Stronger Winds Explain Puzzling Growth of Sea Ice In Antarctica 236
vinces99 writes "As NOAA announces a new record for the extent of sea ice in Antarctica, a new modeling study to be published in the Journal of Climate shows that stronger polar winds lead to an increase in Antarctic sea ice, even when Earth's overall climate is getting warmer. The study (abstract) by Jinlun Zhang, a University of Washington oceanographer, shows that stronger westerly winds swirling around the South Pole can explain 80 percent of the increase in Antarctic sea ice volume during the past three decades. The polar vortex that swirls around the South Pole is not just stronger than it was when satellite records began in the 1970s, it also shoves the sea ice together to cause ridging. Stronger winds also drive ice faster, which leads to still more deformation and ridging. This creates thicker, longer-lasting ice, while exposing surrounding water and thin ice to the blistering cold winds that cause more ice growth. A computer simulation that includes detailed interactions between wind and sea shows that thick ice — more than 6 feet deep — increased by about 1 percent per year from 1979 to 2010, while the amount of thin ice stayed fairly constant. The end result is a thicker, slightly larger ice pack that lasts longer into the summer."
Still Cold (Score:3)
So it's still code as buggery down there?
Re: Still Cold (Score:3, Informative)
Snowball Earth (Score:2)
Smells like "Snowball Earth" scenario.
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You need to get your smeller fixed.
Wat? (Score:2, Insightful)
I really did believe in global warming, but now even I am beginning to wonder about the way every event that seems to discount climate change predictions is attributed to an outlying event, while everything that seems to prove climate change is attributed to human caused global warming...
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I'm not clear. How does this disprove climate change?
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In exactly the same way that the lack of "divine manifestation" disproves the existence of god.
You lack a basic understanding of science, reading and who knows what else.
It is a verifiable fact that the earth's temperature has gone up recently.
It is also a verifiable fact that the antarctic sea ice levels have grown recently.
Now, do try to engage your brain, disassociate the facts from politics, talking heads, lobby groups and whatever other stuff you prefer to listen.
Two things: the earth is warmer and the
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And we are supposed to forget about the talk that the arctic would be ice free, that children will not know what show is anymore, that shifting rain belts will ruin millions of farmers, that disappearing glaciers will threaten millions of people's water supply etc etc etc and all the vast number of connected effects which mean it is highly unjust of you to emit CO2 because it is killing or flooding or spreading more disease and famine to many poor people around the world... all these things have been sugges
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And we are supposed to forget about the talk
Depends. Are you interested in the science or the OMG DOOM predictions from various pundits.
Fine, the temperature has gone up.
Yes. Yes it has.
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Ummmm... the Arctic is less Icy (one side of the Antarctic is more icy and one side less icy).
This year saw record droughts across the US.
While no single event or year can be directly connected it's pretty easy to see why scientists might think the arctic will be ice free in the not too distant future.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/ice-models-reality.jpg [skepticalscience.com]
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Re:Wat? (Score:5, Funny)
The global average temperature is still trending up. But to consider things a bit more accurately:
Think of the earth as one big system. For the most part, energy only comes in and goes out through the atmosphere. At the moment, gases in the atmosphere are causing the earth to radiate slightly less energy out into space than it takes in. Before we got started dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, earth was in a state of equilibrium, but that equilibrium has been disrupted. Provided we can stabilize that amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, we should reach a new state of equilibrium, and with any luck, it will be similar to the one we were in before.
If not, then there are a lot of things that could happen, and most of them aren't good.
Extra energy in the atmosphere often becomes heat. This is pretty much the simplest thing that can happen.
Extra energy can also go into warming the land. This seems like a good thing, because the land can act as a buffer by absorbing energy from the atmosphere, but if the land gets too warm and old swamps start to thaw out, large quantities of methane will be released into the air, which will further decrease the earth's ability to radiate excess energy.
