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Arctic Sea Ice Hits Record Low Extent
mdsolar writes "Arctic sea ice has hit a record low extent for the period of satellite observation. Further, this record has been set in August when the minimum annual sea ice extent (and the prior record) has always come in September. Further still, the ice is still retreating as rapidly as it was in June and July when normally the decrease of sea ice extent slows in August. It is thus possible the the final minimum sea ice extend for 2012 will be seen in October rather than September as has always occurred in the past. More than one monitoring effort agree on the existence of a new record."
... to get first post before it melts
...watching nature at work...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
By October the air temp is around 13 degrees Fahrenheit. The max is 18 degrees and the minimum is 8 degrees. Days with Min Temp Below Freezing 31. http://www.climate-zone.com/climate/united-states/alaska/barrow/ Are you still gonna stand by your statement of melting in October??
Ice melting to the lowest point evar? This must obviously be because of human-caused global warming!
I expect this post will be full of the normal vitriol from barely-informed people.
The CB App. What's your 20?
If climate change is real and man-made, the human race isn't mature enough to react to it in time. The number of people that have a wishy-washy position on it despite the evidence is downright scary. Until the price of food goes up by 10x there isn't going to be a significant reaction, and by then it may be too late.
Translation: I have found a meme that I can continually repeat to rationalize away any disturbing finding. Now come on kiddies, let's BURN MORE OIL!!!!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's good for business, and that's all that matters. For one thing it gives Japan easier access to oil shipped from the North Sea. Carnival Cruise Lines can do more Arctic tours, and have Polar Bear steaks. They can club baby seals and have tailor made coats made right on board. This is not a disaster, it's an opportunity. Make the best of it.. while it lasts.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Start looking at northern land that can be purchased cheaply, soon it may be prime tropical real estate!
Chief Thinker www.devotedskeptic.com
rtfa
its saying that the current level of ice is already lower than it has ever been recorded, and it's not even the end of summer yet, so we expect there to be even more loss of ice to come.
It has nothing to do with datapoints and isn't saying anything, other than ICE IS GOING AWAY
You must be new here. Slashdot is hardly the bastion of the ill-informed global warming deniers. Slashdot is full of various types or nerds who by and large are smarter than most (exceptions do occur)
Oil? We are already burning oil as fast as we possibly can.
Now, we must burn more fracked up gas!
Sometimes I wander if the loonies that oppose all and any nuclear energy projects (including ITER), are somehow not guided by the hand of big oil and big gas companies.
If arctic sea level is a quasi-monotonically decreasing function, then isn't every point in time (after a certain threshold, and when the level changes) a record low?
Without the same observations over a longer period, this data is meaningless in and of itself.
It could easily be part of a cycle we have not been able to observe because we've lacked the means and meaningful observational time frame to detect it. It's simply one point on a graph spanning millenniums.
Strat
Translation # 2: Let's stop doing meaningless science on things that that span millennia. let's BURN MORE OIL!!!!
Moral of the story: Invent time travel first so we can have at least 3 points on the graph to make climate change REALLY convincing.
Translation: I don't like BlueStrat's perfectly calm, rational point, so I'm going to argue against it with emotion, wave my hands around, and come up with some meaningless term that sneers at his point without SOUNDING too sneery. oh, I know -- "meme." Yeah, that'll work.
So, I have a question for you. Do you consider yourself scientifically minded and skeptical? Do you think it's the OTHER guys who post on emotion, looking for anything that confirms their pre-existing notions? Because -- surprise! -- that's exactly what you just did. Kind of humbling, isn't it? BlueStrat made a perfectly scientific point -- this observation, in and of itself, doesn't mean much, because our data set is so small. We've only been making these observations since (I think) 1978 -- an eyeblink in geologic time.
If you actually have something meaningful to say, and you want to show all of us you're actually NOT an idiot, well -- what's stopping you?
lllll Alaska Jack
... that if climate change were legitimate, the Earth would "shut down" and prevent any bad consequences.
What is really scary about this is that only a few years ago scientists were saying that the Arctic "could be ice free in summer before the end of the century" and the deniers were calling them alarmists THEN. Then in the last couple of years some of the most alarmist of these alarmists have been saying that the Arctic could be ice free in summer in the next couple of decades.
Now I look at the slope of the line on that chart and I think the Arctic is going to be to be pretty close to ice free THIS summer.
The Arctic sea ice is showing us how much more rapidly things can change than even the "worst alarmists" dare to predict when positive feedback loops kick in and tipping points are passed. What will be the ripple effects of this? Where is the next tipping point?
Global warming is a Great thing!
We can provide for endless new jobs over the coming centuries as we have to rebuild literally thousands of drowning cities! We will open up new sea shipping lanes, as previously impassable straits are expanded from rising ocean levels! Previously frozen tundra will become prime temperate real estate!
Imagine the possibilities!
/sarcasm
We should just turn our air conditioners around and turn them on full blast. That'll cool the outdoors down.
rewriting history since 2109
rtfa
its saying that the current level of ice is already lower than it has ever been recorded, and it's not even the end of summer yet, so we expect there to be even more loss of ice to come.
I did rtfa.
It's comparing satellite measurements which means, at best, measurements since only the 1960s/70s. On a global climate scale time frame, that's nothing.
It's like measuring the distance between continents in the morning and then in the afternoon and claiming that because no meaningful difference exists between the two that continents are stationary and don't move.
It has nothing to do with datapoints and isn't saying anything, other than ICE IS GOING AWAY
Which is precisely my point, but it won't stop the AGW religious extremists from pointing to this and saying "See! I told you so!" as we can already see from the other comments.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I know several people who never took any interest in any scientific matter whatsoever, and yet are now passionate in their critique of climate science and the vast global conspiracy that all scientists and smart people are obviously parties to. If this is what it takes to finally get them interested in science, maybe it's a good thing?
This is a prime example of a record low over recorder history. In this case recorded history is only the last 30 years. It does not indicate if there was a lower ice sheet cover in the last 100 years, 1000 years or 10,000 years Climate change is a long term phenomenon and 30 years of climate data is an indication of global warming but something similar could have happened outside of recorded history. Too many people look at the word "record" and interpret it as "this has never happened before" while in this case the true statement is "this had not happened in the last 30 years".
You'd be pretty amazed. There are tons of incredibly intelligent people that do all sorts of stupid things - deny global warming, believe in a god, vote republican, etc.
No, it just means that you cannot correlate the data. Without knowing what the high/low cycle was like previously -- with data spanning at least two ice ages -- you cannot make predictions like "this is a result of human pollution" or "this is caused by global warming" or how much of an impact we are having. Now, I am not saying we are having no effect on the planet, I am saying it is difficult to separate natural vs arteficial varaince.
It is possible to measure and correlate human impact on the Earth for things like CFCs, but just having data recorded over a small period of time (when considering ice ages) without any other measurements is not possible to draw any conclusions other than "the Arctic ice is getting smaller for now" (looking at the current trend in the data). We don't know if this is part of a longer cycle (low/high ice cover over ice ages) or if it is associated with the amount of CO2 in the oceans (which we do know is increasing and is man made due to the amount of CO2 we are producing and the equillibrium equation CO2 and water have).
For example, lets say we record the average temperature of a place starting at winter, where we have humans building fires for warmth. As we keep track of the temperatures it moves into summer and the temperatures increase. Now we say that the averate temperature is at a record high. This is true, but we have not recorded the activity for a full season.
Now, one way to get a better picture is to have the records of both the Arctic and Antarctic ice. Measure other factors like the ambiant water temperature, ambiant air temperature, CO2 levels, amount of solar radiation, thickness of the ozone layer, solar activity level (measuring the effect, if any, that solar cycles have on ice levels) as well. Then you can look for correlations and patterns. Then you can create theories and make predicitons based on those.
If you read response #4 of this update from Real Climate, you will see that the National Snow and Ice Data Centre hasn't called the record low yet (as of 26 Aug 2012 at 12:04 PM), since they use 5-day moving averages on their graphs. The graph referred to by the realclimate.org update and I think in the OP is based on daily data. The response is from Walt Meier of the NSIDC. I'll quote it here:
These are daily values, not the 5-day average, which is not quite at a record yet. Using a 5-day average removes some of the noise due to weather and other effects that cause small errors in the daily values. Thus the 5-day estimate is a more robust measure of sea ice changes. We will make an announcement on our web site when we have passed the current record: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Walt Meier
NSIDC
I think however that there are other data series that do agree that the record has been broken, even with 5-day averages. Here is my favourite data compilation for Arctic Sea Ice. It contains many different graphs from different sources. Taken together, the data paints a disturbing picture.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
That one is worth looking at.
Translation: I don't like BlueStrat's perfectly calm, rational point, so I'm going to argue against it with emotion, wave my hands around, and come up with some meaningless term that sneers at his point without SOUNDING too sneery. oh, I know -- "meme." Yeah, that'll work.
