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Antarctic Ice Is Growing, Not Melting Away, At Davis Station
schwit1 writes "A report from The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research says that Antarctic ice is growing, not melting away. Ice core drilling in the fast ice off Australia's Davis Station in East Antarctica by the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-Operative Research Centre shows that last year, the ice had a maximum thickness of 1.89m, its densest in 10 years. The average thickness of the ice at Davis since the 1950s is 1.67m. A paper to be published soon by the British Antarctic Survey in the journal Geophysical Research Letters is expected to confirm that over the past 30 years, the area of sea ice around the continent has expanded."
Too Cold to Snow? WTF are you talking about:
http://www.enotes.com/science-fact-finder/weather-climate/ever-too-cold-snow
The entire area of Antarctica gets some snowfall every year, less in some areas but it still snows:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=107920
People hear "climate change" and "global warming" and think all the ice is going away. Thing is, while there are certain large ice masses that are almost certainly going to melt - the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, for instance - it's an open question how the bulk of Antarctica and Greenland is going to respond to a warmer climate. There will certainly be increased summer melting around the periphery, but there is some speculation that the total ice volume in these places will increase due to warmer (but still below freezing) temperatures. Thing is, for much of the year the air is so cold there that it just doesn't have the carrying capacity for much total water volume. Warmer air can simply carry more water than colder air, which can mean more snow and more ice pack. I say "can mean" because climate change can also affect weather patterns, which can alter the amount of precipitation that falls or even alter the source region for the precipitation that eventually reaches a given location.
However when it comes to smaller glaciers and ice fields, where the average annual temperature was significantly closer to freezing to begin with, it's more obvious that they're shrinking or completely going away.
FWIW up until a few years ago I worked in a climate research lab where we studied the climate records in ice from Greenland and Antarctica.
#DeleteChrome
Just because it's a desert doesn't mean it gets no precipitation, just very little. It's been averaging 4" a year at the south pole since they started taking measurements. Besides, the idea of it being too cold to snow is a myth: http://www.weatherimagery.com/blog/too-cold-to-snow/
Actually the bit about snow was misleading. The article was about sea ice thickness. Sea ice is caused by cold air flowing from a pole toward the equator and cooling the ocean. More about that in a bit.
Back to the bit about "to cold to snow". Really cold air carries very little water vapour.
http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/222/
Now back to the article. The article described 1 year sea ice thickness. This is ice that forms on the sea over one winter and is essentially a measure of how cold the air was that winter. So first thought is that more ice implies a colder winter. Yes I agree with that. The question is what is the average global temperature. Global warming (called climate change by those who think explaining all the details will confuse people) does not mean it warms up everywhere.
Fact: Cold air does not come from the polar regions. Cold air comes from high in the atmosphere where air radiates heat to space. Warm air comes from contact with sun warmed ground and sea.
http://www.rcn27.dial.pipex.com/cloudsrus/wind.html
So the polar regions are cold because they get more cold air dropped on them from high in the atmosphere. What pushes the whole cycle is "heat". We like to think of hot and cold as relative to our norms. Real tempeature is degrees Kelvin. So the polar regions just have less heat than the equatorial regions.
Back to the circulation putting more heat into the system results in a global warming but also in an accelerated wind system. This will push more cold air down at the poles. Essentially making the poles colder and the polar winds colder. This will make the polar regions colder --- when they are not heated by the sun.
So from global warming we can actually expect colder winters at the poles. Overall they will be shorter due to the added heat. There are lots of balances and more complex things. Particularly the global air circulation is not 1 cycle equator to poles, but banded. But the general idea is there.
While the majority of ski resorts have reported a trend of less annual snowfall per year for the past twenty years or so,
Really? Where is that info from?
Because the data I can see says otherwise - like the SNOTEL Precipitation Data Table from Wolf Creek Pass in Colorado. Or Squaw Valley in California. Or Daisy Peak in Montana.
We've had dry years in Colorado over the past decade, but also some banner snow years. Similarly for other places in other states.
So where does the data validating that generally ski resorts have lower snowpack over the last twenty years come from? Or is it just something everyone "knows".
