What Happens Next...

The Dodo: The Future of Polar Bears, in One Photograph

Topics: Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming, Greenhouse Gases, Politics

(Sigh) True-to-form, any climate post is trolled (on Google +).

Troll: Fake news

Me: Valium or Xanax. Take your pick.

S/He obviously didn't look at the source link below.

Since we don't have any spare starships lying in orbital dry dock or actually on Mars at Utopia Planitia, we don't have the luxury of firmly planting our heads in the sand like ostriches. That in and of itself is a myth, since like most birds ostrich don't bury their heads: they eat sand and rock to aid in their digestive process.

What happens next we'll all find out soon enough. The Climate Leadership Council is bringing back the carbon tax, that would at least be something. I just hope the result isn't only a killer tweet.

As the Arctic slipped into the half-darkness of autumn last year, it seemed to enter the Twilight Zone. In the span of a few months, all manner of strange things happened.

The cap of sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean started to shrink when it should have been growing. Temperatures at the North Pole soared more than 20 °C above normal at times. And polar bears prowling the shorelines of Hudson Bay had a record number of run-ins with people while waiting for the water to freeze over.

It was a stark illustration of just how quickly climate change is reshaping the far north. And if last autumn was bizarre, it's the summers that have really got scientists worried. As early as 2030, researchers say, the Arctic Ocean could lose essentially all of its ice during the warmest months of the year—a radical transformation that would upend Arctic ecosystems and disrupt many northern communities.

Change will spill beyond the region, too. An increasingly blue Arctic Ocean could amplify warming trends and even scramble weather patterns around the globe. “It’s not just that we’re talking about polar bears or seals,” says Julienne Stroeve, a sea-ice researcher at University College London. “We all are ice-dependent species.”

With the prospect of ice-free Arctic summers on the horizon, scientists are striving to understand how residents of the north will fare, which animals face the biggest risks and whether nations could save them by protecting small icy refuges.

Scientific American: Arctic 2.0: What Happens after All the Ice Goes? Julia Rosen