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Global Warming Past The Point of No Return
mad_goldfish writes "The UK's Independent is running a front page story today on a scientific report claiming that global warming is now unstoppable, after measuring changes in the level of ice in the arctic." From the article: "The greatest fear is that the Arctic has reached a 'tipping point' beyond which nothing can reverse the continual loss of sea ice and with it the massive land glaciers of Greenland, which will raise sea levels dramatically. Satellites monitoring the Arctic have found that the extent of the sea ice this August has reached its lowest monthly point on record, dipping an unprecedented 18.2 per cent below the long-term average." Either way, someone wins a bet.
And you thought it was a bad movie, it's a FEMA training film now!!!
As if it wasn't bad enough, the flamewar that's about to erupt here will further speed up the process...
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
You know about ice core sampling? Hundreds of thousands of years of accurate temperatures. Neat huh?
But we are actually still coming out of the last ice age, so we may just be egotistical to think that we have an effect on the planet's climate.
Did you know that it's an oddity in the Earth's history that we have ice at *both* poles?
Of course up until recently the Earth's climate was wildly variable, pretty damn close to chaotic. We have no idea what could have been changing Earth's temperature as rapidly as the ice samples indicate.
So we may, as a species, be in for a bumpy ride in the next few thousand years or so.
On a tangential note, does anybody else get annoyed by the overuse of the phrase "tipping point"? It's like "perfect storm" was a few years ago, everybody's favorite trite phrase-of-the-moment. It's like we've reached a tipping point of "tipping point" usage, and this perfect storm of "tipping point"s has driven out the "perfect storm" meme.
Have you read my blog lately?
"Seriously, we've had the technology to detect global climate changes for what, a hundred years at most?"
:-)
"
[snide]Yes, but we have discovered amazing technology that allows us to see into the past![/snide]. We have examined records of climate change that span hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years.
"Life will continue on, and we'll adapt. Okay?
Sure, we'll adapt, since we don't require genetic change to make different climates livable. What about all the species that do? What about our food supply? How much suffering will be endured by less rich nations while we race to adapt our agritech?
Maybe we differ in points of view, but as I see it, it's not just about us. Don't we have the responsibility to minimize our impact on other people and other species?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Erik the Red started a colony in Greenland back in the AD 900's. http://www.greenland-guide.gl/leif2000/history.htm
According to archealogical records, at time the colony was warm enough to grow crops and support a decent little town. Now, all ice. The region went through an extremely warm spell for a hundred years or so then froze up again. I wonder what the glacier levels where then? I guess we will never know.
Ehh...this is the life we chose.
Many of these have been disproven, but they keep coming up. New ones occasionally replace them. But they all amount to the same basic concepts:
Volcanos also spit SO2 in addition to CO2, which basically has the opposite effect (it increases albedo). Furthermore, when they erupt, the ash they throw into the atmosphere reflects sunlight to the extent that major eruptions effectively cool down the Earth. When Pinatubo erupted, it lowered the global temperature by a fraction of a degree. When Thera/Santorini erupted about 3600 years ago, the sempervirens trees from California recorded a sharp drop in temperature.
The Raven
As much as $3 a gallon gas has changed my habits, I guess it is good because it makes other, more environmentally friendly alternatives, an alternative price wise.
Here is my opinion on the global warming thing. I think it is Hubris for humans to think that we can destroy the Earth. We certainly can make it uninhabitable for certain flora and fauna, including Humans, but we can't destroy it. Humans weren't the first species, and we likely won't be here when the Sun finally goes out. If we screw the Earth up bad enough, she will just spin us off, and other species will take over.
Maybe we will be able to keep ourselves going until we can develop ways to populate other planets- but it will require a concerted effort.
Like anything however, we (humans) usually need something really big to get our asses in gear. We are reactive, not proactive. So unless there is some giant event like the atmosphere suddenly disappearing, things aren't likely to change. Although I am holding out some glimmer of hope that we (humans) will decide to be better stewards of our land.
If you are a hard core scientist, then on an intellectual level you must want to help our Earth.
Whether you belive in creationism or God- you would think that serving God requires us to take care of what God blessed us with.
Whether Humans cause Global Climate Change or not, we need to take better care of our Earth. There is an old saying- you don't shit where you sleep....
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
According to wikipedia, the greenland ice sheet, if fully melted, will raise global sea level by 7.2 meters (23.6 feet). This would put large portions of many coastal cities underwater.
