Arctic Sea Ice Hits Record Low Extent 398
mdsolar writes "Arctic sea ice has hit a record low extent for the period of satellite observation. Further, this record has been set in August when the minimum annual sea ice extent (and the prior record) has always come in September. Further still, the ice is still retreating as rapidly as it was in June and July when normally the decrease of sea ice extent slows in August. It is thus possible the the final minimum sea ice extend for 2012 will be seen in October rather than September as has always occurred in the past. More than one monitoring effort agree on the existence of a new record."
Always interesting... (Score:2, Insightful)
...watching nature at work...
Cue the loonies (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
And loonies calling everybody else loonies.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Cue the loonies -- uh no, not on Slashdot (Score:2)
You must be new here. Slashdot is hardly the bastion of the ill-informed global warming deniers. Slashdot is full of various types or nerds who by and large are smarter than most (exceptions do occur)
Re:Cue the loonies -- uh no, not on Slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
Slashdot is one of the oldest nerd/tech blogs in existence, before there even was a word for such a thing. For this reason, it's a bit peculiar:
1. Unbelivable as it may seem, the net had a higher share of libertarians before than today. Libertarians often (not always) deny global warming because a) it gives the uncomfortable feeling that strong government action may be needed to address it, and b) they have no problem assuming they're smarter than climate scientists, because they assume they're smarter than everyone anyway.
2. Since it is so old, many slashdot posters have actually had time to become quite rich from their geek skills. Well-off, established people don't want to believe the world is in trouble and that they need to change.
3. There are today a number of tech/geek sites which are arguably more interesting than slashdot. Most have moved on to these. Those who remain are weighted towards the kind of people who don't approve of unnecessary change, i.e. conservatives, who also tend to deny climate science for cultural reasons. (Not inherent reasons, if you ask me climate change is a prime example of unnecessary change).
Re:Cue the loonies (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Who goes to the beach in winter?
On the other hand... (Score:5, Funny)
I know several people who never took any interest in any scientific matter whatsoever, and yet are now passionate in their critique of climate science and the vast global conspiracy that all scientists and smart people are obviously parties to. If this is what it takes to finally get them interested in science, maybe it's a good thing?
Re: (Score:3)
I think you forgot the /sarcasm tag.
Scary (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
> the human race isn't mature enough to react to it in time
This is exactly why I stopped worrying about it.
Re:Scary (Score:5, Funny)
> > the human race isn't mature enough to react to it in time
> This is exactly why I stopped worrying about it.
You're right, maybe Peril Sensitive Sunglasses are the way to go.
Re:Scary (Score:4, Insightful)
There are only so many things you can worry about.
And global warming/climate change for the average person is *way way way way* down on the list. Other pressing things like job, family, housing, healthcare, etc., come first.
And in this economy, climate change isn't even anywhere on the radar. It's a rich people's problem.
--
BMO
Re:Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
You're probably right. What the hoi polloi don't realize is that in the long run global warming is probably going to make all those other things that much more difficult.
Re:Scary (Score:5, Interesting)
And in this economy, climate change isn't even anywhere on the radar. It's a rich people's problem.
A revenue neutral carbon tax can be used to stimulate the economy, as it has done over the past 10 years in 1/5th of the US economy [wikipedia.org] (relative to the rest of the US economy), and in Germany, which sustained 3% p.a. growth during a global recession.
/perceived/ as a rich people's problem; however, the shrill cries of economic Armageddon -- ironically by those who decry "alarmism" -- has confounded sane public discussion on the economic benefits of ploughing oil money directly back into pure market-based innovations that save energy.
AGW is
Energy bills have come down in North-Eastern USA for both industry and consumer. It is almost as if Adam's invisible hand can fall captive to tradition, and sometimes needs a little push.
Re:Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor people are going to be the hardest hit.
Rich people can move to high ground and outbid poor people for food.
Re: (Score:3)
Except that a number of the ways to mitigate climate change can also mitigate the everyday problems that preoccupy people. Worried about the cost of gas? Get a more efficient vehicle (you don't have to buy new to buy efficient). Wor
The end is not nigh! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, AGW is a serious problem, and denying it makes it costlier. However, the world is not ending. Green(tm) energy is getting cheaper and cheaper. It is predicted that solar will reach residential grid parity as early as 2015*. Not to mention next-generation nuclear. And, in a few decades, nuclear fusion. And if reducing emissions is not enough, we can cool Earth by increasing solar reflection** or by sequestering carbon*** or through some other action.
Also, how can people have such ridiculous short memories? The world was supposed to end in the 1970s though mass famines caused by overpopulation. Then the doomsayers changed their minds and predicted water wars. Then peak oil. Then the ozone layer hole (remember that?). Then acid rain. Then we very closely avoided Armageddon in 2000, due to the Y2K bug. Remember that? The mass societal disruptions, the nuclear wars that would be started because some digital nuclear weapon system misfired due to Y2K? Phew, that was close! But we survived.
Recently, we survived the Apocalypse in 21 May 2011, then 21 October 2011.
Now, of course, all the headlines are about climate change.
Do you know what is the single greatest cause of climate-change denialism? You. Doomsayers. Because you predict the Apocalypse every 5 years, people stopped listening.
Want to help the environment? Start talking straight.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/ff_apocalypsenot/ [wired.com]
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity [wikipedia.org]
** http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/08/putting-the-breaks-on-climate-change-with-diamonds/ [arstechnica.com]
*** http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/08/25/2359234/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic [slashdot.org]
Re:The end is not nigh! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're downplaying dangers that are or were legitimate.
Y2K was mostly fixed due to a massive effort from the software industry. The ozone layer and acid rain have been significantly reduced by legislation.
Famines may become reality as climate change makes historically arable lands unfarmable. I suspect instead of undergoing a global famine, we'll compensate in various ways, such as eating less meat and localizing hardship via market mechanisms. Water scarcity is not yet a serious issue, but it may become one since water consumption has not been reduced.