In reality I think that's a data point too variable to indicate anything one way or the other.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sea ice has a minimal affect on sea level. So anything about more or less sea ice is to a first order irrelevant to global sea level.
http://moregrumbinescience.blogspot.com/2009/04/ice-and-sea-level.html
http://www.radix.net/~bobg/faqs/sea.level.faq.html
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In terms of the ice, there are five identifiable reservoirs, only one
of which is expected to be able to have catastrophic effects on sea
level. They are sea ice, mountain glaciers, the Greenland ice sheet,
the East Antarctic ice sheet, and the West Antarctic ice sheet. The one
expected to be potentially catastrophic is West Antarctica.
Catastrophic is taken to mean meters of sea level in a few hundred years
or less.
First, why can't the other four be catastrophic? Sea ice cannot
change sea level much. That it can do so at all is because sea ice is
not made of quite the same material as the ocean. Sea ice is much
fresher than sea water (5 parts per thousand instead of about 35). When
the ice melts (pretend for the moment that it does so instantly and
retains its shape), the resultant melt water is still slightly less
dense than the original sea water. So the meltwater still 'stands' a
little higher than the local sea level. The amount of extra height
depends on the salinity difference between ice and ocean, and
corresponds to about 2% of the thickness of the original ice floe. For
30 million square kilometers of ice (global maximum extent) and average
thickness of 2 meters (the Arctic ice is about 3 meters, the Antarctic
is about 1), the corresponding change in global sea level would be 2
(meters) * 0.02 (salinity effect) * 0.10 (fraction of ocean covered by
ice), or 4 mm. Not a large figure, but not zero either. My thanks to
chappell@stat.wisc.edu (Rick Chappell) for making me work this out.
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As an indicator of other things 1 year sea ice thickness is relevant on a second order. It is an indicator of the local winter average temperature. Local temperature changes are not global. I say that this indicator of a more cold winter shows an increased polar air circulation which is actually a positive indicator for global warming in general.
Like many people, you have confused Libertarianism with lassez-faire government, or even Conservatism. They are NOT the same things at all.
Libertarians believe in the least amount of regulation that is necessary to do the job. That is not even close to the same as no regulation.
For example, either of last year's Libertarian candidates for President would have regulated the "financial industry" more, not less. Smart Libertarians support reasonable antitrust laws, not unbridled corporatism as they have so often been accused of advocating. And so on.
It might pay to learn something about a philosophy before you go around publicly insulting it.
People don't realise that global warming never meant that the whole world turns into the tropics but that weather patterns shift (ie cold places get warmer but other areas could very well get colder) and that it's still a negative thing because everything in those environments depend on certain temperatures.
Not that it really matters. it's fact that pollution has a very negative impact on human beings so we should care even if there is no negative effects on the environment.
It's scientifically proven that there is a direct inverse correspondence between the number of pirates and global warming. As the number of pirates decreased global warming increased. Now that piracy in Somalia has gone up the ice in that one tiny spot in Antarctica. It'll surely compensate for the rapid flow of glaciers in the West Antarctic icesheet as they flow unimpeded into the sea now that more of the iceshelfs are gone. All hail the Flying Spaghetti Monster in his infinite wisdom for making that happen. He was none to happy about Obama killing those pirates.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
And -20F is only just starting to get cold for places like Antarctica, (or even continental/northern Canada and Russia). Where I live, we regularly get 2-3 weeks with highs below -20F, and you can depend on those weeks to be sunny and dry.
The Electric Universe people were completely discredited when the NASA probe spawned from Deep Impact collided with the comet Tempel 1. If the Universe were -- as they claim -- made up of anti-matter, the resulting explosion of the probe and comet would have vaporized a fair chunk of the solar system.
Of course, this didn't stop them from saying that the collision actually proved their theory since there was a little explosion.
I believe you're proving my point for me when I say that the people who vehemently oppose the Electric Universe (EU) theory tend not to be familiar with it. I have read their works extensively and have never, ever seen the EU folks make the claim that the Universe is made up of antimatter. If you want to see what they had to say about the Deep Impact collison with Tempel 1, look here and you will find something entirely different from what you just described.
