US 'committed' to ratifying Law of Sea Convention: Clinton

[Mr Crowley]

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday the United States was "committed" to ratifying a convention on world ocean use, as she called for more international cooperation to protect the North and South poles.
At the meeting, the United States and Norway said that the melting of glaciers was opening new navigation routes in the Arctic, thus creating economic opportunities -- including in transportation and energy -- for neighboring countries, but with that came new responsibility.

Clinton said Washington would work with other countries surrounding the region "to strengthen peace and security and support economic development and protect the environment." Those countries include Russia, Canada, Norway and Denmark.

"The changes under way in the Arctic will have long-term impacts on our economic future, our energy future and indeed again the future of our planet, so it is crucial that we work together," she added.

The diplomatic chief said she and President Barack Obama were committed to having the US Congress ratify the Law of the Sea Convention, a United Nations text on maritime rights drafted in 1982.

The United States signed the convention's text in 1994, after securing changes to certain provisions deemed against US interests. But Congress never ratified the treaty, despite a lobbying effort by former president George W. Bush in 2007.

Global warming, she added, "raises the possibility of new energy exploration, which will, of course, have additional impacts on our environment."

Clinton was referring to huge unexplored reserves of some 90 billion barrels of oil and an even greater amount of natural gas in the Arctic, according to estimates by the US Geological Survey.

These resources constitute 13 percent of the world's untapped reserves of oil and 30 percent of reserves of natural gas.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store noted that merchandise between the Japanese port of Yokohama and the Dutch port of Rotterdam would see a 40 percent reduction when merchant ships would be able to use the North-West Passage being opened north of Canada.

He called for bordering countries, which are members of the Arctic Council, to cooperate closely to avoid an escalation of conflict.

Russia recently announced it intended to militarize the Arctic in order to protect its interests there, while Canada seeks to control 200 nautical miles of Arctic waters.

Ottawa has been consistently reaffirming its sovereignty over the region, in particular the North-West Passage and its thousands of uninhabited islands. Due to melting ice, the passage could become an important future maritime route linking Asia to Europe.

But the United States and other countries say it is an international maritime route, and should thus remain open.

Participants also spoke about the Antarctic, which is protected by a treaty signed in Washington 50 years ago.

"We have no time to lose in tackling this crisis" and take new measures to protect the region, said Clinton after having recalled the collapse over the weekend of an ice bridge that holds in place the Wilkins Ice Shelf, seen as an alarming sign of melting of the glaciers.

She said that Obama had provided Congress with an annex to the treaty for ratification. The annex set the obligations of signatories in case of an environmental catastrophe in the South Pole region.
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You would have to question whether or not strategic resources and waterways are more important for American motivations here than the environmental considerations.

[Mr Crowley]

The Arctic ice cap is thinner than ever, satellite observations revealed Monday, while also indicating that the sea ice cover continues to shrink due to global warming.

The period between 2004 and 2009 saw the lowest ice extent, said Charles Fowler, a University of Colorado (CU) glaciologist who led a team of scientists for the research.

The researchers found that the maximum sea ice extent for 2008 and 2009, reached on February 28, was 5.85 million square miles (15.2 million square kilometers), 278,000 square miles (720,000 square kilometers) less than the average extent between 1979 an

Last year, a team of researchers led by Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, mapped for the first time sea ice thickness for the entire Arctic basin.

A team of three British explorers on February 28 set out on an 85-day, 850-kilometer (530-mile) trek to the North Pole to measure the thickness of sea ice along the way.

Global warming is believed to be the main culprit in the rapidly melting north polar ice cap that is freeing up new sea routes and untapped mineral resources on the ocean bottom.

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Some 80 percent of Arctic ice may disappear in 30 years, not 90 as scientists had previously estimated, according to a new study on the impact of global warming. Skip related content
"The amount of the Arctic Ocean covered by ice at the end of summer by then could be only about 1 million square kilometers, or about 620,000 square miles," said US researchers who authored the study published Thursday.

"That's compared to today's ice extent of 4.6 million square kilometers, or 2.8 million square miles," they added, warning the development "raises the question of ecosystem upheaval."

