Arctic Sea Ice Hits Record Low 370
Titus Andronicus writes "Angela Fritz and Jeff Masters of Weather Underground analyze this year's record ongoing Arctic ice melt. Arctic sea ice extent, area, and volume are all at record lows for the post-1979 satellite era. The ice is expected to continue melting for perhaps another couple of weeks. Extreme sea ice melting might help cause greater numbers of more powerful Arctic storms, help to accelerate the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and help to accelerate global warming itself, due to the increased absorption of solar energy into the ocean."
Right then. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are measuring for only 35 years, a 35 year low does not mean only 35 years. It means at least 35 years.
But take a look at the data. It looks like a death spiral. The trend from the data is undeniable. Calling the current extent a record low sort of misses the point because the current amount of ice is a tiny fraction of what it was two decades ago.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Informative)
If you are measuring for only 35 years, a 35 year low does not mean only 35 years. It means at least 35 years.
But take a look at the data. It looks like a death spiral. The trend from the data is undeniable. Calling the current extent a record low sort of misses the point because the current amount of ice is a tiny fraction of what it was two decades ago.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/08/new-paper-finds-deep-arctic-ocean-was.html ... 1–2C warmer than modern Arctic Intermediate Water." This finding is particularly surprising because it occurred during the last major ice age.
New paper finds deep Arctic Ocean from 50,000 to 11,000 years ago was 1–2C warmer than modern temperatures
A new paper published in Nature Geoscience finds "From about 50,000 to 11,000 years ago, the central Arctic Basin from 1,000 to 2,500 meters deep was
Deep Arctic Ocean warming during the last glacial cycle
T. M. Cronin, G. S. Dwyer, J. Farmer, H. A. Bauch, R. F.
Spielhagen, M. Jakobsson, J. Nilsson, W. M. Briggs Jr &
A. Stepanova
Nature Geoscience (2012) doi:10.1038/ngeo1557
In the Arctic Ocean, the cold and relatively fresh water
beneath the sea ice is separated from the underlying warmer
and saltier Atlantic Layer by a halocline. Ongoing sea ice
loss and warming in the Arctic Ocean have
demonstrated the instability of the halocline, with
implications for further sea ice loss. The stability of the
halocline through past climate variations is unclear.
Here we estimate intermediate water temperatures over the
past 50,000 years from the Mg/Ca and Sr/Ca values of
ostracods from 31 Arctic sediment cores. From about 50 to
11 [thousand years] ago, the central Arctic Basin from
1,000 to 2,500m was occupied by a water mass we call
Glacial Arctic Intermediate Water. This water mass was
1–2C warmer than modern Arctic Intermediate Water,
with temperatures
peaking during or just before millennial-scale Heinrich cold
events and the Younger Dryas cold interval. We use
numerical modelling to show that the intermediate depth
warming could result from the expected decrease in the flux
of fresh water to the Arctic Ocean during glacial conditions,
which would cause the halocline to deepen and push the
warm Atlantic Layer into intermediate depths. Although not
modelled, the reduced formation of cold, deep waters due to
the exposure of the Arctic continental shelf could also
contribute to the intermediate depth warming.
Paper finds Arctic sea ice extent 8,000 years ago was less than half of the 'record' low 2007 level
A paper published in Science finds summer Arctic Sea Ice extent during the Holocene Thermal Maximum 8,000 years ago was "less than half of the record low 2007 level." The paper finds a "general buildup of sea ice from ~ 6,000 years before the present" which reached a maximum during the Little Ice Age and "attained its present (year 2000) extent at 4,000 years before the present"
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/08/paper-finds-arctic-sea-ice-extent-8000.html
A 10,000-Year Record of Arctic Ocean Sea-Ice Variability—View from the Beach
Svend Funder1,*, Hugues Goosse2, Hans Jepsen1, Eigil Kaas3, Kurt H. Kjær1, Niels J. Korsgaard1, Nicolaj K. Larsen4, Hans Linderson5, Astrid Lyså6, Per Möller5, Jesper Olsen7, Eske Willerslev1
+
ABSTRACT
We present a sea-ice record from northern Greenland covering the past 10,000 years. Multiyear sea ice reached a minimum between ~8500 and 6000 years ago, when the limit of year-round sea ice at the coast of Greenland was located ~1000 kilometers to the north of its present position. The subsequent increase in multiyear sea ice culminated during the past 2500 years and is linked to an increase in ice export from the western Arctic and higher variability of ice-drift routes. When the ice was at its minimum in northern Greenland, it greatly increased at El
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
So, in conclusion, satellites are melting the ice.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
So, in conclusion, satellites are melting the ice.
