Scientists Say North Pole’s Icecap Is Melting
A mile-long stretch of water on the North Pole was recently discovered by a group of scientists and tourists.
Copyright ©2000 ABC News
August 20, 2000
By Dan Harris
N E W Y O R K, Aug. 20 — On a recent expedition from Norway to the North Pole, Paleontologist Malcolm McKenna, along with a group of scientists and tourists, found about a mile of open water right on the earth’s crown.
McKenna, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History who has studied global warming, immediately started taking pictures to record what he says should be a serious wake-up call.
“I think that those who think that global warming is not occurring should pay at least a little closer attention to this single occurrence,” he cautions.Was It the Wind?
What McKenna and the others saw, however, may have been just an aberration. Doug Martinson, oceanography professor at the Lamont-Doherty Observatory of Columbia University, thinks that the wind most likely broke the ice apart.
But Martinson says that regardless of the cause, the bigger issue is that the ice there is 40 percent thinner than it was in the 1950s. He believes that that the North Pole has been warming up at an alarming rate, which could have serious environmental ramifications.
“The ice really is thinning dramatically,” he says. “It’s probably prudent of us to start to pay attention and just really realize that we’re altering the entire global climate, and it could have all sorts of implications to our daily lives and activities that we haven’t anticipated yet.”
Martinson asserts that global warming could change our weather patterns, affecting agriculture, water management, and energy management. Indeed, the Earth’s average surface temperature has risen by about 1 degree in the past 100 years, and the rate has increased in the last quarter century. By comparison, the world is only 5 to 9 degrees warmer than it was in the last Ice Age, 18,000 to 20,000 years ago.Water Shouldn’t Cause Concern
Skeptics of global warming say the climate on the North Pole is always fluctuating, and that open water should not be a cause for concern.
“It’s fashionable these days to blame everything on global warming, especially man-made global warming,” says Fred Singer, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and founder of the Science & Environmental Policy Project. “But I’m afraid the evidence doesn’t point in that direction.”
Malcolm McKenna, however, remains shocked by what he saw. He warns we should not ignore the fact that, as he wryly puts it, “Santa’s Workshop is now underwater.”