Global Warming To Leave North Pole Ice-Free

cwolfsheep writes "Tonight, Yahoo & AFP news are reporting on a study, further backing up a previous report, that suggests the North Pole will be ice-free in the summer by the next century. Oddly enough, they say the melting will not add to the sea-level of the ocean (since the ice is already in the ocean) and that the extra water will help absorb more greenhouse gases. Maybe we need to start using more aerosols."

Re:Isn't water denser than ice??

[MadKeithV]

No, the ice displaces an amount of water equal to it's on weight, and that's why some of it sticks out above the water.

Archimedes Principle

[panurge]

If he is capable of reading some of these posts, Archimedes must be revolving in his grave.

Anything floating in water displaces a volume of water EXACTLY equivalent to its own weight. If ice melts, the part that was above the water is exactly equal to the reduction in volume, and there is exactly no change in the water level.

On the other hand, if the non-floating ice on Antarctica or Greenland melts, since it wasn't displacing any water, the ocean levels will rise. And there is a LOT of ice on Antarctica.

The melting of floating ice makes little difference to sea temperature since it is water at close to 0 degrees, but melting glacial ice generally runs off into warmer water, causing sea temperature reduction with potentially catastrophic effects (e.g. stopping of the Gulf Stream).

Re:Ice melting not the problem

[danormsby]

Unlike the North Pole where the ice floats on the sea Antartica is a big land mass with lots of ice on top. If the Antartic ice melts, sea levels will rise.

Re:I need someone to explain...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Desertification is what destroyed North Africa. The area that is now the Sahara was once a fertile plain. As the soil dries out, it destroys a fungus that actually helps bind it together and retain moisture.

The rub is, Desert begets desert. As the land becomes arid, it heats up the surrounding land, causing the desert to spread.

Now one thing not helping the situation is Man. Certain agricultural practices accellerate desertification.

Indeed, start looking for deserts to form in Brazil. Rain forests don't really build good soil, and when you slash and burn the rainforest down to form farmland you only get a few good years out of it before the soil breaks down. Rain Forests generate their own weather patterns, and with no forest, no rain.

Rapid climate change

[halfseaice]

Only within the past decade have researchers warmed to the possibility of abrupt shifts in Earth's climate. Sometimes, it takes a while to see what one is not prepared to look for:
http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-56/iss-8/p30.html

Todays sea ice maps: http://www.seaice.de

Re:Here, let me help

[Negative Response]

As a result, the complete melting of the polar ice cap would result in, quite possibly, a slight reduction in sea levels, as the resultant water from the melting will take up less space than the ice did. However, since ice floats, some of it was above the waterline so it may end up a wash.

Whatever object that floats does it be repelling water of the same mass as itself, thus melting a piece of ice floating on a water body will result in the water level being exactly the same as before, not "less space" or "end up a wash". Seriously.

Re:Here, let me help

[Nyh]

Two things:

1 Ice floating in water displaces as much water as it mass. So when it melts the volume will not change.

2 The interesting thing is that water shrinks when you heat it from 0C to 4C so in that traject it will take up less space. Continue heating above 4C it it starts expanding again.

Warmer oceans will mean higher sea level because warmer water is less dense.

Nyh

Re:a conflict?

[Fungii]

The point is that when the water is in the form of ice it won't absorb the CO2, whereas in water form it will.

So, I hope that answers your question.

No, BUT...

[danro]

How do they figure melting ice won't raise sea levels? even if the glacier is 20 feet above water, won't the excess buoyant pieces of ice melt down into the ocean?

Actually no. Water is more dense than ice (this is why it floats above the water in the first place). So so far this theory seems ok.

What they don't account for, and what makes this bunk is that it doesn't account for the huge amount of landlocked glaciers (The south pole, Greenland, etc.).
Someone kindly explain how you propose to melt just the floating ice and not the rest of it?

This crap is posted just to further the official slashdot agenda of:
"I'll do whatever the hell I want to and I'm sure it'll have no consequences whatsoever on the environment. And if it has, it's my lazy worthless childrens problem!
You'll pry the steering wheel of my SUV from my cold dead fingers, commie-boy!"

Now go ahead and label me a crazy environazi, if you like.
It doesn't make my point any less valid.

