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Melting Arctic Ice Has Consequences

Posted by kdawson on Sun Nov 05, 2006 05:00 PM
from the darn-it-I-really-liked-polar-bears dept.
The Almighty Buck Science
OriginalArlen writes to tell us about some compelling global warming coverage in the Washington Post. First there is an article about a study indicating that melting Arctic ice is threatening polar bears with extinction. The article quotes an environmentalist: "This study is the smoking gun. Skeptics, polluting industries and President Bush can't run away from this one." And the polar melting is opening new shipping lanes. The second article details a trip late in October through the Northwest Passage by a Canadian icebreaker. Never before in history could this trip have been accomplished so late in the year; ice would have choked off the passage. Estimates of when the passage might be navigable by commercial shipping range from 2020 to the end of the century. The indigeneous people are not looking forward to this development.
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  • "polluting industries and President Bush can't run away from this one."

    I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you've been frozen in arctic ice the past 6 years, were recently thawed out as a result of the melting ice, and have no knowledge of Bush's presidency or how powerful corporations are.

    Welcome to the world of 2006!!

    • Although Bush has done [epa.gov] much [whitehouse.gov] to harm [ens-newswire.com] the environment, denying anthropogenic global warming is not in his toolbox [sciencemag.org]. I mean, as much as I hate to defend the man, we should be clear about the few things he hasn't done wrong. :)
          • A bear from the Smokey Mountains and a bear from the Arctic are dropped into the water. Which one dissolves first? The one in the arctic, because it is POLAR

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Dravik (699631)
              Environmentalists don't have much room to complain about starving children dying of malaria. They are the ones who completely banned DDT thus removing the most effective anti malaria efforts. Do you have any solutions that won't destroy the economy and create more poor starving people to die from the malaria?
      • >increased the fuel econemy rating for a good portion of vehicles on the road.

        Why not raise it across the board? Googling for "CAFE mpg 2000" and "CAFE mpg 2006" is revealing.

        >The fact is that bush hasn't run away from environmental issues at all.

        Correct. The "Healthy Forests Initiative" is hardly running away from an issue. Neither is the "Clear Skies Act", which if Wikipedia has their facts straight


                * Allows 42 million more tons of pollution emitted than the EPA proposal.
                * Weakens controls on mercury pollution levels compared to what would be achieved by enforcing the Clean Air Act stringently.
                * Weakens the current cap on nitrogen oxide pollution levels from 1.25 million tons to 2.1 million tons, allowing 68 % more NOx pollution.
                * Delays the improvement of sulfur dioxide (SO2) pollution levels compared to the Clean Air Act requirements.
                * Delays enforcement of smog-and-soot pollution standards until 2015.
                * Exempts major stationary emissions sources from installing modern pollution control as required under New Source Review when making major capacity upgrades or renovations.

        The endless attempts to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife refuge are not "running away", either.

        November 2004, changed the standard for allowing sewage to be dumped without complete treatment from "emergency" to any time it rains.

        May 2002, tore up existing standards to allow Appalachian coal miners to bury mountain streams in waste.

        Bush is not running away from the environment, he's making a frontal attack on it.

  • How dare they question the Holy Religion of America, as revealed by our Almighty God the Dollar!

    Repeat after me: There is no global warming!

    And even if there is, it's not caused by humans!

    And even if it is, there's no need to do anything about it!

    • And even if there is, it's not caused by humans!

      Ok, so...there have been past dramatic climate changes on the earth that have happend and were certainly not caused by humans.

      I think an open minded person would have to say there are only two or three ways to go here. It is getting hotter, as it has done in the past, and people aren't causing it. It is getting hotter and people are the cause of it. It is getting hotter and it partly a normal cycle of the earth, and people do play some part in it, as well.

      • Re: How dare they! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by transporter_ii (986545) * on Sunday November 05 2006, @05:39PM (#16728841) Homepage
        http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/2006-09-13 -hottest-summer_x.htm [usatoday.com]

        The USA sweated this year through its hottest summer in 70 years, with temperatures not seen since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, according to a government report.

