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Science News

Scientists Search For Clues to Antarctic Climate 33

Posted by michael from the cold-hard-science dept.
Andrevan writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that a group of US scientists has finished a journey to the southernmost point of Antarctica. The team traversed 775 miles. They hope to reveal information on global warming and precipitation trends that began at the end of the Ice Age. According to Dr. Paul Mayewski, the expedition's leader, analysis should be finished in the next year or two."
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Scientists Search For Clues to Antarctic Climate More

Scientists Search For Clues to Antarctic Climate

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  • Changing climates.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by J x ( 160849 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @09:39AM (#5039620)
    A lot of the debate about global warming reminds me about all the Y2K talk a few years ago. Its one of those things that unless it happens no one is going to believe that its real, but if it is real and something wasnt dont about it and disaster resulted, then enough wasnt being done, but then again if something was done to prevent the disaster, then all that money and time was spent for nothing because there was nothing to worry about in the first place.
    Also, the only thing that anyone involved in the science of the whole thing is that global warming will have an effect on the climate. Its anybody's guess, really. I could mean that in the sort term temperatures rise a little allowing snow to fall in places in which it used to be too cold to snow in large quantities resulting in more sun light being reflected back. Who knows? The problem as I see it is not climate change itself. The climate will change with or without our pollution. The problem it seems is our unwillingness to deal with the fact that we will face problems. Again, contingency is seen as a waste, and disaster is seen as the failure of those who were supposed to have the contingency that was so wasteful. Shit happens. Seas rise, lakes dry up, rocks fall from the sky and stars explode

  • Terminology (Score:4, Funny)

    by Jon Peterson ( 1443 ) <jon.snowdrift@org> on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @09:40AM (#5039630) Homepage
    "southernmost point of Antarctica"

    Gee, I wonder why we don't have a special name for that point. Maybe, I dunno, South Spot? Southern Point? Bit at the Bottom? Nah, it's never catch on...

    • Re:Terminology (Score:2, Funny)

      by hplasm ( 576983 )
      "southernmost point of Antarctica"

      Is this not called the South Pole??

      • That name would never catch on. It doesn't look one bit like a pole, or even a stick. It looks more like some snow.
        • That name would never catch on. It doesn't look one bit like a pole, or even a stick. It looks more like some snow.

          To be more specific, it looks like some yellow snow... Those crazy scientists couldn't resist!

      • Re:Terminology (Score:2, Informative)

        by SEWilco ( 27983 )
        Depends whether you're using "geometric south" or "map south". The South Pole on a map is the point where the southern end of the axis of rotation meets the surface.

        With geometry, "south" is be the direction along axis of rotation, -- so the southernmost point could be the point furthest from the equator -- which might be a mountain top some distance from the "South Pole". [Imagine a plane at right angles to the South Pole -- anything piercing that is further "south", perhaps including the heads of visitors standing near the Pole.]


    • Maybe he was trying to distinguish it from the magnetic south pole, which I think is what "South Pole" means. Probably very ambiguous in usage.

  • CBC (Score:3, Informative)

    by J x ( 160849 ) on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @09:41AM (#5039636)
    The CBC [www.cbc.ca]'s radio science program Quirks and Quarks [radio.cbc.ca] interviewed one of the researchers on this topic. You can listen to the MP3 here [radio.cbc.ca]. Other stories this week had to do with the Spider Goats, among others.

    Summary: The majority of the Anarctic continent is isolated from the rest of the world when it comes to weather patterns. Most research stations aren't in the isolated part, they are in the most northerly portions of the continent. They are warming. The isolated part of Antarctica is cooling. It's basically a re-analysis of existing data that has resulted in this conclusion.
  • They didn't even find that old civilization seed (in gold, iirc ?) where a man & a woman are sleeping !
    Guess they were unlucky.... else we could have unlimited energy !! (and also maybe a war, who knows)

    (hint: french book from Rene Barjavel, 'La nuit des temps' / rough translation 'the dawn of times')

  • Christian Science? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Christian Science" - Isn't that a bit like "military intelligence" and "McDonald's Restaurant"?
  • Scientists Search For Clues to Antarctic Climate

    It's cold. Next!

  • Hooray for scientific method (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Wonko42 ( 29194 ) <ryan+slashdot@noSpam.wonko.com> on Wednesday January 08, 2003 @01:16PM (#5041202) Homepage
    I love how the scientific method has mutated into "we're hoping to find such and such, so we're going to look very hard until we do". With that methodology, you'll always find something that supports your theory.

