Huge Freshwater Bulge In Arctic Ocean

New submitter turkeyfish writes "UK scientists are reporting today in the journal Nature Geoscience that a huge bulge of freshwater is forming in the Western Arctic Ocean caused by a large gyre of freshwater. The gyre appears to indicate that the ice is becoming thin enough over the Arctic Ocean that the wind is beginning to affect the motion of water under the ice. A sudden release of this water or its emergence to the surface will greatly accelerate the melting of the remaining polar oceanic ice and likely alter oceanic circulation in the North Atlantic."

Comments

How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[LostCluster]

This is all going according to the long-term global warming forecast laid out by Al Gore in his book and movie "An Inconvenient Truth" where ice at the poles melting means more water and less ice in the ocean which leads to flooding in coastal areas... and it all goes downhill from there.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[lawpoop]

Will liberals stop at nothing to destroy the American Way of Life?

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[jhoegl]

Well, the sooner it happens the faster people will not be able to bitch because they have salt water in their mouth.
Seriously, the back and forth wares me out. Once it happens, at least people who are still alive can tell others. "Told you so".
Ironically, holding on to a floatation device....

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[mosb1000]

Melting sea ice won't lead to a significant increase in ocean levels, it's the land ice you have to worry about.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[NeutronCowboy]

Like the Greenland glaciers.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[hey!]

Well, not yet, and that's from somebody who thinks that anthropogenic climate change is probably a true hypothesis.

For one thing the thinning or melting of sea ice itself has no direct effect on sea level -- just like melting ice cubes don't change the level of water in a glass. The picture the article paints is far more complex. In a nutshell, thinning Arctic ice may allow winds to mix colder surface water with warmer deep water. This would cause more ice thinning faster than changes in the atmosphere (if any) could drive change. Any effect on sea level would be indirect.

What I'm much more concerned with is human responses to this development -- or rather *political* responses. Russia is making territorial claims in the Arctic Ocean based on some creative interpretation of international law, because they think that climate change may open the Arctic to resource exploration. If they find oil up there, there could be a polar conflict between Russia the US and strained relations between Canada and the US.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Anonymous Coward]

NIce try troll. You're wrong for a whole boat-load of reasons.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[SammyIAm]

Well he's half right. Purely sea-based ice will displace as much sea-water as the mass of the ice itself. When the ice melts, it will become the same mass of sea-water that it would have been displaced while it was ice. The net water-level change would be pretty close to nil.

Though now that I think about it, does salt make the sea water effectively more-dense than freshwater in terms of the amount of ice it can float? And if so, will the water from the ice occupy slightly more space if it's fresh-water? Perhaps there would be a very small rise in ocean level...

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[paiute]

But Al Gore lives in a big house and lies about inventing the Internet, so he's a big weenee and we don't have to listen to him lalalalalalalalalala

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[eggstasy]

How much, in total, can ocean levels rise if all ice melts, including Antarctica and Greenland?
I've read more than one estimate, but no real authoritative source.

How much warmer does the atmosphere need to be?
Any idea on how longer it would take, worst-case-scenario? 100 years?

Thanks.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the fraction of the ice that is floating above the water is the volume it shrinks when it melts.

There's a second order effect due to higher density of the salt water, so there will be small net sea level rise,
and will also cause reduced atmospheric pressure due to less volume occupied which could bulge the surface,
but these effects won't flood your coast anytime soon.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Locutus]

I read that too but I think it'll be a big game changer if the water circulation pump in the Atlantic gets messed up. I'd already read that lots of fresh water were are already detected further south than ever before. Lots of fresh water further south changes the current layering of water due to different densities of fresh vs salty water and that's what could screw things up.

a change in those currents means a change in water temps and that means a change in weather patterns.

It sure does seem like lots of stuff is melting all over the place and faster than "expected".

LoB

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[rwa2]

Ice occupies more space than water. Melting of sea ice results in a drop in ocean levels, not an increase. only melting of land based ice results in a rise in sea levels.

But ice also floats on water. If you have ice floating in a glass of water, and the ice melts, the level of liquid stays the same.

But salty water is more buoyant than freshwater! So the icebergs would sit a tad lower as the salinity of the water decreases.

But TFA says it's mostly caused by the wind gyre that sucks everything up with a low pressure system. And the main effect has nothing to do with rise or fall of ocean levels, but with ocean currents that keep the North Atlantic relatively warm, but could plunge it into an ice age if the currents reversed (as was the case during the last ice age). Fun and amazing stuff.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[countach]

I think its about 100 metres, which means half the current land masses would be underwater. As I understand it, this would be likely to take a thousand years to play out.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[guruevi]

It won't affect glaciers on land. I don't see where you get that. The glaciers on land are melting too by the way. The glaciers on land melting will cause the sea levels to rise (Antarctica etc.).

The currents will never stand still however they will become a lot less active causing, as you said, the tropics to overheat and the north pole to freeze over. Yes, eventually nature will balance itself but this process will take a really, really long time while generations of people will either bake or freeze (depending on where they live) and the process will be violent.

Finally, it's indeed the CO2 from SUV's and coal plants that causes glaciers to melt but as the glaciers melt they also release the CO2 stored in/under them. Water acted as a sink to CO2 before the last ice age after which it froze and got captured in the ice. It's basically a positive feedback cycle which will only accelerate the process faster.

Climate change is real, global warming is real and the cause for this is real. This has been established by practically all scientists in the field. Denying it is as futile and idiotic as the few that still refute the theory of evolution based on their personal religious or political ideas.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it odd that there would be oil anywhere near the poles? It would mean that area had to have had a massive amount of plant and animal life there at some point in the past. Exactly how hot was the Earth back then?!

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[josephjall]

If the fresh water disrupts the North Atlantic currents like the summary says, there is going to be plenty of sea ice, and land ice. I don't think flooding is something we are going to need to worry about.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally, it's indeed the CO2 from SUV's and coal plants that causes glaciers to melt but as the glaciers melt they also release the CO2 stored in/under them.

I mostly agree with what you said except for bits about SUV's etc. This is more a smokescreen diversion from the real problems. For instance buy local products instead of imported cheap crap. The link at the bottom indicates that running one particularly large cargo ship supposedly pollutes as much as 50 million cars each year (likely a gross exaggeration but still worth considering)

http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[ArcherB]

Climate change is real, global warming is real and the cause for this is real. This has been established by practically all scientists in the field. Denying it is as futile and idiotic as the few that still refute the theory of evolution based on their personal religious or political ideas.

Just curious... Can you tell me how many of these scientists predicted a fresh water plume, stirred by iceberg moved by high winds, would cause more ice to melt? I can't seem to find that prediction anywhere. I did, however find that high winds will cause the water to cool quicker via evaporation, which should have fixed that pesky iceberg problem, made the water saltier, thereby fixing that overabundance of fresh water problem that started this whole discussion. That was on the Wiki page for Thermohaline circulation. It says, "Wind moving over the water also produces a great deal of evaporation, leading to a decrease in temperature, called evaporative cooling. Evaporation removes only water molecules, resulting in an increase in the salinity of the seawater left behind, and thus an increase in the density of the water mass. In the Norwegian Sea evaporative cooling is predominant, and the sinking water mass, the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW), fills the basin and spills southwards through crevasses in the submarine sills that connect Greenland, Iceland and Great Britain. It then flows very slowly into the deep abyssal plains of the Atlantic, always in a southerly direction."

Also, is CO2 the only gas stored under glaciers? I mean, if the atmospheric CO2 concentration at the time the glaciers formed was so high that releasing a fraction of that gas would be enough to heat the world... wouldn't the planet have been too hot to form these glaciers in the first place?

I'm not trying to be smart ass, but if you don't question, you never learn. And you never EVER give up your freedom of the word of someone else without at least asking a few questions and pointing out gaping logical holes.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[fizzer06]

Well then, we must get the government to do something about those ocean currents. No matter what the cost. /sarc

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Runaway1956]

It was hot enough for jungle ferns to have been found under the ice.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Surt]

That's pretty much the opposite of irony.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[CTachyon]

Right. The Greenland glaciers melting may be bad. Now, would you so kindly tell me how a fresh water plume will affect glaciers ON LAND?

Directly? Not at all. But it's worth keeping in mind that white ice has a higher albedo than dark blue seawater, which keeps arctic / antarctic summers cold by reflecting away summer sunlight.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[SomeKDEUser]

The fact that there was someone there to look at the formation of the plume means that it is not entirely unexpected, as in "someone got their project funded, and thus made a reasonable case for it".

Of course this would be found/discussed in fairly technical papers. If you trust journalists to do science reporting right, I have a bridge on the Moon to sell.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0924796395000062 for example dates from 16 years ago.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1034/j.1600-0889.2001.530504.x/abstract is from 11
  years ago and directly related. Hint: sciencedirect or google scholar are a better way to get scientific information/papers than plain google.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[iter8]

Just curious... Can you tell me how many of these scientists predicted a fresh water plume, stirred by iceberg moved by high winds, would cause more ice to melt?

Googling "predictions of arctic fresh water plume" might be a start.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[riverat1]

Right. The Greenland glaciers melting may be bad. Now, would you so kindly tell me how a fresh water plume will affect glaciers ON LAND?

I'm not saying the fresh water plume will affect the glacial ice but if it does affect the weather over the Arctic Ocean then it must necessarily have an effect on the weather over the ice caps on Greenland and other smaller islands just because of proximity. On top of that loss of sea ice can affect glacial ice where the two meet. Less sea ice means less back pressure on the tongues of glacial ice flowing into the sea so they speed up and lose ice faster than they otherwise might.

Why would you think that melting ice caps would cause ocean currents to cease? I may cause them to change but temperature and density differentials are not the only cause of ocean currents. Prevailing winds and Coriolis forces also have their effects.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[riverat1]

Think plate tectonics. The land surface of the Earth does not stay in one place. Heck, there are some areas on the California coast that were once attached to Antarctica.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[riverat1]

Except Gore never lied about inventing the internet. Some weenies on the other side just took his words and twisted them so it sounds like he did. From the Wikipedia article on Al Gore and information technology:

Of Gore's involvement in the then-developing Internet while in Congress, Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn have also noted that,

As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high-speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system. He was the first elected official to grasp the potential of computer communications to have a broader impact than just improving the conduct of science and scholarship [...] the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication. As an example, he sponsored hearings on how advanced technologies might be put to use in areas like coordinating the response of government agencies to natural disasters and other crises.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[ColdWetDog]

You aren't making a whole lot of sense here. You take a couple of statements, toss a few observations around, complain you don't 'get it' and you really think anyone is going to take you seriously? I'm sorry, this stuff is difficult. It isn't a couple of sound bites and a snarky comment. To understand it requires a fairly concerted effort to read and digest multidisciplinary topics.

So if you're serious, get out of Troll Mode and try to actually learn something.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Anonymous Coward]

Three tenths of a meter? Your sources suck. Now, first, the likelihood of all polar ice melting is very low and would take 1000 years. But if it did happen? Greenland ALONE would add nearly 7 meters to the sea level. And ALL OF ANTARTICA!?!?! That would be SEVENTY meters. Finding this doc took all of 2 minutes - https://pumas.gsfc.nasa.gov/files/02_10_97_1.pdf Your Google-Fu sucks balls - get off the Internet.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Baloroth]

His use of "irony" was ironic, though. Gotta give him points for that.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[guruevi]

I would start by picking up an average textbook on climate. You don't seem to understand the difference in time scales and energy between balanced weather/climate events and the unbalanced forces that create climate change. Again, feedback loops. It's not only the CO2 stored in the frozen water, it's the CO2 trapped in the frozen water + the CO2 and other greenhouse gasses WE HUMANS are adding.

Also, the last time there was such massive climate change there was a significant event that caused it (meteorite impact), now we humans are the significant event.

The effect will be even worse once the antarctic starts melting more significantly than it already does because not only will it release the CO2 trapped but also any matter that has been frozen (plants, microbes, animals, humans) or the life that cannot survive the change will start releasing methane and other greenhouse gasses common to rotting.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[steelfood]

Predictions are rarely that specific. They're not going to tell you that's there's a fresh water "plume" as TFA so indicates. What predictions do is give you trends, and the effect of these trends on the overall system. The predicted effects are also not specific, but instead the prediction of more trends.

Reality is a little different. There's a lot of noise in the system. The variances of what happens and is expected to happen can be extreme. But the average--the predicted trend--will remain barring unaccounted for variables that may make things much worse or much better. This plume may be a part of the trend. Or it may be one such deviation from the system. Or it could be an unaccounted for variable that's about to accelerate the glacial melt timeline significantly.

Only time will tell whether the initial predictions still hold after this. And if the data doesn't support it, it will be revised. But I can't imagine that 20+ years worth of data supporting the predicted trend will be outright reversed by one event. To even fancy such a notion so would be wishful thinking indeed. More likely, things will either get a little better, or a little worse.

Of course, there actually is a point of no return that we are quickly approaching, and even if things go better than expected for us and the predictions are on the high side, we'll still end up there if we don't change our lifestyles. There's a huge amount of methane stored in the Siberian tundra. Methane is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2. It's a missile compared to the bullet that the trapped CO2 in glacial ice would be. As the tundra begins to defrost, methane gets released into the atmosphere. When the climate reaches the point where the permafrost is no longer permanent, no amount of CO2 emissions cuts will be able to prevent the sudden release of greenhouse gas into the environment. And at that point, everyone might as well start staking their turf on high ground.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[sonicmerlin]

Yes you moron, we DO need to get the government, our representative, to do something about these ocean currents- namely cutting down on pollution. Will you let your irrational hate blind you until the west coast is underwater?

