All Eyes on Greenland: Global Warming Continues

[G_j]

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=2005110712033126

All Eyes on Greenland: Global Warming Continues to Warm the Globe

Monday, November 07 2005 @ 12:03 PM PST

Contributed by: Admin

The roll of extreme weather events and milestones has become so steady that the BBC last month gave up mentioning every new weather first; the network now simply refers people to a website that tracks shattered local heat and rain records. The list is currently waterlogged with banner numbers for October 2005, a busy month for climate change in Britain as well as the Gulf region, where as of this writing the 23rd tropical storm of the season is headed for poor little Haiti.

All Eyes on Greenland
Global Warming Continues to Warm the Globe

Alexander Zaitchik
The Beast (Buffalo)

<snip>

The need to treat the larger climate story with the same sustained attention as relief and reconstruction efforts was driven home by an October 27 New York Times piece by Andrew Revkin’s, titled “No Escape: Thaw Gains Momentum.”

An all too rare example of an in-depth global warming story, the article was loosely pegged to the fact that in September, the area covered by sea ice in the Arctic region reached a record low. The congealing consensus among Arctic watchers, reports Revkin, is that the north polar climate flywheel is in motion, and it is all but certain that the region’s summer ice cover will disappear completely by the end of the century, possibly as soon as 2050. This is very bad not just because it will mean to a bunch of drowned Eskimos and Polar Bears, but because a lot of heat normally bounced back into space will be absorbed by the sea, thus fueling the warming loop.

As bad as Arctic melting would be, it’s nothing compared to the big momma of ice cap fears: The dreaded Greenland Thaw. Eric the Red no doubt fantasized about such a melt while trying to colonize the place with dubious Vikings, but for me Revkin’s description of the Greenland cap was the scariest thing on offer this Halloween: “Rising two miles high and spreading over an area twice the size of California, this vast reservoir – essentially the Gulf of Mexico frozen and flipped onto land – contains enough water to raise sea levels worldwide more than 20 feet.”
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[HereSince1628]

1. Well, we need some big pork projects of Halliburton proportion

Buy you stocks now so when the tide comes in it will raise your ship!

[Spinzonner]

2. It's not entirely clear cut how things will play out

The warming of the air, especially at higher altitudes, increases its moisture carrying capacity and has increased the ice buildup at the tops of glaciers even while the edges, at sea-level and affected by warming waters, is melting and receeding.