You can also find more on the Deep Impact event in this category of the Thunderbolts site.
To date, I have never once seen an opponent of the EU theory who was thoroughly familiar with it. There is no substitute for your own inquiry.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
If I had thought that laissez-faire were synonymous with anarchy, then would have just written "anarchy". What makes you think I did? Assumptions?
Your assertions about Libertarianism (at least in the U.S.) are just plain false. Of course there are anarcho-libertarians. There are also anarcho-Republicans. That does not mean that either form a significant percentage of their respective parties. Trying to divide Libertarianism into two separate groups in this fashion is as fallacious as it would be to divide the Republican party the same way.
I have been around Libertarians for many years, and I am intimately familiar with their philosophy and their literature. It is nothing like what you portray at all. If in fact they wanted "the least amount of regulation, period" then they would indeed be anarchists, and there would be no point in even having a Libertarian party!
"Of course. Because it has never been about global warming or CO2. Otherwise CO2 emitted by India and China would have been as bad as emissions in the 1st world. But Kyoto exempted them."
Yes. But you don't have any clue why.
It has something to do with the fact that it is the industrialized countries that have been emptying CO2 into the atmosphere in ever-greater amounts for the last 2 centuries or so before realizing it might be a problem. The premise of the Kyoto agreement is: they are the ones that have created the problem so far, they're the ones that are already industrialized and have most of the money. They are therefore the ones best positioned to come up with technical solutions and ways to meet lowered targets or at least flatten out production. The race is to do that before countries like India and China ramp up as fast as people are expecting given their populations.
How can we possibly say to countries that are in the early stages of industrialization "Oh, you can't do exactly what we've been doing for the last couple of centuries, or it will be a disaster!" It's like eating 3/4 of the pizza at the party and then telling a skinny latecomer: "Whoa there. Don't go eating all the pizza that's left. It's bad for you and we also have to share", while still stuffing your face as fast as ever.
The whole point was to meet the goals of Kyoto and THEN say to India, China and other developing countries: "See? This can be done. Now it's your turn to meet the same targets." That was the bargain.
Ever since then there has been this myth that India and China are somehow completely and forever off the hook. Well, they probably will be because we're dragging our asses on what we committed to do.
Here's hoping the world can make do without any kind of agreement, and that the predictions expected from that scenario are wrong. Hope really hard.
There are some lines on these charts from NASA.
I think most people will agree that the folks at NASA kinda know what they're doing. Despite a couple of monumental fuckups over the years (which were generally management fuckups, not the technical kind), fundamentally, getting rockets into space repeatedly & successfully is a very hard thing to do, and overall they do it well.
So I see you your assertion that global warming is crap, and raise you 17 charts that indicate that something quite significant is happening to our climate. :-)
Oh, and the upper atmosphere thing? Well, you know, seeing unexpected things happen in systems as complex as the earth's atmosphere is how scientists (real ones, not those clowns from the Discovery Institute) learn stuff. They look at what's happening, and modify their models to try and explain it. That's called the scientific process. Real scientists don't ever claim to know all the answers, just to having a really good guess.
I remember a quote from the former Indian prime minster Indira Gandhi - "Poverty is the biggest polluter."
The colder it is, the less moisture the air is capable of carrying, leading to less rain/snowfall. Basically, when it gets below about -10 degree Celsius, you can safely bet it'll be nice and sunny; there simply isn't enough evaporated water to form clouds.
This is my experience from living 30 years in a polar country (Finland); disregard it if you want.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
To anyone who actually has done a bit of looking into Antarctica in climatic terms, this won't be surprising.
Start with a good map of Antarctica: Wikipedia has an excellent picture. You can see the Transantarctic Mountains pretty easily on the picture--it's the line roughly in the center. To the right is East Antarctica; to the left West Antarctica.
Now, you see those two patches of rather gray ice just west of the mountains? That's the part of the sheet that isn't on land. Much of West Antarctica is sitting on ice shelves. East Antarctica is basically a giant sheet of ice a few kilometers thick sitting on land.
For climatic reasons, East Antarctica is colder than West, and it simply doesn't snow that much. The massive cyclone that appears each winter doesn't help.
