Reply #16: Let's look at the facts vis a vis North Pole melting. [View All]

[govegan]

As stated in the article: "Let's look at the facts. Two summers ago the North Pole completely melted for the first time in history that we know of. Both private and military
ships floated directly over the actual North Pole as it was completely
water. This area has never been seen to be less then ten feet of solid ice."

This is not a true statement.



According to NOAA:

Recently there have been newspaper articles describing the existence of open water at the North Pole. This situation is infrequent but has been known to occur as the ice is shifted around by winds. In itself, this observation is not meaningful. Of more importance is the evidence that the Arctic ice cover has been thinning over large areas during the last twenty years. If this trend continues, there may be significant changes in the northern hemisphere heat balance and possibly in ocean circulation.

Link: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/faq.html#10

An interesting piece of research on this can be found at http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm.

NOAA has a camera with daily shots of the North Pole. Live from the North Pole!
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/gallery_np.html

As Bobby Kennedy recently stated in an interview with Grist Magazine:

Grist: Does the problem lie more with the Bush administration or the corporations that are demanding the payback?

Kennedy: It's the political system that allows corporations to have so much influence in the political process. We've got to get the money out of politics. It's overwhelming the democratic process. Campaign finance reform is hands-down the most important environmental bill.

Grist: How so?

Kennedy: We are living in a science-fiction nightmare where children are gasping for breath on bad-air days because somebody gave money to a politician. And my children and the kids of millions of other Americans can no longer go fishing and eat their catch because somebody gave money to a politician. And where the oldest wilderness area on the face of the Earth -- the Adirondack Mountains -- has acidified lakes with sterilized fish because somebody gave money to politicians. And the Appalachian Mountains -- the birthplace of American democracy, the landscapes where Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone roamed, the source of our values, our virtues, our character as a people -- are being cut to the ground so somebody can make money.

Link: http://www.gristmagazine.com/maindish/kennedy071304.asp

After the publication of The Silent Spring Rachel Carson wrote to a friend: "The beauty of the living world I was trying to save has always been uppermost in my mind; that, and anger at the senseless, brutish things that were being done. I have felt bound by a solemn obligation to do what I could---if I didn't at least try I could never be happy again in nature."