Farming in Yellowknife

...looking less and less far-fetched. Also, the Northwest Passage may finally be open year round. Somehow, I'm totally un-enthusiastic.

Global warming 'past the point of no return'
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 16 September 2005

A record loss of sea ice in the Arctic this summer has convinced scientists that the northern hemisphere may have crossed a critical threshold beyond which the climate may never recover. Scientists fear that the Arctic has now entered an irreversible phase of warming which will accelerate the loss of the polar sea ice that has helped to keep the climate stable for thousands of years.

They believe global warming is melting Arctic ice so rapidly that the region is beginning to absorb more heat from the sun, causing the ice to melt still further and so reinforcing a vicious cycle of melting and heating.

The greatest fear is that the Arctic has reached a "tipping point" beyond which nothing can reverse the continual loss of sea ice and with it the massive land glaciers of Greenland, which will raise sea levels dramatically.

Satellites monitoring the Arctic have found that the extent of the sea ice this August has reached its lowest monthly point on record, dipping an unprecedented 18.2 per cent below the long-term average....

Sea ice naturally melts in summer and reforms in winter but for the first time on record this annual rebound did not occur last winter when the ice of the Arctic failed to recover significantly....

Current computer models suggest that the Arctic will be entirely ice-free during summer by the year 2070 but some scientists now believe that even this dire prediction may be over-optimistic, said Professor Peter Wadhams, an Arctic ice specialist at Cambridge University.... "If anything we may be underestimating the dangers. The computer models may not take into account collaborative positive feedback," he said.

It's funny, no matter how many times the scientific community uses the words "first time in recorded history", the climate psychopaths continue to denigrate the idea of science.

It's worth noting that, as the arctic ice caps sit on water anyways, this probably won't have a noticeable effect on it's own on sea levels. Of course, as the article points out, we aren't incorporating positve-feedback in to our models yet.

I wonder if Canadian and Russian farmland can expand fast enough to make up for drought in southern countries? It looks more and more like we'll be the only ones left with arable land...