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[riverat1]

If all of the ice on Greenland and Antarctica (and other lesser ice caps) were to melt it would cause a bit over 200 feet (~65 meters) of sea level rise. However, it would take thousands of years for all of that ice to melt The ice on Antarctica averages ~7,000 feet in depth and it's up to ~12,000 feet in places so it won't melt that fast at any temperature that still supports humans living on the Earth. Current estimates for sea level rise by 2100 are in the 3-6 foot range. 20 feet above the current level isn't inconceivable in 2200.

Regarding what it would take to melt all of it, a paper out recently said that the big ice sheets started to form when CO2 levels dropped below 700 ppmv maybe 30 million years ago. We are currently at ~390 ppmv, up from 280 ppmv in 1830 and ~320 in 1960. At the current rate we would hit 700 ppmv in less than 200 years.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[ukemike]

First, if the ocean currents cease because there is no ice at the poles and poles freeze over, won't that cause the currents to start back up again. See, the currents are caused by freezing water, not frozen water. When salt water freezes, it loses its salt, making the rest of the unfrozen water saltier. That water falls and has nowhere to go but toward the equator. These currents help balance the climate, keeping the tropics from overheating and keeping the northern latitudes from freezing over too much. Which brings me back to my main point; if the poles freeze over due to no current, won't that kick start the currents again? And to YOUR point, glaciers melting over land will have little to no impact on ocean currents, because, as has been previously, stated, GreenLAND is LAND.

This paragraph broke the world record for highest density of inaccuracies, misconceptions, and stoner logic. But by far the best sentence in the whole spiel is:

And to YOUR point, glaciers melting over land will have little to no impact on ocean currents, because, as has been previously, stated, GreenLAND is LAND.

Where does this loon think that the melting ice will go? Heaven forbid it might flow downstream and eventually into the ocean! OMG! I think the fact that this entry was modded up to a 4 is proof that /. has jumped the shark.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Luckyo]

Not to be a total dick, but they weren't telling you that "sky is falling" as you are pretending. At least not the credible sources.

They were telling you, and everyone else who listened that this is a self-feeding accelerating process with a known effect in the end however. So when you see evidence that supports the claim like the OP, it gets harder and harder to claim ignorance. Other then by using strawman argument, like you did.

Of course, given the modern trend of "give me everything now, fuck the future", who really cares?

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Luckyo]

No, that will just let him blame the government for failing to save West Coast and insist that corporations could have done better.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[I'm just joshin]

Um...
  "moron"
  "irrational hate blind you"

How exactly do you plan on convincing anyone by insulting them?

-J

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Jeremi]

Except Gore never lied about inventing the internet.

You're right, of course -- but the denialist side wins the argument anyway, because now we're no longer discussing global warming, we're discussing a politician's history and alleged misdeeds instead. Any discussion that ends up on a completely different topic counts as a tie, and ties count as a win for the status quo.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[turkeyfish]

No, Azolla deposits from the Azolla Event during the Middle Miocene are believed to contain huge amounts of crushed plant material that would likely make it rich oil and gas strata. The problem will be, however, the anthropogenic reverse Azolla event that will likely speed the thawing of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets should this material be extracted and burned.

Actually, the earth was warmer in the Eocene than it was now. The clincher is that it took tens of millions of years to get that way and reverse after the Azolla Event. Human induced carbon dioxide pollution is forcing the system at a rate of 100-1000 times the natural rate. If you throw in the release of 90 GT of methane from clathrates on the arctic ocean floor and methane in from the melting of the permafrost, perhaps you add another 900 GT of methane, more or less all at once, which eventually becomes C02 as methane degrades in about 30 years, such as occurred during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum then we may see as much as 6 C increase in global warming in a very short period of time. This has some scientists worried that we may soon pass or that we may have already passed a tipping point toward runaway heating.

To put that into perspective that means sea temperatures could rapidly return to mid-Eocene levels at the North Pole, about 55 F. Unless you are Santa, it would probably be much warmer at your house. Needless to say, growing food in much of the US or perhaps almost anywhere would be no easy task, especially since much of the mid-west will likely again be underwater.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[turkeyfish]

At least among all the politicians out there Al Gore was the one who first saw the potential of the internet and was a leading advocate in Congress pushing for it to be funded in a very dramatic way. He was successful in that effort, so I guess in a sense he has every right to claim credit for helping to invent the internet. Keep in mind he was doing this in the 1970's, long before many of us were using computers.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[turkeyfish]

I think the above is an indication of the size of the science education process that remains on this issue.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[ohnocitizen]

Shorter Version: "Just curious, I checked it out on wikipedia and don't believe the scientists". Just poking fun. I doubt anyone predicted the water plume, but that's what makes it fascinating. We've seen what humanity's impact on the climate has done, and it turns out there are a number of natural processes that can kick in at any moment to further speed things up. In other words, we aren't as safe as we think we are. Also, if we imagine the water absorbing the excess CO2, and a process of cooling going on, as more and more CO2 is removed into the water, the temperature at the poles would sink progressively, leading to more ice being formed...etc. It isn't hard to imagine that. A big point to consider: even if we didn't cause the climate change - will it hurt us and is should we be doing something to slow it down or stop it?

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[an unsound mind]

Have you LOOKED at the state of the ice caps?

Turns out that global environmental change doesn't happen in a day. Who knew? Other than the people who have been warning people about it for decades and anyone with half a brain, that is.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[hairyfish]

I have a proposition to fix this Global Warming thing. Instead of wasting all this energy arguing about and going nowhere, I'd propose we all sign up to our beliefs. ie you believe or you don't, and it goes on record. We then do nothing for 25 years. By that time if there's any catastrophic change in climate that causes a significant change in our way of life, we'll know for sure by then, and all the people who got it wrong, owe all the people who got it right everything they own. How does that sound?

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[trevelyon]

I'm not a climatologist so take this with a grain of salt. First off the models are VERY complex and there are subtle interactions arising here and there that weren't predicted in any of them. Then again you don't need to know your skin will brown in the oven to figure out that staying in it just might be bad. The data is in and the consensus is rather clear from what I've read. Exactly how things will happen is still being debated but we can already see the effects: extreme famine in Africa, increase in severity of storms in the southern U.S. and Caribbean, high heat summers in Europe (that kill a fair number of people). Personally, I see it in a simple way:

1. Climate change will be as bad or worse than predicted and we do nothing - basically we create our own nasty future and the next generations get our mess dropped in their lap and who knows we just might even wipe out our own species but hey at least we got that new ipad.

2. Climate change is not as bad as we think and we over-react in moving to a more localized and carbon neutral economy - this MAY create a short to medium term financial constriction for the time we are doing it but when the change has been made it most likely will increase the productive capacity since there will be less waste and more efficient energy usage as a result.

I really have a hard time seeing terrible fallout from this in the long term unless of course you happen to be an oil company.

You mention that you are giving up your freedoms to the government to battle climate change. What freedom exactly are you giving up? To be honest I've seen a lot of freedoms in the U.S. given up to "keep us safe from terrorism" which seems a side effect of the U.S. middle east policy. It sure seems to me that if we didn't need oil from the middle east tensions would most likely decrease there and maybe, just maybe we can get some freedoms back (say like the freedom to go through an airport with dignity in tact and without your wife/mother/daughter getting molested or the freedom to not be arrested without warrant and tossed in some foreign prison, you know things like that). Climate change would most likely be battled through regulation on energy/transportation/other energy consuming industries. How exactly will that impinge your basic freedoms or do you have a right to cheap foreign goods?

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Whiteox]

Uh! It was talked about in the 60's and doomsayer warnings in the 70s. A turn-around should've begun then. No-one listened then and the models were primitive.
Now, it's too late and no-one can do anything about it even if they try. Even if it were possible to immediately stop burning fuel (not just fossil fuels) to halt CO2 production and massive planting/plankton recovery, it's just too late.
There is an estimated 300 year supply of fossil fuels and demand will never decrease, so hope is forlorn.
Islands are beginning to disappear at the moment. Tide levels are higher and I bought a house 700 metres above sea level so I can at least watch the wretches below sweeping away the yearly flood waters and rebuilding in a hopeless cycle that will get worse.
Which reminds me that I should get a geophysical map and buy some future beachfront property.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[minio]

It is not only CO2 trapped in/under ice. There are also a huge amounts of methane trapped by ice and permafrost being released. And methane is much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[tgd]

Isn't it odd that there would be oil anywhere near the poles? It would mean that area had to have had a massive amount of plant and animal life there at some point in the past. Exactly how hot was the Earth back then?!

Two reasons -- one, land masses move. The physical rock under the poles are part of the contentinental plates that used to be near the equator, which is why there's so much oil sands in Canada. Secondly, there are two "normal" states for the Earth -- frozen (30-40% ice coverage) and hot, with conditions like you see in equatorial regions today everywhere, with no permanent ice. The reason we have ice at the poles and warm everywhere else is because right now we're in an interglacial period *in an ice age*. It is a *weird* condition, historically. Now, its entirely plausable that the "global warming" is working to keep us from slipping out of the interglacial period -- we're already significantly beyond the point where most of them appear to have ended in the past. So that's arguably a potentially good thing. Humanity spent most of its existence during the glacial periods, but the planet sure can't support 7 billion people that way.

A bigger concern is if global warming was to tip us *out* of the existing ice age. Humanity *hasn't* lived through a warm period on the Earth. In fact, large mammals in general haven't. No one is particularly sure if the planet can support *any* people that way.

But in either case, there's oil at the poles because that land was near the equator when the deposits that turned into oil were layed down.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Attila Dimedici]

Not to be a total dick, but they weren't telling you that "sky is falling" as you are pretending. At least not the credible sources.

Maybe not, but they were perfectly willing to stand by and remain silent while "non-credible" sources were using their data to scream that "the sky is falling". Please tell me the credible source who called Al Gore to task for his over the top advertisement for his carbon credits business, "An Inconvenient Truth".

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[tgd]

To put that into perspective that means sea temperatures could rapidly return to mid-Eocene levels at the North Pole, about 55 F. Unless you are Santa, it would probably be much warmer at your house. Needless to say, growing food in much of the US or perhaps almost anywhere would be no easy task, especially since much of the mid-west will likely again be underwater.

While I agree with most of what you said, the parts of the US that have historically been under water were under water because the ground was physically lower at the time, not because the oceans were higher. Uplift brought big chunks of the continental plates well above where they were, so those areas will not suddenly be underwater because of the rest of the permanent ice melting. And some of those areas (like the mid-west) are still uplifting from the release of the weight of the glaciers 20k years ago.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[DRJlaw]

Having lived in the Midwest for quite a long time, I'm rather comfortable in saying that places that are 500-700ft AMSL are in no danger of inundation by the sea. Although an increase in rainfall can cause river flooding, "much of the mid-west [sic]" would not likely again be underwater. Frankly, current Midwest flooding issues have to do with poor flood control measures (levies crammed right up against the rivers instead of back within the flood plain) and poor infrastructure development (residential developments crammed right up against the rivers).

Rank hyperbole only serves to make all the other information you've provided highly suspect. Congratulate yourself for poisoning you're own argument.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[tgd]

I believe your numbers are correct for surface melting.

My understanding is the bigger concern is melting at ground level, and the ice flowing more quickly off the land into the ocean. You don't need the ice to melt to raise ocean levels, you just need it to not be sitting on rock.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Luckyo]

So, between the total denialists and Al Gore, they were supposed to focus on Al Gore.

Can you explain why?

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[dr2chase]

mod parent up (informative, "your Google-Fu sucks balls")

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Attila Dimedici]

Because Al Gore destroyed the credibility of their argument. There were many "credible sources" who acclaimed Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" even though it was full of misleading information and outright untruths, who, now that it is known that Al Gore was lying, don't want to be lumped in with him. Sorry, you were willing to sell your integrity to someone who was using your cause for political and financial gain when you thought it would advance your cause, now that they have been revealed you want me to judge your position separately from them, not going to happen.
Once you have compromised your integrity for short term gain, it's a tough row to get it back. There is no more referring to generic "credible sources", give me specific names and we will judge them on their merits and whether or not they distanced themselves from the Alarmists before the Alarmists were revealed as self serving liars.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[P-niiice]

So you're admitting that European usage patterns are better?

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[dr2chase]

Might be a good deal faster than that, but it will be decades before we know.

See http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_15/

Or http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110118_MilankovicPaper.pdf (skip to "summary discussion", 7c: "Paleoclimate records include cases in which sea level rose several meters per century, even though known natural positive forcings are much smaller than the human-made forcing. This implies that ice sheet disintegration can be a highly nonlinear process.")

Hansen proposes to fit an exponential curve with 10-year doubling, but initially you can't tell the difference between exponential and quadratic, and the possible mechanisms for rapid sea level rise and not entirely known (as in, can glaciers really move that fast?). He bases his argument on "best data from the paleoclimate says several meters per century happened in the past, and temperatures not far from where we are now".