So, I have a question for you. Do you consider yourself scientifically minded and skeptical? Do you think it's the OTHER guys who post on emotion, looking for anything that confirms their pre-existing notions? Because -- surprise! -- that's exactly what you just did. Kind of humbling, isn't it? BlueStrat made a perfectly scientific point -- this observation, in and of itself, doesn't mean much, because our data set is so small. We've only been making these observations since (I think) 1978 -- an eyeblink in geologic time.
There is nothing rational about saying we just do nothing about a bad situation because we haven't observed in the past how those situations play out. BlueStrat's post basically boils down to "this is probably just nature at work, and we haven't directly observed nature scientifically for a long enough period to know if this is a temporary condition".
We haven't directly observed arctic sea ice cover for very long, but the trends in our observations tie in very closely with other related more long term direct observations, and for much further back in time through indirect methods. The data is not meaningless, and accusing someone of being "emotional" when they post a sarcastic comment rather than regurgitate the thousands of rebuttals that have been made in the past is just you trying to sound reasonable about your cunning plan to do absolutely nothing.
Here's a paper about Arctic sea ice for the past 47 million years: "History of sea ice in the Arctic" (Polyak, et. al. 2010). It may have some of the information you seek. Here's the abstract:
Arctic sea-ice extent and volume are declining rapidly. Several studies project that the Arctic Ocean may become seasonally ice-free by the year 2040 or even earlier. Putting this into perspective requires information on the history of Arctic sea-ice conditions through the geologic past. This information can be provided by proxy records from the Arctic Ocean floor and from the surrounding coasts. Although existing records are far from complete, they indicate that sea ice became a feature of the Arctic by 47 Ma, following a pronounced decline in atmospheric pCO2 after the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Optimum, and consistently covered at least part of the Arctic Ocean for no less than the last 13–14 million years. Ice was apparently most wide-spread during the last 2–3 million years, in accordance with Earth’s overall cooler climate. Nevertheless, episodes of considerably reduced sea ice or even seasonally ice-free conditions occurred during warmer periods linked to orbital variations. The last low-ice event related to orbital forcing (high insolation) was in the early Holocene, after which the northern high latitudes cooled overall, with some superimposed shorter-term (multidecadal to millennial-scale) and lower-magnitude variability. The current reduction in Arctic ice cover started in the late19th century, consistent with the rapidly warming climate, and became very pronounced over the last three decades. This ice loss appears to be unmatched over at least the last few thousand years and unexplainable by any of the known natural variabilities. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Explorers have unsuccessfully sought a Northwest Passage for a lot longer than climate satellites have been orbiting the Earth, so it seems likely that the current minimum dates back to pre-industrial times, at least.
But if you're arguing that "we need more research", then by all means advocate for that to your congressional representatives. House Republicans have been trying to slash climate research funding for a long time. They're also trying to prohibit the National Institutes of Health from funding health economics studies. I wonder what issue that might relate to?
See no evil, hear no evil...
That was a very insightful post. To bad many mods won't read past the first paragraph. They will never get the irony of "the meme calling someone else a meme" being modded insightful and the reasoned reply still being -1 Overrated. Sigh. Now which batch of mods will hit me first?
Translation: I have found a meme that I can continually repeat to rationalize away any disturbing finding. Now come on kiddies, let's BURN MORE OIL!!!!
Nice strawman you built there. I never said anything about burning oil or touched on energy at all in my post.
I'm all for alternative energy sources where they make economic and practical sense.
One data point on a scale covering millenia doesn't prove anything. It only tells us that, *right now*, there seems to be less arctic ice than there has been over the last decade or four.
We know that global climate has changed radically over the ages, from much warmer than now to much colder than now.
We simply don't have data spanning enough time to know whether this is natural or not.
Why don't you be honest and abandon all pretense that you're basing your opinions on science and the scientific method.
Whenever someone mentions unusually cold temperatures in a single winter or even a decade or two, well, that's just weather. Why isn't the reverse true?
What you advocate isn't science, it's evangelism.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
It has nothing to do with datapoints and isn't saying anything, other than ICE IS GOING AWAY
In summer too. Imaging that. It is, however, implying that it it going away faster and further then ever before. Which is true for a very small value of "ever" in a geological time scale.
Weren't the first arctic tracking satelittes launched in the mid 1960's? It should be instructive to see all of the available data. It would also be helpful to show a chart of the yealy data rather than just averages of decades.
Used to be. Slashdot dropped below the average intelligence a few years ago. It's nothing more than a shrill and denier gripe fest.
This is no longer the site where intelligent people hang out.
It's like measuring the distance between continents in the morning and then in the afternoon and claiming that because no meaningful difference exists between the two that continents are stationary and don't move.
Nah; the graph the temperature curves for several years, plus decade averages. So it's more like measuring the distances between continents and showing graphs of the changes for years and decades. We've been able to do this for a while now, and the results for the Atlantic (a few cm wider each year) turn out to be quite consistent with the 80-100 million year age for that ocean.
So maybe we something different from widths of oceans, if we want to ridicule the significance of these graphs. I wonder what other roughly similar measurements might work better ...
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
You're correct that satellites can only provide us with relatively recent data, but scientists have used arctic ice cores and rock samples dating back hundreds of thousands of years to show the rise in atmospheric CO2 levels. The data shows a drastic spike in atmospheric CO2 during the last century. http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ As for my personal opinion, I think we're toast. We're far too selfish, divided, and concerned with immediate gratification to change our course. I don't dwell on it too much, though. I find my time better spent in front of nice warm tire and plastic bottle fire.
Funny enough if you go digging through the old Inuit stories, there are a few where entire groups have been wiped out because of the sea ice or lack thereof. Again, that's oral tradition and people don't like to consider that or anything. This stuff really isn't earth shattering to people who've spent any time in the far north of Canada and talked to them. It's wax and wane.
Records kinda mean squat just like you said, we've got plenty of stations here in Canada, which are only 10-20 years old. Some no more than 30 years old, and those are included in the weather sampling data. Heck, we've got some places that record temperature data for places that are 30-40km from where they state. Or are in bad locations, like next to cold mountain rivers. Or are in the shade for 80% of the day, or other inane things.
Beh. I liken most of this stuff to the jump in autism. Sure there's been a jump, because the diagnosis standard was changed. In turn, of course we're seeing a difference and warmer weather. We have more stations(well kinda), in fact some countries are removing a lot of them. But in others, they're so poorly placed they're useless.
Om, nomnomnom...
There are people that oppose ITER? I have never heard this before.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
So you were here before it became popular.
If you actually have something meaningful to say, and you want to show all of us you're actually NOT an idiot, well -- what's stopping you?
lllll Alaska Jack
As others have already pointed out, satellite data is not the only data available.
If you pretend it is the only data available then you can shoot it down as being a single
data point, but if you look at all the other available data ( such as ice cores ) which provides data points
over the course of several thousand years, then you will be forced by logic to conclude that the
idea that the earth is warming is quite likely to be true.
As for BlueStrat, he is not the sharpest tool in the box here at Slashdot, and it is very rare that he has
something which is of genuine value to offer the discussion.
Translation: I have found a meme that I can continually repeat to rationalize away any disturbing finding. Now come on kiddies, let's BURN MORE OIL!!!!
Nice strawman you built there. I never said anything about burning oil or touched on energy at all in my post.
I'm all for alternative energy sources where they make economic and practical sense.
Economic to the general populace or economic to those who benefit from not paying the for the full cost of their actions?
One data point on a scale covering millenia doesn't prove anything. It only tells us that, *right now*, there seems to be less arctic ice than there has been over the last decade or four.
We know that global climate has changed radically over the ages, from much warmer than now to much colder than now.
We simply don't have data spanning enough time to know whether this is natural or not.
At the timescales you are talking about, having enough data on the past is irrelevant. We would need instead to have data on a sample of similar planets with similar chemical compositions, in similar orbits around stars of similar age size and luminosity, with a similar distribution of landmasses and a similar ecosystem. Bit of a tall order. Just because something happenned in the past doesn't mean it will happen again, and the longer the timescale involved in any cycle, the more chance that things will be different the next time around due to different starting or external conditions to the cycle. We won't have a repeat of pre-carboniferous conditions. Even if we dug up all the coal and oil in the world that we can find and released them back into the atmosphere, tectonic processes will have slightly changed the chemical balance at the surface. The earths orbit will be slightly different, it's rotational speed will be different, the moon will be further away than back then. The amount of light hitting us from the sun will be different. If you want to talk about massive timescales, what nature decides to do to us should be given a judicious shove in the direction we want things to happen, because nature doesn't care about us.
Why don't you be honest and abandon all pretense that you're basing your opinions on science and the scientific method.
Whenever someone mentions unusually cold temperatures in a single winter or even a decade or two, well, that's just weather. Why isn't the reverse true?
What you advocate isn't science, it's evangelism.
Strat
Why don't you be honest and just admit that you are trying to say science doesn't know, so we should do nothing? I like your little "evangelism" dig. Suggesting that climate theory is a religion.... haven't heard that one before.
Whenever someone mentions unusually cold temperatures in a single winter or even a decade or two, well, that's just weather. Why isn't the reverse true? What you advocate isn't science, it's evangelism.