Extra energy can also cause increased evaporation of water from the ocean, which increases cloud cover and precipitation. This is why snow isn't evidence that global warming has somehow reversed. That being said, cloud cover and snow are both white, which increases the amount of light reflected back out into space. The trouble is, we're not going to reach an equilibrium state until the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere level off. Increased precipitation might stave off big rises in temperature for a while. Or, it's possible that precipitation will increase so much that the ice sheets will expand very rapidly, causing the earth to radiate away *more* energy than it takes in, which could set off an ice age, which would be really bad. Or, it's possible that cloud cover and precipitation aren't enough to counteract the warming effect at all, in which case we'll continue to see the heating that we're seeing now.
In any case, as long as we're increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the air, we're pushing things further and further out of equilibrium. If we can't get things under control, it is inevitable that things will eventually swing wildly out of control, because there are only so many potential buffer effects that might absorb or reflect the excess energy. Take the aforementioned cloud cover and precipitation. Since we can increase the greenhouse gases in the air indefinitely, even if cloud cover and precipitation are enough to equalize things for a while, eventually they aren't going to be enough. Or, as I said earlier, they might spiral out of control and become too much. We don't know for sure. But eventually, bad things will happen.
Maybe if we're lucky it'll be in a few hundred years. If we're not so lucky, maybe a few decades.
Re:Wat? (Score:5, Insightful)
Equilibrium? Extra energy often becoming heat? Ancient swamps thawing? [worldoceanreview.com] Additional atmospheric water vapor helps cooling? [nasa.gov], Apocalyptic heat death in a few decades?
I'm really not trying to be mean to you, because we need to stop poisoning ourselves. But posts like yours do not help. Your post is a "deniers" wet dream. It's makes people who want to be better stewards of the planet look like crazy people.
The temperature trends look like they are going up at an insane rate if you look at the last 500, or 1000 years. But if you look at the last 200K years of half or million years, it's debatable.
The earth is not and hopefully will never be in a state of equilibrium any time soon. Do you know what is in a much closer state of atmospheric equilibrium? The moon is a pretty good place to look. Mars isn't bad either. I don't know about you, but I like our atmosphere. As long as we have it and there are living things on this planet, it will remain that way. Hopefully for a very long time.
I'm not even going to get started on the heat energy thing
I assume the link above is what you are referencing in regards to as "old swamps". At least that's what I'm guessing as I've never heard of the danger of thawing swamps. Plus there's a hell of a lot more methane in those formations than any swamp. It's also unknown if that methane will be released with rising temperature. But like you, I'd rather not find out. I would much prefer it remain an academic debate than see it put to the test.
There is strong evidence for the Albedo effect [wikipedia.org]. However the link regarding atmospheric water vapor also seems to provide compelling evidence that water vapor in the atmosphere is also a strong greenhouse gas.
I understand that trying to make this problem something dire that will affect most of us in our lifetimes seems like a way to make others more motivated. But when it doesn't happen in the ridiculously short time-frames you are using, it makes most people call BS. Spreading this amount of misinformation is really not helping. I apologize for sounding like an ass, but posts like yours make it too easy for those who don't give a shit to keep on not worrying about it.
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I think you misunderstand what I mean by "equilibrium". Perhaps I'm using the wrong word, but the sort of equilibrium
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I understood what you meant, and it doesn't work that way. There are a myriad of very complex things that cause these changes. Obviously there's CO2 and methane. But you have volcanic activity, the sunspot cycle (which we continue to learn we don't necessarily understand), and just try to understand relationship of atmospheric temperatures and ocean currents. If you think you have that figured out then you can take a look at the impact of solar vs. cosmic winds. There was a story on /. recently that indicat
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It is not a matter of "how do you know that that's not supposed to be [the] temperature?"
It's not like we have real "equilibriums", i.e. a global minima/maxima. It's more like we have a lot of local minimas/maximas. Enough forcings can push us out of our current local min/max and into a new min/max - like a flip flop that went metastable, sure it's not "supposed" to be at half-voltage, but it's a local minima that is relatively stable until something forces it toward the global minima. In all cases, the
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It all depends on your point of view. If you're a global warming proponent then the temperature is trending up. If you are a global warming denier then the temperature isn't trending up. I'm enjoying this debate with it's non-stop fact making.
