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Huge Arctic Ice Shelf Breaks Off
knarfling writes "CNN is reporting that a chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan has broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada's northern Arctic. Just last month 21 square miles of ice broke free from the Markham Ice Shelf. Scientists are saying that Ellesmere Island has now lost more than 10 times the ice that was predicted earlier this summer. How long before the fabled Northwest Passage is a reality?"
I hope it wasn't abstract artic, or else we're all doomed.
YES! How long until it is 1906 again?
These icy, loveless relationships aren't meant to last. I'm glad that the arctic broke it off.
I just wanted an ice cube...
So is the arctic ice getting more or less when an ice shelf breaks off and floats away without actually melting? Anyhoo, global warming is good - it snowed last weekend.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Ellesmere Island was once entirely ringed by a single enormous ice shelf that broke up in the early 1900s. All that is left today are the four much smaller shelves that together cover little more than 299 square miles.
So this is a process that has been going on for ~100 years now? And that means it is indicative of, or news because... ???
;) )
Nothing to see here... (except my dwindling karma...
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
The climate change proponents will probably try to make a bigger deal out of this than it really is. I take the stance that I'm not educated enough on Earth's climate to have a valid opinion on climate change, but I do find it strange that they never mention the tropics have been colder than usual these past few years. I live in Mackay, Queensland, and this year's winter was probably the coldest I've seen here (though I have only been here eight years).
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
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...are the screams of millions of spelling nazis.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
The North West passage is already open. In fact for the first time in human history it is possible to sail all the way around the North Pole. As reported in the Independent at the weekend:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/for-the-first-time-in-human-history-the-north-pole-can-be-circumnavigated-913924.html
The day the NWP is a reality is the last day of Canada as an independant country.
I'm not ready to give up my home and native land that quick. But how am I to stop US forces, or worse, Russian or even Chinese, should they set their eyes on the NWP?
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I for one am anxious to see the polar ice caps melt. We need to make this planet warmer for my fellow mankind.
Ave Molech Setting
How long before the fabled Northwest Passage is a reality?
From what I read the other day, it is open now...
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
both the NW passage and the NE passage are open this year, for i believe the first time ever.
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
It realy is amazing that those who seek to deny climate change point to regionalized changes as an indication that "it's not getting warmer".
That's not the point. The point is that it is getting warmer on a global average and that some areas will be more affected than others.
The melting of polar ice caps to the extent they are will have impacts such as potential changes in ocean currents. The impact of that change will have even greater affect on regions where climates are moderated by the heat brought in or removed by those currents.
How it all plays out remains to be seen but it's likely to have dire consequences for some regions and relatively little affect on others.
The Northwest Passage is already a reality. (http://nyhederne.tv2.dk/article.php/id-15085891.html) (in Danish).
Wow this news article is front page news on most every news web site, except in Canada!!! WTF eh!
The climate change proponents will probably try to make a bigger deal out of this than it really is. I take the stance that I'm not educated enough on Earth's climate to have a valid opinion on climate change, but I do find it strange that they never mention the tropics have been colder than usual these past few years. I live in Mackay, Queensland, and this year's winter was probably the coldest I've seen here (though I have only been here eight years).
I find it worrying that people say "I don't know enough, so i don't believe it" about climate changes.
I'm the first to admit that i haven't got the faintest clue if we are rapidly accelerating a climatechange. However I think it is better to err on the side of caution than hoping it all blows over
...do you complain about the news covering this every. single. time. it happens as well?
Others might say that reporting about some satellite that watches the oceans is absolutely yawn-worthy... satellites get launched all the time, many of them to observe our planet, what makes that one so special? And you might say because it may help give further information on rogue waves; thus it was news to you and I'm sure you're glad it was reported - even if it doesn't seem particularly noteworthy to most.
quickly climate change man! to the al-gore-mobile!
No, we have our field days when so-called "sceptics" follow up every story that even remotely concerns climate with stupid non-sequiturs, and point to single points of "evidence" against global warming as if they somehow were relevant. Like when junkscience.com presents a "global mean temperature" with sharp differences between day and night and summer and winter, or some idiot on Slashdot points to the weather in fucking Queensland.
I don't have time to find a source right now, but didn't a linked-to-by-slashdot article one or two weeks ago mention the variations in some ocean currents as the cause? Something about them delaying serious global warming until the next decade or so.
...we're looking at ecosystems on the verge of distinction.
I know almost nobody reads TFA, but apparently no one edits them, either.
Impetuous! Homeric!
Can I have mine shaken and not stirred with that wee bit of ice?
Perhaps a Manhattan? Too much ice?
I know, lets tow it to Mexico and have a hella'va Margarita party!!
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
Yeah, I didn't say I don't believe it, I just meant that they never seem to mention regions that have gotten colder when they're trying to 'educate' the masses.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
So arctic ice extent varies (seasonally) between about 4 and 13 MILLION square kilometers. I'm guessing it's at the minimum for the year (it is the end of summer after all) so lets say 4,000,000 km^2. Hmmm 100km^2.... what is that about 0.003%. Why is this news?
I much prefer the story of the Polar Defense Project! (Kayak guys who are stuck in ice 1000km from the pole).
Cheers,
_GP_
Global warming does not imply that all areas will be warmer, just that the world, on average, will be.
In fact, one of the reasons people are so concerned about it is because such warming could (and almost certainly would) alter current weather patterns, causing some areas to become much warmer, or colder, or much dryer or inundated by rain.
Much of that danger is sheer unpredictability. Places in the world that currently support major agriculture could dry up; dryer areas, or coastal ones, could be flooded or washed out.
Think of it this way: pumping more *heat* into the atmosphere is in many ways functionally equivalent to adding more *energy*. You shake up a system, you drive it harder, and it can change in surprising ways, amplifying some behaviors and damping out others. In a system as complicated as the entire Earth, the changes could be dramatic indeed.
I don't think anyone is actively in favor of making the climate worse than it already is, except maybe pentecostalists.
There seem to be an awful lot of climate change Pollyannas around though.
Did it occur to you that the tropics being colder than usual might not be a good thing either?
I piss off bigots.
Um, I'm sorry, can you please explain that in terms of numbers of Manhattans? I can't actually visualize anything more than about 10 square feet.
If you don't have the education and knowledge to have your own opinion, then why is your opinion so different from the scientists who do have the education and knowlege?
I smell bullshit here.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I find it worrying that the reading comprehension level is so low.
You understand of course that extra energy in the system causes larger fluctuations right? The global average will increase, but so will the variance. Your colds will be colder, and your hots will be hotter. This might also change weather patterns so rain might no longer fall where expected, or might fall where it's not expected. All that ice is a hedge against huge and quick climate change. When ice freezes it releases heat into its surroundings. When it melts it's absorbing some of that heat. If it runs away, the system will race to a new thermal equilibrium which could take any number of forms we can only guess at. What we do know about the new thermal equilibrium is it will probably be drastically different to what we're used to, what we evolved to exploit, and it won't be interested in whether or not we find it suitable. I'll be dead before any such eventuality comes to pass so it's literally not my problem. I've no illusions about the universe's impression of my snowflake character. But if we can agree that it'd be a good idea for humans to avoid a massive selection event, then now is the time to start addressing some of that. While it's still a choice.
He didn't say he doesn't believe in global warming. He said he is not educated enough to have a valid opinion. Bit of a difference there.
What if the earth was going to enter a cold period, or an ice age, and all our man-made global warming is actually stopping that? How long has man-made global warming been going on? In the last ~100 years since the industrial revolution, or the last ~8000 years when farming spread throughout the world?
What happens when we stop warming it, and it cools off too much.
Maybe we are warming it up much, maybe note. IANAP
that you are a neo-con living in texas.
I'm not sure it's safe there.
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Northwest_Passage
File this under "normal response." The quacks say warmer, and nobody sees it. That might be because we're talking about a 100 year average of +5 degrees. There's no way anyone would ever feel that minute of a change. Except glaciers, tundra lines, permafrost, and ocean temp. Mind you, I'm not saying you should believe, just that belief or even perception isn't required.
In early June, Slashdot told me all the ice would be melted by now.
There must still be ice up there. Is anyone getting tired of these stupid alarmist stories?
Ice melts in the summer and freezes in the winter. Get over it.
Could you possibly explain how the weather in Queensland is more of a single point of "evidence" than an ice shelf breaking off?
Both are arbitrary anecdotes, which I believe was the parent's original point.
Yeah, I didn't say I don't believe it, I just meant that they never seem to mention regions that have gotten colder when they're trying to 'educate' the masses.
Hello? Have you *seen* the movie "The Day After Tomorrow"?! Global warming will make everything deathly cold.
didn't really mean to pick on you in perticular, was just an observation :)
been mighty nice weather in Norway the last year, so this global warming thingy might actually benefit me. Unlike most of the world, that is.
Still, I'd like to no fuck too much with this planet anyways.
The climate change proponents will probably try to make a bigger deal out of this than it really is. I take the stance that I'm not educated enough on Earth's climate to have a valid opinion on climate change, but I do find it strange that they never mention the tropics have been colder than usual these past few years. I live in Mackay, Queensland, and this year's winter was probably the coldest I've seen here (though I have only been here eight years).
You aren't educated enough. The climate models call for more extreme climate shifts both colder and warmer with the over all average being warmer. Also the tropics change the least and the Arctic regions change the most. The models have been around for years and so far the biggest errors have been underestimating the rate of change. There will be years when the changes will reverse simply due to yearly variations it's the general trend that has changed. Saying you had a colder winter so global warming is wrong is like saying it's warmer in August so winter cooling is a myth. Weather patterns are measured decades, hundreds of years and thousands of years not months and years. Yearly changes are meaningless when talking about long range trends.
"How long before the fabled Northwest Passage is a reality?"
And when can we start drilling for oil up there?