I have a feeling you're going to just scoff at any science anyway, but low and high pressures alternate. If there's been an unusually cold winter one place, other places probably had unusually warm winters. The whole globe isn't cooling down, it's warming up. And we do have other less accurate measures that go further back in time, you're the one claiming we don't have enough information but can't be bothered to find out if it's true. If you go camping and make a fire and a forest fire breaks out near your campsite and you go "it's not proven, forest fires can start by lightning strikes" yet nobody has seen a thunderstorm pass through your claim of natural causes starts looking pretty weak. Replace the campfire with the whole earth burning oil, the forest fire with melting ice and the lightning strike with natural variation and you have a pretty good analogy.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What, is Sunday "idiots-upmodding-mindless-drivel they-agree-with day?"
(1) You put this in quotes:
"this is probably just nature at work, and we haven't directly observed nature scientifically for a long enough period to know if this is a temporary condition".
Except... it's not a quote. BlueStrat didn't say "this is probably just nature at work." Those are YOUR words. They are not the words MightyMartian was commenting on. If you want to paraphrase/make up words and start debating them with yourself, be my guest. But don't drag me into it.
(2) There is nothing rational about saying we just do nothing about a bad situation because we haven't observed in the past how those situations play out.
Of course there is. Doing nothing IS sometimes the most rational response. History is replete with instances where everyone would have been much better off if authorities had simply done nothing. I can think of a dozen instances just off the top of my head. Does that mean THIS is one of those cases? I don't know -- and neither do you. We only know about those things in hindsight. But history makes it sand-poundingly obvious that, yes, sometimes doing nothing is much better than a badly misguided attempt to address a problem affecting a complex system we don't understand very well, on the theory that, well, we must do SOMETHING!!
(3) and accusing someone of being "emotional" when they post a sarcastic comment etc etc etc
So pointing out an obvious fact (i.e., that MightyMartian's reaction was emotional and not rational) is an "accusation"?
Cunning? Oh for Pete's sake. Grow up.
lllll Alaska Jack
Good post -- the abstract sounds interesting. Thanks! lllll AJ
The last low-ice event related to orbital forcing (high insolation) was in the early Holocene,
It's not obvious from your quote so I'll just point out that the Holocene began 12,000 years ago.. That means that this era of an Ice-free arctic occurred in the Age of Men, and it didn't kill us all off - nor were we responsible for it. "Insolation" means higher solar input. So we can blame the sun for warming before, but not now for some reason.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Yes, AGW is a serious problem, and denying it makes it costlier. However, the world is not ending. Green(tm) energy is getting cheaper and cheaper. It is predicted that solar will reach residential grid parity as early as 2015*. Not to mention next-generation nuclear. And, in a few decades, nuclear fusion. And if reducing emissions is not enough, we can cool Earth by increasing solar reflection** or by sequestering carbon*** or through some other action.
Also, how can people have such ridiculous short memories? The world was supposed to end in the 1970s though mass famines caused by overpopulation. Then the doomsayers changed their minds and predicted water wars. Then peak oil. Then the ozone layer hole (remember that?). Then acid rain. Then we very closely avoided Armageddon in 2000, due to the Y2K bug. Remember that? The mass societal disruptions, the nuclear wars that would be started because some digital nuclear weapon system misfired due to Y2K? Phew, that was close! But we survived.
Recently, we survived the Apocalypse in 21 May 2011, then 21 October 2011.
Now, of course, all the headlines are about climate change.
Do you know what is the single greatest cause of climate-change denialism? You. Doomsayers. Because you predict the Apocalypse every 5 years, people stopped listening.
Want to help the environment? Start talking straight.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/ff_apocalypsenot/
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_parity
** http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/08/putting-the-breaks-on-climate-change-with-diamonds/
*** http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/08/25/2359234/a-modest-proposal-for-sequestration-of-co2-in-the-antarctic
As for BlueStrat, he is not the sharpest tool in the box here at Slashdot, and it is very rare that he has
something which is of genuine value to offer the discussion.
Nice job attacking his character instead of his message, but you couldn't even do that properly. It's very rare he offers something of value? Looking at his post history, of his last 24 messages posted, only 1 has been modded down while 7 have been modded up (and none of those are Funny). Seems plenty of slashdot mods disagree with you.
I don't pretend it was the only data point. My post was about how stupid MightyMartian's post was -- instead of pointing out other data points, he responded with the kind of stupid post everyone here should mod into oblivion. What exactly was "insightful" about it? lllll AJ
See http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3073583&cid=41133135
You're correct that satellites can only provide us with relatively recent data, but scientists have used arctic ice cores and rock samples dating back hundreds of thousands of years to show the rise in atmospheric CO2 levels.
You mean the CO2 level increases that lag behind the temperature rises?
The data shows a drastic spike in atmospheric CO2 during the last century. http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
As far as the NASA cite, I don't trust NASA either way regarding AGW/climate change, regardless of which side their data seems to bolster. NASA has become far too politicized and plays far too many political games to be a trusted source re: AGW/climate change, or any politically-sensitive topic.
As for my personal opinion, I think we're toast. We're far too selfish, divided, and concerned with immediate gratification to change our course. I don't dwell on it too much, though. I find my time better spent in front of nice warm tire and plastic bottle fire.
I think using less oil and generally being better stewards of the planet is fine and worthy if done without causing major economic upset and harm to people.
If by "change our course" you mean undertaking attempts to modify global climate trends by causing algae blooms or the other methods suggested to attempt "terraforming" our planet, then I think it's a foolish waste at best, and possibly an extinction-level event, as we posses nowhere near enough data, knowledge, or understanding to safely attempt such a thing. It would be like taking a 10-yo kid that is currently taking a science class covering basic electricity and telling him to go ahead and stick his hands into the guts of your TV set. Better have an ambulance standing by. Except that we have no ambulances to take us off the Earth if we screw the pooch dicking around with our planet's climate.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Drooling Dog --
I don't necessarily concede your point -- I don't know if House Republicans have in fact been trying to slash climate research funding.
But in the bigger picture, it hardly matters. Climate research around the world is funded to the tune of billions every year. I mean, seriously -- of all scientific fields, climate research, of all things, is hardly lacking for funding. It's a huge, highly visible area of massive public interest. Does that mean every researcher gets every grant they want? I assume not. But let's be realistic here. Every large university in the world is pumping out climate research.
lllll AJ
What, is Sunday "idiots-upmodding-mindless-drivel they-agree-with day?"
No, it looks like it's regular-people-downmodding-dishonest-conservative-propaganda day. Doesn't always happen on Slashdot, unfortunately.
People might be able to stand the thought of your presence if you were less pedantic and demeaning for the sake of doing so.
We know that global climate has changed radically over the ages, from much warmer than now to much colder than now.
That collapses to one data point, and ignores a drastic game changing event. The Evolutionary Singularity has occurred, the past is mostly irrelevant now. We have TECHNOLOGICALLY ADVANCED SENTIENT LIFE.
So, that means we have to make do with what we've got. Now, we only have one planet colonized, so if there's a chance that things we are doing are messing it up beyond repair, to the detriment of our existence, then the ONLY logical thing to do is to take action and CHANGE what we're doing as soon as possible. We don't have a "control group" Earth to run the experiment in parallel...
Yes, it's going to be a bit painful to change, it's going to take some sacrifice. All change is a bit uncomfortable at first, but we should have started doing much more sooner. Blame your parents, and grandparents for not being smarter, but being whiny and greedy isn't acceptable anymore -- We know better. If there's a chance we're causing drastic climate change, then something must be done regardless of absolute proof we're going to kill ourselves -- Not doing the experiment is gross negligence. We can't afford to wait until it's too late to do anything about it -- There is a chance it may already be too late, but if you say, "Oh well, it's hopeless, I don't care", then off yourself now, you're hindering the herd.
Drastic climate change is deadly. I'm not being an alarmist, all of our eggs really are in one basket, you should be very concerned about this. While you're burring your head in the sand how can you ignore the fossil record therein?
I find it very amusing that here on Slashdot, a few days after a paper claiming that such melts are actually not unusual, along comes another paper that is "gloom and doom". And yet, many people seem to be irrationally attached to the gloom-and-doom scenario, and have largely ignored the former, even though it was published in a highly respected peer-reviewed journal, and the reviewers found nothing wrong with it.
We don't need more climate research, at this point people either believe the existing evidence or they'll believe the evidence in 50 years. A trillion dollars spent on the most advanced research would do little to change people's minds.
What we need is more money spent on alternative energy, better generation, storage, grids, transport etc. We can cut carbon emissions or not. If we do great, if we don't being able the predict the effects to a higher degree of accuracy won't really help.
You mean the CO2 level increases that lag behind the temperature rises?
Congratulations. You know that increased levels of CO2 are a feedback of increased temperatures (primarily from the ocean warming and outgassing CO2). Now show how increasing CO2 by other means than the feedback method doesn't force additional warming.
Read it again, The last low-ice event related to orbital forcing (high insolation) was in the early Holocene, after which the northern high latitudes cooled overall, and note that the higher insolation was caused by variations in Earths orbit, not a hotter Sun. Whether summer in a hemisphere happens at apogee or perigee affects the climate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Thankyou for all the great links. I agree that AGW is a serious problem, and denying it could potentially be very dangerous (say, 10% chance of CAGW), and Green energy is about to show its hand big-time.