Re: Wat? (Score:2)
As Obi-wan said both facts are true "from a certain point of view".....
1998 - deniers favorite year... (Score:2)
The NYT link does not back up your side of the story. In fact, it explicitly debunks the other two links.
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One of Man's Vestigial Gifts (Score:2)
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Bullshit! We'll keep making up new theories until one of them fits!
Strong winds are blowing bullshit over the artic (Score:5, Insightful)
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until such time humans become extinct and are replaced by a more evolved species that lacks the pretense of understanding a system as complex as the earth's macro climate.
Why wait?
I already understand earth's macro climate... it's very simple: When God cranks up the thermostat, the temperature increases. When God thinks it's too hot, he lowers the thermostat, and the temperature decreases. If he feels particularly sneaky one day; he lowers it a little more than usual, thus creating an ice age.
Could it be Superman? (Score:2)
Science funding problem (Score:2)
Climate science gets funding for research into things that are potentially dangerous. So they look for effects that make climate change worse. But they would never get much attention for a report on a mechanism that slows down the temperature rise, like growing antarctic ice that will increas
Re: OMG! It wasn't puzzling (Score:5, Insightful)
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But this article doesn't discuss what they all are. It shows that with better modelling of wind-sea interactions in the southern ocean, we can get a much better handle on what is happening to the southern sea ice.
I might be hypersensitive to the climate conspiracy theorists on the internet, but I read "therefore cannot accurately predict what will happen in the future", as the common wrong argument that therefore trying to reduce emissions is not ju
I hate Watermelons as much as the next Capitalist (Score:3)
Slashdot likes car analogies, so here's one: When your mechanic says he can't find a problem, it doesn't necessarily mean your car is fine.
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If an Oracle appeared and told you climate change was definitely not happening, would you stop trying to reduce pollution?
Ooh, I like this question and how it is phrased. Of course I would continue to advocate reducing pollution; however, CO2 wouldn't be defined as a pollutant as a corollary to the Oracle's statement.
No reason not to use fossil fuels then, unless scientists discover that the underground reservoirs of petroleum are reducing the Earth's density and are the only thing keeping our planet floating in space. Then I would advocate reducing consumption to fight Global Sinking.
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Everything in access is pollution and if an Oracle appeared and stated that climate change would not happen no matter the amount of CO2 we added to the atmosphere, the Oracle should be treated like if she stated gravity didn't exist. Anyone can do the experiment that shows CO2 is a greenhouse gas and we have the example of Venus. All the Oracle could state was that we've put negligible CO2 into the system so far.
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I put the most interesting words in bold there. She actually said regardless of whether or not scientists are wrong you plebs can pay more for your fucking fuel, bitch. Amazing.
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What's wrong with her saying that?
It's always sensible to conserve your limited resources, while making more efficient use of your (effectively) unlimited resources.
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What is wrong with you people?
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Sure, but with this article we should admit there is still a lot of climate phenomena we do not understand, and therefore cannot accurately predict what will happen in the future
There's lot we don't understand about biochemistry, but we still know that arsenic is poisonous to humans.
There's a lot we don't know about physics, but we still know that a sphere of plutonium-235 around ten kilos will undergo a sustained nuclear chain reaction.
We don't know a lot about climate phenomena, but we do know that increasing global CO2 concentrations from 280 to 400 ppm will trap more energy in the Earth's atmosphere.
Not knowing *everything* is not the same as knowing nothing at all. Often the
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It looks rather like the "global-warming-is-man-made-sound-the-alarms" people have been cherry picking. First it was the higher temperatures. Then when the temperatures did not support their theories, it was "well global warming causes extreme weather!". When THAT got disproven, it was "look-look-look, all the ice is melting!" Now that THAT part of the scam is getting clobbered by the earth itself, what will the GW people predict next?
