This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Those who keep an eye on Earth's polar ice caps report that sea ice has melted faster in the Arctic Ocean this summer than at any time since scientists began recording its ebbs and flows. In fact, the Arctic ice cap reached its smallest summer expanse ever, and some scientists say it's at its lowest reach in nearly 1,500 years.
The shrinking ice cap coincides with warming at the poles that has been accelerating twice as fast as in other areas around the globe.
Even climate-change skeptics have to accept the fact that the planet is warming, and it's happening faster and with greater consequence than during any natural warming cycle in Earth's history. The massive ice melt is changing weather patterns in North America, and this summer's record-setting drought throughout the United States is only the first of a pattern of floods, severe storms, drought and wildfires that likely will become the norm.
The acceleration of Arctic warming, and the interplay between ice formation, snowfall and ocean that reinforces the trend increases severe weather at mid-latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere, where most people live, according to a study published this year in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The changes in ocean temperatures and currents cause patterns of extreme rainfall or drought to sit unmoving for months as they did this summer.
A nearly unanimous consensus among climate scientists attributes the warming to exponentially increasing greenhouse gas emissions — mainly carbon dioxide — spewed into the atmosphere from our burning of fossil fuels that started with the Industrial Revolution. Deforestation and other human-caused changes in the natural atmospheric cleansing mechanisms have also contributed.
While there is still a chance of mitigating the severity of the changes by reducing carbon in the atmosphere, there is no way to stop what is happening. Unfortunately, there is little chance that U.S. leaders will do enough to even slow the inevitable effects of the warming. Incredibly, there remain conservatives in Utah and in Congress who still do not admit that they should make policy changes to deal with the impacts, despite the fact the U.S. has been the primary culprit.
Future generations of Americans — our children and grandchildren — will wonder how their government could have ignored the unmistakable signs of global warming and the warnings of scientists until it was too late.
Policy makers tried to wish away the effects of global warming; now they will have to deal with the consequences.