I have warned many times about the impending milestone in the progression of global warming from a terrifying result of humanity’s addiction to fossil fuels and unsustainable lifestyles to a planetwide crisis which will kill millions and displace hundreds of millions of more. While the scientific basis for predictions of an ice-free Arctic during the summer months strikes me as overwhelmingly conclusive, I can understand where some skeptics remain unconvinced. Now, thanks to the brilliant work of scientific vanguards, we have new evidence from which we can extrapolate the inevitable.
At first glance, one might be struck by the work of Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School and Dr. Leonid Polyak from Ohio State University as pointing to bad news which doesn’t quite rise to the level of global emergency. However, if you fall into this category, I will hasten to emphasize a key detail. Maslowski and Polyak point to an ice-free Arctic in the autumnal months by the end of this decade.
Yes, you read that right. Maslowski and Polyak have offer scientific conclusions that we will see an ice-free Arctic during autumn by the end of this decade. In fact, they inform us that the Arctic ice pack is at its thinnest and smallest coverage area in at least several millennia. Yes, the news is that bad.
By extension, then, we know that we will experience ice-free Arctic summers in our immediate future. I shudder to ponder what that will mean for us and hundreds of endangered species.
We are turning the Arctic Sea into a salty form of slush. Shame on us!
jpg credit: US Geological Survey via flickr
Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line
Corbett Kroehler
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