There is something import that I'd like to add. You have decried all the Malthusians since the 70s, but they've been around forever. (e.g., Christianity was, and still is, an apocalyptic cult.) It is a phenotype -- related to our genetic make-up -- and short of a eugenics program, or some evolutionary-scale event that punctures the genetic equilibrium, we will always have members of the population who are attracted to Malthusian dreams. If behavioural genetics doesn't make sense to you, then you can think of it as Jung's archetypal unconscious.
But, and it is a big but, it would be a mistake to believe that just because there is a Malthusian streak to a significant portion of the population (moths flying towards the flames) -- that does not mean that catastrophes never happen. A a collective, we have still failed to digest the Greek myth of Cassandra. The primary reason is the cognitive bubble, which characterizes pretty much all political discourse.
In the end, I believe that it is scientists -- real seekers of truth -- that identified the problem of AGW, and it will be scientists and engineers that save us. Our political discourse is simply too puerile for anything else.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
BURN MORE OIL
My how The Times have changed.
When I was a young'un, it was all about Burn The Hippies!
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
The higher insolation at the beginning of the Holocene was because of orbital variations, AKA Milankovitch Cycles. The condition of the cycles is different now and trending toward cooler. That's why temperatures have been on a slight cooling trend since the Holocene Climatic Optimum about 8,000 years ago. The abrupt warming we are experiencing today has different causes than orbital variation and so we might expect some of the effects to be different.
So if there were not this warming, we could expect ice. Lots and lots of ice. Not just in the Arctic but right here at home. The kind of ice that crops don't grow in. And you're upset about this for some reason. Why?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
There are people that oppose ITER? I have never heard this before.
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/press/releases/ITERprojectFrance/
Nuclear fusion reactor project in France: an expensive and senseless nuclear stupidity
Press release - June 28, 2005
Greenpeace deplores the agreement by the Representatives of the Parties to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) (1) to construct one of the world's largest nuclear fusion experiments in Cadarache, Southern France. The project, estimated to cost 10bn euros, will not generate any electricity, instead it will need massive amounts of energy to heat up.
etc. etc. etc.
While I wholeheartedly support Greenpeace in their conservation efforts (eg. saving the whales in 1970s), their other efforts in the realms they know nothing about, like nuclear, kind of negates any goodwill I have towards them.
How Greenpeace cannot see that nuclear waste is not a problem for nature, but a problem for man, is kind of beyond my level of thinking. Nature doesn't care about nuclear waste because nature functions through evolution via natural selection. DNA damage, mutations, cancers, etc. don't matter provided some can survive. Human society does not follow those principles and hence any nuclear waste "problem" is a problem for man, not a problem for nature.
A wise man said that the only way to save the Amazon jungle is to spread nuclear waste all over it. I say he was right.
They want to see Capitalism and the US economy destroyed,
If they wanted to see Capitalism and the US economy destroyed, all they have to do is vote Republican.
Learn to love Alaska
You mean the CO2 level increases that lag behind the temperature rises?
Has there been a credible hypothesis for why the CO2 would lag behind temperature increases? I've not seen one, I only see the "look, I found one problem with one piece of data collected in 1953, so it must all be lies!!!!!!!1111!!!!!" responses. Never do I see a hypothesis presented that shows a good counter example, just complaints about one small piece of someone else's collection, followed by sweeping generalizations about the implications.
Learn to love Alaska
It is not AGW, it is the exponential population growth.
AGW stands for Anthropogenic Global Warming.
As in anthropo meaning human, and genesis meaning origin.
As in human impact on the global warming. ANY human impact.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
when the conveyor belt, (a.k.a. the ocean currents, e.g. the gulf stream), will stop or change course?
With the Arctic going like it is, it's going to happen.
"Drill baby, drill" sounds better. I especially like the sexual connotations.
The reason being that analysis indicates that there would have been an increase in insolation consistent with the recorded ice fluctuations - while complicated, orbital mechanics are incredibly deterministic so we can do a pretty incredible job of saying exactly where the Earth was 12,000 years ago, and say - "oh look, the Earth's orbit was 1% closer to the sun, resulting in 2% greater insolation" (for example, I don't know actual numbers).
We can do the same thing today and calculate the variance in insolation over the last century accurately enough to conclusively state that global temperature variations are NOT consistent with only the changes in insolation and other naturally occurring variations. To make the numbers add up to the results we're seeing we also have to factor in the elevated greenhouse gas levels due to human emissions.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
No, I think we would have expected the slight cooling trend to continue as it has for the last 8,000 years while we easily adjusted to the very slow change until it finally reaches a tipping point into the next ice age. From what I've read that's somewhere between 5,000 and 25,000 years from now. Plenty of time to prepare. But if "On the effect of a new grand minimum of solar activity on the future climate on Earth" (Feulner & Rahmstorf 2010) are right we've already prevented the next ice age. If global warming continues as expected (assuming human emissions continue as they have) then we're in for some pretty drastic and costly adjustments for our civilization.
There is no dispute, as far as I am aware, about the cause of the rapid, devastating acidification of the oceans - anthropogenic carbon dioxide uptake. We could talk about that instead, but the truth is that our planet is run by an alien species bent on destroying the planet, ala "They Live". Either that or we are just generally stupid, lazy and greedy as a species. I prefer to believe it is aliens.
It does seem that, while both sides are complicit in the problem, the left, at least, supports acting on science, while the right continues to rely on magical thinking - climate change denial, lower revenue to balance the budget, context-selective sperm, abstinence-based sex programs, 6,000-year old earth, you name it. You can present them with all of the evidence in the world, but they live in their own reality.
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
Most posters should not get modded up or down that much. That indicates he posts early in popular articles with likely popular opinions, not that the posts are of substance or valuable. Truth by popularity is a horrible idea and leads to stonings for witchcraft.
Learn to love Alaska
When coming out of ice ages CO2 levels do lag temperature increases for a while. Basically changes in Milankovitch Cycles start the warming which has a feedback of increasing CO2, mostly from the oceans outgassing it as they warm. This in turn drives even more warming but eventually a new balance is reached. That mechanism in no way implies that CO2 can't drive warming too.
Wow. You've got someone with mod points and your name on them.
But then again, that seems to be modus operandi for you're average Team member, as beautifully detailed in the Climategate leaks :)
Well, first off, you've got the buffer solution model you can think of - the oceans essentially buffer CO2, so its concentration is governed by its temperature, not other outputs/inputs.
But more importantly, even if you assert additional CO2 creates additional warming, you've still got the hurdles of "is warming bad" and "how much will it warm". Jury seems out on that: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/26/lies-damn-lies-and-anoma-lies/
Here's a credible hypothesis for you - CO2 is buffered by the oceans. Temperature increases drive CO2 out of the oceans and adjust the set point, as it were, of the concentration of CO2 in the air. Solar heating of the oceans occurs (moderated by the albedo of clouds), and long deep cycles of currents cause a significant lag in time before such heat can convect through the system. Given that the oceans hold orders of magnitude more heat, it's much more likely that they drive the temperature cycle, rather than the atmosphere (other than, again, the albedo of clouds, which behaves in uncertain ways).
But here's the thing, you can take my hypothesis, and break it - you can show me an observation of say, an immediate heating of oceans based on surface atmospheric temperatures, and my hypothesis falls. Or you could show a discontinuity between ocean CO2 levels and atmospheric CO2 levels (i.e., falsifying the idea of outgassing). Or you could show that there is no solar heating of the oceans.
Of course, me being wrong doesn't make you right, but at least you've got some chance at falsification.
What observations will cause your hypothesis to fall? Where is your falsifiability?
Now, here's an interesting thought - the actual *distribution* of temperatures matter, not the trend. We don't care if the average temperature goes up by 5C, but we *do* care if one half of the planet sits at -100C, and the other half of the planet sits at 100C. What matters is distribution - what matters is *weather*. Climate is simply an average, an abstraction that *loses* data, that has no real meaning.
Now, let's get a model that can predict the specific *distribution* of temperatures, rather than just some mythical average global temperature. Get something like that going, and you'll have my attention.
What if drastic climate change is *beneficial*? What if *without* drastic climate change, the world becomes a colder, darker place, with less plant life, less arable land, and a diminished biosphere?
The problem is that you assume that you've diagnosed the doom properly, and that your solution is not worse than the problem itself. You have no credible argument that your "solution" is either ideal, productive, or neutral.
I find it very amusing that here on Slashdot, a few days after a paper claiming that such melts are actually not unusual, along comes another paper that is "gloom and doom".
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11391.html
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.
Oh and the "not unprecedented" part...
That's just the way of saying "Yeah, sure. It happened before."
In this case, "before" lies somewhere between 9,200 and 2,500 years ago.
Then, during the most of human civilization's existence it cooled down, until around 600 years ago it started to warm up again.
