Is doom ahead, or opportunity?
Sea ice and glaciers are melting. But at least one expert thinks there is at least as much opportunity as trouble in global warming
"It is true that were the Greenland or Antarctic ice caps to thaw, sea levels would rise, but these remain uncertain outcomes," says Barry Scott Zellen, director of the Arctic Security Project at the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. "Evidence of an Antarctic thaw is at best anecdotal and highly localized, and a significant thaw of the southern ice cap remains unlikely in our lifetime. A thaw of the Greenland ice cap also looks highly unlikely, with recent glacial retreats suspected to be a cyclical phenomenon and not evidence of an imminent collapse. And so the flooding that keeps many awake at night may never come, says the author of Arctic Doom, Arctic Boom: The Geopolitics of Climate Change.
"In fact, a warmer earth may be both more bountiful and unified than today's belligerent planet," he says, pointing to new economies that develop around ice-free seas in the north.