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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.'"
Story goes against slashdot groupthink. Climate deniers are stupid M$ users. Mod down!
Mass extinctions are also unusual (but not unprecedented). Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to avoid causing them!
Climate on a penninsula is vulnerable to changes in ocean currents. I would say nothing to see here unless global climates can be correlated with the local climate.
Anything up to and including the entire planet being a blob of molten matter would be "not unprecedented".
Just because the world was really hot during the Jurassic does not mean that humans would enjoy living in that state again.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
I for one welcome our new...old....ones overlords!
There is no such thing as normal. Normal is only a concept that we as humans have because we live such pathetically short lives. Normal simply isn't a natural concept, and we need to quit thinking of nature as being "normal" and start accepting that "change" in part of the natural cycle and learn to adapt with it.
The climate always has gone from warmer to colder and back and forth. Mostly it has been warmer, but it has also spent a fair amount of time under ice ages as well. I live in a place where I am 2000 miles from the nearest ocean and yet can find sea shells in my back yard from time to time. Things change and we need to quit fighting change and learn to adapt to our environment as our environment changes around us.
The continents will shift (there's a museum in Paris with an exhibit I have heard about that depicts how far the North American plate moves away from the European plate each year). Antarctica will eventually move away from the pole and simply melt. Other natural phenomenon will occur and we have to accept that we are simply one part of nature and to learn to live as part of it.
That being said, there is no reason not be be responsible with the environment and fight pollution for the sake of fighting pollution. Living sustainably is something that we have to do as our population becomes ever larger and we need to increase efforts for green energy like nuclear, thorium, solar and geothermal power sources. I really wish people would set aside politics on this and let science do the talking.....
I wasn't going to respond since I have mod points and figured I'd mod up a good response instead. Too bad it's all been cheerleading for believers and deniers. Anyhow, this result isn't evidence for or against climate change. It's another data point. The fact that people think it is evidence for one side or the other shows most people still don't understand climate change. I know statistics and thermodynamics are hard as are non-linear systems. Blah, blah, blah.
Here's the deal. Global warming refers to *average* temperature increase. In order for the average temperature to increase we should expect a higher frequency of warmer events or events driven by increasing warmth. We're not in a pot on a stove over a fire that constantly increases in temperature (actually don't pick at that analogy too much because at a microscopic level it is somewhat similar). As global average temperature increases we should see more warm days but not necessarily the hottest days ever recorded. So, in this case, if we see more frequent unusual events like this one or not, then we might have some evidence one way or the other, but by itself it tells us nothing.
The Year without a Summer (1816) had a global temperature drop of 0.4C to 0.7C.
It was thought to be caused by a series of volcanic eruptions combined with an historic low in solar activity.
The result was:
All that and more with a global variation of <1 degree Celsius.
It really is in our interest to keep global temperature averages from fluctuating too far from what we're accustomed to if possible. The repercussions with such a dramatically larger population could be catastrophic.
WRONG. There was NEVER consensus as to the cooling. Not ever. In fact, it was never more then a tiny percent of climatologist.
You can try to pretend that cooling was "never" predicted. However, the inconvenient truth is that the seminal, and highly cited, work of Strummer et al. (1979) clearly predicted an incipient increase in ice coverage. As they stated (repeatedly):
The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in
Meltdown expected, the wheat is growing thin
At least, that's the only work I know of from that era that predicts another ice age soon...