Greenland Ice Sheet Melts At Record Rate In 2010 654
RedEaredSlider writes "A study using satellite and ground-based data is showing the Greenland ice sheets are setting a record for the areas exposed to melting and the rate at which they are doing so. NASA says 2010 was a record warm year, and temperatures in the Arctic were a good 3 degrees C over normal."
Re:The meaning of random (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The meaning of random (Score:5, Insightful)
How can you be so sure that there is little we can do to stop it? The fact that we can't prove that we're responsible for global warming doesn't prove that we're not. And if you do a proper risk assessment, like this guy [youtube.com] does in his series of videos that are very much worth viewing despite his silly hats, you'll find that the smart thing to do is to try and do something about it.
Your line of thought sounds like "the Earth is going to hell but we might not be responsible so let's just see where this goes". Consider the possibility that we are responsible, and/or (they don't even have to be connected) the possibility that we can do something about it.
Re:Big Deal (Score:4, Insightful)
New York find itself underwater? No loss.
That shows a pretty callous attitude to the 8.4 million people who live there -- and add all the other coastal population centres.
Re:The meaning of random (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all very good to observe this process but since there is little we can do to stop it...
I think I see your problem.
Here's the facts:
CO2 and methane are gasses that prevent thermal energy from escaping into space
The CO2 and methane levels have been rising
Human activity generates CO2 and methane
Thus, there's nothing we can do about it?
Re:The meaning of random (Score:4, Insightful)
excpet that getting goods down to the underwater New York, Amsterdam, etc, may present some challenges.
Re:The meaning of random (Score:5, Insightful)
Conversely, just because things have been going on for millions of years, doesn't mean we can't screw things up much faster. Our ability to do so became much larger in modern times.
The earth, or life in a general sense continuing to exist is pretty much a given unless we manage to blow it up into space dust, DBZ style. But nobody is worrying about that, AFAIK.
What worries me is that I want myself, my children if I ever have any, familiy, friends, their decendants and so on to be able to live and do so reasonably comfortably. Yeah, humanity in general can adapt and survive events like the flooding of all coastal cities even. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't be a big deal. No, it'd be a huge horrible mess with world-wide consequences, so I really hope we don't have to see it happen.
Re:The meaning of random (Score:3, Insightful)
And we share 97% of our DNA with chimpanzees. What is your point?
Re:The meaning of random (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The meaning of random (Score:5, Insightful)
People don't realize that the Earth is been around for millions of years
Believe it or not, people actually do realize this. They also realize that for many of those millions of years the climate in areas we live in now was not nearly as habitable.
and just because we see a changing in a cycle doesn't mean we are causing it.
That's really a completely separate question. The first question is: "Is the climate changing?" If the answer to that is -yes-, then obviously we want to know what is it going to be like. If its going to be less habitable than it is now, then we want to know whether there are changes we can make to change the outcome to something we would like more.
Really, the question of what the cause is largely irrelevant except possibly as a subtext to what changes we might want to make if its heading in a direction we don't like.
Bottom line, if the earth enters another ice age, wipes most of us out, and we could have prevented it somehow but didn't because some idiot convinced us "It was a natural cycle"... that is not a "win". In other words, who exactly is going to be any happier getting wiped out by an ice age that occurs naturally vs one that we caused. Not me. Wiped out is wiped out. Arguing who's fault it is really isn't that important.
Re:The meaning of random (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The meaning of random (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The meaning of random (Score:5, Insightful)
Because discrediting AGW isn't politically motivated? You know, I always find it funny when people believe that there is more political motivation to push AGW than to discredit it, as if the large number of filthy rich corporations who would lose from green measures had neither the motivation nor the means to buy scientists and politicians to slow down and muddle the debate. Yet, somehow, Al Gore and his following of tree-loving hippies can do it?
Re:The meaning of random (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The meaning of random (Score:5, Insightful)
What the fuck is this "Murphy's Law of Research"? I'll tell you what people do to support their assertions, they invent semi-familiar sounding axioms.
