Ministers Visit Melting Antarctica

Researchers From Around The World Study The South Pole's Role In Climate Change

(CBS/AP)  A parka-clad band of environment ministers landed in this remote corner of the icy continent on Monday, in the final days of an intense season of climate research, to learn more about how a melting Antarctica may endanger the planet.

Representatives from more than a dozen nations, including the U.S., China, Britain and Russia, were to rendezvous at a Norwegian research station with American and Norwegian scientists coming in on the last leg of a 1,400-mile, two-month trek over the ice from the South Pole.

The visitors will gain "hands-on experience of the colossal magnitude of the Antarctic continent and its role in global climate change," said the mission's organizer, Norway's Environment Ministry.

They'll also learn about the great uncertainties plaguing research into this southernmost continent and its link to global warming: How much is Antarctica warming? How much ice is melting into the sea? How high might it raise ocean levels worldwide?

The answers are so elusive that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a Nobel Prize-winning U.N. scientific network, excluded the potential threat from the polar ice sheets from calculations in its authoritative 2007 assessment of global warming.

The IPCC forecast that oceans may rise up to 23 inches this century, from heat expansion and melting land ice, if the world does little to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for atmospheric warming.

But the U.N. panel did not take Antarctica and Greenland into account, since the interactions of atmosphere and ocean with their enormous stores of ice - Antarctica has 90 percent of the world's ice - are poorly understood. And yet the West Antarctic ice sheet, some of whose outlet glaciers are pouring ice at a faster rate into the sea, "could be the most dangerous tipping point this century," says a leading U.S. climatologist, NASA's James Hansen.

"There is the potential for several-meter rise of sea level," Hansen told The Associated Press last week. The scenario is "frightening," says the IPCC's chief scientist, Rajendra Pachauri, who met with the ministers in Cape Town before their nine-hour flight here from South Africa.

Finding the answers has been key to the 2007-2009 International Polar Year (IPY), a mobilization of 10,000 scientists and 40,000 others from more than 60 countries engaged in intense Arctic and Antarctic research over the past two southern summer seasons - on the ice, at sea, via icebreaker, submarine and surveillance satellite.

The 12-member Norwegian-American Scientific Traverse of East Antarctica - the trekkers "coming home" to Troll - was one important part of that work, having drilled deep cores into the annual layers of ice sheet in this little-explored region, to determine how much snow has fallen historically and its composition.

Such work will be combined with another IPY project, an all-out effort to map by satellite radar the "velocity fields" of all Antarctic ice sheets over the past two summers, to assess how fast ice is being pushed into the surrounding sea.

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Video:
Arctic Explorers & Science

At the end of February, a team of U.K.-based explorers will strike out on foot 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 in 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.

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Then scientists may understand better the "mass balance" - how much the snow, originating with ocean evaporation, is offsetting the ice pouring seaward.

"We're not sure what the East Antarctic ice sheet is doing," David Carlson, IPY director, explained last week from the program's offices in Cambridge, England. "It looks like it is flowing a little faster. So is that matched by accumulation? What they come back with will be crucial to understanding the process."

The visiting environment ministers were those of Algeria, Britain, Congo, the Czech Republic, Finland, Norway and Sweden. Other countries were represented by climate policymakers and negotiators, including Xie Zhenhua of China and Dan Reifsnyder, a deputy assistant U.S. secretary of state.

During their long day here under the 17-hour sunlight of a dying southern summer, when temperatures still drop to near zero Fahrenheit, the northern visitors took in the awesome sights of Queen Maud Land, a forbidding, mountainous icescape 3,000 miles southwest of South Africa, and toured the Norwegians' high-tech Troll Research Station, upgraded to year-round operations in 2005.

The politics of climate inevitably mixed with the science. Stranded in Cape Town an extra two days when high Antarctic winds scrubbed a planned weekend flight, the ministers were gently lobbied at lunch and dinner by Scandinavian counterparts favoring urgent action on a new global agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, the deal to reduce greenhouse gases that expires in 2012.

President Barack Obama's new U.S. administration has promised action after years of U.S. resistance to the Kyoto process. But the complexity of issues and limited time before a Copenhagen conference in December, target date for a deal, makes the outcome as uncertain as the future of Antarctica's glaciers and offshore ice shelves.

Much more research lies ahead, say the scientists, including investigations of the possible warming and shifting currents of the Southern Ocean ringing Antarctica. "We need to put more resources in," said IPY's Carlson.

Outspoken scientists say political action may be even more urgently needed.

"We are out of our cotton-pickin' minds if we let that process get started," Hansen said of an Antarctic meltdown. "Because there will be no stopping it."

[jameslouiky]

Another is can you name something that is more toxic in PPM or PPB (parts per billion), and is naturally occuring? Go for it. Lets see if you can back up your BS post.

The only error I made is I should have specified untreated water from the Ohio River.

Posted by the74blaster at 6:32 PM

You should look up bacillus of botulism, is far more deadly. 100 grams is capable of killing everyone on this planet and will kill someone in few days. Dioxin may kill you in twenty years from cancer, maybe. Botulism is not man made but from bacteria.

