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Arctic Sea Ice Hits Record Low
Titus Andronicus writes "Angela Fritz and Jeff Masters of Weather Underground analyze this year's record ongoing Arctic ice melt. Arctic sea ice extent, area, and volume are all at record lows for the post-1979 satellite era. The ice is expected to continue melting for perhaps another couple of weeks. Extreme sea ice melting might help cause greater numbers of more powerful Arctic storms, help to accelerate the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and help to accelerate global warming itself, due to the increased absorption of solar energy into the ocean."
Time to buy shares in boats - or just buy boats.
It's here. Let's deal with it.
It is time to accept that this is happening. Time to make the most of it. There are remote communities that will be well positioned in the Canadian Arctic for incredible economical opportunities.
High Prices for Groceries could become a thing of the past once the ice opens up for longer periods of time.
The Northwest Passage has the potential to become more important than Panama
It may well be too late to stop the warming trend, we will have to make the best of it.
Burn the non-believer!
The question to ask is, what are the long term patterns, have we stumbled into a natural cycle, perhaps we have just accelerated what was bound to happen anyways.
Humans aren't to blame for the change, just for the rate of change. We may accomplish in 100 years what would have otherwise taken several thousand.
I'm thinking of the sun's 11-year cycle and the recent larger-than-normal volcano activity
I.e., any explanation except the actual one.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
ah, but that's just it. Clinton's behavior allowed Bush to do as well as he did. If Bush hadn't ridden the anti-Clinton wave, and hence the anti-Democrat wave, his showing would have been so abysmal as to preclude any judicial interference.
There is natural variability but proxy studies of long term sea ice show it's been at least around 8,000 years since sea ice has been this low and more likely over 100,000 years during the last interglacial.
The Sun has been through three 11 year cycles since the first satellite went up in 1979 and there's not much correlation between it and sea ice in the record. Volcanoes would normally have a cooling effect and I'm not aware that there has been a significant increase in volcanic activity anyway.
The sea ice trends have been steadily downwards during the satellite era especially during the past 6 years as shown by the graphs on this page.
"any explanation except the actual one."
Continuing to deny the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is futile.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
If you look at the IPCC report (wg1 chapter 2 page 136 although it's already starting to get a bit old), there is still a (minimal) chance that none of it is caused by CO2, because human release of aerosols cause a cooling effect. Of course there are other considerations like methane, etc. Most scientific organizations say things like, "most of the warming we've seen is caused by humans....." Although 'most' is a wiggle word that accurately represents our uncertainty on the matter.
It's also helps to take this into perspective, look at this graph, you'll see that we keep talking about the summer extent; the winter extent hasn't changed much. The past year was right up there with 1990s average. And the annual change is dramatically larger than the change in either the summer extent or the winter extent. Also, it is arguably more important to measure the thickness of the ice, rather than the extent, but a falling summer extent might suggest the thickness is shrinking as well. We are measuring that now, but only for a few years.
In any case you should check out this amazing picture from the article. Can you guess which direction the earth is spinning?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Well the problem with AGW in a nutshell is we are given NO options other than do nothing or carbon credits, which considering the ones that came up with credit default swaps or the ones writing the rules on carbon credits and cap & trade? uhhh...I think if that is the only choices i'll choose do nothing, thanks anyway.
The bitch is there are thing we can do WITHOUT using crap and trade that could make a difference, but because people like Al Gore, who just FYI has set himself up to be a a carbon billionaire, can't profit from it? Its never mentioned. for example painting roofs white to reflect more sunlight, last study i saw had that simple thing dropping temps 5 degrees, if you likewise paint the streets white instead of leaving them black IIRC it would take another 15 degrees off, which anybody who has walked across pavement in the summer knows how much energy they absorb from the sun.
In the end the thing that proves to me the current AGW "leaders" are lying leeches is you have NEVER, not even once, seen Al Gore and pals talking about restricting trade with China, even though they are throwing so much pollution into the sky we can detect it in California...why? Because rev Al and pals make crazy monies from cheap Chinese labor, you stupid peasant you!
The current leadership has hijacked AGW and turned it into a massive scam. They want the corps to bail for China (where they can get the benefits of cheap labor and no environmental laws) while they raid what's left in your pocket with carbon taxes, which they will then avoid by going overseas or like Rev Al fucking scam by buying credits from HIS OWN COMPANY and then having the brass balls to say fucking off in a Lear jet is "carbon neutral" because he PAID HIMSELF TO DO IT!!! This would be like you or I moving money from our left to right pocket, calling it "wealth redistribution" and getting a fucking tax break for it!
If you want to cut down the pollution, or use cleaner tech? All for it, right there with ya, we do live in a closed system after all. But don't let the scammers fleece your pockets by saying "We're doing something!" when that something is about as productive as a game of three card monty for the player. in the end crap & trade and carbon credits will do NOTHING to help the environment, it'll simply reward the scammers.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Well we've finally done it. We are obviously headed toward a new ice age. We've hit an "all time coldest day" today as far back as I can remember the daily temps (today and yesterday). Everyone run out and buy winter gear (soon as I buy some stock in winter gear companies first thing tomorrow morning!). So run out and stock up (but wait until atleast 10am, thanks!).
It's nowhere near as good as satellite data, but we can infer data about past Arctic ice from geological observations.
It's important because it's not just an effect, it's a cause. Arctic ice levels affect climate patterns.
Pointing out that the climate has changed in the past does dispose of the idiots saying "Save the planet!", because the planet will be just fine. It does, however, hide the issue that matters to a lot of humans, which is whether we can still grow enough food for seven billion of us and continue having cities on coastlines.
If you are measuring for only 35 years, a 35 year low does not mean only 35 years. It means at least 35 years.
But take a look at the data. It looks like a death spiral. The trend from the data is undeniable. Calling the current extent a record low sort of misses the point because the current amount of ice is a tiny fraction of what it was two decades ago.
Offtopic a bit maybe? I don't disagree with anything you are saying but my question was, how much of an influence does man really have?
Again, don't get me wrong, I do my best to minimise my own impact on the environment, but is man's impact really large enough to melt all the arctic ice?
One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
Therefore...
Satellites cause ice melt.
Fran
:):):)
1st 1st Poster of the new Millennium!
Who needs sarcasm tags when you've got exclamation points!!!!!!!?????
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
I hear the voice of Sam Kinison. I hope you are smoking a cigar, or drinking a beer, or eating some food or something like he would have done.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Alex Rogan: Yahoo!
I like how the very article you cited said the effect was "unlikely to make much difference."
I'm not a global warming naysayer, but are humans solely to blame for this?
Of course not, it's the cows fault.
Let's nuke Wisconsin.
Aerosols do cause a cooling effect but some of them, in particular carbon black can increase the melting of ice when it settles on it.
Winter extent doesn't change much in the Arctic Ocean because it's constrained by the land around it. The only places it can grow out further is in the Bering Sea and between North America, Greenland and Europe. In contrast the sea ice around Antarctica melts nearly completely every year and reforms the again next year. It doesn't have the opportunity to build up the thick multi-year ice that exists (but not for much longer) in the Arctic Ocean. The difference between an ocean surrounded by land and land surrounded by ocean at the poles.
Of course the Earth is rotating from Alaska toward Greenland, the same way the storm is spinning.
Satellite records of sea ice extent date back to 1979, though a 2011 study by Kinnard et al. shows that the Arctic hasn't seen a melt like this for at least 1,450 years
Burn the non-believer!
And increase the CO2 content of the atmosphere? You should be sequestrated for such a dumb idea!
(I'm thinking of the sun's 11-year cycle and the recent larger-than-normal volcano activity)
Well, some say that the recent larger-than-normal volcano activity may be an effect rather than a cause (or, anyway, contribute in a positive feedback to GW).
