Arctic melting is accelerating … the normal system isn’t bouncing back.
This is what we call a "feedback loop" …
From the CBC Science section this week
Phillips, a senior climatologist with the federal weather agency, says temperatures were four to five degrees warmer than usual this past winter. The higher temperatures come on the heels of dramatic losses in sea ice last summer, Phillips says, and so the natural cycle hasn’t had a chance to recover.
"There has been no rebounding back," he said. "The ice just hasn’t had a chance to bounce back, to grow during the winter, during the cold season of the year.
"Essentially what’s happening is there’s been so much warm weather, week after week, month after month, season after season, the environment is just not behaving the way it should," said Phillips.
This is why we need to be concerned. One year of warming isn’t a problem. Heck, a couple hot summers aren’t a problem. It’s the lack of cold winters that’s the problem. As this continues, the scare stories begin. At the very least we’re going to start seeing Arctic species (like polar bears) dying off. Then people are going to have to move as their houses built on permafrost start to sink (this has already started to happen).
After that … it’s anyone’s guess.
3 Comments
We joke about climate change at our house, because it’s our way of coping with something we’re mainly powerless to directly stop.
It goes something like this:
me: love my coffee. should build 4 season greenhouse and get bushes, so when the world goes *boink* I can still have coffee
him: give it some time, soon you won’t need a 4 season greenhouse
me: you’re just hoping for skimpy-clothes weather more months out of the year!
him: I say nothing.
I yeah I’m thinking of buying ocean front property … in Colorado!
All joking and skimpy clothes wearing (no further comment needed) aside … what we can do is try to save energy and reduce the amount of CO2 we generate. But here’s a double-edged sword. Just flying once to Toronto (not even back) blew away any CO2 savings I’ve done all year!
I think it will take extreme lifestyle changes, which most of us aren’t wanting to do. And I think that stopping this progression is something we can no longer achieve, even if we went back to simple agrarian lifestyles.
Easy is the key. I don’t want to scrub clothes on a washboard, and if I don’t have to, I’m not going to.
It’s disheartening to hear that making sacrifices all year long can be negated with one plane flight. I’ve not seen any plan of action to not just offset one’s CO2 production, but to actually implement enough measures to have a deficit. And if we all could do so, what impact would that have, globally, if any?