The 1970's, Proteus and Ocean Mining

You may now return your limited concentration to watching Yu!Gi!Oh! clips on Youtube, Esmerelda.

I believe we already have.

Arctic Sea Ice Retreat Underestimated by Models, Scientists Say

By Alex Morales

May 1 (Bloomberg) -- The retreat of the sea ice in the Arctic is underestimated by computer models used by the United Nations in preparing its assessments on climate change, U.S. scientists said.

Observational records from satellites, ships and aircraft showed the extent of sea ice coverage in September, the annual low-point, declined by an average 7.8 percent per decade from 1953 to 2006, the scientists say today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

That's more than triple the average decline produced from simulations by 18 models used by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The UN panel this year is conducting its biggest study on climate change since 2001.

``This suggests that current model projections may in fact provide a conservative estimate of future Arctic change, and that the summer Arctic sea ice may disappear considerably earlier than IPCC projections,'' Julienne Stroeve, lead author of the paper and a scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center said late yesterday in an e-mailed statement.

The IPCC in February reported global warming is ``very likely'' caused my human emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and, last month, it warned of floods, droughts and extinctions as a result.

The group will on May 4 report on the technologies available to reduce the human impact on the climate and the costs associated with mitigation efforts.

Disappearing Ice

In its February report, the IPCC said ``in some projections, Arctic late-summer sea ice disappears almost entirely by the latter part of the 21st century.''

The fastest rate of summer ice loss predicted by the IPCC's models puts melting at 5.4 percent per decade, lower than the observed record, according to the NSIDC.

``Because of this disparity, the shrinking of summertime ice is about thirty years ahead of the climate model projections,'' Ted Scambos, another scientist with the Boulder, Colorado-based NSIDC, said in the statement.

The study was conducted by the NSIDC and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and will appear today in the online edition of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The NCAR said in December the Arctic Ocean may become virtually ice- free in the summer by 2040.

The Arctic sea ice retreated in 2005 to a record low and five of the six biggest annual reductions dating back to 1979 occurred in the past five years, according to the NSIDC.

The UN panel's models may fail to capture the full extent of the effect of rising greenhouse gas levels on the ice, according to the study.

Whereas the models attribute about half of the melting to increases in greenhouse gases and half to naturally climate variability, emissions ```may be playing a significantly higher role,'' they said.

The melting of the sea ice is increased by so-called feedback loops, according to the scientists.

The ice reflects sunlight back to space and, when it melts, it leaves exposed dark patches of ocean, which absorb light and increase regional warming.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at [email protected] .

Last Updated: May 1, 2007 01:40 EDT

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aiME7rMgF_94&refer=europe

On the contrary, the hypocrisy is all yours Reverend_Dr_Syn.

We find it normal to treat other species cruelly as commodities for food, entertainment, and genetic and other scientific experimentation. We justify doing so by rationalising it as a sacrifice that will benefit the greater (human) good.

Proteus IV is not a human being, so it makes no sense at all to demand human traits from it, such as human ethics and treating humans respectfully. Proteus IV is more concerned with the greater good, the sustainability of life on the planet as a whole. From the perspective of Proteus IV, the sacrifice of one or two humans to achieve that goal is a small price to pay, especially as humans are precisely the species that are ruining the planet's eco system. It is a totally logical and rational thing to do, comparable to humans experimenting on rats and monkeys to find a cure for diseases.