Darn, I thought the ice was causing the satellites.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
They're in it together.
Re: (Score:3)
Satellite records of sea ice extent date back to 1979, though a 2011 study by Kinnard et al. shows that the Arctic hasn't seen a melt like this for at least 1,450 years
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a reminder to all the "skeptics" here: There are plenty of climate markets on Intrade. If you think the anthropogenic influence is overestimated, you can make quite a bit of money betting against the prevailing opinion there.
For some reason, "alarmists" seem a lot more willing to put their money where their mouth is than "skeptics". So far, they have also won a lot more on it.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
Skeptics or no skeptics, harm is still done by human activity. It's just that talk and speculation here is pointless. We can't really do much about it, when CO2 emissions exceed even pessimistic estimates, governmental decisions increase CO2 emissions, nuclear power is removed and replaced with coal power plants. In my mind, the race to limit CO2 emissions is lost, now someone had better figure out how to remove it from the atmosphere...
Take a look at this article about Germany's electricity situation. This is a country where greens have had good success with getting rid of nuclear power, and riding the Fukushima wave. They are starting 25 new coal power plants that are even hyped as "clean" (because they have "high" electrical energy efficiency of 43%).
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/08/31/germany-insane-or-just-plain-stupid/
"We usually give the Germans credit for being rational, but this coal plant will emit over one million times more carbon this year than all of their nuclear plants would have over the next 20 years, and cost over twice as much to run as any one of the them."
There is also some speculation what this rise in the cost of electricity will do to the renewable-support...
Re: (Score:3)
There's a farmer in Virginia who claims his permaculture techniques could sequester all the CO2 emitted by humans since the industrial revolution in less than 10 years. His name is Joel Salatin [wikipedia.org] and the technique he invented is called mob-stocking herbivorous solar conversion lignified carbon sequestration fertilization. [yesmagazine.org] In the 50 years the Salatins have been farming this way, they've added 8 inches of topsoil to their land (this is how the carbon is sequestered). Salatin is featured in Michael Pollan's book
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
For some reason, "alarmists" seem a lot more willing to put their money where their mouth is than "skeptics". So far, they have also won a lot more on it.
Because skeptics are um skeptical. There are many of us who don't adopt a position of belief on this subject. Its clear the climate is changing. Its also clear there is lots we don't know about how the system works, and its not entirely clear where things are headed and its even less clear that its man made.
I am not saying it is not man made. It very well might be! I don't want to put money down that its not. I also don't want to adopt economically ruinous measures; on the possibility it is. I want to let the scientists do more science. That is really not an extreme position. Especially when its already to late to fix the problem by 'controlling emissions' if our current level of understanding does turn out to be mostly correct. The focus should be on enhancing our understanding of the climate model and figuring out how we might directly and actively control it.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
Its clear the climate is changing. Its also clear there is lots we don't know about how the system works, and its not entirely clear where things are headed and its even less clear that its man made.
I am not saying it is not man made. It very well might be! I don't want to put money down that its not.
As the comic says, what if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?
Re: (Score:3)
I also don't want to adopt economically ruinous measures; on the possibility it is.
Economic ruin due to preventing AGW is a red herring. We are not dependent on fossil fuels [hyperlogos.org], or at least we need not be. There is no need for us to be. We are told that there is in order to manipulate people into being parrots for what you are squawking. The idea that not poisoning the earth is somehow inherently tied to having a high-tech civilization is a laughable one at best, but as long as many people repeat the lie you're repeating, there's little room for laughter. Only tears now, as we poison the env
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Interesting)
"We are not dependent on fossil fuels"
Wow. Just wow. And to buttress your argument you point to a completely speculative, disorganized, unprovenanced blog.
Go hang out on the Oil Drum [theoildrum.com] for a week to see how staggeringly incorrect you are.
Can we get off of fossil fuels without crashing civilization as we know it? That's a very interesting question. Theoretically we can. We have the technology to create energy from much safer sources. Any practical chance of this happening?
No, not really.
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Insightful)
There's two basic reasons on why we are burning fossil fuels in the quantities that we do. The first is because of the physical properties of these fuels. These fossil fuels are energy dense, easy to store and transport, and can be handled safely by humans with only minor precautions.