Coincidentally, at about that time the 100-year war was raging across Europe, the Mind Dynasty replaced the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty in China while Mongols continued doing their thing all the way to Europe, in Americas Incas were spreading while Aztecs were busy sacrificing humans and Maya were busy with political turmoils of their own.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Of course, me being wrong doesn't make you right, but at least you've got some chance at falsification.
When there's only one plausible theory, it is insane to believe it's wrong because you don't like the conclusion or the people supporting the conclusion.
Here's a credible hypothesis for you - CO2 is buffered by the oceans.
That's a conclusion, not a hypothesis. A warm ocean will sustain more CO2 than a cold one, so I'd presume you are thinking of some sea life interaction, though why the oceans would support less life in warm times seems counterintuitive.
What observations will cause your hypothesis to fall? Where is your falsifiability?
What hypothesis did I put forward? I don't remember putting one forward, so I'm not sure what the question is. I was just complaining about the lack of answers by the nay sayers, as if lack of proof is proof of falsehood.
Learn to love Alaska
I have sadly only anecdotal evidence of this (the worst kind) but the few climate change denialist I have discussed with, which held the "do nothing" plan, are also christian end-of-time type which really think the second coming is around the door. Which is why they seem to think (consciously or not) that pollution law, environment stewardship and protection are useless : why protect something which will be soon be destroyed by the second coming and the apocalypse ?
As far as ocean levels are concerned, it's often overlooked that even if 100% of the Arctic (North Pole) ice cap melted, next to nothing would happen. The ice in the Arctic is already displacing water as there is no land there. It's the ANTarctic, as well as to a lessor extent Greenland that matters. The huge quantities of ice in those places are sitting on land, NOT displacing water; so when THAT water melts it runs into the ocean and would raise ocean levels.
You are aware that GCMs are gridded and do in fact predict distributions? For ages actually. Instead of putting the noise into the SNR, you might want to educate yourself a bit before trying to play a "sceptic". And education is not to be found on Watts' site.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
Almost, but not quite. The problem is that you're *really* saying, "When there's only one plausible theory, it is insane to believe it *can* be wrong."
If you can't imagine a falsification of your theory, then you're not playing the science game, you're playing religion.
Not quite sure if I understand what you mean - a warm ocean holds *less* CO2. Open up a coke can in a 0C room, and open up a coke can in a room temperature room, and see which one outgasses more.
Are you trying to say that lack of proof is proof of truth? Isn't that something worthy of complaint too?
You are aware that GCMs distribution predictions are completely unreliable, right?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0921818192900142
"Current climate change experiments, however, are limited by the inability of the models to produce accurate simulations of the regional climate."
Perhaps you have a GCM regional prediction from say, a 1990 model for 2012 actuals that you'd like to cite as being particularly accurate? Heck, maybe you have a cite for a 2010 model that predicted 2012 regional actuals accurately?
{/crickets}
Slashdot is one of the oldest nerd/tech blogs in existence, before there even was a word for such a thing. For this reason, it's a bit peculiar:
1. Unbelivable as it may seem, the net had a higher share of libertarians before than today. Libertarians often (not always) deny global warming because a) it gives the uncomfortable feeling that strong government action may be needed to address it, and b) they have no problem assuming they're smarter than climate scientists, because they assume they're smarter than everyone anyway.
2. Since it is so old, many slashdot posters have actually had time to become quite rich from their geek skills. Well-off, established people don't want to believe the world is in trouble and that they need to change.
3. There are today a number of tech/geek sites which are arguably more interesting than slashdot. Most have moved on to these. Those who remain are weighted towards the kind of people who don't approve of unnecessary change, i.e. conservatives, who also tend to deny climate science for cultural reasons. (Not inherent reasons, if you ask me climate change is a prime example of unnecessary change).
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
CO2 concentration in water is governed by temperature but it is also governed by the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere. There is a balance between the two. That is why despite ocean temperatures rising the oceans are still sinking CO2 from the atmosphere. We've increased the level of CO2 in the atmosphere by 40% over the past ~200 years and the oceans haven't caught up with the total new CO2 in the system yet.
You and I have gone back and forth before over whether the warming will be good or not. Weather statistics show that heat waves like we've had this past year in the US and like Russia had in 2010 and Europe in 2003 have become more common over the past half century. That is an expected effect of global warming. I don't consider that a good thing.
Don't bother citing WUWT to me. I spent time there a few years back and found nothing of value. I don't even bother to give Watts the page views any more. It's a waste of my time.
Oceans can't drive warming overall because they have no internal source of heat energy. The oceans are warming because right now the absorb about 90% of the increase in heat energy in the Earth system. Despite the fact that oceans are warming they are still absorbing CO2 because we've increased the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere by about 40% over the past ~200 years. Ocean acidification is direct evidence of that.
Well, assume the internal heat of the earth is negligible. The external source of ocean warming is solar - moderated by cloud albedo (which, we've been unable to model very well at this point).
You're assuming that *we've* increased it - it could just as easily be that ocean outgassing has been pushing a 40% increase in partial pressure, and that if our CO2 emissions were to disappear tomorrow, the buffer of the ocean CO2 would simply fill that void to make up for the missing pressure (that is to say, CO2 is buffered in the atmosphere by the ocean, much like a buffer solution which will maintain its pH whether you add acid or base to it).
Not quite sure about that. First, getting terms right, oceans are becoming less alkaline -> they're nowhere near becoming acidic. A tiny point, but important to be clear about what we mean.
Second, the variation of ocean pH is well above any proposed impact atmospheric CO2 (of any source) - there's no evidence that we can see any signal there in the noise - http://joannenova.com.au/2012/01/scripps-blockbuster-ocean-acidification-happens-all-the-time-naturally/
Wow. You've got someone with mod points and your name on them.
But then again, that seems to be modus operandi for you're average Team member, as beautifully detailed in the Climategate leaks :)
Haha, I guess so. :)
Doesn't surprise me, I expected as much, even for simply pointing out that this data alone doesn't prove much. In any other /. topic of discussion that involved a single datapoint, the posts of "correlation does not equal causation" and "one datapoint equals an anecdote" would be legion.
Between /. groupthink and the AGW shill-mods I'm actually surprised they only modded me down as far as they have.
The jokes is on them, however. Anyone even marginally unbiased looking at my post history and then looking at the mods of my posts here can only come to the conclusion that it's simply an attempt to suppress 'an inconvenient truth' and further destroys and discredits their evangelism, just as the Climategate emails and the coverup and attempted poorly-executed whitewashes that followed did.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Why can't you turn that in reverse, if there's a balance? Why can't you assert that the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere is governed by the temperature of the ocean?
If ocean temperatures determine atmospheric CO2 levels (as there is a balance), then adding a *surplus* of CO2 will be adjusted to by sinking it into the ocean (AFAIK, there's no assertion here that CO2 levels in the ocean cause a temperature increase). Similarly, removing CO2 from the atmosphere (say, through plant growth), will be adjusted by further outgassing of the ocean.
So whether or not the ocean is a source or sink depends on what it is buffering, just as a buffer solution can neutralize both acids and bases.
That's a (doubtful) observation that doesn't imply a causality. There's no reason for us to believe that if we had eliminated mankind in WWI with some super virus, that those heat waves wouldn't have happened.
Well, sorry you had such a bad experience. Honestly, understanding how those people who disagree with you think requires observation and listening. Heck, I still listen to NPR, read the NYTimes, despite their completely insular and echo chamber liberal bias :)
If only it was easy to measure hot things (volcanoes, rifts, etc) at the depths of the oceans. Baring that, maybe the u.s. navy could release the temperature data that has been collected by its submarines for the past 50+ years.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
he responded with the kind of stupid post everyone here should mod into oblivion. What exactly was "insightful" about it?
It's got electrolytes!! :)
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Almost, but not quite. The problem is that you're *really* saying, "When there's only one plausible theory, it is insane to believe it *can* be wrong."
Nope. I'm saying that it's insane to disagree without evidence because you don't like the implications of the conclusion, or have issues with those championing it.
Are you trying to say that lack of proof is proof of truth? Isn't that something worthy of complaint too?
I siad I was complaing about those who assert " lack of proof is proof of falsehood" I guess I should add "idiots who don't read and just argue because they are too stupid to understand.
Learn to love Alaska
The decline into ice is rather steep. It seems that the high albedo of ice creates a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism. These issues in a rather rapid descent evolve into ice ages so swiftly that we have actually recovered Wooly Mammoths frozen in ice with daisies in their bellies preserved from the other side of this freezing and warming. To purposely venture closer to this cliff seems unwise.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Is it you're hoping that people will not call *Actual lunatics* looneys because you'll call them a looney too? But that makes YOU a looney b your own admission (since that is all you have required as evidence of lunacy) whilst leaving the original caller in the clear if they have and require *additional* evidence of this person's lunacy.
Really, I don't think you worked it out.
A good eexample of lunacy is Buzz Aldrin. He's smart enough to notice the internal inconsistency in his statement:
"I'm not necessarily of the school that we are causing it all, I think the world is causing it."
Problems include:
1) What school says we are causing it all? None.
