Uploaded December 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Dr. Peter Wadhams, eminent exploratory ice scientist and emeritus Cambridge professor of Polar Ice Physics, is with us again to discuss the situation in the polar regions, and the approaching Arctic #BlueOceanEvent (BOE), and some of its many ramifications. The BOE is defined as less than 100,000 square km of ice in the Arctic Ocean at the annual low point, usually in September. An increasing number of estimates by scientific bodies places the first BOE, since humans have walked the Earth, within the next few years. After that, it's a downhill slide unless we can figure out how to refreeze the Arctic.
The Arctic may be far from where you and I live, but the disappearance of Arctic ice will have vastly more far-reaching impacts in space and time than that. It basically will knock us silly, as it makes it progressively more difficult for humanity to grow enough food to feed itself. Once BOE occurs in some not very far away September, it will gradually spread to other months, and it will constitute #ClimateFeedback of similarly huge consequences, the flipping of the reflectance (or 'albedo') of the Arctic from net reflector to net absorber of the sun's heating rays.
We are, with our daily actions, creating a hell on Earth for our children. We are aware of it, even those who deny it, but we are locked into a system that ignores our imminent danger for the sake of continuing our comfortable lifestyles and participating in a socio-economic system engineered to benefit the banks and the wealthy few at the expense of the rest of us.
For more information on the state of our planet visit the FacingFuture Library at https://facingfuture.earth/library
Dr. Peter Wadhams, eminent exploratory ice scientist and emeritus Cambridge professor of Polar Ice Physics, is with us again to discuss the situation in the polar regions, and the approaching Arctic #BlueOceanEvent (BOE), and some of its many ramifications. The BOE is defined as less than 100,000 square km of ice in the Arctic Ocean at the annual low point, usually in September. An increasing number of estimates by scientific bodies places the first BOE, since humans have walked the Earth, within the next few years. After that, it's a downhill slide unless we can figure out how to refreeze the Arctic.
The Arctic may be far from where you and I live, but the disappearance of Arctic ice will have vastly more far-reaching impacts in space and time than that. It basically will knock us silly, as it makes it progressively more difficult for humanity to grow enough food to feed itself. Once BOE occurs in some not very far away September, it will gradually spread to other months, and it will constitute #ClimateFeedback of similarly huge consequences, the flipping of the reflectance (or 'albedo') of the Arctic from net reflector to net absorber of the sun's heating rays.
We are, with our daily actions, creating a hell on Earth for our children. We are aware of it, even those who deny it, but we are locked into a system that ignores our imminent danger for the sake of continuing our comfortable lifestyles and participating in a socio-economic system engineered to benefit the banks and the wealthy few at the expense of the rest of us.
For more information on the state of our planet visit the FacingFuture Library at https://facingfuture.earth/library