And it's possible they are right.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
You forgot to mention the last sentence of that article: "Even if the amount of CO2 going into the Arctic Ocean doubled, it's a blip on a global scale".
If you take your pills only in the morning, you shouldn't post stuff at midnight.
Seriously? Increased carbon emissions increase volcanoes? This I've never heard before.
One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
Aerosols do cause a cooling effect but some of them, in particular carbon black [wikipedia.org] can increase the melting of ice when it settles on it.
Yeah, it's a complicated topic. Which is why scientists are still researching it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If you look at the IPCC report (wg1 chapter 2 page 136 although it's already starting to get a bit old), there is still a (minimal) chance that none of it is caused by CO2, because human release of aerosols cause a cooling effect. Of course there are other considerations like methane, etc. Most scientific organizations say things like, "most of the warming we've seen is caused by humans....." Although 'most' is a wiggle word that accurately represents our uncertainty on the matter.
Most climatologists, 97%, agree with AGW. An indication that "most" can have a measurable meaning. Of course like all measurements, it comes with an error rate or wiggle room. If you want to believe in all the minimal chances of things, buy a lottery ticket--just one should be enough.
Insightful.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
It's the satellites causing the melt! De-orbit them all ASAP!!!
William Ewing (Columbia Univ), back in the '50s, said that he had evidence of a 60-year freeze/thaw cycle for the Arctic Sea. Evaporation from an ice-free Arctic Sea fed snow falls on Siberia, Canada and Greenland resulting in glaciers sending floes into the Arctic Sea. As the Sea got covered up the evaporation slowed and so did the glaciers. Rinse and repeat.
Why does everybody forget that we're still in an inter-glacial period?
Of course it's warming. That's how we got out (and are still getting out) of the ice age.
10,000 years ago the ice was a mile high over NYC and central Europe. Now THERE's a real disaster. If we can stop the ice coming back, that would be good, wouldn't it?
Most climatologists, 97%, agree with AGW.
This is really a meaningless statement, because "agreeing with AGW" can mean things as diverse as "minimal warming affect" and "HUMANITY WILL SUFFER HORRIFIC CONSEQUENCES!!" Any survey I've seen of climatologists asks questions closer to the "minimal warming affect" end of the scale.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And a dumb fucking electorate gave the cowboy the chance.
If we need to start blaming someone, blame the American people. They are dumb as shit and they elect idiots who don't give a shit about the planet. Given a choice between cheap gas for the SUV or a future for their grandchildren, what do you think they will pick?
Yeah, we shouldn't give that stupid electorate a chance to interfere with what we say is right, and....
Heyyyy, wait a minute!!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
As the Arctic Ocean summer ice declines there is developing evidence it is having an effect on the northern polar jet stream, slowing it down and causing the meanders to get larger. This has the effect of bringing colder weather further south and warmer weather further north and slowing down the speed at which the weather moves through. That would explain why a few years ago when Florida was having freezing weather Greenland was practically balmy.
As earth heats up, cooling mechanisms should increase. It's not instantaneous of course. Until the cooling mechanisms outpace the heating mechanisms, ice is going to keep melting year after year. The speed ice melts probably has more to do with surface area, ice depth, and cloud cover more than ambient temperature.
All of us, sooner or later.
A couple billion prematurely, mostly children and elderly.
Remember world population is going to be significantly lower than today by the end of the century. There are two main ways to achieve that: war and famine.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Seriously? Increased carbon emissions increase volcanoes? This I've never heard before.
Shifting mass distribution on the Earth crust causing adjustments in plate tectonics?
Un-possible! </grin>
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
*Black Sabbath starts playing*
I don't get this obsession with Al Gore. He's like a spokesmodel for global warming. Bypass him and go directly to the source. If you're making your decisions about the validity of global warming based on personal animosity you're doing it wrong.
So, if it's happened sometime since the beginning of the planet, it's a situation we shouldn't worry about? Wrong. For the first 4 billion years, the planet was pretty primitive, and no state to support human life. In the remaining half-billion years there have been numerous extinction events.. Five of them have been labelled major extinction events where 50 to 80 percent of all macroscopic genera went extinct. If we screw up this planet sufficiently, we might well be looking at the so-called "sixth extinction" which could be worse than any of them.
No big deal? We depend on other species to get clean water and eat. Or do you think food and clean water is made in factories?
Of course, shit happens, and humanity will probably go extinct eventually. But this looks to be happening in the next century or so. Maybe you don't care whether your species outlives you, but some of do.
restricting trade with China, even though they are throwing so much pollution into the sky we can detect it in California
Why does everyone blame China? Care to look in your own backyard?
Both theories have been pretty thoroughly debunked. I'd go look it up for you, but I've already done my share of debunking-the-already-debunked for the week.
If you look at TFA, the record low that was just surpassed was set between 2006 and 2009. The records only go back to 1979, but the previous record low was not set in 1979; rather, the trend has been downwards ever since the satellite observations began.
Just a reminder to all the "skeptics" here: There are plenty of climate markets on Intrade. If you think the anthropogenic influence is overestimated, you can make quite a bit of money betting against the prevailing opinion there.
For some reason, "alarmists" seem a lot more willing to put their money where their mouth is than "skeptics". So far, they have also won a lot more on it.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
So... What happens when we run out of shit to paint white, eh, genius?
Yeah, what's the big deal anyway? So some millions of people will die, and some billions will starve. Cap it with couple of nuclear wars because India and China will need to invade neighbours in the midst of rice riots. Some cities wiped by severe storms (those seem to be on the rise with warming). Maldives go underwater. All of this because oil and coal companies must maximise their profits no matter what, and so do politicians. I assume you have a nice bunker somewhere high above the sea level with enough food and porn stashed for the next 200 years?
`grep' is the command, it goes first.
Also, enclose the multiple words you want to grep for in quotes, unless you intend to grep multiple files...
No, bury him. That way his carbon will return to the earth. Burning him will contribute to CO2 levels.
Remember when there was a problem with acid rain?
Sulfur dioxide restrictions were implemented flexibly by a cap and trade system. The economic impact was obviously manageable, and the problem got addressed.
It's instructive to look at the political history of the idea of using market forces to distribute the effort of pollution reduction. Look up whose idea it was in the first place.
He actually proves the GP's point.
Per Capita (which is the graph he links to) shows the US trending down, and China trending up. That's nice, but considering that China has a population of around 1.3 billion versus the US population of around 305 million, even a moderate trend upwards has to be multiplied by over 4.
All of the other CO2 graphs show that China has put out more pollution than the US for a very long time. However 3 of them show that like the US, China too has been reducing their pollution as well. The only one showing an upward trend is the graph showing the kg of CO2 per kg of oil energy equivalent use.
captcha: illusion
I swear someone, somewhere has a really weird sense of humour.
If anyone doesn't get it:
Less sea ice > more air moisture > more snow.
So yes, global warming would cause the winters to be harsher in snowbound areas.
If you are measuring for only 35 years, a 35 year low does not mean only 35 years. It means at least 35 years.
But take a look at the data. It looks like a death spiral. The trend from the data is undeniable. Calling the current extent a record low sort of misses the point because the current amount of ice is a tiny fraction of what it was two decades ago.
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/08/new-paper-finds-deep-arctic-ocean-was.html ... 1–2C warmer than modern Arctic Intermediate Water." This finding is particularly surprising because it occurred during the last major ice age.
New paper finds deep Arctic Ocean from 50,000 to 11,000 years ago was 1–2C warmer than modern temperatures
A new paper published in Nature Geoscience finds "From about 50,000 to 11,000 years ago, the central Arctic Basin from 1,000 to 2,500 meters deep was
Deep Arctic Ocean warming during the last glacial cycle
T. M. Cronin, G. S. Dwyer, J. Farmer, H. A. Bauch, R. F.
Spielhagen, M. Jakobsson, J. Nilsson, W. M. Briggs Jr &
A. Stepanova
Nature Geoscience (2012) doi:10.1038/ngeo1557
In the Arctic Ocean, the cold and relatively fresh water
beneath the sea ice is separated from the underlying warmer
and saltier Atlantic Layer by a halocline. Ongoing sea ice
loss and warming in the Arctic Ocean have
demonstrated the instability of the halocline, with
implications for further sea ice loss. The stability of the
halocline through past climate variations is unclear.
