Canadian Arctic Ice Projection
Graphic Source: US Global Change Research Program

Well I have to say that the debate on global warming is finished as far as I am concerned. I am writing this article on 4 January, 2007. I live in the northeastern part of the United States and right now the temperature is an unheard of, for this time of year, 54 degrees F and it is predicted to go up to 65 degrees F this weekend. When I was a kid, the weather this time of year was brutally cold. Most people here are enjoying the high temperatures and feeling less and less a need to move to Florida at retirement. What many people are not even thinking of is the fact that many of them are living at sea level. Having a warmer temperature here may feel nice, but when it is warmer in the ice fields, more ice melts raising the level of the ocean. This is not exactly a desirable event for us. When I can go out in my shirt sleeves where formerly I had to wear a heavy winter jacket, then something is wrong. The germs seem to like the warmer weather also. Almost everyone I know has been struck by a form of flu like disease that lasts for weeks. We all had our flu shots, but this disease seems to be unaffected by that. In my family, which is quite large, everyone got sick, except for me and my son-in-law. I guess we must be made of tougher stuff, or could it be that we were just lucky?

I look around at what is happening in the world weather wise and I can't help but see the evidence for global warming everywhere. While the global warming debate has been taking place for years, now we seem to have a new twist. Rather than admit to global warming, some scientists are now saying that these events would have taken place anyway. It is not in the best interest of some countries and companies to admit to global warming because they are the biggest offenders and they don't want to look responsible for what is happening. When you hear denials from politicians and scientists, try and take them with a grain of salt and think about why they would be saying this.

Iceberg
Photo Source: NOAA

Did you see that news article the other day that stated that a huge ancient ice shelf broke free? The shelf was part of the Canadian Arctic and it's size was figured in football fields in the article I read. They reported that it was the size of 11,000 football fields or 25 square miles. It is funny how things get reported. As I said this article appeared on 4 January 2007, but when you read it you see that the ice shelf broke off about 16 months before. It made such a violent break that it was detected on seismometers. It is interesting to note how the break was found. Apparently overlays are used and when the overlay from last year was placed over the the same area of this year, the broken off shelf could be readily noticed. The fear is that this ice island will drift into the area when oil drilling is taking place and cause damage to the rigs. One scientist has stated that the remaining Canadian ice shelves are 90 percent smaller than when they were discovered a little over 100 years ago.

The floating ice shelf didn't drift very far because it froze into the freezing sea ice, but this is not permanent and it is expected to be on it's way in the warmer weather. One thing has been noticed by everyone is the fact that more ice is melting on the surface of the Earth than ever before in recorded history. Ice is very important to the Earth because it is very reflective and reflects a lot of sunlight back into space. Without this reflection the Earth would be much hotter. As the ice melts we not only lose this reflective cover but we raise the height of the oceans. Here is a startling fact, the Arctic sea is shrinking. It shrank about 8 or 9 percent in the last 28 years. Add to that the thinning ice and you have a real problem The ice had a thickness of about 10.2 feet in the mid 1960s, today is is somewhere around 5.6 feet. Where did the difference in ice go? Why into the oceans. But not all the water is going there, as the temperatures rise, water evaporates more as seen by the shrinking lakes in Africa.

Surface Air Temperatures
Graphic Source: NASA

When we think of melting ice we think of it melting from above. According to some prominent scientists we would be only partially right in the case of the Arctic Ice melt. The scientists believe that the Arctic ice is melting from the top down, but they also believe that warm water is also rising from the ocean depths and attacking the ice from below, thus we have ice melting from the top and bottom at once. Is this another way of denying that global warming is causing all of this damage or is this actually happening? Scientists state that in one area the Arctic ice had actually thinned a whopping 43% during one Arctic summer. This was the area between the North Pole to Fram Strait between Svalbard and Greenland. We all know that the Arctic is cold and that if you raise the temperature a few degrees in would make no difference to the ice, but the problem is that the temperature does matter in the Arctic summer and the summers are getting warmer and longer. If the ice is also melting from the bottom and you increase the temperature down there, the ice will melt faster.

The EPA is predicting that the oceans will rise about 30 centimeters above the 30 centimeters normal rise which equals 60 centimeters Figuring roughly, this means that the ocean is expected to rise about 23 inches in the next hundred years. That is a lot of water. It is enough water to cover many low lying areas. But too much water is not the only problem that we face. We also face water shortages in many places. Some places depend on glacial runoff for drinking water and if the glacier melts, the drinking water will disappear. Evaporation will also take it's toll and many lakes and rivers that flow from ice fields might also cease to exist. Hurricanes and tropical storms are predicted to increase in both amount and strength. These storms lose much of their intensity when they interact with cold temperatures but as temperatures increase so does the creation and power of the storms.

Yes I am now convinced that global warming is taking place, but I also note that the Earth has warmed many times before and it is possible that even if there was no global warming that was caused by us humans, natural global warming might be happening anyway. This is a matter for scientific circles.