NASA: Arctic Melting Is 'Alarming'

(CBS)  Icebreakers crunching their way through the Arctic ice pack at the top of the world are finding more open water than ever, CBS News correspondent Jerry Bowen reports.

NASA scientists say it's all because of what they call an "alarming" rapid melting of winter sea ice — the usually permanent ice cover over the Arctic Ocean. In just the past two years, it has shrunk by 14 percent. The loss has been just at the edges, but it's still a Texas-sized loss that researchers say is linked to man-made global warming.

"Sea ice melt is actually a consequence of that warming. The fact that you have a longer melt period is also a consequence of greenhouse warming," says Josefino Comiso, a NASA scientist.

Scientists are studying ice thickness and water temperatures in the very heart of the Artic at the North Pole. Two years ago, the idea of an ice-free Arctic was a serious consideration.

"It does represent a fundamental change in our global climate. And it's a concern with any of the global warming scenarios," says James Morison of the University of Washington.

NASA climate scientist James Hansen believes the world has little time left to combat greenhouse gases. "I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change...no longer than a decade at the most," he told a climate conference this week.

If nothing is done, the global warming forecasts speak of rising sea levels worldwide – 3 feet to 20 foot higher seas from Manhattan to Malibu by century's end – but disaster planners say there might still be a fix in the best-case scenario, a way to shore up America. But there's a cost.

"The estimates of what it would cost to defend or adapt the entire United States to the low estimates of rising sea levels is a couple of hundred million dollars a year over the coming century," says Rob Lempert of the Rand Corporation.

That's if policymakers take the warnings seriously. There are some who contend global warming is fiction — that the sky is not falling. But at the top of the world, something is going on: The ice is disappearing.

[Kingkudzu]

It's overstating the obvious that our current administration has a vested interest in maintaing our dependance on fossil fuels--the President and his cronies are all oilmen fighting a war in a country with the lowest oil pull weight (the energy required to bring oil to the surface) in the world. The Alaskan reserves have peaked and are in decline, new deposits in Siberia and other innaccesible places (innaccessible to the United states) will keep pushing the agenda of George Bush and friends until Greenwich Village has surf shops.

I believe the true legacy of this Bush administration will only be apparent by the time he is kissing the great granchildren goodnight by the light of their own personal nuclear power plant down in Crawford, Texas.(on the Gulf)

We as a people need to realize that there is no magic invention that will undo the decades of damage done to our environment at the hands of greedy and self-aggrandizing policy makers like our current leader on Pennslyvania Avenue. His mis-adventures are wars where our Reserves and National Guardsmen and their families pay the toll, his turning a blind eye to the problem of global warming will see his super-rich and powerful friends and family just get richer until it is too late, if it isn't already, to prevent real and lasting catastrophe.
As I mentioned earlier, I believe its overstating the obvious.

[arj4031]

Some people love to avoid responsibility and think there's some cheap & easy solution that will allow them to continue guzzling fossil fuel like there's no tomorrow. Not only would a massive satellite cooling program be a short-term bandaid, but I suspect it would be rather expensive and carry with it the risks inherent in directly tampering with the climate system.

Along with avoiding the use of SUV's for casual city transit, we need a massive expansion of multi-feedstock biodiesel and clean, efficient engines.

[clestes-2009]

as time runs out we can only hope that the next administration has more understanding of the global environment and is less in the pocket of big oil than this one.

Thanks for the news

[phldml]

Hey Cbscrash07,

The sattalites we would need would have to be the size of texas. And you would need quite a few
to make any progress.

[Syndicate]

Global warming could be controlled for few billion dollars and done today. All we need to do is launch some satellites that deploy giant solor shades. These would shade the earth and cool it down. We could even regulate it. But no all the enviromentalist want to do is take away my suv. If we are going to talk about global warming then lets talk and stop pointing fingers. we don't need the kyoto protocal all we need to do is launch some satelites

[breezy321]

It will be WAY costlier to just sit and wait, and then try to fix disasters as they occur. Even the best case scenario says that there will be droughts in places, floods in others, lowering water supply due to run-off glaciers (which we're already seeing in parts of CO, AR, NE and Europe). Its not just the coastal cities, our food and water supplies are in danger. And you can't just turn off a switch and make it go away - we are taking about Earth's climate here!We are conducting a dangerous uncontrolled experiment with the Earth we live on. The technolgies to address climate change are already HERE. If we enact energy efficiency standards from power plants to vehicles to appliances, step-up deployment of Wind, Solar, Tidal, Geo-thermal and Cogeneration technolgies (most of which are already developed and competitive), we can make a huge impact on our energy consumption. Watch "An Inconvenient Truth" it will motivate even the most hardened "Earth-is-flat" Skeptics.

[barry19661]

Gore 2008.

[mona18]

thanks for presenting this. I think we all need to wake up and get involved.

[blueskies11-2009]

Thanks for keeping this issue in the public eye. I think wake-up calls like this are extremely valuable in getting the word out. If the public starts putting this higher on the priority list, maybe then the politicians will finally get busy. I like the idea of following up with suggestions of what can be done to begin solving this critical situation.

[teddavies]

Thank you for investing time and money in this type of news. I hope this will wake up the world leaders.