Here we estimate intermediate water temperatures over the
past 50,000 years from the Mg/Ca and Sr/Ca values of
ostracods from 31 Arctic sediment cores. From about 50 to
11 [thousand years] ago, the central Arctic Basin from
1,000 to 2,500m was occupied by a water mass we call
Glacial Arctic Intermediate Water. This water mass was
1–2C warmer than modern Arctic Intermediate Water,
with temperatures
peaking during or just before millennial-scale Heinrich cold
events and the Younger Dryas cold interval. We use
numerical modelling to show that the intermediate depth
warming could result from the expected decrease in the flux
of fresh water to the Arctic Ocean during glacial conditions,
which would cause the halocline to deepen and push the
warm Atlantic Layer into intermediate depths. Although not
modelled, the reduced formation of cold, deep waters due to
the exposure of the Arctic continental shelf could also
contribute to the intermediate depth warming.
Paper finds Arctic sea ice extent 8,000 years ago was less than half of the 'record' low 2007 level
A paper published in Science finds summer Arctic Sea Ice extent during the Holocene Thermal Maximum 8,000 years ago was "less than half of the record low 2007 level." The paper finds a "general buildup of sea ice from ~ 6,000 years before the present" which reached a maximum during the Little Ice Age and "attained its present (year 2000) extent at 4,000 years before the present"
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2012/08/paper-finds-arctic-sea-ice-extent-8000.html
A 10,000-Year Record of Arctic Ocean Sea-Ice Variability—View from the Beach
Svend Funder1,*, Hugues Goosse2, Hans Jepsen1, Eigil Kaas3, Kurt H. Kjær1, Niels J. Korsgaard1, Nicolaj K. Larsen4, Hans Linderson5, Astrid Lyså6, Per Möller5, Jesper Olsen7, Eske Willerslev1
+
ABSTRACT
We present a sea-ice record from northern Greenland covering the past 10,000 years. Multiyear sea ice reached a minimum between ~8500 and 6000 years ago, when the limit of year-round sea ice at the coast of Greenland was located ~1000 kilometers to the north of its present position. The subsequent increase in multiyear sea ice culminated during the past 2500 years and is linked to an increase in ice export from the western Arctic and higher variability of ice-drift routes. When the ice was at its minimum in northern Greenland, it greatly increased at El
http://www.webcitation.org/6AKKakUIo
There was almost a million km more ice over last winter than there was in the previous low year of 2007.
There was also an exceptionally strong summer storm this year in early August (the time when ice is thinnest) that led to a lot of ice breaking up - hence the relative ice low.
http://earthsky.org/earth/powerful-summer-storm-in-arctic-reduces-sea-ice-even-more
Result is an at least 30 year low, but it is pretty consistent with the 60 year AMO/PDO ocean cycle:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif
So it doesn't actually look like this is a "death spiral" at least in the short term, more like a bit of seasonal variability in an otherwise 5 year upwards trend.
So, in conclusion, satellites are melting the ice.
Alas, no mod points. +1 in spirit anyway.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Humans could have no greater nor swifter impact on the CO2 balance than the evolution of white-rot fungus. That fungus ended the carboniferous era by evolving a species that could metabolize cellulose. Before then dead trees just sat until they could become coal. When this fungus evolved though, it quickly encompassed the Earth and consumed all of the cellulose available to the depths it could reach, releasing untold billions of tons of C02 and methane into the air before it ran out of readily available cellulose to consume. And that's why coal seams have well-defined borders. White-rot fungus is also why there will be no more coal. Life has found a way to prevent it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Drainage to river can cope with heavy storms - check
Able to supply food needs using mixture of conventional growing and hydroponics - check
Politically stable area which is a net food and energy exporter - check
Now I just need a few machine guns and a minefield and I'm all set to watch the fun.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Sorry, but AGW is a physical, observable phenomenom, not a prediction of it's possible consequences. Please do try to keep the two as separate issues, otherwise there's a chance that you reject the observation because you don't like one possible consequence prediction...
Or in other words, the 97% agree that AGW is the best explanation for the atmospheric observations scientists have made since the end of the 19th century. 3% disagree, but can't offer any other framework that explains all observations, or can make predictions.
The biosphere is to a degree self regulating because it has evolved that way. But there are no written guarantees that this will be true tomorrow.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Come on, am I supposed to take seriously someone who is supposed to have read a scientific paper but can't spell one of the key words?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I don't know the original source of your sea ice anomalies graph, here's the noaa one:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/nh-seaice/201207.gif
2007 was not particularly bad, and it's clear there's a strong trend to the ice melting 2012 being the worst.
Looking at your temperature graph, the 100 year trend is up, the whole data trend is up, the 20 year trend is up, the 40 year trend is up, HOWEVER, if we take the 65 year trend, (which includes the drop from the second world war destruction), we get a downward trends. But why did you choose the 65 years trend? That clearly includes the peak around 1939 for the war buildup, without that peak, even that trend is up!
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif
I don't know, are you hoping nobody will actually look at the links you provided? Because I don't see how you can come to that conclusion even from the links you provided. The shrinking ice is within the trend, and it's a clear trend of warming/shrinking.
Humanity is the really big thing that happened last century.
We went from 1.6 billion people to 6, we altered the environment on an unseen before scale, we began mass producing and dumping waste at a pace that couldn't have possibly be without consequence.
Referring strictly to CO2, the levels we have now haven't been seen in at least 650.000 years and that's without considering other gases which are mostly man made (they occur rarely or not at all in nature).
Ignorance is not an excuse. The alternative explanations you mention have been thoroughly debunked.
What the heck has Slashdot turned into?
right...
So, in conclusion, satellites are melting the ice.
Darn, I thought the ice was causing the satellites.
If you want to see basically all the current graphical data available on sea ice in Arctis, you want Arctic sea ice graphs. Take a look!
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
It's also helps to take this into perspective, look at this graph, you'll see that we keep talking about the summer extent; the winter extent hasn't changed much.
The reason for this is very obvious if you go to this page: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/cgi-bin/seaice-monitor.cgi, and change the date to the 1st of March (when the extent is largest). Basically the hole sea area is covered in ice - and it will be for a lot of years. You can not measure the winter change by measuring ice extent. You need to track this by measuring ice thickness. Most likely we will experience a ice free Noth Pole during summer before seeing any significant change in the ice cover extent during winter.
Skeptics or no skeptics, harm is still done by human activity. It's just that talk and speculation here is pointless. We can't really do much about it, when CO2 emissions exceed even pessimistic estimates, governmental decisions increase CO2 emissions, nuclear power is removed and replaced with coal power plants. In my mind, the race to limit CO2 emissions is lost, now someone had better figure out how to remove it from the atmosphere...
Take a look at this article about Germany's electricity situation. This is a country where greens have had good success with getting rid of nuclear power, and riding the Fukushima wave. They are starting 25 new coal power plants that are even hyped as "clean" (because they have "high" electrical energy efficiency of 43%).
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/08/31/germany-insane-or-just-plain-stupid/
"We usually give the Germans credit for being rational, but this coal plant will emit over one million times more carbon this year than all of their nuclear plants would have over the next 20 years, and cost over twice as much to run as any one of the them."
There is also some speculation what this rise in the cost of electricity will do to the renewable-support...
It's hard to derive much meaning from CO2 pollution numbers per country, when the fact is that goods move between USA and China. I believe net transport is from China to USA. Many things are manufactured in China. So part of CO2 emissions in China is directly attributable to US.
