned kitchen table issues like toxic Chinese toys and kids being born with birth defects because the pollution from the power plants and factory farms is so out of control.

Jubal, don't forget that the Greenland ice cap averages 2.3 kilometers in thickness, which is many times the average thickness of the Arctic sea ice.

PS -- can anyone tell me why Current turns quote marks into question marks? That's really annoying.

Well I definitely see your point of view. Although I do think this is very political issue. I do agree this is ultimately a human issue. But I am honestly just a little confused by your statement that this should not be considered a Democratic issue. To a certain extent I agree that it does transcend politics, but on the other hand their really is only one political party (political philosophy) that is preventing action on this issue and that is the Conservatives. Im not sure if there really is another practical way to look at it. They basically are the only ones blocking improved pollution control standards. I agree whole heartedly that this is a global issue and a human issue, but each political party views this issue so differently Im not sure how this could be viewed as bipartisan. I agree that it should be. I agree that ideally we would want both parties to come together, but realistically only one party does view it as a serious issue. This is (for better or worse) a one sided issue wherein the Democrats just happen to be on the right side. It may come across as divisive, but sometimes thats just unavoidable on certain issues. This might come across as hyperbolic, but slavery and ending Child Labor were political issues wherein only one side was right. The other side, the other political philosophy that objected to ending slavery and objected to ending child labor, was clearly wrong.

crob, what browser are you using? I'm pretty sure Current.com works best with Firefox.

JanforGore,

You are so awesome doing all that research and sharing the links to that information with us. Keep em coming.

Thank you for advocating so strongly for awareness of the climate issues relating to the North Pole/Artic permafreeze loss.

I totally agree with crob on his posting about what the real issues are, or at least the best way to counter the skeptics.

I love his idea of using graphic images to illustrate what polution is doing now to children and even seniors.

Wow Vierotchka, your right I did read that in an article somewhere. So in reality the amount of melt is much greater than 6 Greenland's worth. Hmmm

No, jubal, what this implies is that there is considerably more ice on Greenland than the amount of sea ice that has melted. If all the sea ice melts, the sea level will rise by a couple of meters, whereas if all of Greenland's ice melts, it will rise much, much higher, as I understood it. If I find the article, I'll post a link to it here. :)

I haven't yet found the link to the site where I had read this, but I did find this one:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs2-00/

why do people only look at the small picture of things
look at it in a much bigger view first of all you got to take into account where the solar system is in the milky way and how the solar system go's up and down, the solar system is coming to a warm part of the galaxy and the most dangerst for us we see the first signs in 1995 ( i think ) when the comet be-bop showed up in the skys
then you got all the rest of the factors to take it like solar winds and sun flares, the obit around the sun, and that the moon is moving away from the earth at 1 cm a year, then there's north america moving away from europe 2cm a year allowing the gulf stream to push more warm salt water in the arctic
you could melt all the snow and ice in the world and it would only add about 1/2 metre to sea levels,but if you warm up all the seas by 2% it be 3x greater

what happens to water when frozen ,and how much is the world covered in water
for the sea to rise 80 meters you would need the seas to be boiling

southerners, that doesn't make sense at all - unless you happen to know something that science doesn't yet know.

you freeze water and it will swell up to a greater volume
the snow and ice in antartica at its deepest known point is just under a 1000 feet and that is just out side of vodstock station and under all that ice is another 75 feet of super chilled water
has for greenland having 2.5 km of ice and snow it dont thats the how high the ice level is above sea level, greenland is made up of high land levels, and antartica is the same if you got your self on top of the antartica plateau you will find your only on top of 200 feet of ice the rest is rock
i think you going to ask next how do i know i tell ya save you from asking i been to the south pole a few times

@Vierotchka

If you visit this thread

http://tinyurl.com/2g655r

it will be clear that southerner is a little off his meds, let's put it that way.

He has all kind of Alice in wonderland-type ideas about ice thickness (200 feet of ice the rest is rock ????) and boreholes and a funny non-existent place called vodstock base station.