The paper in which the fast paleoclimate sea level rise is studied: http://www.planetwork.net/climate/Hansen2007.pdf
One question I don't see an answer to (yet) is whether the fastest rise occurred earlier in the glacial melt -- i.e., when ice sheets all over the northern hemisphere were melting, not just Greenland. But (apparently) Antarctica has plenty of potential.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[HornWumpus]

In the 60s and 70s they were predicting a new ice age.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[mcgrew]

Troll, mods? WTF, Newt's staff has mod points? The comment is accurate, although I can see how it might upset a denier, or someone who sees "Al Gore" and thinks he's trolling environmentalists without bothering to read. Whoever modded him down, waste a few points on me so you don't bury someone else's relevant, insightful comment as well. Sheesh, you should have to take a literacy test to get mod points.

And it won't just lead to flooding; the "little ice age" is thought to have been caused by the phenomena of a huge amount of fresh water spilling into the Atlantic, disrupting the normal current flow. Global warming can cause regional cooling.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[riverat1]

Both you and tgd are right. I didn't address the potential for rapid ice sheet disintegration. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is particularly vulnerable to that as it is grounded as much as 2,500 feet below sea level. I also didn't address thermal expansion of the ocean as it warms up. About half of the 20th century sea level rise was from thermal expansion.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[1u3hr]

The link at the bottom indicates that running one particularly large cargo ship supposedly pollutes as much as 50 million cars each year (likely a gross exaggeration but still worth considering) http://www.gizmag.com/shipping-pollution/11526/

Read what you link to. That article is about dirty bunker oil producing sulphur oxides and other nasty stuff. Obviously burning that produce much more poison than low-sulphur oils, or relatively clean gasoline. Which all has very little relation to the amount of CO2, which is what we're talking about. Cargo ships could burn cleaner fuels if they were compelled to -- near most ports they are.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[pixelpusher220]

You mean Cap and Trade? You realize that was a GOP idea right? It was, then, called using the power of the 'free market' to drive solutions.

Funny how the GOP is anti free market when it suits them....

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[pixelpusher220]

Well melting sea ice increases the heat absorbing ability of the ocean, thus warming the planet and increasing the rate at which land ice melts...

While it won't directly affect sea-level for the reasons you imply, feedback loops are a bitch....

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[mosb1000]

The currents mix the water, warming the polar regions and cooling the equatorial regions. Shutting that down would not lead to increased melting in land based ice sheets which are all in polar regions. Thats not to say it'd all be fine, but it absolutely would not lead to raising seawater levels.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[pixelpusher220]

No, it's 'warm' water that happens to be fresh that will cause ice to melt. Heat tends to do that.

The fun part is when it starts affecting the global currents that keep Europe warmer than it should be at that latitude. So you end up with massive heat stratification; super heated equator and frozen northern climates. 'Average' temps won't reflect that, but it still makes the planet damn inhospitable to us.

What happens it the fresh water is less dense than salt water and it will not sink in the North Atlantic. This is against the gulf stream current flowing up to the north and then sinking as it cools (and transfers heat to Europe). Since there would now be a big patch of fresh water...this 'conveyor belt' gets disrupted and all sorts of fun climate effects start happening. Likewise, if Greenland melts, the same thing happens.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[pixelpusher220]

Nice idea in theory...unfortunately if we'd done it 25 years ago, I'm not sure you'd be able to collect as there haven't been catastrophic changes just yet.

That's the problem with putting human time frames on geologic/environmental processes.

The better path is to get people educated and call out the people spreading false propaganda so as to have a chance at solving something.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[budgenator]

That's over the top, not even the beeb is going all CGW on this, the fact is the average temps up there right now are averaging in the -10 through -30C, so any fresh water exposed is going to freeze pretty damn quick and any salt water is going to freeze just a smidgen less than PDQ as well. Most of the fresh water is coming from Siberia, from the rivers draining spring run off into the Arctic Ocean and fresh water floats on top of salt water and the wind piles it up into the gyre. The data set they are working only back 15 years, this could be a cyclic phenomena and we'd be unlikely to see it without some older classified data.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[pixelpusher220]

The problem is that we can already take the 'coarse less accurate' models from 30 years ago and see that the realized effects are literally off the scale past the worst case scenario predicted.

Newer more accurate models are still predicting worse and worse. So #1 is already here.

The freedom argument is mostly about prices and costs - some realized, others unrealized. The 'cost' of driving a Hummer isn't limited to the vehicle and the gasoline, but that's the only price that is paid by the vehicle owner. So by placing costs on the release of CO2 you are making the Hummer more expensive and thus reducing the 'freedom' of someone to own it.

Realistically it's no different than the gas guzzler tax placed on foreign car imports like Ferrari's and such. Just that the average Joe can feel the difference since they actually buy the SUV's as opposed to the wealthy buying supercars who don't really care about the price much.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[amRadioHed]

So those who are predicting a dramatic climate change lose either way, and the deniers will win either way. Sounds like a a great bet, where do I sign up?

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[pixelpusher220]

Methane under glaciers is going to be a fairly small amount given surface area. The permafrost of the arctic contains vast amounts of methane and CO2 that is currently frozen in organic material...as it thaws and decays it gets released. The amount of permafrost area is huge.

Likewise, the methane substrates that exist in deep ocean water also start to sublimate into gas as oceans warm.

Those areas are much more likely to have huge effects than just the area under glaciers, which according to wikipedia actually aren't likely to have permafrost under them as the ice is an insulating blanket.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[budgenator]

Antarctic Sea Ice Extent is above average this year; not sure what land ice is doing, but if sea ice is up, land ice is likely to be up as well. Greenland is pretty well iced in this winter too.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[khallow]

Golly, what could possibly go wrong?

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[pixelpusher220]

'Considered' being the operative word here. It means they were taken into proper account for what we knew about them.

I can 'consider' the intelligence of the average GOP voter and then dismiss it as people voting against their own economic interests and therefore not terribly intelligent.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[khallow]

I mostly agree with what you said except for bits about SUV's etc. This is more a smokescreen diversion from the real problems. For instance buy local products instead of imported cheap crap.

Ever hear of comparative advantage? If you want local, then why not go to the logical extreme and grow or make it all yourself? That eliminates transportation costs altogether.

As I see it, the real problem is that a bunch of wealthy people in the developed world have theirs and want to hold the world in its current state no matter how much it harms the rest of the world.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Luckyo]

So, just to get the facts straight:

Al Gore is bad because, while generally attracting attention to worthy cause, he spun it to make a profit on it.
Denialists are much better, because they have much better visibility, are completely off scale in terms of self-delusion, and are also making a huge profit.

Hmmm...

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[pixelpusher220]

nope. With more open ocean now catching the suns rays it absorbs much more heat than the ice covered area did previously.

That increased heat in the atmosphere and ocean then melts more sea ice, rinse, repeat. All that increased warmth in the atmosphere also tends to melt ice on land...

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[pixelpusher220]

Continents move, the 'arctic' was once at the equator..as was just about every other point on earth....

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[budgenator]

It's not the CO2 from glaciers that's worrisome, but methane in the sediments. It's far more potent greenhouse has then CO2, and we have quite a bit of evidence in our studies of the issue (specifically historic evidence in relation to atmospheric concentrations of methane relative to temperature of the period) that suggests that once we hit the critical point where methane starts to get released, reaction will accelerate at a completely different rate from now and become utterly unstoppable.

Well let's see what the warmists have to say about that

The methane bubbles coming from the Siberian shelf are part of a system that takes centuries to respond to changes in temperature. The methane from the Arctic lakes is also potentially part of a new, enhanced, chronic methane release to the atmosphere. Neither of them could release a catastrophic amount of methane (hundreds of Gtons) within a short time frame (a few years or less). There isn’t some huge bubble of methane waiting to erupt as soon as its roof melts. Much ado about methane

and

... the methane worst case does not suddenly spell the extinction of human life on Earth. It does not lead to a runaway greenhouse. The worst-case methane scenario stands comparable to what CO2 can do. What CO2 will do, under business-as-usual, not in a wild blow-the-doors-off unpleasant surprise, but just in the absence of any pleasant surprises (like emission controls). An Arctic methane worst-case scenario

seems they aren't real excited about methane.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[mcgrew]

In the 60s and 70s they were predicting a new ice age.

Scientists weren't. That dumbass that predicted global famine by 2000 wasn't a scientist, either. And neither was the idiot who wrote those books about space-alien spacecraft visiting ancient human civilizations.

Don't believe everything you read. Lots and lots of books are written by ignorant morons. If a book about any of the sciences doesn't have a bibliography pointing to real studies, throw it away, it's worthless and will only make you dumber.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[pixelpusher220]

Mostly false. When you take into account the actual facts and circumstances.

Gore pays a higher premium because he requires the energy come from renewable/clean sources. So his energy use is doing far less environmental damage than regular users who are getting their electricity from coal/gas. So he's putting his money where his mouth is.

Further more he invested heavily into making it a more efficient system. As evidence of this, when a record heat wave hit Nashville, his energy use was down 11% from the previous year while most Nashville houses reported 20-30% *more* energy used.

If you generate your *own* electricity from solar/wind/etc as Gore's house does.. how much you use doesn't matter nearly as much .

Likewise trolls like you bitched when Gore bought an 'ocean front' house in CA. Obviously a hypocrite since he was saying sea levels were going to rise! Except his house is on a *cliff* 60 feet up. Well beyond any rise that will happen in his lifetime.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[rcamans]

How do the satellites know that the water under the ice is freshwater? Does the radar measure salinity?

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[rcamans]

Hey! I have a copywrite on "bridge on the moon to sell"

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[rcamans]

NO, it's the CO2 trapped in the frozen water + the CO2 trapped in the ocean water + the CO2 and other greenhouse gasses WE HUMANS are adding - the CO2 consumed by the plants and trees WE HUMANS are cutting down.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Attila Dimedici]

It doesn't matter whose idea it was originally, Al Gore made a fortune off of it (and other "green solutions").
However, the Cap & Trade idea was proposed by members of the GOP to address a real pollutant(SO2), not a natural byproducts of living(CO2).

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Attila Dimedici]

Al Gore lied and exagerated in order to get people to demand that governments force companies to give businesses that he was invested in money. Those who sided with Al Gore lost their credibility by not pointing out that he was exagerating and lying. They were hoping to steamroller people into adopting their preferred solution to a poorly defined problem. They failed and are now trying to back away from Al Gore (and those like him) by claiming that they never said any of the exagerations that he made. That may be true, but they were praising him for the effort he was making on behalf of their cause before people realized how over the top he was.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Locutus]

what I read a few years ago led me to believe there wasn't complete mixing but instead a definite stratifying going on. IIRC the paper talked about measurements across layers and measuring increases in the fresher water layer(s). I wasn't try to say it would cause increased melting of the caps although it could. Only that it would/could change the currents and therefore change the weather patterns.

LoB

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[budgenator]

I'm sorry, this stuff is difficult. It isn't a couple of sound bites and a snarky comment. To understand it requires a fairly concerted effort to read and digest multidisciplinary topics.

I'll bet that Bernie Madoff said something like that to his investors too. The Inconvenient Truth is, your trying to change people's behaviors in ways that will obviously cause them considerable expense. To do that you'll have to explain it to people in a clear concise manner that is logically consistent and build from valid premises. Using more than 3 equations means you fail, as well as if any of the equations exceeds 5th grade math skills. Cite a study behind a paywall you fail, as well as anything published by the UN. Anybody involved in the climategate emails needs to be fed to the wolves.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Luckyo]

What the hell is a "warmist" and umm, "won't suddenly spell the extinction of human life on Earth"?

Hey, I hear it will also not cause the Sun to shut down, or the tea cup that controls the world from orbit between Mars and Earth to come down the surface and give its order directly. Now, can we talk about realistic things, like the "worst case scenario comparable to what CO2 can do", i.e. global warning? You know, the thing we were talking about here before you tried to strawman it into oblivion?

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Luckyo]

You dodged the obvious elephant in the room again, "why is fighting those in complete denial less important then fighting someone who while exaggerating the problem, is at least going into the right general direction"?

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[pixelpusher220]

Uh, sulfur dioxide is a regular product of volcanos so it too is a natural byproduct of the earth of which all living things are as well.

We're just now producing it excessively ourselves.

CO2 released that was removed from the air last week isn't a problem. CO2 that released that was removed from the air 5 million years ago is a problem because it's outside the 'normal' cycles. Note I said 'normal' and not natural since oil is itself a natural thing.

Now couple that with releasing millions of years worth of CO2 in just 100 years. It's going to have very significant effects even if it was released naturally/normally. But for us we're doing it explicitly when it would not have 'normally' been released. So it's our activities that are putting all this extra CO2 into the air at a time when it wouldn't be there otherwise.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[mcgrew]

There's little I can do about the cargo ships, but I have a choice whether to drive a sedan or an SUV. I mean, try getting any kind of electronics whatever without the goods having been on a cargo ship. Food? We export food. However, I'll agree that buying oranges from South America instead of Florida is stupid.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[avandesande]

I think they were suggesting that if the winds changed and the plume dissipates then melting would accelerate, probably due to the change in salinity.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Attila Dimedici]

It is not a question of fighting, it is a question of supporting. Since they supported Al Gore's message, they have the same credibility that Al Gore has on the issue.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Attila Dimedici]

You are welcome to your opinion but I am not interested in paying for it.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[gamanimatron]

I can't speak for Atilla there, but my answer would be that the folks who are exaggerating the problem are much more damaging to any hope of an appropriate solution than the folks in complete denial. After I watched that pile of mealy-mouthed self-serving propaganda, I came away convinced that global warming was a money grubbing con job, and I took a lot of my friends and family with me. It took years and the perusal of mountains of data from people without (I hope) any direct or indirect financial incentive in the matter to convince me that something might actually be going on. And I'm still not entirely convinced. Because Al Gore is an asshat.