Remember the Salt effect

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if I remember right the ice is salt free right?? Well when this salt free water is introduced into the oceans wouldn't it lower the saltness levels. This in turn effect the cooling affects of the water. There was a post a couple of months on this. Basically it said the introducing of the fresh water(melting cap/s) well cause the planet to become cooler because of how salt water and fresh water interacts in the ocean in it cooling/warming process

Re:Question

[halfseaice]

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/floods.htm#L_07 03

Just to Clarify : Ozone / Global warming

[jack_reacher]

Maybe we need to start using more aerosols.

CFCs from aerosols deplete the ozone layer, allowing through more UV rays, causing more skin cancer.

Global warming is caused mainly by CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

The two are pretty distinct, but often get confused.

Re:Ice melting not the problem

[Rolo Tomasi]

The interesting bit here is that the normal state of the earth is to be completely ice-free, which means that the sea level would be some 250 feet higher than it currently is. We're presently still in an ice age, which was probably caused by the American continents blocking off equatorial sea currents, and the transfer of heat to the colder parts of the globe. One exception is the Gulf Stream, which is responsible for the very mild climate in much of northern Europe.

Re:I need someone to explain...

[tiled_rainbows]

I thought it was something to do with goats? Goats created the Saharah by their ceaseless, unstoppable munching of the undergrowth?

Re:Here, let me help

[Wavicle]

I'm not really sure where your physics comes from, but the principle isn't all that complicated. Anything that floats on water displaces a volume of water where the mass of the water displaced is the same as the mass of whatever is floating.

When the ice melts, its density becomes 1 therefore its mass = its displacement (1kg of water will displace the volume of water which weighs 1kg).

So there is no "approximately cancel each other out." As the parent stated the net change in sea level will be exactly zero. Excepting for minor changes due to temperature or evaporation. Ice currently sitting on a land mass will change the sea level since it is not displacing more or less water.

Re:Penguins?

[f00duvoodu]

Heck here everyone. http://www.penguins.cl that should give everything anyone will want to know about penguins. has them all, galapagos, blue, gentoo. check it out

Re:Here, let me help

[richie2000]

Sweden has several [kebnekaise.nu] glaciers [z.se]. I'm a bit more doubtful about Finland, but there may be a few up near the Norwegian/Russian border.

Re:Here, let me help

[Eric Ass Raymond]

That's exactly my point.

Global warming means that the average temperature goes up. It does not mean that the climate gets warmer throughout the globe.

This is exactly why arguments like "global warming my ass - where I live the last ten years have been colder than before" really piss me off. Why? Because that's exactly what the global warming leads to: exterme, unusual weather patterns. Somewhere it means schorching heat and somewhere else it is below the average temperatures. The key point is that the weather is out of the norm.

Re:Sea level...

[jez_f]

Thanks that was almost what I wanted to say.
one other big factor that dosn't seem to have been mentioned yet is that ice is very good at reflecting light and water is not so good. If the planet is covered in ice it gets very cold if the ice melts it takes less energy to heat it up. Take a look at the snowball earth theory [uwsp.edu].

I think you're wrong about the causes.

[MickLinux]

First of all, Sahara was at one time reasonably fertile. Or at least parts of it were. In a similar way, we could point out that the America's Midwest is potentially a desert: those are sand dunes we're farming on, and we'd better take care of it if we want to keep on farming it.

And yes, political strife makes it so people, desperate to eat today, don't take care of tomorrow. And the Saharan region *did* go through political strife: the conquest by Islam. [and no, not all religions are equal, or as you seem to think, equally bad. Some shed more blood, some less. Some have peaceful periods, some don't.]

You're also wrong that there were no dictatorships. Some of the dunes have completely covered old Roman forts. Rome was definitely a dictatorship.

But I don't think it was politics or religion that did the Sahara in. I think it was the introduction of grazing animals. You see, the earlier (Christian) and primitive (animist) cultures that existed in the region before that were mostly farmers. But grazing animals represented wealth to the incoming Islamic "missionaries". So they brought that in with them (but not because of their religion; just because of their culture.)

