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News is trickling out that scientists believe the North Pole will be completely ice-free (melted) by September… and not September 2050… or September 2020… they mean this freaking year.
Can someone fill me in when this happened? I know global warming is just a hoax, George Bush told me, but when did we manage to melt our ice caps… that seems like a pretty important thing to not try and melt.
CNN details the implications of the North Pole melting, and I’ll send along a picture of myself hiding under my desk with a 5-gallon jug of water later… maybe a short How-To on “How to survive Hell melting our polar ice caps… oh yea and I’ll see you there”
So I guess skiing will become a luxury sport here in about 5 years… California will sink into the ocean, Arizona will become a beachy oasis and Florida will become a string of islands… and Manhattan… well we know what happens to Manhattan.
Thanks Slashdot!
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June 28th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Yea,
this will be the first summer where it will melt almost completely (in the winter it goes back to normal)
it’s already affecting the polar bears, many will die of hunger (specially cubs) in the winter this year. They will have less time to hunt and prepare.
gladly is only a small part that melts, happens every year, but now is worse every time.
June 28th, 2008 at 10:58 am
Manny, do you happen to know if the pole has ever been close to melting completely like it has now? I’m guessing over the last 10 years it’s been close, but I mean in history… is this normal, or is it normally pretty dang frozen and this is the first time it’s been so close to completely melting?
I can’t imagine the North Pole getting warm enough to melt… when you see movies of it or the South Pole it seems unholy-cold…
June 28th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
well the temperatures have been on the increase and the summer time in the north pole seems to become longer.
also, the North pole and south are not the same. The south pole (Antarctica) should not melt, but yes, there have been an increase in the temperature.
Antarctica is like 20% land and 80% ice. The north pole is like 70% land.
oh and hurricane season now starts earlier and ends later.
in the next 50 years we’ll see the following:
-More deserts
-less food
-more poverty
-about 10 billion human beings (or more)
-More level 5 hurricanes
-more tornados
-20% of plants and animals extincted
-More plagues and diseases
-more crime…
that’s the world where our kids and grandkids will live in if we don’t do anything now.
i don’t know if you seen this video of the miniature earth (it’s enlightening…)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvTFKpIaQhM&feature=related
June 29th, 2008 at 6:51 am
Wow… the part when it got to the military funding versus the development expenditures… that just was depressing.
Are humans really *that* destructive that we have to spend 1000x more on military than we do on development? Or is it just that military spending is so much more profitable so that top 6% can continue to hold 75-80% of the world’s wealth?
Probably the latter… and that makes me sad.
June 29th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
yea it’s really sad sad… :/
videos like this make you think if we’re really heading in the right direction.
the number of people that live with 1 dollar or less a day is insane and plain depressing.
oh and just by owning a home am richer than most people in this world…
i really Thank God for how lucky i am i have a roof, food on the table, a vehicle, phone, internet, cable, etc. i always thought it was the opposite and took everything i archived for granted.
i really feel the need to give back and help somehow.
capitalism/globalization seems to be making the rich, richer and the poor… dead?
June 29th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
I know what you mean, there are down sides to capitalism, but there are huge up-sides to it as well. If you look at all the attempts at “equaling the playing field” through history, none of them ever worked because of the seemingly inate corruptibility of the “leaders”. If that’s the case and you have to assume leadership will get corrupt, atleast capitalism gives folks with drive an opportunity to push forward and up and out of a lower level of living.
Also what you said about “giving back”, I’ve had that bug big-time for the last few years… I try and do little things, donations, leave my change with the cashier incase other people need it and more recently, personal donations to people I know need it… nothing big, just trying to spread a little joy.
Ultimately I don’t think handing anyone a giant lump sum of money would help them, but some kindness here and there I think does wonders.
June 30th, 2008 at 1:47 am
yea,
but i would really like those “6 percent” that literally own the world to really give back
if only 1 of those gave up half their fortune, i wonder how many would benefit…
June 30th, 2008 at 2:10 am
yes, but capitalism is not sustainable in the long term unless we go to space, discover and use up the resources from other planets.
it’s all about “vertical economic growth”
for this to happen you need:
-New discoveries
-More resources (more energy, more land, materials, workers, more food, etc.)
-More consumers (increase in the population without stop)
-New problems (aka “opportunities”…)
-Rinse and repeat
Imperialism didn’t work, communism didn’t work, capitalism is the exact opposite and seems to be the less bad (but not sustainable in the long run…)
i hope the future can find some type of middle ground. But this will only happen when people start cooperating instead of blindly competing and/or stealing from each other.
before human greed, for millions of years nature had a perfect cycle and 1 world was more than enough for all creatures to live in…