Slashdot Mirror
North Pole Ice On Track To Melt By September?
phobos13013 writes "Recently released evidence is showing the North Pole ice is melting at the highest rate ever recorded. As a result, the Pole may be completely ice-free at the surface and composed of nothing but open water by September. As reported in September of last year, the Northwest Passage was ice-free for the first time known to man. The implications of this, as well as the causes, are still being debated. Are global warming experts just short-sighted alarmists? Are we heading for a global ice age? Or is the increase in global mean temperature having an effect on our planet?"
The Polar Bears. No place to go any more.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Oh no! What will happen to santa and his elves, and the reindeer? Won't someone think of the reindeer?
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
It's about fucking time those damn penguins get what they deserve.
This is not news. This is a prediction that there might be news in September.
If it doesn't happen, will we get an apology for misleading us?
"The melt would be mostly symbolic--thicker ice, pushed against the Canadian continental shelf by weather and Earth's rotation, would still survive the summer."
So when we say the North Pole will melt we are talking about a point not the whole Artic ocean which is what impression one might get from the title.
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
Has anyone thought that this is just the planet recovering from the ice age?
That book was powerfully bitch-smacked it was so debunked after it came out.
I wouldn't take any details in it seriously... good book, interesting theory, but most of the evidence was fabricated or misinterpreted.
Maybe the melting ice could have something to do with this:
AFP Volcanic eruptions reshape Arctic ocean floor: study
Arctic Volcanoes Found Active at Unprecedented Depths
Some analysis at:
Global Warming - Or Simply Massive Under Sea Volcanoes?
Just read a great book about China's 'discovery' of the America around 1421 and they were able to get their junks around Greenland, a feat not otherwise possible, but it was warm that year.
Just think how much they've progressed, now they can get their junks all the way to Walmart!
It is comical to me that in the past decade, I've seen the headlines purchased by oil company spin doctors go from:
Global Warming: Fact or Fiction?
to
Global Warming: Are We Causing It?
to
Global Warming: What Can We Do About It?
to
Antarctica: The New Hawaii
You do realize that book is widely considered to be poppycock?
This is where I look to keep track of what's happening with the north pole:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
Best graph is :
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
My friends refer to it a climate-porn...
Can't say I strongly disagree since it has the feel of watching a loooong slow train wreck...
Arctic ice is floating, and thus already displacing water. It's the Antarctic and Greenland ice melting that would be a concern, since they rest on land.
Ah, Chrichton. Because writing Jurassic Park is the only scientific credential that actually matters.
With all due respect, he's got an M.D., he's not a climatologist. I don't call a plumber when I'm sick; I don't ask an M.D.'s opinion on climate change.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
Anyone who believes this isn't a man-made disaster has their speaking privileges taken away. Put on your dunce caps, go sit in the corner and shut the f&*k up.
Yes, absolutely. Instead of believing the propaganda from Big Oil that nothing is wrong, we should instead believe in the propaganda from political interests attempting to divert our attention from other matters and scientific communities whose funding is dependent on the support of those political interests that our doom is upon us and we must stop doing anything.
In no way will this turn out to be the same as most issues in popular science, where there is an underlying trend that we should consider changing, but whose likely effects will not be fully understood without much more research and in any case will occur subtly over a period of many years.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Mod me down if you will, but I heard one report that ice levels right now are higher than at the same time last year.
The NW Passage has been open in the recent past from (1905 - 1948). Accurate measurement of the "melting" began in 1979, probably about the time ice coverage peaked. As a cursory search will show, it has also been open in the more distant past as well.
The freeze/thaw of the arctic is clearly cyclic. Whether it is clear evidence of global warming or not is a question to be considered. Man's impact on this warming, if the warming is actually happening, is another question altogether.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Almost.
But not quite.
Don't anthropomorphise Mother Nature. She hates it when you do that.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Yeah. Better to sit on your ass and do nothing until you have 100% proof and it's too late to bother changing your ways anyway. That's the spirit. If a car is coming towards you at 100 miles an hour and at 50ft away a phycisist says "There's a very good chance that car isn't going to stop in time, maybe you should move out of the way" do you tell him you want to be 100% sure before you move?
