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Arctic Ice

Some interesting things floating around the web regarding Arctic Ice and its potential for melting due to Anthropogenic Global Warming. Representative Henry Waxman is pushing for Cap and Trade regulation which will do nothing for the environment but make a few people very very rich. Rep. Waxman being interviewed by NPRs Tavis Smiley:

We're seeing the reality of a lot of the North Pole starting to evaporate, and we could get to a tipping point. Because if it evaporates to a certain point - they have lanes now where ships can go that couldn't ever sail through before. And if it gets to a point where it evaporates too much, there's a lot of tundra that's being held down by that ice cap.

If that gets released we'll have more carbon emissions and methane gas in our atmosphere than we have now. We see a lot of destruction happening because of global warming, climate change problems, so we've got enough warning signals and enough of a scientific consensus to take this seriously.

Tundra under the Arctic Ice? As for this line: "they have lanes now where ships can go that couldn't ever sail through before" Consider Roald Amundsen who sailed the Northwest Passage in 1906 -- his route was relatively free of ice but some of the passages were too shallow to allow for commercial shipping. Next up was RCMPV St. Roch who sailed the Northwest passage twice -- the first time took two years but the second time, they were able to do it in one shot. You can visit her in Vancouver at the Vancouver Maritime Museum Here is a photo of her under way. Anthony Watts ran into these photographs of US Navy Submarines surfacing at the North Pole with minimal or no Polar Ice. Here are five showing the variability of the ice over time
Skate (SSN-578), surfaced at the North Pole, 17 March 1959. Image from NAVSOURCE


Seadragon (SSN-584), foreground, and her sister Skate (SSN-578)
during a rendezvous at the North Pole in August 1962


This famous photo...


USS Pargo at the North Pole in 1993. (US Navy Photo)


USS Hawkbill at the North Pole, Spring 1999. (US Navy Photo) Whaling ship Captain's Log Books have the same kinds of records. While they may have not gone through the Northwest Passage (not profitable), they certainly recorded ice that extended and retracted over the years. Posted by DaveH at April 27, 2009 8:50 PM