[watsisname]

2007 was an astonishing year for arctic sea ice extent.  Now the record has again been broken and there are still weeks of melting expected.  I think the implications of this trend are extremely disturbing.  By some estimates we could be seeing ice-free arctic summers not just in our lifetimes, but in the next 10 years.

NSIDC report
BBC article

I'd also just like to quote an article written after the 2007 record minimum.

Speaking to BBC News on Monday this week, Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the NSIDC, said: "2005 was the previous record and what happened then had really astounded us; we had never seen anything like that, having so little sea ice at the end of summer. Then along comes 2007 and it has completely shattered that old record."

To quote Serreze now, “What is perhaps most surprising is that we are no longer surprised.”

[HAZARDLEADER]

Right now earth is a ****ed up place. Its that fossil fuel mentality, for god sakes we are still using technology that is a century out dated. (combustion engines) Its time to move on! But the ****ing oil companies are too greedy to let go, so its not going to happen. And Monsanto is ****ing with our, seeds and our food. When Monsanto started ****ing with our food, is when all the **** started happening to us. Diabetes and obesity sky rocketed, and little girls that maturing at 7, WHAT THE ****. 

The Human race is pretty ****ed right now, we need change...FAST.
But odds are, our hatred and our greed will blow us to bits in the fifty years. Our legacy would be; 'a race that was too stuck up, stupid, greedy, and violent that they couldn't even get past there own selfishness and stupidity to survive'

Sorry every one had to see that, I have STRONG feelings about this stuff. 

[Bobboau]

this is an interesting variation of poe's law

[Klaustrophobia]

global warming thread detected.  engage evasive maneuvers.

[watsisname]

What is also disturbing is that discussions of data regarding ice extent and trends, taken directly from satellite observations, cannot be posted without resulting in responses like the above.

[The E]

Indeed.

Hazardleader: No, the United States are not the entire world.

[Mongoose]

And Monsanto is ****ing with our, seeds and our food. When Monsanto started ****ing with our food, is when all the **** started happening to us. Diabetes and obesity sky rocketed, and little girls that maturing at 7, WHAT THE ****. 

...huh.

[watsisname]

I'd never heard of the company Monsanto before so I looked it up.  Yeah, I'm not gonna touch that topic here... :V

[Nuke]

nuke the ice caps!

[Dragon]

It's high time for people to open their eyes and see that nuclear power is the future energy source. Time to let go of old fossil fuel plants. Also, hydrogen-powered cars are slowly becoming more and more viable (recently, a Polish newspaper wrote about a new hydrogen "sponge" material which can be used for storing it), so it's time to start converting. I can't wait for the day we'll be able to show the middle finger to the middle eastern sheiks from our hydrogen cars and nuclear powered houses. Then, they could set gas prices as high as they want.

[headdie]

It's high time for people to open their eyes and see that nuclear power is the future energy source. Time to let go of old fossil fuel plants. Also, hydrogen-powered cars are slowly becoming more and more viable (recently, a Polish newspaper wrote about a new hydrogen "sponge" material which can be used for storing it), so it's time to start converting. I can't wait for the day we'll be able to show the middle finger to the middle eastern sheiks from our hydrogen cars and nuclear powered houses. Then, they could set gas prices as high as they want.

thing about fission power is it is not the be all and end all, while it doesn't pollute during production the waste material is a significant issue, also I believe they are slow to adapt to unexpected changes in demand.  Develop Fusion power and I will consider nuclear power a clear improvement until then it's just as bad in my opinion, just in a different way.

also power and cars are not the only source of pollutants, there is also heavy industry to consider.

[Dragon]

Heavy (and also chemical) industry is the smallest one of those, and one we can't do much about. There are some things that can't run on hydrogen or uranium in there, and oil is still very important in producing plastics. In general (IIRC), the industry produces less warming gases, but more toxins.
Nuclear waste is a problem, but compared to the amount of power it generates and to what fossil fuel plants exhale, it's almost nothing. I agree that fusion plants are the ultimate nuclear power source, fission ones will have to do as a stopgap before those are developed. Regarding increased demand on uranium, construction of nuke plants takes a long time. When the uranium providers see there's a boom (economic, of course ) on building such plants, they'll work to increase their output in advance.

[Mikes]

thing about fission power is it is not the be all and end all, while it doesn't pollute during production the waste material is a significant issue, also I believe they are slow to adapt to unexpected changes in demand.  Develop Fusion power and I will consider nuclear power a clear improvement until then it's just as bad in my opinion, just in a different way.

Which is basically what our physics teacher in 10th grade discussed with us some 20 years ago.... kinda depressing how little has changed.

[Nuke]

to be fair there is no magic bullet to meet all our energy demands. nuclear will give us an edge, and will make viable hydrogen or electric cars. fossil fuels, namely coal would still be used to take up the slack in the power demands. if we get lftr reactors into production, we could pretty much have another line of nuclear reactors running off a different fuel source in parallel to traditional water reactors (or newer generation reactors on the same fuel cycle). you still need to use all those renewable (wind/solar/hydro/geothermal/etc), as its essentially free power for the taking, not very much but enough to justify the cost and turn a modest profit on. even thats not enough, and we will need to be producing coal plants, and your karosene/gasoline/diesel/fuel oil/natural gas, will be needed for mass transport industries (planes/trucks/trains/ships), with natural gas mostly being applied to heating and some power generation. we need all tha powah!

yea **** the environment, just keep my 100w incandescent bulbs running.

[Dragon]

If we have enough spare electricity, we could use that for heating. I think that if nuclear plants got common enough, fossil fuel ones would become completely obsolete. Renewable sources are good on small scale, but somewhat cost-inefficient with current tech. And aside from planes, mass transport could switch to hydrogen engines once they become developed enough. I think that pollution from airplanes is insignificant compared to other sources.

[Nuke]

lol. fissile material is just as limited a resource as fossil fuels. do we really want our lust for oil to be replaced by the lust for uranium? and even if we brought a thousand reactors online it would not be enough to make coal obsolete.

[Dragon]

Well, this would take some power from middle east and greedy sheiks, not to mention it pollutes much less. It's an overall improvement, though not as large as fusion plants would be. As I said, a good enough stopgap. Maybe fission plants won't obsolete coal plants completely (fusion should, though), but they should greatly reduce their number.

[Nuke]

someone had a design for a working energy positive heavy ion fusion plant back in the 70s. catch is it would be a massive installation, would require a large complex including a particle accelerator, and a fusion target factory and a ****ton of other infrastructure and a $2 billion price tag. but it would work.

[Dragon]

Well, that's heavy ion fusion, which is rather inefficient compared to hydrogen fusion, heavy ions are somewhat harder to come by, not to mention $2 billion price tag isn't anywhere near what countries can afford these days (heck, at one point I was a worried about ITER getting it's funding slashed, crisis being what it is, but fortunately that didn't happen). 70s, were right in the middle of Cold War. You could justify (and fund) the strangest research (like Project Star Wars or Jedi knights) by saying "It'll help us against Soviets".

[Nuke]

its certainly cheaper than the 18 billion we spent trying to get tokamaks to not suck. and its not our fault that the world is running out of evil communists.