An Arctic Journey

Taking A Close-Up Look At The Impact Of Climate Change

(CBS)  The Arctic, where the midnight summer sun kisses the horizon that never sets. It's the land of 24-hour daylight, and is home to some of the world's most beautiful — and most endangered — environments.

"There's not a whole lot of people that have been here and not a whole lot of people that have seen these things," says Bryon Gibbons.

Things like an iceberg or a musk ox — an animal you'll find only in this remote part of the world. It's scenery like this that continues to astonish Arctic veterans like Gibbons, a Canadian Coast Guard officer who's been coming to the region for 23 years.

But there's something else he's not seeing as much of: ice.

"There's definitely not the amount that used to be here," he says. "The concentrations are smaller. There's a lot more open water."

What Gibbons sees from sea level is even clearer from space. Satellite images show that Arctic sea ice has decreased substantially from 1979 to 2005.

This summer, scientists saw the most rapid reduction in sea ice in nearly 30 years.

Troubling observations like these brought together an international team to find out how dramatic changes here affect our global climate. They're making their way through the Arctic Ocean — a body of water larger than the United States — traveling aboard the Canadian icebreaker Louis S. St. Laurent, because while there's less ice, it's far from gone.

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Follow Daniel Sieberg's Journey: Blog, Photos, and Video

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"Things are happening really rapidly in the Arctic," says geneticist John Nelson.

Scientists like Nelson are trying to keep up, reports CBS News science and technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg. Nelson is leading the expedition, studying the water and its creatures, like starfish, to see how climate change affects even the tiniest organisms.

"If we understand what things may be doing in the Arctic, because it's tied to climate pretty much everywhere in the globe, then we might be able to understand what might be happening as things warm up," he says.

In fact, 11 of the past 12 years have been the warmest worldwide since 1850. And, of course, warmer air impacts life both in the sea and on the land.

On Devon Island, a glacier slowly makes its way into the sea. As that happens, it can affect everything from the migration patterns of animals to the amount of light that's reflected back into the atmosphere.

Think of Arctic ice as a mirror, reflecting some of the sun's power back into space and helping to keep the earth cool. As ice disappears, temperatures go up and more ice melts.

We saw temperatures averaging close to 40 degrees, and while glaciers melt and freeze annually, a recent study found they are getting thinner and pouring more water into our oceans. So what may look like a river is runoff from the glacier. Even a few inches added to the world sea level could affect millions of people who live along coastlines.

But the question for oceanographer Eddy Carmack is how much the warming trend is being accelerated by humans and how much is part of a natural cycle.

"If we had been here, in the same spot 10,000 years ago, we wouldn't be standing on sea ice; we'd probably be on a glacier extending down off the coast of Canada. If we went back 120,000 years we might be treading water," Carmack says.

It's the immediate future that has Carmack and others gathering hard data to better predict what lies ahead for those of us living south of the Arctic Circle.

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In part two of his series, Sieberg takes a look at how global warming affects the food chain — from plankton to polar bears.

[oakishpines]

if we make folk pay to learn to do 'brain surgery': then the twelve year old stomach surgeon from the local little fast food garden crop will have forgotten nothing when she trips on the interstate walk home from work over our concussioned heads after crashing our spore bloom dragons


'folk favor the pharoah and fear neighbor joe because the pharoahs armies diseducate neighbor joes so the pharoahs folk can have all the best care'


if we clear all the men with bouquets from the front pages, will we be left in a world full of girls with bombs??


yseedsberry

it's like an evolved paperback book exchange

only it's a place to shop gift bargains aand jobs and opertunitys and wutnots and trade arts and crafts and to rally around sick beds dancing get well feed world songs comforting the afflicted and to rally around the well beds dancing get sick tax world songs afflicting the comfortable so as to have someones ill enough to occupy the sick beds and demand all the parades in their names

[oakishpines]

if we clear all the men with bouquets from the front pages, will we be left in a world full of girls with bombs??

[oakishpines]

if we make folk pay to learn to do 'brain surgery': then the twelve year old stomach surgeon from the local little fast food garden crop will have forgotten nothing when she trips on the interstate walk home from work over our concussioned heads after crashing our spore bloom dragons

[oakishpines]

most folk most time
dance get well feed world songs
rallied round the sick beds drifting along
tens millions spore bloom weed dragon
trail fickle first aid lunch farm
cottage studio trails
(some folk some time
dance get sick tax world songs)

most invest their funds in non charity
and their votes in taxation at gunpoint
(that was a joke, who needs funds or votes)

to float above the poverty line here,
one needs around 60 dollars per work day
or one dollar from each of 60 people

for all to float above the poverty line,
each in an average county of 90,000
must pay out 60 dollars per day
(and take in 60 dollars per day)

(the global poverty line is like $2,
businesses that exploit both markets
are sucking the 2 and 60 dollar lines
more close together, optimistically)

if, in a county, theres, very roughly,
300 trail groups of 16+ acres each,
and 300 folk each; and, in the world,
theres, very roughly, 90,000 countys
of 90,000 folk each:

then there's about 2500 square feet per folkone


(actually, there's just over 4 acres per huvan,
but much of it is relatively uninhabitable,
much of the rest will likely be 'busy blooming'
because the trails like to move,
and the population doubles rather rapidly,
and we will be below 2 acres per huvan,
then one acre, and so on: so 16 acres is
just an estimate of a pleasant amount
of currently required space)

[hawksprings]

Here's a story about Global Warming during the 1920's that you will NEVER see on CBSNBCABCCNN or Public Radio/TV.

Why not, you ask? It doesn't fit their template.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070814/NATION02/108140063

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