No one can actually predict with any certainty what our would will be like without any North Pole ice every Summer. The world will surely be much warmer than it is today. The polar sea and all the other oceans of the world would be warmer without the cooling effect of all that polar ice reflecting trillions of thermal units of heat back into space. The currents bringing warmer ocean water to the pole would cool it much less than before. The possibility of changing ocean currents are another wild card that we do not fully understand, but without a North Pole ice cap in the Summer, they could change substantially.
It is very probable that Greenlands glaciers will melt much more rapidly that previously expected. Our best and most objective scientists have been very wrong about how fast the North Pole Summer ice cover would melt. If you were to look at a chart predicting the probable North Pole ice loss with the range of expected loss predicted by the IPCC and other scientific organizations, you would see that in the last two years the actual losses went right off the chart. Originally it was predicted that there would be a meter higher sea levels by 2100, but scientist are already saying, as reported on NBC, that there will be at least twice the sea level increase this century as originally thought. It is becoming obvious that we just don't know how fast Greenland will be adding potentially 23 feet of additional water to the seas. If the pole could be gone by 2013 or sooner, most of Greenlands glaciers, as well as Antarctic glaciers, could be melted, flooding coasts and cities, much sooner that anyone thought.
We don't know what our weather would be like in a much hotter world, nor just how much hotter it might get. If humanity doesn't make a very rapid transition to a world that is carbon neutral we will be living in a very different planet and very soon. According to Professor Brian Fagan, a leading climatologist, computer models predict that the 3% of the worlds population that now live in extreem drought conditions would grow to 18%, and 30% would be living with severe drought. We would have new deserts, and much less rainforest. We would undoubtedly have famines.
It should be enough to know that vast ares would be flooded and that the world will lose hundreds of cities, many with populations in the millions. According to "Six Degrees Could Change the World", a billion people will lose their homes! Farewell New York, Miami, New Orleans and hundreds of other cities. Farewell to your favorite beach and many islands that would be completely submerged. This alone, even without the other serious consequences of a much hotter world, should be enough to convince us that we cannot allow the North Pole to melt.There is also the probability of vast methane releases from the melting permafrost, and even potentially from the sea bottom, that could put us into a runaway global warming that we cannot really predict, but could possibly make the planet vitrually uninhabbital for most of the creatures now living.
The Kyoto accords, the 2% solution, all that we are now planning to slow global warming will simply not be enough to save Humanity and countless species from incredible tragedy. We must create a totally new vision of human civilization. We must find the way to become carbon neutral or better and we don't have any time to waste. We can and we must reverse global warming with the technology we have today. We need a heroic effort like the one marshalled for World War Two, and we must start right now!
A World Without A North Pole