The subject is always hotly debated and my impression is that some interest groups are trying to keep it that way (something similar to creationism vs evolution). The fact that the OP could name the two top "alternative" explanations for global warming and still put them forward as reasonable speaks to me of ill intent, because they are frankly bullshit.
There is no controversy. Anthropogenic global warming is real. The crushing majority of climatologists and the data point to that conclusion.
right...
Well great. We can assume that human beings can't affect the environment any worse than a fungus that altered that altered the ecosphere beyond all recognition. Hey, that makes me feel a lot better.
BTW, my Googling about WRF (I do thank you for telling me about it) gives me a rather more ambiguous picture than the one you offer. Most science stories describe it as "an interesting theory" but not yet universally accepted. I admit that it's a really plausible theory, but not one you can cite with such religious certainty.
They're in it together.
rewriting history since 2109
Mitt Romney doesn't give a shit.
They mean "the lowest we've ever recorded, and from our data, hasn't happened since human civilization started." Worst in 3000 years requires it also be the worst in 33 years.
Learn to love Alaska
Instead of speculating on the basis of miniscule data, you're better off just shutting up and burning less stuff - which, incidentally, is exactly what needs to be done because we're a) running out of stuff to burn in some areas and b) we finally start bringing a few billion people from abject poverty into reasonable (though still very poor) living conditions who will need stuff to burn.
FYI, the cycle is 22 years, not 11.
Mod up this AC, please. The sunspot cycle of about 11 years is only one half of the solar magnetic cycle of about 22 years. And as a side note, the cycle is on average about 22 years. Observed cycles have varied by up to a few years from this.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Blame the way your government acted at Kyoto for that (proposed a carbon market like an economists wet dream to screw everything up, then pulled out at the last minute - that's set the insane carbon credit agenda) and let the people you vote for know you are not happy about it. There's no point blaming some poor sod doing his job freezing his arse off in Antarctica taking ice cores (even if they love doing that sort of thing).
The "massive scam" is called politics and people trying to turn anything they can find to their advantage.
How about investing money and knowledge to try to fix this problem? It's really incredible that people after thousands of years cannot find:
30 second research and google would have told you this has been eliminated as explanation , what, a million time now ? Even in year of big eruption volcano don't even scratch the quantity CO2 we emit as human. As for sun it has so long been eliminated. Why do people ask question which are easily answered by a cursory google search (and I am not even speaking of reading peer reviewed article linked as primary source in case one don't trust real climate or whatever).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
There've been a very long period of low Sun activity, but the meltdown didn't stop.
Sun is one parameter, like fire under a pot. But there are gases inside the pot which give inertia to Sun's heat, and most of them have a human origin.
Actually, the remaining 3% don't even disagree; they want more data before they decide.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Weeds grow better with increased CO2 concentration than food-plants. Not all plants are food, Humans don't like weeds.
Food-plants grown under increased CO2 show decreased nutritional value per weight, so even if you get more growth, the end result is less nutritious...
In the real world of plant-growing, CO2 is rarely the limiting factor, usually water, nitrogen or soil-minerals are the limiting factor. Increased CO2 leads to increased temperature, often leading to increased drought during the growing season, so plants grow *less* despite increased CO2 concentrations.
See: reality is more complicated than you pretend it to be...
For some reason, "alarmists" seem a lot more willing to put their money where their mouth is than "skeptics". So far, they have also won a lot more on it.
Because skeptics are um skeptical. There are many of us who don't adopt a position of belief on this subject. Its clear the climate is changing. Its also clear there is lots we don't know about how the system works, and its not entirely clear where things are headed and its even less clear that its man made.
I am not saying it is not man made. It very well might be! I don't want to put money down that its not. I also don't want to adopt economically ruinous measures; on the possibility it is. I want to let the scientists do more science. That is really not an extreme position. Especially when its already to late to fix the problem by 'controlling emissions' if our current level of understanding does turn out to be mostly correct. The focus should be on enhancing our understanding of the climate model and figuring out how we might directly and actively control it.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Contrary to what symbolset says though, I think that the impact of white-rot fungus was quite the opposite of "releasing untold billions of CO2 into the air". It seems much more likely that what happened is that, by preventing coal production through tree fossilization, it halted the massive sequestration of CO2 that was going on during the Carboniferous era. This led to an equilibrium, since the coal that had been produced wasn't going anywhere, and WRF was preventing new coal from being produced - most of the CO2 sequestered in new trees was being sent right back into the atmosphere via WRF.
In the past few hundred years though, with the advent of man burning coal, we could easily be upsetting the equilibrium. Humans are, after all, just another species that evolved. If the evolution of trees can lead to a massive decline in CO2 levels due to fossilization, and the evolution of WRF can lead to an equilibrium by preventing further fossilization, there's absolutely no reason to believe that the evolution of humans couldn't lead to a breaking of the equilibrium and a massive rise in CO2 levels.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
No no, you need to make sure he fossilizes. Just burying him will probably cause him to decompose.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Painting streets white is a terrible idea, can you imagine how difficult that would make it to drive on a sunny day? Ugh.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
The problem is that change happens, but the speed it happens with. It's like stopping your car - if you apply the brakes gently, you hardly feel a thing, but if you hit a road tree, well, you still won't feel it, but for other reasons.
Yeah, I had the same thought after a while. So rather than being limited to reversing the effects of the fungus (which themselves must have been pretty extreme) we're able to release all that carbon that's been sequestered for the last 260 billion years. Pretty nasty.
Anyway, it's all nonsense. The articles I've been reading don't say that coal formation started when trees evolved and stopped when white rot fungus came along. Coal formation started when algae first appeared and continued (with various breaks, presumably due to extinction events) until the present day. All the WRF did was slow down (not stop) coal formation from lignan-based plants.
I wonder what climate denier blog he's parroting. Typical stuff: bad facts, bad logic, and a result that doesn't even support his thesis
I do miss the days when scientific cranks stuck with harmless stuff, like proving that Earth was settled from Mars, or that pi is a rational number.
I work on coal-bearing forests in the Carboniferous (yeah, yeah, saying "in" is standard geology terminology -- I don't *actually* have a time machine), and this is the first I've heard of any type of fungus being responsible for that much change. There is a big change globally in climate as you go from the Carboniferous Period (named such because of the abundance of coal) into the Permian Period. The climate generally becomes more arid. But this is thought to be related to the development of Pangaea and the whole-hemisphere ocean on the other side of it, Panthalassa, not some transformation of forest terrains due to evolution of a new fungus. For that matter, there *are* coals in the Permian, but they are located in places such as India and Australia that people may not be as familiar with. There is also plenty of coal in rocks of all ages from the Carboniferous onward, although it's global abundance does wax and wane with global climate. For example, coal is particularly abundant in the Cretaceous Period and in the Eocene, both times of "greenhouse" conditions. It's less common in, say, the Triassic, which like the Permian has more widespread arid conditions (Pangaea was still breaking up). Coal is forming today as peat in many parts of the world. I have no doubt that the evolution of fungus that could metabolize cellulose was an important event, but it did not result in the end of coal.
The bitch is there are thing we can do WITHOUT using crap and trade that could make a difference, but because people like Al Gore, who just FYI has set himself up to be a a carbon billionaire [telegraph.co.uk], can't profit from it?
Al Gore is set up to become a "carbon billionaire" because he's investing heavily in green technology, which is benefiting from growth due to subsidies by countless governments. It has nothing to do with cap and trade.
If you want to argue against the government subsidizing green-tech companies, that's fine with me. I'll just say this though, I'd rather have the government investing in green-tech than military tech.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
France is actually set to go below China in that mix, and Germany has been rapidly declining.
The Aussies, on the other hand, are being complete assholes.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
*groan* Why did I not read my post before I pressed "Submit"? It should have said "The problem is not that ...", obviously.