Re: (Score:3)
I think you're doing what a lot of people do. You see the dire predictions but you don't pay that much attention to the time frame attached to them. After having been burned a few times myself I learned better. Yes, some of the predictions are hyperbolic but many of them are proceeding on schedule. The ozone layer, acid rain and Y2K are all things we took action on to mitigate the problem.
Re:The end is not nigh! (Score:4, Insightful)
"Want to help the environment? Start talking straight."
You know what is the far most biggest problem to the environment? It is not AGW, it is the exponential population growth. There are already several billion too many of us.
So I'd rather say "start talking gay".
Overpopulation is a myth (Score:4, Informative)
There is no global overpopulation. Some places (such as Japan) are already experiencing population aging and decline, which is bad in many ways. Other places (such as the USA and specially Europe) already have sub-replacement fertility rates, and their population only grows because of demographic lag and immigration. It is predicted the the European Union population (now at 503M) will reach zero natural population increase by 2015 and zero total population increase in 2035 (at 520M), then start declining.
The USA will grow from 310M in 2010 to 403M in 2050. [1]
Asia will increase from 4.2B in 2010 to 5.1B in 2050, then start declining. [2]
The only region that is really growing is Africa. It will increase from 1B in 2010 to 2.2B in 2050. [2] Then its population density will be 73/km2. [3] Compare that to the current population density in Portugal (115/km2), in South Korea (487/km2) and in Taiwan (641/km2). [4]
Global population is predicted to grow from 7B in 2011 to 9B in 2050 and 10B in 2100 [5] and start falling soon after [6].
And according to [7], 40-50% of America-produced food is thrown away. According to [8], 1/3 of the world food is thrown away.
And this does not take into account that people eat, just for pleasure, excessive quantities of resource-intensive food (such as meat). If Americans/Europeans want to help the poor, an easy way would be to decrease (say, by 30%) their diet of meat. This will immediately reduce food demand and, for double bonus, the saved money can be donated to charity. And much arable land is wasted on subsidized inefficient corn-based ethanol. You can lobby your government to stop that.
Plus, there does not seem to be a negative correlation between population density and GDP per capita. [9]
African hunger is not caused by overpopulation. It is caused by corrupt and authoritarian governments, and by guerrillas/terrorists motivated by Marxism, Islamism, ethnic hate or simply greed.
Overpopulation fear-mongering is very old - at least as old as Malthus. One of its more recent incarnations was the 1968 book "The Population Bomb", which predicted mass starvation to occur in the 1970s.
Anyway, for better or for worse, there is already strong action taken by individuals, foundations, and Western governments, to restrict fertility in Africa.
1 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_11.htm [un.org]
2 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_2.htm [un.org]
3 : According to [2], Africa will have 2.2B people in 2050, and according to Google[10] and Wikipedia [11], the area of Africa is 30,221,532 km2
4 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density [wikipedia.org]
5 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_1.htm [un.org]
6 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_6.htm [un.org]
7 : http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=56376-us-wastes-half [foodnavigator-usa.com]
8 : http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/74192/icode/ [fao.org]
9 : http://sanamagan.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/population-population-density-gdp-per-capita-ppp/ [wordpress.com]
10 : https://www.google.co [google.com.br]
Re: (Score:3)
If there were not enough food to feed everyone, and food prices continued to systematically rise. And if the high food prices were caused by a shortage of land or raw materials. In that case, we could maybe say there is overpopulation.
However, today, we have much more than enough food to feed everyone. In fact, we throw away 1/3 of our food. And food production per capita does only rise.
A Malthusian phenotype (Score:3)
There is something import that I'd like to add. You have decried all the Malthusians since the 70s, but they've been around forever. (e.g., Christianity was, and still is, an apocalyptic cult.) It is a phenotype -- related to our genetic make-up -- and short of a eugenics program, or some evolutionary-scal
Re:The end is not nigh! (Score:5, Insightful)
The hole in the ozone layer, acid rain, and Y2K were all real problems that were solved because we did something about them.
The people saying the Apocalypse is coming on specific dates are loons who have NOTHING to do with the scientists predicting a man-made, dramatic shift in the climate.
But you know all that. You're just using a cynical, insulting debating tactic to shift the blame to the people trying to prevent the problem, and away from those who are making it worse.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
In all seriousness, I think the climate is much more resilient than most alarmists are saying. We have had both much hatter times and much cooler times, and nothing tipped over then. The farm belt may move a lot closer to the pools... And with Canada as the new farm belt, the US corn subsidies may be less of an economic drain. (The out of work framers near me are another story) In other words, the change will suck for a
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
In all seriousness, I think the climate is much more resilient than most alarmists are saying. We have had both much hatter times and much cooler times, and nothing tipped over then.
Of course the planet has. But that's got nothing to do with it. No one in their right mind is trying to say that the planet will end. The big thing is that it is going to create instability and conflict and cost a looooooooooooot of money.
The farm belt may move a lot closer to the pools... And with Canada as the new farm belt, the US corn subsidies may be less of an economic drain. (The out of work framers near me are another story) In other words, the change will suck for a lot of people and be a boon for a lot of other people. Just like most major change.
Just think about that for a bit. Those farms near you are now worthless. Who's going to pay for that? More banks go bust?? Who is going to employ the workers. How are you going to pay for the food you now have to import.
What about creating the new infrastructure required to farm these new areas?
What happens when various cities become uninhabitable / less inhabitable because of local climatic changes. How much does it cost to build a city including all of the associated infrastructure?
What happens when your country can no longer feed itself, but the neighbours have new farmland? Conflict is the normal resolution to these issues.
In general humanity gave up being nomads several millennia ago. We can't just follow the herds any more.