Gaining mass means you're getting more snow, which means that the temperature is, you know, getting warmer. The annual mean temperature is -57ÂC at the South Pole...
Now, many of you will say "this debunks global warming", etc., but you're missing a key part of the equation. West Antarctica may be 10% of the ice sheet of Antarctica, but when you compare that the entire Antarctic ice sheet comprises the majority of freshwater on Earth, a collapse of its ice sheet would result in significant rise of sea levels. And what's preventing its collapse? The Ross and Ronne Ice Shelves. And yep, they're shrinking.
And yet NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, probably the most capable agency of its kind in the world, has itself released a paper stating that even if the global-warming alarmist's worst-case scenario were to happen, the oceans would rise an average of four inches worldwide over the next hundred years.
Who should I believe, do you think?
I'm pretty sure it means reducing the amount of net carbon you add to the climate system. Anything you breathe out or decay into is already in the system, with the natural balance of plant respiration to keep the overall levels even. The problem is when you release carbon thats been sequestered in fossil fuels for millions of years; thus the phrase 'Carbon Neutral'.
It's also the reason why biofuels make sense, even if the particular blend isn't much cleaner than a fossil fuel-based product, the biomass that goes into making it sequestered that carbon before re-releasing it, keeping the atmospheric balance at the level we're used to.
Just because Kyoto wasn't ratified doesn't mean that a carbon tax can't be implemented in the future.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
I remember a quote from the former Indian prime minster Indira Gandhi - "Poverty is the biggest polluter."
Indeed. Images from Mumbai.
Interesting about a regions ice thinkness; however, this has nothing to do with CO2 levels, or global warming...
Maybe the politics and religion of SlashDot can for once leave the science to let's say the 'scientists'?
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There are so many factors in 'global warming' from desalination and currents to polar winds just to top off a couple of important things that makes this report have nothing to do with overall climate status/change.
There is also the effect of mankind's pollution in opacity, as just the increases the Bush administration allowed in the past eight years would have once again decreased the amount of sunlight that gets to the surface, giving the earth a temporary cooling, that when stabalized could mean the global warming effects would hit many times faster than even the most extreme left alarmist would argue.
I love the goofs that want to tell everyone the Global Warming is in effect on a hot summer day and the other goofs that tell us it doesn't exist on a cold day.
Climate disturbance caused by man's contribution to enviornmental factors are not so easy to understand, but is something that needs to be taken seriously, as the science does show humans DO impact the climate. If it is more than expected, then watch as Europe and the north coast of America freezes over, which would be 'Global Warming'.
Do people honestly think that Global climates changes are 'not' important to mankind? History shows that natural changes nearly caused the demise of the human race several times.
It is something we should study as much as we can and prevent as much as we can, and with the 'chaotic' variable called man affecting the climate, the study and monitoring is needed now more than ever.
I did. I also checked out the molecular weight of oxygen, nitrogen and argon. There's no way oxygen can exist anywhere near ground level. There, the air is made entirely of argon.
If you want to breathe oxygen, you'll have to go up several hundred metres. Unfortunately, it will be relatively pure, highly corrosive even to organic materials and a terrible fire risk. To be safe, you'll have to go up much higher in the atmospheric layer cake to the boundary between the oxygen and nitrogen layers.
Blancmange
(I'm the AC that also responded to you). After doing some research into their claims, I came across this: impossible dinosaurs. Their claim is as follows:
"Most conventional theories assume that gravity throughout the universe has always been and will always be a constant property of matter. ... The Electric Universe offers a different point of view. Gravity is not a constant. It's a variable that depends on the plasma environment. So Earth in the Mesozoic Era may have had less gravity than it has today. Holden calculates that in order for the largest dinosaurs to function, gravity must have been at least 1/3 (and possibly as low as 1/4) what it is today."
It took a fair amount of effort to dig up the relevant papers regarding changes in the gravitational constant. (Short answer for the mathematically challenged: it hasn't changed). I'd also point out that if gravity was 1/3 to 1/4 of what it was today, the moon wouldn't have remained in orbit.
The original slashdot article had a post detailing what their predictions were. They were wrong.