Global warming is most evident in corals, both bleaching, RTNing and STNing. What I mean by this is, that these events do happen normally, but in the past recovery was much more likely because of a higher PH, less pollution, less endemic predators(crown of thorns starfish) and lower global water temps (many sps corals do not grow well in higher then normal temps ie: above 80 to 85 degrees)
Ice shelves to me are not determinant of a global temperature change, but rather with our oceans, increased atmospheric CO2 equates to a lessening ability of the worlds ocean to maintain a proper PH of 8.3 so this large CO2 sink, creates a more acidic environment in our oceans.
In the end world all funked.
"goodbye and thanks for all the fish"HGTTG
This in conjunction with no sun spots on the sun for how many days in a row..Earth and Sun are conspiring against us man...All because we keep talking about leaving this solar system
...some idiot on Slashdot points to the weather in fucking Queensland.
hey, what's wrong with Queensland? The weather is great here. :)
A huge chunk of ice just broke off! Gaahh!! Run for you lives! Run! Fly, you fools!!! *drops himself off ledge*
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Ah, no point worrying then. :-)
*Turns up the dial on coal plant*
Send your spendthrift head of state this
Yea, like "evidence" is something the global warming consensus is going to bother with. They have a CONSENSUS goddammit! You better watch what you say, or they just might burn you at the stake. With ethanol, of course. :-)
Send your spendthrift head of state this
I read about it here.
The ice is melting!
Get a fucking grip!
Sig this!
What's even more amazing is he starts his post pointing out that he does not know what he is talking about...yet is insightful in some way.
Perhaps about the fact that his insight is not?
Right after the next ice age, which should be starting in a few years. It doesn't have to get much cooler for an ice age, just a lot wetter. A few degrees lower than we are now would do it.
The warmest periods on earth supported gigantic creatures and even larger plantlife.
Why is this a bad thing? I love the cold and I really can't see a negative to seeing india and florida flood in exchange for bumper crops across the globe, or giant forests, or what have you.
Dinosaurs would be cool too.
So what? We know for a fact when the dinosaurs roamed the earth several degrees warmer than it is now. We also know the average CO2 level was quiet a bit higher.
We know that the earth goes through periodic ice ages, does it not make sense that it also goes periodic warm cycles? or is such a fact beyond the ability of reason? Ice shelves routinely break off. We know this is true. how because they aren't millions of years old but only thousands.
If they melt and reform over the course of 100 thousand years and the human race is what 40,000 years old who are we to judge what is the acceptable rate for melting ice caps?
We Also know for a fact that ice ages tend to happen in a hurry. The initial ice forms quickly, grows slowly, and then melts. would it not make sense for the warm cycles to follow a similar pattern?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Actually, Slashdot *REPORTED* that the *NORTH POLE* *MAY* be ice free by September. Not that the entire area north of the Arctic Circle would be tropical. But sensationalist hyperbole is fairly common around here I suppose.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
But can it run Crysis?
From http://thetyee.ca/Views/2006/01/30/DefendNorthwestPassage/:
If the US resumes that path, and there's no evidence they will right now, it'll lead to a fundamental change is the perceived "special relationship" between Canada and the US. Americans would be surprised at the change in attitude that would result.
However, I believe things are quite a bit different now compared to 1969. We have Russia making macho territorial claims all over the place and Canada (plus Denmark) are in the best position to legally defeat those claims, not the US.
Also, there might be some recognition in Washington that treating the NWP as the high seas could easily result in an environmental mess of biblical proportions because, for example, dumped oily bilge water in the cold Arctic water doesn't disperse like it does in warmer climates. A large oil spill up there would be an unmitigated disaster.
Finally one would assume the US would like to know, via Canadian tracking of ships in it's territorial waters, who's going where. Canada would have some rights to actually board and inspect ships which is much superior to what the US could find out if the passage was international waters in which case they would be limited to satellite, radar, or airborne tracking.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
figured I'd just sum up the Left's position on this.
Hah! We are now well overdue for solar cycle 24 and haven't had a sunspot for a month. Our theory is simple. If there are no sunspots, the planet cools, otherwise, it gets warmer. Fancy that, the planet has actually cooled somewhat this year, despite the increases in CO2.
This is my sig.
I'm moving to my global warming shelter now. Good luck to all you doomed mankind.
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
Has anyone considered the potential increase in the price of mixed drinks at your local watering hole if this shortage of ice continues?
Changing the world... one research project at a time.
Yeah, I didn't say I don't believe it, I just meant that they never seem to mention regions that have gotten colder when they're trying to 'educate' the masses.
Heck, dude, you're so far out of touch that you think Australia is in the tropics so "educate" isn't a word that you should even be using. That's especially true considering that it's only the people who aren't at all educated on the matter that don't know that some regions are very likely to get colder.
You can be uninformed and insightful. Einstein spouted random shit about how the universe worked, off the top of his head, from strict logical conclusions and theorizations mostly.
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This is exactly my argument for my anti-Godzilla policy proposals. Better safe than sorry!
-Peter
Because they need to eat and pay rent, scientists will follow the corporate line and rave about the emperor's new clothes just like the ignorant.
As a species we seem to love having these waves of hype up problems: SARS, Bird Flu, etc. Global Warming has been the biggest of these because everyone can relate to it.
Politicians love Global Warming because it stops people from thinking about other political issues. Many scientists love it because they finally get some of the spotlight and almost all scientific disciplines can be somehow linked to global warming. Just work GLobal Warming into your research title and it becomes trendy and "important".
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Reminds me of an advert for breakfast cereal in the UK:
May keep your heart healthy as part of a balanced diet.
Every time I hear that, the words may, keep, healthy, and as part of stand out. If you are unspecific enough, of course things'll come true.
I predict that someone, somewhere, within the next 200 years will die of choking on a mouse. Remember, you heard it hear first.
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I've been wondering how much of the ice breaking up is caused by drought and a lack of snowfall. If it is the case that these ice break-ups are actually being caused by a lack of snowfall *replenishing the ice* that has been melting. It might be the case that this ice is melting at an accelerated rate, but because the ice is being replenished at a diminished rate the actual break-up of ice is happening faster.
Global dimming is known to reduce evaporation and reduce rainfall, so surely it must reduce snowfall as well(?). I'm saying this because there maybe more that we can do to control immediate particulate emissions that cause global dimming than carbon emissions.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Actually, Slashdot *REPORTED* that the *NORTH POLE* *MAY* be ice free by September. Not that the entire area north of the Arctic Circle would be tropical. But sensationalist hyperbole is fairly common around here I suppose.
You've got a post that's as close to objectively superior to GP's as possible, and you get no mods, he gets +3 Interesting. I'm gonna go meta-moderate to try to prevent this from happening in the future.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Major climate changes in the past have tended to involve significant extinctions, as species caught in the wrong places couldn't adapt to the new conditions. Imagine that same effect on our food crops. Yes, other species adapt and move in to take their places, but the local effects can be severe in the meantime, and the faster it happens, the worse it will be. There may be bumper crops at higher latitudes, but first there will be increased desertification in the tropics.
There's also no guarantee that the warming would stop at any previously attained level; take a look at Venus for why this would be bad.
Open Water Circling North Pole? Not Quite
And one of the groups focusing most closely on possible Arctic shipping lanes, the National Ice Center operated by the Navy and Commerce Department, says flatly that the satellites are misreading conditions in many spots and that there is too much ice in a critical spot along the Russian coast (highlighted in the smaller image above) to allow anything but ice-hardened ships to get through. In an e-mail message Wednesday, Sean R. Helfrich, a scientist at the ice center, said that ponds of meltwater pooling on sea ice could fool certain satellite-borne instruments into interpreting ice as open water, âoesuggesting areas that have substantial ice cover as being sea-ice free.â The highlighted area is probably still impassible ice, including large amounts of thick old floes, he said. I sent the note to an array of sea-ice experts, and many, including Mark Serreze at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, concurred.
It's no Larsen B, the Antarctic shelf that broke up earlier this decade:
Plus Larsen B had a song written about it by British Sea Power so it's got more indie cred with the kids.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
The warmest periods on earth supported gigantic creatures and even larger plantlife.
Why is this a bad thing? I love the cold and I really can't see a negative to seeing india and florida flood in exchange for bumper crops across the globe, or giant forests, or what have you.
Dinosaurs would be cool too.
Uh, cus I'm neither gigantic creature or plant? I'm just a homo sapien whose society and thus basic necessities rely on a huge network of interconnecting aspects that can get severely screwed by global climate change, like when fuel supplies get stopped by a hurricane hitting the gulf coast only bigger. I don't fancy starving to death because drought in the midwest has stopped the growth of crops and there's an extra couple hundred million people sharing my space and my food because coastal areas are flooded.
Look, the planet earth, and life itself, are going to survive. We could unleash any catastrophe, like if WWIII had occurred at the height of nuclear stockpiling, and life would go on. Humans might not. Especially not humans like me.
So yeah, I'm not ready to give the dinosaurs another chance at supremacy quite yet. :P
The enemies of Democracy are
That article is talking about the North Pole, i.e. the spot right above zero degrees north latitude. There are ways to see open water at the pole while still having other places in the arctic covered by ice (due to ocean currents and varying thicknesses and such). It's still astonishing, but not on the order of "all melted".
The effects of global warming are predicted to be most noticeable in the Arctic. This is because any warming will melt ice and snow. The reduced ice and snow cover reflects less sunlight back into space, meaning that more heat is trapped to melt yet more snow and ice, and so on. One of the first major predicted effects of global warming, besides the global mean temperature increasing, is that the Arctic ice will melt. Of course, these are exactly what we observe.
That the tropics are colder in these past few years is normal climate variation. You wouldn't notice the influence of global warming over a few years, as it would be a change of less than 0.1 degrees Celsius.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
That's like saying I should totally believe in some religion or other just because 'everyone' else around me does. (Or a billion other analogies, I couldn't think of one based on cars)
What do you do when so many of these 'scientists' have vastly differing opinions on the same subject, but no hard evidence to show one way or the other which is the more accurate truth.