Why would the price of food go up? We will have that new Greenland orange crop...
All of the infrastructure changes that are required for that to happen will ensure that prices go up (massively). You may no longer even have access to the food source (eg: a blockade due to conflict)
Our civilisation absolutely requires stability and trust for it to work. The changes you agree are likely to happen mean that we won't have either. This is our greatest risk.
Just think about the grief and cost that the GFC has caused around the world in recent years. That was all because a handful of companies had some liquidity issues. Imagine what will happen if you multiply that by a million or more times.
The end result of climate change is the planet will still be here. There will be a significant number of plant and animal extinctions. The majority of people will probably survive, but that will depend on the level of conflict that ensues. One thing for certain is that virtually everyone's standard of living will go down (massively).
Re:Scary (Score:4, Insightful)
Those farms near you are now worthless. Who's going to pay for that?
The owners of the land, silly. That would mainly be Big Agriculture. Giant conglomerates that often also own the associated food processing industry.
What about creating the new infrastructure required to farm these new areas?
You mean like irrigation? Pave a road or two? We are constantly developing that sort of infrastructure already. No new expenses next year? Great.
What happens when various cities become uninhabitable / less inhabitable because of local climatic changes.
Like New York? Miami? The earth could burn up and dry out and still people would live in those places, because cities already are an artificial environment. Even rising oceans wont make cities go away. There might be some rough patches with some flooding, but even New Orleans is still on the coast, below sea level, and heavily populated. Cities just arent going anywhere.
What happens when your country can no longer feed itself, but the neighbours have new farmland? Conflict is the normal resolution to these issues.
Most of the world already can't feed itself, and yet you are here telling us that one of the dire consequences of climate change is that most of the world wont be able to feed itself? You are describing the present, not the future.
In general humanity gave up being nomads several millennia ago. We can't just follow the herds any more.
We "gave up" being nomads because we can produce artificial environments. The majority of the western world lives on a giant carpet of pavement, and brings in resources from as far away as the opposite side of the planet to make that happen. We gladly accepted the consequences of non-local resource needs a very long time ago.
This is an already solved problem, and proof of that solution are all the metropolises that we have erected. We wont have to follow the herds because we don't have to follow the herds. If Americans can pay China to produce gadgets for them, then the "distance problem" obviously has become a trivial afterthought. Stop pretending that its a problem, OK? Its intellectually dishonest at best.. blatantly willful ignorance at worst.
Re:Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
The owners of the land, silly. That would mainly be Big Agriculture. Giant conglomerates that often also own the associated food processing industry.
???
Just because they are corporations doesn't mean it isn't real money. They've shelled out $$ for land that is now worthless, or at least worth a lot less than they paid for it. It doesn't matter at all who's money it is / was, it's still real money. Those costs are going to get passed on in some way, shape or form to the end users (us).
You mean like irrigation? Pave a road or two? We are constantly developing that sort of infrastructure already. No new expenses next year? Great.
I mean a LOT of infrastructure, not just a road or two and a bit of irrigation piping.
I mean things like:
Proper irrigation infrastructure, probably where none existed before. Dams, pipes / canals / pumps etc
Proper access and distribution infrastructure.
Roads
Rail
Ports
Other infrastructure:
Electricity
Gas
Communications
Setting up the farms in the first place. Buildings, fields, fencing, etc etc etc
Maybe you have to drain the land. Isn't half of Canada going to turn into one giant bog once all the permafrost melts?
And it mean *lots* of it.
That's a lot of $$$$. That's also lots of time required. It's highly likely we don't have that much time to work up the new infrastructure.
Also, who said the "new land" will be any where near as productive as the old land, or that there will be enough of it.
Like New York? Miami? The earth could burn up and dry out and still people would live in those places, because cities already are an artificial environment. Even rising oceans wont make cities go away. There might be some rough patches with some flooding, but even New Orleans is still on the coast, below sea level, and heavily populated. Cities just arent going anywhere.
Those cities maybe, but others will have problems. Many cities already face serious infrastructure issues (like enough suitable potable water supplies)
There's a hell of a lot of value / sunk costs in a city of any size. Hell in my city they are talking about building a new convention / entertainment centre. It will hold maybe 7,000 people. They're talking $100,000,000. That's just one dodgy building.
I don't know what homes go for where you live, but around here you are talking $400,000 - $500,000 each.
Don't forget the basic infrastructure to go with all that (water, roads, sanitation, electricity, gas, etc)
Now multiply that out by an entire city, then a number of cities. And remember, you aren't going to be able to sell your old real estate for anything much. So this is all cash you have to find from somewhere.
Most of the world already can't feed itself, and yet you are here telling us that one of the dire consequences of climate change is that most of the world wont be able to feed itself? You are describing the present, not the future.
This is an already solved problem, and proof of that solution are all the metropolises that we have erected. We wont have to follow the herds because we don't have to follow the herds. If Americans can pay China to produce gadgets for them, then the "distance problem" obviously has become a trivial afterthought. Stop pretending that its a problem, OK? Its intellectually dishonest at best.. blatantly willful ignorance at worst.
You're missing the point. The problem is about changing the current "haves" into the new "have nots". That's not going to go down too well.
As I said before the real issues will be around the costs of moving / changing. They are going to be massive. Of course we can engineer solutions to individual issues. It's just going to cost us. The other even bigger thing is the resulting conflicts that will arise from the changes. That is going to be one of the "engineering solutions". Take if from whoever has it now.
Re: (Score:2)
If climate change is real and man-made, the human race isn't mature enough to react to it in time.
I guess I can understand the need to identify a cause for global warming - if we can arrest anthropogenic sources of change then it follows we can perhaps slow or stop climate changes induced by people.