The grazing animals overgrazed the land, and destroyed the plant life, freeing up the dunes.
Further, plants tend to regulate the water; so the Sahara then had no further regulation.

But no, this also isn't Western capitalism that did it. This is an extension, if you will, of the Mongol invasion, and the imposition of a new culture upon a region that was not suited to it.

Re:Penguins?

[lightsaber1]

Oh please! First of all, there is no true solid evidence of global warming. The temperature of the Earth has always gone in cycles. As evidence, look at the multiple ice ages in the books. We are looking at but a tiny snapshot in the history of the Earth. Sure it may be a bit warmer (though I'd like to point out that, here at least, this summer has been far from the hottest), but that may be perfectly normal for all we know.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating pollution, I'm simply saying a report that suggests the north pole will have lost all its ice by the next century is going to influence politicians, you're sadly mistaken, especially when this report suggests that all those negative side effects people talk about (flooding, etc...) will not happen.

Re:Ice melting not the problem

[erktrek]

Actually according to this article [nature.com] in Nature we are at the end of a warming trend (which occurs every 10,000 years or so). This article points out however that there is still some debate as to wether or not the next ice age will actually occur thanks to global warming...

The Idiots are Taking Over

[bert33]

It's not the right time to be sober
Now the idiots have taken over
Spreading like a social cancer, is there an answer?

Mensa membership receeding
Tell me why and how are all the stupid people breeding
Watson, it's really elementary
The industrial revolution
Has flipped the bitch on evolution
The benevolent and wise are being cornered, ostracized, what a bummer
The world keeps getting dumber
Insensitivity is standard and faith is being fancied over reason

Darwin's rollin over in his coffin
The fittest are surviving much less often
Now everything seems to be reversing, and it's worsening
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool
Now angry mob mentality's no longer the exception, it's the rule
And I'm startin to feel a lot like charlton heston
Stranded on a primate planet
Apes and orangutans that ran it to the ground
With generals and the armies that obeyed them
Followers following fables
Philosophies that enable them to rule without regard

There's no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated
Political scientists think the same one vote that some monkeys are inbred
Majority rule, don't work in mental institutions
Sometimes the smallest softest voice carries the grand biggest solutions

What are we left with?
A nation of god-fearing pregnant nationalists
Who feel it's their duty to populate the homeland
Pass on traditions
How to get ahead religions
And prosperity be a symbol to culture

The idiots are takin over

-NOFX

Re:Isn't water denser than ice??

[cluckshot]

The issue of what will happen when land covered by ice sees a melting is curious. Most people assume that water/ice sitting on land will raise ocean levels when it runs into the ocean. This is not so. The reason has to do with the exact same reason for which the land sticks above the ocean. Frankly it is floating just as the ICE in the water. When the ice or water on land runs off into the ocean, the land it was on rises in a process called isostatic rebound. This makes more room for the water in the ocean and as such makes the net effect zero.

The reasons for which large land masses rise or fall below the ocean has to do with effects in the Crust and Mantle of the earth. Clearly these effects are beyond any human control. The Isostatic rebound is pretty profound. In areas where glaciers have recently melted off, land masses have risen as much as 200 or 300 feet. These have been observed in the past 100 years.

The complete melting of Ice off of Greenland for example would reveal a land mass which at this time is below sea level most of it. The land would rise serveral thousand feet by best estimates revealing mountains as high possibly as the Smoky Mountains or higher in places.

The science we have regards this is revealed in sattelite orbits. This mapping measures the density as by deviations in orbits. It reveals that this particular set of data is fact. It would be best to assume that land like Ice is floating and subject to all the same rules of displacement. Undersea land is sunk for the same reasons.

The melting of the polar regions is driven by cycles way too long to have been affected by any human intervention. The heat to melt the polar ice is part of a ocean current cycle that has over 20,000 years of lead time on our current events. The salt water currents cycle is massive and is global. It is controlled by an inventory of water that is estimated to take over 20,000 years to cycle through. If and it appears so that the Polar Caps are melting, The heat that is driving this melt fell to earth some 20,000 years ago.

For those of us who live in the eastern USA our mountains have massive cliffs cut by deep rivers of ice. These glaciers had north America looking like the south polar regions do today. The warming that took out those glaciers is probably echoing back on us right now.