Quite a few "inconvienent truths" seem to be getting in the GW people
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How was this modded insightful? None of those have been disproved. Look at any of glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere for example. Not 1 of them is even as large as it was 25, 50, 75, or 100+ years ago. Many of them don't even exist anymore. Same in South America and anywhere along the equator. If you are trying to say this Antarctic ice difference makes up the total difference for a net 0 result, then you need to check your facts.
While I agree with you that trying to stop the change is foolish, I don't dis
Re:OMG! It wasn't puzzling (Score:4, Insightful)
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This was the same "logic" that parent used when they refused to give their kids vaccines. Now their kids are dying of preventable diseases. Do we dare take a chance? FUCK YES! Reducing CO2 emissions is a huge waste of money, and hurts everyone. We absolutely should not make policies based on fear-mongering and bullshit pseudoscience.
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The point is, that the OP was saying "Why wouldn't we reduce emissions, even if climate scientists are wrong" and the correct answer is, because you can't do it for free. You have to determine what your ultimate goal is. If it is saving human lives, then reducing emissions can clearly be shown to save more lives today due to increased fuel costs and decreased standard of living. It's not like we can just cut emissions at no cost or say "it's just money". Climate science, wrong or right, has done a very poor
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In other words, do we dare take a chance?
The answer is obviously yes. There is no global or even national controls over CO2 emission. It's businesses that produce it or sell the products that produce it. Businesses aren't concerned with potential long term climate disasters. In fact, rebuilding what environmental disasters have destroyed could be good for business.
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*Ring* *Ring*
Hello? Oh hi! Broken window fallacy, I haven't seen you in forever... Oh, this call isn't for me? It's for Sperbels? Ok, I'll hand you over.
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If you can show me a model of car that weighs less than the previous model, I'll give you a billion moles of CO2 that you can do with what you wish.
I have no problem with reducing pollution, it's a matter of how much pollution is dangerous. There is lead, arsenic, mercury, and all kinds of other horrible things in drinking water. They are so low it's not a hazard, so you stop caring. What level of CO2 in the atmosphere is so low that it isn't a hazard? What is the threshold? I am breathing fine right now, a
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The was the little ice age. Of course when we'll go into another is anybody's guess.
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The climate conspiracy theorists are out in force. (Score:4, Informative)
It looks rather like the "global-warming-is-man-made-sound-the-alarms" people have been cherry picking
No, this is not cherry-picking. There's not question that the earth is warming due to the enhanced greenhouse effect. The oceans are expanding [csiro.au]. The surface temperatures [nasa.gov] are increasing.
This paper looks at the response in the Antarctic Sea Ice, and has found a possible improvement to its understanding.
No cherry picking involved.
Then when the temperatures did not support their theories, it was "well global warming causes extreme weather!".
It was always suspected that global warming would increase extreme weather events because hurricane intensity is highly related to sea surface temperature when they form, and more energy in the atmosphere gives more evaporation so heavier rainfall.
But the theories are thermodynamics, fluid mechanics and optics. They are not challenged if warming is only 0.1C per decade for a decade instead of the long term trend of 0.16C per decade.
When THAT got disproven, it was "look-look-look, all the ice is melting!" Now that THAT part of the scam is getting clobbered by the earth itself, what will the GW people predict next?
The northern sea ice [washington.edu] is in steep decline. The Antarctic Ice Sheet and Greenland Ice Sheet [wiley.com] are in accelerating decline.
How on god's green earth do you manage to get to "THAT part of the scam is getting clobbered by the earth itself" for there?
Carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant. It is stupid to treat it that way.
You've not heard of the greenhouse effect then?
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When did slashdot become a stronghold of science-denialist crackpots?
There are about ZERO scientific organizations: ( as of 2007, when the American Association of Petroleum Geologists released a revised statement, no scientific body of national or international standing rejected the findings of human-induced effects on climate change [wikipedia.org]), and about ZERO scholarly papers (Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position [sciencemag.org] ) that support your denialist bullshit.
