For the people who say there is no global warming: Why are the ice packs at the poles shrinking so fast?

Question

It is much warmer at the poles now than 20 years ago and the ice packs retreat miles farther every year. The glaciers in Glacier National Park are shrinking so much that they will no longer exist in the summer in 10 years or so. What is your explanation for these phenomena?

Answer 1

Because people are stupid. Of course there's global warming.

Answer 2

In the Northern arctic circle, recently exposed permafrost that has never once melted in all of the age of man, is beginning to radically accelerate its output of CO-2, as it decomposes.
This once upon a time "perma" frosted peat, only 150,000 years worth, contains more (now rotting) vegetation, than all the trees still standing in the continental USA combined would be, if they were cut down and left to rot.

There is still another 65 million years worth of unmelted peat bellow that.

65 million years worth. Does that number of years ring a bell?

Most of the carbon that we have been burning is that age and much older. That is from peat bogs and seabeds that have never been frozen. In the last 300 years, we have burned what? 300 million years worth of stored carbon.

Stored

Carbon.

That carbon had been slowly “stored” by plants, thus slowly bringing the global temperature down over eons of time, by sucking the carbon out of the atmosphere, in the form of carbon dioxide. It finally got “cool” enough on the land masses, as they were, around the poles, that any form of life would not be almost instantly desiccated, (like stepping into a microwave oven) by the atmospheric heat. Slowly came more plants, more carbon stored, less heat.

Endotherms of any kind, did not even evolve, until the planet cooled enough for WE endotherms to survive our own body chemistry. Then 65 million years ago, there was a major global drop in temperature. Suddenly, almost everything that was not an endotherm, POOF! Was gone.

The CO-2 is already approaching what it was when the thunder lizards ruled the planet. And the temperature is only starting to catch up.

The domino has fallen people. Will your lumber houses turn to ashes and well watered lawns join the new dust bowl days to come, before you wonder if you listened to the wrong “facts”?

Stop putting carbon dioxide into the air.

Stop murdering your grandchildren.

Stop listening to the over paid voices, of filthy rich old men, who cannot even care,

IF there is a next generation.

Just stop, and think.

Answer 3

of COURSE there is global warming

the debate is not whether the earth is warming
the debate is about what is causing it, and how long will it last, and what rate will the warming be

your glacier prediction for instance, is very different from that of most scientists who are not predicting melting at anything close to the rate you are predicting (we will know in 10 years or so, won't we)

also, when you say that the poles are MUCH warmer than they used to be, how much is much
most climatoligists believe the earth's near surface average temperature went up about 1 degree (F) over the last 100 years

I don't think that is MUCH but it is certainly real

Answer 4

People disbelieve in global warming, not so much because they don't believe the world is getting warmer, but because they don't want to take the blame for it. "Global warming" means to them "humans are causing problems." That is what they deny.

So they focus on your oddments, or on apparent contradictions or manufacture contradictions, or focus on a single facet of global warming such as ice persistance in Antarctica, and generally blame any warming they can't brush aside as a "natural cycle."'

There is no subject in the world that doesn't have its nay-sayers. And they usually have some personal motive.

Plus, Al Gore says there is global warming and humans are big contributors, and we don't like Al Gore, to say the least, so that proves there is no global warming right there.

Answer 5

It's been retreating for centuries. And we're all guessing as to whether human activity is contributing 10 % or 90 %.

And even if we're contributing, the earth has gone thru many eras of temperature fluctuation. In fact for the past 60,000 years (or whatever) it's been surprisingly stable.

The real question can be, - is this beyond the tolerance that the earth can handle?? ..I think not. And besides, how much effort and energy expended could we really think we could do to "control the weather"??

Answer 6

It's just as likely to be within the natural cycle, we have no point of reference except what can be deduced from prehistoric evidence. Ice ages last thousands of years and so do warm periods. There will almost certainly have been a time when there was no ice at all.

Answer 7

Fish are eating away at the bottom of the ice caps? I'm sorry for being a smart a**.. I agree with you 100% there is definitely Global Warming! No Doubt!

Answer 8

I don't think rational people are saying global warming doesn't exist. We're just saying the Earth goes through natural cycles of cooling and warming. There's nothing we can do to stop this. Our contributions to Global Warming are too minor to validate spending billions of $ to try to slow the warming.

We're talking about 1.5 degree increase in 100 yrs.

