Sabbath 10/10/28/120 B
The Arctic is now speeding up its loss of sea ice at an exponential rate. In
a recent report professor Louis Fortier disclosed that the speed with which
the Arctic ice was melting was accelerating exponentially.
According to Reuter’s reporter David Fogarty quoting Louis Fortier on Monday 5 December 2005.
“Summertime sea-ice cover and thickness are shrinking each year and 2005 marked a turning point, professor Louis Fortier said. ‘Since 1978, we could see a linear decline in sea-ice cover. It has now reduced by about 24 percent in extent and about up to 50 percent in thickness,’ Fortier, who is also director of a number of Arctic research programs, said: ‘Up until 2004, we thought the decline was linear but since 2004 there had been an indication it has begun to accelerate and 2005 was the all-time record minimum. It's astounding,’ he said in Montreal, where the ship was docked a short distance from where representatives from 189 nations are trying to agree on ways to curb global warming.
This year the summertime sea-ice coverage totalled 2.12 million square miles and thickness was down from an average 12.5 feet in the 1970s to about 5.25 feet this year.
He said computer models five years ago predicted the Arctic would be ice-free during summer by 2070, then 2050 and now some studies suggested 2015 to 2017.
‘This means you can have intercontinental shipping but also no ice for walruses or polar bears. It's going to be a seasonally ice-free ocean just like the Baltic Sea.’”
When we published Global Warming and Bible Prophecy (No. 218) in 1997 there were virtually no effective models for Artic sea ice melt. It is a blessing that the Arctic sea ice has no real effect on sea levels due to the fact that ice in water displaces its own volume of water with the trapped air lost resulting in a virtual nil increase in water levels. The time frame of the melt has dropped from predictions of ice-free summers by 2070 five years ago to predictions of ice free by 2015 to 2017. The exponential increases will see that shortened yet again very soon.
The real gains in sea levels will be from the Greenland cap, which is also accelerating in its ice loss exponentially. The Antarctic is also losing ice at an exponential rate. Soon we will see much larger moves in sea levels. A metre rise will see the loss of Bangladesh and the displacement of 80 million people. A further 12-inch or 30 centimetre rise will see large numbers begin to be displaced. The Kiribati Island groups will begin to be lost very early in the piece.
The days of pretence are long gone.
Wade Cox
Coordinator General
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