In December 2009, the Anglican Church of Canada implored its membership – whose size is diminishing far more rapidly than Arctic ice – to petition parliament to combat melting sea ice in the Arctic:
What was, only a few years ago, seen as one possibility among several has now become an undisputed fact: Climate change is real and is having increasingly serious impacts on the environment and people. More worrisome, its impact is stronger and faster than was predicted even a short time ago. Artic [sic] ice is melting much faster than expected, so are the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. In Canada, we see impacts of changing climate in the melting of permafrost in the North and weather- related events such as floods and droughts in the South. The changes are taking place at an increasing speed and the predictions are repeatedly turning out too optimistic.
Oops. It appears that strong winds are causing much of the loss of Arctic sea-ice:
Strong winds and not global warming are to blame for much of the record-breaking loss of ice in the Arctic Ocean in recent years, new research reveals.
Ice blown out of the Arctic area by winds can explain the one-third drop of sea ice since 1979, scientists believe.
The study helps to explain the huge loss of ice in the region during the summers of 2007 and 2008, after which some commentators suggested the Arctic Ocean would be ice-free during the summertime within a decade.
Still, there is probably enough wind generated by the ACoC to blow all the ice back again.
Anglican Samizdat 