North Pole With No Ice - Santa Hardest Hit

Sounds like Santa had better learn to tread water:

It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.

The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.

"From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water," said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.

If it happens, it raises the prospect of the Arctic nations being able to exploit the valuable oil and mineral deposits below these a bed which have until now been impossible to extract because of the thick sea ice above.

Maybe that explains the deer that was seen swimming in the ocean off Malibu Wednesday.

There are a couple of interesting points in this article. First of all, they dared to flout conventional wisdom and actually said there could be an advantage to a sea ice-free North Pole in terms of energy exploration. Secondly, I have my doubts about that "first time in human history" statement. Are there a lot of records of the North Pole sea ice levels during the Medieval Warm Period when Greenland was actually green? I have my doubts. That statement seems like a little globaloney to me.

UPDATE: Rush talked about this story on his show and consulted with the official EIB meteorologist Dr. Roy Spencer. Spencer offered some interesting facts. One year ago the sea ice coverage in the artic measured about 7 million square kilometers. It shrunk to a low of 3 million square kilometers before reforming during the winter.

Today the arctic ice coverage is approximately 10 million square kilometers, 3 million more than last year. What are the odds that it's going to go from 10 million to zero by the end summer? Not good.