That's why.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Luckyo]

Now you're trying to turn the thing on its head. The original argument was that people who understand and support global warming should have fought against Al Gore. Counter argument to this was that they were too busy fighting those who were completely denying that global warming even exists. Many still do.

So for obvious reasons, people went after the elephant in the room (people who are denying) and didn't bother fighting Al Gore (fly on the window outside).

So stop squirming and answer the question why fighting Al Gore was more important for movement that is trying to get people to understand that our planet is warming up would be far more important then fighting people who deny that such warming is happening completely.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Attila Dimedici]

Because by allowing Al Gore to make himself the voice of the movement, they now have the same amount of credibility that Al Gore has: none. Additionally, since Al Gore sounded like he was exaggerating, this made those on the other side sound reasonable. It's like the guy who is trying to warn people that there are wolves in the next valley saying "See, we need to prepare for wolves," when some other guy who claims that there is one right outside the door. When people open the door and discover that there are isn't a wolf outside the door, they aren't going to take seriously the guy who says, "I know I never said there wasn't a wolf outside the door when the boy said there was, but there really are wolves the next valley that we need to prepare for." Especially when they dismissed those who questioned the guy who said the wolves were right outside the door as being head-in-the-sand deniers.
The other thing is that Al Gore made it obvious that the Alarmists whole game was about giving central planners control over the economy more than it was about global warming.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[Luckyo]

That is a blatant lie. "Movement" as you call it, or more specifically understating that world is warming up and CO2 emitted by humans is at least a partial cause is the cause has significant pull with many world's leaders, as well as general populace. Just because a few claims of a single person were proven false, and people who are paid to spread FUD spread it as far as their money would allow so their paymasters can keep on building coal plants and earning good return on that investment doesn't mean that there aren't measures being taken to reduce the increase of CO2 emissions all over the world.

Far bigger problem is the economy, which is dependent on industries which emit a lot of CO2. The public image issues because a former vice president of US made himself a few million on being overly alarmist is a bucket in the ocean, a largely meaningless one at that.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[scot4875]

And the people making those claims were quickly peer reviewed out the door.

--Jeremy

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[budgenator]

Interesting starting point, the real question now becomes
the Earth presents a surface of 126,916,372,000,000,000 m^2 (1.27*10^17) to the sun, receiving 1413 W/m^2 = 89879688605803 or 8.98 * 10^13 watts;
the ice mass of Greenland and Antarctica is 28728096 Km^3 * 10^12 Kg/Km^3 = 287,280,960,000,000,000,000 or 2.87 *10^20 Kg ,
the Enthalpy of Fusion for Water is 334000 J/Kg * 2.87*10^20 = 9.58 *10^25 J,
9.58 *10^25J (W/S) / 8.98 * 10^13 W = 1.0668 * 10^12 seconds of sunlight! that 12,347,222/365 = 33,828 years worth of sunlight just to melt the ICE! Somebody please show me my error, because I can't believe even a climatologist with a PhD. could seriously consider the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland melting within the time the remaining before the next Ice-age.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[OldHawk777]

Don't Worry Be Happy Humans are near extinction. Next the Planet of the Mice?

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[dr2chase]

Checking your work:

(data from wikipedia)
earth radius = 6371km = 6.4e6m
pi r^2 = 1.3e14m^2 (flat disk, presented to sun, deals with cosine off the equator)
sunlight at surface = 1e3W/m^2 (perpindicular to sun, smaller than your number, which was top of atmosphere)

I get more watts -- 1.3e14 x 1e3 = 1.3e17

(data from wikipedia)
ice mass numbers look right.
l/km is right.
heat of fusion is right

9.6e25 / 1.3e17 = 740,000,000 s = 205,000 h = 23y

So it's not necessarily constrained to be millennia-slow. Three cheers for showing work.

The issue from the Hansen papers I have read (I cite them somewhere else in the pile of comments on this thread) is that it appears that the ice sheets did enter the ocean (if not melt) rapidly in the past, because the sea level appears to have risen at a rate of several meters per century. He acknowledges that the exact mechanism of this occurring is unknown and the scale of the event is boggling (and thus, his hair is on fire on this issue). The hypothesis is that the ice need not passively melt; surface melt could supply water at the bottom and accelerate glacier movement. Ice sheets (believed to be slowing glacier flow by being in the way) could thin and become unstuck from the ocean floor, and the glaciers "run" off the land masses. Once the ice is floating in the ocean, it raises the sea level. Hansen also notes that there is a rate of iceberg formation that is self-limiting -- if you dump enough bergs in the ocean, it will become locally cooled. I had not realized quite how much energy would be needed to melt that ice; we might indeed get "change", not warming, on the scale of several decades.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[wiedzmin]

Alright, can't wait for my downtown condo to become beach-side property :)

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[budgenator]

Thanks, the numbers I got were insane, still 23 years worth of planetary insolation is still a lot of energy

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[riverat1]

Yeah, I know. Don't feed the trolls.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[dr2chase]

It occurred to me that there is an equivalently large shitpile of energy stored in the oceans. 1.3e9 km^3, versus 3e7 for the ice caps. If the energy to melt the ice caps came from the ocean, (I think, 60 cal/gm is heat of fusion, right?) we get about 1.5 degree C of ocean cooling. So if the glaciers filled the oceans with icebergs, there would be heat available to melt them.

At least, I think that's right.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[pixelpusher220]

What opinion? Everything I stated is iron clad fact.

Perhaps you could say this is opinion "It's going to have very significant effects even if it was released naturally/normally." but that's mostly just saying when you radically alter a system, the system is going to react to that change.

So what exactly are you saying is opinion?

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[DarthVain]

As my drunken Geography Professor used to like to say: "When the ice in your rum and coke (alternative ending was whiskey/soda) melts, does the volume of your drink change? NO!" I always thought he said it rather sadly...

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[sonicmerlin]

Sigh... you're actually right. I hate American baby-boomers.

Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get

[dr2chase]

Dammit, I did the math again, and I am getting a different number now. I can see where we fence-posted an exponent in the ice volume calculation. That gets us to 2.3y. I also used the actual density of ice (lower than 1) and your estimate of top-of-atmosphere, not mine of bottom, and that cuts it all the way down to 1.9, but my second go round gives 1.4 years.

So don't go quoting this to anyone else quite yet, we might want to do a 3rd round of checking.

Radius of earth, r = 6.4 × 106 m

Size of illuminated disk = PI × r2 = 1.3 × 1014 m2

Sunlight at top of atmosphere = 1366 W/m2

Continuous solar watts, p = 1366 W/m2 × 1.3 × 1014 m2 = 1.8 × 1017 W

Solar energy per year = p × seconds/year = 1.8 × 1017 × 3.15 × 107 = 5.6 × 1024 J

Volume of Greenland and Antarctic ice caps = 29 × 106 km3 = 29 × 1015 m3 = 29 × 1018 l

Weight of ice caps = 0.92 kg/l × 29 × 1018 l = 2.4 × 1019 kg

Heat to melt the ice caps = 333.55 × 103 J/kg × 2.4 × 1019 kg = 8 × 1024J

Years of total solar power received by earth required to melt the ice caps =
8 × 1024J / 5.6 × 1024 J = 1.4 year

Don't panic.

[Loopy]

Note the large, friendly letters.

Question seems to be, has this ever happened before? If it has, how would we know?

Re:Don't panic.

[LostCluster]

Maybe it happened around the end of the Ice Age... which is exactly the problem here. Ice melting and dumping into the ocean will trigger a chain reaction.

Re:Don't panic.

[ae1294]

which is exactly the problem here. Ice melting and dumping into the ocean will trigger a chain reaction.

and the earth will go supercritical.

Re:Don't panic.

[artor3]

Important addendum to the question:

Has this ever happened before? If so, what were the effects?

You seem to be implying that this might not be a problem because it could have happened before without us noticing. Maybe you're right. Or maybe it happened hundreds of thousands of years ago and caused some massive flooding that wasn't necessarily significant in an uncivilized world, but would be bad news for places like NYC.

I agree it would be foolish to panic, but we should investigate what the effects of this might be, and how to best mitigate them if they are unpleasant.

Re:Don't panic.

[sincewhen]

No, that is not the question.

The question is, what could happen, how likely is it, and how would it affect us.

I don't know if you are being a denier, but I'm now getting more tired of hearing from the "I don't have to care if it's Nature" crowd as I am from the "Oh no we are hurting Gaia, humans deserve to die out" crowd.

Why can't we all agree that shit is happening and we should investigate what to do about it?

Re:Don't panic.

[Rockoon]

The gyre appears to indicate that the ice is becoming thin enough over the Arctic Ocean that the wind is beginning to affect the motion of water under the ice.

I'm quite certain that not only has this not happened before, its not happening now. The summary must not state what the article states, because wind is not magical stuff that teleports through ice in order to transfer its momentum to water underneath it.

Re:Don't panic.

[sdguero]

Or maybe it happened in 2001, since the only started monitoring this in 2002 when the new satellite went online.

Re:Don't panic.

[artor3]

I don't even need to read the article to recognize the flaw in your thinking.

Wind blows water in the parts of the ocean not covered by ice. That water pushes on other water, which is under ice. Tada! Wind affects water under the ice, no magic required!

Re:Don't panic.

[spud603]

Thank you. Regardless of the origin of the changes to the climate, they are real and potentially devastating. If they are largely caused by our behavior, then maybe we can help mitigate by changing our behavior asap. But that doesn't change the fact that we'll all want to figure out something to do about the changes as they're already being realized.

Re:Don't panic.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Why can't we all agree that shit is happening and we should investigate what to do about it?

Because it has become an article of nigh-religious faith among a large number of otherwise rational people to insist that it's not happening, or if it happening it's not our fault, or even if it is happening and it's our fault there's nothing we can do about it. Sometimes all three at once. As the saying goes, "You can't reason people out of a position they didn't reason themselves into."

Re:Don't panic.

[Radworker]

Put the gun down and call the suicide hotline.

Re:Don't panic.

[Tenebrousedge]

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question473.htm

The main ice covered landmass is Antarctica at the South Pole, with about 90 percent of the world's ice (and 70 percent of its fresh water). Antarctica is covered with ice an average of 2,133 meters (7,000 feet) thick. If all of the Antarctic ice melted, sea levels around the world would rise about 61 meters (200 feet). But the average temperature in Antarctica is -37ÂC, so the ice there is in no danger of melting. In fact in most parts of the continent it never gets above freezing.

At the other end of the world, the North Pole, the ice is not nearly as thick as at the South Pole. The ice floats on the Arctic Ocean. If it melted sea levels would not be affecteÂd.

There is a significant amount of ice covering Greenland, which would add another 7 meters (20 feet) to the oceans if it melted. Because Greenland is closer to the equator than Antarctica, the temperatures there are higher, so the ice is more likely to melt.

The numbers here are likely to be more accurate:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/spmsspm-c-15-magnitudes-of.html

The complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the West Antarctic ice sheet would lead to a contribution to sea-level rise of up to 7 m and about 5 m, respectively [Working Group I Fourth Assessment 6.4, 10.7; Working Group II Fourth Assessment 19.3].

Yet another source: http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/sea_level.html

Antarctica and Greenland, the world's largest ice sheets, make up the vast majority of the Earth's ice. If these ice sheets melted entirely, sea level would rise by more than 70 meters.

Your move. Let's see what asshole you pulled this "not more than a foot" number from.

Re:Don't panic.

[riverat1]

Wind also pushes the ice itself which has an effect on the water underneath it. The thinner the ice the easier the wind can push it.

Re:Don't panic.

[ukemike]

Because it has become an article of nigh-religious faith among a large number of otherwise rational people to insist that it's not happening"

I have to object to that "otherwise rational people" bit. Come-on these people are the same evangelical, poor white republican, the rapture is near types that dominate so much of our discourse these days.

Re:Don't panic.

[Loopy]

Is a possible rise in sea level of greater concern than a possible die-off[sic] of a huge swath of sea life? Not sure, thus my question.

I'm also not sure how you extrapolated "denier" or "not happening" from "how would we know" i.e. "what evidence is there of similar past events and how would such evidence inform us?"

Re:Don't panic.

[interkin3tic]

I don't even need to read the article to recognize the flaw in your thinking.

Wait, you mean we're SUPPOSED to be doing that?

All these years... I've been doing it all wrong...

Re:Don't panic.

