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Big Arctic Perils Seen in Warming
gollum123 wrote in with news of a new study of warming in the Arctic, showing that warming from greenhouse gases is causing vast changes in the region. If your lifestyle depends on cold and frozen rather than mild and damp, you're in deep trouble.
"I guess I'll be buying property in Antartica."
Hate to disappoint you, but Antarctica has been cooling for years: it's only the Arctic which has been warming (and much of that is because many parts of the Arctic were unusually cold a couple of decades ago and is returning to more normal temperatures).
I'm not trolling I just have an honest question...
When that big lump of ice out there in the North Pole melts, will we *notice* it at all?
My reasoning is that most of the ice is underwater, and ice takes up more cm than water, so there would be a smaller volume of water than there is ice. Sure some of the ice is above sealevel but surely the difference in volume compensates for this?
Where am I wrong?
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
Hasn't the artic been warming for the last 10,000 years since the last Ice Age? I'm sure mankind is contributing somehow to this process but why is what seems to be a natural cycle of the earth an inherrently bad thing? Its just another natural phenomenon we must learn to deal with with like earthquakes, volcanoes, storms etc.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I'll start with the last comment first:
Do you assume that global warming means that temperatures will rise uniformly across the globe?
Do you assume that global warming would cause no shift in weather patterns?
Do you assume that any shifts in weather patterns would not be disruptive to agriculture?
Do you assume that disruptions in agriculture can be easily accomodated, say by rapidly shifting agricultural production to different parts of the globe (assuming, of course, that there would be vast new tracks of arable farmland as a result of changed weather patterns)?
If the answer to any of these questions is "no", then global warming should make you nervous.
If your answer to any of these is "yes", then it's you, not the environmental scientists, who have some explaining to do. They seem like pretty shaky assumptions.
I live in the Northwest Territories (Canada) and I can say in the last 15 years the winters have become much warmer. I remember stretched where is was -35 C for 3 weeks at a time. Now it only reaches that occasionally. I cannot speak for long term trends however. And yes, I did walk to school both ways uphill.
Let me guess: you are an American. Let me answer at least a couple of the questions you just brought up: 3) Scientists are scientists (unless owned by a politician like the ones working for Bush that say global warming is OK..) and they are people who stay true to facts. If scientists are continuously telling you something bad's coming, it means they reviewed quite a few facts before reaching this conclusion. And finally, the above being said, I'd listen to what they have to say. On a side note, you may want to look up the IPCC (www.ipcc.ch). Those guys are from all over the place and they have been working on global warming for a while now. They are saying the same thing. 4) I'm sorry, this is just a stupid question. Global warming (or massive amounts of ice melting) doesn't just make the climate a bit warmer. It actually starts a chain reaction of events which take place in a land slide and end with a signifant portion of the earth's biosphere dead or extinct. Yes, this coming from the same guys that can tell you what your weather will be like tomorrow correctly 90% of the time.
I am prepared to send two of my ex's to the north and south poles respectively. Those cold hearted frigid bitches will soon put an end to any thawing going on.
All I ask for saving humanity is a tropical island paradise where I can be surrounded by nubile maidens.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Humans don't have to be solely responsible for us to do something. That there are other factors in climate change does not mean we should not change those which we have control over.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Out come the enviro-trolls.
Yes, here you come.
1: Show me ACCURATE 1 million year tempature records. Wait!! We only have 80 years of records
It's called paleoclimatology. It was developed by people who actually studied when they went to school, as opposed to following your apparent curriculum of eating glue and getting your head stuck in bannisters.
2: Show me this hasnt happened before.
What does that have to do with anything? If it happened before it can't happen again? I mean, remember the last time you got your head stuck in a bannister? Did the fact that it had happened before prevent it from happening again?
3: Tell me the "scientists" studying arent also getting grants from... greenpeace or ELF..
Well, if you read the article then you would see who commissioned the study. But I guess it's more fun to accuse the scientists of being bribed liars. Because who wouldn't be corrupted by those climatology grants; you can really live the high life on those.
4: WHY exactly is global warming bad? Wont it give more landmass (eg, melts permafrost siberia) and lessen the "nice tropical -120F on antartica?
See, those pesky laws of thermodynamics mess things up. Maybe you should have taken junior high school physics instead of eating all that glue. Water, like many, many substances, tends to increase in volume when you add heat. So sea level rises. So you may gain part of Siberia, but you also lose a sizeable chunk of the world's coastal areas.
Maybe you shouldn't jump to conclusions on the validity of the science on the basis of an NYT article.
A .html m l l eoclimate.htm
One of the many ways of studying past climate patterns is by looking at ice cores.
We have pretty good data on long term climate patterns in cold places. Some links here:
http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/globalwarm
http://www.secretsoftheice.org/icecore/warming.ht
http://www.brighton73.freeserve.co.uk/gw/paleo/pa
Correction: the ice replaces exactly the amount of water it occupies when floating (=law of Archimedes). Proof: take a glass of water, put in ice cube, fill up glass to the edge (but not overflowing!). Ice melts, and water is still exactly up to the edge.
Secondly: the bigger part of ice masses aren't floating, but piled hundreds or thousands or metres thick on top of land masses. And a glacier isn't usually found in an ocean or lake either. So if these ice masses melt, you get more water -> sea level up -> less land for people to live on.
My next comment will be ready soon, but subscribers can't beat the rush or see it early!
I fail to see how this is so insightful.
It's easy to say "I don't care" about some environmental issue, because natural processes also cause cataclysmic effects. The fact is that humans CAN alter the environment and humans DO breathe the air the environment produces, drink the water, and eat the fruit of the land.