The OP is a
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When a theory cannot be falsified because ad hoc adjustments explain every discrepency, it has become a belief.
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Ocean acidification.
Re:OMG! It wasn't puzzling (Score:4, Informative)
Hmm... I guess y'all want a more serious answer.
It looks rather like the "global-warming-is-man-made-sound-the-alarms" people have been cherry picking. First it was the higher temperatures. Then when the temperatures did not support their theories,
While the slope of temperature increase in the atmosphere is lower than it was in the 1980's and 1990's, the 2000's was still the hottest decade in the modern temperature records and 2005 & 2010 are tied for the hottest year in most of them (1998 still is hottest in HADCRUT3). The oceans are still warming and the ice is still melting. None of this is a surprise to climate scientists who realize that natural variability can overcome the forcing of greenhouse gases for a decade or more. The oceans, where over 90% of the heat of global warming goes anyway are still warming and the next time we get a moderately strong El NIno (which reduces the heat going into the ocean) you can bet we will set a new global temperature record (unless we coincidentally get a large volcanic eruption).
it was "well global warming causes extreme weather!". When THAT got disproven,
You've got a little bit of truth in this because global warming doesn't cause any kind of weather in and of itself. What is does is affect the context within which weather occurs. So for instance if the climate is warming then the high temperature events will be a little warmer and the peaks a little higher. There is more energy in the system to drive weather. There is more water vapor in the atmosphere to drive precipitation.
it was "look-look-look, all the ice is melting!" Now that THAT part of the scam is getting clobbered by the earth itself,
When you look at natural ice on the Earth it can be divided into a number of categories. The ice sheets (Greenland & Antarctica), the lesser ice fields and glaciers, the ice shelves (the tongues of glaciers floating on the sea) and sea ice in the Arctic and in the Antarctic. Of all of those kinds of ice the only one that has had a net increase is the Antarctic sea ice which is a very small portion of all of that ice. The net volume of all of the ice taken together is on a strong downward path.
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Ah the missing heat lurking in the deep unmeasured ocean.
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Not so unmeasured since the advent of the the ARGO Floats. [wikipedia.org]
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Fracking is creating the most energy efficient and cleanest source of energy we have. It is largely responsible for the reduction in CO2 emissions in the US over the past few years.
Deforestation isn't caused by expanding cities and suburbs. It is caused by the increase in agriculture which is needed to provide all of the biomass to make ethanol in response to stupid policies to fight climate change.
Re:Bullshit! (Score:5, Funny)
No it's real my friend. You just need to believe.
Now put these flowers in your hair and come dance with us.
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I'd settle for predicting the weather 5 days out. I am lucky if they can get it right two days out.
You are not winning your argument here.
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Re:Bullshit! (Score:4, Insightful)
So what you are saying is they change the models to fit what happens? But that is science! You've stumbled onto the scientific method.
Re:Bullshit! (Score:5, Interesting)
I work in a government remote-sensing role, where we generate a lot of derived data (backed up by ground truth data we collect in the real world to compare against).
We've got a bit of an unspoken law about models: they're shit.
No matter how hard you try, when you attempt to model/simulate large-scale natural phenomena - where you have so many different systems affecting one another, and so much to keep track of - you end up with a realistic workload of dozens of man years of scientific development just to come up with the mathematical model (ignoring the software side to actually simulate it on a computer).
The end result of this is: People simplify, and then simplify again - to take what should take the better part of a couple years, and do it in 6 months to get reviewed and presented at their next conference of choice; ultimately coming up with useless results - which on the surface if they're lucky may look valid, but just end up proving to be horribly incorrect in a different spatial or temporal domain (eg: on another continent, or in your case - a year later...)
There's are of course a few exceptions to this rule (typically around radiative transfer models, and flood plain modeling - and a few other places where you're either working at such a low level and scale or an incredibly well studied field (eg: radiation/light physics has centuries of scientific backing)).
