Recent Warming of Antarctica "Unusual But Not Unprecedented"

First time accepted submitter tomhath writes with a link to the abstract (full article paywalled) in Nature of an "Ice core study that concludes that climate change and associated melting of ice in Antarctica is more the norm than the exception, including rapid warming cycles as we appear to be in today. Study concludes: 'Although warming of the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula began around 600 years ago, the high rate of warming over the past century is unusual (but not unprecedented) in the context of natural climate variability over the past two millennia. The connection shown here between past temperature and ice-shelf stability suggests that warming for several centuries rendered ice shelves on the northeastern Antarctic Peninsula vulnerable to collapse.'"

Comments

Re:Mod story down

[zmooc]

Climate deniers? This has nothing to do with them. No unusual warming is predicted for Antarctica for now. Global warming is expected to make the ocean currents that surround Antarctica stronger, thereby isolating it from warming factors and preventing it from heating up significantly for some time to come. It's a pity Al Gore's Unconvenient Truth has incorrectly linked the breaking up of the Ross ice shelf to global warming, leading many to believe something unusual is going on on Antarctica while it is not. Yet.

Re:climate change is the only consistency

[ColdWetDog]

Here's the problem. You're likely correct - at least to some point. However, if you are at all interested in the 'fate of mankind' i.e., everybody else, then you notice that humans a perched on a fairly narrow ledge in terms of the survivability of large swatches of population. If you preturb the climate, especially if the changes are relatively rapid, a lot of people are going to a) starve b) displaced c) not be particularly happy about a and b and try to get a resources of those who aren't so drastically affected.

That leads to conflict, upheaval, war and pestilence - fairly typical (but generally frowned upon) human behaviors.

Note that climate pressures on human settlements are often the driver for abandonment / downfalls of civilizations (the Diamond and Tainter arguments) - it's just with 7 billion (or whatever) of us on the planet we're capable of making some really big messes at present.

Then there are the persons of the tree hugging persuasion who feel that it's morally indefensible to take the entire planet down so we can have iPods and Big Macs. Your personal moral codes may vary.