Answer 9

You been around here how long, jackass? 20, 30, 40, Surely no more than 90 years, right? How the HELL long do you think the ice packs at the poles have been doin' thier thing? One or two generations? Or maybe SIXTY? Don't waste our time with your mumbo- jumbo ****. Wake up and do something worthwhile.

Answer 10

Global warming has been blamed for a dramatic reduction in the Arctic ice cap. The 2005 northern summer melting of the ice cap has been the largest measured over 21 years, according to an American study.

Britain's Channel 4 claimed: "By the end of the century, and possibly much earlier, the region is likely to be ice-free through the summer months - pushing temperatures not seen there for around a million years." (Channel 4 News UK, September 29, 2005). Similar reports appeared in the Australian media.

What does it mean?

What are the facts, and what does all this mean?

America's National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) released a report late in September which said: "For the fourth consecutive year, NSIDC and NASA scientists using satellite data have tracked a stunning reduction in Arctic sea ice at the end of the northern summer."

It added: "If current rates of decline in sea ice continue, the summertime Arctic could be completely ice-free well before the end of this century."

However, a careful examination of the report and accompanying information, gives a considerably more complex picture. There have, indeed, been four years of significantly warmer temperatures in the Arctic than previously; but if these are discounted, the previous 20 years show no clearly discernible trend.

Further, history records that there have been many periods of warming and cooling of the polar regions. A prolonged cooling phase in the late 1840s, which saw no melting of the Arctic ice in summer, is now believed to be the cause of the failure of Franklin's expedition to find the Northwest passage from Europe to Asia, which resulted in the death of every man in the expedition.

The Arctic is subject to complex ocean currents, which influence both sea and atmospheric temperatures. Among the most important of these are the global thermohaline currents, which push warmer waters towards the Arctic in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

If the Arctic Ocean is warming up, eventually the atmosphere above it will become warmer and wetter, leading to heavy snow falls which will increase the size of the ice cap.

This feedback mechanism will counter the effect of solar radiation which the report suggests will cause further warming of the Arctic atmosphere.

The NSIDC web site reports that, since satellite data has been available in 1972, "Arctic ice has been decreasing at an average rate of about 3 percent per decade, while Antarctic ice has increased by about 0.8 percent per decade".

If global warming has caused the decline in the Arctic ice cap, it would be expected to have caused the same effects in Antarctica. In fact, the opposite is happening.

More significantly, the total ice area of Antarctica is far greater than that of the Arctic. The land mass of Antarctica is 13 million square km, and the band of sea ice surrounding it is a further 20 million square km in winter. In contrast, the Arctic ice cap area typically is less than half this, 14-16 million square km.

According to the Australian Antarctic Division, the Antarctic ice sheet "holds 90 percent of the world's ice".

In the Antarctic, the increase in the ice cap points to increasing rain/snow fall.

A study, published some years ago in the Journal of Climate, suggested that during the next century, the Antarctic's ice volume could grow a little, on account of global warming It suggested that increased snow falls would occur because warmer air, when saturated, carries more water vapour.

In any event, in relation to global warming, there is no scientific consensus. Critics argue that short-term climate variations are sufficiently large to mask long-term trends.

Further, while computer models forecast rapidly rising global temperatures, owing largely to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, data from weather satellites and balloon instruments over the past 25 years show no warming trend.

All this indicates that melting of the arctic ice cap is an extremely complex phenomenon, which cannot be attributed to one factor.

William Kininmonth, former head of the National Climate Centre in Canberra, wrote recently that the temperatures of the polar regions are mainly regulated by energy carried from the tropics towards the poles by ocean currents and wind. Without this, the poles would be much colder.

Seven years

He said: "A one-percent increase in the annual average transport in the Northern Hemisphere, if sustained, would transport additional energy sufficient to melt the Arctic Ocean sea ice in about seven years (and computer models cannot simulate the poleward transport of energy with such accuracy!)."

After observing that climatic trends oscillate over periods ranging from decades to centuries, he concluded: "We should not be too concerned about recent rises in temperatures over the Arctic. There will not be a runaway warming because the region is reliant upon transport of energy from the tropics to maintain its 'warmth'."

Answer 11

Read the news. Why do you assume that global climate change cannot be responsible?? That could explain what you see. Since we don't know what those long term climate changes are we cannot put those parameters into our computer simulations. Are you so fixated on only a single answer that you are not even aware of others????