Fortunately, there are other factors that should mitigate this, such as increased mass of the antarctic ice sheet due to increased moisture levels. See sea level rise.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
If it's too hot = Global Warming
If It's too cold = Global Warming
If It's a Monsoon = Global Warming
If It's a drought = Global Warming
If a part of a glacier breaks away from Antartica = Global Warming
If the rest of Antartica is getting colder = Global Warming
If you replace "Global Warming" up there with "It's Bush's fault" then you have the left's political platform as well.
Come up with some REAL science that is not funded by politically oriented "science" organizations, then MAYBE there would be more support for change.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Sweet! If we're past the point of no return, there is no sense worrying about it now!
Repeal the Kyoto Treaty and fire up the coal power plants. If we're all going to die, it mine as well be full speed ahead!
Coding with assembly is like playing with Legos. Coding an application in assembly is like building a car with Legos.
Training implies that there are competent people at FEMA. An assertation I'm not sure a certain region of the US would agree with.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
You're thinking of the Orontius Finaeus Map of Antarctica from the 1500's.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Yes, the Earth *has* gone through dramatic climate changes in its history:
Vostok data and others. We also have more recent data from ice, sediment cores which all give the same sort of data: the earth's climate changes wildly naturally, but over many thousands of years.
Two things seriously stand out in all of the data:
1) The earth's temperature *has varied* widely - but over tens of thousands of years. The most pronounced spike was when temperature went from 8 degrees below present 140,000 years ago to 2 degrees above present 125,000 years ago; that's 10 degrees in 15,000 years. We're currently experiencing a change of 0.2 degrees every decade, I.e., thirty times as fast. While there have been shorter spikes that have been steeper, nothing in history even approaches what we're experiencing right now.
2) There is an extreme correlation between CO2 and temperature. There is no doubt about the severity of our CO2 spike, nor its cause. We're injecting at a rapid rate earth's sequestered carbon into the atmosphere, and have 2.5xed atmospheric carbon since the early 1800s. We output about 7.1 billion (of which 3B enters the atmosphere) additional tonnes of carbon per year. The atmosphere currently holds about 750B tonnes (which, as stated previously, is a 2.5x over the early 1800s). While there is hope that marine biota will increase carbon consumption, history has shown that such changes take thousands of years when left unassisted.
regardless of whether we eject terawatts of thermal energy
What on earth does this have to do with global climate change?
A forest fire or volcano is a hell of a lot more energy than humans normally put out
If you want to get back to climate change, their CO2 and methane emissions aren't comparable, except for historic supervolcanoes. At the same time, volcanoes produce overall global cooling because of the aerosols and sulfuric acid particulate (which increases cloud formation).
You look beautiful! Incidentally, my favorite artist is Picasso.
Err, I don't know...maybe the missing ozone layer has something to do with it?
No. Completely wrong. The missing ozone allows UV radiation through, not more heat. Ozone itself is a greenhouse gas and a pollutant.
Note that while ozone is considered a greenhouse gas only in the troposphere, the primary source of tropospheric ozone is stratospheric ozone... which is what the hole is in.
Bottom line is that stratospheric ozone relies on continual production to sustain itself. Certain chemicals (CFCs, for instance) both interfere with production and destroy some existing ozone in the stratosphere. This creates the hole.
Eventually, (surviving) ozone in the stratosphere sinks down into the troposphere, where it becomes a greenhouse gas, and contributes to globabl warming. This process is the biggest contributor to tropospheric ozone.
So, in reality, the ozone destruction is limiting global warming to an extent, though since some CFCs themselves are powerful greenhouse gases, it is not a net reduction.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
I'm not sure I agree with it, but the theory is that there is big money in global warming research, both for and against.
.' are needed.
."
If you want to cash-out with the oil companies, you have to be saying that there ISN'T any global warming, and you have to spend a lot of time/money criticizing the environmentalists. If there wasn't anybody making noises about global warming, than you, as an anti-global warming researching wouldn't get millions in grants.
If you are an environmentalist, you have to be saying that there IS global warming, and you have to spend a lot of time/money criticizing the people I just described above. If there wasn't anybody disputing your facts, than you, as a global warming research, wouldn't get millions in grants.
Both sides have an incentive to say that both sides should get more funding. As both sides get more funding, they make *yet more noise*.
