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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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[Below is the original script. But a few changes may have been made during the recording of this audio podcast.]
The North Pole is melting, and there's very little Santa can do about it. No matter how green his elves are.
It's worse for the Inuit people, polar bears, walruses, and a host of less charismatic residents of the far north. Inuit leaders repeatedly deliver warnings about dwindling caribou herds, ground collapsing from beneath villages and ice too thin to hunt on. This disappearing ice is the very reason polar bears are now listed as an endangered species.
Thin ice also allowed the first commercial ship, the MV Camilla Desgagnes to traverse the fabled Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in September, delivering cargo to Inuit villages. It is a feat, long sought after (and died over) by European Arctic explorers—but it's not good news for Arctic residents.
The South Pole isn't faring much better. The Antarctic Peninsula is among the fastest warming locations in the world and, according to the European Space Agency, the enormous Wilkins Ice Shelf is in imminent danger of collapse, much like the Larsen ice shelf fragmented a few years back. That's bad news for global sea levels as well as would-be ice dwellers.
In future, Santa's reindeers may need water wings.
—David Biello
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4 Comments
Add CommentGreat timing. It's snowing in Houston for heavens sake.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSnowing in Houston... haha. Start getting used to screwed up weather. As the cold areas continue to get warmer, it screws up the water and air currents. It's not so funny when you realize the crops have some pretty strict temperature requirements to stay alive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistest
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour statement "the North Pole is melting" is incorrect, for the link you give was for last year, not 2008, and it mentions only the distant edge of the sea ice, not the North Pole. That sea ice, according to the information you give, extended 22% less in 2007 (at the usual autumn minimum) than in 2005, and was the smallest minimum recorded since 1979. You say that "annihilated" the previous record, but you give no indication, for a proper comparison, of historical variability. In addition, the extra ice loss was not caused by higher atmospheric temperatures, as you misleadingly imply; in other words, it was not due to global warming, but to wind and ocean currents, according to NASA.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou say: "The South Pole isn't faring much better." But you ludicrously link to material describing why Antarctica is much colder than the Arctic. In that, you contradict yourself.
You say: "The Antarctic Peninsula is among the fastest warming locations in the world" and that may be true. However, the long thin peninsula comprises only 2% or so of the great Antarctic continent and it protrudes about 500km beyond the Antarctic Circle into warmer waters, so it's not surprising that it is subject to more melting sometimes than the rest of the continent, regardless of global warming.
The enormous Wilkins Ice Shelf is not "in imminent danger of collapse" as you claim, although a small region has broken up this year. This happens to ice shelves all the time as they grow. It's because they are growing that bits break off, not because they're shrinking. This statement of yours is misleading.
Any ice that separates from the shelf will not be "bad news for global sea levels" since no grounded ice is involved, only floating ice. In this, you are unscientific.
I don't mind if you get most of your facts wrong, or even if you deliberately intend to write alarming, unsubstantiated claptrap, but I am disturbed by the decision of Scientific American editors to publish such defective writing. It is to their shame they do not impose more rigorous scientific standards in their once-prestigious publication.
Cheers,
Richard Treadgold,
Convenor,
Climate Conversation Group.