How much of it would have happened anyway?
If we are talking since 1900, none of it according to the best models, if anything the globe would have very slightly cooled. The official IPCC position is more conservative and simply states that "most" of the observed warming is due to our activity (it's the second point in the much maligned 3 point scientific consensus)
rant/
A good place to start looking for more detailed answers on sun cycles and volcanos is here, and the youtube channel "climate crock of the week" is also a good place to visit for quality investigative journalism on the subject, (warning it includes strong British sarcasm). But for god's sake don't take my word for it, trusting a single source in the minefield of disinformation on climate science is quite likely to be fatal to your understanding of the issue. WP (or any other reputable encyclopedia) is also a good place to start, and it's hard to go past realclimate.org, it's run by Michael Mann (the hockey stick guy) and features articles and commentary by some of the world's leading climatologists. sourcewatch.org also has an extensive database of front groups, shills and lobbyists who publish climate misinformation, making it relatively simple for a genuine skeptic to work out who is bullshitting them and why. Make no mistake, if your interested in truth these "lobbyists" are your enemy, they will attempt to recruit you into the dwindling ranks of their army of useful idiots they have extensive propoganda experience that has been refined since the days the same people were paid to disrcedit medical science that said smoking causes cancer, somewhat surprisingly such expertise is cheap, (as well as fucking nasty).
/rant
Disclaimer: Unlike the so called "climate change skeptics" I want you to be skeptical of what I say and who I recommend. I've been following the science as an interested layman now for 30yrs, I want you to constructively attack the evidence I'm leaning on because (as a grandfather of three) the issue is way too important to allow the mediocrity you speak of in your sig to waste time and sow doubt amongst the uninformed.
A final bit of good faith advice (Aussie style) - Do you fucking homework mate, your ignorance.is your enemy's most effective weapon.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The IPCC actually categorize their assertions with different confidence ratings, of the major influences on climate, aerosols, clouds, and ice disintegration are the least understood. For instance the heat absorbed by soot in the atmosphere usually ends up in the ocean when it falls out of suspension.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Actually, I think it is all Clinton's fault. If he hadn't been such a tool, Bush never would have gotten elected.
You're being shortsighted. There's a butterfly in Mongolia I'm really pissed off at right now.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Your house is on fire. You know it is on fire, you can see the flames and smell the smoke.
You do not know if it was started by an arsonist, or perhaps by lightning or an electrical problem.
Do you wait for the scientists to find out what started the fire before calling the fire department?
By that time the house will be burned down
I myself think we are looking at it all wrong. I think it is man-made, all the evidence points to the earth never having had such a rapid increase CO2 and temperature. Regardless of the source of warming though, we both agree that it -is- warming, and at an alarming rate.
Shouldn't we expend resources to stop it or reduce damages from it, regardless of our belief? If you are of a christian bent, God made us stewards of the earth. To care for and manipulate as we need, but in that process we should respect it.
I myself am no longer christian, but I do not understand how 'christian' people can so readily rape the world that they believe god has given them.
Silence is a state of mime.
Its clear the climate is changing. Its also clear there is lots we don't know about how the system works, and its not entirely clear where things are headed and its even less clear that its man made.
I am not saying it is not man made. It very well might be! I don't want to put money down that its not.
As the comic says, what if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
And which cooling mechanisms are these? According to TFA, melting the polar icecap actually removes an important cooling mechanism. Other mechanisms, such as the ocean's ability to abosrb CO2, are pretty much maxed out. Do you have a planet size air conditioner nobody else knows about?
With substantial removal of ice cover from land areas, we get increased erosion from previously inaccessible terrain, leading to increased amounts of certain minerals available in the ocean, which remove CO2 through carbonate formation. Another major mechanism for CO2 removal is the occurrence of global oceanic anoxic events, which leads to massive oceanic burying of organic carbon (there is some speculation that anoxic periods were responsible for the formation of some major oil deposits, as well as some extinction events).
Of course, geological mechanisms such as this function on geological time scales, so I wouldn't expect these effects to kick in on any timescale observable by our human civilization.
blah blah blah MIGHT CAUSE blah HORRIBLENESS blah CATASTROPHE blah AWFULNESS
Or ... it MIGHT NOT
When they say 'MIGHT', what exactly is the probability they are suggesting? Pretty much unknown ... like most climate related FUD.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I read the science paper too. It's a hypothesis (not a fact), an interesting one to say the least, and it has also been suggested before. Anyway, it was about the evolution of a specific family of genes, in the white rot fungi lineage (subphylum Agaricomycotina, phylum Basidiomycota), not the evolution of some specific species.
No! No! No! I won't! I won't! I won't! La La La La! I can't hear you!
You are welcome on my lawn.
Burning plants or animals that have been recently alive will not increase the CO2 content of the atmosphere. It will only return CO2 to the atmosphere that has been removed within the past few years. You're just sending that CO2 to the next phase in the carbon cycle. It's digging up billions of tons of fossil fuels that have been buried for millions of years and burning them that increases the CO2 content of the atmosphere. That is adding carbon to the carbon cycle.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Genetically engineer trees to all be white!
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No it's more like, your house is 20 degrees warmer today than it was 8 months ago in the depths of winter. Clearly this is your fault and with that trend, by 2020 it will be uninhabitable! You better dedicate half your income to air conditioning so that the average temperature in the summer equals the average temperature in the winter, because you picked an arbitrary point and never want it to change from there.
Why not build solar, wind, and nuclear plants? There's another option.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I also don't want to adopt economically ruinous measures; on the possibility it is.
Economic ruin due to preventing AGW is a red herring. We are not dependent on fossil fuels, or at least we need not be. There is no need for us to be. We are told that there is in order to manipulate people into being parrots for what you are squawking. The idea that not poisoning the earth is somehow inherently tied to having a high-tech civilization is a laughable one at best, but as long as many people repeat the lie you're repeating, there's little room for laughter. Only tears now, as we poison the environment in which we live. One of the basic tenets of life is that you shouldn't shit where you eat.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
White-rot fungus is also why there will be no more coal. Life has found a way to prevent it.
Today we have numerous fungi which attack both lignin and cellulose — not in the same organism, as the fungi which grow on trees are characterized as one or the other. But can all of them survive in all conditions? I can imagine some events which might result in the burying of lots of organic matter all at once.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
One does not simply paint the streets white. Paint offers less traction than pavement and as it fails (which it will, and rapidly) it will trap water which would otherwise evaporate and actually hasten the demise of the pavement.
One can use a light-colored concrete to build roads, but this is significantly more expensive than using asphalt. It is also more expensive to repair. After any significant seismic activity there is often damage which is effectively unrepairable which renders the road surface horribly unpleasant to drive on. I get to "enjoy" a section of it on the 101 on a regular basis. Over the last 20 years or so that I've been traveling it, it has become progressively more offensive. It's not too bad in my Mercedes, but in the Astro it's a bit uncomfortable and in my F250 it's agonizing.
As well, a light-colored road surface is a horrible thing to look upon in any kind of inclement weather. Lines tend to disappear and glare when present is magnified.
A better solution would be to turn back the clock, figuratively since literally seems not to be possible, and eliminate the interstate highway system. We'd be better off with lots of rail than we are with lots of road, in a number of ways. As diesel locomotives use a hybrid powertrain, it ought to be relatively simple to run them electrically in certain locations (with a third rail?) and the diesel can come from algae grown on seawater, which only looks to become more plentiful. Instead, we have the situation which benefits entrenched corporations as much as possible, made possible by our government in the first place. The automakers bought profitable public transportation systems and shut them down to force people to purchase their product, making the interstate highway system possible.