The second reason we burn so much fossil fuels is because it is cheap. The article you link to states that we can replicate fuels with similar physical properties to fossil fuels but it says next to nothing about the cost. If the replacement fuels cost twice what the fossil fuels cost it might not mean economic ruin but it will certainly reduce our standard of living. The problem lies in that as of right now these replacement fuels don't cost twice as much but more like ten times as much.
There's another issue with bio-fuels specifically. With bio-fuels we place a very direct connection between our food and our fuel. A drought could place us in the very unfortunate position of choosing between starving to death and freezing to death. I read my history and civilizations have collapsed because of being forced into that situation.
I agree that we don't have to give up economic prosperity to avoid the burning of fossil fuels. What I disagree with is the severity of the supposed pollution that the burning of fossil fuels cause and the means by which many propose we shift away from fossil fuels to alternatives.
The only technology that we have right now that can compete with fossil fuels on cost is nuclear power. Wind power might get there as could bio-fuels and synthetic fuels given some investment in technology and infrastructure. Until we build enough windmills and nuclear power plants we are going to have to continue burning coal. If we shut off the coal power tap now we will never have enough power at a low enough cost to build that infrastructure. We can't build nuclear power plants without burning coal or erect windmills without burning diesel fuel.
People need to come to the realization that the transition away from fossil fuels is going to take decades. In the mean time, as we build these nuclear power plants, we need to keep digging up coal and drilling for natural gas. If we don't keep digging for coal then we just will not have the resources to transition to its replacement. If we don't keep digging for coal we will place ourselves in the position of choosing between starving to death or freezing to death.
A pound of prevent; ounce of cure (Score:4, Insightful)
The focus should be on enhancing our understanding of the climate model and figuring out how we might directly and actively control it.
Because a pound of cure is better then an ounce of prevention. Right?
Because skeptics are um skeptical. There are many of us who don't adopt a position of belief on this subject.
But those who call themselves skeptics have almost universally adopted a belief on the subject. That their 1-3 climate scientists are correct about climate science -- even thought they are creation scientists, but skeptics don't think about that.
As for those cries of economic armageddon from the ostensibly rational skeptics: they are also not founded in any reality. We have had various carbon trading and/or tax systems in place. In America. In Germany. The evidence is in, and just like the economists said, the net effect on the economy is negligible.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
No it's more like, your house is 20 degrees warmer today than it was 8 months ago in the depths of winter. Clearly this is your fault and with that trend, by 2020 it will be uninhabitable! You better dedicate half your income to air conditioning so that the average temperature in the summer equals the average temperature in the winter, because you picked an arbitrary point and never want it to change from there.
Re: (Score:3)
Just to say up front I'm not in the skeptical camp on this, but the problem with your analogy is that it is leading and implies immediate, drastic action must be taken NOW or all is lost. It's very possible we can adapt to these changes as we focus our efforts on cleaning up our act. Technology got us into our current messes, but it can also get us out, and hobbling ourselves is not a good idea.
So maybe the house isn't really on fire yet, but you demand the fire company deluge it with water, and that destro
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Interesting)
The real reason it's too late is that without getting China and India onboard, the best anyone can do is spit in the wind; We've already met the Kyoto Protocol objectives for the US even without ratifying the treaty,, but somehow that doesn't seem to satisfy anyone.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if it's happened sometime since the beginning of the planet, it's a situation we shouldn't worry about? Wrong. For the first 4 billion years, the planet was pretty primitive, and no state to support human life. In the remaining half-billion years there have been numerous extinction events [wikipedia.org].. Five of them have been labelled major extinction events where 50 to 80 percent of all macroscopic genera went extinct. If we screw up this planet sufficiently, we might well be looking at the so-called "sixth extinction" which could be worse than any of them.
No big deal? We depend on other species to get clean water and eat. Or do you think food and clean water is made in factories?
Of course, shit happens, and humanity will probably go extinct eventually. But this looks to be happening in the next century or so. Maybe you don't care whether your species outlives you, but some of do.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well great. We can assume that human beings can't affect the environment any worse than a fungus that altered that altered the ecosphere beyond all recognition. Hey, that makes me feel a lot better.