[crutchy]

to prevent climate change once and for all, simply turn off all the electricity around the world

think of how much heat is generated from voltage down stepping

also, without electricity mass de-urbanization would occur due to lack of refrigeration (people would be forced to move near to where produce is grown) so atmospheric inversion would gradually dissipate, along with reduction of introduction of new vehicles and precision equipment

life expectancy would probably increase due to reduction in stress from lifestyle simplification, healthier diets (more basic vegetables and unprocessed foods) and increased exercise due to reduction in availability of petroleum products for vehicles

world dominance would gradually shift from modern centers of civilization to the third world due to their reduced dependence on electricity

there would be wide scale civil unrest in large centers of population dependent on electricity, and starvation, murder and suicide would be rampant until a sustainable population density is reached

the world would become a much bigger place again

Re:Don't panic.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Well, yeah, there are lots of those too. But I know a frightening number of people, whom I know to be quite intelligent and quite rational in most ways, who just turn into propaganda-spouting loons on this subject.

Re:Don't panic.

[Tastecicles]

I did.

Lady on the other end shot herself.

Re:Don't panic.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Thanks for providing me with Exhibit A for my argument, Coward -- although in keeping with ukemike's observation, you're probably not one of the ones who's rational under normal circumstances.

Re:Don't panic.

[burnetd]

Great, where is it? I'll advise all the coastal refugees to move there.

Re:Don't panic.

[Splab]

Wauw, are you really *that* stupid?

You want us to go back to preindustrialization and believe we will live longer and better?

We live longer due to better medical help, we have better medical help because of things like electricity - try mass producing the medicine needed to sustaine our lifespans without electricity...

Re:Don't panic.

[chichilalescu]

I agree with most of your points, except the one about life expectancy. if you move everyone to the countryside and forbid electricity, you also go back to at most medicine before the first world war. probably even before that. so life expectancy will decrease.

Re:Don't panic.

[Attila Dimedici]

That would work, except that life expectancy would decrease without electricity. First, as someone else point out, getting rid of electricity would do away with most modern medicine (without electrcity you could not manufacture most modern medicine). Additionally, getting rid of electricity would reduce the amount of food we as humans are able to produce, which would lead to famine. So, if we got rid of electricity, that would reduce the human population drastically. Oh and there would be no world dominance. Of course if any effort was made to maintain industrialization in the absence of electricity it would mean a significant increase in other pollutants as the harnessing of electricity allowed humans to reduce the pollution generated by their industrial plants.

Re:Don't panic.

[makomk]

How many of them are economic libertarians though? There seems to be a lot of them in the geek community and they pretty much all insist on denying that global warming exists because their economic ideology is completely and utterly unable to deal with it - it's a symptom of a bigger problem with their underlying beliefs, not just a case of them being unexpectedly irrational about one topic.

Re:Don't panic.

[dr2chase]

That's flat backwards. You want to convert MORE to electricity, because that gives you the flexibility to get energy from hydro, geothermal, wind, solar, tidal, burning biomass, battery storage, orbiting solar collectors, traditional nukes, thorium nukes, and (if it ever works) fusion, and (if it ever works) "clean coal" (meaning, sequestered CO2). Everything else follows from how-do-we-get-there and what-are-the-economics.

Re:Don't panic.

[dr2chase]

Don't forget, "and shit will be better ANYWAY".

Re:Don't panic.

[Wulfrunner]

Is a possible rise in sea level of greater concern than a possible die-off[sic] of a huge swath of sea life? Not sure, thus my question.

A die-off of marine life could lead to more severe long-term consequences if the oxygen balance of the ocean is sufficiently disrupted. There has been research and speculation on oceanic anoxic events suggesting that anaerobic bacteria, specifically sulphate reducers that normally live in sea-floor sediments, could gradually migrate towards the surface as environmental conditions became more hospitable for them (i.e. less oxygen in the water). If you're really interested, you'd find some interesting reading by Googling "Permian Triassic". Here's a couple of quick teasers to get you started.

Re:Don't panic.

[Xoltri]

So tell me exactly how life expectancy would increase with wide scale civil unrest, starvation, murder and suicide.

Re:Don't panic.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

And here we have Exhibit B. Wow, you guys just keep it coming.

Re:Don't panic.

[pixelpusher220]

Completely false. Sea levels rise 'naturally' as sediment runs into the oceans. This is usually measured in a few inches per century.

We're now looking at meters per century with the additional land ice melting.

Re:Don't panic.

[pixelpusher220]

re: libertarians

I always love how they tout Ron Paul's fanatical base of 'young' supporters...yet never question that since he's been running this schtick for 30 years, shouldn't some of his supports be 'old' now?

It's almost as if they get older and wiser and see what a loon he really is :)

Re:Don't panic.

[Terwin]

Obviously life would just *seem* longer.
No electronic games, toiling sun up to sun down, staying up all night to keep watch for hostiles who want the fruits of your labor, watching baby after baby die from lack of food, clean water or medicine, burying 3/4 of your children before they get to be of marriageable age(this would go back down to 14-15, possibly younger).

Sure you won't actually live as long, but look at all of those experiences you will have to make it *seem* like unending drudgery!

No more of this 'time flies when you are having fun', unless perhaps you enjoy watching your pa cut the head off that chicken that got too old to lay eggs so you can watch it run around spurting blood everywhere.

Re:Don't panic.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Right, I forgot about that one. "We'll all just move to Siberia and northern Canada!"

Re:Don't panic.

[crutchy]

i care as much about human life as most other humans, including yourself no doubt (though I’m sure you would do your best to put yourself on some kind of moral pedestal)

Re:Don't panic.

[crutchy]

i said turn off electricity, not pretend like it never existed... moron

we live longer due to medical help, but increases in life expectancy are mainly due to some key discoveries like penicillin, increased access to healthcare professionals, and increased awareness of the causes of common ailments, none of which require electricity

much of the need for more advanced medical technology has come about because of the things i already mentioned (environmental effects of industrialization and urbanization), amongst others like smoking, binge drinking, drugs, lack of exercise, poor diet, foreign diseases (international travel and shipping, and deforestation), etc.

you'll no doubt disagree, but whatever...

Re:Don't panic.

[crutchy]

knowledge already gained with the benefits of electricity need not be forgotten if electricity is turned off

21st century medicine is required for 21st century health problems

Re:Don't panic.

[crutchy]

it would increase after the population reached a sustainable level, with those remaining being the ones that got off their fat lazy asses to fend for themselves... survival of the fittest

by the way, I’m not advocating turning off electricity... i enjoy a good bickering on /. as much as the next geek, and I’m definitely not a tree-hugging bong-smoking hippie environmentalist

it's brought out some entertaining (if predictable) responses though

Re:Don't panic.

[crutchy]

actually you wouldn't see anything cos your TV wouldn't work any more... bye bye CNN

Re:Don't panic.

[crutchy]

fair enough... maybe what i meant was "help to prevent further climate change due to human industrial activity"... dude, read between the lines. I’m not your fucking 2nd grade teacher, and you're not mine either.

and how do you know climate change has been going on that long? have you gone back in time 4 billion years ago and planted data loggers to measure climate metrics and then dug them up recently to plot the trend? you may be right, and it seems logical (i personally doubt that humanity will do any long term damage to the earth), but just because some discovery channel doco says something doesn't necessarily make it true.

my opinion of the "global warming/climate change" debate is more relevant on a localized scale, such as in heavily populated regions (eastern seaboard of US, Europe, India, China, Mexico City, etc) where atmospheric inversion due to pollutants (not just excessive levels of CO2, but CO, NOx, and SOx) has become a major problem.

the whole climate change bandwagon was started by wealthy power brokers who were afraid that acid rain might damage the paint on their Bentleys

Re:Don't panic.

[Xoltri]

'Survival of the fittest' became largely irrelevant in humans once we became capable of passing complex information between individuals and generations. Survival of the fittest still exists, but it's not in the individual organism but rather in the ideas, societal structure, and technological innovations that we devise that helps improve us as a species. For reading on this topic you might as well go to the source and read 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins.

The argument that we'd all be better off if we were forced to compete in some grand primitive indirect battle to the death is a really tired one. I'm not sure why people cling to it so much, maybe it's because they think they would come out on top. But truthfully, I'm happy that we've (mostly) left this part of our history and progressed to longer life spans and comfortable lifestyles. It's easy to sit in your comfortable chair and type on your computer that costs more than most people live off of for an entire year and spout nonsense like this. But if you were in some country where you were not so fortunate, and people around you were dying of simple diseases, and you were actually experiencing the process of 'natural selection', you might have a very different opinion.

Re:Don't panic.

[crutchy]

i mostly agree with you (except about the nonsense bit of course). it seems rather obvious that my outlook and attitude would be different if i were living in less fortunate circumstances, but you're still welcome to highlight it.

I don't think we would be "better off" fighting it out, but if electricity was turned off, particularly in modern nations that depend on it, citizens would mostly be ill-prepared and unable to cope, so would likely resort to primitive instinctual behavior.

Most people wouldn't normally even contemplate looting to acquire food, but if you're starving and there are ten other people vying for the same can of food, regardless of how moral you are in your cozy chair now, there is a good chance you would be doing as much harm as necessary to the other people to get that can of food (even if those other people were little kids or women).

Refer to Maslow's hierarchy of needs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

The alternatives would be starving to death, suicide, or looking elsewhere, but in a situation where you were only one of millions of starving people, your outlook would be pretty hopeless.

People already living in impoverished countries are much more adapted to a lifestyle without an abundance of convenient food. These people do have a lower life expectancy, but from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Regional_variations it is apparently primarily due to diseases like malaria and HIV. There is no cure for HIV (that I'm aware of), but it's more under control in modern countries more due to higher level of education and simple measures like use of condoms/diaphragms or barrier creams/ointments than advanced medical technology. Our education of STDs is the best weapon against these diseases; if you know someone is infected with HIV, you don't have unprotected sex with them (if you're unaware of the risks of HIV, you're more likely to have unprotected sex with them anyway, regardless of availability of contraception).

Malaria is transmitted by the mosquito, so elimination of stagnant water, physical barriers (cloth or nets) etc can reduce the chance of infection, but if you're unfamiliar with this (as is likely the case in poor countries with little/no education), you're risk of infection increases. If the level of education in poorer countries was equivalent to that in countries like Australia or the US, the life expectancy in poorer countries would increase (even without electricity).

You're idea of a grand primitive battle is also a bit extraneous. Not everyone strives for the highest living standard possible. Many people aim to improve their standard of living to some extent, but I don't think its any sort of battle. Most people are quite used to living within their means and they are comfortable with that. People who aren't used to having electricity are unlikely to die from their lack of it, and even those that are used to having electricity who all of a sudden lose it are at most likely to suffer some level of withdrawal similar to any addiction.

Even with our advanced medical technology, unfit people still suffer. Medicine may be able to keep them alive, but many of our medicines are merely treatments for which the primary purpose has little to do with helping those who need them. The entire modern medicinal industry revolves around profit (duh!). There are possibly cures to some diseases but it would be much more profitable to market treatments that must be taken regularly for life than to offer some one off cure. I would go so far as to say that some modern bugs may have either been manufactured or at least artificially spread to establish a broad market for their treatment. You might think that no company could ever get away with such a thing, especially in the mighty home of the free, but "freedom" can also be used for evil, and i

Re:Rubbish from alarmists!!!

[Forty Two Tenfold]

The fresh water can freeze faster than the salt water, so it will freeze back in a few months.

Yeah. Especially that it's winter now. And for the rest of the year the Arctic is going to get warmer if anything.

Mistake

[Tablizer]

Earth is a "he". Who knew?

Re:Mistake

[omnichad]

With the size of the earth, that's a rather absurdly small phallus.

Re:Rubbish from alarmists!!!

[LostCluster]

Citation needed.

Re:Rubbish from alarmists!!!

[halfEvilTech]

The freezing point of seawater is about 28.4F (-2C), instead of the 32F (0C) freezing point of ordinary water.
http://www.onr.navy.mil/focus/ocean/water/temp3.htm

Re:Rubbish from alarmists!!!

[icebike]

Fresh water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius and seawater water freezes at about -2 degrees C, therefore more freshwater would equal more ice formation.
4th grade science.

Crap. I'm running behind......

[dbreeze]

I'm way behind schedule on my plans to gather everything up and git my ass to the mountains before it all goes to hell. Anyone interested in swapping some land up the hill a ways for some coastal Carolina soon to be beachfront property?

Re:Crap. I'm running behind......

[dbreeze]

Don't tempt me. You been to Pender County lately?

Thermohaline

[Anonymous Coward]

Read more about the thermo-haline cycle on Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation.

Yeah, but.

[The Askylist]

I'll only start worrying if this gyre starts to gimble in the wabe.

Re:Yeah, but.

[LordLucless]

Or if there's a falconer in the middle of it.

Re:Yeah, but.

[caitsith01]

If only we'd listened to Al Gore and brought along our vorpal blade.

Re:Yeah, but.

[Anonymous Coward]

I didnt understand that at all! - Do I need to hand in my geek card?

Re:Yeah, but.

[Frequency Domain]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky

Re:Yeah, but.

[Ruke]

Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. =(

Pfffft

[Tablizer]

Bulges are a liberal myth. True Americans don't have any bulges.

Re:Meh...

[nedlohs]

Because sea level is the only that matters in the world?

And fresh water ice cubes floating in a glass of salt water will change the level of the water when they melt. By an insignificant amount, but still a tiny bit.

Disaster porn

[ztexas]

This is giving me a huge bulge of my own. How long until New York freezes over like in The Day After Tomorrow?