Let's just call bad science when we see it. Plasma cosmology predicts few things. When it has tried to, it failed. Much like the yeti, flat earth, luminous aether and timecube, it probably won't go away any time soon. But it really should.
Your reference does not support your alledged Fact, and your alledged Fact ignores the concept of adiabatic warming. The poles are colder than the equator because they receive less energy from the sun, not because descending air is colder. This casts a LOT of doubt to the validity of the rest of your arguments as well.
*Note that the adiabatic warming reference is from an education institution site, not a property development site.
The last few years have been warmer than any year in the 20th centry except 1998.
(Citation needed). I only ask for a citation because I recall that 1998 was the hottest year on record and that these past few years have been cooler than normal. Come to find out, 1998 was NOT the hottest year on record, 1938 was.
Also note that 1938 and 1998 were both in the 20th century and both years were hotter than these past few years.
Actually, never mind. I did some searching and found out that 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 are all the hottest year on record, depending on what source you use.
And these guys wonder why we don't believe them??
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I second this question. There is some kind of inconsistency in this thread.
No, that's just cause you weren't reading carefully enough to note the important parts of what he was saying.
Global warming gets you colder winters at the poles because of the increased air circulation. He also claimed that the winters would become _shorter_, and I assume the summers then would also be warmer.
Thus increased ice thickness wouldn't be evidence against global warming, and the theory is disprovable if you can show that the winters aren't becoming shorter.
- These characters were randomly selected.
You did not read the whole thing, did you? That was already accounted for in the calculations. And I am not just talking out my ass here. The one to do the calculations was renowned economist Bjorn Lomborg (that is the closest you can get to the spelling in English), not just some clueless newspaper reporter. You can find his Ted talk on Youtube if you want to look. Take the short version or the full hour... your choice.
no mention of the Arctic ice, which is the ice that's usually pointed to by climate scientists as a sign of global warming.
You mean the ice which "experts" authoritatively stated was going to all melt away, and that much of it was already gone, because their remote sensors said so?
Except that the people who actually flew out there, and the satellites that orbit the poles showed that the non-existent ice actually exists?
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/19/0420255
And that anchored ice in the Arctic?
Because dark Asian soot is blowing north and west, settling on (Arctic, Alaskan and Rocky Mountains) ice, holding heat and thus melting the ice.
Soot filters on those thousands of Chinese dirty coal-fired plants would do wonders for re-thickening the ice that really is thinning.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
"Yes. But you don't have any clue why.
It has something to do with [...]"
Well, apparently you don't either, both self-admitted and as evidenced later in your comments.
The reason the other countries were left out had to with the expected slower development of their (industrialized) economies. As such, these countries were expected to develop later and hence when they did build their plants and industrialized bases, they'd be using *newer*, more efficient technologies from the get go. These newer technologies, without specification or enforcement in the exempted countries, were supposedly more efficient, more cost effective, etc., so the *expectation* by Kyoto was that the exempted countries would use them implicitly over the old (which alone shows how shoddy Kyoto is).
So the old, inefficient, CO2 and other greenhouse gas belching plants and the like would not be built in India and China. But they were...Kyoto assumed increased efficiencies over time (which does happen), but it missed the RATE because Kyoto itself caused unexpected consequences similar to the corn to ethanol law in the US.
"The whole point was to meet the goals of Kyoto and THEN say to India, China and other developing countries: "See? This can be done. Now it's your turn to meet the same targets." That was the bargain."
Liar. There is nothing in Kyoto that forces any current signees to sign a future agreement. It's a glaring loophole in Kyoto, one of at least two major ones, and the big reason Kyoto is a good idea but implemented horribly.
"Ever since then there has been this myth that India and China are somehow completely and forever off the hook. Well, they probably will be because we're dragging our asses on what we committed to do."
They're off the hook, you moron, because the international community let them off the hook and continues to do so. They're off the hook because it allows the signees to offload their carbon to those countries.
You want to know the reason why the US has higher CO2 emissions than, say, most if not all European countries? Because despite being a huge importer of China made goods, comparatively and relatively to the EU, we have offloaded less of our manufacturing to China compared to the EU.