If much of the change is related to us burning fossil fuels I think we're basically screwed. Fossil fuels accounts for about 85% of the United States's energy use (see EIA Renewable Energy [eia.gov]). With a number that high can anyone imagine a social policy change or technological advance that would reduce the amount
Coming Soon the tropics of Labrador (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, after it thaws out, then dries out, and assuming it's far enough above the current sea level to remain dry on sea level stops rising. So maybe in a couple hundred years.
Quasi-monotonic functions (Score:2)
All Right-Thinking People Know ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Is that you Todd Akin?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
... that if climate change were legitimate, the Earth would "shut down" and prevent any bad consequences.
It does this regularly. We call them Extinction Level Events. When things get too out of balance the Earth tends to get rid of the thing causing the imbalance. That's why we should take warning signs seriously.
Re: (Score:3)
the phrasing leads a little to be desired (the Earth doesn't need to be anthropomorphized), but the statement is true enough.
simple - shit in your nest long enough, and it'll be so full of shit that you're no longer able to live there. you'll die of shit diseases that you caught from your own shit.
now, one could say "the nest got rid of what caused the imbalance", or you could equally say "the occupant of the nest was so damn stupid they didn't even know what to do with their own shit, and so they died".
Re: (Score:3)
You're assuming that the shit in our nest doesn't have a purpose.
Think back to the Chinese purge of sparrows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign). Sparrows were pollution. Something to be rid of. Of course, after decimating (or more) the population, it turns out that it was the Sparrows keeping insects in check, and BAM, welcome to famine city.
CO2 (our shit in this case), feeds plants, keeps the next ice age at bay, and a dearth of it could slap us into iceball earth territory.
Heck, even li
Re: (Score:3)
- Sux To Be Us
- Life (for us) will become more harsh, more distressing, less convenient
- Nature / The Earth , on the other hand, doesn't give a flying fart for Human Beings, and will continue on nonetheless
I for one do not believe that things will be as bad as some scientists would claim. If nothing else give-or-take a few hundred million years and you'd never know that Human Beings Completely Screwed Up The Environ
What's really scary about this... (Score:5, Insightful)
What is really scary about this is that only a few years ago scientists were saying that the Arctic "could be ice free in summer before the end of the century" and the deniers were calling them alarmists THEN. Then in the last couple of years some of the most alarmist of these alarmists have been saying that the Arctic could be ice free in summer in the next couple of decades.
Now I look at the slope of the line on that chart and I think the Arctic is going to be to be pretty close to ice free THIS summer.
The Arctic sea ice is showing us how much more rapidly things can change than even the "worst alarmists" dare to predict when positive feedback loops kick in and tipping points are passed. What will be the ripple effects of this? Where is the next tipping point?
Re:What's really scary about this... (Score:5, Insightful)
The joys of being a RELIGIOUS FANATIC is that you can keep moving the goalposts in an endless "blind faith means you're never having to admit you're wrong" litany.
We're seeing EXACTLY this same behaviour here in Australia. The Glorious Leader of The Opposition INSISTED that The Carbon Tax would have an IMMEDIATE and DEVASTATING impact on the economy.
Now that he's been proved CONCLUSIVELY wrong on that specific count, he's turned about and is loudly claiming "Yeah Well trust me, I'm right and you're wrong, it'll be devastating just in the long term".
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, note that the chart is of the "white lies, black lies and statistics" type. If you actually extend it down to 0 you'll see there's a pretty far way to go still. Then again, it's also like a smaller and smaller ice cube in a big glass of water...
Re:What's really scary about this... (Score:4, Interesting)
Now I look at the slope of the line on that chart and I think the Arctic is going to be to be pretty close to ice free THIS summer.
Well, note that the graph is missing it's zero line. If you add that in, below the line of month names, you get a better picture of it all.
What I see is that the top (light grey) curve, representing the 1980s' average, bottoms out somewhat below 8. This year, it looks like the minimum will be somewhat below 4. So over roughly 3 decades, we've lost roughly half the Arctic sea ice. This would imply a back-of-the-envelope, one-significant-digit estimate of an ice-free Arctic somewhere around 2040.
Of course, if you look at the graphs too closely, you can sorta see an acceleration, with the 1990s curve somewhat closer to the 1980s curve than to the 2000s curve. Then there are the three lowest years' curves that don't show much of a pattern, and this year's curve way lower than any of the others. But this isn't very many data curves. Maybe it's all accelerating and the Arctic will be ice free by 2020; maybe not.
One thing that is clear is that we're not going to do much about it. So we should just stock up on a good supply of popcorn, and watch the show. And not buy any ocean-front property, no matter how good a deal the seller makes it sound like (because it's not just sea ice that's melting).
Re:What's really scary about this... (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in northern canada. 57th parallel. The winters have been getting warmer and warmer over the last 20 years. Rarely see -50C now, last winter coldest was -36C.
The thing is, canada is a nation of lakes and rivers. The water is getting warmer. Coupled with all the large scale hydro electric projects, the temperature of the land is getting warmer over the course of the year. The tipping point you are referring to, is all the peat bog. Its burning in forest fires during the summer, but the big problem will be all the methane it is off gassing. Most of the north is frozen bog..... this will be an interesting experiment.
Global Warming is Great! (Score:5, Funny)
Global warming is a Great thing!
We can provide for endless new jobs over the coming centuries as we have to rebuild literally thousands of drowning cities! We will open up new sea shipping lanes, as previously impassable straits are expanded from rising ocean levels! Previously frozen tundra will become prime temperate real estate!
Imagine the possibilities!
/sarcasm
Solution (Score:2, Funny)
We should just turn our air conditioners around and turn them on full blast. That'll cool the outdoors down.