Blame Russia

[WillAffleckUW]

According to recent research, a large quantity of Russian rivers that flow North are dumping unusually high amounts of fresh water into the Arctic Ocean.

Either that or Dick Cheney cause it's all due to Global Warming.

Level is not the danger

[tizan]

It is the breaking of the well established currents.
More water in the system will destroy some of the well established ocean currents that drives the weather on the planet and have caused some stability for the last 15000 years or so.

Re:Level is not the danger

[Locutus]

sorry, no MOD points but what you said is the key. I just posted above too.

LoB

Re:Level is not the danger

[Surt]

They may have thrived during those times. The concern now is that there are too many people living along the coasts to be accommodated inland. When those people are displaced, there seems to be no choice but to have a major die back event. This was not true in the Medieval Warming Period. Nor, as far as I've heard, did the warming period then last long enough to cause the sea level rise that is expected now.

Re:Level is not the danger

[d3ac0n]

Of course there is. It's readily available for those who look. Start here and then spend some time over at wattsupwiththat.com. More scientific evidence than you can shake a hockey stick at.

Most of it shows that most of the globe was warmer about 700 years ago, and it was pretty damn awesome. More arable land everywhere (warmer AND wetter climate) generally milder weather patterns, and an extended growing season allowed civilization to flourish. Good times.

Unfortunately, it's looking like we are actually heading into an extended cooling period until roughly 2068 or thereabouts. In a way, I almost wish that AGW was true. I'd have more hope for our future. If things progress the way that the evidence shows, pack a parka. You'll need it.

Re:Level is not the danger

[Jeremi]

I guess you have never seen west Texas... And for that matter, lots of other places currently not very nice to live in that will be much nicer in a warmer and wetter world.

Perhaps the climate will be nicer in those places... but that pleasantness will be largely cancelled out by the presence of all the desperate refugees with no more houses to live in or food to eat.

It takes a lot of time and money to (re)build a coastal city, and it's not like you can just pick up the city's buildings and move them all whenever the coastline moves.

Re:Level is not the danger

[Surt]

That misses the point. What happens in the US will be largely irrelevant when india and china go nuclear because millions of people are trying to cross the borders.

Re:Level is not the danger

[TapeCutter]

I really wish people would stop panicking over what amounts to very little.

And I really wish people would stop digging up the rotting corpses of long dead talking points.

Re:Level is not the danger

[Mindcontrolled]

Watts and "scientific evidence" in one sentence? You owe me a new keyboard. Thanks, though - no better way to start the day in the office than with a good laugh.

Re:Level is not the danger

[mjwx]

then spend some time over at wattsupwiththat.com

Then report for a full frontal lobotomy, you'll come out of the operation with a higher IQ then you'd get from reading anything written by Anthony Watts.

Re:Level is not the danger

[Jane Q. Public]

See the reply below.

Re:Level is not the danger

[Jane Q. Public]

Yes, scientific evidence. You seem to forget that not everything that is posted or linked to on WattsUpWithThat originated with Anthony Watts. They post some very good information by reputable scientists, among them Prof. WibjÃrn Karlén, who collaborated with the folks at CRU on at least 4 papers that I know of, and probably more. (One paper was on tree-ring proxies, for example.) He knows his stuff.

Karlén, and very definitely others, have a fine reputation in the science world, thank you very much. If you don't think so, then you must believe the people at CRU are themselves idiots, to collaborate on a climate paper with some kind of fool, eh?

And yet Karlén, among other people, have found some very severe faults with the data that was cherry-picked for IPCC reports, for example. Watts himself, with a collaborator, was responsible for finding flaws in the statistical methods used by the Hadley Centre, CRU, and Mann in their research. Flaws that have been continued to be questioned by every body that has investigated their operations to date.

Yeah, there's science there, all right. Real science.

Re:Level is not the danger

[Jane Q. Public]

Slashdot needs to change the default character set for its pages. They really should know better. But until they do, names like Wibjorn Karlen (English-ifiied spelling) simply won't show up properly.

Re:Level is not the danger

[dkf]

I guess you have never seen west Texas... And for that matter, lots of other places currently not very nice to live in that will be much nicer in a warmer and wetter world.

Do you want to bet the farm (literally) on that? We don't know what will happen in specific locations as global average temperatures rise (though it's a reasonably good bet that arctic areas will get warmer). If an area that currently supports many people gets a lot less hospitable — unreasonable to assume that this wouldn't happen somewhere, though not necessarily where we expect — there will have to be mass migrations (and/or mass deaths). That would likely involve at least one war. Or maybe a part of the world that currently produces a lot of food would suddenly become less able to do so. That would also be very bad. Will these things happen? Who knows, but the stakes are mind-bogglingly high.

Climate scientists are kicking up a fuss over global warming not because they hate big business (though some do) but rather because they are, as a group, very scared of the consequences of what they've discovered. They'd love for this to be not true, they'd love for it to go away, but they're too honest to pretend that it will without action.

Re:Level is not the danger

[AlterEager]

Watts himself, with a collaborator, was responsible for finding flaws in the statistical methods used by the Hadley Centre, CRU, and Mann in their research

Citation needed.

Re:Level is not the danger

[AlterEager]

This isn't f**cking Wikipedia. But if you insist that somebody do your homework for you, look up "Wegman Report" and read the intro and conclusion, if you don't want to wade through all the rest.And guess who found those flaws in tse statistical methods in the first place (as credited by Wegman and others since)? Why, it was none other than Anthony Watts.

Bwahahhahahha.

Re:Level is not the danger

[khallow]

Why would that happen? And why would it be worse than the usual proposed solution of radical restructuring of global energy infrastructure?

Re:Level is not the danger

[Surt]

It would happen because both of those countries are packed much more densely with people than is the US, and they both have large numbers (many millions) living in coastal areas that will be under water. When they have to move or drown, they have nowhere to go but into their neighbors. Try to imagine how the US might respond if the rate of mexican illegal immigrants went from a half million per year to a half million per day.

And it would be worse than restructuring global energy infrastructure because a nuclear exchange between china and india will send worldwide food production into the toilet (among other reasons it will suck).

Re:Level is not the danger

[khallow]

and they both have large numbers (many millions) living in coastal areas that will be under water. When they have to move or drown, they have nowhere to go but into their neighbors.

They plenty of land that is more than a few meters above sea level. And why would refugees flee to another country that suffers from the same problem?

And it would be worse than restructuring global energy infrastructure because a nuclear exchange between china and india will send worldwide food production into the toilet (among other reasons it will suck).

Why is a nuclear exchange between these two countries more likely with global warming than with radical carbon dioxide emission reduction?

Re:Level is not the danger

[pixelpusher220]

Except that arable land doesn't move with the change in temperatures. It's still non-arable land that is now warmer and wetter. It takes quite a bit of time to make it productive...and much longer than the hunger of 200 million people who just moved there.

Re:Level is not the danger

[tp1024]

Nope. It is breaking the currents that were observed from 1995 until the early 2000's, then entering a new regime until today. Beyond that, no such observations exist due to lack of suitable satellite data.This is research, not theology.

Re:Level is not the danger

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Ever wonder if that's what China is doing building all those huge empty cities far inland?

Re:Level is not the danger

[Jane Q. Public]

And so? What do you think is funny? Please be specific.

Do you think the Wegman report has been "discredited" simply because it appears to have some "borrowed" descriptions of evidence? Not so. It is the validity of the math and the conclusions that matter.

Do you think the statistics used by the CRU crew are "okay"? If so, why did EVERY actual investigation find problems with it?

Seriously, I'd like to know what you find funny. You asked for support of real science, you got it.

"Funny" is trying to pawn bad research with bad math off on the public. For that you can thank Mann, Bradley, Hughes, et al.

Re:Level is not the danger

[Surt]

They don't have plenty of land. Unlike the US, they have basically all usable land in use. People will cross boundaries in both directions because they are panicked, and just running from the trouble.

Nuclear exchange is more likely in this scenario because of the territorial violations.

Re:Level is not the danger

[budgenator]

this Chinese study shows that in Central Eastern Tibet the MWP was at least as warm as today.

Re:Level is not the danger

[khallow]

They don't have plenty of land. Unlike the US, they have basically all usable land in use. People will cross boundaries in both directions because they are panicked, and just running from the trouble

. So you're claiming that people from India and China are going to scale the Himalayas so that they can have the same problem on the other side? I don't buy it. We also ignore here that global warming is a gradual scenario not something that happens overnight and that there is considerable higher elevation land on both sides. They can pack more people in the large land areas they have.

Re:Level is not the danger

[mjwx]

And guess who found those flaws in tse statistical methods in the first place (as credited by Wegman and others since)? Why, it was none other than Anthony Watts.

When no-one else can find the same flaws, the flaws themselves tend to be fallacious.

Anthony Watts is no scientist, he was a TV weatherman. The best evidence he found out of the IPCC report is a few typo's.

Re:Level is not the danger

[houstonbofh]

It takes a lot of time and money to (re)build a coastal city, and it's not like you can just pick up the city's buildings and move them all whenever the coastline moves.

You can move them up... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice

Re:Level is not the danger

[Jane Q. Public]

"When no-one else can find the same flaws, the flaws themselves tend to be fallacious."

Hahahaha! Now it's my turn to laugh.

Everyone has found the same flaws. You haven't been paying attention. EVERY team that has investigated CRU and friends in regard to their research, including University of East Anglia itself, Wegman, Penn State, and the British House of Commons, ALL called them on their shoddy statistical methods. They worded it mildly, but it was included in each of those reports, make no mistake.

And Watts was the first one to point it out. In fact Wegman was assigned to investigate by the U.S. Senate, who had gotten wind of Watts' findings. So it was a direct result of good old Anthony Watts. And the Wegman report concluded that Watts' criticisms were valid. It says so in the report, in so many words.

"Anthony Watts is no scientist, he was a TV weatherman."

And Einstein was a patent clerk. So f*king what? That means absolutely nothing. You are committing the logical fallacy of "appeal to authority". It is possible for a non-scientist to call a scientist on shoddy methods. It happens all the time. He -- and I, and a great many people who are not University researchers -- know enough about statistics to know when somebody is playing fast and loose with them, regardless of whether they are "scientists" or not. And in fact, that's part of the point: they made mistakes (if we assume they were really mistakes), BECAUSE they are climate researchers, and not statisticians. But that doesn't excuse them for not verifying their methods with some actual professionals before publishing.

"The best evidence he found out of the IPCC report is a few typo's."

Again, you haven't been paying attention. Most of the stuff on the WUWT website does not come from Watts himself. It may be that he didn't find flaws with the IPCC reports himself, but he certainly did report about other people who did. Respectable and reputable scientists, no less. As I already told you.

Re:Level is not the danger

[AlterEager]

Do you think the Wegman report has been "discredited" simply because it appears to have some "borrowed" descriptions of evidence?

No, I think it is crap.

The fact that parts of it are cut'n'pasted from Wikipedia is mere icing on the cake.

It's padded with crazy "references" like this "Valentine, Tom (1987) “Magnetics may hold key to ozone layer problems,” Magnets, 2(1) 18-26.". The only thing it's missing the the Iron Sun.

It also doesn't cite Watts - why do you think he had anything to do with it?

Re:Level is not the danger

[Jane Q. Public]

Pardon me. You got me there. I was confusing Watts and a friend of his with McIntyre and McKitrick. They were the ones who originally brought up the famous "critiques" of CRU's statistics. However, Watts did feature that on his site, which was the original point: Watt does not need to be a scientist himself to reference scientific material. McIntyre and McKitrick are not "climate scientists" either, but their criticisms of the statistics have been repeatedly confirmed to be valid. Up to and including, as I stated earlier, by every one of the official direct investigations that have been made to date.

"The fact that parts of it are cut'n'pasted from Wikipedia is mere icing on the cake."

What relevance does that have? See, this is the problem with your "scientific" arguments: you aren't making any.

Instead you pick on him for a weird reference, reputed plagiarism, etc. which are completely irrelevant to the arguments and conclusions about the statistics, which are the heart and purpose of the paper.

It's nothing but indirect ad hominem argument. That is to say, it's ridiculous. You aren't addressing any of the actual ISSUES raised in the paper. If you have something to say about the statistics, then say so. Otherwise, you're just blowing hot air.

To put it a different way: since you obviously can't refute the actual technical points made in the paper, you choose to pick on it in other ways, including an obscure reference. Which, by the way, was a paper dealing with magnetic effects of solar radiation on the upper atmosphere, which is a real phenomenon. If somebody is going to pick on the reference, maybe they should obtain a copy first, and tell us all about how ridiculous the actual paper is, rather than scoffing at the title alone?

Re:OK, I believe, but where do I put my money?

[gatkinso]

Wealth will be measured using much different metrics.

Like how many canoes you own.

Re:OK, I believe, but where do I put my money?

[anubi]

Into yourself.

Acquire knowledge and tools.

And it begins!

[codepunk]

It's true the world is doomed it is 2012.

Re:Day After Tomorrow

[wierd_w]

What happened in that movie was that the resulting super hurricane created an enormous low pressure cell which pulled extremely low temperature upper atmospheric air down to the surface.

This does not seem to contradict some observed "fossil" data, which shows mammoths frozen solid with food in their mouths. (Sorry, can't find a suitable citation. Most reports of this finding are from old field journals in the 1600s to 1800s.)