The EU countries largely have shut down their dirtiest industrial complexes to meet Kyoto. But they simply buy the parts and chemicals and products that were previously made at these now closed plants from, yup, China and India. Which are exempt.
This had at least 5 effects, which Kyoto DIRECTLY FRACKIN CAUSED--
(1) China and India do not have the political will or experience or experienced manpower to implement pollution regulations that the EU and US had and continue to have. Some or similar process, more pollution, simply not in the EU.
(2) There is no effective intra-national monitoring body in China.
(3) The EU and other signees bash the US for not signing Kyoto, and stupid people like yourself think the US is a bad actor, by ignoring the fact they have offloaded their carbon to India and China. A more effective way would be to take the goods imported per person from these countries or any country and factor in their production and CO2 costs on a per capita basis, instead of the current method of actual usage in the country. This would represent a more accurate CO2 usage per country count.
(4) Because of the trade imbalance that resulted, as well as cheaper labor, in India and China, there has been a major explosion in industrialization in these unregulated countries. This came a) larger than expected and b) earlier than expected (maybe there will be a followup post mod'd funny). As such, the supposed efficiences did not manifest. First, China uses older equipment anyways. Second, even if they used current equipment, the efficiencies are not as mature as Kyoto expected--China is probably a decade or two ahead, and hence using equipment the Kyoto protocol bean counters expected would have been MORE efficient since they would
Global warming gets you colder winters at the poles because of the increased air circulation. He also claimed that the winters would become _shorter_, and I assume the summers then would also be warmer.
Let us then keep an eye on this sea ice graph. The peaks and valleys should get more extreme.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
How much of the melting, though, is caused by coal and wood soot from India and China?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/science/earth/16degrees.html>
BTW, if 1/5 of the cause of AGW was "discovered" less than 2 years ago, what are scientists going to discover 2 years from now? That it's really 2/5 of the cause? Or something else that's totally unexpected?
While the developed world spends even more money that we don't have on projects with dubious worth?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Except that this doesn't disagree with the predictions made by scientists.
Let me explain:
First, ice thickness in Antarctica isn't controlled by temperature... as long as the temperature stay below freezing, which it does. Instead, the control on thickness is the amount of precipitation.
The IPCC predicts increased precipitation in the Antarctic to the tune of 25%. Just look up the IPCC report on climate change on confirm this.
Secondly, you should understand that the predictions are that there is an increase in average temperature; but not a uniform increase in temperature everywhere. Some places will see an increase, and some places a decrease, in temperature, precipitation, and other climatic variables.
You are right that we shouldn't believe people just because they have a powerful media presence. I personally recommend my alternative: knowing the facts.
The thing a lot of people seem to be missing here is that the two poles are very different. Yes, they are poles, and have some similarity in the style of their extremes. But Antarctica is a continent surrounded by oceans. The Arctic is primarily ocean.
There are two really obvious related factors in the Arctic. One factor is, oddly enough, the melting point of sea ice. And the frequently overlooked part of that is that *it's a state change*. At a threshold temperature, the stuff changes state. So subtle changes in the central tendency of an oscillation around the melting point can bring the system suddenly out of apparent equilibrium and into... feedback. One factor is albedo. With less reflection from the sea ice, there's more thermal absorption, which leads to less reflection... feedback.
The *real* problem with the global warming evidence is that it's more and more frequently explained in simplistic terms by people who don't understand it, resulting in backlash. There are also a ton of advocacy people out there who lack actual scientific background. These are really complicated systems, and one of the reasons we model them is that they're too complicated for any one person to understand every single aspect; models are a sane way to integrate the results of studies requiring disparate expertise (or at least different people).
And yes, colder winters, longer summers, whatever... as you've pointed out, talking about this is useless without at least a clear and common reference. This story pulls one very interesting result out of context and into casual conversation. So I suppose I'll be going now. I would highly recommend a literature search to you. It's not difficult stuff to understand, experiment by experiment, it's just an incredibly complex set of interactions combined with frustrating (i.e. real-world) experimental conditions.
[|]
The logic in this post is so completely bogus.