NSIDC hasn't called the record yet (Score:5, Informative)
If you read response #4 of this update [realclimate.org] from Real Climate, you will see that the National Snow and Ice Data Centre hasn't called the record low yet (as of 26 Aug 2012 at 12:04 PM), since they use 5-day moving averages on their graphs. The graph referred to by the realclimate.org update and I think in the OP is based on daily data. The response is from Walt Meier of the NSIDC. I'll quote it here:
These are daily values, not the 5-day average, which is not quite at a record yet. Using a 5-day average removes some of the noise due to weather and other effects that cause small errors in the daily values. Thus the 5-day estimate is a more robust measure of sea ice changes. We will make an announcement on our web site when we have passed the current record: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ [nsidc.org]
Walt Meier
NSIDC
I think however that there are other data series that do agree that the record has been broken, even with 5-day averages. Here is my favourite data compilation [google.com] for Arctic Sea Ice. It contains many different graphs from different sources. Taken together, the data paints a disturbing picture.
Re:NSIDC hasn't called the record yet (Score:5, Insightful)
I, for one, fail to see the wisdom in that stance.
Sure, I fully understand that behaviours less damaging to the environment will be expensive in terms of both money and politics.
But seriously folks this is pretty much the same thing as Your Doctor telling you that you need to do a significant amount of exercise and change your diet if you want to NOT DIE OF A HEART-ATTACK in the next ten years.
The Climate Change Deniers are sitting there in the consult room saying "but PROVE ABSOLUTELY AND CONCLUSIVELY that I will have a heart-attack, and be EXACT and SPECIFIC about when".
Re:NSIDC hasn't called the record yet (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen very little discussion framed as "It will cost us X trillions to execute plan A and if we don't, ignoring it will cost Y trillions." Instead, we get drivel like "We didn't take care of the planet and we ruined it, now we need to curb fossil fuel use." I've yet to see any specific plan that will both be likely to actually work and is likely to cost less than the cost of the disaster that it will avoid. Instead we get a bunch of people saying it will be the end of the world. The world won't end... hundreds of millions of people may die and previously valuable land may become worthless, but the remainder of humanity will get along just fine.
Re:NSIDC hasn't called the record yet (Score:4, Insightful)
"The hardening of my arteries is just a natural cycle".
"What do doctors know? They can't even tell whether you'll be alive next week, so how can they forecast a decade ahead?"
"What do doctors know? My Aunt Nellie's doctor was wrong about something fifteen years go."
"Well, of course doctors want to push this 'heart disease' and 'save your life' idea. Look how much money there is in it!"
"Well, I found a veterinarian who says just the opposite!"
And so on.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If some Psychic Tarot reader tells me that catastrophe is going to strike me down unless I throw a big fat wad of 50s into her bowl, should I simply take the alarm at face value? Let's say she shows me something in a crystal ball, or in astrological charts, or in twenty decks of cards that all show me the Death card - should that make me more apt to believe her?
Heck, while we're talking about diet and exercise, why the fuck should I listen to a doctor who insists that I need a low-fat/low-calorie/high-exer
Re:Hmmm lets see (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only air temperature but water temperature also has an effect on ice melt. With less ice the exposed water has more chance to absorb heat and warm up which may delay the start of freezing.
Re:Hmmm lets see (Score:4, Interesting)
Couple that with the fact salt water freezes at lower than 0 C and that dramatic line this year, it's possible. If people remember the articles a month or so ago, about the very unusual complete surface melt over the surface of the Greenland ice sheet this summer, it also wouldn't be surprising. As far as salt water, I would think given the volume being diluted that the salinity isn't that much less (due to the melting ice), but it would be interesting to see what effect this major melt has on these levels. What does it take to stop the Atlantic conveyor (probably nowhere near that kind of level, but still)?
That said, I do believe man is responsible for much if not all of the environment change we're seeing, but I really hope that graph is a mistake. I find it somewhat scary. But given the Greenland melt event this year, plus the record high temperatures in the norther hemisphere this year, I think it is probably accurate. Let's hope this year is an anomaly because a change that great in one year is pretty drastic.
Re:Hmmm lets see (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the way it usually works. You get a dramatic year followed by more normal years but a bit lower than the previous normal years. Then you get another dramatic year. Meanwhile on average it just keeps going downhill.
If you're interested in graphs here's a bunch more. [google.com]
Re:Hmmm lets see (Score:5, Informative)
With regard to the Arctic melt of recent years, the VOLUME has been on a steady downward trend with little to no recovery. Extent is probably the easiest to measure but, by itself, it can be very misleading and is heavily influenced by waves and winds.
Re:Hmmm lets see (Score:5, Informative)
You are absolutely right. Volume and area are more telling than extent but as you say extent's the easiest to measure and volume the most difficult. With the launch of Cryosat [wikipedia.org] in April 2010 volume measurements are much more accurate now. That page I cited has graphs for extent, area and volume.
Re:Hmmm lets see (Score:5, Informative)
Cryosat uses SIRAL (a synthetic aperture radar/inferometric radar altimeter) to measure the altitude of sea ice over sea level to get the volume. Since ice is about 9% less dense than water you can tell how much ice there is by how high it sticks out of the water. If a 5 cm layer is at the surface then Cryosat will show an elevation of a little less 0.5 cm. I don't think there is such a thing as submerged lumps of thick multiyear ice because something would have to be holding it down to keep it from floating at the surface. There may be some relatively small areas that are held under water by mechanical pressure but they still contribute to the overall ice elevation in the area.
Re:Hmmm lets see (Score:4, Insightful)
More liquidity means more economic activity.
More activity means more trade.
More trade means more development.
More development means lower GDP/CO2
Lower GDP/CO2 means faster accumulation of AGG.
Faster accumulation of AGG means greater human forcing of temperature.
If we wanted to go back to the pre-industrial era and live in a semi-permanent malthusian depression, we could end global warming now. The challenge is to maintain current economic growth, and improvement in living standards, within the bottlenecks we face at any given time. Sometimes this does mean temporizing with them – i.e. slowing economic growth by monetary means until technology has advanced sufficiently to substitute around the bottleneck – however if liquidity gets low enough, a self-perpetuating cycle of austerity begins, and capital falls into disuse entirely.
n.b. I'm not a gold bug.