2) By saying the world is causing it, either
a) we are part of the world, therefore us, but implying
b) we have nothing to do with it at all, which then puts him in another extreme end: we are causing NONE of it
If he's smart enough to know this problem in the statement, then he is irrational and that's colloquially called "lunacy".
The mathematics of thermal runaway on those old designs is nearly identical to the albedo-loss calculations of our ice caps.
I'd be brave enough to guess that they are the same equations with different constants and variables. When "thermal runaway" happens to a planet it's called a runaway greenhouse effect, Venus is to Earth as the fused transistor is to a working transistor. We're very unlikely to trigger such an effect here on Earth* but it's fairly well established science that Earth's ultimate fate is to look like a lot like Venus, ( in about 500Myrs from now). There are also -ve feedbacks, eg: expanding deserts tend to put dust in the air which has a cooling effect, as do sulfur emissions (which unfortunately also cause acid rain). When you add up all the +ve/-ve forcings and feedbacks you get a number called climate sensitivity
Once the planet has undergone "thermal runaway" it's "fused", the oceans are gone forever, the hydrogen in the water vapor is split off in the upper atmosphere by radiation and over time leaks off into space due to it being the lightest element, carbon is now bound to the oxygen from the H2o to form more CO2, the process also makes the atmosphere denser since C is heaver than H. Earth is losing Hydrogen from the same process, it just taking a lot longer than it did for Mars and Venus (probably due to Earth's strong magnetic field.
* - James Hansen and other climatologists at the top of their field have warned that burning ALL known reserves of FF (coal/oil/gas/tar sands) would be more than enough forcing to trigger a RGH, sadly it's exactly what most industrial nations are planning to do over the next 250yrs or so (politicians can and do think long term when they want to). I say a RGH is unlikely since there are major signs that political will is growing to make the simplest and most cost effective adaptation we can to avert such an apocalyptic scenario, namely rebuilding the energy infrastructure ('a stitch in time' and all that). It's really not a huge drama when spread over 40-50yrs, on that time scale every nuke/coal generator on the planet has been planned, built and/or rebuilt, since I was born. We have to replace every one of them again in the next half century anyway. The only thing holding us up is a shrinking group of corporate Luddites such as Peabody coal who have not yet accepted their business model is as dead as the dinosaurs they are burning. If they hold on to coal for too long then bankruptcy will be a self-fulfilling prophecy as renewables take over and coal mines become virtually worthless.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The VAST MAJORITY are ignorant about their cars but will take the advice of a certified mechanic.
This is called "sensible".
Those who insist their mechanic is on some government-led secret plot to sell "gas" (which you can't see! Can you see the air? No! That's a gas! See! PROOF!) and that cars run by pixies riding horses in the engine compartment, therefore place hay in their tank and insist that everyone else do so too are called "lunatics".
But perhaps there is an impenetrable barrier on September 30 that requires a bounce.
It trips over the barrier about week earlier (the equinox), so I'd expect the timing of low point would have a similar consistency when noise is removed. I picture the ice extent as a sine wave that is being distorted and dragged downward on the graph in TFA, however the frequency of the wave remains unchanged since it represents the climate "forcing" causing the change (ie: Earth's orbit). The same phenomena is behind the "Pluto is warming" canard, summer solstice had just passed on Pluto but the atmosphere continued to warm due to thermal inertia.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
There are today a number of tech/geek sites which are arguably more interesting than slashdot. Most have moved on to these.
Could you list them? I know Slashdot has it's flaws, but I'm yet to find anything better...
Otherwise these news would be kind of worrying.
Your goalposts don't just shift, they are quantum goalposts, only taking a specified position when observed...
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
All righty then. You forgot to mention tin foil hat technology in your definition of all things not you.
There is no global overpopulation. Some places (such as Japan) are already experiencing population aging and decline, which is bad in many ways. Other places (such as the USA and specially Europe) already have sub-replacement fertility rates, and their population only grows because of demographic lag and immigration. It is predicted the the European Union population (now at 503M) will reach zero natural population increase by 2015 and zero total population increase in 2035 (at 520M), then start declining.
The USA will grow from 310M in 2010 to 403M in 2050. [1]
Asia will increase from 4.2B in 2010 to 5.1B in 2050, then start declining. [2]
The only region that is really growing is Africa. It will increase from 1B in 2010 to 2.2B in 2050. [2] Then its population density will be 73/km2. [3] Compare that to the current population density in Portugal (115/km2), in South Korea (487/km2) and in Taiwan (641/km2). [4]
Global population is predicted to grow from 7B in 2011 to 9B in 2050 and 10B in 2100 [5] and start falling soon after [6].
And according to [7], 40-50% of America-produced food is thrown away. According to [8], 1/3 of the world food is thrown away.
And this does not take into account that people eat, just for pleasure, excessive quantities of resource-intensive food (such as meat). If Americans/Europeans want to help the poor, an easy way would be to decrease (say, by 30%) their diet of meat. This will immediately reduce food demand and, for double bonus, the saved money can be donated to charity. And much arable land is wasted on subsidized inefficient corn-based ethanol. You can lobby your government to stop that.
Plus, there does not seem to be a negative correlation between population density and GDP per capita. [9]
African hunger is not caused by overpopulation. It is caused by corrupt and authoritarian governments, and by guerrillas/terrorists motivated by Marxism, Islamism, ethnic hate or simply greed.
Overpopulation fear-mongering is very old - at least as old as Malthus. One of its more recent incarnations was the 1968 book "The Population Bomb", which predicted mass starvation to occur in the 1970s.
Anyway, for better or for worse, there is already strong action taken by individuals, foundations, and Western governments, to restrict fertility in Africa.
1 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_11.htm
2 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_2.htm
3 : According to [2], Africa will have 2.2B people in 2050, and according to Google[10] and Wikipedia [11], the area of Africa is 30,221,532 km2
4 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density
5 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_1.htm
6 : http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Analytical-Figures/htm/fig_6.htm
7 : http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=56376-us-wastes-half
8 : http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/74192/icode/
9 : http://sanamagan.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/population-population-density-gdp-per-capita-ppp/
10 : https://www.google.co
...that ice doesn't melt in the case of legitimate warming.
I am just saying that, in the end, the problem will be solved with a low to moderate impact on the economy.
This is what happens every time . Y2K, ozone layer hole, acid rain, all were resolved with little impact on the economy. Overpopulation was absolutely a non-issue. Why would AGW be different?
Really, apocalypse is predicted every 5 years. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 12 times, shame on me.
You missed the fact that most of the intelligence has long since migrated away from slashdot because of over saturation of the unintelligent. Thusly what you're largely left with is those who think of themselves as intelligent, yet are not, and proceed to build a massive ego around what is likely an average or slightly higher IQ.
I commonly find a massive number of comments are wrong, half truths, and complete misinterpretations of available facts, yet are constantly re-confirmed via moderation. Slashdot has become the bastion of confirmation bias one sided censorship. Which in turn wrongly educates the next influx of newbie slashdotters. Who in turn, then believe they should have a massive ego based on the wrong information they learned while on slashdot.
By far, its the exception to the rule to actually find informative, factually accurate, intelligent comments on slashdot these days. Which of course, continues to drive away the intelligence which previously made slashdot great. That's why you see so many comments about slashdot being dead. It is afer all. There is nothing great about slashdot anymore as most all of us (I have a 5-digit UID) who made slashdot great have long since left or stopped contributing anywhere near what once was - as it would largely be ignored and trolled by the ignorant masses.
...the satellites that monitor sea ice were launched in the late 1960's. Why is the data prior to 1980 missing? Also, why do we just see a graph of the averages for decades but there's no accompanying graph of the yearly data showing trending? Showing a couple of years as compared to averaged decades seems a bit odd. Yeah, I know, It's just crazy talk to ask for a full data set and graphs without arbitrarily chosen layouts before deciding if the claims being made are valid. Must be all the tin foil on my head....
Slashdot is the worst, except for all the others. Just because slashdot has become king of the turd, doesn't mean its not on a turd.
This exchange wonderfully confirms some of the other posts in this thread. Read them. Get better.
Without drastic climate change, the world would presumably look like the 18th century, but without the abundant whale oil, and with six billion extra people.
I don't remember from my school history books that the world was "a colder, darker place, with less plant life, less arable land, and a diminished biosphere", as you put it. Unless you mean darker because of the lack of lantern posts, and less arable land because the tractor wasn't invented yet.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
I should have quoted the parent and the grandparent.
This Slashdot story, by itself, is not alarmist. I was responding to the parent and grandparent, who are alarmists as Hell.
Slashdot should allow adding additional text to posts! It would greatly enhance the discussion.
How about one in 1981 (much more crude) cf 2010?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Hansen-hit-a-home-run.html
Some environmentalist alarmists have actually proposed crippling the economy to mandate zero economic growth for twenty years.
Some calculate the carbon impact of an African baby, and start promoting abortion.
Some wackos even promote degrowth . Yes, you heard that right. Intentional economic contraction.
Many use environmentalism to express their misanthropy. One of the world's most famous misanthropes, Paul R. Ehrlich, speaks of his contempt for human beings:
So yes, if we let these people take over, it will be a humanitarian catastrophe.