The climate is definitely changing. Millions of us know this from all around the globe without any need for a scientist to tell us it is happening. Clouds and rain in what is normally the dry season, snow in summer, etc.
Seems to me much of the bullshit is coming from the emotionally funded parts of the scientific community.
Maybe cataloguing and tagging all the anecdotal evidence from people like the parent poster might just turn out to be an interesting statistical data point to add to our total understanding of things.
Change is not always easy, even if the end result is better for humanity, look at the Columbian exchange, where select groups of people were nearly extinct while others thrived, or in industries where one group is turned out by machines, yet both have net positive effects on the whole. I'm not saying global warming will be good for humanity, I'm just saying looking at individual losses isn't a good way to judge something.
Yes, ice melts in the summer and freezes in the winter. But due to global warming, the amount of ice in the Arctic has been decreasing dramatically over the past few decades. In several years, the Arctic could be ice-free each September.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Or to at least err on the side of the vast majority of scientists who specialize in that subject
From the part you highlighted:
"These changes are irreversible under the present climate and indicate that the environmental conditions that have kept these ice shelves in balance for thousands of years are no longer present," said Muller.
The assumption, of course, is that today's "environmental conditions" are constant -- ie, global climate change will continue in the same rate and direction.
It's somewhat akin to me saying "If the weather stays like it is now (August) then we will not have any snowfall"
Of course, if the assumption that manmade global climate change in the heating direction is inexorable, then we're boned :)
How it all plays out remains to be seen but it's likely to have dire consequences for some regions and relatively little affect on others.
That's the status quo.
when so-called "sceptics"
I'm going to consider "sceptics" to be a snigglet of "sceptors" and "septic" systems, such that a "sceptic" would be a king upon his thrown.
Not that I'm sexist, there are female "sceptics" as well.
And you can be as skeptic as you want about that.
I too have been worried about Godzilla of late. Then I realized, that there is a rock in my backyard and that the whole time the rock has been there, Godzilla never attacked my home! Its amazing, but its true. I am willing to sell you this rock and take the risk of a Godzilla attack because I feel its only fair that others may benefit. I must charge for it, so that I may use the funds to research other anti-Godzilla measures and fund my anti-bear attack research. Let me know if you are interested.
When all else fails, try.
Here's the truth:
We don't know.
Simple
Is human pollution a factor in the environmental changes we are facing?
I would say YES.
Is human pollution causing weather changes and global warming?
Who knows?
We are still very very new at this, the understanding of how the weather works, is etchy at best.
The pollution we create does damage the environment, no doubt.
And it never ceases to amaze me to think of all that oil we have dug, which was safe and non-pollutant, and now, burned and part of our atmosphere.
What is in place of that oil you ask? Uh... water and/or other fluid, to help push the oil up.
What type of consequences will come from that in the long run? That water is contaminated, that's for sure.
The oceans are plagued with "patches of garbage areas". That's pretty sick, and while it may seem far from us, the truth is, we get our fishes and seafood from there. Our waste is causing the oxygen levels to deplete, toxicity is spreading and plankton levels are dropping, which is of course, not a good thing, as it is the foundation of ocean food. And let's not even talk about the mercury levels from various industries, the estrogen levels from garbage and home, and all the other crap we keep feeding our *for the most part* untreated sewage water.
Obviously, our atmosphere was not designed to handle all these pollutants, I should say our biosphere is not equipped to handle this, thus the problems currently faced by wildlife and wildlife habitats, most of them endangered in some ways or another. In fact, some lakes in the US have estrogen levels so high, male fishes are mutating into female fishes!
So we can agree that we, the human race is undoubtably the architect for the demise of the environment around us, that is without a doubt true.
But is pollution the major factor in the weather changes, global warming and the poles to be melting?.
We don't know.
That's what I'm deducing from the myriads of conflicting reports and research out there.
And why we don't know? Because we can't compare our findings, we don't have a real test bed to work with/from and that is pretty much it.
It is theorized that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, so there could be cycles of weather pattern which may be involved which we have no real clue about. Let's face it, on a cosmic scale, we've not been around for very long, like.. a blip in time really in comparison to our planet's age.
So what to do?
Well, since we know the state of our environment is a direct result of how we have been neglecting it, we can always assume that some of the changes in the weather MAY be linked, but the remedy for fixing the weather, mmm, that's not something I believe we have the answers to yet.
But let's examine what we DO know.
Since we know all of that, then it's up to us to fix it.
Clean up our act!
We need to learn more about the weather, etc.., but we also need to take some very pro-active steps towards changing and adapting the way we use the environment for our needs.
Eco friendly cities, alternative energy use, recyclable water, better waste management, etc...
Anything that can be construed as "clean living" so to speak.
And, let's not forget this too: the weather knows NO jurisdiction, no barriers, no boundaries, so, it's not enough for any single country to do what it can, all countries have to work at it. Pollutants in the atmosphere from Europe, for example can float all the way to the US in a matter of weeks.
The trick here is that in end, money shouldn't be a factor. The "cost" of being eco-friendly, etc.. shouldn't be an impediment, because, without our Earth to sustain else, everything else is moot point.
And that's the truth here we must remember, in the end, all the money in the world can't fix our environment, but, we, as the human race, can work together and fix it.
I seem to remember a year ago or so there was a chunk of ice that broke off the ANTArctic ice shelf that was also the size of Manhatten Island. This can't be a coincidence, especialy as Manhatten Island is a target for terrorists. Maybe the idea is to have dummy copies of Manhatten made of ice floating around so that the terrorists are confused, and fly theor planes into the wrong one.
Heh. Good point. But what I think we should do is ban nuclear power plants because they're scary, and hydroelectric plants because of the herring, and wind turbines because of their dramatic effect on property values in favor of deep-ocean wind (that might take a while to come online) and.. uh.. hydrogen <waves hand> economy.
But since those things will take a while to build, in the mean time, we'd better build a few coal plants...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The problem is it's not getting warmer across the globe.
Climate scientists are indeed aware of this, and the phrase "global warming" doesn't mean strict increase at each point on the globe, but that the mean temperature across measured points is rising.
They're also aware of the argument that some large subset of points might be affected by urban heat islands, and apparently, even when you factor this out, it appears the mean temperature is still rising.
Check into it. If you put as much effort as you have into imagining a world where the vast majority of climatologists are essentially falsifying research for personal gain, you might find out that they have considered and provided substantial refutations of nearly every single popular climate change denial talking point.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
..r tha cheerz ov millyinz ov spellin trollz
I recall this http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080625140649.htm being reported. Huge under the ice volcanoes might have some impact wouldn't you think?
Cheers
je
I love the cold and I really can't see a negative to seeing india and florida flood in exchange for bumper crops across the globe, or giant forests, or what have you.
Please tell us where are you, all my people of Bangladesh will love to visit you soon.
I have NO idea what the heck is going on with the planet anymore.
There's too much conflicting information. The waters have been successfully muddied to death. I am ready to curl up into a comatose ball and watch re-runs of mindless TV shows and will allow you to inject me with whatever 'vaccine' you want, and my phone calls will be mumbles which I no longer care if you tap. You WIN!
Actually, I'm just kidding. -Because while the messages and science are claiming this and that, Global Warming, Global Cooling, Sunspot Minimums, Oceanic Saline Maximums, Gulf Stream, Greenhouse Gas and on and on. . . It all adds up to one thing and one thing only. . .
Ice Age.
And that, my friends, is the only thing which counts in the end, and it's what The Powers That Be are having to plan for. Having everybody on the planet paralyzed with confusion just helps keep them. . , well, paralyzed so that the various plans can move forth without complication.
-FL
Why is it that any evidence against global warming is regional and thus dismissed and any miniscule shred of evidence that might support global warming is embraced wholeheartedly?
I'm left with the impression that the evidence didn't quite support the notion of sustained global warming. So the movement has been rebranded as climate change which is so far reaching that basically anything qualifies as climate change.
That's like saying that Alan Turing just threw some random parts together and suddenly cracked the Enigma.
In both cases it so downplays the enormous amount of education, study, and preparation undertaken by each of them that the end result simply has no resemblance to reality.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Idling for a bit. ;)
Moving on...
Global warming does not imply that all areas will be warmer, just that the world, on average, will be.
In fact, one of the reasons people are so concerned about it is because such warming could (and almost certainly would) alter current weather patterns, causing some areas to become much warmer, or colder, or much dryer or inundated by rain.
So pretty much *ANY* weather can prove global warming. Genius!
VOLCANIC SUNSETS:
The volcanic sunsets lately have produce a lot of sulfur dioxide. Yet, a few more volcano's erupting may change things. I feel we are in for a bit of a colder winter.
Heck, dude, you're so far out of touch that you think Australia is in the tropics so "educate" isn't a word that you should even be using. That's especially true considering that it's only the people who aren't at all educated on the matter that don't know that some regions are very likely to get colder.
Perhaps you need a little bit of education yourself before you go making statements like that:
Mackay, Queensland: 21 8' 28" S
Tropic of Capricorn: 23 26' 22" S
It's true that most of the population does live south of the tropics, but to say that Australia isn't in the tropics is just plain dumb.
You understand of course that extra energy in the system causes larger fluctuations right? The global average will increase, but so will the variance. Your colds will be colder, and your hots will be hotter.