There hasn't been a single article from either side saying 'cut off funding for the other'. All the scientists agree that 'more research, more funding, more computer models, etc. .
Never forget, big science research ITSELF is fairly big research. The largest computing clusters in the world have been built for the purpose of analyzing global warming. Literally fleets of ships, along with mounds and mounds of atmospheric measuring equipment, and dozens of satellites have been constructed for the purpose of studying warming. Not to say that they don't find a bunch of intresting conclusions/data. But don't expect ANYONE tied up in the debate to ever say, "We're done researching, time to act, no more money for science, lets just spend it on lobbying, etc. .
Want to fund your ancient petrifyied tree research project? Link it to global warming, say that you are looking to see past temperature data. Shop it out to both sides, the IPCC people, the sierra club, and the oil companies, and make sure you release *very* high quality, but moderately ambiguous data.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
The Vostock ice cores have given us good temperature and CO2 records for the last 400,000 years, and we see an obvious 100,000 year cycle of glaciation punctuated by brief warm spells, like the one we're in now. We're currently in an ice age that started 50,000,000 years ago. So that's two cycles we know about: the 100 ky glaciation cycle, and the ~300 My ice age cycle. Presumably there are temperature cycles in between those times as well.
The biggest driver for the ice age cycle is geological. Rocks erode, removing CO2 from the atmosphere as part of the chemical reaction involved in weathering, and eventually depositing it on the ocean floors. The ocean floors are subducted, and the CO2 eventually spit out by volcanoes again. Nothing humanity can possibly do regarding CO2 levels will even be noticed by this vast slow cycle. The cycle is self-governing, as glaciation reduces the amount of exposed rock, increasing atmospheric CO2 levels and therefore temperature. This correction would presumably take millions of years, however, no so helpful to humanity.
The cycle that's interesting on our time scale is the 100,000 year cycle. Every 100,000 years or so temperatures spike (usually to higher than they are now, by a bit) and CO2 levels spike, then within 1,000 years or so something forces temperatures and CO2 levels back down. We don't know what that mechanism is, but it must be quite powerful. For some reason when temperatures peaked 10,000 years ago, they stayed warm (it's a little too early in mankind's history to give us the credit for that, but the unnatural warm spell almost certainly allowed us to develop civilization outside of the tropics).
What mechanism usually cranks CO2 levels and temperatures down when they spike every 100,000 years? Why didn't it happen 10,000 years ago? When will it eventually kick in? Without knowing the answers to these questions, it's just absurd to announce that global warming is "unstoppable". We have only the most shallow hypotheses about how the cycle works in the first place.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Best to go ahead and kill yourself now. That way, nothing scary and complicated will happen to you.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
The fact is that humans, even with all our pollution, can't put a dent in our planets ecosystem
Have you ever eard about the holocene extinction event? From wikipedia: A 1998 survey by the American Museum of Natural History found that 70% of biologists view the present era as part of a mass extinction event. Some, such E. O. Wilson of Harvard University, predict that man's destruction of the biosphere could cause the extinction of one-half of all species in the next 100 years. Research and conservation efforts, such as the IUCN's annual "Red List" of threatened species, all point to an ongoing period of enhanced extinction, though some offer much lower rates and hence longer time scales before the onset of catastrophic damage. The extinction of many megafauna near the end of the most recent ice age is also sometimes considered a part of the Holocene extinction event.
Well, 70% of biologists think that we are going thtought a massive extinction event and you say that humans can't put a dent in the ecosystem. With that, you get modded +5 Insightful..
We could at least say that your thinking is not shared by the science community, even if it seems to find echo on slashdot.
We really have a huge lack of evidence about global warming. The earth is warming yes, but are we causing it?
:)
It would be odd if pumping millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere had no effect, wouldn't it?
The eart has gone to drastic changes over the course of several million years. Within the past 10,000 years, glaicers have formed and receeded in northern Europe and North America. Not too long ago, Chicago was covered in ice. It's why there is so much good farm land up near Indiana.
How is this relevant? During most of that period there were not that many people around (a few millions at most) and they lived tough lives. Now we have hundreds of millions living within a few metres of sea level, and we rely on subtle aspects of rainfall and climate to grow our food. Even a minor climate change could have a dramatic and very unpleasant effect.
The fact is that humans, even with all our pollution, can't put a dent in our planets ecosystem compared to the power of one rhylothetic (sp?) volcanic eruption
I can't check what you mean because of the spelling
However, we are having an impact. In a few decades we will have doubled the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere - that is a major change.