Polar bears already have problems. Ice freezes later and thaws sooner, so bears have to swim further and many drown. Seals, their primary food source, are also under pressure because they need the ice to birth. Your wiki source also includes this:
Finally, the National Geographic was a little glib, if not intentionally missleading, when it said:
Any reasonable person quickly realizes there will be no ice to "push" if it's all gone in the center. Models that have not predicted the rapidity of ice loss need to be recalibrated as do politicians who deny global warming and it's impact. The alarmists are alarmingly correct.
I don't call a plumber when I'm sick; I don't ask an M.D.'s opinion on climate change.
Then please, please tell me why anyone thinks Al Gore is remotely relevant on the issue of climate change!!!
The Cryosphere Today is a web site run by the University of Illinois. It gives daily information on the extent of polar sea ice.
As shown here and here and here, the arctic ice extent is actually greater than last year, although lower than historical averages.
We seem to have conflicting data.
Then please, please tell me why anyone thinks Al Gore is remotely relevant on the issue of climate change!!!
Because he invented the Internet, silly.
right now the cap is 10.5mm square kilometers, vs. 7.5mm this time last year. Hacks.
!#&*
I have some serious questions for you:
1) Do you believe that Michael Crichton has information that the climate scientists do not?
2) Do you believe Michael Crichton is smarter than the climate scientists and better able to interpret the data?
3) If either of these is true, what leads you to believe this?
But at a scale a lot greater than the human one, our sun is growing fast. A couple hundredths of a percent every decade. So our faith is there. As the sun will grow larger and larger, our planet is going to heat more and more, and there's absolutely nothing we can do about it.
Bzzzztt!!! I call Bullsh-t.
WTF are you talking about? The sun is growing larger? Why would you pull something so incredibly obviously wrong out of your arse, and why would anybody be dumb enough to mod this up?
The output of the sun is so even and so predictable, it's called the "Solar Constant". There is a variation of about 1 part per thousand over a 30-year cycle. In short, the idea that the sun is getting hotter every year is not just wrong, it's absurdly so.
Come back when you have some "facts" that reflect reality, mmmkay?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Actually, free-floating ice is displacing 100% of the volume it would displace once melted.
I just finished reading 1421, and my completely-layman, don't-know-enough-history-to-comment opinion was that it was interesting (and, sure, possible), but the author seemed to play pretty fast and loose with his evidence. Some of his claims (like the idea that the Bimini Road was a construction to slide ships back into deeper water after repair) sounded pretty outlandish and not well researched. Others, such as his analysis of old maps and the routes ships would have taken, seemed plausible, but I don't have the background to evaluate them.
I've been looking for a good analysis of his claims, but haven't been able to find much beyond "he got detail X wrong, so it's all bogus." I'd like to read some better thought out critiques. If you have any links handy, I'd be much obliged.
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
True... now here's the converse: Al Gore is no climatologist, either - but that didn't stop him from writing a book and being pointed at as some sort of authority on climate by the populace at large.
Not trying to pick a debate, but I do want to point out something.
It doesn't require any sort of degree to use logic in order to take what's out there data-wise, and form a hypothesis (or opinion) that can withstand scrutiny. All that is required is logical skill, intellect, a lot of research, a little wisdom, and patience enough to see the argument (pro or con) come together.
I honestly don't care about who advances the opinion, I care about the logical progression of the argument. I also care about whether or not the supporting facts are as complete as possible, in context, and not in disregard of facts which oppose the conclusion. See also the reasons why ad hominem and appeals to authority are counted as fallacious.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Changes in solar energy output (the "ringing" of the Sun)?
Well that's certainly a hypothesis worth investigating. Thankfully people other than yourself did actually think about that one, and have done a significant amunt of research on the amount of solar variation and how much of the change in global average temperature over the last century or so is attributable to those variations. The short answer is that, while solar variation has contributed (around 30% according to the IPCC) it can't fully account for the observed temperature changes. Indeed, solar variation flattened off in the last few decades, while temperature continued to rise see here.
Naturally occuring changes in the planetary atmosphere (as has happened before on this planet)?
