Let’s face it: We don’t care all that much about sea ice.
We care about our kid’s job, or our GPA in college. We care
about our favorite sports team, or who’s winning the election. We care about
the noisy neighbors, or the worsening traffic on our commute.
But sea ice? Hardly on the radar screen, right?
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| Today's ice v. normal (orange line) |
And that’s a pity, because scientists at the National
Academy of Sciences (NAS) tell us that it’s more important to our future – and our
kids’ futures – than most things we worry about.
Bright white ice used to cover most of the Arctic, from
Siberia to Greenland, even in midsummer. But it’s been shrinking, year by year, as the
earth warms. And now the U.S.
National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) tells us that this year will be a
new
record for ice shrinkage by a wide margin. The last record was set in 2007,
and this year’s ice melt is way ahead of that.
We might have thought that maybe this would a good thing.
After all, mariners have been trying for ages to open the Northwest Passage,
and avoid those long voyages through warmer southern waters. Just last week, a Chinese
ship docked in Iceland, after taking the shortcut along the northern coast
of Russia.
"To our astonishment ... most part of the Northern Sea
Route is open," expedition leader Huigen Yang told Reuters upon arrival. The
Chinese had expected much more ice, and now plan to return by a more direct route
closer to the North Pole.
But there is a problem in all this, according
to the NAS. All that former bright white ice was really reflective, sending
about 60% of the energy from the sun’s rays back out into space. By contrast,
ocean water is really dark, and it reflects only about
10% of the sun’s energy that hits it. The remaining 90% gets absorbed, and
warms the oceans. The more the Earth warms, the Polar Regions become more
energy-absorbent, generating even more warmth. That’s why small changes in the Earth’s
systems sometimes turn into big changes for the Earth.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned
that this would happen back in 2007. But many people predicted they’d
be way off. In fact, they were. But like
so many scientific predictions regarding the damage to the Earth from climate
change, they were wrong in the wrong way. Actual sea ice melting is far worse than the
IPCC predicted. The IPCC warned that Arctic sea ice cover could shrink to about
7.0 million square km by this time. In fact, we’re at 5.09 million square km as I write
this, and falling.
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| The U.N. IPCC was wrong: It's much worse |
And today, there’s more deep-blue absorbent water in the
Arctic than there was on average in the period 1979-2000 by an area roughly the
size of India. For the Earth’s climate, it’s as though we’ve taken an area
called home by over one billion people, and repainted the entire surface from
reflective white to limousine-black -- to bake in the sun all day long.
Whatever the world’s nations decide to do in the year ahead,
that India-sized black limo will again be baking in the Arctic sun next summer,
only it will be bigger, and hotter. That’s
why we can’t afford to get around to listening to the climate scientists after
our immediate concerns – the recession, the pennant race, the election, or
whatever – are resolved.
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| Breaking records: more open water than ever |
For your own sake, and for your kids, the time to demand
climate action is now. Our leaders will
only do what we demand that they do. Why not take a moment, and make your voice heard?
Thanks for reading, and for speaking out. And may God
bless you.
J. Elwood
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