The whole point of AGM is that the climactic changes we're seeing are not part of a normal cycle. And what is it that you suggest, that we stop gathering data because the data will point towards a specific theory? That's the whole fucking point. You gather data, and the more data you gather, the clearer the picture becomes, for the theory or against it.
Re:The meaning of random (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The meaning of random (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The meaning of random (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The meaning of random (Score:4, Insightful)
So, assuming that you're accusing James Hansen of fraudulently exaggerating the risk of climate change, what do you say was his motivation to be fraudulent?
As an aside, debating about whether carbon dioxide contributes to global warming is partially irrelevant: the excess carbon comes from burning fossil fuels, and fossil fuels are a limited resource. Even if there's no associated environmental damage, we should be looking for sustainable alternatives anyway. Sunlight is the only thing that isn't going to run out in the long term (for some definition of long term).
Re:The meaning of random (Score:2, Insightful)
Only problem is, you cannot predict something unless you know the mechanism. Without knowing what is the driver for change, you are in the "correlation does not imply causality" land. Someone like me can reasonably propose that the previous 50 years of warming mean nothing since the next 50 will be cooling. You need a comprehensive model with testable predictive power, otherwise you can only react to what happened in the past.
Re:The meaning of random (Score:2, Insightful)
There are places in Europe below sea level. Dams and dikes are a practical solution. Building them around our coasts would create jobs. I never understood this whole "OMG we'll flood the coasts" screaming. If this is an issue then start lobbying Washington for funds to build dams.
And BTW, we did not have a problem resettling all the people from New Orleans on very short notice. Resettling the coasts would take years and is entirely doable on that time scale.
The main questions are whether we expect sea levels to continue rising, the time scale and the cheapest way to deal with it.
Re:The meaning of random (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, at least in practical terms we won't -- what we will do is endlessly argue about it and make excuses. :-/
The key to American behavior is Florida. As long as Florida is above water, any money spent fighting global warming will be considered wasted. The day Disney World has to close permanently due to perpetual flooding, global warming will become Public Enemy #1 and no expense will be spared to stop it. (Of course, by that point it will likely be too late, so all the money thrown at the problem then will in fact be wasted... and thus the prophecy fulfills itself)
Re:The meaning of random (Score:5, Insightful)
The speed of change that's happening is staggering, it's at least a hundred times faster than the speed of natural, geological changes. The difference between our current changes to the composition of the atmosphere and thus the planet's surface temperature and the geological changes is like the difference between bumping into someone and running that person over at over 100MPH.
Re:The meaning of random (Score:4, Insightful)
Since when is 3 degrees C a few tenths? And really, the issue isn't environmental damage, per se, it's environmental change that we're worried about. Although environmental change will certainly cause damage in many discrete ways. But if you don't think the melting of the polar ice caps is going to have a substantial effect, you're deluding yourself.
And I don't know how you can say that CO2 is not harmful to the environment in any way. That is simply not true, no matter what some guy who founded Greenpeace says. Increased CO2 in the oceans is causing ocean acidification, which is damaging many types of ocean life, particularly coral reefs.
Climate change to continue to year 3000 (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-01/uoc-cct010611.php [eurekalert.org]
Yuppie! They've got the models to prove it:
Climate change to continue to year 3000 in best case scenarios
The study, to be published in the Jan. 9 Advanced Online Publication of the journal Nature Geoscience, is the first full climate model simulation to make predictions out to 1000 years from now. It is based on best-case, 'zero-emissions' scenarios constructed by a team of researchers from the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (an Environment Canada research lab at the University of Victoria) and the University of Calgary.
The Northern Hemisphere fares better than the south in the computer simulations, with patterns of climate change reversing within the 1000-year time frame in places like Canada.
That's a pretty good model.
Who cares about 30 years of data when they can forecast out 1000 years!
Looks to me that after we drown because of rising sea levels then the sea level will go back down. Darn - and I want some ocean front property. Maybe this will drive the price down. Maybe it will drive the price up. Maybe can we use the model on the stock market? I hate to admit that probably some of my tax money funded this.
Re:The meaning of random (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, I agree we need to find alternatives to fossil fuels over the medium term, but we don't need to destroy public trust in science, scientists and the scientific method in order to make it a priority. If you're suggesting the ends justify the means, I would humbly submit that in this case they are harmful, rather than beneficial, to civilisation.