That's not a prediction of the IPCC, who gather together and summarise the peer reviewed literature. Climate is variable because there are a lot of things that effect it, from solar influences, to the La Nina/El Nino cycles. Regional variation is greater than global variation. Due to that variation we can still expect extremes to occur: some years are just very cold (for a number of factors not related to anthropogenic warming), and some are hot, and that will continue, regardless of warming. However, as noted in IPCC assessment reports (TAR WGI 9.3.6):
In other words, individual cold days or years are not evidence against global warming, since they may well be a result of natural variation caused by other factors (and would have simply been even colder without global warming). To count as notable evidence against global warming you would need a significant sustained cold spell (5 to 10 years at this point). However, extreme cold days or years are not predicted effects of global warming. They may well happen, but there isn't any significant evidence that they are caused by global warming.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Given the wild exaggeration for dramatic effect, that is, indeed, one plausible scenario. Of course, you generally get at lot of melting first, enough to raise the sea levels markedly, while the oceans continue to get warmer...but then one year something happens (possibly a large volcano in the early spring), and the snow doesn't melt that year, and now there's LOTS of water in the atmosphere to precipitate out...and it does. Some places as snow. And the oceans are still warm, but the air is now cold, so the cloud cover gets severe, which means that solar warming is diminished a lot, so it never really warms up that summer, and that winter it snows a lot more, and the next year it's still cloudy all summer...
Well, it's possible. It requires very warm oceans and a cool atmosphere, but if the oceans are very warm, a large volcano can supply the missing part.
OTOH, I'm sure you aren't mistaking a movie for how it would actually happen. It would probably take decades for the glaciers to cover even just Canada...but do notice that I said decades, not centuries. Last time the glaciers got as far south as central California (half way through the US) before they stopped advancing. We don't know why they started, or why they stopped, but that's one reasonable scenario.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I find it more worrying that people use their backyard thermometer a proof that global warming is or isn't happening. That's meteorology, not climatology.
Climatological has been showing a pronounced warming trend. Just because it is cold in your backyard doesn't mean the rest of the planet is not warming up. On top of that, a warming planet doesn't mean it's going to warm up everywhere (it's not).
If you have a choice between believing the world scientists or your own opinion in regards to climate change, I would suggest listening to the scientists. They know ALOT more about it than you do.
~X~
~X~
It's called "weather." The reason it's an issue now is because we have a lot of people who have a lot of money, hate a lot of corporations, and have the vague desire to "do good," and we have a lot of 24-hour news networks trying to cope with the fact that the average day contains, at best, half an hour of actual news.
In twenty years, we'll all look back on this and laugh, like we do now when we read old articles about how Africanized killer bees are going to kill everybody in the US.
Comment of the year
- Land mass of Rhode Island is 1045 sq. mi.
- Manhattan is 34 sq. mi.
So, this piece of ice is 3/100ths of a Rhode Island.
Now, I'm not as worried.
-fragbait
Santa was probably getting tired of the cold weather anyway.
Climate change is what they call it I believe, it is just global weather. It changes constantly, and there is a 90% chance of weather tomorrow, with partly cloudy skies.
If we want to replace the ice, we should get another asteroid to hit the earth so we can have our ice again. /. about how cold it is.
I can then post in
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
In twenty years, we'll all look back on this and laugh, like we do now when we read old articles about how Africanized killer bees are going to kill everybody in the US.
There's nothing wrong with projecting possible outcomes given known quantities. It's one of our strengths as a species, but untoward fear is certainly unnecessary. Ice ages happen like clock-work, so yeah, 'weather' does cover it, I suppose.
It's a shame those Africanized killer bees weren't up to the job of resisting the various causes of colony collapse disorder which is currently killing farms. I guess that IS sort of funny, albeit in an ironic kind of way.
-FL
The "ice cover in the arctic is growing" claim is bogus, and they know it (or should). It keeps coming up and people point out that even the authors of the claim now say it's bogus (see linked thread) but the same claim keeps coming back, generally worded the same way ("the real inconvenient truth is that the ice cap is growing" or some such).
I used to think it was just cluelessness, but I'm starting to suspect trolls.
--MarkusQ
Why is this being moderate as Troll? I wish I knew who can be so inconsiderate.
Could you possibly explain how the weather in Queensland is more of a single point of "evidence" than an ice shelf breaking off?
Both are arbitrary anecdotes, which I believe was the parent's original point.
The ice shelf breaking off is more than just a "single point of data" because the forces that caused it have been acting consistently for several years. It takes many years of warming to weaken and melt an ice shelf. The decay of this ice shelf indicates a trend being exhibited at a single point over several years. The trend exhibited at that point is also indicative of a broader trend of arctic warming.
The Queensland temperature for one particular season is not indicative of a trend. It is just the weather for one place during a single season.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I'm sure it's just leaving for its Summer holiday and it will be back in a couple of weeks. God knows it couldn't be a result of global warming, because according to that noted authority, the Governor of Alaska and Republican VP pick Sarah Palin, there's no such thing. And for those of you who want to say that Al Gore is right - well, who looks better in a skirt, huh? And you just hate women, anyway.
And now that I've settled that debate, I'm off to show that evolution is a fraud! Toodles...
That is all.
When international summit after international summit after international summit all recognize global warming and the human influence how can you still deny it? When from every article in a referred scientific journal about climate change from 1993 to 2003, there isn't even ONE that disagrees with the consensus that that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities, how is it not obvious? When even international panels like the InterAcademy Council and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change can agree on the human impact, what "controversy" is there?
It is so painfully obvious that we do make a difference, that CO2 concentration is much higher than ever seen before, as shown by the Keeling Curve. And I can only hope most people understand that high CO2 levels lead to high temperatures and I don't have to spell that out.
It's not a debate. There is no "maybe." There's no confusion. The entire world's academic and scientific community have come to a consensus on it, but apparently some people here just don't get it.
Its at the point where both U.S. presidential hopefuls have made it both policy and goals to cut down on emissions, its not even politically dividing.
Global warming is real, it does exist, we do contribute, and if you think otherwise you're honestly in denial.
meet ya there, aries
I find it worrying when people jump on a bandwagon with the attitude that "we can err on the side of caution, and that will be ok because maybe it stops doomsday".
Unfortunately, doomsday never materializes, but in the meantime, people have spent much of their time and resources, to their detriment as a whole, to avert a disaster which is not occurring.
Now, I think reasonable people would agree that we should reduce pollution as far as reasonably possible. That's improvement. But to tell everyone that the sky is falling unless you only have 1 child (thus increasing the chances that your line will disappear), or unless you switch to electric cars (which have toxic batteries installed), or unless you vote for some guy who will drastically increase CAFE standards, is irresponsible. Unfortunately, these sorts of people don't care what damage they cause. Look at Paul Ehrlich, still truckin' despite his many flawed and dangerous predictions:
"In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish." Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day 1970
"Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make, ... The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." Paul Ehrlich in an interview with Peter Collier in the April 1970 of the magazine Mademoiselle.
"Actually, the problem in the world is that there is much too many rich people..." - Quoted by the Associated Press, April 6, 1990
The last is telling. The man is not an environmentalist. He is a communist, who tried to use fear and hysteria to convince people that they needed to suffer in order to live.
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
"err on the side of caution"
The problem with that policy is deciding how to err on the side of caution. You appear to believe that it means reducing emissions "just in case", while many of us believe it means not crippling the US's economic and military power. You say tomato, I say foodstuff ...
Back in 1981 John McPhee published his "Annals of the Former World", a magnificently readable work on geology. It won a Pulitzer partly because it's so readable.
Page 260 is pretty interesting. He's quoting Anita Harris of the U.S. Geological Survey and presenting the history of people understanding glaciers at all (as moving things), which only happened around the late 1800's. It's worth a look to get some genuine historical perspective.
McPhee quotes her:
"Throughout most of time, the Earth has been without ice caps. 20,000 years ago, when there was much more ice than there is now, the sea was 300 feet lower. The coast was more than a hundred miles east of New York. You could have walked to the edge of the Continental Shelf. Baltimore Canyon, Hudson Canyon were exposed to the open air."
Looking at Wikipedia ("glaciers"), it seems these cycles last about 100,000 years, and there seems to be direct fossil evidence of at least 20 of these climactic cycles.
This has certainly changed my perspective about what is "normal" for the Earth. Over and over, the lesson I keep running into is: what is here, is here because it is being sustained by a powerful active system. Otherwise it would have been gone a long time ago, geological time.
This expresses no opinion on climate change etc. This is strictly perspective.
Thanks,
Dave Small
Sort of.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Glancing over the comments one can see yet another re-run of the same old arguments about why global warming isn't happening and why it isn't our fault anyway; and I wonder - does it matter what we think, in the long run?
Scientists are without a doubt those best suited to evaluate what is going on, and what they have to say makes more sense to me than all these denials. That is the whole point of science: the results stand up to close scrutiny, whether we like them or not. It is silly to imagine a conspiracy amongst climate scientists; the only conspiracy is the conspiracy to only accept research based on the scientific method.
The sad fact is that the climate is changing, that we are causing it and if we want to do anything to avoid a major cataclysmic breakdown, we have to swiftly take radical action. The habitual gluttony that we embellish with names like "consumerism" or "capitalism" is coming to and end, one way or another; the only question is whether we want to exert some influence over how it is going to happpen. If we do nothing or too little, too late - then we will have resource wars, starvation, epidemics and a general breakdown of society, even in Europe and America.
You may call this sensationalism, but that is the thing about looking at the fact objectively: you don't have to like me or my opinions - just check the data, the numbers are all there for you. And then form your own conclusion - but lay aside all the dreams about "we will find a way to continue our gluttony" because we haven't done so yet; which is why there is so much resistance against acknowledging the facts about climate change. Our whole way of life depends on the assumption that we are able to produce cheap energy and pollute without consequences for ever; that there will always be economic growth. We have always known this assumption to be false, and now we see it looming over us. Are we going to panic and hide under our blankets until the bogeyman goes away?
I thought that was the point... no video of Bush talking about global warming was played when I clicked on the link and it just made sense. I had a laugh.
An actual video of that sack-of-rocks just sounds to scary so I'll pass for now.
