🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mar 2, 2:14 am, "James Fox" <j...@about.com> wrote:
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/06/beaufort_freshwater_russ
> ian_rivers/
>
> Concern that the Arctic Ocean is becoming massively less salty
> due to its ice cap melting - which could have knock-on
> consequences for the planet's climate - is unfounded, NASA
> scientists have said.
>
> For years, researchers have seen falling salinity readings in
> the Canadian half of the Arctic Ocean. This has led them to
> theorise that large amounts of fresh water were being added due
> to permanent disappearance of ice. In itself this might not mean
> a lot - sea levels would be unaffected, as the Arctic ice floats
> atop the sea - but it had been feared that addition of so much
> fresh water could impact the oceanic "conveyor belt" which moves
> heat around the planet, with major consequences for the climate.
>
> As long ago as 1999, Greenpeace were saying things like this:
>
> Calculations suggest that most, if not all, of the fresh water
> added to the Beaufort Sea came from melting Beaufort sea ice in
> the summer of 1997, and imply that much of the ice of the
> Beaufort Sea was much thinner (perhaps more than a meter
> thinner) at the end of the melt season in 1997 than it was
> during the end of the melt season in 1975.
>
> But the hippies were wrong. Analysis of data from specialised
> NASA satellites monitoring the Arctic ice has disproven this.
>
> "Changes in the volume and extent of Arctic sea ice in recent
> years have focused attention on melting ice," says Ron Kwok of
> NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which runs the Grace and
> ICESat spacecraft. "The Grace and ICESat data allow us to now
> examine the impacts of widespread changes in ocean circulation."
>
> According to Kwok and his colleagues, analysing readings from
> the satellites overhead, new freshwater in the Beaufort Sea
> comes not from melted ice but from rivers in Russia. Formerly
> this freshwater would have stayed largely in the Russian side of
> the Arctic, but a shift in circulation has occurred.

Why are you attempting to mislead alt.politics readers?
What you post is filled with LIES !
(and attempts to retrieve your original article just returns "Page not
found"

THIS is truthful:

"Using ICESat measurements, scientists found that overall Arctic sea
ice thinned about 0.17 meters (7 inches) a year, for a total of 0.68
meters (2.2 feet) over four winters. The total area covered by the
thicker, older "multi-year" ice that has survived one or more summers
shrank by 42 percent."

""Ice volume allows us to calculate annual ice production and gives us
an inventory of the freshwater and total ice mass stored in Arctic sea
ice," said Kwok. "Even in years when the overall extent of sea ice
remains stable or grows slightly, the thickness and volume of the ice
cover is continuing to decline, making the ice more vulnerable to
continued shrinkage. Our data will help scientists better understand
how fast the volume of Arctic ice is decreasing and how soon we might
see a nearly ice-free Arctic in the summer." - Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/icesat-20090707r.html