Icecap


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Polar ice cap melts

Perhaps the single most disturbing piece of evidence that something dramatic is happening to the worlds climate is the melting of the north Polar Ice Cap. No this isn’t a misprint or a sensationalist ploy to make you carry on reading - it is simply the truth. The ice cap around the North Pole has vanished for the first time in over 55 million years.

Open sea.

This alarming discovery was made by a team of oceanographers sponsored by the United Nations. In the summer of the year 2000 they journeyed to the North Pole with the intention of taking ice depth measurements. To their intense surprise they found there was no ice left to measure, and the area is now open sea. Where they expected to find ice to a depth of nine feet there was nothing but water. It means that for the first time in over 55 million years the North Pole is completely free of ice.

It has to be stressed that the extent of this melting is confined to within a two mile radius of the pole. However experts predict that by the middle of the century most of the arctic ice pack will just cease to exist.

Major surprise.

This stunning revelation has taken everyone by surprise. It was thought that polar melting due to global warming would be a gradual process that would take place over many years. As on so many other occasions however, reality has imposed its own logic and confirmed our worst suspicions - that the planet is undergoing a series of dramatic changes that are without precedence in human history.

North West Passage.

Another staggering revelation is the discovery that the once fabled North West passage is no longer a daydream but a fact of life. For more than 500 years brave mariners and explorers attempted to plot a passage across the ice floes at the top of the world.

Large loss of land.

The alarm with which these latest developments were greeted are a measure of the very real dilemmas that we face. It is well known that melting polar ice caps will lead to raised sea levels and widespread flooding. For low lying countries this does not make cheerful reading Even the most conservative estimates speak of large areas of land loss in the face of ever rising sea levels.

Humanitarian disaster.

What is abundantly clear is that melting polar ice will have devastating consequences for most regions of the world. Some low lying countries such as Holland and Belgium may be completely swamped. Across the world the unfolding humanitarian disaster will be of a magnitude barely imaginable as rising water levels swiftly redraw the map of the world.

Point on no return.

The worst thing of all is that we are fast approaching the point where little can be done to stave off the inevitable. It means that realistically we should be turning our attention to the vast logistical effort that will one day be required to move millions of people to higher ground!


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