The scientists made their projections based on models that took accounted for changes in Arctic ice, which saw "dramatic declines" at the end of summer in 2007 and 2008, when the ice surface dropped to 4.3 and 4.6 million square kilometers (1.7 and 1.8 million square miles), respectively.

The models pointed to a "nearly ice-free" Arctic in just 32 years, with some of the models making the same prediction for 11 years from now.

"In recent years, the combination of unusual warm temperatures from natural causes and the global warming signal have worked together to provide an earlier summer sea-ice loss than was predicted," said James Overland of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The researchers noted one benefit of less ice in the Arctic: "a boon for shipping and for extracting minerals and oil from the seabed."

[Geckko]

Do read with any critical faculties at all??

Just some of the questions you shold immediately raise from your articles:

[COLOR="Red"]The Arctic ice cap is thinner than ever[/COLOR], satellite observations revealed Monday, while also indicating that the sea ice cover continues to shrink due to global warming.

[COLOR="red"]The period between 2004 and 2009 saw the lowest ice extent[/COLOR], said Charles Fowler, a University of Colorado (CU) glaciologist who led a team of scientists for the research.

The researchers found that the maximum sea ice extent for 2008 and 2009, reached on February 28, was 5.85 million square miles (15.2 million square kilometers), 278,000 square miles (720,000 square kilometers) less than the average extent between 1979 an

[COLOR="red"]Last year, a team of researchers led by Ron Kwok of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, mapped for the first time sea ice thickness[/COLOR] for the entire Arctic basin.

Proof that sea ice is "thinner than ever" on data compiled last year. MArvellous. Just to be clear - two years of data and you claim ice thickness is "thinner than ever":

Last year, a team of researchers led by scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., created the first map of sea ice thickness for the entire Arctic basin, according to NASA. [COLOR="red"]The scientists used two years of data [/COLOR]compiled from NASA's Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat).

A team of three British explorers on February 28 set out on an 85-day, 850-kilometer (530-mile) trek to the North Pole to measure the thickness of sea ice along the way.

And how is that working out for them? Not much warmening there, with coldest tmeps in decades. And as for the "research", like the "2 years of data prove decadal loss of sea ice" their labours will be able to prove nothing at all.

Global warming is [COLOR="red"]believed [/COLOR]to be the main culprit in the rapidly melting north polar ice cap that is freeing up new sea routes and untapped mineral resources on the ocean bottom.

ANd there is the nub of it and you don't even realise. Belief. Like an article of Faith.

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Some 80 percent of Arctic ice may disappear in 30 years, not 90 as scientists had previously estimated, according to a new study on the impact of global warming. Skip related content
"The amount of the Arctic Ocean covered by ice at the end of summer by then could be only about 1 million square kilometers, or about 620,000 square miles," said US researchers who authored the study published Thursday.

"That's compared to today's ice extent of 4.6 million square kilometers, or 2.8 million square miles," they added, warning the development "raises the question of ecosystem upheaval."

The scientists made their projections based on models that took accounted for changes in Arctic ice, which saw "dramatic declines" at the end of summer in 2007 and 2008, when the ice surface dropped to 4.3 and 4.6 million square kilometers (1.7 and 1.8 million square miles), respectively.

The models pointed to a "nearly ice-free" Arctic in just 32 years, with some of the models making the same prediction for 11 years from now.

"In recent years, the combination of unusual warm temperatures from natural causes and the global warming signal have worked together to provide an earlier summer sea-ice loss than was predicted," said James Overland of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The researchers noted one benefit of less ice in the Arctic: "a boon for shipping and for extracting minerals and oil from the seabed."

And this is just models models models, forecasts forecasts forecats, based on the Disco Stu school of forecasting (look, it's going up). And guess what, the trend appears to have done an about face:

[Mr Crowley]

Forgive me if I choose to place more credence in the views of experts rather than the incoherent ramblings of an anamoloy fetishist.

[Geckko]

Forgive me if I choose to place more credence in the views of experts rather than the incoherent ramblings of an anamoloy fetishist.

Or maybe a novel approach.

Use your own brain.