BTW, my Googling about WRF (I do thank you for telling me about it) gives me a rather more ambiguous picture than the one you offer. Most science stories describe it as "an interesting theory" but not yet universally accepted. I admit that it's a really plausible theory, but not one you can cite with such religious certainty.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, I had the same thought after a while. So rather than being limited to reversing the effects of the fungus (which themselves must have been pretty extreme) we're able to release all that carbon that's been sequestered for the last 260 billion years. Pretty nasty.
Anyway, it's all nonsense. The articles I've been reading don't say that coal formation started when trees evolved and stopped when white rot fungus came along. Coal formation started when algae first appeared and continued (with various breaks
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Informative)
I work on coal-bearing forests in the Carboniferous (yeah, yeah, saying "in" is standard geology terminology -- I don't *actually* have a time machine), and this is the first I've heard of any type of fungus being responsible for that much change. There is a big change globally in climate as you go from the Carboniferous Period (named such because of the abundance of coal) into the Permian Period. The climate generally becomes more arid. But this is thought to be related to the development of Pangaea and the whole-hemisphere ocean on the other side of it, Panthalassa, not some transformation of forest terrains due to evolution of a new fungus. For that matter, there *are* coals in the Permian, but they are located in places such as India and Australia that people may not be as familiar with. There is also plenty of coal in rocks of all ages from the Carboniferous onward, although it's global abundance does wax and wane with global climate. For example, coal is particularly abundant in the Cretaceous Period and in the Eocene, both times of "greenhouse" conditions. It's less common in, say, the Triassic, which like the Permian has more widespread arid conditions (Pangaea was still breaking up). Coal is forming today as peat in many parts of the world. I have no doubt that the evolution of fungus that could metabolize cellulose was an important event, but it did not result in the end of coal.
Anthropogenic Global Warming (Score:4, Insightful)
It's here. Let's deal with it.
Re:Anthropogenic Global Warming (Score:5, Informative)
That is the problem. Everyone wants *everyone else* to deal with. As long as they can still drive to work with cheap gas and get a shiny new smart phone every year, its clearly other peoples real problem... if only they would deal with it right?
So what are you doing to deal with it?
Re: (Score:3)
Pro tip with real stuff... its not summed up with 2 view partisan politics.
Re:Anthropogenic Global Warming (Score:5, Informative)
Uh... the data we have from ice cores go back way more than 33 years.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Anthropogenic Global Warming (Score:5, Informative)
As a side note from just across the strait here in Iceland, it's been abnormally warm this summer. Was kind of shocking, the peak of Snæfellsjökull (visible from Reykjavík on a clear day) showed through the ice cap. It's never happened before in recorded history. I mean, it was one thing when Iceland got a new tallest waterfall because of the retreating glaciers in Skaftafell, but to see a mountain whose name literally translates as "Snow Mountain" lose so much that its peak became visible... they're saying that at the current rate it's losing ice, the entire glacier will be gone in 20-30 years, and all of Iceland's glaciers in 150-200 years. Just crazy when you think about it, given that one of Iceland's glaciers alone is the largest in Europe by volume and takes up nearly 10% of the country.
Re: (Score:3)
As a side note from just across the strait here in Iceland, it's been abnormally warm this summer. Was kind of shocking, the peak of Snæfellsjökull (visible from Reykjavík on a clear day) showed through the ice cap. It's never happened before in recorded history. I mean, it was one thing when Iceland got a new tallest waterfall because of the retreating glaciers in Skaftafell, but to see a mountain whose name literally translates as "Snow Mountain" lose so much that its peak became visible... they're saying that at the current rate it's losing ice, the entire glacier will be gone in 20-30 years, and all of Iceland's glaciers in 150-200 years. Just crazy when you think about it, given that one of Iceland's glaciers alone is the largest in Europe by volume and takes up nearly 10% of the country.
I went mountain climbing in Ecuador a few years ago and it was the same story there too. We had to go almost 1k higher in order to find the glacier than we should have. The mountains we climbed have always been permanent snow covered peaks according to local custom but are looking like they will be bear rock within a decade if the current temperatures continue.
It is really bizarre walking on rocks that have been covered by glazier for thousands of years. They have a texture like a stony beach but instead of
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Satellite records of sea ice extent date back to 1979, though a 2011 study by Kinnard et al. shows that the Arctic hasn't seen a melt like this for at least 1,450 years.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it's just one more brick in the wall of evidence for global warming. That wall has plenty of bricks in it already.
