If you are a Global Warming denier, move on. We are sane here, and we are operating from the premise that Global Warming is real, since every single peer reviewed article on the topic finds that to be the case. I have tried to find a valid study that uses sound methodology and has been peer reviewed that casts doubt on the reality of Global Warming, and I have not been able to find one. That is why we are not going to waste time debating whether or not it exists. It exists. That piece is on the board, m'kay?
Operating from that premise, I fully intend to set your hair on fire.
Lets start by looking at the picture and noticing how much more white there was in 1979. Do you remember your physics? Do you remember how light behaves?
Isaac Newton discovered that light could be split into the spectrum, in a precise and unvarying array, by a prism and used this experimental concept to analyze light. The order of colors as fragmented by the prism is a constant. Each color has a unique signature identifying its location in the spectrum, and the signature of color is the wavelength of light.
Quite simply, the darker a color, the more light (energy) it absorbs. Now look at that picture again. See how much darker the 2003 photo is? That is a lot of blue absorbing light (energy) and a lot less white reflecting it back to space. This causes the oceans to warm perceptably. The warmer the ocen, the faster the ice melts, and the faster the ice melts the more water there is to absorb the light (energy) and hold the heat and raise the temperature of the oceans.
But wait, there's more. Because we are spewing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, the atmosphere is thickening. So some of that light that is reflected off the ice can't escape the atmosphere and ends up reflected back to the earth from the atmospheric ceiling. As the light energy is unable to escape the atmosphere, it warms. This warming of the atmosphere accelerates the melt of alpine glaciers. Within a few years, there will be no Snows of Kilamanjaro because the mountain glacier will be gone.
Global Warming Threatens Polar Bears
Even the Bush administration has been forced to admit that Global Warming is real. For several years, the "polar bear problem" has been discussed among ecologists and environmental biologists. As their habitat shrinks, they are pushed into contact with humans. Bears have been dying of starvation and drowning, unable to cross the expanses of ocean that now loom, devoid of ice floes. Bears that are tranquilized for study show signs of emaciation and malnutrition.
The polar bears are our canary in the coal mine.
We have a decade, both to turn the tide on global warming and to save the polar bears. We can do both. The question is, however, will we do either?