"Botulinum Toxin is the world's deadliest poison and the most poisonous naturally occurring substances. It is a neurotoxin protein produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum."


A single one cell organisum, since it can reproduce itself can everyone.

[the74blaster]

Posted by louiville2 at 03:59 PM : Feb 23, 2009,

So are you trying to tell me that water carries dissolved liquids with different boiling points or suspended solids with it when it evaporates?

Another is can you name something that is more toxic in PPM or PPB (parts per billion), than Dioxin, and is naturally occuring?

http://cqs.com/edioxin.htm

Quote

We now know that dioxin exhibits serious health effects when it reaches as little as a few parts per trillion in your body fat. Dioxin is a powerful hormone disrupting chemical.Go for it. Lets see if you can back up your BS post.

The only error I made is I should have specified untreated water from the Ohio River.

Sorry about the repost, I needed to include a couple of Man Made chemicals.

Now Louisville2, show me something that occurs naturally that impacts man's health with a concentration level of sever parts per trillion.

[the74blaster]

These **************!it is summer in that part of the world, they don''t think people know that. The ice will be less down there because of the warmer weather! What a bunch of shiitheads! Yup, sure is good people have nothing better to do but lie through there liberal a$$!

Posted by libsbloww at 06:21 PM : Feb 23, 2009,

Really. If you have some facts to state then post them. Lets see how well you can defend against critical thinking from an independent scientist!

Bring it on!

[the74blaster]

Am i obnoxious enough? Maybe. But not nearly as obnoxious as those of you who spout policy and politics and world order without knowing your grade school earth science.

Posted by zertrat at 03:47 PM : Feb 23, 2009,

Has anyone told them that the Earth is a sphere and is not flat?

[the74blaster]

We already have and worse for you see what''s here has always been here and will always be here. Every drop of water on this planet has passed through something/someone millions of times. Man can make some nasty items but they pale in comparison to naturally/biologically made compounds.

Posted by louiville2 at 03:59 PM : Feb 23, 2009,

So are you trying to tell me that water carries dissolved liquids with different boiling points or suspended solids with it when it evaporates?

Another is can you name something that is more toxic in PPM or PPB (parts per billion), and is naturally occuring? Go for it. Lets see if you can back up your BS post.

The only error I made is I should have specified untreated water from the Ohio River.

[zertrat]

Dear libssbloww,
You are such a polite, thoughtful person. Its nice to know you have learned that the temperate zones have seasons. What a genius. Thank you. If only we had learned this before, just think of all the trouble we would have saved.

[libsbloww]

These **************!it is summer in that part of the world, they don't think people know that. The ice will be less down there because of the warmer weather! What a bunch of shiitheads! Yup, sure is good people have nothing better to do but lie through there liberal a$$!

[louiville2]

Nice try to divert attention from the fact that your math is nothing but fuzzy math. (prove it)

I suggest you read something more meaningful. Try Island ecology.

Apparently you do not fully understand the concept of heat transfer and how it fits with global warming. (do you? If so explain it with facts)

I would not expect a blow hard conservative to admit they are wrong since its easier to resort to name calling or change the topic of discussion.(Hmmm that's your plan, you have offered no facts)

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Posted by the74blaster at 02:09 PM

All your rant says is that you have read the "front page" where fear sells but you have never read the "back page" where the good news is.

Spend some open minded time reading both sides of an issue for the truth is some where in between.

BTW "If you beleive your posts that man is so insignifant to Earth as a whole, then prove it by taking a nice cold drink out of the Ohio River, just downstream from the outfall of a chemical plant or waste treatment facility."

We already have and worse for you see what's here has always been here and will always be here. Every drop of water on this planet has passed through something/someone millions of times. Man can make some nasty items but they pale in comparison to naturally/biologically made compounds.

[zertrat]

I'm thrilled to see some conservatives have learned that there is an annual cycle in sunlight regimes in the northern and southern hemispheres. Congrats! You've just passed 6th grade! (i'm being kind, most kids know that much earlier.) Now, move on to our next lesson, which is to learn that over just the last 60 million years we have fluctuated between a world with tropical conditions extending almost to the arctic circle, to conditions with ice over parts of the temperate zone. Then you will be equipped to learn about rates of climate change over geological time. Then in late high school you can move on to understand the relationship between ecosystems and climate.

Am i obnoxious enough? Maybe. But not nearly as obnoxious as those of you who spout policy and politics and world order without knowing your grade school earth science.

[zertrat]

Holy Joe is like a lot of Americans. They don't have much science education so they say sarcastic things like: "Could someone please explain how the earth came out of the last Ice Age without man's intervention?"

The earth's climate has always been changing, of course, but the fact is that the rate of change now is much faster than any event in the past. Instead of happening over tens of thousands of years, which would give time for habitat zones to slide north or south, the change is taking place over centuries. In the past, there were no coastal cities and industrial plants, agriculture-intensive zones at certain latitudes, resources like seafood already pushed to the limit. The changes are faster now, habitats are already pushed to the brink by human over-use, and there are, well, humans living here now! Can't you conservatives just give up the fight of ignorance and admit we are facing a huge crisis? I love it that you guys try to use science in your favor (snicker).