On top of this, many geologists believe that we are currently in an Ice Age and we're on the cooling side of it!
We were on the cooling side of it!
Tell ya what, I miss the days of Global cooling.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Its odd that so many people think this isn't a big deal, siting issues like "we don't know enough" or "its happened before in our geological history"...
If you actually put some common sense into, that is the carbon cycle over millions of years has store sh1tloads of carbon away underground, and that in the next hundred years its very likely we will have put it all up in the atmosphere... and that carbon contributes to global warming, that has the side effects of unpredictable violent weather, and a general slowing of the earth on its axis (like Venus)... you would think that even the SUGGESTION that we should be conscious over what is in our control would be an action item.
An analogy is forest fires... forests have burned forever, contributing to the nitrogen cycle and carbon cycle. But now we're hell bent on putting them out. Sure, it means not-so-much carbon, but the result is a f4cked up nitrogen cycle and a build up of biomass just waiting to be a serious blaze. Why do we fight the fires then? Protect peoples homes? OR to protect the forestry industry?
So the ocean rises a few inches, and a bunch of well established species get extinct; just think of how many times we get to rebuild New Orleans, Miami, and such...
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Northern Indiana, while it survived the ice age, was once a huge marsh through the various river valleys that ran through the area. These marshes were drained, just ike Chicagoland was, in the 1800's and 1900's. The remaining silt made for good farm land. The withdrawal of glacial activity merely made it flat and sucseptable to contours that made the marshes and flow. It took several thousand years to make that dirt as black as it is, prarrie grasses, fowl, and trillions of shellfish lived up there. No more.
Now you can have corn chips.
We've put a SERIOUS dent into our plant's ecosystem. Look at all of the species gone, do to man. Look at all the ones on the endangered list(s).
There's overwhelming evidence. Just look at it. It's not disjointed, it's not anecdotal, it's scientific evidence.
Please go back to your job in the Bush administration and stop playing with your computer on the government's time.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Remember Lex Luthors plan to get rich ? Buy all the property on the east side of the san andreas fault, then set off nukes in the fault to sink the west half of the state. Lex would overnite own the majority of waterfront property in california.
According to the sinless triumverate of truth (moveon.org, indymedia, and dailykos), Karl Rove has almost completed his master plan of melting all global ice to raise the world sealevel by 23ft.. which in a single stroke would wipe out almost all democratic voters in the US, as well as place all socialist-european countries in state of total turmoil whilst they tried to rebuild their cities and save their tax base (their population).
The republicans would then RULE THE WORLD!
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
As someone who has done some work in this field I have to say I hate these articles. Chances are it is media hype. But it works because both sides dig in and either call them alarmists or prophets.
It would be nice if those who jump to say 'I told you so' would recongnize that this is the one of the first articles that claim to have evidence decided we are past a tipping point. The people involved are reutable but we need more research.
It would also be nice for those denying that there is a problem to get some of their facts straight. While the media only reports on catastrophic events like massive flooding and hurricanes those are the worst case predictions. Many of the scientist more realistic predictions made in the past are on tract. West Nile virus, Avian flu, malaria are showing up where it never has before. 20 years ago climate scientist had claimed that this would be an indirect result. There is also other indirect evidence like bird/fish/herd migration changes, species sensitivity and so on. As well as direct evidence as found in telecontection analysis, outgoing longwave radiation, etc (just google climate studies).
The biggest problem is everyone wants or expects a definetive answer right now. It is probably the most complex system that is currently intesivly studied. That is why they need massive supercomputers and incredible amounts of data. You are not going to get an easy answer for about 100 years.
In my opinion it should be more like a health problem. I personally would like to live a long health life. There are now the obvious things to avoid like smoking and drugs, but I also might at least listen when someone talks about chloesterol, heart disease, and bbq pork ribs (mmm, ribs).
I have secretly hidden some mispelled words in this post. Can you find them?
. HUGE changes have occurred, yet the earth has always pulled back to an equilibrium point that has provided life.
Right, but what makes you think that life will continue to include homo sapiens as a species?
100,000 year cycle of glaciation
;)
:)
Apparently I missed 10,000 years between the start of the industrial revolution and now, when we've experienced the degree of CO2 increase and temperature rise.
