Accelerating Arctic Melt Worries Experts
WASHINGTON (Dec. 11) - An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.
Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data obtained by The Associated Press.
"The Arctic is screaming," said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government's snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.
Just last year, two top scientists surprised their colleagues by projecting that the Arctic sea ice was melting so rapidly that it could disappear entirely by the summer of 2040.
This week, after reviewing his own new data, NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."
So scientists in recent days have been asking themselves these questions: Was the record melt seen all over the Arctic in 2007 a blip amid relentless and steady warming? Or has everything sped up to a new climate cycle that goes beyond the worst case scenarios presented by computer models?
For the rest of this story, go to News - AOL News - Accelerating Arctic Melt Worries Experts. Here, you can read the rest of the story, which is scary and fascinating at the same time, and, watch some pretty eye opening pictures on the slide show presentation.
Before I close this out, let me say one thing. As much as I like Al Gore, do not be fooled into believing that we are the ones responsible for the so called "global warming"! Yes, we have contributed to the wear of the ozone layer with our burning of fossil fuels etc., however, what is taking place on this planet now is no more than the planet and the universe going through their evolutionary cycles. Hey, the last "ice age" ended 10 to 12 thousand years ago. It's not like what is happening now never happened before. IT HAS!
"The more YOU know, the more YOU grow,
The more YOU grow, the further YOU go"
Bobby Sharpe Dragon, Book of Shang www.myspace.com/akuasharpe
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