NOAA: Arctic Likely Free Of Summer Ice By 2050 — Possibly Much Sooner 335
Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have published research into the shrinking levels of sea ice in the Arctic. They wanted to figure out how long it would take before summer sea ice disappeared entirely. Since there's no perfect model for predicting ice levels, they used three different methods. All three predicted the Arctic would be nearly free of summer sea ice by the middle of the century, and one indicated it could happen as early as 2020. Two of the methods were based on observed sea ice trends. If ice loss proceeds as it has in the past decade, we get the 2020 timeframe. If ice loss events are large, like the 2007 and 2012 events, but happen at random some years, the estimate is pushed back to 2030. The third method uses global climate models to 'predict atmosphere, ocean, land, and sea ice conditions over time.' This model pushes the timeframe back to 2040 at the earliest, and around 2060 as the median (abstract). One of the study's authors, James Overland, said, "Rapid Arctic sea ice loss is probably the most visible indicator of global climate change; it leads to shifts in ecosystems and economic access, and potentially impacts weather throughout the northern hemisphere. Increased physical understanding of rapid Arctic climate shifts and improved models are needed that give a more detailed picture and timing of what to expect so we can better prepare and adapt to such changes. Early loss of Arctic sea ice gives immediacy to the issue of climate change."
Or not... (Score:1, Insightful)
Long-range climate predictions are nearly always wrong, despite their insistence to the contrary, I suspect they may be wrong again.
Or not...
Re:I thought this was over and done already? (Score:5, Insightful)
Predicting sensible weather in the short term is quite different from predicting broad climate trends. And as it happens, short-term weather prediction is actually pretty good these days. Hurricane tracks, for example, have fairly low error rates these days, outside of some exceptional scenarios. In what other field besides astronomy do we have that level of predictive ability and accuracy? Can we predict the economy? Social trends? What Egypt will do in a year? No. But we can predict the weather, regularly, and do a pretty damn good job. So stop shitting on the one field that is actually able to predict the future with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
Re:I thought this was over and done already? (Score:5, Insightful)
how can you predict the average of 100 dice rolls, when you can't even predict what the next dice roll will give?
Re:Hurry up damnit (Score:3, Insightful)
Left up to some US state legislators, they'd probably try.
Look you loons, the climate IS changing, humans ARE pushing the carrying capacity of the planet, things ARE going to come to a head. Most likely in the lifetimes of some of the younger Slashdotters or at longest, their progeny (assuming a few will, like the original land dwelling animals, crawl out of the swamp and reproduce).
Details left as an exercise for the student or their favorite dystopian author.
Re:I thought this was over and done already? (Score:0, Insightful)
Climate can change and it will change but predicting these kinds of trends to 2050 with any kind of accuracy is ludicrous at best, since they cannot even predict whats the weather next weekend.
Idiot who can't tell weather from climate gets modded up.
I have a bad feeling about this thread.
Re:I thought this was over and done already? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's Slashdot. Despite being a tech and science nerd gathering spot, there's a strange strain of climate change denialism here. Maybe it's because the non-denialists don't bother commenting on these stories any more, leaving the denialists to defecate all over the comment section.
Re:Hurry up damnit (Score:3, Insightful)
humans ARE pushing the carrying capacity of the planet
Hold on! I'm not a climate change denier, but this claim screams for a citation.
Re:I thought this was over and done already? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's single axis of ranking that make it hard to sort out things, and find the signal amid the noise. If there were ways to flag a point of view, for example, you could find things you agree with (or don't) and want to read, and filter out all the rage post crap.
As it's strictly a popularity contest at present... stuff that appeals to the usual crowd self reinforces over time, and you end up with the crowd that stays here.
The current work around is to scatter our attention at a bunch of broken sites, looking for one that better matches our view... and always being disappointed.
Re:I thought this was over and done already? (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot is also remarkably conservative. You see this regularly in terms of computer technology (anti-Wayland, anti-Gnome, anti-Windows 8....) but it is also true in terms of American politics. Climate change is going to require coordinated large scale governmental actions through incentives and regulation. Libertarians don't like it so they pretend there is no underlying problem
Re:I predict... (Score:3, Insightful)
Arguments I've actually heard:
Evolution denier: You can't trust biologists because they've all been brainwashed by their education.
Global warming denier: You can't trust climatologists because they've all been brainwashed by their education.
Evolution denier: You can't trust biologists because they're all part of a conspiracy to deny the existence of God.
Global warming denier: You can't trust climatologists because they're all part of a conspiracy to bilk the government for research money.
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I thought this was over and done already? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ballistics.
Seriously, any part of physics that isn't significantly affected by quantum effects yields much more accurate predictions, as does chemistry.
Re:Awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
Even in the worst case, it would take centuries for the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps to melt. People migrate so much faster than that that nobody would even notice even the most rapid sea level rise.
Yes, and there will continue to be rivers, coasts, and fertile deltas, just like there have been for the past 10000 years during the enormous sea level rise we have experienced so far. Those aren't static features in the landscape, they are dynamic and just adapt to whatever the sea level is. (Ditto for coral islands.)
The climate hasn't been stable in many millions of years. We're on a roller coaster ride between glaciations and interglacial periods, with frequent spikes and dips. The idea that climate has been stable and is being upset by human activity is the left wing version of young earth creationism; apparently neither creationists nor progressives can cope with the idea that the earth and humanity are constantly changing.
Re:I thought this was over and done already? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dice rolls can be predicted because unlike weather and climate they are not non-linear chaotic systems.
Re:Too late (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Or not... (Score:3, Insightful)
Its not testable at all. Its a prophecy set so far into the future that the modellers will likely be dead before 2050. There is no way to tell in any intervening period before then that the claim can be proven false.
