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03/22/2006
Where's the Ice?
Last week my wife and I went on a 2-day AARP bus trip to the
Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun resorts in Connecticut. These are
Native American casinos that offer competition to our own New
Jersey casinos in Atlantic City. The gal who handled our
application for a gambling card at the Mohegan Sun had a badge
with her name and “Indian” on it. Apparently, the Mohegan tribe
doesn’t insist on the Native American designation.
Foxwoods was an impressive establishment but the Mohegan
Sun was something else. It’s a huge, spectacular facility rivaling
those in Las Vegas. With a waterfall and pools and a woodsy
ambience, it carries out its Indian motif. One thing I noticed was
a darker ambience in the casinos. In Atlantic City’s Showboat,
where we spent an afternoon on another trip last year, the casino
was ablaze with flashing lights and I couldn’t help thinking about
the exorbitant amount of energy being expended just for the
lighting. Perhaps the reputed Indian concern for the environment
plays a role in the more subdued Mohegan Sun lighting.
On the way back to New Jersey we stopped at a theater in New
London for an afternoon performance by a group from Ireland (it
was the day before St. Patrick’s Day). There were Irish dancers,
two superb young singers, a talented 3-man combo and a bald,
older guy, reputedly Ireland’s top comedian. I believe it. In his
second appearance in the show he came onstage in a ridiculous
outfit – leotards, a green cape and an outrageous green hat
decorated with flowers. He kept us in stitches, prancing back
and forth with a constant stream of Irish humor. Example –
Murphy was a real athlete. He swam the English Channel to
France in 5 hours and 15 minutes. On the return swim, he made
it back in just 3 minutes and 28 seconds. His jock strap was
snagged on the pier!
In contrast to this lighthearted show, when we left for home, the
tour leader put on the movie “Day After Tomorrow”. If you
haven’t seen this movie, it’s about global warming and a scientist
trying to warn an indifferent Vice President about the need to act
quickly. We’ve talked in earlier columns about the possibility
that melting of the ice in polar regions could shut down the
pattern of global circulation of water in the oceans. One
consequence would be shutting down the flow of warm Gulf
Stream waters that moderate Europe’s climate, with the result
being a possible ice age. Scientists are concerned that this might
happen soon, even in this century.
In the movie, the ocean current pattern suddenly shuts down and
cataclysmic storms develop that drop down from the Polar
Regions. The storm causes monumental snowfalls, huge tidal
waves and rapid drops in temperature that freeze people outdoors
almost immediately. New York, for example, is flooded and
frozen so quickly that only handfuls of people survive. It’s a
frightening movie with impressive special effects. The chance of
such super storms seems highly remote but global warming
shutting down the ocean currents may be all too real. Also real is
the fact that the world’s political leaders, and most of us, are not
willing to bite the bullet and take drastic measures to try to slow
or halt the warming.
After our trip, I happened to read three articles on Greenland that
tie in directly with the movie. One article put a human face on
global warming while the other articles detail scientific evidence
that the ice caps are disappearing. The January 2006 National
Geographic had an article by Gretel Ehrlich titled “Last Days of
the Ice Hunters?” Ehrlich describes joining Greenlander Jens
Danielsen, his 15-dog team and his three brothers-in-law and
their dog teams on a hunt for walruses on the sea ice.
Danielsen’s ancestors have been hunting walruses and other
game for some 800 years and before that, up to 5,000 years ago,
others had come to Greenland from Siberia to do the same.
Danielsen lives in Qaanaaq, with a population of about 650, in
northwestern Greenland. Normally, the ice arrives in that area in
September and lasts until June but in recent years the ice has
only been firm enough for hunting just a few weeks of the year.
Danielsen says that, where the ice used to be three feet thick,
now it’s more like four inches. The article sates that, over the
past decades, the temperatures in Greenland have increased 2
degrees Fahrenheit, twice as much as the average global
temperature. As we’ve discussed before, the warming in the
polar regions increases as the snow/ice cover melts because the
snow and ice reflect heat and when they melt that leaves bare
ground or open ocean to absorb the Sun’s rays. So, melting ice
leads to warmer temperatures, which in turn melts more ice and
the process feeds on itself.
The whole ecosystem is in trouble since seals need the sea ice to
make ledges to rest on and to eat and give birth to their offspring.
Walruses have to climb up on floating sea ice to rest and digest
their meals. The polar bears need the ice to catch the seals and
Danielsen needs the ice to hunt all three of the animals. He and
his relatives have nearly 60 dogs to feed and they have to catch
several walruses if they expect to bring any meat home. They
aren’t just hunting for the sport of it, that’s for sure. On the hunt
Ehrlich describes, they got one 800-pound walrus. That sounds
like a lot but it was only enough to feed the hunting party and the
dogs for four days! They hoped to find more walrus in an area
where the sea ice was always dependable but were shocked to
find it all open water – no ice. And no meat to take home.
Without ice, they’re in real trouble.
In the February 17 issue of Science, Eric Rignot of Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Panir Kanagaratnam of the
University of Kansas put the Greenland melting on a quantitative
basis in an article titled “Changes in the Velocity Structure of the
Greenland Ice Sheet”. A Perspective on this work by Julian
Dowdeswell in the same issue of Science provides additional
information. They used satellite radar measurements on 28
different glaciers covering a large area of Greenland. This was
in 2005 and they compare the data with results on these 28
glaciers from 2000 and with 1996 data on most of the same
glaciers.
What they find is that the glaciers are moving faster than they did
in the past. One, for example, is the fastest moving glacier in the
world at about 7 miles a year. The glaciers are flowing twice as
fast as they did about five years ago. Well, the faster they flow
the more ice reaches the coast and the more icebergs break off
and melt in the seas. Why are the glaciers moving so fast? The
answer isn’t known but one possibility is that water from melting
ice finds its way under the glacier and acts to lubricate the flow,
making it easier for the glacier to move.
From their data, Rignot and Kanagaratnam calculate a mass
deficit, that is, more melting or ice discharge into the sea than ice
accumulation from the snows. In 1996 the deficit was around 90
cubic kilometers while in 2005 the figure was about 220 cubic
kilometers, roughly twice the loss in 1996. Put another way, in
1996 the Greenland deficit alone was raising the sea level by
about 0.2 millimeter a year. In 2005 that rate was about 0.6
millimeter a year. Their article states that at Angmassalik in
eastern Greenland the yearly air temperature has risen 3 degrees
Centigrade (5 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past couple of
decades. That’s over twice what the Geographic article gives for
Greenland as a whole. Either way, we’re in deep trouble.
Allen F. Bortrum
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