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Saturday, September 15th, 2012

The Rush to Exploit an Increasingly Ice-free Arctic

Author:     SCOTT K. JOHNSON
Source:     arstechnica
Publication Date:     Sept 9 2012, 11:30am PDT
 Link: The Rush to Exploit an Increasingly Ice-free Arctic
Stephan:   This was inevitable, and speaks volumes about how psychotic we have become about profit. The Bible is right. 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.' - Matthew 6:19-21,24 (KJV) When you worship Mammon bad things happen though, because by emphasizing profit above all, it emphasizes the individual interest as being superior to all other interests, and it destroys the sense of interconnectedness and interdependence of all life that is the essence of the biosphere. The exploitation of the arctic will result in grave harm to an ecosystem not structured to include humans, and this will boomerang against us. That is my prediction.

It’s that time of year again, when we check in to see where the annual Arctic sea ice minimum will end up. And this year is a doozie. We haven’t quite bottomed out at the end of the melt season, yet, but already 2012 has set new records for smallest Arctic sea ice extent and volume, smashing through the numbers from 2007. Records are often attention-grabbing and ‘exciting,’ in a way, but while Usain Bolt’s incredible shrinking 100-meter dash time may be uplifting, shrinking sea ice is not.

Every time a new sea ice extent record is broken, the same question comes up: how long until it’s gone? That is, how long will it be before the Arctic Ocean is functionally ice-free in the summer, legitimately opening the once-fabled Northwest Passage?

The fact is, we don’t know. Climate models continue to underestimate the rate of sea ice loss we’re observing, leaving researchers to hazard less scientific guesses. Many estimate that day will come around 2030, but some others push it out to 2070. Regardless, Arctic sea ice is changing-and fast. The prospects of open shipping routes and newly-accessible resources have corporations chomping at the bit and governments racing to prepare the way. […]

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