At the time of the IPCC AR4 report in 2007 the best estimates were that the Arctic Ocean would be ice free sometime after 2040. At the rate we're going it's going to happen before 2020.
Re:Anthropogenic Global Warming (Score:5, Insightful)
The incredibly robust review process of the IPCC should be held up as an outstanding example of how science should inform policy. The partially successful assassination of it's character by Luddites in the coal industry should be held up as an outstanding example of how easy it is convince people to work against their own best interest with nothing more than cheap, transparent, propaganda.
Re:Anthropogenic Global Warming (Score:5, Interesting)
Uh...based on 33 years worth of data.
Based on ice cores and seabed cores going back thousands of years.
Okay there, I guess the next time a severe winter storm comes up ...
This wasn't caused by one storm. There are nearly two million square kilometers of open water where there was sea ice a few decades ago, and that understates the problem because the ice is getting thinner by a bigger percentage than the extent is shrinking.
Re:Anthropogenic Global Warming (Score:5, Insightful)
Quick quiz: What is more effective for getting more snowfall on a given winter day?
a) lower temperatures
b) more moisture in the air
Meaning (Score:5, Informative)
If anyone doesn't get it:
Less sea ice > more air moisture > more snow.
So yes, global warming would cause the winters to be harsher in snowbound areas.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yup, that's where the natural variability part comes in. The storm broke up some of the ice but it was already set up to be easily broken. That same storm in 1979 wouldn't have had nearly the same effect because the ice was much thicker back then.
Its Happening (Score:5, Insightful)
It is time to accept that this is happening. Time to make the most of it. There are remote communities that will be well positioned in the Canadian Arctic for incredible economical opportunities.
High Prices for Groceries [www.cbc.ca] could become a thing of the past once the ice opens up for longer periods of time.
The Northwest Passage has the potential to become more important than Panama
It may well be too late to stop the warming trend, we will have to make the best of it.
Re:Its Happening (Score:4, Funny)
It may well be too late to stop the warming trend, we will have to make the best of it.
What I dread is scraping the foot-long dragonflies off the windshield of my flying car.
Re:Its Happening (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not the first time climatic [foxnews.com] change [sunysuffolk.edu]has had profound effects on the human race.
There will be "Population Adjustments" in the future regardless of what measures we take now. The earth can only support so many of us.
Our increasing population [arewetoast.com] has been cited by some to be the cause of climate change. I think they may well be inter-connected.
Let's face it, if the uber-hard-core folks had their way, we would be living a lifestyle from the 1700s. No electricity, no cars, no burning massive amount of fossil fuels. There would be no global economy because there would be no global transportation network. In fact our population would not only have to redistribute out of the urban centres, it would have to suffer a major reduction in numbers. Without modern farming techniques, you can only feed so many mouths.
However you slice it, there will be fewer people on the planet in the future, and it won't be a pleasant transition.
Re:Its Happening (Score:4, Insightful)
The only difference is that humanity has found ways using technology to push back the population ceiling (which is mainly determined by food production). Eventually, and this is a certainty, we will not be able to produce any more food on Earth.... or some massive storm and/or drought will cause widespread crop failure. This will result in starvation, and will be a natural check on the human population.
Saying the earth can only support so many of us is an absolute fact. Now, that number might be far, far larger than we currently believe, but that there is an absolute ceiling is without doubt. One absolute ceiling for the population of the earth would be the amount of energy arriving from the sun divided by the amount of energy consumed by a person. Of course, that would mean no energy was being used by anything else on the planet, so it is impossibly high, but it's just to prove a point.
Re: (Score:3)
That is so far off, I don't know where to begin. A quick trip to Wikipedia shows that, in a year, the sun pumps *3,850,000 EJ* into the earth.
Except that the growth rate has been steadily slowing for some time now. Estimates based on current trends are that the world population will top out at at about 10 billion sometime after 2
Re: (Score:3)
The earth can only support so many of us.
That is purely a myth, with absolutely no sound scientific basis behind it. Stop spreading false information.
No, it's a fact. Each of us requires a certain amount of space and it takes a certain amount of space to feed us. We might be nowhere near that limit, but the limit varies with technology and society (how little space members of a given society can live in before they go crazy and start doing bad things because of it, and how much space it takes to produce their food.)
