Let's see the conservanuts try to spin this report:
WINNIPEG–One of Canada's top northern researchers says the permanent Arctic sea ice that is home to the world's polar bears and usually survives the summer has all but disappeared.
Experts around the world believed the ice was recovering because satellite images showed it expanding. But David Barber says the thick, multi-year frozen sheets crucial to the northern ecosystem have been replaced by thin "rotten" ice that can't support weight of the bears. "It caught us all by surprise because we were expecting there to be multi-year sea ice. The whole world thought it was multi-year sea ice," said Barber, who just returned from an expedition to the Beaufort Sea.
... The ice is unable to withstand battering waves and storms because global warming is rapidly melting it at a rate of 70,000 square kilometres each year, he said.
Multi-year sea ice used to cover 90 per cent of the Arctic basin, Barber said. It now covers 19 per cent. Where it used to be up to 10 metres thick, it's now 2 metres at most.
The findings, soon to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, come as a shock to experts worldwide.
It's a known fact of life that some people learn life's lessons through hardship, pain and misery. I'm of the belief that the climate change deniers are firmly ensconced within that foolhardy mindset of the human species.
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Elbert Hubbard
US author (1856 - 1915)
----k
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