    • Re:Hooray for scientific method (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Please explain how you think that relates to this story. They have already have lots of records of climate change. There isn't any dispute about that except among some talk radio whores.

      This project looks at the climate record across a large strech of Antarctica to see is greater detail what really happened. There's no political adgenda with that, but you sound like you have one.

      It bugs me that every time someone tries to studies climate change they get called a tree hugger. Global warming is a proven fact. We need to study it more to find out why it is happening and what it will do. It's good for tree huggers as well as chemical plants to know what's comming next!

      • It bugs me that every time someone tries to studies climate change they get called a tree hugger. Global warming is a proven fact. We need to study it more to find out why it is happening...

        Call it "Global Climate" and study the history of global weather patterns over millions of years, then you're less likely to be considered as practicing ecological nostalgia.

    • You're misunderstanding the scientific method. If you come up with a hypothesis, by whatever means, one of the things you then have to do is look for evidence to support that hypothesis. Otherwise, no new theories could ever arise.

      Separately from that, you also need to try to falsify your hypothesis - look for evidence that contradicts it. To a large extent, this is often left to the peer-review process, since those involved in finding evidence for a hypothesis may not in fact be the best people to falsify it - which is the point you were picking up on.

      However, that's normal - scientists are human, too. I don't know if you develop software, but it's similar to the situation with software developers - you write some code, which you can think of as the embodiment of a hypothesis about how to solve some set of problems. You try to test it as best you can, but other testers or users are still likely to find bugs that you missed - in other words, your "hypothesis" (the software) was wrong in some respect.

      One reason this happens is that during development, you tend to try harder to provide input that will make the software work, than make it fail. Only once it's working reasonably well, does it make sense to try to make it fail - before that, it's too fragile. A similar process often occurs in science - theories don't always spring fully-formed from a scientist's mind.

  • If you can still keep an open mind about global warming then have a long hard look at this page. http://www.john-daly.com This guy is very sceptical about it all and puts in some solid research to back it all up. At nearly 50, I've scare's come and go like in the late 60's when it was an accepted fact that by the year 2000 we would all have 1 square metre to stand in. Having read a lot of John Daly's evidence I think global warming falls into the same category, trendy pseudo-science.
    • John Daly is hardly a skeptic. He uncritically accepts evidence that supports his claims, and ignores anything that contradicts it.

      An example, he uses the Island of Tuvula as an example. He shows some raw data, but ignores an inconveint analysis of it (which can be found here [utas.edu.au]) which finds that the sea levels around Tuvula are rising (abit with a large uncertainity in the data) at a rate which is line with the IPCC estimates.

      Having read a lot of John Daly's evidence I think global warming falls into the same category, trendy pseudo-science.

      Whereas I (having read some of John Daly's "evidence", plus a whole lot more peer reviewed scientific articles of global warming) think that global warming is a well respected scientific theory who's critics have lost the science battle along time ago, and have hence shifted the debate into a propaganda war.
      • I suppose you've got to be philosophical about people like John Daly. He's on the public/political front of the Global Warming debate so he's not going to plead for the other side. Like your example, he has plenty of his own examples at john-daly.com, which don't get publicised by the opposing camp.

        As regards the very real propaganda war I think the Global Warmers have the edge here. There is hardly a day goes by when the TV News is not forecasting doom and overheating. And then the Weather Forecast comes on to announce that much of the Northern Hemisphere is currently in the grip of one of the most severe freeze-ups for 50 years. It's all very confusing.

        The trouble is that it's a very difficult topic and we know precious little about many of the factors such as long (and short) term solar cycles which will influence our climate to a great extent. However, there is a well respected scientific fact (not theory), which is the past cycle of long ice ages and short warm periods. We've a few thousand years to run in our little warm period yet and then we really will have a climate change to worry about.

        Anyway for our amusement, here's a bit more well respected science from 1975. http://www.globalclimate.org/Newsweek.htm [globalclimate.org]
        The lesson to be learnt is that it's dangerous to make long term forecasts from short term observations.
        • From what I've observed, both sides have their fair share of PR people, nuts and liars. However, the skeptics lack something which the other side had; science. The vast majority of climatical scientists believe in human induced global warming. The vast majority of scientific papers on the subject support global warming.

