The Shrinking Arctic Ice Cap

[akrauth]

Aloha mai kakou,

I recently heard on the news that "there in the Arctic," the ice cap is shrinking. I was wondering if anybody out there has an opinion on how we can all kokua.

Mahalo nui loa!

[akrauth]

Re: The Shrinking Arctic Ice Cap

I just wanted to say e kala mai to the admin. For those of you who don't know your Hawaiian music, "aia i 'Alika" is the first line of the Auntie Genoa Keawe song "'Alika" and translates as "there in the Arctic," which is why I put those words in quotes in my message. I know why the subject got changed. It's because some people wouldn't know what it meant and wouldn't understand why I thought it made sense. My feelings are not hurt.

A hui hou kakou!

[craigwatanabe]

Re: The Shrinking Arctic Ice Cap

Aloha mai kakou,

I recently heard on the news that "there in the Arctic," the ice cap is shrinking. I was wondering if anybody out there has an opinion on how we can all kokua.

Mahalo nui loa!

With all this fuss about bottled water the best way we can help the rising tide is to start bottling up all this melting prehistoric water and start drinking it like there's no tomorrow!

We can call it Global Warming delite cuz we even bottle the greenhouse gas Co2 to give it a bit of fizz.

See solve two problems and make a fantastic soft drink to boot! Oh and HI-5 the bottle...we gotta keep saving the Earth.

[akrauth]

Re: The Shrinking Arctic Ice Cap

That's good advice! Mahalo nui.

[AlohaKine]

Re: The Shrinking Arctic Ice Cap

Not everything about global warming is bad. Like a longer, better growing season for Russian, Alaskan, and Canadian Farmers. And what about Greenland, if that ice cap goes away think of the potential to get at loads of virgin mineral resources. The people of Greenland could get rich.

[craigwatanabe]

Re: The Shrinking Arctic Ice Cap

Well with the ice caps melting wasn't there a story somewhere in the news talking about how one of the northern shipping routes was ice free for the first time in history allowing ships to sail above instead of thru the Panama Canal...or something like that.

[TATTRAT]

Re: The Shrinking Arctic Ice Cap

The norhtwest passage.




But with that comes the battle for "ownage". Canada is sitting on a gold mine. The shortest distance between 2 points is a straight line, so this is pretty easy to figure out.

[craigwatanabe]

Re: The Shrinking Arctic Ice Cap

So if you bottle the melting glaciers and sell it to thirsty nations, and open up the Norhtwest passage...what's the problem? I see lemon aide here while some see lemons. You could tow melting ice caps thru the Northwest passage and into drought stricken nations. If we can move the Brooklyn Bridge...

[AlohaKine]

Re: The Shrinking Arctic Ice Cap

Well with the ice caps melting wasn't there a story somewhere in the news talking about how one of the northern shipping routes was ice free for the first time in history allowing ships to sail above instead of thru the Panama Canal...or something like that.

That's true also. You won't here the environmental groups mention it however. Check out the greenpeace website for example.

http://www.greenpeace.org/internatio...change/impacts

Wow, nothing positive to say. Make sure to slam "Big Oil". George Bush is the enemy, of course in their minds. I'm not saying everything they say is false, but the bias is clear.

There's a "stop smoking" subsection on the site that got Alohakine here concerned for a minute. Thankfully they were talking about smokestacks not ciggies.

[Zovo]

Re: The Shrinking Arctic Ice Cap

Oddly enough, the whole crisis of Global Warming is a very Euro/Ameri-centric problem. many climate models show that, while yes Global Warming could be problematic for places like the United States, it could also bring increased rainfall and longer growing seasons to some of thr dryest, most impoverished places on earth.

And to that the fact that hundreds of times more deaths are reported every year as a result of cold weather as opposed to heat related deaths; the fact that melting arctic sea ice will not raise sea levels anywhere (because it is floating and there-by displaced already); and, as was already mentioned, the issue of virgin resources in both the Arctic and Antarctic circles as well as new shipping lanes helping to establish more amicable ties between historically rival nations, etc. . .

Indeed, while the US and Europe may be in for hard times, there is definitely some lemonade to made here.

[salmoned]

Re: The Shrinking Arctic Ice Cap

I disagree with the idea that global warming is mainly considered detrimental to USA & Europe. A major complication of global warming is the rising of the oceans. This affects coastal population centers world-wide. Of course, the oceans in the distant past have been much higher (during warm spells) and lower (during ice ages) than now. Personally, I prefer warmer over colder from here.

[craigwatanabe]

Re: The Shrinking Arctic Ice Cap

So with all the volcanic activity going on here on the big island, how's all that SO2 affecting our climate?

Oh and yeah I forgot...it's all Bush's fault. The stryker's calling Pele's back their home and she's pissed.

[Jim75]

Re: The Shrinking Arctic Ice Cap

If the earth warms continuously into the future, there'll certainly be a window of time wherein some will benefit. But as time moves forward, we'll move past that window and everyone will be affected in a negative way. The balance of much of the life on earth is only maintained by fairly narrow bands of minimum and maximum temperature. The minute we move too far out of those bands certain plant and animal forms will falter. When they falter, species that are closely interconnected with them will falter. Then species connected with those will falter, and on and on.

Chief Seattle was quoted as saying "Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."

If Global Warming is caused by human activity, and a very large group of credible people seem to think it is, then we need to take whatever action we can to prevent this chain reaction from unfolding. If they're wrong, we'd still have gained by cleaning up the environment. If they're right, and we don't act, the penalty could be very painful.

I suppose there's some potential that Global Warming could counterbalance whatever factors set an ice age into place and save everybody's bacon from freezing, but that seems like a pretty precarious gamble, given we don't know what causes an ice age or when one might develop.

And yes . . . this IS all George Bush's fault.

[craigwatanabe]

Re: The Shrinking Arctic Ice Cap

If the earth warms continuously into the future, there'll certainly be a window of time wherein some will benefit. But as time moves forward, we'll move past that window and everyone will be affected in a negative way. The balance of much of the life on earth is only maintained by fairly narrow bands of minimum and maximum temperature. The minute we move too far out of those bands certain plant and animal forms will falter. When they falter, species that are closely interconnected with them will falter. Then species connected with those will falter, and on and on.

Chief Seattle was quoted as saying "Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."

If Global Warming is caused by human activity, and a very large group of credible people seem to think it is, then we need to take whatever action we can to prevent this chain reaction from unfolding. If they're wrong, we'd still have gained by cleaning up the environment. If they're right, and we don't act, the penalty could be very painful.

I suppose there's some potential that Global Warming could counterbalance whatever factors set an ice age into place and save everybody's bacon from freezing, but that seems like a pretty precarious gamble, given we don't know what causes an ice age or when one might develop.

And yes . . . this IS all George Bush's fault.

Ya know with the presidential elections just a few months away, isn't it nice to know that global warming will be a thing of the past once a Democrat is in office? I can't imagine eight years of Bush made that much of a climate change.

[lensperson]

Re: The Shrinking Arctic Ice Cap

The garbage dump outside Hilo once seemed endless in capacity.Alas it had a finite size. The World also has a finite size.
It's a silly bird that fouls its own nest.
Whoever goes to Washington later on has a giant mess to cope with. I should not expect any miracles there.
The weather here in Seattle has been very cold. Bush managed to veto Spring somehow(I thought this impossible earlier in my youth)
Ciao