Arctic Booms as Global Warming Melts Polar Ice Caps

Mr_Jefferson_24

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Mon Nov-28-05 03:58 AM
Original message

Arctic Booms as Global Warming Melts Polar Ice Caps

by Alex Duval-Smith

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1127-03.htm

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These are the Klondikers of global warming: men from all over the world who have come to Hammerfest, gateway to the Barents Sea, to make their fortune from new resources - oil, gas, fish and diamonds - made accessible by the receding ice.

It is the dark season here - two months from November to January when the sun never rises above the snow-laced rocks around Hammerfest, ice-free thanks to the Gulf stream. In the horseshoe-shaped port, trawlers from all over the world wait for favorable weather to head back into the Barents Sea. Hammerfest, with its colorful wooden houses, feels cozy. But it is a nerve center of the scramble for the Arctic's wealth that raises urgent questions.

The 14 million sq km Arctic Ocean is home to 25 per cent of the planet's unextracted oil and natural gas. With a population of four million, the region is much more stable than the Middle East. Global warming, in combination with the current high oil price, makes it ever more accessible. Yet the bordering countries - Russia, Canada, the US, Norway and Danish Greenland - have yet to agree on who owns what. Long-forgotten bays, waterways and islands are moving to the top of the international agenda.

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rman

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Mon Nov-28-05 07:21 AM
Response to Original message

1. They may have another thing coming yet;

melt water reduces the salidity of ocean water around the polar region, which reduces the weight of the water, which makes it sink slower, which reduces the power of the 'engine' that drives the Gulf Stream (and many other "convyor belt currents" in the oceans). Less Gulf Stream = lower temperatures in the north of the Atlantic - possibly causing a new (small) ice age.

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TX-RAT

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Mon Nov-28-05 10:34 AM
Response to Reply #1

4. melt water reduces the salidity of ocean water around the polar region,

I wonder what the salinity was about 75 million years ago when a large part of the US and Canada, was completely under water.

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DUgosh

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Mon Nov-28-05 10:52 AM
Response to Reply #4

6. This effect you speak about

The big engine, could produce still bigger hurricanes this Spring.

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rman

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Mon Nov-28-05 11:18 AM
Response to Reply #4

7. I wonder what the climate was like 75 million years ago, period.

Must have been a whole lot different. Entire continents in different places then they are now.
There's no comparing really.

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TX-RAT

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Mon Nov-28-05 12:24 PM
Response to Reply #7

8. Obviously much hotter than it is now.

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SpiralHawk

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Mon Nov-28-05 07:37 AM
Response to Original message

2. I'd bet a sack of doughnuts they are all NeoCons

Who else could be so callous and greedy?

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DeepModem Mom

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Mon Nov-28-05 10:02 AM
Response to Original message

3. Making a buck from the tragedy of global warming --

I guess we should have expected this. No wonder the Bush cabal refuses to do anything to combat climate change.

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hatrack

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Mon Nov-28-05 10:36 AM
Response to Original message

5. Since warming's eliminating the ice caps, let's drill for oil, burn it . .

And release even more GHGs to the atmosphere so that warming can speed up even more.

Yeah, that makes a LOT of fucking sense!! :eyes:

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