When Rackel Weisz's character compared denying the Holocaust with those who deny the ice caps are melting, that statement ruined the entire movie for me. The ice caps are NOT melting. NASA has been confirming this since 1979 with satellite imagery but the producers of this movie just couldn't resist another chance to get their little false and stupid political agenda injected into the movie.
shareIt is not a stupid political agenda. It is physics. The ice is melting.
Check your facts. Read the NASA satellite reports. The ice is actually expanding and NASA is puzzled by this since it doesn't fit the "agenda" This has nothing to do with physics and everything to do with anti-capitalist politics. Stop drinking the koolaid.
shareIt is physics.
The Earth is heated by energy arriving from the Sun. The Earth in turn dumps this energy into space, in the form of long wave radiation. A stable global temperature occurs when the amount of short wave energy arriving from the Sun balances the emission of long wave radiation from the Earth. This is physics.
When humans burn fossil fuels for energy we pump into the atmosphere gases which are opaque to long wave radiation. These gases make the Earth more inefficient at dumping heat to space, and so, as a consequence, the planet is warming up. The planet will continue to warm until the energy flows are back in balance again, at which point the rise in warming will stop. This, too, is physics.
The more fossil fuels we burn, the higher this final temperature will be. This is physics too.
The Arctic is currently at least 2 degrees C above the 1950-1991 average (even more above the pre-industrial average). Warmer temperature results in less ice. It is physics.
There are many sites which cover sea ice developments. Here's one http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Here's another http://neven1.typepad.com/