If you have a choice between believing the world scientists or your own opinion in regards to climate change, I would suggest listening to the scientists. They know ALOT more about it than you do.
Do these "world scientists" depend upon government/NGO grants to pay their salary and are the ones that disagree (who should NOT be listened to, of course) all in the pocket of big oil?
"ALOT" is not a word, by the way.
Not in the US. Many Republican politicians deny, or belatedly acknowledge, Global Warming. Mike Huckabee, I think but I'm not sure, speaking at the convention intimated Obama wants people to make sure their tires are properly inflated.
Many scientists love it because they finally get some of the spotlight and almost all scientific disciplines can be somehow linked to global warming. Just work GLobal Warming into your research title and it becomes trendy and "important".
That can work both ways, one groups of scientists getting big study grants for saying how bad Global Warming is while another group can get big grants also for disproving Global Warming. I haven't seen many of the later though.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Does banning those plastic shopping bags in cities (the new environmentalist trend in hip cities) actually stop any pollution?
Even in the environmental community there's a debate on paper or plastic. I read of one study that showed plastic bags are better. I've even seen reusable bags made out of plastic. Myself I try not to use either one. When I go out I almost always take at least one of my backpacks and I keep a few cloth bags in them. One cloth bag I've had at least 5 years and I've used it at least 50 tymes. About the only tyme I'll use either one is for recycling, the recyclers here only take paper bags. Or I'll use plastic when I need to keep things dry, from leaking all over, and I keep a couple of those in my backpacks as well.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Do you know what a flywheel is and how huge the earth is? Do you (with the "could", "might", "can" verbiage), really think that such a massive, inertial force (influenced so greatly by Sol) will be changed by our puny, human efforts?
does this mean hydrogen cars and their water vapor exaust would actually make things worse ?
This is something I've wondered about using hydrogen as a fuel. I'd like to see some science studies on it.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The opening of the Northwest Passage is so last year. The big news this year is that the ice might break up all the way to the pole, a development scientists thought was still the better part of a century off.
We know CO2 soaks up heat and we know there's a lot of CO2 being released.
Well, we know that 2008 is the coldest year since 2000, despite the fact that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere now than there was in 2000. Shouldn't it be hotter, not cooler?
Unless, perhaps, global temperatures are caused by other variables?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Right now, it seems to be getting warmer, even though there are reports about the ice in the Arctic covering more area than it has in decades
Really? I haven't seen anything on this, can you share some links on it? In return I'll share links saying the Arctic is losing ice, Arctic ice melting and not coming back: scientist.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Whether temps go up or down, you global warming experts are right. Is there *any* kind of temperature data that you will accept as actually disproving your theories? 2008 is the coldest year since 2000. How many years would it have to go down before you'd call it significant? I sure don't hear this "but it's only short-term change" argument after particularly hot years.
And the climate models are bullshit, since they have not been empirically tested (CO2 emissions have only occurred in significant numbers in the last 50 or so). As you have said yourself, temp change can only really be measured over hundreds or thousands of years. That means your models must be empirically tested (as all theories must be) over hundreds or thousands of years. So get back to me in 4008 after your models have been properly vetted.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
We live in an age where EVERYBODY is an expert on EVERYTHING. All you have to do is watch a 20 minute news program once a night and *bam* your an expert on global warming, politics, macro-economic theory, criminology, Pathology & healthcare, the lot.
Don't bother leaving it to the expert who have spent years researching the field, they might not agree with you.
Hey, idiot, there's a world out there that doesn't adhere to American English spelling conventions. Just FYI.
I don't know if you're being, or trying to be, sarcastic but there's a debate going on in the environmental communities on whether carbon credits are good or bad. Some saying are that they can help reduce reliance on fossil fuels. Others say people are just out for a quick buck. Still others say carbon credits are just a "feel good" measure, people can buy credits but then won't adjust their lifestyle to have a smaller carbon footprint.
As I see it, carbon credits can be all of them.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If we were to increase the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere to 0.5%, there's no way green plants could handle it
Actually science has shown it works both ways. Some plants grow slower in a CO2 enriched environment whereas others grow faster. For instance Poison ivy grows faster and bigger with higher atmospheric levels of CO2.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
"I find it worrying that people say "I don't know enough, so i don't believe it" about climate changes...."
Would you worry more, or less, if someone said, "I don't know enough, so I believe it..."?
I find it incredible that, on Slashdot, a SCIENCE-based blog, people can say such things. There is a wealth of data out there which can be adduced to support either side of the argument. Science is ABOUT discussing the data and coming to a conclusion. Why is someone elevating ignorance to a position from which decisions can be made?
(Interestingly, this post has mis-stated the parents position. The parent said that he didn't have enough data to form a valid opinion, but thought one data item to be strange. - That's reasonable science. This post seems to say that if you don't know you should take the action I recommend, without working out whether the action will make things better or worse. That is religion - Pascal's Wager, to be precise...
Am I the only person who is actually kind of rooting for climate change? I think that humans generally are smart enough to overcome mostly anything. I think that the way global society is set up right now is not great. I find the world that we live in rather dull, wit no real threats other than those we pose to ourselves. We have no predators, nothing to strive against. We're far, far too comfortable.
I think that it would be rather interesting to see what happened to our global society, our technological master if faced with an extinction level event. I reckon that we'd survive as a species, although many would die. I would be really interested to see what our society turned into afterwards. I'd be interested to see what we came up with as an answer to that threat. Assuming, of course, that I was one of those who survived...
When a huge, 4500 year old ice shelf rapidly disappears (this latest break isn't exceptional, it's part of a trend), you have climate change (no, not an indicator of climate change; this is, in itself, climate change). When someone in Queensland complains about the weather, you have a whiny Australian. The former is the result of a change of average temperature over a period of many years, the latter is the result of some guy having to wear a jacket in the winter.
"We also know that water vapor soaks up 25 times as much heat as CO2, and that there's a lot more of it, especially over the oceans. Of course, the Global Warming Industry doesn't mention this, because it would make people wonder how much effect CO2 really has, except over cold deserts."
You have been misinformed by the opposing "industry", scientists pretty much ignore water vapour for a very good reason. The atmosphere is saturated with water vapour. That means that the only way to change the amount of water vapour in the air is to change either the temprature or pressure of the atmosphere. In other words water is a feedback in a changing climate.
Now what the anti-GW "industry" never mentions is a little thing called the dew point that explains why dew drops form all over the world every night, even in deserts. In a (globally) stable climate you can pump as much H2O as you like into the atmosphere and all that will happen is that it will fall out as rain/dew over the next few days.
Here is a short list of some other old and tiresome misinformation that is midlessly regurgitated every time GW is mentioned...
Climate change on Mars/Jupiter
Sunspots.
Cosmic rays.
Volcanos emit more CO2 than mankind.
No warming since 1998.
Global cooling was all the rage in the 70's.
There are many more but the point here is that people simply spout off what they read in the opinion pages without having a fucking clue as to what they are talking about and a complete lack of desire to find out. They assume that the thousands of scientists that make up EVERY national science body on the planet are lobotmised fools who haven't got a clue about what they have spent a good portion of their lives studying.
A couple of minutes googling would have busted the ridiculous myth that you are propogating. If you or anyone else reading wants to be treated as a skeptic and not a 'denier', then act like a skeptic. Go and question your own assumption and try and prove yourself wrong. When you fail to do so then you may just be onto something worthwhile and ORIGINAL. Picking out pre-spun factoids that happen to fit your worlview is nothing less than the triumph of politics over science.
Disclaimer: I picked on you because I was looking for the H2O meme and you were the first one I saw. If you are interested in some genuine science I can give you some links but I suspect your mind is made up and firmly closed.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
You appear to believe that it means reducing emissions "just in case", while many of us believe it means not crippling the US's economic and military power.
Bush is doing quite well crippling the US's economic and military power. As for reducing emissions meaning crippling economic power what many don't or won't see is that it could actually increase the US's economic power. Businesses developing alternative energy sources would mushroom creating well paying jobs then the technology can be exported. Even Texas Oil Billionaire T. Boone Pickens has proposed a plan. Saying "Don't get the idea that I've turned green. My business is making money, and I think this is going to make a lot of money" he's planned on investing $10 billion on wind power. Environmental Engineering is a growing field as well. How many jobs has NanoSolar created? Whether it being solar, wind, or another area renewable energy jobs are being created today, even in installation.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
> Global warming does not imply that all areas will be warmer, just that the world, on average, will be.
Which, of course, is why a lot of people now refer to "Climate Change", not "Global warming".
> I find it worrying that people say "I don't know enough, so i don't believe it" about climate changes.
Same here. And I think in the end it comes down to who you *trust*: peer reviewed scientists or politicians and ad agencies etc. Of course you bring what knowledge you do have to help you decide but in the end everyone makes a decision: even not making a decision is a decision (ie to do nothing).
(IMHO a lot of people make decisions and then try to justify them instead of the other way around (eg I do not want to change my lifestyle therefore I do not believe in Climate Change.).)
Clouds WILL absorb and reflect and refract incoming energy from the sun. They will also absorb, reflect and refract LW radiation.
Water vapour will mostly only block LW.
But clouds DO block.
The modelling of water vapour is HUGELY modelled. There are radiative specialists trying to work out what the feck is going on. What ISN'T modelled is the formation of CLOUDS.
But since clouds are not water vapour (about the only thing you got right) and they can either cause cooling or warming based on height, their effect is to randomise the measures rather than force a bias upon them.
So they are OK to ignore for climate purposes. No climate forcing: no need to model in a climate model.
But water vapour? Modelled to hell and back.
Epically wrong.
Planning on reducing dependence on Middle East oil? Then Canada is your very best friend.