The question, much like the actual question in the issue of AGW, is what that carrying capacity actually is at any given time. I suspect we a
It affects our weather (Score:5, Interesting)
As the Arctic Ocean summer ice declines there is developing evidence it is having an effect on the northern polar jet stream, slowing it down and causing the meanders to get larger. This has the effect of bringing colder weather further south and warmer weather further north and slowing down the speed at which the weather moves through. That would explain why a few years ago when Florida was having freezing weather Greenland was practically balmy.
Cooling mechanisms (Score:2)
As earth heats up, cooling mechanisms should increase. It's not instantaneous of course. Until the cooling mechanisms outpace the heating mechanisms, ice is going to keep melting year after year. The speed ice melts probably has more to do with surface area, ice depth, and cloud cover more than ambient temperature.
Re:Cooling mechanisms (Score:4, Insightful)
And which cooling mechanisms are these? According to TFA, melting the polar icecap actually removes an important cooling mechanism. Other mechanisms, such as the ocean's ability to abosrb CO2, are pretty much maxed out. Do you have a planet size air conditioner nobody else knows about?
"Got to where it was" (Score:3)
The biosphere is to a degree self regulating because it has evolved that way. But there are no written guarantees that this will be true tomorrow.
Re: (Score:2)
The question to ask is, what are the long term patterns, have we stumbled into a natural cycle, perhaps we have just accelerated what was bound to happen anyways.
Re: (Score:3)
Given that we're on track to end 2.4 million years of northern hemisphere glaciers and given that we know the gross mechanisms that are changing the climate, and we know those mechanisms are being activated by human activity, and given that we know the natural trend was going in the opposite direction until human activity overwhelmed it, it seems highly unlikely that it's "a natural cycle".
Re:Ice Tea... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm thinking of the sun's 11-year cycle and the recent larger-than-normal volcano activity
I.e., any explanation except the actual one.
Re:Ice Tea... (Score:5, Funny)
Continuing to deny the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is futile.
Re:Ice Tea... (Score:5, Informative)
There is natural variability but proxy studies of long term sea ice show it's been at least around 8,000 years since sea ice has been this low and more likely over 100,000 years during the last interglacial.
The Sun has been through three 11 year cycles since the first satellite went up in 1979 and there's not much correlation between it and sea ice in the record. Volcanoes would normally have a cooling effect and I'm not aware that there has been a significant increase in volcanic activity anyway.
The sea ice trends have been steadily downwards during the satellite era especially during the past 6 years as shown by the graphs on this page. [google.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Therefore...
Satellites cause ice melt.
Re: (Score:2)
It's the satellites causing the melt! De-orbit them all ASAP!!!
Re:Ice Tea... (Score:5, Informative)
It's also helps to take this into perspective, look at this graph [uaf.edu], you'll see that we keep talking about the summer extent; the winter extent hasn't changed much. The past year was right up there with 1990s average. And the annual change is dramatically larger than the change in either the summer extent or the winter extent. Also, it is arguably more important to measure the thickness of the ice, rather than the extent, but a falling summer extent might suggest the thickness is shrinking as well. We are measuring that now, but only for a few years.
In any case you should check out this amazing picture from the article [wxug.com]. Can you guess which direction the earth is spinning?
Re:Ice Tea... (Score:4, Insightful)
Aerosols do cause a cooling effect but some of them, in particular carbon black [wikipedia.org] can increase the melting of ice when it settles on it.
Winter extent doesn't change much in the Arctic Ocean because it's constrained by the land around it. The only places it can grow out further is in the Bering Sea and between North America, Greenland and Europe. In contrast the sea ice around Antarctica melts nearly completely every year and reforms the again next year. It doesn't have the opportunity to build up the thick multi-year ice that exists (but not for much longer) in the Arctic Ocean. The difference between an ocean surrounded by land and land surrounded by ocean at the poles.
Of course the Earth is rotating from Alaska toward Greenland, the same way the storm is spinning.
Re: (Score:2)
Aerosols do cause a cooling effect but some of them, in particular carbon black [wikipedia.org] can increase the melting of ice when it settles on it.
Yeah, it's a complicated topic. Which is why scientists are still researching it.
Re: (Score:2)
If you look at the IPCC report (wg1 chapter 2 page 136 although it's already starting to get a bit old), there is still a (minimal) chance that none of it is caused by CO2, because human release of aerosols cause a cooling effect. Of course there are other considerations like methane, etc. Most scientific organizations say things like, "most of the warming we've seen is caused by humans....." Although 'most' is a wiggle word that accurately represents our uncertainty on the matter.
