How Much Ice Is Left In The Arctic?
This story was filed by CBS News London producer Steve Berriman.
For decades, a growing number of scientists have been predicting that man's addiction to natural resources would one day throw the planet into an irreversible cycle of environmental degradation. What was once dismissed as alarmist conjecture has become, for the most part, empirical fact.
But how much time does our bloated world-population have left to turn back the dial on global warming? You will often hear that, while we are undoubtedly haunted by the threat of mass-flooding and superheated summers, it is our children's children who will have to deal with those dark realities.
Eco-meltdown, however, may be much closer than we think.
At the end of February a small team of U.K.-based explorers will strike out for a 90-day journey to the North Pole. They hope to determine whether the first big — and some would say indisputable — symptom of an Earth seemingly on the edge of terminal sickness will become apparent, not by 2050 or 2100, but within the next five years.
Pen Hadow, leader of the three-person Catlin Arctic Survey, spoke to CBS News at his team's London operations center about the arduous task which lies ahead. He described how a small radar strapped to the back of his sledge may be able to tell us whether year-round ice in the Arctic Ocean will soon become a thing of the past.
"The journey's going to be about 700 miles in distance, taking about three months," said Hadow. "In the earlier phases, the temperatures are about minus 50 degrees, so it's nearly five times colder than a domestic deep freeze. And we're towing sledges with our camping equipment and our survey equipment — almost twice our body weights — for most of the distance."
The expedition's "specially commissioned radar" will send a pulse of energy through the snow and ice, "giving an incredibly detailed cross-profile every ten centimeters along the 700-mile journey." About 12 million readings will be taken during the trek.
The scientist whose troubling prediction the team may be able to help prove was also at the operation center to talk to us. Professor Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. has been studying the Arctic for years. He says the region is providing an "amplifying response, in terms of global warming and climate change, for the entire Earth."
Maslowski offers the following stark warning:
"According to our studies, it's very likely that if this current trend of ice decline based on the last decade or so continues, or accelerates, the ice might be almost gone in summer sometime between 2010 and 2016."
© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved. It's no longer a radical thought that the Earth's atmosphere is heating up, with potentially catastrophic consequences for all those living on our planet.
Video: For decades, a growing number of scientists have been predicting that man's addiction to natural resources would one day throw the planet into an irreversible cycle of environmental degradation. What was once dismissed as alarmist conjecture has become, for the most part, empirical fact.
But how much time does our bloated world-population have left to turn back the dial on global warming? You will often hear that, while we are undoubtedly haunted by the threat of mass-flooding and superheated summers, it is our children's children who will have to deal with those dark realities.
Eco-meltdown, however, may be much closer than we think.
At the end of February a small team of U.K.-based explorers will strike out for a 90-day journey to the North Pole. They hope to determine whether the first big — and some would say indisputable — symptom of an Earth seemingly on the edge of terminal sickness will become apparent, not by 2050 or 2100, but within the next five years.
Pen Hadow, leader of the three-person Catlin Arctic Survey, spoke to CBS News at his team's London operations center about the arduous task which lies ahead. He described how a small radar strapped to the back of his sledge may be able to tell us whether year-round ice in the Arctic Ocean will soon become a thing of the past.
"The journey's going to be about 700 miles in distance, taking about three months," said Hadow. "In the earlier phases, the temperatures are about minus 50 degrees, so it's nearly five times colder than a domestic deep freeze. And we're towing sledges with our camping equipment and our survey equipment — almost twice our body weights — for most of the distance."
The expedition's "specially commissioned radar" will send a pulse of energy through the snow and ice, "giving an incredibly detailed cross-profile every ten centimeters along the 700-mile journey." About 12 million readings will be taken during the trek.
The scientist whose troubling prediction the team may be able to help prove was also at the operation center to talk to us. Professor Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. has been studying the Arctic for years. He says the region is providing an "amplifying response, in terms of global warming and climate change, for the entire Earth."
Maslowski offers the following stark warning:
"According to our studies, it's very likely that if this current trend of ice decline based on the last decade or so continues, or accelerates, the ice might be almost gone in summer sometime between 2010 and 2016."
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Posted by cydygitt1
2 Peter 1:16
We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
-The Bible has eye-witness accounts of the events that occurred.
How many eye-witness accounts of Darwin's version of history do you have available cydygitt1 ??
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Posted by cydygitt1 at 01:39 PM : Feb 18, 2009
Actually it's you secularists/Darwinists who are pushing and imposing your religion of secular humanism in classrooms all across America, and you've been doing it for decades now.
Don't you dare try to play the victim role either. We know what you're up to...pushing your intolerant Darwinian Socialist views into the minds of innocent children.
www.expelledthemovie.com
posted by cydygitt1
If you don't believe in a book of fairy tales then why do you believe in Darwin's "The Origin of Species by Natural Selection"?
That book takes home the cake when it comes to secular fairy tales.
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Posted by mdalerwill at 06:22 PM
I fully understand the distinction but you missed the point. In a follow up post. Man has been studying other species for more then 100,000 years but yet here we are finding new species. Are they "New" or are they just unfound species, only further research will tell.
That said, in looking at GW people look at warming and want to see some manmade reason for it. That mentality goes back thousands of years when people sacrificed others to change the world during a string of bad luck. Today the see CO2 and make a quantum leap that correlation means causation, which is the same as blaming women (witches) for a bad crop year. Total stupidity and ignorance of the highest order. Gore et.al. are playing to those fears so wise up and look beyond the headlines.
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Posted by louiville2 at 12:11 PM : Feb 18, 2009
I am not going to launch into this war of words a few people here are having about the science behind global warming, but I would like to point out one thing. There is a difference between new species and previously unknown species. One suggests creation of something that was not here before, the other something that just had not yet been discovered. The discovery of unknown species does not negate the extinction of known species.
In case you don''t know, Al Gore is the one who is behind the global warming myth and is brainwashing children against the beliefs of their parents.
Also, Do you honestly believe everything you hear on National Geographic? Who funds them? Take a deeper look. It sounds like you are well "indoctrinated". YOU pay the upcoming "carbon" taxes for Al''s theories and, I''ll keep my money.