Canada is already the US's largest oil exporter, with Mexico being number two. China is licking it's chops at the Oil Sands in Alberta. I don't know how far they are but there's talk about building an oil pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific coast of Canada to export the oil to China.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
When the climate temps go up, you point to where it's gone down and claim it's cooler. Or that "it's the sun" or "volcanoes". When the temps are steady you say "See, it's about to go back down" and when it doesn't go down, you go "it is the coldest decade this century!". When it goes down, you're right.
You can see the sea ice as it is right now at the above website (or link here).
That said, it was last year that my brother sent me an email showing this, and showing that the NW passage was open at that time.
So how long before the fabled NW passage is open? Last year. Not the ultimate in slashdot old news, but yes... old.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
How come that is know, but the actions in the IPCC are not?
Margaret Thatcher, as Prime Minister of the UK, warned about global warming in a speech way back in 1988. She is one of very few scientists who became world leaders.
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=107346
(I don't know if it was noticed by the media, or what happened -- if anything -- as a result. I was only 2 years old.)
Heck, dude, you're so far out of touch that you think Australia is in the tropics so "educate" isn't a word that you should even be using.
A large chunk of northern Austrailia is in the Tropics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropics
Check your facts before accusing people of being stupid.
Interesting that you get labelled troll when all you did was illustrate an unpopular point.
To counter this, I put forth that the doomsayers may spur innovation by motivating people to overcome this "disaster". This can lead to real advances even if that disaster was not coming.
Secondly, this weird association people make between our use of technology and global warming... From everything I have seen, there isn't any real strong evidence that we are causing it - or that anything should be done to prevent it.
Maybe the key is learning to live with it and adapting to change instead of fortifying ourselves against a cycle that the earth has gone through numerous times?
When all else fails, try.
I'm sure the Earth will keep spinning, and orbiting Sol. The question is whether humans will be living on it.
Do you know what a balance is? One with huge masses on either end can still be pushed over by a mouse (how long will it take to settle again? if there's lots of friction at the pivot, it might not settle in the same place.).
> http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=107346
Wow: I can't believe she made a speech like this. I was 24 and living in the UK at this time and her governments policies could not be further from what she spoke about. "The Government espouses the concept of sustainable economic development." struck me as being particularly bizarre: this was the era of Yuppies, greed is good and Loads-a-money.
Personally I find that evidence such as this and the world's disaperring glaciers compelling eveidence for the warming trend. Having said that, does any one still believe in the veracity of Mann's hockey stick, which seems to me to be proven to be complete rubbish. If so why?
OK, I get it: "Earth in the Balance". Subtle, but overdone.
If the life of the Earth was a 12 hour clock the human race has only been around since 19 seconds to midnight.
What makes us think we are so important? The Earth and it's ecosystems will survice in one form or another.
Yearly changes are meaningless when talking about long range trends.
Then I guess this single day occourance (even if it took a few years to accomplish) is meaningless? Seriously, you just proved my point.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
It has been sailed over 110 times since 105, when it was sailed by a dude in a wooden boat. Wooden boat != icebreaker.
Can WALK to church in Godless China.
I moved from BC to Ontario (Canada). Both have a store called "the Real Canadian Superstore." In BC, superstore gives you these nice and thick plastic bags that are really durable and useful. I tended to use them for all sorts of things, or re-use them, because they were so durable. Yes, a lot went out with the garbage, but as garbage bags (so in a sense it was less waste as I was only tossing the SS bag and not another garbage bag as well). Other uses found them storing tools/clothes/etc.
Here in Ontario, Superstores will bag your groceries with a crapload of thin, cruddy bags that easily break. I bought the re-usable bags not because I was really so much into the recycling part as that my bag-holder under the sink was getting full (normally at least I keep the bags until they can be used for bagging up other garbage, etc).
It seems to me that - in Canada at least - the East preaches a lot more about recycling, while in the West it was actually more a part of daily life. The city I'm in has a lot more public recycling containers to drop your pop bottle etc than my hometown back west, but they don't have a deposit-based system etc to entice people to return their bottles for a refund like the west does.
What this assumes, of course, is that finding a possible answer is the same as finding the correct answer.
Since there's evidence of multiple cycles of warming and cooling on the planet, another reason might be that cycling warming and cooling is a normal pattern for our planet.
I'm not against taking preventative action in the event that the current theory of global warming (greenhouse gases) is correct, but I think that some healthy skepticism is warranted.
"When international summit [royalsociety.org] after international summit [pik-potsdam.de] after international summit [nationalacademies.org] all recognize global warming and the human influence how can you still deny it? When from every article [sciencemag.org] in a referred scientific journal about climate change from 1993 to 2003, there isn't even ONE that disagrees with the consensus that that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities, how is it not obvious? When even international panels like the InterAcademy Council [interacademycouncil.net] and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [bbc.co.uk] can agree on the human impact, what "controversy" is there?"
Because the statement of a scientific consensus is, among other things, propaganda. And furthermore, a number of climatologists have been caught making specious claims for what appears to be publicity's sake. The findings of the IPCC have also been called into question, in peer-reviewed journals.
So, let's go through some of the list here...
First, the "hockey stick" graph was discredited a few years ago when two Canadian mathematicians tried to reproduce it, and found that the data used had been cherry picked - only the lowest data points were used for the Medieval Warm Period, and only the highest data points were used for the 1980s onwards. For more information, see http://www.climateaudit.org/?page_id=354
That, however, is nothing compared to how the "hockey stick" got into the 2007 IPCC report. That verged on fraud: http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2008/8/11/caspar-and-the-jesus-paper.html
The IPCC report itself was based on faulty mathematics. Christopher Monckton, a physicist, decided to examine the climate model used for the 2007 IPCC report, and found that the math was wrong, and that the impact of CO2 on climate had been overstated by anywhere from 500-2000%: http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/monckton.cfm
Looking away from the science for a moment, why is it that Al Gore got a Nobel peace prize for a documentary that either misled or got a large part of its science wrong ( http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html )? Why is it that the skeptics who point at the problems with climate science suffer from ad hominem attacks, while the skeptics themselves are just looking at the science? Shouldn't the argument be in regards to the data - and for that matter, isn't the ad hominem attack usually used by the person whose argument is weakest?
The climate is changing - it always has been. In fact, the last eight years have been very abnormal due to the fact that the overall surface temperature of the Earth hasn't actually changed during them (the only measurement station noting an increase in temperature is from NASA, which relies on ground based thermometers which have been overrun by urban centers, which raises the local temperature anyway - sorry, but I don't have the link for this data on hand and I'm running out of time, so you'll have to google for this information yourself). And while CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it is a very minor one. Climate-wise, we have been on an upswing for some time. But how much of that is our fault?
I don't know. But so long as the "science" that is being spouted on this is based on discredited graphs, cherry-picked data, and faulty mathematics, I don't think I'm going to find out any time soon. This "scientific consensus" is propaganda double-speak, and what's needed is honest science where theory is based on data, and not the other way around.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Mine!
+11! (previously)
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
"Noone can impart perfect universal truths to their Students."
"Ahem."
"Except math teachers."
There's still part of me that suspects that half the people here will change their handle and adopt new arguments when global temperature starts dropping. Stay tuned.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Yep. Just like cancer researchers, AIDS researchers, etc. who depend on government funding and, you would think, have a vested interest in making sure a cure for such diseases are never found as it would put them out of a job.
Of course, nobody seems to have a problem listening to them.
Come up with a real argument. Preferably on that is falsifiable and backed by enough research and data as to disprove the current scientific consensus.
ALOT was a typo.
~X~
~X~
Well, not me, but Roald Amundsen did it over a hundred years ago. And it's been navigated so many times since then that it's not exactly news anymore.
Last year, the European Space Agency said that the passage was "fully navigable" without any special equipment. So I guess that the invading horde from the US will be overhauling Canada any time now.
It's great to know that we can look forward to more crappy Hollywood remakes in 50 years.
It isn't the only ice shelf that's broken off in the past few years. I'm simplifying a lot, but this warmign trend isn't just localized to the arctic circle.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Yes, and Lewis Pugh is kayaking to the North Pole. http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_7590000/newsid_7590600/7590677.stm
So what? We know for a fact when the dinosaurs roamed the earth several degrees warmer than it is now. We also know the average CO2 level was quiet a bit higher.
If this is supposed to be one of those "climate change doesn't matter because it happened before in the past" arguments then how about this?
We know that most of the human race was wiped out at at least one point in the past but we seem to have recovered just fine. Since it wasn't a problem in the past then it shouldn't be a problem if we do a repeat now, right? Would you mind being the first one on the chopping block?
There are plenty of other things that happened in the past, on both historic and geologic time scales, that the human race in specific or life or general managed to survive but that i'm not particularly eager to have a repeat of during my lifetime.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Sarah Palin says: "There is no such thing as global warming so this could not have possibly happened!"
The claim that the arctic ice cap is growing simply isn't true. The "increase" you refer to is really a reduction in the rate at which it is shrinking. At the time the article was written, the arctic ice cover had been shrinking 10% or less than at the same time last year. This does not mean that it was growing.
Further, (as I believe the article states) the rate of melting is not uniform and it was still possible (even probable) that this year would exceed last year in terms of total icecap loss. Given the events which started this thread:
...I'd say that it was more, not less likely.
--MarkusQ
Global Warming would be taken a lot more seriously if a scientist (any scientist!) made a prediction that was within a respectable margin of error. Every report I've read is "10 times more than expected" this or that... A 300% margin of error, as was reported concerning the rise in sea levels recently, doesn't lend any credibility whatsoever to your argument. If you can't make predictions, your science is garbage and you should spend more time in the lab and less at "summit after summit" telling reporters the cause of something when we don't have enough of the elements of the equation to reduce our margin of error to something that's not laughable.
If I knew I could have my balls tickled by the global community of scientists for making predictions that are consistently wildly inaccurate, maybe I'd have studied global warming too...or worked on a Mars lander.
