Growing broccoli in Greenland

As reported in Guardian CIF today.

The article contains some very interesting and some very worrying snippets.

"The IPCC predicted an ice-free Arctic by the end of the century; some scientists now predict it for 2020. Ten years ago, it was thought that the Greenland ice cap - 11,000 feet high in some places - would take centuries to melt. Now, the pace of melting of the ice cap, and the unpredictable interaction of the feedback loops such melting may trigger, makes any firm prediction hazardous. In Greenland they know human civilisation is already entering unknown territory."

"But as the ice melts, the dark seas and the bare rock surface absorb heat, further accelerating melting and triggering sea level rises that will inundate, among other places, the Nile Delta, much of San Francisco and 40% of Bangladesh."

"'For the last 10,000 years,' Corell says, 'we have been living in a remarkably stable climate that has allowed the whole of human development to take place. In all that time, through the mediaeval warming and the Little Ice Age, there was only a variation of 1C. Now we see the potential for sudden changes of between 2C and 6C. We just don't know what the world is like at those temperatures. We are climbing rapidly out of mankind's safe zone into new territory, and we have no idea if we can live in it."

As the Arctic ice cap itself is disappearing (see Arctic Ice Update), the Greenland ice sheet appears to be starting to follow suit too. The potential for sea level rises that may have massive effects on mankind is well understood. The worrying thing is that the evidence suggests that it is already starting to happen at an accelerating pace.