(Word 'fossil' in quotes, since subjects are not actually fossils, but chryopreserved corpses.)

I don't know if a reversal of the north atlantic current would do what was depicted in that movie, but there is evidence of previous cataclysmic and sudden climatological events in earth's history.

Personally, I prefer to think that if anthopogenic co2 is not responsible, it certainly can't be helping things any given what we do know. Eg, if you are genetically type 1 diabetic, eating super fatty foods and becoming obiese doesn't help you very much, and can compound the problem. (Because then you get type 2 on top of the type 1.)

We can control the amount of co2 that mankind releases, and not so much what nature releases with volcanism, etc. As such, if we are to try to mitigate the problem, anthropogenic sources are the first target of interest regardless of ideological position on the matter. (Unless you choose to ignore over a century's worth of scientific inquiry into the greenhouse gas nature of that particular compound.....) limiting and attempting marked reductions in such emissions would undeniably be a good thing, in terms of postponing a hypothetical carbon dioxide cascade scenario from occuring. (The arguments over source just limits how effective such measures might prove to be. If most of the problem is anthropogenic, such reduction could postpone indefinately, and if the bulk is natural, we might just stave if off a few decades. Something to consider when chosing to blame nature for this problem, as the implication is far more dire in the long term. Regardlss, limiting the rate using the variable we *can* control is simply a good idea, given the currently available information.)

I can't think of any other potential driving factor for such extreme climate changes without including major greenhouse gasses, such as co2, methane, and water vapor.

The cessation of the north atlantic current would deffinately change the weather in europe and north america, since warm, moisture rich air wouldn't get pushed to europe (europe would get much colder and drier) and cold, nutrient rich north ocean water wouldn't make its way into the caribbean, greatly impacting the food chain in that region, among other things.

The impact on climate, though, is dependant upon how long the current is suspended, the outcomes of snowfall in suddenly much chillier areas altering wind patterns, and the amount of water vapor staying in the atmosphere from equatorial regions taking over/enhancing the effects of co2 levels.

I don't know if the cessation of the NA Current would initiate a chain reaction or not, but it certainly would decimate many human industries, ranging from fishing to farming. That alone makes it a "bad thing" worth worrying about.

doh.

[unity100]

Right. The Greenland glaciers melting may be bad. Now, would you so kindly tell me how a fresh water plume will affect glaciers ON LAND?

noone would need to tell you what will result when that happens - if you had used your brain to think this more than just 2-3 seconds.

freshwater plume forming means that there is some source that is supplying that freshwater. freshwater, therefore, will grow unless the current trend changes. and when it grows, it is going to affect EVERYthing in that ecosystem. especially arctic is populated and dependent on endless plankton that would not take the transition from salt water to fresh water well. ALL of these creatures and the higher ones are parts of the climate there with their activity and byproducts. and when the sea gets affected with that ecosystem change, it will also affect the land microclimate.

Finally, I thought it was CO2 from our SUV's and coal fired plants causing glaciers to melt. Now it's fresh water?

so, in light of the above, just stop posing funky statements without thinking for a few seconds.

there is no easily detectable dynamic of CLIMATE CHANGE. the climate, will change with average global warming. other than the measurable average global warming of a mere 1-3 degrees - which is so pathetic a difference in daily life that you would not feel it by the way - it is a totally chaotic system ; because the average 1-3 degrees worldwide is the result of all temperature averages averaged worldwide - from minus 50s to high 50s.

there is no telling what will happen to your microclimate in your locale as the globe warms up on average. you may remain unaffected, or get hit by freak weather or conditions.

Re:doh.

[ArcherB]

noone would need to tell you what will result when that happens - if you had used your brain to think this more than just 2-3 seconds.

freshwater plume forming means that there is some source that is supplying that freshwater. freshwater, therefore, will grow unless the current trend changes.

If you spent less time telling me to thing and more time... you know, reading the F'in article, you would fine the following:

This fresh water is coming in large part from the rivers running off the Eurasian (Russian) side of the Arctic basin.

Winds and currents have transported this fresh water around the ocean until it has been pulled into the gyre. The volume currently held in the circulation probably represents about 10% of all the fresh water in the Arctic.

Note that TFA says NOTHING about global warming or an increase in the amount of water entering the Arctic. What it DOES say is that WIND is bringing more of the water to the area, and the rotating nature of the winds is holding it there.

there is no telling what will happen to your microclimate in your locale as the globe warms up on average. you may remain unaffected, or get hit by freak weather or conditions.

Well, my "microclimate", meaning the southern half of the United States, just spent a summer with temperatures several degrees warmer than usual and we got no more freakish weather than usual. The winter before that was a few degrees colder than normal, and still no hurricanes over land. So, in a single year, I've seen periods warmer than usual and cooler than usual with no freakish behavior. I think we'll be OK with a 1.6 degree increase over the next 100 years.

Re:doh.

[SomeKDEUser]

Maybe. Or maybe there'll be another mass extinction event. Who knows, right? Pretty serious people, whose job it is to study climate, are pretty worried. Maybe you should be, too. Odds are, they know better.

This is in fact not an argument from authority, it is more akin to realising that you can either trust some scientist who has devoted his life to the question, or you can trust the oil industry. It would be better if you could become a climatologist, but specialisation in society means we must trust other people to do the research for us. When someone tells me something which is thermodynamically reasonable, is backed by evidence, is supported by a well established Theory, I tend to believe them.

And so should you.

Re:doh.

[Luckyo]

Worth noting that there is something of a mass extinction event currently ongoing. Cause is humanity, its population explosion and means it's taking to feed it.

If anything, reduction of humanity's livable area is going to stop the this mass extinction event.

Re:doh.

[vik]

And strangely enough, who share the same planet with YOU.

Don't be silly. The experts in the field have found the problem. You're one of the people who denies the problem, and so are not actually in a position to even bother to understand what the problem is.

You too should be worried. Because something bigger than you feel comfortable thinking about may well be about to happen. I have given up trying to change people's minds, and I'm now putting my effort into being able to survive the consequences of the actions of people who think like you. Whatever the possibilities, I think mine is the more prudent course of action.

Re:doh.

[viperidaenz]

I'm not denying anything. I just think a little scepticism isn't always a bad thing. I don't blindly believe something just because someone else tells me its true.

Re:doh.

[unity100]

Well, my "microclimate", meaning the southern half of the United States, just spent a summer with temperatures several degrees warmer than usual and we got no more freakish weather than usual. The winter before that was a few degrees colder than normal, and still no hurricanes over land. So, in a single year, I've seen periods warmer than usual and cooler than usual with no freakish behavior. I think we'll be OK with a 1.6 degree increase over the next 100 years.

yeah, and in contrast, i had a winter as cold as sweden, stockholm, despite i am situated in the mediterranean and this place is known to be 'temperate climate' since the antiquity.

so ? your point ?

Re:doh.

[unity100]

skepticism should go away when the biggest proponents of that skepticism is industries who will be inconvenienced by global warming if it is widely accepted.

Re:doh.

[Jeremi]

Pretty serious people, whose livelyhood depends on grants given to those who have the ability to make others worry, are pretty worried

I understand you can also make a pretty good livelihood getting grants from those who want the idea of global warming to go away. In fact, I think it's safe to say the Chevrons and Exxons of the world will pay your hypothetical opportunistic scientist a lot more than the average University could -- after all, oil companies make a lot more profit, and a lot more to lose if people start taking the issue seriously.

Re:doh.

[unity100]

you are so entirely completely and ridiculously wrong. 1-3 deg C makes a huge huge huge difference. really huge. massive. mass extinctions the likes of which will start a new epoch in the geologic record. that's big, and it is bad news for your current way of life.

i meant he would not feel that difference in temperature in his daily life. it would be unnoticeable if his city got 2 degrees warmer.

actually it is more correct to say that the physics of it contains many poorly understood non-linear parameters than to say it is truly chaotic. [disclaimer for the stupid and easily led: that in no way means that we don't have a very good idea of where the general trends are taking us, even if we haven't figured out all of the fine details yet]

meaning, it is chaotic for us and our measurement, calculation and modeling capabilities.

Re:doh.

[TapeCutter]

Pretty serious people, whose livelyhood depends on grants given to those who have the ability to make others worry, are pretty worried.
I'm not denying anything. I just think a little scepticism isn't always a bad thing.

That's not "scepticism", that's hubris. You're either a parrot or you're simply projecting your lack of morals onto others.

Re:doh.

[TapeCutter]

Chaotic systems can and do have stable statistics. Kick the system and it will find a new "dynamic equilibrium" with a new set of stable statistics. For example it's trivial to determine how long it will take a particular volume of water to reach boiling point (climate), it's impossible to predict when and where the first bubble will appear (weather).

Re:doh.

[Cimexus]

I dunno. I'd certainly notice if where I lived got on average 2 C warmer (~3.5 F warmer). Hell, I've noticed it getting warmer in the 30 years I've already lived here (by ~1 to 1.5 C according to the stats). 2 C can be the difference between frosts and no frosts in areas like mine that only marginally dip below freezing on winter nights. It can be the difference between snowfall and no snowfall in areas that depend on building a snowpack for springtime meltwater (for irrigation etc.)

Or on the flip side, if it's hot, it's the difference between, say, 38 and 40 C (both hot, but I know which one I'd take).

Re:doh.

[tbannist]

Well, my "microclimate", meaning the southern half of the United States, just spent a summer with temperatures several degrees warmer than usual and we got no more freakish weather than usual. The winter before that was a few degrees colder than normal, and still no hurricanes over land. So, in a single year, I've seen periods warmer than usual and cooler than usual with no freakish behavior. I think we'll be OK with a 1.6 degree increase over the next 100 years.

Actually, no. There was a lot of freakish behaviour, I don't know how you are able to ignore it*. More than half of the continental United States was affected by either drought or flood last year, a record level of both. In particular, Texas had the worst drought since they started keeping temperature records. On the flooding side, I saw an article indicating that Atlanta had an estimated 500 year high flood, if a one in 500 years event isn't unusual, I'm not sure what qualified for you. Maybe your community escaped the freakish weather, but there was plenty to go around.

It's not just the U.S. either, for the first time in it's history, most of Canada had a green Christmas. Australia had record setting flooding. In fact there was so much rain and flooding this past year that the evaporation that fuelled the flooding actually lowered the sea level slightly.

* Although my guess would be a combination of Fox News, confirmation bias, and ignorance.

Re:doh.

[khallow]

Pretty serious people, whose livelyhood depends on grants given to those who have the ability to make others worry, are pretty worried. I'm not denying anything. I just think a little scepticism isn't always a bad thing.

That's not "scepticism", that's hubris. You're either a parrot or you're simply projecting your lack of morals onto others.

Onto people with similar moral conflicts. People still don't get why the "climategate" emails were so important. They showed us that the climatologists involved had the moral failings that normal people do. And once that was demonstrated, then we do need to consider the usual ethical problems that normal people have such as conflicts of interest.

Re:doh.

[unity100]

they can have statistics. but you cannot estimate/calculate the state of a certain part of the chaotic system at any given point. you can only observe the system from outside and take its overall statistics.

Re:doh.

[unity100]

if it goes from 9 degrees to 11 degrees, you feel it. but, going from 22 degrees to 24 degrees, you wont feel it much.

Re:doh.

[pixelpusher220]

Believe me, there's literally BILLIONS of dollars just waiting for anyone who can produce results disproving global warming. The oil/coal companies would make said person very very wealthy overnight.

The problem is there isn't any solid evidence disproving it. Hell even scientists do try to disprove it...it's why in the 70s they were worried about global cooling but after more study they determined warming was much more likely. They see new data and adapt too it. As opposed to the climate change deniers who question everything that produced the data when they can't disprove the data itself. Then they go after the people who produced it...

It's called denial for a reason.

Re:doh.

[pixelpusher220]

To be fair having a one 500 year flood every 500 years *isn't* unusual :)

Having 2 or 3 a century would be by definition unusual.

Re:doh.

[hoboroadie]

I used to think that with a different approach, the Fools could be educated and Life on Earth would improve. Then I decided that stupid people resist knowledge, (which has been corroborated recently by some researchers), and I should spend my efforts trying to exist in spite of all their ambition. That has freed a lot of time to work on anti-gravity, free power, and a host of more feasible endeavors.

Re:doh.

[tbannist]

I know you're an idiot troll, but just in case anyone with a half a brain is interested, the dust bowl was caused by a combination of drought and poor farming practices. Since North American farmers no longer follow the same destructive practices that caused the dust bowl, we're not likely to see it happen again, even though this drought is worse than the one that created the dust bowl.

So here's your notice, the drought is worse (less than 1/10th the rain in the 30's), but the U.S. Government took action long ago to prevent another dust bowl from occurring.

Re:doh.

[Shotgun]

But, don't those people in the oil industry and their families share the same planet, also?

Clarification.

[mevets]

Uncertainty. It may make sense there is a balance equation between the frozen state of the poles and the existence of ocean currents. I don't think that anybody knows what the 'time to rebalance' is.

For example, it maybe just long enough to extinguish civilization. At that point it is moot.

That is what I find funny about the various prognostications about how everything will/won't be alright as we consume buffer after buffer in this system. It is like honking your horn when you really need to hit the brakes.

