Are you worried about that Greenland ice yet? PHOTOS: Huge Greenland Glacier Disintegrating
Aug. 28, 2008
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...

Arctic Ice On Verge Of Another All-time Low
Aug. 28, 2008
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...

Arctic sea ice now second-lowest on record
Update 9:15 am MT August 27:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

Additional Details

6 days ago

rugrat;
%26quot;The ice has shrunk in length, but there is no mention of the fact that it has actually increased in depth!%26quot;
hmmm interesting idea, do you have any evidence, links for that?
i guess not, as it is complete rubbish, the current year%26#039;s sea ice is nearly all very thin one year ice, and the mass balance of the greenland ice sheet is reducing yearly, and the loss has been accellerating alarmingly over the last 2 years in particular.

check out this picture for an intuitive idea of the process by which the melt water gets down to the base of the glaciers and lubricates them;
http://my.opera.com/mariamagadalena/albu...

6 days ago

amy; yes, scary replies!

thor; sorry, yes, i used %26#039;worry%26#039; again instead of some less emotive word.

gunplumber; i agree, unfortunately :%26#039;-(

d/dx; thanks for the sanity injection on this thread.
all right thinking people should be worried about arctic oil wars! i wonder if the first nation folk have a contingency plan?

eric; links? evidence? we have been through all this before.

james e; dont be so insulting, i%26#039;m sure i know more scandinavian history than you. did you realise the (two, on the south west coast where it remained ice free) medieval towns were fur trading outposts rather than autonmous settlements? one was lost in a barney with the scraelings, the other failed after a falling out with the traders.
as for permafrost, you can build on it easily, and dig through it to make a grave you know, its not like concrete, just very hard work.

6 days ago

jim z; how patronising! i too have studied geology and have been in the habit since teenage of thinking in geological time scales (most reassuring). change is of course the norm, and mass extinction events like the one we are heading towards (now officially named the anthropocene extinction) are nothing new. my best wishes to the rats, roaches or whichever species survives to be next topp dog.

6 days ago

dana, yes, the %26#039;blue ice%26#039; thing is another unforseen feedback thing. there are some brilliant pics of different albedo ice these are in antarctica, by tony travouillon), here;
http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~tonyt/Dome...

6 days ago

Benjamin, you got it! %26quot;You can still have fun AND protect the environment%26quot;. sure can friend :-)


Tom P; 1992 to 2002? have you nothing more recent? Dana and i are talking about rather more recent developments....

6 days ago

here%26#039;s the whole slide show.
http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~tonyt/Dome...

4 days ago

tom p; sorry i upset you, yours was a good link, totally appropriate, peer reviewed study etc. but... it really is out of date, the whole thing is changing so fast now, even data from last year is old, the ice loss is accelerating so fast. ) and now Germans

Prof. Heinrich Miller from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Bremerhaven, Germany commented that, %26quot;Our ice-breaking research vessel %26#039;Polarstern%26#039; is currently on a scientific mission in the Arctic Ocean. Departing from Iceland, the route has taken the ship through the Northwest Passage into the Canadian Basin where geophysical and geological studies will be carried out along profiles into the Makarov Basin to study the tectonic history and submarine geology of the central Arctic Ocean. In addition, oceanographic as well as biological studies will be carried out. Polarstern will circumnavigate the whole Arctic Ocean and exit through the Northeast Passage.%26quot;

and others all vying to encroach on Canada. %26quot;Geological studies%26quot; translates to prospecting for minerals.

I am about 500 ft above sea level, so rising sea levels don%26#039;t directly concern me, but the prospect for a naval war in the arctic over resources is a concern of most Canadians. We may have to bring the troops currently defending the Americans from Bin Laden in Afghanistan home in order to defend Canada instead.

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Other Answers (1 - 30 of 35)

• No.
  What is there to actually worry about?
  I%26#039;m, sure the people of Greenland are not worried, so why should you be?
  By the way, those are the type of pictures which everyone points to as some sort of proof of an impending disaster.
  Glacier bases always recede in summer, and this is nothing new.
  Sometimes more spectacularly than others.
  
  Have you actually sat near the base of a glacier in a hot summers day to watch what happens?
  It is quite spectacular to see the recession occurring in front of your eyes, with huge boulders falling off the face as you eat your lunch.
  
  In another 6 months they will be talking about the Antarctic again, since that will be the summertime in the southern hemisphere. there have always been streams like that in Greenland and other icy areas.
  As for your very first link, I%26#039;m not sure what that is trying to prove. All three of the pictures are the same except for an increase in ice in the top part of the pictures. The crack that the text speaks of is just a valley in the land, not a crack in the ice. Ice is white not brown after all.
  
  So I%26#039;m not worried about Greenland ice at all.
  http://oceanmotion.org/html/background/o...
  
  Edit: I guess when I do provide a link to an actual scientific study, it is not good enough. It is trumped by news articles and a slide show.
• Next %26gt;

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