Also one other factor is driving events. In the early part of the 1900's the sun got about 1.5% brighter than it was over the previous 5,000 years. It has remained so since. It does appear in the past 5 to 7 years that this trend has reversed. I sincerely doubt that we humans have any influence on the brightness of the sun.

The whole "Global Warming" argument is actually a political argument by Europeans and Asians to hobble the Americna Economy. Their economic beliefs generally assume the success of one person is the result of him having advantage over his competition. This is why we see such dangers to the world economy at this time. Such ideas do not allow adaptation. They rely on conquest.

The Irony of this is that while the these Asian and Europeans are using massively higher amounts of coal, much of which is mined in the USA, they are telling Americans not to burn it! While US Coal consumption has dropped steadily since the early 1900's Hampton Roads, Virginia and Mobile, Alabama have become the worlds largest energy exporting ports. No it is not oil. It is COAL. The total tonnage is about 1 Billion Tons of coal from these two ports a year. The energy value of this is more than equal to 300 billion barrels of oil/year. This means that the USA exports the equal to the entire Saudi Oil Inventory in the ground about every 10 years. Total world production of oil is about 65 Billion Barrels of oil a year.

While everyone was not watching China raised their consumption of coal to a total of about 2 Billion Tons a year. India did about 1.5 Billion tons a year increase as well. This means that the total US Consumption and Export of Coal of about

Mars losing its polar ice too

[peter303]

Peter Malin, the designer of the Mars Surveyor camera, said at his Denver lecture last night [dmnh.org] that three years of photography have observed the Martian polar ice caps are melting away. Each year they are smaller. This suggests there could be a solar component to global warming if it affects two planets.

Impossible to model the earth's climate

[Starrider]

There is no way to prove global warming exists, or if it doesn't exist. Certain factors such as solar radiation AND the impact of different types of clouds have yet to be accurately modeled.

One of my good friends is a masters student in meterology at the University of Oklahoma (the best in the country for meterology.) We were discussing this the other day. All models used to prove or disprove global warming completely ignore the impact that different cloud formations have on climate change. This is just one of many hundreds (or even thousands) of variables that cannot even be measured let alone modeled.

I take this global warming with a grain fo salt. Remember the Ice Age and the "Little Ice Age"? Those were natural phenomena. This warming (if it even is warming) could also be natural.

Scientists have only kept decent records of temperature for the last 100 to 150 years. Accurate studies of other factors (sea surface temperature, solar radiation, etc) have been taken for even less time. There just is not enough data to draw any conclusion about these so-called "drastic climate changes",

Re:global warming *isn't* necessarily our fault

[apoc.famine]

Exactly. I had one professor who claimed you could link the increasing effects of global warming with "research" groups fighting for funding in congress. He even had charts. ;)

The temperature of the earth has been hotter then this before, and it has been colder. Yes, we may be in a time of man-made temperature increases, but we still don't know for sure. What all the global-warming zealots ignore is the fact that in the hundred thousand year global temperature cycle, we are IN A WARMING TREND. This is to be expected. If you look at the ice age cycles, they follow similar temperature trends. Yes we may be causing some of the temperature increase - but at the same time, a good deal of it is most likely normal, natural, and to be expected.

I wish people would stop looking at the last 50-100 years, and get it through their heads that to understand climate modeling, you need to look at eons. The ice ages do have some meaning - they weren't random events that happened due to man not burning fossil fuels.

Since nobody seems to be doing this, here are some pretty charts and discussions about why the current hype about global warming is, at minimum overrated, and at max completely bogus:

Ice ages and inter-glacial warming periods:

http://www.ocs.orst.edu/forum/BigPicture.htm

Thermodynamics coupled with solar radiation fluctuations:

http://64.21.37.2/~rhailey/archives/001402.htm

Temperatures since the last ice age:

http://www.gfz-potsdam.de/pb3/pb33/kihzhome/kihz01 /fig2_en.html

While I don't claim that these are all 100% correct and relevant, they should at least get you to question the current global-warming mentality of "we did it and it's here now". Yes, we may be responsible for some global warming. But until we can tell for sure, THROUGH SCIENCE, people need to take a deep breath and calm down. Ask for the facts, ask for the numbers, look at the charts.

