UN Climate Report Fails To Capture Arctic Ice: MIT

An anonymous reader writes "The United Nations' most recent global climate report 'fails to capture trends in Arctic sea-ice thinning and drift, and in some cases substantially underestimates these trends,' says a new research from MIT. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report, released in 2007, forecasts an ice-free Arctic summer by the year 2100. However, the Arctic sea ice may be thinning four times faster than predicted, according to Pierre Rampal and his research team of MIT's Department of Earth, Atmosphere, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS)."

Comments

Re:Doesn't matter what they report

[bunratty]

So it's just an amazing coincidence that we'll have ice-free summers in the Arctic 200 years after we started burning fossil fuels en masse?

We have excellent "undeniable" evidence of global warming. We have over 100 years of climatology that tell us that the carbon sensitivity is probably between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius, starting with Arrhenius and continuing to the latest estimations. We have agreed that we want to keep the global temperature rise under 2 degrees Celsius. The only way we can achieve this goal is to begin reducing carbon dioxide emissions immediately, given the information we presently have. To me, that says "Act now!"

Re:Doesn't matter what they report

[bunratty]

We have more than a mere correlation between carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and temperature rise. We have a mechanism of causation: carbon dioxide is conclusively known to be a greenhouse gas. So, yes, burning fossil fuels absolutely does increase global temperature. Of that, there's no doubt at all. The only question is how much. A few climatologists argue that it's not enough to worry about, but the vast majority conclude that the climate sensitivity is above 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is enough that it makes economic sense to reduce carbon dioxide emissions now.

Non-anthropogenic causes

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

> It'll also give us time to weed out alternate explanations for the perceived global warming such as changes in solar activity, orbital configuration, or other non-anthropogenic possibilities.

What's an example of one that's not already been weeded out?

Solar output has been measured by satellite since 1978, http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ACRIMIII/Images/solar_irradiance_right.gif. Orbit cycles have been understood for a long time.

Re:Doesn't matter what they report

[GameboyRMH]

It seems you're getting your info on environmentalists from Fox News stereotypes rather than the real world. Most intelligent environmentalists (the type you're likely to run into on Slashdot) DO advocate for nuclear power, and none want to turn the world communist or have us live in caves.