          Your link to global cooling in 1975 is also illustrative of the propaganda of the climate skeptics. While many people thought that a cooling period could result in the 70's, their wasn't a single scientific paper published in the 70's on a global ice age (at least not in the sense used in this article). On the other hand there are thousands of scientific papers on global warming. This massive difference is ignored by climate skeptics who try and equate the two.
    • ...I think global warming falls into the same category, trendy pseudo-science.

      Global warming is undeniably real. What's a matter of debate is whether humanity contributes significantly to it, or if it's just part of the normal cycle.

    • That site looks like classic kook stuff to me.

      There's not a whole lot of doubt that global warming has been taking place. The only real points in dispute are what the major causes are, whether one of the causes is human behavior, and whether the trend will continue upward. If human behavior is a major factor, then the answer is that the trend will continue upwards unless we do something.

      As for your comparison to theories about population, the scare from the '60s was not based on the same degree of scientific study. In fact, it was a popular scare, much more than a scientific scare, based on popular books like Erlich's "The Population Bomb". The scientific aspect of that scare was actually tailing off, having first been raised around 1800 by Malthus.

      In fact, Malthus' predictions were not completely wrong - the rate at which the human population of Earth is doubling is increasing, from about 120 years for the doubling from 1 billion to 2 billion, down to 47 years for the doublings to 4 billion. Do the math - unless population growth slows a lot, we will run into serious population problems, just not in our lifetimes.

      The global warming situation is already having an effect, in our lifetime. Average global temperature increases have been measured and aren't disputed - only the causes are disputed. There's a big pool of water at the North Pole, where explorers once planted flags. There are huge and ancient ice shelfs melting and falling into the sea around Antarctica. The permafrost in Canada and Alaska is melting and affecting the few people who live there.

      Sticking your head in the sand and believing what you want to believe, won't make this problem go away. So rather than spreading misinformation, like that found at the site you referenced, I recommend trying to educate yourself a bit more. No-one benefits from ignorance and the spread thereof.

      • I have to qualify one thing I mentioned, about the pool of water at the North Pole, since that is one of the items allegedly "debunked" at the site referenced by the OP. Since cracks which create "leads" of water in the Arctic ice are common in the summer months, questions were raised about the various original reports, in 2000, of pools of water at the North Pole. It's rather difficult for non-experts to determine how normal it is to find large pools of water at or near the North Pole, but there's other less anecdotal data we can turn to, e.g. as described in this BBC report [bbc.co.uk], which reports on the widespread thinning of the Arctic ice.

    • Hmmm. Way back in my BBS days I used to argue CO2 / Greenhouse Effect stuff with John. I was initially impressed with his knowledge and thought he made a good case.

      However, problems arose when I started reading his book "The Greenhouse Trap" ... I noticed that he got the Stefan-Boltzman Constant (k) mixed up with Stefan's Constant (sigma) when I told him this it took me a few emails to convince him he was wrong ... and then he said well it didn't matter because he was using a ratio so the constant would cancel out (true). But I wasn't impressed with a) his lack of knowledge on something so fundamental, and b) the fact that he could not admit a mistake was made.

      Then I noticed a few other things ... he argued strongly to the person in many cases where he didn't agree with someone's ideas ... any argument against his thesis by "experts" he took personally, and also would rant about scientists being corrupted by the greenies. In my opinion some of his statements were very close to libel.

      Another thing about his book, in one part he argues that since there is CO2 in the air then adding any more should have no additional effect ... he seemed to not understand that opacity can be between 0 and 100%.

      John used to be a greenie but was very bitter about the experience and blamed them for many woes. He told me he once had a self sufficient farm in Wales before me moved to Australia. He's a smart guy but I think he carries personal grudges into his public statements. Pity.

      I finally stopped arguing with him because it got me nowhere. He has access to a lot of data and reports but he is very selective in what he references. To me the final bit of evidence that was unequivocal and "proved" global warming were the borehole temperature measurements into permafrost. John's answer was that: there is no global warming and if there is then it is due to a natural cycle. That's not exactly what he said but in more longwinded form it is the gist of his view. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to spot the logical flaw there :)

      So yeah he has some interesting things to say, but remember he is VERY selective. Read more widely.

      • Damn! Shows what happens when you don't do any physics for a decade (though I remember the actual physics but not the names). Ok. Ok. 'k' is of course Boltzman's Constant from thermodynames , and sigma is the Stefan-Boltzman constant (or sometimes referred to as Stefan's Constant I think) from EM theory as in energy_density = sigma*T^4 etc etc

  • by definition that is the south pole

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