Re:Hmmm lets see (Score:5, Interesting)
Being I first learned solid state linear design on germanium transistors, I am well aware of something we called "thermal runaway", in which the transistor would bias itself on more and more as it got hotter, yet being biased on was what was making it hot. The hotter it got, the more current it passed. Thermal runaway.
The result was a fused transistor.
The mathematics of thermal runaway on those old designs is nearly identical to the albedo-loss calculations of our ice caps. I find it a frightening scenario, as I can't simply change out the planet as easily as I can replace a fused transistor.
Climate sensitivity (Score:4, Informative)
The mathematics of thermal runaway on those old designs is nearly identical to the albedo-loss calculations of our ice caps.
I'd be brave enough to guess that they are the same equations with different constants and variables. When "thermal runaway" happens to a planet it's called a runaway greenhouse effect, Venus is to Earth as the fused transistor is to a working transistor. We're very unlikely to trigger such an effect here on Earth* but it's fairly well established science that Earth's ultimate fate is to look like a lot like Venus, ( in about 500Myrs from now). There are also -ve feedbacks, eg: expanding deserts tend to put dust in the air which has a cooling effect, as do sulfur emissions (which unfortunately also cause acid rain). When you add up all the +ve/-ve forcings and feedbacks you get a number called climate sensitivity [wikipedia.org]
Once the planet has undergone "thermal runaway" it's "fused", the oceans are gone forever, the hydrogen in the water vapor is split off in the upper atmosphere by radiation and over time leaks off into space due to it being the lightest element, carbon is now bound to the oxygen from the H2o to form more CO2, the process also makes the atmosphere denser since C is heaver than H. Earth is losing Hydrogen from the same process, it just taking a lot longer than it did for Mars and Venus (probably due to Earth's strong magnetic field.
* - James Hansen and other climatologists at the top of their field have warned that burning ALL known reserves of FF (coal/oil/gas/tar sands) would be more than enough forcing to trigger a RGH, sadly it's exactly what most industrial nations are planning to do over the next 250yrs or so (politicians can and do think long term when they want to). I say a RGH is unlikely since there are major signs that political will is growing to make the simplest and most cost effective adaptation we can to avert such an apocalyptic scenario, namely rebuilding the energy infrastructure ('a stitch in time' and all that). It's really not a huge drama when spread over 40-50yrs, on that time scale every nuke/coal generator on the planet has been planned, built and/or rebuilt, since I was born. We have to replace every one of them again in the next half century anyway. The only thing holding us up is a shrinking group of corporate Luddites such as Peabody coal who have not yet accepted their business model is as dead as the dinosaurs they are burning. If they hold on to coal for too long then bankruptcy will be a self-fulfilling prophecy as renewables take over and coal mines become virtually worthless.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Hmmm lets see (Score:5, Informative)
By October the air temp is around 13 degrees Fahrenheit. The max is 18 degrees and the minimum is 8 degrees. Days with Min Temp Below Freezing 31. http://www.climate-zone.com/climate/united-states/alaska/barrow/ [climate-zone.com] Are you still gonna stand by your statement of melting in October??
Do you realize how much time and energy it takes to raise a mass of water even one degree? It's why water temperature is always behind air temperature. You can have 90 degree days all through June and still have cold water temperatures yet still be swimming in September when air temperatures are cold. Water is a wonderful heat sink.
Re:Hmmm lets see (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep, the top 10 feet of the oceans contains as much heat energy as the entire atmosphere.
Re: (Score:3)
It sounds like you're having some effects from the bong.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Extent can decrease without melting, for example by compaction of the remaining ice. If refreezing is delayed, extent may decrease into October while ice volume levels off or even starts to increase.
Re: (Score:3)
You are right. In one of the groups publishing extent measurements any area of the ocean that is 30% covered by ice is counted as extent. That is why area and volume are more informative measurements of sea ice. Both of those are at record lows as well.
Pluto is warming! (Score:3)
But perhaps there is an impenetrable barrier on September 30 that requires a bounce.
It trips over the barrier about week earlier (the equinox), so I'd expect the timing of low point would have a similar consistency when noise is removed. I picture the ice extent as a sine wave that is being distorted and dragged downward on the graph in TFA, however the frequency of the wave remains unchanged since it represents the climate "forcing" causing the change (ie: Earth's orbit). The same phenomena is behind the "Pluto is warming" canard, summer solstice had just passed on Pluto but the atmospher
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Almost Meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: I have found a meme that I can continually repeat to rationalize away any disturbing finding. Now come on kiddies, let's BURN MORE OIL!!!!
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Oil? We are already burning oil as fast as we possibly can.
Now, we must burn more fracked up gas!
Sometimes I wander if the loonies that oppose all and any nuclear energy projects (including ITER), are somehow not guided by the hand of big oil and big gas companies.
Re: (Score:2)
There are people that oppose ITER? I have never heard this before.
Re: (Score:2)
No, it just means that you cannot correlate the data. Without knowing what the high/low cycle was like previously -- with data spanning at least two ice ages -- you cannot make predictions like "this is a result of human pollution" or "this is caused by global warming" or how much of an impact we are having. Now, I am not saying we are having no effect on the planet, I am saying it is difficult to separate natural vs arteficial varaince.
It is possible to measure and correlate human impact on the Earth for t
Re:Almost Meaningless (Score:4, Insightful)
Translation: I don't like BlueStrat's perfectly calm, rational point, so I'm going to argue against it with emotion, wave my hands around, and come up with some meaningless term that sneers at his point without SOUNDING too sneery. oh, I know -- "meme." Yeah, that'll work.