Are you trying to claim that the rates are comparable? If not, then what kind of argument are you trying to make? "The earth has changed before, so 30x-ing the rate won't make a difference"?
within a thousand years
I think you need to look at those graphs again. Historically, temperature changes relatively little over a thousand years, except in modern times.
eventually spit out by volcanoes again
Human CO2 emissions far outpace volcanic emissions. We mine Earth's carbon resevoirs at a tremendous rate - burning about 6 gigatonnes (6e12 kg) (plus an additional GT from displaced carbon sinks) annually. To put that number in perspective, if the carbon sources that we burn annually averaged the density of water, they would fill a cube 1.8 kilometers on each side.
You look beautiful! Incidentally, my favorite artist is Picasso.
Although global climate might be within plausible variation, here's one undisputed fact of human effects. We have royally mucked up the atmosphere.
For at least the past 400000+ years, global CO2 concentrations fluctuated solidly in the 180-300ppm range. Methane flucutated 300-700ppb on a matching path, and both correlate strongly with temperature (r about .8) over that time.
Today, CO2 has shot up to 380ppm and methane above 1700ppb. Any rational observer should conclude this is A Bad Thing(tm).
BTW, we're currently towards the high end of average temperature, not low. What is the phrase "still coming out of an ice age" is being measured against?
Why he is an idiot: http://mustelid.blogspot.com/2005/08/pielke-senior -has-blog.html#comments
He certain has been peer-reviewed, though. The feedback he got from his papers include:
The exchange is not worthy of publication. In fact, I do not understand why P&C even wrote their piece in the first place. They continually destroy whatever point they had in mind by noting Hansen 'did it right'... None of the participants in this pathetic exchange seem to have the slightest clue about the large decadal noise that exists in the oceans and some ocean models.
Which bring up the question about why he resigned, which in his own words:
The current discussion in the media based on the three Science Express articles misses the more significant issue of spatial trends in tropospheric temperature trends.
He quit because the committee was focusing on trends in the global average, and he was more interested in geographical locations.
Realclimate is a group blog focusing only on scientific analysis and which gives no recommendations for policy change. The views they give strike me as typically very cautious - so what do you consider to be alarmism?
People think "the ice age" is a defining moment. There was a mini-ice age in the 17th century. There was one that ended maybe 14,000 years ago. Those are NOT the LONG TERM cycles that repeat on earth.
Those 5 CO2 peaks over the last 400,000 years came from the
Vostok Antarctica ice cores (about every 100,000 years). Our actual CO2 might be expected to go a bit higher based on the prior peaks, but then something repeatedly changes in the world's ecosphere in the past cycles and there is an ABRUPT drop in CO2 in the past history.
Why did it go up?
Why did it turn?
What long term sun cycles or sun spots only exist, which we have not detected yet?
Does a direct hit by a large coronal mass ejection/s offer a drastic change to the earth's enviroment?
Why did it go down precipitously?
Once you know what caused it, does it have so much power behind it that man can or can NOT change it?
If you look at facts instead of blathering, it becomes apparent that scientists and interested laymen yet today have no proof of what moves the momentum of the truely long term ecosystem's atmosphere.
I personally believe we will find that man is incapable of altering the long term climatic cycles, and at some point Canada & Northern Europe and Asia will again go under kilometers of ice, and man (just like the Vikings in Greenland), will only be able to look on in horror as the ice relentlessly takes over the land they used to work and live on.
You can easily see the CO2 charts on the web, but I won't post any URLs.
Bo
In other words, when you find yourself trapped in a burning building, it's not wise pump a barrel of gasoline into the flames.
We may be in a warmer cycle, but it is a firm fact that we've pumped up the methane, CO2 and CO in the atmosphere. We are pumping a tanker of gasoline onto a raging inferno.
No matter the overall climatic changes, OUR activites have made it much worse and much faster. Ice is melting everywhere. Glaciers are going, Siberia is melting, releasing methane in a vicious cycle, villages in Alaska are disappearing in the meltoff of the land, we're getting four times the normal number of hurricanes in a year -- and they are stronger, for the waters are warmer than they have been in centuries. The Northwest Passage over the arctic ocean is opening up as the ice floes melt.
It's real. The only choice we have, in the short run, is whether we wish to mitigate the changes by cutting down greenhouse gases -- immediately. We wait, there'll be new oceanfront property really soon.
