[DantesPeak]

Two Books Discuss Global Warming:

Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World's Highest Mountains
by Mark Bowen
Henry Holt, 463 pp., $30.00

Dancing at the Dead Sea: Tracking the World's Environmental Hotspots
by Alanna Mitchell
University of Chicago Press, 239 pp., $25.00

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he year 2005 has been the hottest year on record for the planet, hotter than 1998, 2002, 2004, and 2003. More importantly, perhaps, this has been the autumn when the planet has shown more clearly than before just what that extra heat means. Consider just a few of the findings published in the major scientific journals during the last three months:

—Arctic sea ice is melting fast. There was 20 percent less of it than normal this summer, and as Dr. Mark Serreze, one of the researchers from Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center, told reporters, "the feeling is we are reaching a tipping point or threshold beyond which sea ice will not recover." That is particularly bad news because it creates a potent feedback effect: instead of blinding white ice that bounces sunlight back into space, there is now open blue water that soaks up the sun's heat, amplifying the melting process.

—In the tundra of Siberia, other researchers report that permafrost has begun to melt rapidly, and, as it does, formerly frozen methane—which, like the more prevalent carbon dioxide, acts as a heat-trapping "greenhouse gas"—is escaping into the atmosphere. In some places last winter, the methane bubbled up so steadily that puddles of standing water couldn't freeze even in the depths of the Russian winter.

—British researchers, examining almost six thousand soil borings across the UK, found another feedback effect. Warmer temperatures (growing seasons now last eleven days longer at that latitude) meant that microbial activity had increased dramatically in the soil. This, in turn, meant that much of the carbon long stored in the soil was now being released into the atmosphere. The quantities were large enough to negate all the work that Britain had done to switch away from coal to reduce carbon in the atmosphere. "All the consequences of global warming will occur more rapidly," said Guy Kirk, chief scientist on the study. "That's the scary thing. The amount of time we have got to do something about it is smaller than we thought."

[mgibbons19]

I just got back from a few weeks in Iceland. They are pretty excited about global warming. They figure they'll get better weather, and a sea port on the northern passage out of it.

[savethehumans]

Snag a copy of the January issue of National Geographic Magazine. There's a story in there about how thinner ice and earlier, faster melting threaten hunters' way of life there. One hunter remarked to the writer that this was NOT "our weather." It belonged to someone else.

Yet another canary in the coal mine, folks!

[TorrKing]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('savethehumans', 'S')nag a copy of the January issue of National Geographic Magazine. There's a story in there about how thinner ice and earlier, faster melting threaten hunters' way of life there. One hunter remarked to the writer that this was NOT "our weather." It belonged to someone else.

Yet another canary in the coal mine, folks!

[hanrahan]

When I suggested to my realestate investing mates that they should buy in Greenland they looked at me as if I were crazy.

Didn't the vikings farm it a few centurys ago?

[TorrKing]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hanrahan', 'W')hen I suggested to my realestate investing mates that they should buy in Greenland they looked at me as if I were crazy.

Didn't the vikings farm it a few centurys ago?