Of course, if not a federal interstate highway system, we'd have wound up with a federal interstate railway system, but it's hard to see how that would produce any more corruption than we have today with the highway system.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The Earth has not been warming at the rate of 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade since the last ice age. The RATE of warming has increased dramatically in the past several decades. We're not "forgetting" at all. We're taking into account more data than you are.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Weeds grow better with increased CO2 concentration than food-plants. Not all plants are food, Humans don't like weeds.
A lot of weeds ARE food plants, we've just chosen not to eat them for one reason or another.
In the real world of plant-growing, CO2 is rarely the limiting factor, usually water, nitrogen or soil-minerals are the limiting factor.
Which world? In the organic world, not USDA organic but the real thing, animals are involved in the equation and you fertilize with shit. A composting toilet can turn your poop (and your household compost) into some of the best soil available in a matter of months.
With modern technology, the only real limiting factor is water. And we do have numerous technologies for cleaning that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The focus should be on enhancing our understanding of the climate model and figuring out how we might directly and actively control it.
Because a pound of cure is better then an ounce of prevention. Right?
Because skeptics are um skeptical. There are many of us who don't adopt a position of belief on this subject.
But those who call themselves skeptics have almost universally adopted a belief on the subject. That their 1-3 climate scientists are correct about climate science -- even thought they are creation scientists, but skeptics don't think about that.
As for those cries of economic armageddon from the ostensibly rational skeptics: they are also not founded in any reality. We have had various carbon trading and/or tax systems in place. In America. In Germany. The evidence is in, and just like the economists said, the net effect on the economy is negligible.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Humans could have no greater nor swifter impact on the CO2 balance than the evolution of white-rot fungus.
Gee. Let me draw an analogy. I once saw a forest fire. The forest burnt down. Therefore, if I intentionally light a fire and destroy another forest, that forest wasn't really effected by my actions. Because that other forest was destroyed by natural causes.
If you think climate scientists are too stupid to know about such things, then you are too incompetent to recognize how incompetent you are.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Everyone wants *everyone else* to deal with.
No everyone. Just you, and a minority in the world. That's right, we're burning up the world because of the tyranny of a small special interest group and a few loud gullible follows.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Hint: France uses nuclear power plants (zero CO2 emissions), and Germany imports power from France :)
I hope we stop the panic and build some nuke facilities of our own.
How about this solution:
Hard caps on carbon output, slowly being lowered. Each corporation that outputs carbon (with certain modifications - the carbon emitted by vehicles is controlled separately) is initially capped at whatever they output in the year before the law is passed. It then decreases by 2% per year until it has reached a "controllable" level. Every five years, have regulators re-examine the distribution and make tweaks, but at no point can the total carbon output increase year-over-year. Make the fines for breaking this truly massive - billions of dollars.
I'm not going to say "no exceptions", but the exceptions should only be for a damn good reason. For instance, space launch - we basically have no low-carbon alternatives to rockets.
Meanwhile, replace all public coal, oil and gas power plants, with whatever makes sense for that area (preferably geothermal or hydroelectric (well-proven "green" technologies), failing that solar, tidal or wind (where the load is small enough to be met by those) or nuclear (only where necessary to meet demand - preferably paired with a hydroelectric plant)). And of course, if we get fusion working, do that.
As for vehicular carbon, that gets softer caps. Start with an emissions standard - no new vehicle of X type may emit more than Y carbon per mile/kilometer/megacubit, and no vehicle of X type may emit more than Y carbon per year (possibly estimated using distance traveled and the average carbon output). The former applies to manufacturers, the latter to individuals. Breaking the per-year emissions brings additional tax penalties. Both slowly decrease over time.
That *will* solve Global Warming, if it is able to be solved. It might trash the economy in the short-term, and it might be too late to prevent major climate change, but it would work.
Ok, before I get modded Troll, I'd like to appeal to your critical thinking logical side.
First, while I personally find this a bit saddening, lets ask a couple questions and make some observations.
1. Why is the ice cap cited as such a barometer of global warming?
2. Is the warming necessarily anthropogenic? Wouldn't it melt even if the warming was entirely natural?
3. What does an ice cap (which floats on water, which is an order of magnitude better conductor of heat than air)
3a. Where does this water get it's heat from? Hint: 75% of our surface is water. Does air affect ocean temps or something else?
3b. What is the heating role of CO2 in water. (ignore acidification)
4. If I showed you a temperature graph which showed temperatures are average while ice area is down, what would you infer?
( temperature graph )
4a. Could the ice pack be affected by say a storm that broke up the ice which facilitated melting?
So while the news is bad, we can't necessarily draw the conclusion that we've been told to draw. Low sea ice has nothing to with CO2. Global warming maybe, but not CO2.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
If you don't mind I will inherit your post title...
To the point: there are many ways to slice and dice this. Yes, China has a bigger population, but who are you to claim that each and every one of them does not deserve the same standard of living as yourself? You cannot point your finger at China and scream bloody murder when your own pollution is quadruple of the civilized world average. Just compare US to European developed nations, like Germany and France (using the same link, naturally).
So before "imposing trade sanctions on China", as GGP suggested, check the numbers to make sure you are not laughed out of the trade sanctions meeting.
"any explanation except the actual one."
Continuing to deny the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is futile.
Oh, I know that He once existed. But one evening I came home from work really tired, and inadvertently put Him in the microwave. Now He no longer exists.
But like all gods, He was good.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
No, it's more like you put 20 thermometers at various locations in your house and took careful measurements once a day for several years, and then compared the data sets year-to-year.
Changes in temperature in one specific location do not model global changes. Climate change models predict that some regions will become cooler on average, while some others will get warmer. But, overall, the average temperature of the planet is rising year-to-year. You can argue about the cause (and there are legitimate arguments to be made on both sides of the man-made vs. natural variation argument) but the data tells the truth.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Just to say up front I'm not in the skeptical camp on this, but the problem with your analogy is that it is leading and implies immediate, drastic action must be taken NOW or all is lost. It's very possible we can adapt to these changes as we focus our efforts on cleaning up our act. Technology got us into our current messes, but it can also get us out, and hobbling ourselves is not a good idea.
So maybe the house isn't really on fire yet, but you demand the fire company deluge it with water, and that destroys your computer with the plans for a better house, or the money spent on repairing the water damage means other improvements are put off.
I myself am no longer christian, but I do not understand how 'christian' people can so readily rape the world that they believe god has given them.
Never been religious myself, ever, but I guess it's the idea that God gave Man dominion over the Earth? Something like that?
Of course the real answer is alpha sociopaths in charge of everything- corporaitons, governments and religions- but that's a different thread. :-)
It apparently has not happened in hundreds of thousands of years, aside from the previous record breaking low in 2007. They are able to tell by various methods of radioactive dating of the air bubbles stored in the ice. In 2007, we had a lot of this 100,000 year old ice melting off, which means this is the warmest the arctic has been since modern humans have evolved. This year, we're breaking that record.
So the conditions of the deep and intermediate water were warmer than now during the last ice-age? What does this have to do with the current melt-off?
Also, has this study passed peer review already or is it in process?
not a lot, concrete streets are very common in a lot of places, and are pretty white
There's a farmer in Virginia who claims his permaculture techniques could sequester all the CO2 emitted by humans since the industrial revolution in less than 10 years. His name is Joel Salatin and the technique he invented is called mob-stocking herbivorous solar conversion lignified carbon sequestration fertilization. In the 50 years the Salatins have been farming this way, they've added 8 inches of topsoil to their land (this is how the carbon is sequestered). Salatin is featured in Michael Pollan's book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma." Pollan gives a brief introduction to the farm in this video among others.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
What part of "A paper published in Science finds summer Arctic Sea Ice extent during the Holocene Thermal Maximum 8,000 years ago was "less than half of the record low 2007 level." don't you understand?
I'm not taking a stance on the validity of the sentence, but it does pretty much address your concerns.
So, in conclusion, satellites are melting the ice.
Darn, I thought the ice was causing the satellites.