An interesting hpothesis; perhapsthe dramatic rise in CO2 has nothing to do with humans. Fortunately, again, other people thought of this possibility and actually did the research. Since fossil fuels have rather distinctive isotope ratios we can gauge how much of the increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to fossil fuel burning by analysing the changing isotope ratios of atmospheric CO2. Unfortunately your hypothesis just isn't borne out; humans are responsible for the most recent dramatic rise in levels of atmospheric CO2.
But you get the point - when we at least have an educated guess as to the 'why'...
But we do have an educated guess as to why, significant amounts of research into that, and the alternative possibilities you suggest have been explored, and the results are that, to the very best of our current understanding, anthropogenic CO2 (and to a lesser degree other anthropogenic greenhouse gases) are a very significant factor -- indeed, the most significant -- in causing the observed increase in global average temperature. That rise in temperature is easily the prime candidate for blame with regard to melting arctic sea ice.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
If you truly think that modern "science" isn't influenced at all by politics, you really need to read about what happened behind the scenes before that IPCC report was published. You could start by looking at the legal action some of the scientists named as contributors took to try to get their names removed because they didn't want to be associated with it. Then you could look at the funding arrangements for the strongest supporters.
I'm not saying the phenomenon of global warming is completely made up. I'm not saying we shouldn't be watching what's happening, considering our role in it, and adjusting our behaviour if necessary. Nowhere did I say any of these things, despite what several knee-jerk respondents seem to think I wrote.
What I am saying is that we shouldn't panic over every little story about something this year being different to something last year, and go all hyper as if the world is about to end. As others have noted, the possibility of global warming has been on the scientific radar for decades. If it is such a great and immediate threat to humanity, the scientific community has been remarkably restrained for an awfully long time given that suddenly this is the top item on the agenda and they are falling over themselves to tell us how much trouble we are in. The science didn't change that quickly; remember, the IPCC report was essentially a huge survey paper, not a whole load of original research that told us we'd been off by orders of magnitude in our previous knowledge and modelling or something. What changed quickly was the politics.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
On the other hand, there is a non-zero chance that when you leave your home to go to work tomorrow morning, you will be run over by a truck. You could guarantee that you will avoid this fate by staying home. Do you do so?
The difference is just the numbers. In one case, we know the impact is very likely; in the other, it is very unlikely. In one case, the downside of making the "safe" choice is negligible; in the other, it probably costs you your job.
I rather doubt that an informed, object viewer of the current evidence on global warming would consider the situation anything like either of these extremes.
For the record, I also rather doubt any of the people expressing such strong views in this Slashdot discussion are even remotely qualified to do so. Heck, looking at some of the comments, I would be surprised if the majority of people here even know the basic science to understand what is being discussed rather than regurgitating the passionately held views of whoever's position statement they read most recently.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Well, what would have given them all that hubris? Possibly scientific education and specialisation? Years spent studying the planet's climate?
Well no shit Sherlock.
As a PhD in control theory, I can solemnly declare you a charlatan. Space shuttles are controlled. Nuclear fission reactions are controlled (and they are both nonlinear and unstable). Hell even chaotic systems are controlled. And I am supposed to believe a Sci-Fi writer that has been called a moron by every competent climatologist that hey, you can't help complex stuff? I don't believe in penis-enlargement pills, therefore I don't believe in Michael Crichton.
Your foolish statement may be reworded as "Since you cannot understand a system as complex as the human body, you cannot possibly cure people".
You know, I have this sick, sad habit of looking at politically incorrect sites. Nazis, racists, holocaust deniers—it's a little philosophical exercise, to think how the would would be absurd if these retards actually were right. There is however a line to draw, and Crichton, in that video, passed it after five minutes, when he said that Chernobyl was not really that much of a disaster because only "50 people died". Such a claim indicates a spectacular level of intellectual dishonesty: he's counting only the firefighters who died in the accident, and since nobody traced the isotopes, well, all those malformed children born in Belarus, all those cases of thyroid cancer, they could all just be a statistical anomaly, right? And that's only counting deaths, the really alarming numbers are the people who develop conditions because of the poisoning: in the Ukraine alone, the authorities estimate that 2.4 millions people were affected by the radiation. Note that Ukraine did not even get most of the fallout, Belarus did.
Well, that's enough to make up my mind for now: he's a shill paid by industry lobbyists to deliver lies. Call me up when they actually find a climatologist backing him up.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y