NYT article about the Earth's "Northern Icecap" (I call it the Arctic Ocean) possibly having no ice (in about 50 years) (during the summer months).
How does this relate to Qualcomm ?
Well -- if you look at the part I highlighted in bold print, you might guess what occurred to me :
If Europeans use GPRS (which has HUGE problems with over-heating), maybe they will help bring on this possible predicted Ice Age (for Europe only).
They should stick with Qualcomm technology !
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July 11, 2000
Research Predicts Summer Doom for Northern
Icecap
By WALTER GIBBS
OSLO, July 10 -- The mythic ice scape
that stretches south in all directions
from the North Pole is melting so fast
that Norwegian scientists say it could
disappear entirely each summer beginning in
just 50 years, radically altering the Earth's
environment, the global economy and the
human imagination.
Climatologists have warned for a decade that
the northern ice cap is retreating. But
researchers at the University of Bergen's
Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing
Center are apparently the first to predict the
disorienting specter of a watery North Pole
open to cruise ships and the Polar Bear Swim
Club within the lives of today's young people.
"The changes we've seen have been much
faster and more dramatic than most people
imagine," said Tore Furevik, 31, a polar researcher and co-author of the
article "Toward an Ice-Free Arctic?" in the latest issue of the Norwegian
science journal Cicerone.
Not all ice specialists agree with Mr. Furevik, but his 50-year projection is
supported by the director of the Bergen research center, Prof. Ola M.
Johannessen, whose own study will appear in the fall issue of Science
Progress, a British journal.
Professor Johannessen, 61, said the receding and thinning of Arctic sea ice
have outstripped the theoretical effect of global warming from greenhouse
gases by a factor of three. "The greenhouse is here, no doubt about it, but
there is more to it," he said, speculating that a conjunction of long-term
oscillations in North Atlantic air pressure have hastened the melting. If so, he
said, the cycles will eventually decouple and the ice, or what is left of it,
could regain stability.
Since 1978, the coverage of Arctic sea ice in winter has decreased by 6
percent, equivalent to an area the size of Texas, according to satellite
pictures. As for average ice thickness in late summer, submarine sonar
measurements since the 1950's have shown a decline to 5.9 feet from 10.2
feet, or 42 percent. The Norwegian researchers' prediction of zero ice in a
half-century is based partly on extrapolation of the submarine data and partly
on Professor Johannessen's discovery last year that hard-core, year-round
ice is shrinking twice as fast as the overall winter perimeter.
While an ice-free Arctic Ocean would most likely disrupt the global
environment, researchers said, it could have positive economic aspects. It
could shorten shipping routes, for example, and expand the range of offshore
oil drillers. Rich new fishing areas would probably appear, though established
fisheries to the south could decline.
Dr. Drew Rothrock, a University of Washington oceanographer, said he
agreed that Arctic sea ice was on a trajectory to disappear in 50 years. But,
he added, that did not mean it would.
The ice is being expelled from the Arctic by abnormally strong winds before
it could achieve its accustomed thickness, he said, and that could be a
temporary phenomenon.
"I think it is quite possible that in the next 10 years we will see the winds
revert to a more historical pattern, so that the ice begins to reside longer in
the Arctic and thicken up again," he said. "I would be cautious about
predicting doom."
Unlike the ice in a pond, Arctic sea ice consists of independent floes of
varying age that join together, pull apart or pile up on one another in reaction
to wind and currents. In winter, it extends as far south as Hudson Bay in
Canada. By late summer it pulls back to the roughly circular Arctic basin.
The seeming permanence and impregnability of the northern icescape have
given it almost continental status in the human imagination. As a mythic
anchor point, the North Pole, home of Santa Claus, has few geographic
rivals.
"The North Pole is the strongest symbol of mankind's struggle against, and
with, nature," said the Norwegian adventurer Boerge Ousland, the first man
to ski there alone without aerial reprovisioning, in 1994. "If the ice
disappears, well, I just can't imagine it."
The sea ice is thickest above North America, where Canadian islands and the
fingers of northern Greenland act as a sieve in the current. As the floes stack
up there, they create pressure ridges up to 40 feet high. By contrast, a branch
of the warm-water Gulf Stream keeps Norway's north coast ice-free. That
warm flow continues under the ice along most of the northern Siberian coast.
If the trend continues, it is there, the Eurasian Arctic, that the first significant
opening of ice-clogged water is expected. Russia, Scandinavia and Japan are
laying plans. Government ministers and shipping executives met in Oslo last
fall and declared that "considerable profit potential" existed for a proposed
shipping lane linking Western Europe and Asia across the mellowing Arctic.
The Northern Sea Route is a centuries-old dream comparable to that of the
Northwest Passage of Canada, which is even more solidly frozen.
Ships using the Arctic to move cargo from Hamburg, Germany, to
Yokohama, Japan, would save about 4,800 miles compared with the usual
route through the Suez Canal. Current traffic is limited to the Russian Navy
and a handful of heavily subsidized nickel ore carriers escorted by
nuclear-powered icebreakers. But receding ice could open the way for a
parade of cargo vessels and oil tankers, shipping industry experts said.
A proponent of the shortcut is Ivan Ivanov, leader of an Arctic shipping
demonstration project carried out by Finland's Fortum energy company with
financing from the European Commission. Citing what he called official
Russian estimates, he said the Russian Arctic shelf contained three times the
oil of Saudi Arabia.
The vision of an industrialized Arctic Ocean alarms environmentalists, who
see the dwindling of ice as a disaster. They said the loss of white surface
area would cause the Arctic to reflect less of the sun's energy, accelerating
the warming. On the other hand, open water makes a better "sink" for
absorbing atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Thus, according to one model, an ice-free Arctic Ocean could do as much to
slow global warming as the melting did to stimulate it. Yet even a modest
change in Arctic dynamics could have wrenching effects elsewhere. If the
changes divert the Gulf Stream, Professor Johannessen said, much of
Western Europe could be plunged into an ice age.
One sure thing is that melting sea ice cannot be implicated in the coastal
flooding that many global warming models have projected. Just as melting ice
cubes do not cause a glass of water to overflow, melting sea ice does not
increase oceanic volume. Any future rise in sea level would result from
glaciers melting on land, of which there has been little evidence to date.
Another sure thing is that the polar bear and other creatures face a bleak
future if their habitat keeps liquefying. So do Eskimo populations that hunt
game like seal and walrus. Alan Springer, a wildlife specialist at the University
of Alaska in Fairbanks, said Alaska's 250,000 walruses seem to have suffered
weight loss and stress from retraction of the pack ice they need for resting
and raising pups.
"The sea ice in summer has been receding so far north that it carries the
walruses into very deep water, far from their optimal feeding ground," Dr.
Springer said.
Mr. Furevik, the Norwegian researcher, said he could foresee ice-dwelling
mammals making "a desperate last stand" north of Greenland, where he
believes the final patch of Arctic sea ice will linger before vanishing into the
waves in about 2050.
Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company |