First, using your own figures, the military budget is 700 billion and we spend 1500 billion on social programs. That is almost 50%. That is not peanuts! If the military budget were 1% of the budget for social programs, that would be peanuts.
Second, you refer to the 1500 billion as what we are paying to "feed the poor." Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and even unemployment are not programs to "feed the poor." They are also not welfare programs according to the common use of the term. Nor is it fair to refer to those programs as programs where people are not taking responsibility for their actions, and thus burdening society for their (or their father's) laziness. So, if I spend 45 years of my life working and paying in money to the social security system, and then at the age of 66 I start withdrawing money from it, then I'm someone who is not taking responsibility for his actions, and I am burdening society with my laziness?
Your logic is completely bogus!
The North West passage in the last three centuries was a fabled myth that many explores risked their lives and often died trying to find, all in vain.
This century it is almost a yearly occurrence.
The difference? The ice.
Global Climate Change due to manmade influences on nature is occuring, and seeing as how we depend on climates remaining stable throughout nearly all parts of the world it is a big deal.
Climate changes in good growing region means no food for cities supplied for that region. Yes another region may pop up with better climate but without the access roads and modern technology infrastructure to use and harvest it.
So even if Climate Change/Global warming is a zero sum over all, it is still a major issue to be dealt with and not just some "liberal" conspiracy.
Did you even read the source article?
On February 18, we reported that the F15 sensor malfunction started out having a negligible impact on computed ice extent, which gradually increased as the sensor degraded further. At the end of January, the F15 sensor underestimated ice extent by 50,000 square kilometers (19,300 square miles) compared to F13. That is still within the margin of error for daily data. By mid-February, the difference had grown to 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles), which is outside of expected error. However, that amount represents less than 4% of Arctic sea ice extent at this time of year. When the computed daily extent dropped sharply on February 16, the sensor failure became obvious.
NSIDC stopped displaying the problematic data, and recalculated sea ice extent using data from the DMSP F13 satellite, an older sensor in the same series of satellites. The recalculation changed the January monthly average ice extent by less than the margin of error for the sensor. As we reported in our February 3 post, growth of Arctic sea ice did indeed slow in January because of unusual atmospheric conditions. Using F13 data instead of F15, the September daily minimum that we reported on September 16, 2008, changed from 4.52 million square kilometers (1.74 million square miles) to 4.54 million square kilometers (1.75 million square miles), within the margin of error for daily data.
The F15 sensor drift does not change any of our conclusions regarding the long-term decline in Arctic sea ice extent. Such scientific conclusions, published in peer-reviewed journals, are based on quality-controlled monthly to annually averaged data. We have quality-controlled the final data through 2007; a thorough audit of the more recent data from 2008 shows that any discrepancies fall within the margin of error.
It's one thing to be a denier, but at least don't be so obvious about your attempts to distort the data. It was one, brief problem which was immediately recognized and only caused an approximately 4% error at its peak.
You're going to have to deal with the *fact* that not only is Arctic ice extent far less than it has been at any point in recorded history, but that it's far thinner to boot. If you hate what peer-reviewed science says, that's your problem. Build your *own* network of sensors and satellites and monitor the Arctic for decades if you don't like the results the current hardware is giving.
And as for the Slashdot article in question? Let me sum up: "Ice is growing at a single Antarctic station. Therefore, tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers which never predicted that ice would shrink at every station are still wrong (because it's "global climate change", not "local weather change"), and global warming is a scientific conspiracy to destroy capitalism."
"You see, Government is a system that is based on weapons." -- Timster
You are wrong, water increases volume when heated up. Quite significant (read: small fraction) amount of sea level rise is attributed to water expanding in higher temperature.
Climate models show a steep increase of temperature at the north pole and flat or even slight cooling at the south pole. I have never understood the reason that the poles are different in this regard. These results are no surprise to the IPCC, more sea ice at the North pole would really be surprising. The projections for the future showing high warming at the north pole and less at the south can be found at the bottom of the summary for policy makers; http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf The IPCC physical science report showing a high probability of short-term warming at the south pole http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter3.pdf
the US is one of the richest countries in the world, but at the same time for sure the biggest polluter
Not quite. In fact, the US and Canada are net carbon sinks.
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR