Declassified Satellite Images

Satellite images of polar ice (that had been classified by the Bush administration) that were declassified last week by President Obama show just how devastating and extreme the polar meltdown has been in recent years. You read that correctly: George W Bush classified pictures that gave dramatic evidence of global climate change. I guess it was just another aspect of his War on Science. One amazing image can be seen above.

The photos, and their 1-meter resolution, helped scientists estimate the amount of ice that melted in the summer of 2007, the largest melt on record, at more than a million square kilometers. The NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has warned that America's satellite fleet is aging and may no longer be effective at monitoring and predicting climate change. This sentiment has also been reflected by the National Academy of Sciences in their warning that the environmental satellite network was "at risk of collapse." NASA had planned to put a high-tech, carbon-monitoring satellite into orbit earlier this year, but it crashed shortly after lift-off.

The good news is that President Obama, in his Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, has already allocated $170 million for climate modelling and the NOAA is looking for an additional $390 million to upgrade its environmental satellite fleet in 2010.

Here are two more of the freshly declassified pictures: