This chain of islands used to be a “peninsula”

All over Greenland and the Arctic, rising temperatures are not simply melting ice; they are changing the very geography of coastlines. Nunataks — “lonely mountains” in Inuit — that were encased in the margins of Greenland’s ice sheet are being freed of their age-old bonds, exposing a new chain of islands and a new opportunity for Arctic explorers to write their names on the landscape.

The abrupt acceleration of melting in Greenland has taken climate scientists by surprise. Tidewater glaciers, which discharge ice into the oceans as they break up in the process called calving, have doubled and tripled in speed all over Greenland. Ice shelves are breaking up, and summertime “glacial earthquakes” have been detected within the ice sheet.

“The general thinking until very recently was that ice sheets don’t react very quickly to climate,” said Martin Truffer, a glaciologist at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. “But that thinking is changing right now, because we’re seeing things that people have thought are impossible.”

Glaciologists, ice geologists, institutes studying such phenomena will continue to record and analyze data — even when it confounds those who think science should fit into tidy unchanging boxes.

Ennui is always more comfortable than inquiry.



  1. moss says:

    IHT’s new online format — finally including photos — is pretty snazzy. They must be listening to John.

  2. BillM says:

    Seems as though there was an “ice bridge” from Asia to North America up around the Bering Strait. Wonder what happened to that?

  3. Mucous says:

    Climate change is good – less need for fuel expended on heating.

  4. Dallas says:

    It’s a disturbing phenomenon to see these radical changes on our earth perpetuated by the pollutants we generate.

    What’s equally disturbing is an apathetic public, irresponsible leaders and industry.

    I hope many would take an opportunity to view “inconvenient Truth” documentary and recommend this viewing to help stoke awareness to this looming disaster of epic proportions.

  5. Time to buy vacation property in Greenland

  6. Mucous says:

    #4 – Setting aside Al Gore’s little piece of fiction presented as accepted fact – It’s not apathy – it’s a calmly calculated prioritization and analysis of what’s truly important.

    Choice A: small cars or worse no privately owned vehicles (all mass transit), smaller houses and yards, or worse no privately owned homes, reduction in urban sprawl, no freeways etc., etc.

    Choice B: Everyone lives lives worthy of Americans until the Earth is incinerated.

    Choice B is preferable, What good is life if you give up the very things that make it worthwhile?

  7. Mark says:

    Mucous, so its toys that make life worth living?

  8. BillM says:

    Check this animation out. The link to additional information is pretty interesting too. Makes you wonder how the kilometers of ice that covered North America melted without help from my SUV.

    http://earth.rice.edu/MTPE/cryo/cryosphere/topics/ice_age.html

  9. ballseye says:

    to be honest, I really don´t care… I´m not in it for the long run

  10. TJGeezer says:

    #9 -LOL

    #4 – View “Inconvenient Truth”? Hell, in Washington State they won’t even let it be shown (or summarized) in school. It’s the old right-wing “gotta teach the controversy, not a best approximation of facts” tactic. At least in Kansas they had sense enough to vote the anti-science idiots off the school board. Maybe Federal Way will be as smart. Good story about it at http://tinyurl.com/y25a8q (Seattle Post-Intelligencer link).

    #8 – What do you mean, without help from your SUV? The whole thing was CAUSED by your SUV. Everybody knows it.

  11. fred says:

    #6
    “Choice B: Everyone lives lives worthy of Americans until the Earth is
    incinerated.”

    I’m not quite sure what you mean by “everyone”. 95.4% of the world’s
    population do not live in the US but 100% of us have to suffer from
    the effects of your pollution.

  12. dave says:

    #6 it is people like you that make the rest of the world hate america and americans. Your attitude that you are the only one that matters is so small minded and uninformed.

    Some time ago the USA and people like you could take the kind of tact that you did, without concequence but no longer. The whole world sees the US as a dying super power and a secod rate place to live. China and India will take Americas place as leaders in the world and there is nothing that america can do about it because there are just too many people like yourself in the country.

  13. BillM says:

    #12
    China and India will be great leaders. You can go down to the river and draw your drinking water next to the sacred cow. And wlak around the streets with masks over your face because of the pollution.

    #9
    Washington state did not say they couldn’t show Al’s fiction. They said they had to present both sides. And there are two sides to the issue.

  14. ChrisMac says:

    I wonder what Jack Rickard would think of all this…

  15. Mike Novick says:

    >China and India will take Americas place as leaders in the world

    And emit more greenhouse gasesin the process. Ask any scientist doing climate modeling, and they’ll tell you that the Kyoto Treaty leads to China being the worlds largest emitter in 10 years.

  16. giap says:

    The most fun will be when cartographers find themselves called in to redraw property lines in Westport or, say, Sausalito. No one can whine as loud as wealthy property owners.

  17. Mucous says:

    #10 – You’ve got it backwards, the reason not to show it is because it’s NOT good science.

    Anyone who actually believes Global Warming (TM): please feel free to going back subsistence living in caves because civilization is killing Mother Gaia. Feel virtuous because of your noble sacrifice too. Just DON’T tell everyone else they have to join you.

    We have freedom of religion in America. Most of us do not worship in the Church of Global Warming (TM).


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