Too bad we can't capture all that freshwater

[ToiletBomber]

Then we could solve all our water needs... but we don't have any sort of storage/transportation system to do that sort of thing, let alone one large enough to capture a reasonable portion. Unless you had millions of people at a time flock to the place with water bottles and pitchers.

Re:Too bad we can't capture all that freshwater

[interkin3tic]

I was about to ask about this. We can get crude oil out from thousands of feet underground and run it across the country, but we can't suck up water in pipes and bring it down to drought areas?

I'll state explicitly that I'm completely ignorant in this area. That was not a hypothetical question, I know nothing about the scale, cost, or mechanics involved here. Just seems odd that we can do one but not the other. I'm guessing that economics are the main barrier here? Farmers in droughted areas wouldn't be able to afford the prices that would need to be charged to send it all that way?

Re:Too bad we can't capture all that freshwater

[Wulfrunner]

Qadhaffi funded irrigation of the whole of North Africa down to the Equator

Does that makes his madness tolerable?

Re:Too bad we can't capture all that freshwater

[sartin]

When fresh water is over $100 a barrel, we will have the pipelines.

Re:Too bad we can't capture all that freshwater

[jackbird]

Well, my household (with water-saving sinks/showerheads but a fairly inefficient washer and small children in the house) uses about 100 gal/day at a rate of about $0.02/gallon. We burn about 2 gal/gasoline a day for commuting at a rate of about $3.50/gallon. That's $60 of water and $210 of gasoline per month, but at 50x the volume.

Also, oil deposits aren't doing much for the local ecosystem (leaving fracking out of the discussion for now), but drain an aquifer and you really fuck up the environment and piss off any locals trying to grow food.

Re:Too bad we can't capture all that freshwater

[interkin3tic]

but drain an aquifer and you really fuck up the environment and piss off any locals trying to grow food.

In the Arctic circle?

Re:Day After Tomorrow

[wierd_w]

Iirc, the incidence of the reports suggested whole herds preserved this way. This kinds rules out "omg, I has cngestive heart failure cuz iz so fat!" As the cause.

Re:OK, I believe, but where do I put my money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitcoins

Re:When this happened the last time.

[Kenja]

Did it not cause an ice age?

The current thinking is that it extended the ice age for a large part of asia and europe.

arrogance

[decora]

is awesome. especially when dealing with complex systems.

Re:Day After Tomorrow

[wierd_w]

Indeed. But I question the intensity of cold needed to freeze a blubber insulated, and wooly adult mammoth solid, while it is actively grazing.

Even a dead mammoth, put in a commerical freezer, would take several hours to freeze to such a state.

The cold would have had to have been sufficient to kill said mammoth quite quickly. Mammoth species had evolved pretty clever biology to prevent such an outcome. (Mutant hemoglobin, thick blubber layer, excessive secretion of sebum and thick, wooly body hair, just to name a few.) Humans, by comparison, are simply "ready to freeze" meat popsicles.

Re:Meh...

[nedlohs]

insignificant change and "will not change" are not the same thing.

Panic? PANIC!

[NicknamesAreStupid]

Why not panic? If the glaciers melt and the oceans rise, then over a billion coastal people will be displaced, the food supply will be severely disrupted, and a large portion of our population will die off by drowning, overcrowding, or starvation. Then there are the land and water wars. We could lose 70% of our people, and civilization could be stalled for centuries.

Is that a bad thing?

Infamous redirection plan of Siberian rivers

[mapkinase]

"This fresh water is coming in large part from the rivers running off the Eurasian (Russian) side of the Arctic basin"

Infamous redirection plan of Siberian rivers aimed at turning them towards Central Asia deserts for irrigation and cultivation of massive cotton,etc fields (Americans as usual were more successful and spectacularly succeeded in creating a South-West wonder called Salton Sea).

Now that plan does not sound so stupid, does it?

Re:Infamous redirection plan of Siberian rivers

[ImprovOmega]

The Salton Sea alternately existed and didn't for thousands of years before man got in there and made it a permanent thing. And the actions of Americans in the southwest were primarily directed at stopping the Colorado River from flooding the Imperial Valley every few years. The permanent establishment of the Salton Sea was merely a side effect of the push to enable irrigation and cultivation of the land in the Imperial Valley.

Re:Infamous redirection plan of Siberian rivers

[mapkinase]

I see. Then we definitely should turn the Siberian rivers to Central Asia.

IPCC3 says 68m

[Namarrgon]

(Undoing moderation to post this)

IPCC 3 WGI Chap 11 Table 11.3 estimates a 61m sea-level rise if all of Antarctica melts, and 7m from Greenland. This could take 1500 years, though other factors like lubrication might speed this.

It's also worth noting that sea levels have already risen 120m since the last glacial maximum.

Re:Day After Tomorrow

[artor3]

Could this sort of thing simply be the result of an avalanche? Bunch of animals grazing, they hear a loud rumbling, look up frozen in fear like a deer in headlights, and subsequently get buried in snow and frozen solid. If the snow is tight enough around them, they couldn't drop the food if they tried. It doesn't matter how long it takes for them to freeze at that point, 'cause they aren't going anywhere.

Re:Meh...

[riverat1]

Call me when the ice on Antarctica will start melting at an accelerated rate.

Ring! Ring! It already is melting and the rate is accelerating as measured by the GRACE satellites. But it still amounts to less than a millimeter per year of SLR for now.

Re:Day After Tomorrow

[riverat1]

Perhaps they were caught in a big avalanche off the face of of a melting ice cap essentially killing them instantly.

Re:Day After Tomorrow

[riverat1]

Some people have "Gore derangement syndrome."

Re:Panic? PANIC!

[Archangel Michael]

So, what is the downside?

and in contrast

[unity100]

Pretty comfortable people, whose livelihood depends on profits they make keeping people in comfort zone, are pretty uncomfortable.

Re:OK, I believe, but where do I put my money?

[Tastecicles]

Firewood stocks. And Cup-a-Soup.

beach realestate still pricey

[cheekyboy]

Aslong as beach mansions and realestate is still in the millions, its all good, nothing will happen.

Re:I hate to piss on your rug, but...

[AlterEager]

Water ice is 7/8 the density of liquid water. Even at depth, this remains true. Therefore, if all the Arctic ice, which sits on an ocean, were to melt, then that 1/8 difference would be absorbed by the 7/8 if the ice that sits below sea level and global sea levels would actually *FALL* by 7/8 of the total original amount of Arctic sea ice divided by the surface area of the oceans. Shot in the dark number: -7 feet.

Sorry, wrong.

Wrong twice in fact.

Floating ice won't raise the level of fresh water - yes, it's less dense - that's why some of it is above the water line. But, per Archimedes, it displaces exactlt it's own weight of water - so when it melts back to denser water it fills exactly the same below water-level volume.

But ice is fresh water and the sea is salt water. Fresh water is less dense than salt water, so when it melts it takes up more volume than the volume of salt water it displaces.

Hence melting floating ice will cause sea level rise. (Not much, just a little).

See "The Melting of Floating Ice will Raise the Ocean Level", Noerdlinger, Geophysical Journal International.

tubes

[mdsolar]

You mean its not just a bunch of used catheters?

Re:Day After Tomorrow

[lightknight]

"Even a dead mammoth, put in a commerical freezer, would take several hours to freeze to such a state." -> So would a human being. Ask me how I know. ;-)

"The cold would have had to have been sufficient to kill said mammoth quite quickly. Mammoth species had evolved pretty clever biology to prevent such an outcome. (Mutant hemoglobin, thick blubber layer, excessive secretion of sebum and thick, wooly body hair, just to name a few.) Humans, by comparison, are simply "ready to freeze" meat popsicles." -> Indeed. However, just as four-wheel drive vehicle does not grant immunity from the effects of ice / snow on the road, neither do the Woolly Mammoth's evolved advantages. 99% of the time, I'm sure, it's not an issue; but that 1% of the time...well, if you were a large mammal whose instincts were not tuned to detect that kind of danger (temperature drops a little too low, etc.), it's possible for it to creep up on you.

In all the animals I know, the effects of hypothermia is a b*tch. And even for Arctic-based animals, there is something known as "too cold."

it's about climate change, not water level

[dutchwhizzman]

For those that don't understand the consequences of this. Warm currents of tropical ocean water that warm up Western Europe in the winter could stop or divert to other areas. This will likely give most of Europe a climate like the west of Canada and Alaska. Similar climate changes on the other coastal area's in the Northern hemisphere and possibly the southern are just as possible. Water levels will not directly be influenced, but may change due to "Ice age" In parts of the Northern hemisphere.

Re:I hate to piss on your rug, but...

[jackbird]

It displaces its own volume by not having any of itself sticking up out of the water.

Re:I hate to piss on your rug, but...

[sexconker]

Water ice is 7/8 the density of liquid water. Even at depth, this remains true. Therefore, if all the Arctic ice, which sits on an ocean, were to melt, then that 1/8 difference would be absorbed by the 7/8 if the ice that sits below sea level and global sea levels would actually *FALL* by 7/8 of the total original amount of Arctic sea ice divided by the surface area of the oceans. Shot in the dark number: -7 feet.

Sorry, wrong.

Wrong twice in fact.

Floating ice won't raise the level of fresh water - yes, it's less dense - that's why some of it is above the water line. But, per Archimedes, it displaces exactlt it's own weight of water - so when it melts back to denser water it fills exactly the same below water-level volume.

But ice is fresh water and the sea is salt water. Fresh water is less dense than salt water, so when it melts it takes up more volume than the volume of salt water it displaces.

Hence melting floating ice will cause sea level rise. (Not much, just a little).

See "The Melting of Floating Ice will Raise the Ocean Level", Noerdlinger, Geophysical Journal International.

You're an idiot. The bolded part is particularly retarded.

If frozen liquid displaces X amount of liquid in a container, that means it weighs the same as X amount of the liquid it's sitting in.
If that frozen liquid is lifted out of the container, then that volume of X will be filled by the liquid in the container, and the level of liquid in the container will drop by X/S, where S is the surface area of the container.

If that frozen liquid is then melted, it will yield a volume of liquid Y. Since the frozen liquid was floating, we know that the frozen liquid was less dense than the liquid it was sitting in. In fact, we know that it weighed exactly as much as X amount of the liquid it was sitting in. If you knew the relative densities, you could calculate the relative volumes, and Y would be greater than X.

But that volume of Y will mix with the rest of the liquid in the container, lowering the overall density of the liquid in the container to equilibrium.
While the level of liquid in the container has increased by an amount equal to (Y-X)/S, the decrease in density means it has more capacity (in terms of salinity).

If you take this and apply it to the ocean, you'll see that:
Because the salinity has dropped, the freezing of the water has increased, so it is now easier for water to freeze and stay frozen.
And of course, the temperature exchange that caused the melting in the first place lowers the temperature of the ocean.
And of course, if the sea level rises, the planet cools.

It's a global cycle that takes far longer than any election campaign.

Re:Rubbish from alarmists!!!

[sexconker]

Yeah. Especially that it's winter now.

(just can't stop myself) [Citation needed]

(duck)

Citation here.

Wait... what?

[hoboroadie]

Reducing humanitiy's living area won't leave anything for other species, as we are one of the most adaptable species in that regard. I don't really give a rat about the BILLIONS who will be displaced by this, but I do fret a bit about the rapid acceleration of the Holocene Extinction Event, at least regarding all those other species.

Re:Wait... what?

[Luckyo]

Actually, many species have very different habitat requirements then humans. Take a look at Tsernobyl as a great example of what happens when area become uninhabitable by humans, and how many species suddenly populate it just fine. And that's just for the land mass. Consider all the life in oceans that would have a much larger habitat if much of land mass goes under water for example.

Now, if you cut down your definition of "other species" to "large mammals who have largely similar habitat requirements to humans" then yes, these compete with us directly. But they are only a small portion of all species in the biosphere of our planet.

Re:I hate to piss on your rug, but...

[pixelpusher220]

Melting sea ice doesn't 'directly' raise sea levels. It does however increase the amount of heat absorbed by the same area that was nice and white (ice covered) and now is dark blue (open water) and this is a very significant amount of new heat in the environment. That increased heat causes the air to heat up...which then melts ice on land.

Try thinking more than 1 step into the future...

Salton Sea not permanent - it's shrinking

[zooblethorpe]

The Salton Sea was formerly part of the Gulf of Cortez, at least until the Colorado River delta expanded across the gulf and blocked off the northern portion. The surface of the Sea is currently some 200 feet below sea level (i.e. the surface of the ocean), similar to Death Valley, and the size of the Sea fluctuates depending on changes in precipitation and how much river water is not diverted for other purposes. The Salton Sea is probably not permanent, and has in fact shrunk noticeably due to evaporation as the years have passed. The Wikipedia article has some photos of derelict structures that used to be on the Salton Sea shore.

Cheers,

Re:OK, I believe, but where do I put my money?

[Chris Burke]

Bitcanoe?

Re:Rubbish from alarmists!!!

[budgenator]

and Air temps are running -20 thru -30C up there now

Re:OK, I believe, but where do I put my money?

[anubi]

The most important thing is make yourself useful. Society will keep you. If you own too much, they will shoot you, as they need what you have and can't afford to pay you. But if they need your services, you are good to go. I am heavily invested in my ability to fix things. Cars, industrial machinery, refrigeration, process controllers, you name it. They all follow the same laws of physics.