Arctic Ice: Another Canary In The Coal Mine

With catastrophic weather events happening with increasing regularity -- from years-long droughts at one extreme to historic flooding at the other -- the discussion of human-caused climate change should be near or at the top of our politics. It is in one party, but the banana Republican / New Confederate / Stupid / Shooter's Party is in deep and destructive denial, endangering the survivability of our and future generations, choosing to serve the fossil fuel industrial complex.

Recently, NASA presented more evidence that human-caused warming is having a disastrous effect on the Arctic ice cap, specifically in Greenland, where 2016 could mark the top year for melting, even more than in 2012 when the ice cap lost a staggering 500 billion tons.  In terms of land area, the Arctic ice cap has lost an area twice the size of Alaska over several decades of warming. The most ominous part of NASA's presentation is the fact that this melting process feeds into an accelerating cycle of warming:

"Principal among those is a feedback involving the Earth’s albedo, or reflectivity. Less ice over Arctic waters, more meltwater atop Greenland and less snow on the land surface all darken the Earth and decrease its ability to reflect sunlight back to space. That means the energy stays around — causing more melting and warming." (emphasis added)

That means, for example, that scientists have found that over the past 30 years, this albedo effect has contributed 25% to the earth's warming above that created by carbon dioxide production.

As NASA scientist Walt Meier who studies Arctic sea ice says, "the extraordinary years have become the normal years," while the coin-operated legislators on the right continue to toy with the lives of future generations in order to keep their own craven careers alive.

(thanks to P.E.C. for pointing us to this story)