Its not science at all. Its a religious belief in the validity of mathematical models which cannot predict climate in the near term better than by chance.
Re:I thought this was over and done already? (Score:2, Insightful)
Erm the accuracy of predicting a single coin toss is THE SAME as 1000 coin tosses.
Where as climate is a far more complicated system sort of like where the probability of heads is determined by the previous coin flips.
Not the end of the world [Re:Satellite data on...] (Score:4, Insightful)
What about the volcanoes on the Gakkel Ridge.
The comment I was replying to stated that the decrease in arctic ice thickness "has reversed." That statement is not correct, and I posted a link to the data.
Now you, apparently, are trying to come up with a hypothesis to explain this, other than the trivial hypothesis that since temperatures are increasing, ice is melting.
Fine. Do some back of the envelope calculations, and if you still think that's a viable hypothesis, well, uh, maybe you should get somebody else to check your calculations. Then, if you still think it's plausible, go get your ice model peer reviewed.
...
I tend to be a skeptic on all end of the world scenarios, until an asteroid or comet are heading in our direction.
This majorly pisses me off. I point out data showing that Arctic ice is thinning, and people jump immediately to "he's screaming about the end of the world"! That's a false dichotomy: either carbon dioxide has no effect on climate and everything's fine, or it's the end of the world, no other alternatives.
The planet is warming. This is very well documented. "End of the world"?? Why does everything have to be "it's the end of the world"? It's not the end of the world.
Re:Awesome (Score:4, Insightful)
"The idea that climate has been stable and is being upset by human activity is the left wing version of young earth creationism"
If I had mod points then that sentence would be worth at least a million. Climate change alarm is based on a myth of past climate stability - it is disguised creationism.
Nice straw man you've put up there to cut down, too bad no real scientists say that. Hell, if the climate hadn't changed here since the last ice age this message would be coming to you from deep under the ice cap. Here for example is a graph of the last 2000 years [wikimedia.org], last 12000 years [wikimedia.org], last 450000 years [wikimedia.org]. The climate changes naturally but not like now, which is all the time I'm going to waste arguing with a closed mind. And even though the planet has been hotter than it is now (look at the 450k year graph, nobody's denying this shit) a rapid man-made climate change won't leave nature or people time to adapt. Change that happens in a century is different than change that happens over 10000 years.
Name the target (Score:2, Insightful)
No, frakking isn't going to help much of anything except give us a few years before fossil fuel costs really go through the roof.
The U.S. alone has hundreds of years of natural gas reserves.
Natural gas replaces coal power plants, which emit tons (literally) of CO2.
Nuclear power is another subject. IF we could do it correctly
What "if" is there? Even if you run the most leaakingist explodingist mutation causing nuclear reactor ever fired, you still are emitting zero CO2 compared to whatever else was providing energy that the nuclear plant now provides. Is CO2 caused global warming a crisis or not? If you really thought it was you be willing to accept ANY amount of localized pollution in exchange for not having a climate too hot to support life. So we can pretty obvious understand from you and other people's take on this that CO2 is actually of zero concern whatsoever.
Kyoto was a bad political joke and had little to do with slowing global warming.
Yes it did fail, that is not my point. My point was that it had a TARGET of CO2 levels to meet that was supposed to address the problem. The U.S. has met the target, supposedly set by real scientists. If those targets are not good enough, then what IS a target the U.S. should meet and where is THAT target from? Is the target zero? I get the sense the only answer you and other hopelessly unrealistic warming cultists will accept is zero, with the same percentage of scientific backing behind it.
However, the real problem is the several billion people trying to work their way up from dismal poverty
To the environmentalist, it always comes down to somehow mandating a certain portion of the populace must be kept in squalor "for the good of the Earth". Or I guess we could just hitler them (oh no I DIDN'T)!
Disgusting.
But it will get dealt with. It's just going to be ugly, protracted and scary.
It sure will be scary having greater yields in agriculture across the planet! I shiver! Or I would if it were cold anymore, which it isn't what with winter everywhere being a thing of the past (as they were saying about the UK some years ago). Going to pack a bathing suit and visit Europe next January. Or should it be ten Januaries from now? Or 100? Or 1000? I'm a little fuzzy about that exact rate of warming again...
Re:I thought this was over and done already? (Score:5, Insightful)
Climate can change and it will change but predicting these kinds of trends to 2050 with any kind of accuracy is ludicrous at best, since they cannot even predict whats the weather next weekend.
Again, the above is a perfect example of bullshit [wikipedia.org], or if you want a more polite term, "poppycock" or "humbug". Quoting from the above link...
Bullshit is commonly used to describe statements made by people more concerned with the response of the audience than in truth and accuracy, such as goal-oriented statements made in the field of politics or advertising.
"bullshit" can be sometimes be distinguished from lying...
"Bullshit" does not necessarily have to be a complete fabrication; with only basic knowledge about a topic, bullshit is often used to make the audience believe that one knows far more about the topic by feigning total certainty or making probable predictions.
The parent poster seems to implicitly (and deliberately?) confuse climate and weather. There are numerous [newscientist.com] quality [scienceblogs.com] discussions [ilstu.edu] about chaotic systems, the differences between climate and weather, and how climate is predictable farther into the future than weather. The existence of these arguments, and the poster's seeming ignorance of them seems to indicate to me that the poster simply does not care about the truth, but cares rather only to appear to be truthful to those less well-read in science. As such, he falls nicely under Princeton Professor Harry Frankfurt's definition of a bullshiter given in his 2005 monograph 'On Bullshit' [wikipedia.org]:
It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.