Needless to say though, 'climate change' is a worst case scenario here - large scale, many complicated systems, and in aggregate everything needed to model this accurately doesn't have the solid scientific understanding.
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...and I'll believe your bullshit ranting when you learn some geography.
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What has the study of rocks got to do with it?
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There's nothing insightful about the AC's comment. Instead it just demonstrates a very shallow understanding of of the subject that shows the AC has no idea what they are talking about.
While last year was a new record low for Arctic sea ice very few people in the cryology field thought it "would be gone in a few years with cataclysmic results". It's true though that late summer Arctic sea ice could be gone sometime in the 2020's and it's impossible to rule out cataclysmic results from that at this time.
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This summer the Arctic sea ice is no where near a record high but has merely moved back to the general declining path it's been on after last year's exceptional melt.
Unfortunately, Earth is on that "general declining path" since the planet formed from frozen gases and other debris a few billion years ago. But I guess if we take our last money away from our children and give it to some salesmen, we can fix this problem in less than a century or two! Where do I sign up?
The villager: Tell me, the learned
Climatology is not a working science yet (Score:2, Insightful)
The reason for this mess is that some climatologists fail to distinguish between their personal beliefs or gut feeling and what the scientific method really allows them to state with precision. They regularly claim that their observations "prove" their preferred interpretation despite the absence of any validly predictive theories in this area yet. All we have today are piecemeal components for some future theory.
The GCMs of climatology are helpful and fun, but they're just extremely rough approximations
Re:Bullshit! (Score:4, Interesting)
Any time "experts" flawlessly explain occurances after the fact, even when it contradicts their predictions, it makes me believe they have no idea what they are talking about
Correcting your theories after they've been proven incomplete or incorrect is part of the scientific process. The alternative, declaring reality wrong if it disagrees with you, would be religion.
I guess this is why people seem to listen to religious experts more often than scientific experts.
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They aren't correcting anything. They are making up new ones: A causes B. OK, except when it doesn't because C is happening...maybe.
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Very Scientific! Brilliant!
Re:Bullshit! (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you actually sat down and talked with an actual scientist in the field?
Instead of only reading laymans interpretations of what they say?
You might be surprised that they can actually answer all of the dumb questions.
Deniers usually attack a simplified view made to explain extremely complex things to layman and then find some holes in the simplificiation and then deny everything based on it.
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They aren't correcting anything. They are making up new ones: A causes B. OK, except when it doesn't because C is happening...maybe.
This works out just fine when C leads to predictions and can be tested.
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I just have a hard time with people who piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.
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Furthermore, a lot of medical research these days are screens, people dumping random chemicals on cells to find one that works. Is that not science? The theory they have in advance, if there is one, would be something like "If I keep testing chemicals, eventually I'll find one that works."
Perhaps science is not as simple and neat as y
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To all the idiots who modded this up: just one key mistake from the last few weeks is that there are no record ice caps, just that the growth from summer minimum has been going at an unusually high pace. We're still way below average ice coverage and volume.
And this is how you lie to ignorant people and make them believe whatever you want: tell them something that is close enough to the truth that they sort of remember something like it and that tells them they are going to be alright. They won't catch the
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Any time "experts" flawlessly explain occurances after the fact, even when it contradicts their predictions, it makes me believe they have no idea what they are talking about.
This is the same kind of bellyaching people do about "revisionist history". It's actually the job of historians to revise history; history isn't what happened, which of course is fixed; it's the set of *our beliefs* about what happened, which ought to change as we learn more. Likewise it is the job of scientists to incorporate new data into the scientific consensus, either by retracting part of that consensus, or elaborating part of that consensus.
This case called for elaboration, since that was the explana
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Scientists always explain surprise occurrences after the fact, which indicates that they don't know everything and have to keep adapting theory to observation. There's tons of things that contradicted details of more general theoretical predictions without invalidating the general theory. However flawed, science is our best way of figuring things out, and has a very impressive track record in producing useful things. The scientific consensus is almost always reasonably accurate for things well within th
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Look up the meaning of variation. Prediction. Accuracy.
