Recent satellite photos reveal a vast ice sheet covering the Arctic Ocean. This is a noteworthy development because of concern among some scientists that the Arctic Ice Cap would disappear entirely this year due to predictions of Global Warming.

 

Reported by the University of Illinois's Arctic Climate Research Center, the study concludes that worldwide sea ice covering is equal to that monitored in 1979, when satellite photos first became available of the Arctic.

 

Researchers predicted that the thinness of the new Arctic sea ice meant it would melt more quickly. This actually fostered its growth because less snow accumulated on the ice as it grew. In related news, Polar Bear numbers are on the rise.

 

Btw polar bear population has increased 5 fold since 1979.

 

http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=76028

 

Please give up more money and freedom for fake science so our government can have more power.

 

I can't wait til they announce aliens are a threat and we need to spend a few trillion on space guns to defend us.:laugh3::\

Is this for real? If so, it's very interesting indeed!;)

Apparently the conference in Copenhagen is creating a huge amount of carbon. They're flying in with their jets, driving their BMW's to the conference to tell us to stop?

 

Yeah Mark, it's real.

Well then the conspiracy theorists are gonna have a field-day!!:lol:

Well then the conspiracy theorists are gonna have a field-day!!:lol:

 

It's not a conspiracy, it's government lies to gain power. Remember Iraq had WMD's, terrorist are going to get you at any moment and we're all going to die from a heatwave.

 

Unless you give up freedoms and money, because government can solve all problems. They may have to first create them, but they can solve them.

:wtf: so.......

 

SAVE THE TURTLES :awesome:

Amidst all the corporate attempts to spin the understanding, and the researchers who want more funding, or have set their minds in one frame of thought, lay a few hearty researchers and institutions who are seeking the truth, as some are actually motivated by the moment of discovery, of determining what's really occurring.

I trust not in momentary whims of sea ice levels, yearly temperature fluctuations, or the gossip over some Emails - I am seeking truth in the broader trends, and the mass balance, the mass flow of carbon on the earth, and how the biosphere reacts.

Besides all the extremists, alarmists, and propagandists lay those who seek to unravel the mystery, and those who are not afraid to consider all possibilities, to test and question their own assumptions, and broaden their understanding..

It's not a conspiracy, it's government lies to gain power. Remember Iraq had WMD's, terrorist are going to get you at any moment and we're all going to die from a heatwave.

 

Unless you give up freedoms and money, because government can solve all problems. They may have to first create them, but they can solve them.

 

That's right. Michael Moore was going on about that sort of stuff a few years back................... ;)

Surely it is a conspiracy of sorts, though..................................

Year-round Arctic ice nearly gone, expert says

 

Thin 'rotten' ice replacing multi-year floes that are home to polar bears

 

 

WINNIPEG – An Arctic researcher says the permanent northern sea ice that usually survives the summer has all but disappeared.

David Barber, who just returned from a research trip to the Beaufort Sea, says his team was shocked by the state of the sea ice.

He says the thick, multi-year ice that is home to polar bears has been replaced by "rotten" ice, which is thin and flimsy.

Barber says researchers on the expedition watched a multi-year ice floe the size of Winnipeg break up before their eyes.

He says experts around the world believed Arctic sea ice was recovering because satellite images showed it was expanding.

But he says the satellites were misleading because the rotten ice looked sturdy on the surface. Published On Fri Nov 27 2009

 

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/731776--year-round-arctic-ice-nearly-gone-expert-says

 

 

 

Arctic ice meltdown remains severe: report

 

 

 

 

By Randy BoswellNovember 27, 2009

 

Studies suggesting the Arctic sea ice has made a modest recovery following its record-setting retreat in 2007 are misleading and underestimate the severity of the polar meltdown, says one of Canada’s top ice scientists.

David Barber, Canada Research Chair in Arctic System Science at the University of Manitoba, says satellite images used to track the overall extent of Arctic ice don’t adequately perceive how weak and “rotten” the region’s older, thicker, multi-year ice cover has become.

His findings, to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, suggest a transformative change in Arctic ecosystems is accelerating and that safe shipping in polar waters during the summer and fall will begin much sooner than many experts predict.

“These are very significant findings since the scientists and public all thought that sea ice was recovering since the minimum extent in 2007,” says Mr. Barber, an environment and geography professor with the university’s Centre for Earth Observation Science.

“In 2008 and 2009 satellite data showed a growth in Arctic sea ice extension leaving some to reckon global warming was reversing,” states a summary of the research. “Contrary to what satellites recently suggested, we are actually speeding up the loss of the remaining, healthy, multi-year sea ice.”

The replacement of older, thicker ice with weak first-year ice has been noted by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, one of the leading trackers of the annual ebb and flow of Arctic ice cover. The Colorado-based centre was instrumental in alerting the world in 2007 to the unprecedented meltdown in Arctic sea ice, from 14 million square kilometres that winter to about 4.3 million square kilometres by September 2007.