        From June 1 to Aug. 31, as summer is defined by the National Climatic Data Center, the continental USA had an average temperature of 74.5 degrees, based on readings from hundreds of weather stations nationwide. It was the second-hottest summer temperature the government has recorded since it started keeping track in 1895. The only one warmer -- by about two-tenths of a degree -- was in 1936.

        Ok, seriously, what made it so hot back in 1936? Was it just a natural occurrence, or was it man made way back then?

        Transporter_ii

        • The poor practices of landowners [wikipedia.org] led the way to the dust bowl, and to the local increases in temperatures here in the US.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by DiamondGeezer (872237)
            They may have made the Dustbowl worse, but the temperatures were not caused by the Dustbowl. All the way to the Arctic the temperatures of the late 1930s were the highest of the 20th Century.

            I think you're confusing cause and effect.
      • It's hard to make out what you are trying to say in your last line.

        Are you saying that only a moronic fool would believe that people
        are the problem, or are part of the problem because there have been
        dramatic climatic changes in the past?

        If so, that seems to be ignoring that we might be part of the problem.
        Climatic changes happened in the past without human input does not mean
        *necessarily* that *this* set of changes do not have a human component.
        Shouldnt we find out?

        Also, lets say, for argument, that people
      • Given that the earth has had dramatic climate changes well before people could have possibly had anything to do with it...why is that anyone who believes this could be the case here must be some type of moronic fool?

        Anyone who can't grasp the concept of rate of change is rather likely to be a moronic fool.

      • Given that the earth has had dramatic climate changes well before people could have possibly had anything to do with it...why is that anyone who believes this could be the case here must be some type of moronic fool?

        I think an open minded person would have to say there are only two or three ways to go here. The person is some type of "moronic fool" who doesn't understand the science despite their best efforts. The person is actually a shill whose livelihood depends on him and/or others not understanding

      • You're right: the Earth has experienced dramatic climate change in the past. But every time it has experienced dramatic climate change, it has also experienced mass extinctions.

        And considering how close most of the world's population lives to the ocean coasts, and how much we rely on a relatively small number of dwindling species for survival, can we really say that we're not going to be on the extinction list this time around?

      • Ok, so...there have been past dramatic climate changes on the earth that have happend and were certainly not caused by humans.
        ...
        Given that the earth has had dramatic climate changes well before people could have possibly had anything to do with it...why is that anyone who believes this could be the case here must be some type of moronic fool?

        You have to look at the scale of the change. In the last 600'000 years the CO2 levels never exceeded a certain threshold. We are now over that threshold roughly 2-

  • Just like the governments of the world didn't already know this. NOBODY GIVES A SHIT, don't you know? Its so far into the future nobody cares, nobody thinks of the children so stop posting all this shit on slashdot. I gladly await our deserved destruction.
    • Well, excuse us for disturbing your complacent nihilism. But you must have noticed by now that most Slashdotters still suffer from the illusion that their lives matter!

  • This gives the phrase... (Score:4, Funny)

    by thewiz (24994) * on Sunday November 05 2006, @05:13PM (#16728607)
    "Baked Alaska" a whole new meaning.
  • I mean, didn't we send those polar bears the memo about global warming? Oh wait... it wasn't congressionally approved.... =P

  • Political Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)

    by chill (34294) on Sunday November 05 2006, @05:16PM (#16728631) Journal
    On both sides.

    This has been presented before, and debunked before. This study [ncpa.org] shows that while ice is thinning in some parts of the arctic, it is thickening in others and the temperature change isn't uniform.

    It also shows that the majority of polar bear populations are steady, with an equal number on the increase and decrease.

    That shipping lane has been there before, and guess what -- there were polar bears around back then. Amazingly enough, polar bears aren't the hot-house flowers these people are making them out to be.