So, I have a question for you. Do you consider yourself scientifically minded and skeptical? Do you think it's the OTHER guys who post on emotion, looking for anything that confirms their pre-existing notions? Because -- surprise! -- that's exactly what you just did. Kind of humbling, isn't it? BlueStrat made a perfectly scientific point -- this observation, in and of itself, doesn't mean much, because our data set is so small. We've only been making these observations since (I think) 1978 -- an eyeblink in geologic time.
There is nothing rational about saying we just do nothing about a bad situation because we haven't observed in the past how those situations play out. BlueStrat's post basically boils down to "this is probably just nature at work, and we haven't directly observed nature scientifically for a long enough period to know if this is a temporary condition".
We haven't directly observed arctic sea ice cover for very long, but the trends in our observations tie in very closely with other related more long term direct observations, and for much further back in time through indirect methods. The data is not meaningless, and accusing someone of being "emotional" when they post a sarcastic comment rather than regurgitate the thousands of rebuttals that have been made in the past is just you trying to sound reasonable about your cunning plan to do absolutely nothing.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They want to see Capitalism and the US economy destroyed,
If they wanted to see Capitalism and the US economy destroyed, all they have to do is vote Republican.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
You mean the CO2 level increases that lag behind the temperature rises?
Congratulations. You know that increased levels of CO2 are a feedback of increased temperatures (primarily from the ocean warming and outgassing CO2). Now show how increasing CO2 by other means than the feedback method doesn't force additional warming.
Re: (Score:3)
CO2 concentration in water is governed by temperature but it is also governed by the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere. There is a balance between the two. That is why despite ocean temperatures rising the oceans are still sinking CO2 from the atmosphere. We've increased the level of CO2 in the atmosphere by 40% over the past ~200 years and the oceans haven't caught up with the total new CO2 in the system yet.
You and I have gone back and forth before over whether the warming will be good or not.
Re: (Score:3)
Here's a credible hypothesis for you - CO2 is buffered by the oceans. Temperature increases drive CO2 out of the oceans and adjust the set point, as it were, of the concentration of CO2 in the air. Solar heating of the oceans occurs (moderated by the albedo of clouds), and long deep cycles of currents cause a significant lag in time before such heat can convect through the system. Given that the oceans hold orders of magnitude more heat, it's much more likely that they drive the temperature cycle, rather
Re: (Score:3)
Oceans can't drive warming overall because they have no internal source of heat energy. The oceans are warming because right now the absorb about 90% of the increase in heat energy in the Earth system. Despite the fact that oceans are warming they are still absorbing CO2 because we've increased the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere by about 40% over the past ~200 years. Ocean acidification is direct evidence of that.
Re:Almost Meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: I have found a meme that I can continually repeat to rationalize away any disturbing finding. Now come on kiddies, let's BURN MORE OIL!!!!
Nice strawman you built there. I never said anything about burning oil or touched on energy at all in my post.
I'm all for alternative energy sources where they make economic and practical sense.
Economic to the general populace or economic to those who benefit from not paying the for the full cost of their actions?
One data point on a scale covering millenia doesn't prove anything. It only tells us that, *right now*, there seems to be less arctic ice than there has been over the last decade or four.
We know that global climate has changed radically over the ages, from much warmer than now to much colder than now.
We simply don't have data spanning enough time to know whether this is natural or not.
At the timescales you are talking about, having enough data on the past is irrelevant. We would need instead to have data on a sample of similar planets with similar chemical compositions, in similar orbits around stars of similar age size and luminosity, with a similar distribution of landmasses and a similar ecosystem. Bit of a tall order. Just because something happenned in the past doesn't mean it will happen again, and the longer the timescale involved in any cycle, the more chance that things will be different the next time around due to different starting or external conditions to the cycle. We won't have a repeat of pre-carboniferous conditions. Even if we dug up all the coal and oil in the world that we can find and released them back into the atmosphere, tectonic processes will have slightly changed the chemical balance at the surface. The earths orbit will be slightly different, it's rotational speed will be different, the moon will be further away than back then. The amount of light hitting us from the sun will be different. If you want to talk about massive timescales, what nature decides to do to us should be given a judicious shove in the direction we want things to happen, because nature doesn't care about us.
Why don't you be honest and abandon all pretense that you're basing your opinions on science and the scientific method.
Whenever someone mentions unusually cold temperatures in a single winter or even a decade or two, well, that's just weather. Why isn't the reverse true?
What you advocate isn't science, it's evangelism.
Strat
Why don't you be honest and just admit that you are trying to say science doesn't know, so we should do nothing? I like your little "evangelism" dig. Suggesting that climate theory is a religion.... haven't heard that one before.
Re:Almost Meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever someone mentions unusually cold temperatures in a single winter or even a decade or two, well, that's just weather. Why isn't the reverse true? What you advocate isn't science, it's evangelism.
I have a feeling you're going to just scoff at any science anyway, but low and high pressures alternate. If there's been an unusually cold winter one place, other places probably had unusually warm winters. The whole globe isn't cooling down, it's warming up. And we do have other less accurate measures that go further back in time, you're the one claiming we don't have enough information but can't be bothered to find out if it's true. If you go camping and make a fire and a forest fire breaks out near your campsite and you go "it's not proven, forest fires can start by lightning strikes" yet nobody has seen a thunderstorm pass through your claim of natural causes starts looking pretty weak. Replace the campfire with the whole earth burning oil, the forest fire with melting ice and the lightning strike with natural variation and you have a pretty good analogy.
Re: (Score:3)
We know that global climate has changed radically over the ages, from much warmer than now to much colder than now.
That collapses to one data point, and ignores a drastic game changing event. The Evolutionary Singularity has occurred, the past is mostly irrelevant now. We have TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED SENTIENT LIFE.