Only in Soviet Russia!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
They are building new coal fired plants because the renewable energy like solar and wind turbines just plain don't work, they're getting something like 12% the nameplate rating. I wouldn't be surprized that after you add in manufacture, installation, new grid connections, and backup energy sources that renewable cost more CO2 than they could save in multiple lifetimes, not to mention the 14,000 abandoned wind turbines in the US; "free energy" and they couldn't even afford to maintain the collection devices.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
The real reason it's too late is that without getting China and India onboard, the best anyone can do is spit in the wind; We've already met the Kyoto Protocol objectives for the US even without ratifying the treaty,, but somehow that doesn't seem to satisfy anyone.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
"We are not dependent on fossil fuels"
Wow. Just wow. And to buttress your argument you point to a completely speculative, disorganized, unprovenanced blog.
Go hang out on the Oil Drum for a week to see how staggeringly incorrect you are.
Can we get off of fossil fuels without crashing civilization as we know it? That's a very interesting question. Theoretically we can. We have the technology to create energy from much safer sources. Any practical chance of this happening?
No, not really.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
There's two basic reasons on why we are burning fossil fuels in the quantities that we do. The first is because of the physical properties of these fuels. These fossil fuels are energy dense, easy to store and transport, and can be handled safely by humans with only minor precautions.
The second reason we burn so much fossil fuels is because it is cheap. The article you link to states that we can replicate fuels with similar physical properties to fossil fuels but it says next to nothing about the cost. If the replacement fuels cost twice what the fossil fuels cost it might not mean economic ruin but it will certainly reduce our standard of living. The problem lies in that as of right now these replacement fuels don't cost twice as much but more like ten times as much.
There's another issue with bio-fuels specifically. With bio-fuels we place a very direct connection between our food and our fuel. A drought could place us in the very unfortunate position of choosing between starving to death and freezing to death. I read my history and civilizations have collapsed because of being forced into that situation.
I agree that we don't have to give up economic prosperity to avoid the burning of fossil fuels. What I disagree with is the severity of the supposed pollution that the burning of fossil fuels cause and the means by which many propose we shift away from fossil fuels to alternatives.
The only technology that we have right now that can compete with fossil fuels on cost is nuclear power. Wind power might get there as could bio-fuels and synthetic fuels given some investment in technology and infrastructure. Until we build enough windmills and nuclear power plants we are going to have to continue burning coal. If we shut off the coal power tap now we will never have enough power at a low enough cost to build that infrastructure. We can't build nuclear power plants without burning coal or erect windmills without burning diesel fuel.
People need to come to the realization that the transition away from fossil fuels is going to take decades. In the mean time, as we build these nuclear power plants, we need to keep digging up coal and drilling for natural gas. If we don't keep digging for coal then we just will not have the resources to transition to its replacement. If we don't keep digging for coal we will place ourselves in the position of choosing between starving to death or freezing to death.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Given that we're on track to end 2.4 million years of northern hemisphere glaciers and given that we know the gross mechanisms that are changing the climate, and we know those mechanisms are being activated by human activity, and given that we know the natural trend was going in the opposite direction until human activity overwhelmed it, it seems highly unlikely that it's "a natural cycle".
Fanatically anti-fanatical
The winter ice extent is missleading since the ice is gettng thinner. It's not the total ice area, it's also the VOLUME that is shrinking and NOT recovering!
Did anybody follow this link that was posted on the article....?
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/09/05/799761/death-spiral-watch-experts-warn-near-ice-free-arctic-in-summer-in-a-decade-volume-trends-continue/
Don't worry. His Noodlyness is not so easily destroyed. All you need to do is release the sacred pasta into a pot of holy (boiling) water and he shall be reborn anew and you can once more eat of his flesh and blood. Much like the Catholics do, but with less cannibalism.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Sorry, but AGW is a physical, observable phenomenom, not a prediction of it's possible consequences.
No, you are wrong, otherwise people like Lindzen, John Christy and Bjorn Lomborg wouldn't be called skeptics and dissenters.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Did anybody follow this link that was posted on the article
Uh, did you not read the post you replied to?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Again, don't get me wrong, I do my best to minimise my own impact on the environment, but is man's impact really large enough to melt all the arctic ice?
Yes, it is.
We're releasing about 30 Gigatonnes of carbon dioxide per year. It's small compared to the natural cycle, with is around 750 Gigatonnes, but we put more into the system every year. Any person who can do multiplication should be able to see that at the current rate it only takes about 25 years of emissions to equal all of the Carbon already in the cycle.
It's like leaving a hose running into a swimming pool, the hose is tiny and the pool is big, but even a small hose running constantly will eventually fill the pool up and then cause it to overflow.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Especially when its already to late to fix the problem by 'controlling emissions' if our current level of understanding does turn out to be mostly correct.
"Well, we are going too fast to come to a complete stop before we hit that other car, so don't bother taking your foot off the accelerator."
My webcomic
A new paper published in Nature Geoscience finds "From about 50,000 to 11,000 years ago, the central Arctic Basin from 1,000 to 2,500 meters deep was ... 1â"2C warmer than modern Arctic Intermediate Water."
That's irrelevant to the extent of Arctic sea ice. It only has to do with water at intermediate depths, not the surface temperature, nor sea ice extent. The Arctic surface was indeed colder than today during the glacial period, and there was more sea ice (to the extent that we can reconstruct from paleo proxies).
This finding is particularly surprising because it occurred during the last major ice age.
Not completely surprising. Cooling at the surface induces ocean circulation changes that can warm at depth. For example, the warmer Atlantic water could be forced deeper and warm the Arctic depths. The paper discusses a number of hypotheses for how this may happen.
What part of "A paper published in Science finds summer Arctic Sea Ice extent during the Holocene Thermal Maximum 8,000 years ago was "less than half of the record low 2007 level." don't you understand?
I'm not taking a stance on the validity of the sentence, but it does pretty much address your concerns.
Actually if you read the comment he was replying too, the bit you quoted was referencing a different paper. He was asking about the first bit, which apparently was from a paper published in Nature Geoscience. And he is free to have concerns about the comment he was posting on; apparently you were unable to comprehend it properly when you read it either.
Why does everybody forget that we're still in an inter-glacial period?
Of course it's warming. That's how we got out (and are still getting out) of the ice age.
Gee, if only paleoclimatologists knew about interglacials!
Oh wait, they do.
The interglacial already peaked 8000 years ago. We've been very gradually cooling since then, on average (with century-scale variability superimposed), as predicted by the Milankovitch cycles.
If we can stop the ice coming back, that would be good, wouldn't it?
If you really cared about that, you'd argue for saving our fossil fuels for later, when we need them, instead of using them all up now, when we don't. If you wanted to prevent the next glacial period, you'd slowly dole them out over thousands of years to stabilize the climate. And you certainly wouldn't use all of them (far beyond what's needed to prevent a glacial inception).
I'm not a global warming naysayer, but are humans solely to blame for this? How much of it would have happened anyway? (I'm thinking of the sun's 11-year cycle and the recent larger-than-normal volcano activity)
Um, maybe other people have already tried to answer those questions?
The answer is that the majority(*) of warming is due to human activity.
(As for the solar cycle - it's pretty obvious that an 11 year cycle can't make a 30 odd year trend).
(What "recent" larger than normal volcano activity? Also large volcanic events tend to reduce global temperatures.)
(* scientists tend not to say "all", there might be a little bit of warming coming from somewhere else).
And if it isn't man-made and is a product of natural variation, shoddy statistics? What if man's contribution is merely sprinkles on the shoddy statistics icing on the natural variation cake? Do you really think that if we didn't cause the warming, that we'd be able to stop it? I'm not sure if the warming is still happening, lower troposphere temperature annomaly measured by satellites have been stuck around 0.3 C for quite a while.
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Wow. Just wow. And to buttress your argument you point to a completely speculative, disorganized, unprovenanced blog.