    The climate is changing, that is for certain. The only thing more certain is that politicos and people who want gov't grants are going to exaggerate and hype every little anomaly beyond belief in order to garner attention and eventually money. What they hell ever happened to science for the sake of actual knowledge?
    • but damn it! an environmentalist said it was as smoking gun! bush cant deny that wikiality!
    • and the temperature change isn't uniform.
      You know, that is why it is called global warming, not local warming on a global scale.
    • > What they hell ever happened to science for the sake of actual knowledge?

      How do you tell science and political bullshit apart, other than by whether you like the result?

      It happens that the "report" you quote is scientifically incoherent. I don't know much about polar bears, but I am very familiar with sea ice trends.

      Arctic sea ice summer extent minima are rapidly retreating, and the best evidence is that perennial ice has shrunk by 40% ion the last forty years. It is reasonable to expect that all the perennial Arctic sea ice will go away in this century, both by extrapolation and by careful consideration of the thermodynamics and radiation budgets involved.

      Real scientists talk about one issue at a time, and their opinions have a logical consistency rather than a political one. No one who is an expert on polar bears is an expert on sea ice mechanics.

      The statement about Antarctica is a particlar howler.

      "Moreover, while sea ice has decreased in the Arctic, it has remained relatively constant (or even increased slightly) in the Antarctic since 1978."

      It's true enough but completely irrelevant. Have a glance at a globe. It might be worth considering that Antarctic sea ice has completely different origins than Arctic sea ice. If Antarctica melts, what happens to southern summer sea ice extent?

      And why should polar bears care about the Antarctic anyway?

      The paper you quote comes from a group that invariably highlights evidence against global warming and minimizes evidence supporting it. I don't know who funds it, but I have run into it before. I promise you it is not considered a scientific source; but go ahead an check the citation index and prove me wrong.

      So, as someone who knows some of the scientists, who seem to me to be very serious people, I would say you have your bullshit and your science swapped.

      I'm sure you won't take my word for it, but consider this. How, exactly, would you know?

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by uncadonna (85026)
          I am an environmental scientist. As such I cannot be held responsible for what any political party does.

          The word "environmentalist" makes me cringe, though not as much as the word "anti-environmentalist" does, I'll admit. I am just doing my part to explain the difference between the facts and the noise that is injected by people with many billions of dollars of fossil fuel assets that they are motivated to protect.

          However, you are right that I do dismiss the contemporary crop of "global warming skeptics".

          I
      • Funny, that you would believe a study published by a group run by Governor Pete du Pont.

        Funny, that you would imply that the study is unreliable just because you don't like governor du Pont for some reason.

        -jcr

  • OriginalArlen writes to tell us about some compelling global warming coverage in the Washington Post.

    Send some of that global warming up here to Canada will ya? It is fracking cold up here at this time of year. Could use it right about now. Natural gas/taxes are lower when it is warmer too.

  • ...to go watch The Inconvenient Truth [wikipedia.org].

    Part of the documentary deals with the disappearing/melting ice on the polar ice caps and at Greenland.
  • So .. less man-killing polar bears... and more new trade routes.

    Hell, I might go set a few gallons of crude oil on fire just to help out the cause!
  • "Skeptics, polluting industries and President Bush can't run away from this one."

    Wanna bet?
  • I recently had the pleasure of attending a conference in Minnesota where Will Steger gave a talk. Some of the pencil necked may not know it, but his outward personna is that of the explorer that has crossed both poles by dogsled...the long way. Not the short trips across, just to say it was done, but the long way.

    Actually, Steger impresses me as a scientist first, with unsurpassed real leadership and planning ability for the great outdoors. He made the comment that in the future he will not be remembered
    • Um, how the hell does Kyoto make China increase emissions? Oh wait, you're full of shit here. (And America is still the world's largest polluter.)
      • This [asianews.it] details how China and India get to increase greenhouse gasses. In reality, the Kyoto Protocols are all about politics, and not about science. Why else would they be written so a CO2 molecule from the US is evil and one from China or India is good?
        • Kyoto is a political solution for a global science problem. High CO2 levels is the evil. But the problem is how do you get China and India to sign on, when their argument is that the west has emissions per person of 10-20x what they have? So by allowing China and India to increase a bit, they are hopeful that they will sign on.