*Note: I do not deny AGW, and I support research into solar, wind, next-generation nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, efficient biofuels, and carbon sequestering. I can even accept a carbon tax. I am just saying that there is a difference between serious engineers who study the environment, and the misanthrope loonies.
More like cue the sophistry...
1. Libertarians often (not always) deny *MAN MADE* global warming because a) History suggests that climate change is inevitable and has happened before man walked the planet and b) the leading climate scientists have been caught cooking the data.
2. Since it is so old, many slashdot posters have actually had time to become quite knowledgeable from their geek skills. Well informed, rational people don't believe the insane hype demanding they change their lives.
3. Very few people deny climate change for what you call "cultural reasons". I know the idea is to claim anyone objecting to your world view is a anti-science troglodyte but that kind of framing is every bit as invalid as the faux science created to support AGW.
Should I therefore kill your children so that these others may live?
Yeah, there are lots of misathopists out there. Don't let them get you down -- or stop you from thinking about solutions to our problems. I make fun of them myself. As a side note, Ehrlich isn't the misantropist that he is made out to be. He wrote a section of a book on what /might/ happen if we just let population ballon. He reasoned that, at some stage, action on population growth would be inevitable, and then imaginatively and graphically described what that may look like. It was a warning; however, it is now deliberately portrayed as a presecrption. Those who portray it this way are almost always using it to bolster some other argument, as you just did.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
There are today a number of tech/geek sites which are arguably more interesting than slashdot. Most have moved on to these.
WHHHHAAAAATTT??? Where did everybody go? Why didn't anybody tell me?
This is JUST like HIGH SCHOOL!!!
We are not anywhere close to this cliff at the present time and with global warming we are sprinting away from the cliff.
My issue is that without a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement, the "evidence" you put forth simply isn't compelling. If you would be specific about what evidence would falsify your belief system, then we could play the science game. As it stands, it doesn't seem like any observation of CO2 and global average temperature, on any time scale, past, present or future, would falsify your belief.
Again, you cannot assert that "lack of proof" is "proof of truth". Show me your falsifiability :)
You:
Peer reviewed literature:
"Current climate change experiments, however, are limited by the inability of the models to produce accurate simulations of the regional climate."
Let's assume that you thought I was unaware of gridded regional predictions of GCMs. You corrected me on that point quite astutely.
Of course, now the problem is, the inaccuracy of those predictions. In the science game, when your prediction is wrong, your hypothesis is wrong - Feynman does a great job of illustrating this in his lectures. Your predictions are wrong. Are you ready to abandon your hypothesis?
Yes, the internal heat of the Earth is negligible compared to the energy we receive from the Sun.
I'm not assuming we've increased the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. It's evident in the numbers that our emissions are increasing CO2. The year to year increase in atmospheric CO2 is only about 43% of the total CO2 emitted by humans. Most of the other 57% is being absorbed by the oceans presently. All of that is evident in the observations we make.
Acidification simply means the pH of the ocean is dropping, not that it has actually become acid. You could call it dealkalinization too but that's kind of clumsy. If it ever reaches the point of even being neutral (pH=7) we're in for a world of hurt from the effects.
Well, we know the Little Ice Age was colder...we know that lower CO2 levels mean less plant life on the planet...and tractors or not, we know that the range of crops is diminished when upper latitudes become too cold for them.
http://www.eh-resources.org/timeline/timeline_lia.html
"During the height of the Little Ice Age general, it was about 1 degree Celsius colder than at present. The Baltic Sea froze over, as did most of the rivers in Europe. Winters were bitterly cold and prolonged, reducing the growing season with several weeks. These conditions led to widespread crop failure, famine, and in some regions population decline.
The prices of grain increased and wine became difficult to produce in many areas and commercial vineyards vanished in England. Fishing also was bad as the cod migrated south to find warmer water. Storminess and flooding increased. In mountainous regions the tree line and snowline dropped. In addition glaciers advanced in the Alps and Northern Europe, overrunning towns and farms in the process.
Iceland was one of the hardest hit areas. Sea ice, which today is far to the north, came down around Iceland. In some years, it was difficult to bring a ship ashore anywhere along the coast. Grain became impossible to grow and even hay crops failed. Volcanic eruptions made life even harder. Iceland lost half of its population during the Little Ice Age.
Scandinavia was also hard hit by the colder conditions of the Little Ice Age. Tax records show many farms were destroyed by advancing ice and by melt water streams. Travellers in Scotland reported permanent snow cover over the Cairgorms in Scotland at an altitude of about 1200 metres. In the Alps, the glaciers advanced and bulldozed over towns. Ice-dammed lakes burst periodically, destroying hundreds of buildings and killing many people. As late as 1930 the French Government commissioned a report to investigate the threat of the glaciers. They could not have foreseen that human induced global warming was to deal more effective with this problem than any committee ever could."
But hey, let's take a look at it another way - we jumped what, .7C over the last century, and look towards the same in the next century. We call this "drastic", but the world in 2000 seems like a better place than the world in 1900.
Um, where's the regional specificity there? Hansen pretty much said "the world is warming" (pretty obvious coming out of a little ice age), had huge error bars, and actually, *none* of his model sensitivities got it right. Now, perhaps what he meant was "if we see this, it means that our model sensitivity should be X", but that presupposes the model is correct. He's finding a fudge factor there, not making a prediction :)
Assuming Hansen got better over time, here's his 1988 predictions:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/15/james-hansens-climate-forecast-of-1988-a-whopping-150-wrong/
In a situation where there was a balance between the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere and the CO2 dissolved in the oceans it would be governed by ocean temperature. Right now there is an imbalance with the atmosphere containing the excess. That's easily shown with simple with simple chemistry.
Yes, CO2 in the ocean has little or no direct effect on temperature. I'm not sure your assertion that the ocean may be a buffer solution that neutralizes acids and bases is warranted.
The observation that heat waves are becoming more common and affecting more of the Earth's surface over the past 50 years is a simple statistical analysis. It's an expected effect of global warming.
There's no reason for us to believe that if we had eliminated mankind in WWI with some super virus, that those heat waves would have happened either.
I still pay attention to what people like Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen have to say. They have some expertize in the subject. Watts has no credibility for me.
"There are today a number of tech/geek sites which are arguably more interesting than slashdot. Most have moved on to these"
For example?
Which (to use a familiar term), is *consistent* with the idea that the oceans buffer CO2, and that ocean temperature is what drives CO2 levels. If we eliminated humanity tomorrow, the oceans would fill the partial pressure vacuum and become a *source* rather than a *sink*.
It seems more reasonable to assert the causality chain *from* the oceans *to* the atmosphere, rather than the other way around.
I would propose this experiment - take a proportional amount of sea water, and a proportional amount of air, and put it in a sealed chamber. (The atmosphere has a mass of about 5×10^18 kg, and the hydrosphere has a mass of about 1.4×10^21 kg - so about 280 times more sea water than air). Assuming 1 kg of air (0.8562m^3), 280 kg of water (about 74 gallons) - so about a meter cube of air, on top of say, two barrels of water. CO2 partial pressure will stabilize between the two. Assume it hits say, 300ppm. Add another three grams of CO2 into the air. CO2 partial pressure will again stabilize between the two.
What is your prediction for the second stabilization point?
Take my simple chemistry example of a buffer, and apply it to the oceans. Buffer solutions will neutralize both bases and acids, just as the oceans will either absorb excess, or emit when there is a deficit.
To be clear, I'm not saying that the ocean is a pH buffer solution - I'm saying that it *acts* like a buffer solution in regards to CO2.
A few problems though - the observational period is incredibly short, the historical record is of lower quality, and whether or not it is an effect of global warming, doesn't imply any *cause* for that warming.
But more importantly, if next year heat waves are *less* common, does that necessarily mean that the globe is not warming? Can I take a graph of heat wave frequency, and assert that it is a proxy for global temperature?
I'll try avoiding quoting Watts then, but WUWT does have posts by other people besides Anthony :)
Sorry, missed a decimal point - not 3 grams of additional CO2, 0.3 grams of additional CO2.
But my bet is even with 3 grams of additional CO2 you'd see something you wouldn't expect :)
I would expect if you continuously add CO2 to the air in your experiment at the rate humans are adding it to the atmosphere approximately 43% of it will remain in the air and the rest will be absorbed by the ocean water. A new balance won't be reached until you quite adding CO2.
The observation period is what it is and we have pretty good records going back over 100 years. We can only work with what we have. This graph shows how temperature anomalies have shifted since the 1950's. The caption for it is:
Figure 2. Temperature anomaly distribution: The frequency of occurrence (vertical axis) of local temperature anomalies (relative to 1951-1980 mean) in units of local standard deviation (horizontal axis). Area under each curve is unity. Image credit: NASA/GISS.
Notice how the curves for the past 3 decades have shifted towards the hot end of the scale increasing the chances for heat waves and decreasing the chances for cold snaps.