Most climatologists, 97%, agree with AGW. An indication that "most" can have a measurable meaning. Of course like all measurements, it comes with an error rate or wiggle room. If you want to believe in all the minimal chances of things, buy a lottery ticket--just one should be enough.
Re: (Score:2)
Most climatologists, 97%, agree with AGW.
This is really a meaningless statement, because "agreeing with AGW" can mean things as diverse as "minimal warming affect" and "HUMANITY WILL SUFFER HORRIFIC CONSEQUENCES!!" Any survey I've seen of climatologists asks questions closer to the "minimal warming affect" end of the scale.
Re:Ice Tea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or in other words, the 97% agree that AGW is the best explanation for the atmospheric observations scientists have made since the end of the 19th century. 3% disagree, but can't offer any other framework that explains all observations, or can make predictions.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Offtopic a bit maybe? I don't disagree with anything you are saying but my question was, how much of an influence does man really have?
Again, don't get me wrong, I do my best to minimise my own impact on the environment, but is man's impact really large enough to melt all the arctic ice?
Re:Ice Tea... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't get this obsession with Al Gore. He's like a spokesmodel for global warming. Bypass him and go directly to the source. If you're making your decisions about the validity of global warming based on personal animosity you're doing it wrong.
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restricting trade with China, even though they are throwing so much pollution into the sky we can detect it in California
Why does everyone blame China? Care to look in your own backyard? [google.com]
Mod Parent Down (Score:2, Interesting)
He actually proves the GP's point.
Per Capita (which is the graph he links to) shows the US trending down, and China trending up. That's nice, but considering that China has a population of around 1.3 billion versus the US population of around 305 million, even a moderate trend upwards has to be multiplied by over 4.
All of the other CO2 graphs show that China has put out more pollution than the US for a very long time. However 3 of them show that like the US, China too has been reducing their pollution as we
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Cap and trade (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember when there was a problem with acid rain?
Sulfur dioxide restrictions were implemented flexibly by a cap and trade system. The economic impact was obviously manageable, and the problem got addressed.
It's instructive to look at the political history of the idea of using market forces to distribute the effort of pollution reduction. Look up whose idea it was in the first place.
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(I'm thinking of the sun's 11-year cycle and the recent larger-than-normal volcano activity)
Well, some say that the recent larger-than-normal volcano activity may be an effect [telegraph.co.uk] rather than a cause (or, anyway, contribute in a positive feedback to GW).
And it's possible they are right [wikipedia.org].
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Seriously? Increased carbon emissions increase volcanoes? This I've never heard before.
Shifting mass distribution on the Earth crust causing adjustments in plate tectonics?
Un-possible! [wikipedia.org] </grin>
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Both theories have been pretty thoroughly debunked. I'd go look it up for you, but I've already done my share of debunking-the-already-debunked for the week.
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Humanity is the really big thing that happened last century.
We went from 1.6 billion people to 6, we altered the environment on an unseen before scale, we began mass producing and dumping waste at a pace that couldn't have possibly be without consequence.
Referring strictly to CO2, the levels we have now haven't been seen in at least 650.000 years and that's without considering other gases which are mostly man made (they occur rarely or not at all in nature).
Ignorance is not an excuse. The alternative explan
30 second research and google (Score:3)
Re:Ice Tea... (Score:5, Informative)
How much of it would have happened anyway?
If we are talking since 1900, none of it according to the best models, if anything the globe would have very slightly cooled. The official IPCC position is more conservative and simply states that "most" of the observed warming is due to our activity (it's the second point in the much maligned 3 point scientific consensus [wikipedia.org])
rant/
A good place to start looking for more detailed answers on sun cycles and volcanos is here [skepticalscience.com], and the youtube channel "climate crock of the week" is also a good place to visit for quality investigative journalism on the subject, (warning it includes strong British sarcasm). But for god's sake don't take my word for it, trusting a single source in the minefield of disinformation on climate science is quite likely to be fatal to your understanding of the issue. WP (or any other reputable encyclopedia) is also a good place to start, and it's hard to go past realclimate.org, it's run by Michael Mann (the hockey stick guy) and features articles and commentary by some of the world's leading climatologists. sourcewatch.org also has an extensive database of front groups, shills and lobbyists who publish climate misinformation, making it relatively simple for a genuine skeptic to work out who is bullshitting them and why. Make no mistake, if your interested in truth these "lobbyists" are your enemy, they will attempt to recruit you into the dwindling ranks of their army of useful idiots [wikipedia.org] they have extensive propoganda experience that has been refined since the days the same people were paid to disrcedit medical science that said smoking causes cancer, somewhat surprisingly such expertise is cheap, (as well as fucking nasty).