The thing is, it's not hard to tell that something is going on. But the whole "Global Warming" campaign has turned into finger pointing and blame placing, instead of an issue that every person on earth should be more than willing to take an interest in. News sources eat it up, because a "300% More Dead Penguins Than Expected!" makes for a fantastic headline. The general population has already been jerked around to the point where this is no longer an issue that can be talked about objectively because neither side knows with any precision WHAT is happening. So why does the entire argument revolve around the WHY?
Until you can describe the problem, you have no business prescribing a solution.
So according to your reasoning, global warming advocates should opt for theism over agnosticism as well?
Nobody "rebranded" anything, except perhaps the media. Back when the media were talking about "global warming", climatologists were studying the climate. Now that the media is using the (better) term "climate change" those climatologists are still studying the climate (and coming up with pretty much the same conclusions, just with ever increasing accuracy (as happens in most fields of scientific study)). There has been no re-branding in the science, only in how the media is reporting it to you. Regardless of what you call it, it's still the same thing. It just happens that "climate change" is a more accurate term than "global warming", although neither are completely incorrect.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Your counter is a good point, and I would not call it untrue. I would counter by saying that the mental energy expended would just as likely be directed towards some other advance which was just as or even more important.
As far as the existence of global warming, it really will be a while before anyone can say for sure, and the earth as far as we know has been both warmer and colder.
The real issue that I take with many of these "scientific" articles is that they take extreme liberty in forming their conclusions. They then attract a rabid following, and when the science or conclusion changes, there is no learning occurring on the part of the followers. They continue to be rabid on the new thinking, and try to shout down anyone who doesn't carry the banner.
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
"Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Difference. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we're a threat? That somehow we're gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a-floatin' around the sun?
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles...hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worlwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet...the planet...the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!
We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance."
I've been watching seasonal maps for a while now, and I can tell you that the problem with the NW-passage is NOT in the Bafflin Sea, but in the Beaufort sea, specifically in the passage of the Prince Patrick Island-Banks Island Gap. Partly due to not having a more-northerly source of ice, The Bafflin Sea is plenty clear plenty of the year.
The problem is since you (or me for that matter) don't have the faintest clue, you (or me) simply don't know what is the "side of caution". What if we aren't accelerating any climate change, but in our hysteria we accelerate social changes to the point of violent revolution? What if, say, "the West" goes to war with China over environmental concerns? I for one want nothing to have to do with that if the only basis for it is your dubious conception of "the side of caution".
I agree. Here's some better ideas to mull:
1. Is the Earth the hottest it's ever been?
2. It the Earth the hottest it's ever been since human kind has evolved?
3. Is a warmer planet with more area available for growing food and biofuel crops a bad thing?
4. Is a colder planet preferred?
Better yet, let's just skip those questions. What is the ideal temperature of the Earth? Or, we can make it easier, is that ideal temperature colder or hotter than it is now?
I suppose many would say colder, since we're discussing global warming. However, I'd refer back to question 3 to get some more clarification. Colder planet = less food.
Your colds will be colder, and your hots will be hotter.
No, no, no, no, no! Pumping more energy in the system can not make *all* your colds colder, some might be but many will be more temperate, summer will be longer at higher latitudes, vegetation will expand and absorb some additional C02, etc.
There is absolutely no reason to believe that global warming will be catastrophically global. Think about it: where did that carbon we're "releasing" now came from in the first place? The atmosphere! There's indeed evidence that Earth was much warmer before, and guess what? It was *teeming* with life!
So sure, Hollywood stars and Manhattan millionaires have a lot to be concerned for their shoreline properties, but I very much doubt Mexicans, Mongolians, Tanzanians or Dakotans are in much danger of anything.
The problem is that this is unacceptable to the Climate Change movement. Any heretics are branded "deniers" and derided as backwards, retarded, and ignorant.
You're drinking the Kool-Aid, man, don't you worry about that bitter almond aftertaste?
If there is a "Climate Change movement" it must be the least effective "movement" since the vegetarian party tried to win the US presidency.
I myself am a member of the "Gravity movement" which contends that heretics who deny the reality of mass attraction are backwards, retarded, and ignorant. Our insidious and unscrupulous political machinations have been successful beyond the dreams of the "Climate Change movement" and we now control the media and both political parties, preventing any scientific inquiry whatsoever into totally plausible but utterly discredited theories such as Earth Suckage and Divine Pushdown. Muahahahaha!!!
No Correlation has been shown! Just because I put a fire underneath ice and it melts doesn't mean fire melts ice. Ice will melt in the air too. And in water. See? Anything could be causing the ice to melt
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
Any time someone says "almost certainly" you should look very hard at what follows, as it's generally someone with no factual knowledge of the subject foisting their BS on the audience.
Everybody knows that...
To quote LongNoi "QZTR was right and won't leave me alone because I called him a moron when I was wrong" FYS
The Queensland temperature for one particular season is not indicative of a trend. It is just the weather for one place during a single season.
It isn't the only ice shelf that's broken off in the past few years. I'm simplifying a lot, but this warmign trend isn't just localized to the arctic circle.
*sigh* So you're absolute, 100% sure that local temperatures, such as that in Queensland are *not* part of a trend, but this ice shelf is? You have all the historic data for these places to prove it? Once again... I believe your comment is precisely the field day the (great grand?) parent was talking about.
Your grasp of logic is very weak.
A personal anecdote about a "probably" cold winter in Queensland demonstrates nothing. The breaking of large ice shelves in water that is too warm to re-form them demonstrates something. Why is that so difficult for you?
Yes, surely top scientists with PhDs, tenure at first-tier universities, even Nobel prizes, are all too stupid to think of asking those questions. Good thing you came along, now we can all go back to digging and burning, digging and burning, digging and burning, faster and faster, forever and ever! Hallelujah!
No, there is less. As the graph from the article you site shows, the present sea-ice coverage area is very slightly larger than it was this time last year (which was a record low), but the thickness of the ice is steadily decreasing, and as a consequence, so is the total amount of ice.
In fact, as the ice melts and breaks up it tends to spread out, temporarily increasing the "sea area with > 15% ice" which is what the graph shows.
--MarkusQ
Even the liberal media agrees that having ice caps at the poles is a relatively odd thing to have in earth's history. I should think that having them melt is probably a good thing.
Here's Why:
Much more biomass can be supported by a hotter earth, as has been shown through the fossil record (fossil as in stones and fuel). Even if the planet obtained a climate more like it had one billion years ago, the temperatures from back then do not seem to have created a worldwide desert. Indeed, quite the opposite occurred.
So... why is global warming a bad thing again?
Your ignorance is funny. Knowing nothing is so cute and sexy!
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
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If so much ice has broken off, than how come the Sea levels haven't risen anywhere? If they have, how come no one is reporting the two events together?
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My martini is now complete! Oh, wait, still need the olive. Doh!
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
It was a flippant comment, although I think what stuck me most was that is mimics a lot of discussion happening around this issue.
I notice it is now called flamebait - there your go.
Not surprising as the politics of this issue has long since defied all reason.
People are (loudly) calling this scientific and complex issue from their armchair and they have no idea what they are talking about or what is going on.
The problem is that these people vote and politicians are making the most of this.
This issue is FAR TOO IMPORTANT to be handled/influenced by people and special interest groups, whether they admit how clueless they are or falsefy their expertise.
Both of these are currently abundant.
Go right ahead and try. i am not dumb enough to build my house on the sea shore, in a hurricane flood zone, open field where tornado's zip across like farm tractors, or an area where major earth quakes level the city once every 15 years. Floods happen, Ice melts, water levels rise and fall. I am more concerned about an ice age, or the pole flipping As those two events would change the long term conditions of where I live. warmer temperatures, means more moderate winters, I am 500 feet above the ocean with a mountain range between here and there. I am sitting near 50% of the worlds fresh water supply.
So what is worse the ice caps melting and might possibly flood , killing 100's of millions in the low lying flood zones, or running out of oil and 6 billion people in a war fighting to survive against each other.
One is an absolute certain thing to happen with in your lifetime. can you guess which? Mother nature has nothing on the future war of oil supplies. At current growth rates in india and china you have maybe 20 years before the supply is so low that countries will wage wars against one another to secure oil supplies.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Likewise, the scientists get spotlight time regardless of whether they agree or not. There's funding and debating both ways.
Similarly, most people thought of the CIA as a Cold War relic, until 9/11. After 9/11 the CIA gets the spotlight again + funding + whatever. 9/11 brought the CIA back into business, but that does not mean they support terrorism.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
How can the planet *not* get warmer so long as we continue to burn fossil fuel of _any_ kind?
We're taking stored energy, in the form of fossil fuels that have been burried for millions of years and releasing it into the atmosphere.
Over enough time, how can that *not* have an impact?
I think one of the reasons to argue against promulgating anthropogenic global warming is the attitude inherent in your last sentence. Guess what. It doesn't matter what you're eager to repeat. There is nothing so indifferent to human opinion as the weather. And it's the weather that can kill you, not climate change. Half a degree in the average global temperature over the course of a century means absolutely nothing to your personal survival.
The problem with the Kyoto Treaty and every similar thing is that no matter what we change, today or tomorrow, nothing can stop the weather. If you live in New Orleans and the hurricane is coming, you leave. You can't STOP it. You can't even make it hesitate. What are you going to do, stand out on the beach and yell into the wind, "I drive a hybrid you bastard!" ? I don't think so. It doesn't matter if you drive a Hummer or pole a skiff through the bayou by hand, there's always going to be hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires, and sundry other potentially deadly things. You have one and only one choice as far as surviving the weather is concerned: do you get out of the way or do you not.
The only difference between now and and the days of the Toba catastrophe theory is that maybe, just maybe, our technological civilization will empower us to save more of us this time. We've got the satellites to be able to see the hurricanes coming in time, and know that it IS a hurricane, and not just a squall. We know how to build in concrete and steel now, and yeah that takes ginormous amounts of energy by primitive standards, but we can use it to hold back the sea for real, not just make symbolic gestures about the futility of trying.
