Saturday, May 04, 2013

protect US resource interests by increasing arctic military penetration?


guardian | Senior US government officials are to be briefed at the White House this week on the danger of an ice-free Arctic in the summer within two years.

The meeting is bringing together Nasa's acting chief scientist, Gale Allen, the director of the US National Science Foundation, Cora Marett, as well as representatives from the US Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. 

This is the latest indication that US officials are increasingly concerned about the international and domestic security implications of climate change.

Senior scientists advising the US government at the meeting include 10 Arctic specialists, including marine scientist Prof Carlos Duarte, director of the Oceans Institute at the University of Western Australia.
In early April, Duarte warned that the Arctic summer sea ice was melting at a rate faster than predicted by conventional climate models, and could be ice free as early as 2015 - rather than toward the end of the century, as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected in 2007. He said:
"The Arctic situation is snowballing: dangerous changes in the Arctic derived from accumulated anthropogenic green house gases lead to more activities conducive to further greenhouse gas emissions. This situation has the momentum of a runaway train."
Duarte is lead author of a paper published last year in Nature Climate Change documenting how "tipping elements" in the Arctic ecosystems leading to "abrupt changes" that would dramatically impact "the global earth system" had "already started up". Duarte and his team concluded: "We are facing the first clear evidence of dangerous climate change."

7 comments:

John Kurman said...

Off Topic: Dude, I let out a surprised falsetto exhalation when I saw the graphic in the upper right corner. Got my eye to tearing, but then I realized it was just some small mechanical creatures what got it in there. (They aren't supposed to do that). Seriously, I appreciate the generosity, for both the contribution and the media buzz. Thanks!

CNu said...

I only wish I could do more to support a practicing exemplar. Thanks for your most interesting work John!

John Kurman said...

On topic: I made a bet in 2009 that I would be able to swim to the North Pole by the summer of 2015. Long as I get in training Right Now, I think I can win that 100 bucks. In retrospect, being right ain't all what it's cracked up to be, is it?

CNu said...

At this moment, the inevitable disruptions and probable privations resulting from the impact on agriculture still seem remote and hypothetical - funny how that works even when one has thoroughly self-indoctrinated to know better.

John Kurman said...

The lesson of history is no one ever learns it. I'm waiting to see how those countries that are considered resource-gravid suddenly find out they are on the pointy end of the extraction network? (e.g. Russia thinks it is in the catbird seat, when in fact much bigger animals to the south are eyeing its vast water/mineral/energy/geographic resources; Canada - not so nice anymore?, and Denmark - will the world's happiest people be able to live up to their socialist paradise ideals, or will they spread Greenland's legs for everyone to have a go?) And the desiccation of the High Plains and thorough corn-holing of the Southwest is right on schedule, which means the (human) locusts they are astirring, with nary a seagull in sight...

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