Of course, the same industrial and financial firms who wished to maintain their status quo by resisting change and financing PR fake science will shift gears in the new warm world and find massive profit in the meltdown. It's all the same to them.
Here's one chart of the Vostock data, here's another in a weird movie format that you have to scroll around in, but has some additional data. The commentary on the first page may be BS for all I know, but the charts are good. You've probably seen all this, but many slashotters haven't.
You can see the 100,000 year cycles clearly. Temperatures spike from -8 or -9 degrees (C) below present to 2 or 3 degrees above present in about 5000 years, then almost immediately reverse, dropping about 5 degrees over the next 10,000 years, then cool off slowly over the remainder of the 100,000 year (give or take) cycle.
About 15,000 years ago temps spiked as normal, reaching today's temps about 10,000 years ago but *didn't* dive as would be expected. Humans started messing with the climate significantly only in the past 200 years, but something unprecedented in the 400,000 years of good data we have happened 10,000 years ago - we should have been back to the norm for the Current Ice Age by now. What happened? During the previous cycle CO2 levels stayed at the ~275ppm level for 10,00 years but temperatures dropped nearly 10 degrees during that time anyway - why?
Yes, indeed, as I said repeatedly, the volcanic cycle is far slower than the timescale we care about. But CO2 level changes driven by the big geological cycle dominate the geological data. There have been geological periods when CO2 levels were 6-7 times as high as they are now (we think), but temperatures were about the same. Why? We really know very little about the factors that govern the climate.
What we *do* know is that it's a historical anomaly during the past 50,000,000 years for temperatures to be this warm for even 1,000 years at a stretch - the climate simply isn't naturally stable.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
First of all, there is no such type of volcanic eruption termed "rhylothetic" (bad spelling nor otherwise). What in God's name are you doing, making up words?
Your choices are: Strombolian, Vulcanian, Vesuvian, Peléan, Hawaiian, Phreatic, and the most powerful, Plinian.
So, maybe your are right. There is no way human pollution can put a dent into the ecosystem the way a rhylothetic eruption can, because there is no such thing as a rhylothetic eruption!
We'll let the rest wonder about the validity of your other fantasy conclusions...
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
>> the acid rain would kill us all by 1990. But I
>> was busy with work and didn't notice the end of
>> everything. How was it?
They actually *did* something about it and mandated pollution controls on coal-fired plants. You were probably too busy with work to notice that too.
400-1200 metric tons per day is absolutely nothing. Humans release 16 million metric tonnes per day (and displace additional absorption). As a long term average, volcanoes produce about 500 million tonnes of CO2 annually, compared to ~6 billion for humans. Furthermore, volcanoes are overall coolers because of the aerosols and sulfuric gasses they release, unlike humans.
You look beautiful! Incidentally, my favorite artist is Picasso.
This post is one of the most insulting posts I've seen in ages.
It seems to assert that the people who make computer models are too stupid to avoid linear extrapolations from cyclic data.
You can't have a consensus among reputable, peer-reviewed scientists when discussing new results.
Yes, the article reports a prediction of an ice-free arctic (at the end of summer) in 65 years. That's the result of a model. But the article also reports that the September ice coverage of the arctic was at a record low in September 2004, which followed a record low in September 2003, which followed a record low in September 2002. Ice coverage at the end of August, 2005 is 1/6th lower (2.0 million square miles vs. 2.4 million square miles) than it has averaged since we've had satellites watching. And that the more of the arctic ocean that is ice free, the more of the ice melts.
Your argument is flawed in that you neglect to mention that computer-driven models can generate hypothesis that can be *tested*, both retrospectively, and in the future.
In your example, you'll know the computer model is wrong if in a week you are still alive. On the other hand, if the model can make accurate predictions about historical data, without being based on that data, then you have evidence to the model's accuracy. For example, use a machine learning technique to train a system to predict a 1-year climate trend using data from 1900-1990. Then, see if the system can accurately predict trends from 1990-2005. If so, there's no evidence that it would be wrong when predicting a trend from 2005-2015, when trained from 1990-2005. Other similar tests might include training on even-numbered years, and then predicting climate for odd-numbered years, or training on non-leap years, and predicting for leap years.
When you have sufficient data, you can use rigorous statistical methods to say with a known confidence how accurate your methods are likely to be in making predictions (and I'm not just talking about accuracy and recall; you can validate a hypothesis much more rigorously). You can then make rational, scientific statements.