There have been a lot of article about this summer’s all time low ice pack, but this article from the Scientific American tells even more.
The rapid melting north polar ice has already changed the climate there
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There have been a lot of article about this summer’s all time low ice pack, but this article from the Scientific American tells even more.
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Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan’s Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of “Hiking Idaho.” He also wrote “Beyond the Tetons” and “Backpacking Wyoming’s Teton and Washakie Wilderness.” He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
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Ice core sampling demonstrates that large, rapid, global climactic change is more the norm for the Earth’s climate than is climactic stasis. Climactic stasis is wishful thinking by humans, not environmental reality.
Radiocarbon dating of bones and analysis of soils and plant matter shows that Aleutian climate was mild 3500 years ago, and in the 10th century, Greenland’s climate, and presumably that of the Arctic nearby, was considerably warmer than today.
Ice-free summers in the Arctic occur approximately every 70 years according to some Russian sources. The Northwest Passage has been open numerous times in the past 100 years. Roald Amundson navigated it in 1903-06. The 104′ wooden ship St. Roch sailed through twice in the early 1940s. The Coast Guard ship the USS Storis did it in 1955. There are quite a few other accounts of navigation of the Northwest Passage in the last century, so many that it is actually relatively commonplace. That the Northwest Passage was considered for so long to be a myth is likely due to the mini-ice age from the 16th through the mid 19th centuries rather than because it never existed. That it is open now is simply not that unusual, except in the short-sighted eyes of human memory.
To attribute global climate changes to human impacts on the environment without consideration of the geologic reality of climate change is more an economic tool for those who benefit from such scares than scientific fact.
The Earth’s climate is unstable. This has made for hardship and extinction for many peoples over the millennia. At some times, however, often fairly long periods, climate is stable and with that civilization often thrives.
Most agree we are entering a period of very warm climate and that will have many secondary and tertiary effects. Whether this is natural or human-caused, many things will become more difficult and less predictable,and we need to prepare for ourselves and for wildlife and vegetation too because these cannot respond as easily as in times past because of all the human barriers that have been built.