Over my short but ultimately enjoyable tenure here at Green Options (a tenure which I hope to hold on to for a long time to come…), I have had the opportunity to write often on the recent scientific observations taken from the Arctic: that the Arctic ice sheet suffered its largest drop in recorded history. In fact, if you haven’t heard of it here at GO already, you no doubt will have heard of it in the news or in the newspapers.

But it seems that whenever I turn to my news each night to filter through the unimportant to find that which I bring to you each day, there is always another report referencing the massive summertime melt.

The recent Arctic melt crosses a fine line for two reasons that I will now discuss but, for the more observant, were already hinted at in my title.

Many scientists will snub anyone who uses the term "tipping point" purely because, in a lot of cases, they are little understood. Those scientists will dismiss such claims as scaremongering.

Scaremongering

Before we look at the facts behind this article, I want to take a moment to nullify some of the skeptics out there, before they attack me for simply perpetuating scare tactics being laid out by the media or a certain breed of scientists.

First of all, we have to admit that, some of the time, there are those amongst us that are willing – often too willing – to take new evidence too far. They will see it as a potential to shift the power in their favor, but in the process, put everybody else off.

A good example is that of religious evangelization. Many times, people are unwilling to hear what someone is saying if that someone is attempting to force their religion down your throat. However, the same cannot be said for when someone quietly goes about their lives, and allows themselves to be open to questions, rather than attempting to smack you over the head with a bible, Koran or alternate religious book.

The simple fact is that the Arctic ice sheet melted more than it ever has. We don’t need to force it in to anyone’s face; it is a relatively important action on its own that is more than able to inform the world by itself. So let us let the evidence do the talking, rather than attempt to reinterpret it ourselves.

That being said, if you’re not scared by the fact that the Arctic ice sheet could be totally gone during summers decades prior to earlier forecasts, then there’s no real hope in the first place.

Ecological Tipping Points

As mentioned, tipping points are not something that a lot of scientists are comfortable with. Just as the fat kid on the see-saw changes the balance in their favor, so there is some, often inaccessible, piece of scientific data that shifts the status quo in the opposite direction.

One of these tipping points, according to scientists like James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, could have already happened for the Arctic ice-sheet. "The reason so much of the Arctic ice went suddenly is that it is hitting a tipping point that we have been warning about for the past few years," he said in a recent interview with Reuters.

That tipping point, in facts, looks like this: the Arctic summer sea ice recently shrunk to 23% below the previously record low of 2005, dropping to a minimum area of 2.92 million km² and minimum extent of 4.14 million km². The facts keep coming, with this minimum representing some 41% below the 1978-2000 average summer-minimum.

But don’t take my word on it; here’s what the NSIDC had to say on the matter: Compared to the long-term average between 1979 and 2000, the 2007 minimum "was lower by 2.61 million square kilometers (one million square miles), an area approximately equal to the size of Alaska and Texas combined, or the size of ten United Kingdom’s."

The experts keep coming too, with Paal Prestrud of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo saying "I’d say we are reaching a tipping point or are past it for the ice. This is a strong indication that there is an amplifying mechanism here.”

And to make sure that I’m being fair minded, he also added this: "But that’s more or less speculation. There isn’t scientific documentation other than the observations."

But, and I want to stress this, these observations are the facts that I listed above. There may not be scientific documentation, other than the fact that by 2030, scientists are predicting no summer ice. This has not happened in at least a millennia, and possibly, and probably, much longer.

The Future

So we’re left with the virtually inescapable conclusion that if something is not done to avert this now, then what will be left but a fat kid sitting on the ground? In other words, if we don’t pile all our friends on to our side of the swing to outweigh the fat kid, will our kids ever make it on to a see-saw?

Now whether I’m pushing the analogy a step too far, I don’t know, but scientists believe that it is not too late. That, to take my analogy to its limits, all it needs is enough friends on one side of the swing to reverse what is happening.

Take Anders Levermann, a Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research professor, who says "I do not believe that this is alarmist… not all tipping points are irreversible."

Whats worse is that the melting of the Arctic ice sheet has virtually no impact on the world’s sea levels. It is really more of a "canary in the mine" sort of thing. But what that canary is showing us is that the ice sheets for Greenland and Antarctica may very well melt sometime this century. This is scary because, while the Arctic has no impact, Greenland has enough ice to raise oceans by 7 meters, and Antarctica by about 57 meters, according to U.N. estimates.

Now this is not likely to happen in our lifetimes, as the conditions to melt these two ice sheets are much harder to come by. In fact, the media will sometimes attempt to persuade you that the Antarctic ice sheet is melting, but it is more factual to say that the peninsula is melting, and that even if the Western Antarctic sheet were to melt, it would take some 7000 years and raise sea levels by 5 meters.

Conclusion

So we sit here, at the precipice, on that fine line I mentioned at the top. We have the possibility of a tipping point – the Arctic ice-sheet healing or dying on whether we act nor or not, and we have the fine line between reality and scaremongering. I hope that I’ve walked that line properly, and that that line is enough to make everyone realize that there is something seriously at play here, that will have dire consequences, if not for our lives, than for the lives of our children.

And despite my sounding like the lady screaming "Won’t someone please think of the children?!, can you really think of a better reason to act than that?

ENN - Arctic Thaw May be at "Tipping Point"

Pew Center on Global Climate Change - Arctic Ice Cap at Record Minimum Size

NSIDC - Arctic Sea Ice News Fall 2007

Washington Post - Antarctic Ice Sheet Is Melting Rapidly