Guest Post: Michael Stafford
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M-H
To a climate change denier
Humanity, are you grieving, over global ice retreating? This summer, the sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean shrunk to just 1.3 million square miles, a record low. Worse, as ocean temperatures rise, the Arctic’s summer ice covering will continue to contract- more “record lows” can be expected to follow in quick succession. If this trend continues, the Arctic could be ice-free in the summer before the end of the decade.
An Arctic Ocean devoid of summer sea ice would be a catastrophe for humanity. Ice reflects solar radiation back into space; open water absorbs it. As a result, without summer sea ice, the Arctic’s water temperature will rise, further fueling global warming in a vicious feedback cycle and playing havoc with existing weather patterns.
And it’s not just Arctic ice that’s melting. Glaciers are retreating across the planet- a phenomenon poignantly documented by the Glacier Research Imaging Project, the Extreme Ice Survey, and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Repeat Photography Project at Glacier National Park in Montana. Indeed, scientists predict the latter will be glacierless by 2030.
