andygates: (Default)
andygates ([personal profile] andygates) wrote2008-06-27 07:42 pm

Aw crap

According to boffins at the US National Snow and Ice Center, there's a greater than 50% chance that the ice over North Pole will melt completely this summer.  An iceless North Pole is not the world I know: this is TEOTWAWKI.  Only recently the predictions were for an iceless summer Pole in fifty to a dozen years. 

[identity profile] ravenbait.livejournal.com 2008-06-27 06:58 pm (UTC)(link)
"Teotwaki"?

[identity profile] ravenbait.livejournal.com 2008-06-27 06:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Never mind. Google to the rescue.

[identity profile] ravenbait.livejournal.com 2008-06-27 07:00 pm (UTC)(link)
It's pish, though, isn't it?

Just for clarification

[identity profile] ravenbait.livejournal.com 2008-06-27 07:25 pm (UTC)(link)
I meant the situation, rather than the declaration.

Re: Just for clarification

[identity profile] andygates.livejournal.com 2008-06-27 07:51 pm (UTC)(link)
Do you mean pish as in "nonsense" or "bad"?

Re: Just for clarification

[identity profile] ravenbait.livejournal.com 2008-06-27 08:07 pm (UTC)(link)
I mean "bad".

Re: Just for clarification

[identity profile] andygates.livejournal.com 2008-06-27 08:16 pm (UTC)(link)
And I concur. Realclimate has just picked up on it. There are North Pole webcams that I may have to haunt with a ghoulish sense of doom.

Feck feck feckitty feck. :(

Re: Just for clarification

[identity profile] despaer.livejournal.com 2008-06-28 06:54 pm (UTC)(link)
And this is before we see whether the thermohaline circulation will finally get messed up by this. Oh happy days I don't think...

Re: Just for clarification

[identity profile] andygates.livejournal.com 2008-06-28 07:58 pm (UTC)(link)
Even if this melt doesn't mess it up, the loss of so much sea ice could accelerate the loss of the Greenland ice sheets, and that's a solid "bugger" for the THC, if I remember right.

Re: Just for clarification

[identity profile] andygates.livejournal.com 2008-06-28 08:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Just for jolly, there's no evidence of an ice-free Arctic in the last 800,000 years. We didn't even exist as a species the last time this condition may have occurred... H. erectus was just about sussing fire.