Scientists Search For Clues to Antarctic Climate

Andrevan writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that a group of US scientists has finished a journey to the southernmost point of Antarctica. The team traversed 775 miles. They hope to reveal information on global warming and precipitation trends that began at the end of the Ice Age. According to Dr. Paul Mayewski, the expedition's leader, analysis should be finished in the next year or two."

Comments

Changing climates..

[J x]

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

Terminology

[Jon Peterson]

"southernmost point of Antarctica"

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

CBC

[J x]

The CBC's radio science program Quirks and Quarks interviewed one of the researchers on this topic. You can listen to the MP3 here. Other stories this week had to do with the Spider Goats, among others.

Summary: The majority of the Anarctic continent is isolated from the rest of the world when it comes to weather patterns. Most research stations aren't in the isolated part, they are in the most northerly portions of the continent. They are warming. The isolated part of Antarctica is cooling. It's basically a re-analysis of existing data that has resulted in this conclusion.

Re:Doh !

[JanneM]

On the other hand, they didn't find frozen Old Ones at the foot of a forbidding mountain range either, which we presumably can be grateful for.

Hooray for scientific method

[Wonko42]

I love how the scientific method has mutated into "we're hoping to find such and such, so we're going to look very hard until we do". With that methodology, you'll always find something that supports your theory.

Re:Hooray for scientific method

[alienmole]

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

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

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

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

Re:Climate Change or Change of Climate

[alienmole]

That site looks like classic kook stuff to me.

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

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

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

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

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