Yes, we’re back to the prognostication of an ice free Arctic. How’s that worked out all the other times?
Climate crisis: North pole ‘soon to be ice free in summer’, scientists say
The Arctic Ocean will likely be ice-free during summers before 2050, researchers say.
Amid rapid global warming – with average Arctic temperatures already 2C above what they were in the pre-industrial era – the extent of the sea ice is diminishing ever faster.
As the climate crisis worsens, scientists say it is now only the efficacy of protection measures which will determine for how many more years our planet will continue to have a northern ice cap year round.
A major new piece of research involving 21 leading institutes and using 40 different climate models has found that whatever action is taken, we are on course to see ice-free summers in the coming decades.
The research is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The scientists considered the future of Arctic sea-ice cover in scenarios with high future CO2 emissions and little climate protection – as expected, Arctic sea ice disappeared quickly in summer in these simulations.
Let’s see, it was supposed to be ice free by 2008, 20012, 2013, 2014, 2015, among the bigger predictions. How’d that work out? And ice free by 2049. Oh, and here’s one saying it could maybe possibly we think be ice free by 2020. What will they say when it isn’t? What’s the penalty for being wrong? Oh, right, nothing, they just make another prognostication.
Will Florida be lost forever to the climate crisis?
Few places on the planet are more at risk from the climate crisis than south Florida, where more than 8 million residents are affected by the convergence of almost every modern environmental challenge – from rising seas to contaminated drinking water, more frequent and powerful hurricanes, coastal erosion, flooding and vanishing wildlife and habitat.
If scientists are right, most of the lower half of the state will be underwater by the end of the century. Yet despite this grim outlook, scientists, politicians, environment groups and others are tackling the challenges head on.
Seas barely rising, totally within the average, so, less than it should during a Holocene warm period. Florida had a record drought for no landfalling tropical systems, including hurricanes. They sure haven’t been more frequent and more powerful. Erosion is utterly normal. As is flooding. Vanishing wildlife and habitat is real, though it has nothing to do with global anthropogenic climate change, though it does effect land use.
Florida will be fine.
