AFP reporter Shaun Tandon – Tue, Aug 28, 2012
The sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has melted to its smallest point ever in a milestone that may show that worst-case forecasts on climate change are coming true, US scientists said.
The nation’s ice center, based at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said in a statement that the decline in summer Arctic sea ice “is considered a strong signal of long-term climate warming.”
Arctic ice is considered vital for the planet as it reflects heat from the sun back into space, helping keep down the planet’s temperatures.
The Arctic region is now losing about 155,000 square kilometers (60,000 square miles) of ice annually, the equivalent of a US state every two years, said Walt Meier, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Scientists believe that climate change is caused by human emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions.
“Climate change is not some freak of nature but the effects of man-made global warming caused by our reliance on dirty fossil fuels”, said Kumi Naidoo, the executive director of Greenpeace.
The melt has rapidly changed the politics and economics of the Arctic region, with shipping companies increasingly eager to save time by sailing through the once-forbidding waters.
Data released Monday by the Washington-based Center for Global Development found that nations including China, India and the United States were reducing the intensity of their carbon emissions but that the effort was overwhelmed by the surge in power consumption in developing nations.