The planet will survive no matter what we do, I'll grant you that. On the other hand, it need not support mamillian life. Though the course of history many classes of living organisms have become extinct though natural proccesses. It's quite possible that given a critical mass of people, all producing some minor atmospheric effect, we could alter the environment on the order of those natural processes, such that mamilian life were no longer sustainable. Natural selection would weed out the mammals and a new form of life would emerge.
If you're OK with that, go ahead and ignore the research about global warming. I for one would like to preserve the human race. I'm not saying all the science about global warmning is good. It isn't. However, to say that 6 billion people on the planet cold never affect the environment in a negative way is quite silly. We do need to take environmental research seriously, debunk the bad research, and heed the good research.
Why is this assertion repeated every time this topic comes up? It's patently false. We annually burn up couple of km^3 pure carbon and turn it all into CO2. A very major volcano spews only a few km^3 of material, most of which is just rocks that fall to the ground next to the volcano. Do you have any valid links to back up your claim?
> The amount of greenhouse gases that the civilized world has output since the Industrial Revolution [...]
You are merely making an unfounded statement, but still got moderated up. Care to back this up?
According to "Gerlach, T.M., 1991, Present-day CO2 emissions from volcanoes: Transactions of the American Geophysical Union (EOS), v. 72, p. 249, and 254-255." CO2 emissions of all volcanoes are surpassed by us humble beings by a factor of 150.
Sulphourous-emissions of volcanoes and all other natural sources are surpassed by 330%.
I guess, you'll now have to retort to doubting the integrity and/or qualification of the scientist in question.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
On the contrary. The evidence is quite good.
I have no freaking clue what you are talking about the Earth's magnetic field. For one, it has *NOTHING* to do with global warming.
Read this and this and then get back to me. The magnetosphere blocks solar radiation from penetrating the lower levels of the atmosphere.
About the sun, well, let's see. Sunspots are actually cooler areas of the Sun. So the more sunspots, the cooler the sun!
Read this and then get back to me. Sunspots are indicators of higher solar activity.
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
I clicked on this article specifically to see the Libertarian environment trolls come out and scream about how it's all a left-wing conspiracy and climate change is just fine, and boy, I was not disappointed.
Well, I was disappointed in the human race I guess
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
The water held in the air is not available to flood anything.
Do you have any credible reason to think that the amount of increased atmospheric H2O will counteract rising sea level temperatures?
There are TROPICAL fossils and fossil fuels in the arctic. How did they get there?
Why do you keep asking this question? Nobody's disputing that the greenhouse effect was more pronounced a few million years ago. But just because champsosaurs didn't have a problem with the climate, don't assume that we won't. If you haven't noticed, we're not semi-aquatic alligators. But you know, you're just proving my point: climate change can mean extinction. And I really don't want to be extinct.
These changes take a long time and living things are very adaptable. We will also adapt over the many generations that such changes happen.
a) it could happen faster than that, and b) "adapting" requires a lot of organisms in a species dying.
1. CO2 is not a pollutant. It is, in fact, the lifeblood of the planet, required for growth of vegetation. It is the cornerstone of the food chain. The increased CO2 aerial fertilization effect has contributed to the greening of the planet, as confirmed by satellite photography.
2. Water vapor is by far the primary contributor of the greenhouse effect, accounting for 96 to 99%. CO2 accounts for 1 to 3%. Methane and others trace gasses account for 3. During the current interglacial period, the Earth has been about 2C cooler (The "Little Ice Age" around 1600-1700, when the Thames regularly frozen over), and it has also been about 2C warmer (The medieval warm period around 1200, when Greenland was colonized by the Vikings.) We are currently about in the middle of this natural variation, which occurred without manmade CO2.
4. The 500k year Vostok ice core data: http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/co2/vostok.htm/ shows CO2 either in phase or lagging temperature by up to 1000 years, over four temperature oscillations. This means the CO2 does not drive temperature, but that temperature drives CO2. The most likely explanation is that the ocean outgases and releases more CO2 when temperature increases, and holds more dissolved gasses as the oceans cools.
5. I'm not disputing the Earth may be getting relatively warmer (as we are coming out of the little ice age). One reason is likely the unusually active Sun. This report: http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/aah4688.pdf/ shows that over the last several centuries, solar activity is at its highest levels. The IPCC determined that the Sun's variation in energy output were too small to explain global warming. They dismissed the sun as a likely source of Earth changing climate!. Here is a link to a recent study showing how the sun's variation could have a feedback that would drive earth's climate change: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2333133. stm/ The theory goes like this: When the sun is highly magnetically active, the increased solar wind shields us from cosmic radiation. Low levels of incoming comic reduce cloud formation. Reduced low level cloud formation reduces reflectivity (i.e., the Earth's albedo). More energy is absorbed instead of reflected, and the temperature increases. The difference from an active Sun to an inactive Sun was about 3% global cloud coverage. The correlation in the study is remarkable. The jury is still out, but it could explain the correlation between the Maunder minimum of the 1600's and the little ice age, and account for the warming in the last 3 decades that corresponds with unusually high solar activity at the same time.
6. In November 1991, Danish scientists Eijil Friis-Christensen and Knud Lassen, startled the climatological world with a paper in "Science" describing a 0.95 correlation between solar cycle length and global temperature (IPCC version). "Science" writer, Richard Kerr described it as "one dazzling correlation". The blue line is temperature, the red line is solar cycle length.) As can be seen, global temperature has tended to increase in lockstep with shortening of the solar cycle length (ie. solar maxima becoming more frequent) I hope you follow the link, because one look at it, and you are forced to say, "Its the Sun, stupid." The graph is at the bottom of this link: http://http//web.dmi.dk/sol-jord/projekter/rum_vej r/oversigt.html/
7. The best protection against climate change is a rich, technologically advanced society that can adapt to natural variation. Don't damn the 3rd