          But as I indicated elsewhere, Kyoto is flawed due to everybody trying to cheat. The only way past this, is to freeze everybody. If anybody does not want to belong to a kyoto II accor

        • The one who confuses "get to" with "makes", or the one who calls him on it? The GP clearly emphasized that no one is forcing China to increase its greenhouse gases. The GGP post (yours) implied that increasing greenhouse gases for China was somehow part of the plan of Kyoto. That's silly. No one wants China to increase its greenhouse gases. However, since they have much lower per capita greenhouse emissions than developed nations, Kyoto acknowledges that it would be very difficult for them to acheive modern

          • "implied that increasing greenhouse gases for China was somehow part of the plan of Kyoto"

            It is.

            "No one wants China to increase its greenhouse gases."

            Except if they sign Kyoto.

            "Kyoto acknowledges that it would be very difficult for them to acheive modernization without modest increases in greenhouse emissions"

            That's hogwash. They just wanted to be let off easy, and got what they wanted.

            "No one expects them to increase their per capita emissions beyond ours, however."

            I have no doubt that

            • Yes. I'm in favor of the idea, but want something based on science instead of something that comes across as something designed to hamper some economies and boost others. Re-write it so it includes reductions for all. No increase. Reductions for all.

              That sure sounds to me like it would hamper non-developed countries, while doing little to the US, etc. Why should the US get to have much higher per capita emissions just because they got polluting earlier in the game? That my friend is the hogwash.

              • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                by kimvette (919543)
                Simple.

                The US has entrenched technology that will take decades if not centuries to phase out; coal and oil fired power plants, internal combustion engines for automobiles, oil, natural gas, and coal heat for homes, and so forth.

                China has a great opportunity to go electric across the board from the get-go, using nuclear power and solar power. Their infrastructure is still immature, and as such there is no huge investment in existing power to speak of. I'm sure that the folks working in agriculture are still
                  • Being only 4 miles offshore, Teddy could still hit one while driving.


                    *snickerfits* Well this certainly clears up the objections he has toward the project. :D
      • Are you on Crack? USA largest polluter in the world? Yeah when you look at numbers like per person polution. When you look at total polution out put china and India both top the US by a large margin May I suggest you at least google pollution. (or visit mexico city)

        http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID =9509 [zmag.org]
        http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=5058 [yale.edu]
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment_of_China [wikipedia.org]
        http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/20 06/jun/science/tw_chineseair.html [acs.org]

        but
    • The free market economy approach first used by Poppa Bush in America for other pollutions has been successful, but it has worked very poorly WRT Kyoto. As it is, they are all trying to cheat past the accords and point fingers elsewhere. Instead, each nation (including China, India, etc) should sign a new accord to state that they will hold steady at current levels of emissions and will then decrease over a period of time. The simple answer is that all nations have it in their ability to increase energy vi
    • To be fair, though, we (meaning the West) have already pumped a lot of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere as part of the industrialization of countries. The idea that we have already gotten to do this, and are now rich enough and have enough infrastructure to be able to start spending some money on being industrial in a cleaner way, while many less developed countries still need to spend invest a lot of money in the initial infrastructure that are needed to be industrial at all, is not outrageous. Of cou
    • "I beleive this is like the 3rd article on /. that covers the global warming problem, yet I don't remember reading a solution for the the problem yet. So what are the solutions?"

      How about the Kyoto protocols? [asianews.it]. A dandy solution. To stop global warming caused by greenhouse-gas emissions, the protocols have countries like India and China increase such emissions. That should solve the problem, right?

    • Kerry lost Ohio by 100,000 votes. Kerry most likely would have signed the kyoto treaty that would have curbed global warming.

      Presidents don't put treaties into practise. Bill Clinton already signed the Kyoto protocols, but without Congress agreeing to it, it was just for show. Kerry wouldn't have been able to do anything climate-wise if he were president with a Republican-majority Congress.

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