This is probably the best visual depiction of climate change in action that I have ever seen.
The video, by WWF International’s Arctic Program, is a month by month animated compilation of satellite imagery showing the extent of Arctic sea ice, starting in 1979 and running through until October 2007 (date in top left corner). The white is older ice - five years or more old - and the blues are progressively younger ice, with the shade closest to the ocean being fresh, or one year old, ice. The red dots are tracking buoys, showing how the ice is shifting further and faster as it melts.
Watch for the two stage collapse, particularly the devastating second stage of the last two years. Word is that this year the ice is melting substantially faster than last year. Last year’s most pessimistic prediction of a total summer ice loss by 2013 is starting to look conservative.
I’m not sure whether to thank Neil Hamilton from WWF for sending us this video. I almost wish I’d never seen it.
It is probably too late to save the Arctic, and the species like polar bears, walrus and ringed seals it sustains. The question is, will this be the wake up call the world needs to turn around and build a new, zero emissions world fast enough to stop this happening to the rest of the planet?
Before you get too depressed, now read Christine’s Budget Reply speech!
Countries like America and Russia will claim it’s a boon for international shipping but they’re probably not going to enjoy the climatic changes arising from the lack of reflection by the ice.
Once the ice is gone, it’s going to be harder to stop runaway climate change; we all know this.
Perhaps we should start looking at projects which will actively suck carbon out of the air rather than reducing the amount we put in there. Yes, we need to stop emitting which is why we need to switch to renewables for electricity and public transport over the car. We also need to get as much carbon out of the air as possible.
Actually Sam we have such things. They are called trees.
A really interesting idea (perhaps a bit challenging for Greens though) is selectively logging mature trees (that are no longer rapidly extracting CO2) and burying those trees about a metre below the ground. At the right locations they have been shown to last thousands of years without decay in such conditions. That may be enough time for earth systems to renormalise our CO2 levels, or some other solution to arise, assuming we decarbonise our civilisation soon.
You can continue to grow forests from where you logged the now buried tree. So the newly planted trees keep pumping CO2 out of the air and storing it as wood. You can even bury the tree in the forest itself.
The crux of it is you manage the forest (by selective logging) to ensure it is always operating at its maximum CO2 extraction rate.
If a tree operates at maximum extraction rate for 30 years and the buried trees are sound for 3000 years, then you potentially get 100 times the total CO2 sequestration that would have been available from a steady state forest.
I wouldn’t describe it as a silver bullet, just possibly one of the potential strategies to deploy within a larger suite.
PS: If we do end up heading for an ice age, we can always dig up the fantastic resource of buried trees we squirrelled away and use them for firewood :)
Thanks for posting this video - I’d read the statistics, but seeing the visuals always makes it much clearer for me.
Here is the best, almost real time, indicator of Climate Change and Global Warming I know of. Just watch the Blue line.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Greg Watson
In reality, donating money to any organization purporting to be able to save anything to make yourself feel like you are doing something is just a waste of money.
‘Suck carbon out of the air’, but where will you store it and what will be the size of the ‘vacuum cleaner - air purifier’; why are these suggestions always re-active … whatever happened to ‘prevention is better than cure’ ?
‘Selectively’ driving dozers through forests and ‘burying older trees’ … burning more fossil fuels to dig holes and bury all manner of wildlife’s habitat … its no silver bullet, it’s a blank, just all noise …. what about just using less energy ?
If it is too late to save the bears, seals & walruses, it would make good ecological sense to hunt them all now. We could eat the meat, sell the skins & use the jaw bones as digging implements.