The past two summers have shown the late-summer minimum at about 4.7 million square kilometres (2008) and 5.4 million square kilometres (2009), still the second- and third-lowest extents since satellite measurements began in 1979.

The NSIDC did note in its October summary of sea ice conditions that “the ice cover remained thin, leaving the ice cover vulnerable to melt in coming summers.”

But Mr. Barber’s study appears to drive home that point and raise new questions about the health of even the thickest Arctic ice. The research highlights the limitations of satellites in assessing the rapid and widespread degradation of the region’s older ice cover.

Using data gathered in September, during a voyage in the Beaufort Sea aboard the Canadian Coast Guard research vessel Amundsen, Mr. Barber observed that even relatively thick multi-year ice was so “heavily decayed” by warming temperatures that the ship “easily broke through floes six to eight metres thick.”

He said: “Ship navigation across the pole is imminent as the type of ice which resides there is no longer a barrier to ships in the late summer and fall.”

Satellite readings of ice age and thickness are limited, he notes, because they can’t fully distinguish between rock-hard, super-thick floes and degraded ones vulnerable to rapid breakdown after decades or even centuries of remaining intact.

He said that healthy multi-year ice and “the ‘rotten’ ice have similar near-surface temperatures, similar near-surface salinities” and that “when satellites try to identify who’s who, the microwaves behave similar enough that cases of mistaken identity abound.”

Mr. Barber’s findings emerge at a time when federal MPs are debating a bill to rename Canada’s northern sea route the “Canadian Northwest Passage” to symbolically bolster the country’s claims to the disputed waterway.

The study also coincides with rising concern about Canada’s long-term environmental strategy — including mitigation of climate change impacts in the North — ahead of the international Copenhagen conference aimed at curbing global carbon emissions

 

http://www.canada.com/technology/Arctic+meltdown+remains+severe+report/2276659/story.html

Hungry polar bears resorting to cannibalism

 

But Inuit leader disputes starvation is cause

 

Last Updated: Thursday, December 3, 2009 | 5:49 PM CT

 

The late formation of Arctic sea ice may be forcing some hungry and desperate polar bears in northern Manitoba to resort to cannibalism. Eight cases of mature male polar bears eating bear cubs have been reported this year among the animals around Churchill, according to scientists.

Four cases were reported to Manitoba Conservation and four to Environment Canada.

Some tourists on a tundra buggy tour of the Churchill wildlife management area on Nov. 20 were shaken and started crying after witnessing a male bear eating a cub, said John Gunter, general manager for Frontiers North Adventures, an area tour operator.

"A big male polar bear separated a young cub from its mother and had its way with the cub," he said. "But the whole time, while that mother polar bear watched and witnessed, and actually after the big bears left, she still tried to take care of it.

"It was difficult for our guests to witness and it was difficult for me to hear about and learn about. It was a sombre day on the buggy that's for sure."

'It's a normal normal occurrence. '

—Jose Kusugak,Kivalliq Inuit Association

In recent years, Manitoba Conservation has received one to two reports each year about bear cannibalism.

Retired Environment Canada biologist Ian Stirling, who has studied bears all over the arctic, said evidence suggests the cubs are being killed for food, not just so the male can mate with the sow. The Hudson Bay sea ice, which the bears use to get at the seals they need to fatten up for winter, isn't appearing until weeks later than it used to, he said.

However, an Inuit leader in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut said the incidents are non-events and that it's wrong to connect the bear's behaviour with starvation.

"It makes the south — southern people — look so ignorant," said Kivalliq Inuit Association president Jose Kusugak.

"A male polar bear eating a cub becomes a big story and they try to marry it with climate change and so on, it becomes absurd when it's a normal normal occurrence," Kusugak said.

Kusugak admitted some communities are having polar bear problems because warmer than average temperatures means sea ice hasn't yet formed properly.

But he disagrees that their numbers are dwindling or that polar bears are in other danger because of climate change.

Bears trying to survive longer on fat reserves, conservationists say

 

Infanticide occurs among all species of bears but can become accentuated among polar bears when they run low on fat reserves and become hungry enough to resort to cannibalism, according to Polar Bears International, a non-profit organization dedicated to the worldwide conservation of polar bears and their Arctic habitat. Scientists predict that with later formation of ice in the fall and earlier breakup in the spring because of climate warming, polar bears in places like western Hudson Bay will have to survive on land for longer on their diminishing fat reserves instead of hunting seals.

"At this time of year, polar bears are hungry because they have been surviving on their stored fat reserves since the ice cover of Hudson Bay broke up a few months ago. Thus, days they spend waiting for the sea ice to return, they are losing weight and eventually get quite hungry," said Stirling, who has studied the western Hudson Bay polar bear population for over 35 years.

'Days they spend waiting for the sea ice to return, they are losing weight and eventually get quite hungry.'

—John Gunter, Frontiers North Adventures

"During the summer and autumn, polar bears lose up to 30 per cent of their body mass because they burn up to one kilogram of stored body fat every day while they are waiting for the ice to freeze.