We can move a million people across the face of the earth in a matter of days, and feed them and house them in astounding comfort, and we think nothing of it. We bandy about phrases like "a million people". It was not so very long ago, in the history of the Earth, that a million people was all the people there was, anywhere. If we refuse to sacrifice our technology in the name of some foolish notion that we can control the planet, we might stand a chance of avoiding being reduced to those numbers again.
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This issue is FAR TOO IMPORTANT to be handled/influenced by people and special interest groups, whether they admit how clueless they are or falsefy their expertise.
So what are you going to do about it? It's also far too important to avoid attracting the attention of such groups. A dictatorship of scientists? I'm not convinced that would work any better in the end.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
>A dictatorship of scientists?
That is the sort of politically charged comment I am talking about. How on earth am I suggesting this?
Submissions are made to the UN and other international organisations. Independant research needs to be done.
The papers are currently quoting "experts" with no experience in the field as authorities and swaying public perception of the scientific consensus.
NASA scientists are being supressed/fired for having a valid scientific opinion. (reports suggest a MAINSTREAM scientific opinion also??)
People are laughing at the issue based purely on the fact that they are "anti-green".
Turning it into a "I am green" and "I am not green" issue is not helpful.
If global warming IS a problem to the extent that people are saying, then it will not be a "green" issue. It will be a human survival issue - and I would expect the anti-green crowd are not a bunch of suicide psychopaths?!?!?
I think you miss the point entirely here.
People who do not in man made global warming theory tend to be strong supporters of climate change - that's why they do not believe in man made global warming theory. Get it?
Two things that I NEVER understood.
1. Why is it bad that climate is changing?
It seems that people are saying 'climate is changing! - it's no longer static!' ->Panic!!!!
2. Why does it have any significance what the average of all temperatures recorded over Earth's surface?
3.Why no one pays attention to nonsense like 'we need ONLY 62 trillion dollars to solve global warming.'
It was a question, thus the question mark. How do you propose to keep clueless people away from such an important issue? You keep complaining about it but I don't see any answers. Not that you need to have them, but you make it sound like you do.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
>Submissions are made to the UN and other international organisations. Independant research needs to be done.
I think the suggestion from this was that the active participation of the uninformed and deceptive in the discourse (and the over reporting of such) is harming the debate.
The above is ALREADY being carried out.
I still don't understand. What are you proposing that we do about this problem you're discussing? Submitting stuff to the UN and performing independent research won't do anything to prevent the clueless from taking an active role in policy.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
I am proposing that we do this to find out if there is a problem. (at least with a 70-80% assurance)
Actually, I am saying this is currently happening. And that assurances of many ARE at 70-80%.
To actually fix the problem?? Well most of the rest of the world outside the US are already subscribed to the Kyoto protocol. Research into alternative energry sources is getting major attention.
Why not the US also?? (I mean after Bush is gone as it is obvious he is anti all of this)
Again, I am saying that we are already on the way. The only thing slowing us down is the large numbers of people altering the political landscape (via ignorance and/or deception) so that the effort is being undermined.
like all good religions it ends in brimstone for those who do not heed the words of those who have been divined wisdom. yadda yadda yadda *yawn*
Excuse me if I'm skeptical but I'm still recovering from the disappointment of the world not ending January 1, 2000.
Either it is true or not. If true, for me its proof positive that many in the scientific community may be right and Global Warming is real.
Where other measures (i.e. temperature, ozone, size of the ice sheet, and so many others) do seem to be cyclical; the concentration of gases in the ice core samples does NOT, according to the scientist who take them, show a cycle with the gases specifically. Instead they have only increased over time. Further they stated that those gases related to industrialized society (which can occur in nature also) have increased at a faster, more significant rate then ever in the history of the planet.
Evidently the gases are trapped in the ice when the ice froze thousands and/or millions of years ago.
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Wait... weather dude can't tell me the weather of what is going to happen next week with any kind of accuracy. But now these climate guys can tell me the weather hundreds of thousands of years from now?
I think they have models alright... I think they are models of tie-fighters and x-wings.
If yearly changes are meaningless than so is the 200 years of collected data that points to a rickety 1.4 F temperature change. Besides that the story has changed from global cooling in the 1960's. C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization warned, "The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not be soon be reversed."
Obviously it did as now we have ice shelves that won't ever rebuild again. Notice its almost the same exact story word for word but only in reverse.
Best of all they changed the story to "Global Climate Change" which basically means we are pretty much clueless but it will mean doomsday whatever its doing! But they have time clocked doing models on a super computer so this lack of knowledge is proven.
If ice never melted from the poles, all the ocean water would be tied up in two huge ice balls...like a dumbbell shaped planet. And Al Gore wouldn't be making millions per year PLANTING TREES. How stupid are you Democrat party hacks going to get?
Actually, that Ice Shelf found Ellesmere Island has been breaking up since 1900. Many years indeed. Perhaps that was because of the CO2 from horse buggies?
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I see from the blog you link to in your sig that you have gone past the point of being a global warming denier to actually claiming that we are heading into an ice age, due to the fact (you claim) that the sun is cooling off or at least that "something switched off" in the sun. You hold to this belief despite the fact that actuate measurements of insolation clearly disprove prove your theory. This would explain why you feel the need to argue that there is, by some measure or other "more ice" in the arctic than there used to be.
You are, I believe, wrong. Further, I believe that your beliefs are blinding you to reasonable discourse.
For example, dismissing the most recent data on ice thickness because it doesn't (yet) contain the numbers for the current season is unreasonable. Even if partial data (up through August 2008, for example) were included you could just say "Oh well, we are a week into September now so things may have changed."
This is, frankly, an unreasonable position to take, though it makes sense in the context of your coming-Ice-Age theory. A more reasonable assumption would be that, as annualized ice thicknesses have steadily decreased year over year for the past decade and there is a well understood mechanism for why they are doing so, they will continue on the same trend for the foreseeable future. If we do not have today's reading in hand, we would be well advised to assume that they fall along the trend line and not that a great deal of additional ice has mysteriously* appeared since we last measured.
Please do not read this as an acknowledgment of a prior error. It is not, nor was my last post. When and if I acknowledge an error, I try to do so clearly and explicitly, not in some secret code only you can understand.
--MarkusQ
* It would have to be mysterious, too, since the rate of precipitation in the arctic is low and has apparently been declining. So if the ice suddenly got much thicker, there would be one heck of a question created--where did it come from?
And before you run off on some weird tangent, there isn't a corresponding mystery when the ice melts, since the melt water simply flows into the sea, where it can be (and has been) detected as local decrease in salinity.
True. Both, er all, sides want studies that support their version of things.
9/11 brought the CIA back into business, but that does not mean they support terrorism.
Not just the CIA but different US administrations supported, indirectly, terrorism. Starting with Jimmy Carter the US president supported the counter insurgents in Afghanistan after the Soviet Union invaded. Among those who went to Afghan to fight was Osama bin Laden and other Muslims from the Middle East. The US aided them, in part by supplying financing and arms. Al Qaeda came out of that. The US supported them until the Soviets left, Afghanistan was the Soviet's Vietnam, only worse. Then the US dropped Afghan. I don't know if it would have helped but I think if the US had tried to help the Afghans form a stable government thing would not have gotten so bad there through the 1990s.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
My point is from when techno-vampire said "there are reports about the ice in the Arctic covering more area than it has in decades" . 2007 set a record for the least amount of ice cover in the Arctic, and the 2008 ice coverage was only a little more than 2007. Therefore 2008 did not have more ice covering than in decades. With the exception of 2007 2008 had the least ice coverage.
At which point is it ok - according to you - to say that a trend has ended?
Where did this come from, that a trend ended? I said no such thing.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You made a claim ("There is more ice in the arctic than last year") that would 1) be inconsistent with the known data, which show steady reduction in total ice volume and 2) would require an as-yet-unexplained mechanism to get the water up there.
In support you provided a story which had originally made a claim ("sea ice is increasing") which would have (partially) supported your theory but was later corrected by the author so that it is nearly neutral with regards to your theory ("area of sea with > 15% ice coverage is nearly the same as last year"). However, even if the original story had held up, you would not have proved your point since you failed to address ice thickness (which has been steadily decreasing), non-sea ice coverage, etc.
It is you who have tried to make a point and failed because you don't have data to support your claim.
--MarkusQ
Ok, I have to admit it.
That's a first for me. I've been on the internet for twenty years, and I thought I'd seen everything.
But I was wrong.
Up until this very day I had never seen the "I was stuck in English so I'm switching to Danish" gambit before.
--MarkusQ
P.S. As for the rest of your post, I am aware of the solar cycle running late and the changes in Earth's magnetic field. I have yet to see an explanation of how these seemingly unrelated effects would transport a large amount of water to the arctic, let alone how they would freeze it. 'cause if you want to have the total amount of arctic ice increase, that's what will need to happen.
P.P.S. I also note that your link is just a news article that says the arctic is open on both the East and West for the first time since records have been kept. It says that, while theoretically navigable, the trip would not be safe for unprepared vessels. It says that the proportion of sea ice is nearly as low as last years record low (presumably a reference to the same data you started with) but it says nothing about the total amount of arctic ice. It then goes on to discuss the international vs. territorial waters issue.
P.P.P.S. You might note that the same source has another story titled "Smeltning i øst og vest åbner arktiske sejlruter samtidigt" (roughly "There is only thin ice covering the pole this winter")--hardly an endorsement of your growing icecap theory.
Ok, now we've got some data.
This year's thickness data shows that, just as I said, "Arctic ice cover is following a trend of becoming younger and thinner each year". The lead on the article:
So now will you please stop peddling your "Arctic Ice Is Increasing" bilge?
--MarkusQ