OK, check out my UID for starters. Yes, that's a 3 digit number. And I could have had a 2 digit number if I'd have registered as soon as registering was an option, because I've been around here from before there were UIDs. With that fact out of the way, I'm definitely not in GW denial and never have been, because I'm in essence always taking the scientific approach to everything and the GW evidence has been around for a very long time.
Sorry to punch a hole in your scientifically unproven theory :-), but always willing to study the evidence for it if you can provide it after all.
Linux user since early January 1992.
Greenpeace. I might have known.
A wise man said that the only way to save the Amazon jungle is to spread nuclear waste all over it. I say he was right.
Considering how comparatively well the environment is doing near Chernobyl, I'm inclined to agree.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
I put forth no "evidence" so your complaint that it isn't falsifiable indicates you aren't reading what I say, just arguing because you like to argue with anyone that believes anything different than you. Don't you have some witches to burn at the stake, or are you worried about how many trees to plant to offset the witch CO2?
Learn to love Alaska
This is not record low. Why all the media are lying ?
Here is ice in 2007:
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/ARCHIVE/AK/2007/ims2007265_alaska.gif
And here is 2012:
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/ims/ims_gif/DATA/cursnow_alaska.gif
Church of global warming at its best ?
JAM
You're not following the thread, are you?
You: "Never do I see a hypothesis presented that shows a good counter example, just complaints about one small piece of someone else's collection, followed by sweeping generalizations about the implications."
Me: "Here's a credible hypothesis for you - CO2 is buffered by the oceans."
You: "That's a conclusion, not a hypothesis."
Funny, considering "Human CO2 emissions are the primary cause of 20th century warming" is also a conclusion, not a hypothesis, but I digress :)
Also You: "I was just complaining about the lack of answers by the nay sayers, as if lack of proof is proof of falsehood."
Me: "Are you trying to say that lack of proof is proof of truth?"
You: "I siad I was complaing about those who assert " lack of proof is proof of falsehood" "
But apparently you want us to come to the conclusion that not only is a lack of proof *not* proof of falsehood, but by implication, it must be a proof of truth. I don't think you completely got that one, so let me be explicit.
You're sort of paraphrasing the idea that "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" -> i.e., just because I don't have proof of God doesn't mean that he must *not* exist. The problem with that concept is that it is also true that "absence of evidence is not evidence of presence" either. So while you complain that naysayers somehow assert the "absence of evidence" proves you wrong, you're not addressing the complementary issue - "absence of evidence" doesn't prove you right either. You're still back at square one with the null hypothesis.
Indeed, you haven't. Yet, you seem to think we should share your point of view nonetheless :)
In fact I learned to post when everyone was smart enough to understand the purpose of a subject line.
Now get off my lawn.
ironic captcha: charcoal
. So while you complain that naysayers somehow assert the "absence of evidence" proves you wrong, you're not addressing the complementary issue - "absence of evidence" doesn't prove you right either.
Read your own summary of the conversation. Where did I say anything requiring any "proof"? I didn't. So your complaint might as well be complaining that my green pants are too short, despite the fact that I am not wearing green pants (and don't own any).
I put forth no "evidence"
Indeed, you haven't. Yet, you seem to think we should share your point of view nonetheless :)
I never indicated that you should share my point of view. The truth doesn't care whether you agree with me. The truth is immutable, and doesn't rely on your (or my) opinions. I've only commented on the reliability of the arguments I'm hearing. Everything else is a fabrication on your part. Why do you keep implying that I said anything about global warming? I only made a comment about rhetorical games by deniers. Calling them deniers doesn't imply any stance on my part, just a comment on those who communicate by attaching the messenger without addressing the points at all.
Learn to love Alaska
...will finally be able to discover the Northwest Passage!
The test of overpopulation is simply whether natural resource consumption outpaces natural resource renewal.
Our population growth and agricultural yields have been achieved through unsustainable means.
Our seeming prosperity is not the triumph of technology; it's primarily a loan that our kids will be obliged, and unable, to repay.
Fair enough, you've got your point of view, and neither the truth, nor I care :)
Do you see these rhetorical games any different when used by alarmists? Or is it just your prerogative to critique the people you disagree with? :)
Do you see these rhetorical games any different when used by alarmists?
I complain when I see them, but the "alarmists" seem to not use them as much. If by "alarmists" you mean those who are researching the problem, and not those working on solutions. The solutions are silly in that not one has ever given a definition of "success" that feeds back into a usable info for the others. Just because those proposing solutions are idiots doesn't mean that the premise they are working from is wrong.
But the "deniers" all seem to argue the points that the person they aren't speaking to make. You do that with me, where you presume me an alarmist, and attack me as such. Or attaching AGW basics when talking to those proposing solutions, or arguing solutions with those researching the problem. Argue the science with the scientists, and solutions with the solution proposers, and it'll work out better for everyone.
Learn to love Alaska
Well, I'm not sure anyone has actually identified a real problem yet, although there are lots of proposed solutions. By "alarmist" I mean those people who have bought into an unfalsifiable hypothesis of doom, and have no room in their minds that their hypothesis could possibly be wrong, to the point where they cannot even express a potential refutation of their beliefs.
I think that's kinda a cop out. Alarmists make these broad, ambiguous statements, leave important issues unaddressed and unspoken, and then when someone tries to nail them down to something explicit, they simply say "oh, that wasn't my point".
Of course, the *real* solution to that meta-problem is to start with a clearly stated, necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement :)
Interesting. It seems like "solution proposers" get a free ride on actually having to defend the existence of an actual *problem*. In fact, it might be better to call them "problem proposers", to focus them further on the fact that they haven't yet established their premises as true :)
By "alarmist" I mean those people who have bought into an unfalsifiable hypothesis of doom, and have no room in their minds that their hypothesis could possibly be wrong, to the point where they cannot even express a potential refutation of their beliefs.
There's a more accurate description of that:
Strawman
I think that's kinda a cop out. Alarmists make these broad, ambiguous statements, leave important issues unaddressed and unspoken, and then when someone tries to nail them down to something explicit, they simply say "oh, that wasn't my point".
But the deniers *never* follow up with "oh, sorry, then what was your point again?" Instead, the deniers launch into their rants on the price of bread or whatever they want to rant about. It's never about discussion, but about large egos demanding attention.
Learn to love Alaska
I didn't say all early adopters are AGW deniers. But you can look for youself next time there's a climate story.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
1. Some deny just man-made warming, but many deny warming too - at the very least some of the observed warming. Your a) and b) are tired and wrong, and just more evidence for my 3.
2. Switching to a better-updated site is hardly a shattering life change. You may have become knowledgeable, but you're unlikely to become much more of it if you hang around here.
3. On the contrary, I'm confident most people deny - and accept climate change for cultural reasons, just like their attitudes to everything from abortion to foreign policy. Few people, even very smart people, adopt a well-reasoned position on everything. They adopt positions consciously on a few issues they care about, and adopt the rest from the kind of people who seem to agree on those issues.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
It makes no sense to ignore economics here. The whole question is about whether we can produce enough to feed ourselves in the long term.
Sorta like "denier", huh? :)
What were you saying about strawmen? :)
Let's face it, the whole rhetorical game of arguing talking points is alive, well, and kicking, with a lot of people from both sides. For actual, constructive discussion to happen about a scientific topic, you really need to start with the necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement. "ZOMG, you're gonna kill the planet" and "Al Gore is a liar who assaults massage specialists" are part of the party play, not about really understanding the root of any disagreement.
Fundamentally, it all comes down to disagreeing on the premises, but ignoring that and simply fighting about the conclusions.
Yeah, you prove my point. You've never asked my opinion on it, yet are 100% sure that I'm wrong about it, and since I'm wrong on that, I must be wrong about everything.
Learn to love Alaska
Never asked your opinion on what? AGW?
Ahem, hey AK Marc, what is your opinion on AGW?
Have I disproved your point now, or shall you come up with an ad hoc special pleading to maintain your hypothesis? :)
True, but just because it's all we have doesn't mean that it's sufficient to prove our pet hypothesis :)
Isn't that contrary to what is predicted (or touted) by the current crop of alarmists saying that we will get more heat waves *and* more cold snaps? Would an increase in cold snaps be evidence against global warming (regardless of its origin)? Over what time period?
So you'd alter the experiment by making the additional 3g of CO2 go in *slower*, with the expectation that only 67% of it would be absorbed by the two barrels of water. Say you go with my procedure anyway, would you care to take a bet on how long it would take for the 3g to stabilize back to 300ppm in the air? Or if we were to inject the 3g over a period of a month (.1g per day), would you be surprised if every single day, the CO2 balance remains at 300ppm?
No global warming does not predict more cold snaps, just that a cold snap alone is not enough to disprove global warming. If you look at the curves in the graph you'll notice that not only has the curve been shifting toward the hot side but it's a bit shorter and wider than it used to be so the chances of heat waves has increased more than the chances of cold snaps had decreased.
Any addition of CO2 to your experiment will increase the total CO2 in the system. The balance between the amount in the water and the amount in the air will be maintained according to the partial pressure laws so the level will increase in both the water and the air. It may not be exactly the same balance as before because there are other factors but the water won't absorb 100% of the added CO2 under any reasonable scenario.