Re:The meaning of random (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The meaning of random (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The meaning of random (Score:4, Insightful)
Most of them have big money invested in non renewable rescources -- some not very liquid (like a stock you can just sell in milliseconds) - they own things you can't sell quick and easy, especially if at that point no one else wants them much either, so they see a direct threat in this whole idea, and to them, it's a real threat and real money at stake. And for them, buying a credible scientist amounts to less than lunch money or a trip on the corprate jet. Sad, but.
So much so, that it costs less to buy off a decent (even Nobel prize level) scientist to say what they want said, right out in public. I have found it very entertaining to "follow the money" and it's actually kind of disgusting how cheap it is to buy a fake "controversy" where none exists among scientists not paid by these guys and/or coal/oil firms.
In fact, virtually 100% of all the deniers can be traced back to payment from one or more such entities. They've not bothered covering their tracks all that well, probably because they think the "greenies" don't include any forensic accountants. Wrong, but....
These guys are running scared, and putting money into people whose mouths say what they want said.... Look for yourselves -- it's not that hard to trace funding on some study. It's only a little harder to trace money given previously to get some one to say something.
If you want some guys easy to find out, and to see the very hotbed of this kind of scam, look at Investors Business Daily -- you'll want to puke of course, but they are more "out there" than any other source of this, and the least clever about who they quote and covering their tracks. Note, it's an expensive (and otherwise good info source) paper for investors -- many hundreds of bucks a year. I stopped my sub to them because the editorials on this and other issues made me want to barf too often.
Another way to get at the truth is things like NASA data as mentioned, and just looking at what was thought before this all became so politicized and conflictinated. There really wasn't much controversy then -- when it was "safe" to ignore by the big boys in carbon generation. And it should be obvious to most we are now, finally, doing things at a large enough scale to matter -- look at pictures of the earth from space at night...
There are nice long data series on ppm of CO2 in the air as measured in HI for example. We've tripled it. If we do so again, warming won't matter -- we'll simply suffocate - we'll be at the level where humans can't get rid of their internally generated CO2 quick enough to not pass out. We could hope for some limited cooling from a volcano, or some sort of nuclear winter as far as warming goes, but that sets a pretty hard limit.
And lets face it -- the last time all this carbon was in the air -- we had the dinosaur climate (and our midwest was under water). There's no particular reason to disbelieve that if we put things back that way, we'd have the same climate as then, is there?
Humans can adapt and move, at some cost and travail. But how about trees? We're already seeing issues there and that's just one other form of life.
Re:The meaning of random (Score:0, Insightful)
Congratulations! You have successfully correlated temperature and CO2 concentrations for a century! The real issue though is of course pirates [tonguetiedandtwisted.com], whose decline also correlates with temperature.
You haven't proven any causation, you have merely identified two increasing trends. The assumption that CO2 is significant flies in the face of our knowledge of greenhouse gases where water vapour accounts for over 90% of the effect. You also ignore that the climate is a chaotic system with literally thousands of factors that can drive temperatures up or down. Pointing at a single factor and ignoring the others is ridiculous and unscientific in the extreme.
Re:The new abortion (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't anti-abortion vs pro-choice - this is "babies come from storks" vs "babies come from sex", and the story with the storks keeps on winning because people don't want to face the fact that if you have a lot of unprotected sex, you're going to end up with babies.
Re:The meaning of exponential (Score:5, Insightful)
All well and good, but what about land? Is there enough of it that's suitable for building new houses? That's presuming that the people who vacate the flooded cities are going to live somewhere, but perhaps you have other plans for them.
Ad hominem.
It's the logistic curve, not logistics.
The fact that it may eventually peter out due to constraints at some future time (like lots of other processes from fork bombs to rabbit populations) has nothing to do with what it's doing now. He never claimed it would be exponential for ever and you know it. What a ridiculous strawman.
Re:This site suggests melting ice (Score:2, Insightful)
Because Antarctic ice has been melting at an accelerating rate for the past decade [nasa.gov].