So, that means we have to make do with what we've got. Now, we only have one planet colonized, so if there's a chance that things we are doing are messing it up beyond repair, to the detriment of our existence, then the ONLY logical thing to do is to take action and CHANGE what we're doing as soon as p
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Without the same observations over a longer period, this data is meaningless in and of itself.
It could easily be part of a cycle we have not been able to observe because we've lacked the means and meaningful observational time frame to detect it. It's simply one point on a graph spanning millenniums.
Strat
Translation # 2: Let's stop doing meaningless science on things that that span millennia. let's BURN MORE OIL!!!!
Moral of the story: Invent time travel first so we can have at least 3 points on the graph to make climate change REALLY convincing.
Re:Almost Meaningless (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a paper about Arctic sea ice for the past 47 million years: "History of sea ice in the Arctic" (Polyak, et. al. 2010) [osu.edu]. It may have some of the information you seek. Here's the abstract:
Arctic sea-ice extent and volume are declining rapidly. Several studies project that the Arctic Ocean may become seasonally ice-free by the year 2040 or even earlier. Putting this into perspective requires information on the history of Arctic sea-ice conditions through the geologic past. This information can be provided by proxy records from the Arctic Ocean floor and from the surrounding coasts. Although existing records are far from complete, they indicate that sea ice became a feature of the Arctic by 47 Ma, following a pronounced decline in atmospheric pCO2 after the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Optimum, and consistently covered at least part of the Arctic Ocean for no less than the last 13–14 million years. Ice was apparently most wide-spread during the last 2–3 million years, in accordance with Earth’s overall cooler climate. Nevertheless, episodes of considerably reduced sea ice or even seasonally ice-free conditions occurred during warmer periods linked to orbital variations. The last low-ice event related to orbital forcing (high insolation) was in the early Holocene, after which the northern high latitudes cooled overall, with some superimposed shorter-term (multidecadal to millennial-scale) and lower-magnitude variability. The current reduction in Arctic ice cover started in the late19th century, consistent with the rapidly warming climate, and became very pronounced over the last three decades. This ice loss appears to be unmatched over at least the last few thousand years and unexplainable by any of the known natural variabilities. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Re: (Score:3)
Read it again, The last low-ice event related to orbital forcing (high insolation) was in the early Holocene, after which the northern high latitudes cooled overall, and note that the higher insolation was caused by variations in Earths orbit, not a hotter Sun. Whether summer in a hemisphere happens at apogee or perigee affects the climate.
Re: (Score:3)
The higher insolation at the beginning of the Holocene was because of orbital variations, AKA Milankovitch Cycles. The condition of the cycles is different now and trending toward cooler. That's why temperatures have been on a slight cooling trend since the Holocene Climatic Optimum [wikipedia.org] about 8,000 years ago. The abrupt warming we are experiencing today has different causes than orbital variation and so we might expect some of the effects to be different.
Re:Almost Meaningless (Score:5, Informative)
Explorers have unsuccessfully sought a Northwest Passage for a lot longer than climate satellites have been orbiting the Earth, so it seems likely that the current minimum dates back to pre-industrial times, at least.
But if you're arguing that "we need more research", then by all means advocate for that to your congressional representatives. House Republicans have been trying to slash climate research funding for a long time. They're also trying to prohibit [sciencemag.org] the National Institutes of Health from funding health economics studies. I wonder what issue that might relate to?
See no evil, hear no evil...
Re: (Score:2)
It has nothing to do with datapoints and isn't saying anything, other than ICE IS GOING AWAY
In summer too. Imaging that. It is, however, implying that it it going away faster and further then ever before. Which is true for a very small value of "ever" in a geological time scale.
Re: (Score:2)
It's like measuring the distance between continents in the morning and then in the afternoon and claiming that because no meaningful difference exists between the two that continents are stationary and don't move.
Nah; the graph the temperature curves for several years, plus decade averages. So it's more like measuring the distances between continents and showing graphs of the changes for years and decades. We've been able to do this for a while now, and the results for the Atlantic (a few cm wider each year) turn out to be quite consistent with the 80-100 million year age for that ocean.
So maybe we something different from widths of oceans, if we want to ridicule the significance of these graphs. I wonder what
Re: (Score:2)
Funny enough if you go digging through the old Inuit stories, there are a few where entire groups have been wiped out because of the sea ice or lack thereof. Again, that's oral tradition and people don't like to consider that or anything. This stuff really isn't earth shattering to people who've spent any time in the far north of Canada and talked to them. It's wax and wane.
Records kinda mean squat just like you said, we've got plenty of stations here in Canada, which are only 10-20 years old. Some no m
Re:Short term record (Score:5, Informative)
Actually the true statement IS that "this has never happened before". Ok, maybe it did happen in the interglacial periods before the last ice age, but not in the last 1450 years [skepticalscience.com] for which we have ice cores and other proxy data... and by that point there is no reason to not assume it to be true for the rest of our current interglacial unless you have some good argument to the contrary. You don't NEED the rather super-precise satellite observations we have for the last 33 years to make this kind of statement.
If this weren't so tragic it would be really funny seeing you deniers all flailing madly about for a way out of this one.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
A simple sediment core from the Arctic seabed provides temperature and biological records going back a very long ways, and can trivially establish if the ocean in an area was exposed or whether it was covered with ice.
Yes, I know the saying goes, don't argue with a fool because outside observers won't know the difference. Sorry, I fed the denier troll. Slaps back of hand. I'll try not to let it happen again.
Re: (Score:3)
I think we have good enough records to say unequivocally this is the lowest sea ice in several hundred years. Proxies from boreholes drilled in the Arctic Ocean indicate it's the lowest for several thousand years. Here's [osu.edu] a paper I referenced in a reply above about Arctic sea ice for the past 47 Ma.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This is a prime example of a record low over recorder history.
And over flute history, and clarinet history, and, indeed, all of woodwind history.