Few of you believe manufacturers when they claim speeds for things - you go look at benchmarks. Why would you then automatically accept claims of massive global warming, especially from groups with obvious agendas? Ask to see the data. Ask to see *all* of the data. Get angry that much of the "temperature increase of y degrees in the last x years" "data" came from limited readings in some of the coldest places on earth, because it showed the greatest change, instead of from a representative sample across the entire planet.

Yes, we should pollute less, and yes, we should take responsibility for our environment. However, we shouldn't run around screaming "the ice is melting, the ice is melting". If it is, then it very well might do that every so often, humans, fossil fuels, or not. But using junk or no science to promote a phenomenon which might or might not exist is just not cool...

Re:Penguins?

[JJ]

I've seen the details on nuclear plant saftey with the new post-3 Mile Island saftey designs. Does it include a 747? Yes. Actually, four seperate possibilities were detailed: 1) a 747 (cargo haul version, taken over by terrorists and carrying non-nuclear explosives in a fair portion of the cargo hold) 2) a fully laden B-52 with non-nuclear weapons, 3) a flight of F-15C Strike Eagles and 4) the worst combination of the three, specifically 2 and 3.
Why non-nuclear? Because if you drop a nuclear bomb on a nuclear plant, the bomb effects dwarf the nuclear plant effects. The result is almost the same as dropping a nuclear bomb on a coal plant.
The results with the new design in the worst case? The reactor shuts down and is entombed in a concrete/ lithium half-sphere. The underground shielding remained intact. Radiation leakage? The lithium allows only short-term low-effect leakage.
My backyard is fine with me and apart from the amount of space required, densely populated areas are safe.

This is old news

[King Louie]

This is just another example of an ill-informed, alarmist media alowing their own political views to color their reporting. I recall seeing a similar article about a year ago. Turns out that for as long as people have been able to get to the North Pole an spend enough time there to do some real research, there have been periods during the summer where there was a hole in the middle of the polar ice cap.

And remember, it has been much less than a century that we have had the technology to actually spend significant time at the North Pole studying the area. The first known human expedition to the North Pole was in 1909. Even today, getting there and spending enough time to gather a lot of data is very hard. No one has ever spent an entire year there, so we really don't know what the long-term behavior of the polar ice cap is.

Woods Hole on Abrupt Climate Change!!!

[DammitBeavis!]

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (remember Alvin the sub?) has done lots of studies on the ocean circulation system, dubbed the "The Great Ocean Conveyor".

They claim that as the oceans salt level decreases (via the ice packs melting), the heat exchange via the "The Great Ocean Conveyor" will dramatically change the Earths weather climate.

Read about it here:
http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/current topics/ abruptclimate_joyce_keigwin.html

It's a sobering read. :(

Yeah, sure...

[CrashRide]

*The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population. -- Reid Bryson, "Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man", (1971) The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer -- Paul Ehrlich - The Population Bomb (1968) *I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000 -- Paul Ehrlich in (1969) *In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. -- Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970) Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion -- Paul Ehrlich in (1976) *This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century -- Peter Gwynne, Newsweek 1976 There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon... The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it. -- Newsweek, April 28, (1975) *This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. -- Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976 *If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. -- Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970) Since 1978, the ice cap has shrunk by nearly three or four percent per decade. At the turn of the century there will be no more ice at the North Pole in summer," Ola Johannessen (2003)

I can't believe no one noticed this...

[Catbeller]

We should use more aerosols?

Um, how do I say this... aerosols, by which I assume you mean CFC-based aerosols, float to the upper atmosphere and catalyze the very thin layer of ozone that sort of floats like a skin over the whole planet. This causes sporadic thinning of the ozone layer, which is usually not a big deal, since ozone regenerates. But the CFC's float about for a while, and do persistent damage until they disappate.

Ozone depletion is a different problem than the greenhouse effect, which is caused by increased amounts of CO2 in the lower atmosphere caused by burning fossil fuels and of all things, flatulence of our herd animals.

The confusion of CFC pollution which causes ozone depletion and the global warming engendered by CO2 seems to widespread everywhere. I can't count the times I've seen intelligent people mix this up.