Both the weather and climate are vary and fluctuate greatly. Both are unpredictable. Both have a habit of showing mankind's predictions to always be wrong.
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Climate: change over time. Length of time? Whatever's convenient to your argument.
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Laws related to reducing global warming are good for the environment so it does not matter a damn what the data says.
Evey now and then these people say what they really think and show their true intentions. The whole AGW thing is merely a cover for their agenda.
Do it because "it's for the children".
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We have to pass it to find out what's in it.
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Is there anything about CO2 that would make it pollution outside of the scope of AGW? If so, what is the impact of CO2? If there's no other area where CO2 is a pollutant, then why should we support restricting emissions when there's no harm coming from it? Why should we be increasing energy prices, which would impact the lower classes more, when there's no gain from it if CO2 doesn't affect AGW?
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But it must be declining. If the temperature is like 20 degrees hotter than it was a decade ago the ice has to melt. Doesn't it? Oh, now I'm so confused.
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Yes [nsidc.org].
Also, ditto on arctic sea ice volume [washington.edu], which is a more meaningful metric
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You "twerk" the truth brother....
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Until you understand the difference between the Arctic and the Antarctic you really can't understand why the two react differently to stimulus. Simply stated the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by continents while the Antarctic is a continent surrounded by ocean. That is one reason why the sea ice in the Arctic tends to persist over the summer while the sea ice in Antarctica melts completely away over the (southern hemisphere) summer every year. Because of those differences don't expect wind to have same e
Re:OMG....this blows... (Score:5, Interesting)
This kind of reporting is really very troublesome for both sides of the argument. Pro-AGW folks get painted as biased alarmists and Anti-AGW folks have any evidence they might use immediately dismissed.
I know enough to know I don't have the truth one way or the other about the whole AGW issue, but I sure as hell can tell when people are putting spin on things and everyone on both sides is doing that.
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Hey idiots, as I was a marine science major for 5 1/2 years. I'm kind of familiar with the two. And nothing in my post has any confusion on that fact.
Yes, Anarctica is a continent covered in ice and surrounded by more ice. Arctic is a big super iceberg floating at the top of the planet. But the truth is, that the article is postulating that wind blowing freezes more ice (usually true, especially if you've ever raced in the Boston Snow row in January - I have).
But you're making a couple of mistakes. First
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The sea ice in the Arctic is mostly constrained by the land that surrounds it and once it freezes up to that land in the winter winds have less effect in that regard. Since the Antarctic sea ice is not constrained by land the ice near the edge can still be affected by wind even in the middle of winter when freezing conditions are good.
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Um, did you read my post. I think it was clear that I was differentiating between the two. Hence, noting the lack of wind in the arctic and the need for big giant fans. ;-)
Re:All those liberals (Score:4, Insightful)
So the stuff that's been predicted for years by climatologists is happening, and yet, for some reason, the core mechanism for it is wrong.
You are one piece of work.
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NOTHING they have predicted has come true. The core mechanism IS wrong. And you are still crying about it while our fisheries are dying.
You are the pot calling the porcelain tea set black.
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Last year everyone was screaming about an ice free North Pole, and here we are.
Yeah... and this year the North Pole still has substantially lower ice and decreasing on average every year.
So here we are... with decreasing Arctic ice. Saying that ice every where will always decrease isn't something that scientists say. In fact the least confident statements by scientists are the specifics of global warming. Everyone realizes that you can't say what will happen to Seattle or Mumbai. But you can with confidence say what the *trends* will be.
The trends are less ice. The outcome is les
Re:All those liberals (Score:4, Insightful)
So the ocean pH is going down, thus in the direction of acidity, but still waaaaaay alkaline?
It isn't whether the ocean is alkaline, but whether it's alkaline enough. Do you really want to see sea life reduced to algae, brittle stars, and squid?
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