Canada’s Arctic Ice Shelves Are Vanishing

“Recent (ice shelf) loss has been very rapid”
Environment • Views: 30,658

As the Republican Party denies, denies, denies that global warming is real: Canada’s Arctic ice shelves breaking up fast.

Luke Copland, an associate geography professor at the University of Ottawa, said the Serson Ice Shelf shrank from 79 square miles to two remnant sections five years ago, and was further diminished this past summer.

Serson went from a 16-square-mile floating glacier tongue to 10 square miles, and the second section from 13 square miles to 2 square miles.

In addition, Ward Hunt Ice Shelf’s central area disintegrated into drifting ice masses last summer, leaving two separate ice shelves measuring 88 and 29 square miles respectively, reduced from 132 square miles the previous year.

“It has dramatically broken apart in two separate areas and there’s nothing in between now but water,” said Copland.

Copland said those two losses are significant, especially since the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf has always been the biggest, the farthest north and the one scientists thought might have been the most stable.

“Since the end of July, pieces equaling one and a half times the size of Manhattan Island have broken off,” Copland said in a statement. Copland uses satellite imagery and has conducted field work in the Arctic every May for the past five years.

Co-researcher Derek Mueller, an assistant professor at Carleton University, said the loss this past summer equals up to three billion tons of ice.

“This is our coastline changing,” Mueller stated. “These unique and massive geographical features that we consider to be part of the map of Canada are disappearing and they won’t come back.”

“Recent (ice shelf) loss has been very rapid, and goes hand-in-hand with the rapid sea ice decline we have seen in this decade and the increasing warmth and extensive melt in the Arctic regions,” said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, remarking on the research.

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19 comments
1 (I Stand By What I Said Whatever It Was)  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 2:24:01pm

Climate always changes ! Only God affects nature, not man ! Solar rays! Climategate!

2 recusancy  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 2:24:28pm

Nat Geo had a good article this month (in the magazine) on the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum era and how extreme it was and how there's a better than not chance that it will be similar to our not too distant future.

3 Obdicut  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 2:24:32pm

And the oceans are becoming more acidic, too.

I don't know how long big oil and coal can fool the public.

Probably for far too long.

Then they'll just move into the Lomberg "So it's warming? Isn't warm nice? Don't worry about it!" mode.

4 Lord Baron Viscount Duke Earl Count Planckton  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 2:25:46pm

re: #3 Obdicut

When conditions do become extreme, guess who will be blamed? Liberals, of course.

5 Sol Berdinowitz  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 2:27:03pm

re: #3 Obdicut

I don't know how long big oil and coal can fool the public.

Probably for far too long.

.

As long as we keep giving them the means to buy politicians and publicity every time we fill our tanks, they will keep fooling us.

6 recusancy  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 2:27:13pm

re: #2 recusancy

Nat Geo had a good article this month (in the magazine) on the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum era and how extreme it was and how there's a better than not chance that it will be similar to our not too distant future.

Here's the article online: [Link: ngm.nationalgeographic.com...]

7 Sol Berdinowitz  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 2:27:27pm

re: #4 Sergey Romanov

When conditions do become extreme, guess who will be blamed? Liberals, of course.

For not allowing the market to find a viable solution, yes.

8 Kragar  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 2:28:04pm

"But its raining and snowing down here!!!"

Where do you think all that excess water came from guys?

9 Lord Baron Viscount Duke Earl Count Planckton  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 2:28:55pm

re: #7 ralphieboy

For not allowing the market to find a viable solution, yes.

See, you already know. Also:

Yeah, OK, you were right all along. But the reason we didn't believe is that you lied too much! ClimateGate! Now off with your heads.

10 Lord Baron Viscount Duke Earl Count Planckton  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 2:31:46pm

re: #9 Sergey Romanov

Also, Al Gore. Why did you make him your spokesperson on climate? Of course we didn't believe him, no fault of ours.

11 (I Stand By What I Said Whatever It Was)  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 2:32:04pm

re: #7 ralphieboy

For not allowing the market to find a viable solution, yes.

Which is funny, since "free market" ideology is an eonomically liberal position.

12 Lord Baron Viscount Duke Earl Count Planckton  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 2:36:17pm

Speaking of Lomborg - did he ever explain why he switched from "skeptical about the warming" to "yeah there is, but..."?

13 recusancy  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 2:38:12pm

re: #12 Sergey Romanov

Speaking of Lomborg - did he ever explain why he switched from "skeptical about the warming" to "yeah there is, but..."?

So he could maintain his "reasonable" denier status.

14 Lord Baron Viscount Duke Earl Count Planckton  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 2:39:18pm

re: #13 recusancy

To clarify: I'm interested in his words about him "seeing the light". Those could be used.

15 bratwurst  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 2:45:42pm

I predict this thread is going to be like a Christmas tree where lots of gifts in the form of denialist talking points will be found in the morning!

16 dragonfire1981  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 3:05:44pm

I was talking with a denialist friend of mine and he said the ice loss and warmer temperatures are a good thing because they will allow mankind to inhabit areas previously too inhospitable to live in (Siberia for instance).

He just didn't understand why that wasn't really a good thing.

Although the long term impact of global warming (regardless of the cause) will be a population drifting northward, as tropical and southern climes become uninhabitable.

17 Kronocide  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 3:23:09pm

re: #16 dragonfire1981

I was talking with a denialist friend of mine and he said the ice loss and warmer temperatures are a good thing because they will allow mankind to inhabit areas previously too inhospitable to live in (Siberia for instance).

Ignorance. While this might be true, there will still be lots of bad things.

How bout moving cities with millions of people 6' higher above sea level. No problem, no? Rice fields going to desert, no biggie?

18 (I Stand By What I Said Whatever It Was)  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 4:05:16pm

re: #17 BigPapa

It's endless. I have a friend who thinks it's no big deal if the human species dies out. Has kids, too.

19 lostlakehiker  Fri, Sep 30, 2011 5:10:08pm

re: #2 recusancy

Nat Geo had a good article this month (in the magazine) on the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum era and how extreme it was and how there's a better than not chance that it will be similar to our not too distant future.

It's almost heartening. There was not a drastic sulfur event wiping out most land life. Birds did not go extinct. [Some species, but not all bird species, went extinct.]

And that's with an event that puts as much CO2 into the atmosphere as would be dumped if we used all our fossil fuel. All of it.

Meanwhile, solar companies are going bankrupt because the competition is coming out with better panels at a price cut of 37 percent.

That sort of progress, if it can be kept going even at a less feverish pace for another decade or two, will mean that the day is not far off when we can move over to solar and even profit from it. Republicans will demand that the government get out of the way and that mineral rights don't include sunlight rights, Democrats will insist that no solar farms be built until the effect on the desert kangaroo rat's fleas can be determined, and libertarians will insist that any landowner has the right to block any transmission line. Everything will be back to normal and the climate will be saved. China will buy a patch of Algeria and supply all of Europe. India will pave a patch of the Great Thar desert, and Pakistan will claim that it belongs to them. Russia will complain that Europe is defaulting on its contracts to buy coal and natural gas.

Well, not exactly. It's already hotter than optimal, and the next decade or two will make matters worse, and I'm guessing we're already inside the event horizon for the loss of the Greenland ice cap. But the big kahuna of climate change, the loss of Antarctica and the loss of so much productive farmland that food production cannot be sustained and famine becomes near universal, can be and will be avoided.


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