/rant
Disclaimer: Unlike the so called "climate change skeptics" I want you to be skeptical of what I say and who I recommend. I've been following the science as an interested layman now for 30yrs, I want you to constructively attack the evidence I'm leaning on [www.ipcc.ch] because (as a grandfather of three) the issue is way too important to allow the mediocrity you speak of in your sig to waste time and sow doubt amongst the uninformed.
A final bit of good faith advice (Aussie style) - Do you fucking homework mate, your ignorance.is your enemy's most effective weapon.
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Burn the non-believer!
And increase the CO2 content of the atmosphere? You should be sequestrated for such a dumb idea!
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No, bury him. That way his carbon will return to the earth. Burning him will contribute to CO2 levels.
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Actually, I think it is all Clinton's fault. If he hadn't been such a tool, Bush never would have gotten elected.
You're being shortsighted. There's a butterfly in Mongolia I'm really pissed off at right now.
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ah, but that's just it. Clinton's behavior allowed Bush to do as well as he did. If Bush hadn't ridden the anti-Clinton wave, and hence the anti-Democrat wave, his showing would have been so abysmal as to preclude any judicial interference.
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And a dumb fucking electorate gave the cowboy the chance.
If we need to start blaming someone, blame the American people. They are dumb as shit and they elect idiots who don't give a shit about the planet. Given a choice between cheap gas for the SUV or a future for their grandchildren, what do you think they will pick?
Yeah, we shouldn't give that stupid electorate a chance to interfere with what we say is right, and....
Heyyyy, wait a minute!!
Strat
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Well we've finally done it. We are obviously headed toward a new ice age. We've hit an "all time coldest day" today as far back as I can remember the daily temps (today and yesterday). Everyone run out and buy winter gear (soon as I buy some stock in winter gear companies first thing tomorrow morning!). So run out and stock up (but wait until atleast 10am, thanks!).
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It's nowhere near as good as satellite data, but we can infer data about past Arctic ice from geological observations.
It's important because it's not just an effect, it's a cause. Arctic ice levels affect climate patterns.
Pointing out that the climate has changed in the past does dispose of the idiots saying "Save the planet!", because the planet will be just fine. It does, however, hide the issue that matters to a lot of humans, which is whether we can still grow enough food for seven billion of us and con
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Who needs sarcasm tags when you've got exclamation points!!!!!!!?????
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Alex Rogan: Yahoo!
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I like how the very article you cited said the effect was "unlikely to make much difference."
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Insightful.
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All of us, sooner or later.
A couple billion prematurely, mostly children and elderly.
Remember world population is going to be significantly lower than today by the end of the century. There are two main ways to achieve that: war and famine.
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*Black Sabbath starts playing*
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No no no... (Score:2)
`grep' is the command, it goes first.
Also, enclose the multiple words you want to grep for in quotes, unless you intend to grep multiple files...
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Right, just ignore the obvious downward trend for the previous 30 years on the graph; go ahead and cherry-pick your data so you can declare a 5 year upward trend! It's all so much simpler when you sweep things under the Seasonal Variability rug, isn't it?
Ever heard of the "Escalator Graph" [skepticalscience.com]? Yes, that's what you just did.
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Weeds grow better with increased CO2 concentration than food-plants. Not all plants are food, Humans don't like weeds.
Food-plants grown under increased CO2 show decreased nutritional value per weight, so even if you get more growth, the end result is less nutritious...
In the real world of plant-growing, CO2 is rarely the limiting factor, usually water, nitrogen or soil-minerals are the limiting factor. Increased CO2 leads to increased temperature, often leading to increased drought during the growing season
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There's quite a few actually.
1. Cloud cover
2. Solar output (lagged of course, driving El Nino) variation
3. Ocean oscillations (related to solar output)
The real indicator is the graph I posted. The red line does not deviate much at all from green line, when it is about the blue line (freezing point) As the graph is measuring atmospheric temperature, one can only conclude that the record low is not air temperature driven, which is the crux of the anthropogenic global warming argument.