"We have observed that the average body condition of the western Hudson Bay polar bears has been declining for almost 30 years. By mid-to-late November, if they can't get on the sea ice to feed on seals, males may seek out alternate food sources."

Killing of a cub for food by an adult male has also been recorded in Svalbard, in the Norwegian Arctic, said Stirling.

And in the southern Beaufort Sea, where the body condition of polar bears has also declined apparently because of deteriorating ice conditions, there have been four cases of cannibalism by adult male bears in the last few years.

In those four cases, the victims were three adult females and one yearling, according to Stirling.

Ice breaking up earlier than ever

 

The average date of breakup of the sea ice in western Hudson Bay is about three weeks earlier than it was 30 years ago, although there is a lot of variation between years, said Robert Buchanan, president of Polar Bears International.

'While these images are very difficult to look at, we need to remind people that there is hope and each of us can help save polar bears and their habitat.'

—Robert Buchanan, Polar Bears International

In 2008, the breakup was later, in early August, so the bears came ashore in better condition than in most recent years.

But that advantage has been lost due to the current delay in freeze-up, Buchanan said.

This year may be an even longer wait for the bears to return to the sea ice to hunt as the current long range forecast calls for above average temperatures in the region until the second week of December.

Twenty years ago, the average date the bears returned to the ice was Nov. 8, Buchanan noted.

"While these images are very difficult to look at, we need to remind people that there is hope and each of us can help save polar bears and their habitat," he said about the photos provided by the organization of the Nov. 20 incident of cannibalism.

With files from The Canadian Press

 

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2009/12/03/mb-polar-bear-cannibalism-churchill-manitoba.html

Polar bear population has massively increased. 5 fold since 1979.

 

Maybe they'll become so populous they'll go extinct! Ice is increasing, polar bear population increasing, temperatures dropping......there is a reason they changed it from "global warming" to "Climate change" lol

Ooh ooh, question! *raises hand*

 

Did you actually read all of what I posted? (About the ice, not the bears I mean.)

Throughout the animal kingdom many species resort to these behaviors. If things were as bad as you insist population wouldn't be massively increasing but decreasing.

 

Satellite images and others studies show Arctic ice is growing. All the main claims are being disproved by the facts.

 

Ice growing, weather cooling, population increasing.... If the opposite of these were to occur, I'd be singing a different tune.

*blinks*

 

I'll take that as a 'no' then.

 

I have not insisted a single thing in this thread. I repeated a couple of articles from respected news associations that have come up in the press recently. The comments in the ice articles are a direct response by a scientist to the information in your first post.

*blinks*

 

I'll take that as a 'no' then.

 

I have not insisted a single thing in this thread. I repeated a couple of articles from respected news associations that have come up in the press recently. The comments in the ice articles are a direct response by a scientist to the information in your first post.

 

I read them.

 

Ok I skimmed through it, now I'm reading it all the way through.

I read them.

 

Ok I skimmed through it, now I'm reading it all the way through.

See? That's what I thought.

Apparently the conference in Copenhagen is creating a huge amount of carbon. They're flying in with their jets, driving their BMW's to the conference to tell us to stop?

 

Yeah Mark, it's real.

 

Yep, please stop flying/driving/living so we can fly/drive/live more to support our false science (did you read those emails?)

Yep, please stop flying/driving/living so we can fly/drive/live more to support our false science (did you read those emails?)

 

No, what emails?:thinking:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/nov/23/global-warming-leaked-email-climate-scientists

They're elitist who want more money and power and will go against science to get it.

Milliards will not help already, all of us will die till 2050. I am an environmentalist, but I see no ways, globalization will simply squeeze out everything that possible from this planet, convert into a money, and then it will appear that living is possible only on former Gimalayakh, where and oligarchs will settle. To begin the real work in the question of global warming it is needed to be Spiderman or Fox Mulder:(

article

 

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/731776--year-round-arctic-ice-nearly-gone-expert-says

 

As if anyone on here is going to be believing The Star anymore - nice work.

:huh: That's from the Toronto Star. It's Toronto's main legitimate newspaper not a tabloid. A Canadian newspaper speaking to a Canadian scientist who'd just gotten back from sea... I posted it because it was a nice summary of the longer National Post article.

 

I have to say I don't follow you... :confused:

Random half drunken/tired rant: For you people bringing up CO2 bullshit: Temperature levels increase CO2 levels, not the other way around. The ocean releases CO2 into the atmosphere when it gets warmer; it isn't CO2 emissions causing global warming, or any greenhouse gas for that matter.

 

The most common greenhouse gas on Earth is H2O (Water Vapor) anyway.

 

So even if Global warming IS happening, it's not humans causing it, and it never will be. Humans can never measure up to the Earth's own natural climate cycles.

 

 

It's been happening for hundreds of thousands of years; humans have only been here for some 200,000, and we only just began using Fossil fuels.

No, I got a Prius,moved into a cave and started wearing hemp clothes for nothing.