Scientists Warn that the North Pole May Have No Ice this Summer

What’s the North Pole without ice? Can you even imagine it? When there’s no ice at the North Pole, something is very very wrong. And indeed, scientists are predicting that Arctic sea ice may disappear entirely from the area this year. The disappearance of North Pole ice would be one of the most dramatic and frightening examples of the impact of global warming thus far.

Santa is not happy.

From The Independent:

“From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water,” said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.

If it happens, it raises the prospect of the Arctic nations being able to exploit the valuable oil and mineral deposits below these a bed which have until now been impossible to extract because of the thick sea ice above.

Seasoned polar scientists believe the chances of a totally ice-free North Pole this summer are greater than 50:50 because the normally thick ice formed over many years at the Pole has been blown away and replaced by huge swathes of thinner ice formed over a single year.

One-year ice is highly vulnerable to melting in the summer. So far this year, satellite data has shown that the ice is melting even faster than last year, when there was an all-time record loss of Arctic sea ice. The North Pole has never before been exposed, and it’s likely that we’ll see that happen over the next few months.

What’s that you say, global warming deniers? Oh, right, you have no argument aside from the same old tired idiotic ‘not caused by humans’ spiel. Get your heads out of the fucking sand. This is the point where intelligent people – even those who have been stubbornly wrong about global warming for whatever reasons – should be seeing the light.

Link [The Independent]
Photo credit: The Independent

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