Wook's Place

The North Polar Ice Cap

Most of this is taken from a The Register piece titled "Are the ice caps melting", with the amusing subtitle of "Climate science's bipolar disorder". I'm just extracting the links and info to keep them around. However, if you are interested, the answer is that no, the ice cap is not melting any more than it normally does, and in fact is going to be bigger in 2008 than it was in 2007. And to take it a step further, it has melted before. The northwest passage, which so many claim has never opened in recorded history, has in fact been sailed roughly 110 times since 1905. Submarines have come to the surface at the north pole in cracks between ice floes and otherwise open water in 1987, and again in 2000 and 2005.

• http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E3DD1E31F93AA1575BC0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2
• http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/server?show=nav.2546&outputFormat=print
• http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/07/03/ice_change_large.jpg
• http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222206740006&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
• http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222208910006&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
• http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=222202920005&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
• http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=634011520003&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
• http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station.py?id=620040300000&data_set=1&num_neighbors=1
• http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=06&fd=30&fy=2007&sm=06&sd=30&sy=2008
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6999078.stm
• http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/16/you-ask-i-provide-november-2nd-1922-arctic-ocean-getting-warm-seals-vanish-and-icebergs-melt/
• http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2007/09/bad-reporting-about-northwest-passage.html
• http://newsbusters.org/node/15493/print
• http://www.enchantedlearning.com/explorers/page/a/amundsen.shtml