If you were a little cleverer you would have noticed that's my blog. It's not disorganized at all, it just doesn't provide an easy means to get to old content. It might not be organized the way you want it, but then, I'm not trying to make money with it, either. It's a hobby. That blog post is basically something I had to keep writing and rewriting for people too in love with traditional Big Energy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's the lowest extent on record. We didn't have satellites before 1979, unless you have a time machine we can't change that. Proxy reconstructions estimates it's the lowest level in at least 8000 years and maybe the lowest level since Homo Sapiens evolved. It helps if you read everything, not just the stuff you agree with.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Let's see, which of us received 529 million $ in federal loans to start a green car company overseas?
Me: No.
You: No.
Al Gore: Bingo!
Yep, no obsession there.
fm6 suggested AGW may cause a worse extinction event than the previous ones (which is the kind of over-hype that skeptics like to use to claim AGW is false). symbolset appears to be responding to this claim, I doubt he is suggesting a slightly-less-severe extinction would be nothing to worry about.
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And looking at that graph, the maximum winter extent in 2011 was less than 2000s average maximum winter extent, and the 2000s average was less than the 1990s average, and the 1990s average was less than the 1980s average. Not as big of a swing, but still the same trend as the minimum summer extent. Even the 2010s winter average, so far, appears a little lower than the 2000s winter average, for whatever 2 years is worth.
Are you suggesting that reducing CO2 emissions will have some Reaganomic like trickle down effect on real pollutants? Wouldn't it be more effective to reduce actual pollution directly, instead of relying on some Rube Goldberg mechanism to do it indirectly? What about the poor plants, they've been CO2 starved for so long? They really starting to grow now.
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Excuse me! Obama said Osama is dead and terrorism is solved! If you disagree you are obviously a racist!
If by "minimal warming affect" you mean a few degrees, then yes, that's what all the fuss is about. Well, the few degrees of world temperature, which is an average of more varying data from many locales. There are some predictions of what will happen. How minimal or horrific those are depend on your definition of "minimal" and "horror;" whether we're talking 20 or 200 years; and, for some, whether they live there or not.
You seem to be suggesting that there might be an alternative reason for advancing a sensationalist agenda other than saving us from ourselves? Confused.
The sixth extinction is overhype? It's not universally accepted, but there's a lot of evidence.
Go back and read the thread. I did not bring up the sixth extinction in response to symbolset's post. I brought it up in response to a previous claim that if something has happened before in the 4.5 billion year history of the planet, it's no big deal.
I contend that he just did not read very closely, missing that the paper he was commenting on was also accepted and published. It just seems like a lazy attempt at poisoning the well, which adds very little to any debate.
I do agree that the relation between the findings of the first paper and sea ice coverage need clarification, but it seems to be of less importance given the findings of the second paper.
William Ewing (Columbia Univ), back in the '50s, said that he had evidence of a 60-year freeze/thaw cycle for the Arctic Sea. Evaporation from an ice-free Arctic Sea fed snow falls on Siberia, Canada and Greenland resulting in glaciers sending floes into the Arctic Sea. As the Sea got covered up the evaporation slowed and so did the glaciers. Rinse and repeat.
Well, that would mean there should have been as little ice when he said that as there is now. http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/sea_ice.html
Satellite data from the SMMR and SSM/I instruments have been combined with earlier observations from ice charts and other sources to yield a time series of Arctic ice extent from the early 1900s onward. While the pre-satellite records are not as reliable, their trends are in good general agreement with the satellite record and indicate that Arctic sea ice extent has been declining since at least the early 1950s.
Next!
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
You were modded troll...unfortunately, some people can't spot obvious sarcasm. Poe's law etc, but I find jokes funnier when you don't have to explain it afterwards...
Because they can simply move to China, which thanks to MFN will give us the finger and not do shit, thus running out what few companies we have left when they can't compete?
You should watch this cute little video that will show you quickly and easily how it will become a giant scam. Oh and everyone brings up sulfur trading but guess what? It got scammed to the tune of billions by corps getting paid for not putting out sulfur...they weren't gonna put out in the first place! Gotta love being an insider huh?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Because skeptics are um skeptical. There are many of us who don't adopt a position of belief on this subject. Its clear the climate is changing. Its also clear there is lots we don't know about how the system works, and its not entirely clear where things are headed and its even less clear that its man made.
I am not saying it is not man made. It very well might be! I don't want to put money down that its not. I also don't want to adopt economically ruinous measures; on the possibility it is.
Skepticism isn't mere disbelief. One of the tenets of skepticism is going with the evidence once the evidence points strongly in a certain direction, instead of continually moving the goal posts. As used here, though, what people are calling "skepticism" is really just denial.
I want to let the scientists do more science. That is really not an extreme position.
No argument from me on that point. But many of those in the denial camp maintain that all of this climate science is nothing more than a bid for funding, and would love to stop the research. And I find that to be an extreme position.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
Perhaps we the rest of us would like policy decisions based on something more credible that someone's hobby.
Luckily for the rest of you, I included citations in link form. If you disagree with the conclusions of my citations, feel free to attempt to refute them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What about the poor plants, they've been CO2 starved for so long? They really starting to grow now.
You jest, but unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Some plants can make use of more CO2, but not most of them. They're used to it being around a certain level, so there's no reason for them to have evolved the ability to use much more. Some of them can use more than usual during periods of increased insolation, but there are practical upper limits to that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
To be fair, not every bio fuel candidate is a food source...
To be fair there is a very high correlation between bio-fuels and food. Any plant based fuel source is going to compete with food for land, water, fertilizers and pesticides. I've seen the claim of bio-fuels being derived from agricultural, meat processing, and food "waste" but that stuff is rarely "wasted". I grew up on a farm and we knew that the manure from the cattle had to go to the fields or the crops would not grow. We knew that the corn stalks, straw, and other "waste" had to remain in the field or the top soil would wash away. Even rotten fruit, animal bones, and other nasty bits of organic material no one would want to eat can be, and is, used as fertilizer.
I seen claims that algae can be grown in factories out in the desert where the algae soaks up the sun in transparent pipes. The water can be drawn from the ocean or from city sewage so as not to deplete fresh water sources. Even this competes with food since that same algae can be used to produce oil for food just as easily as it can for fuel. Change that process slightly so that instead of just squeezing out the oils the algae proteins are extracted and one could produce a nutritious, and perhaps a bit unappealing in raw form, food source.
Nor does every heating option require fossil fuels. For starters , simple wood burning stoves have worked for ages.
While the wood is not food many trees produce fruits that we eat. That land used to grow trees can be used to grow food crops. Even wood for fuel competes with food.
This brings up the history I've read on how civilizations have ended when food competes with fuel. A harsh winter comes along. The people are looking for anything to keep them warm. The trees they relied upon for apples, dates, olives, whatever, start to look real tempting for firewood. They cut down the trees and burn the wood. Spring comes and there's not enough trees to feed them any more. By next winter large numbers starve or freeze to death. The next spring the people that remain, if there are any, move on and leave a desert behind. We've seen this happen many times in history, we don't need to see it repeated again.
There is one bio-fuel source I can support and that is municipal sewage. Using human waste as fertilizer carries the hazard of spreading disease. There are methods that are currently used now to treat the waste and dispose of it in relatively safe means but we still see wildlife getting harmed by our treated waste. If we use this waste for synthesizing fuels any bacteria, virus, prion, hormone, enzyme or whatever that exists in the waste will be destroyed in the creation of the fuel or consumed when the fuel is burned.
The municipal sewage is not an energy source in itself. Much of the energy that is contained in the finished fuel product will have to come from some other source. The sewage is mostly a feedstock to derive the carbon and hydrogen atoms so that a valuable fuel (like jet fuel or heating oil) can be made from a less valuable fuel (like nuclear, coal, or natural gas).
I realized this post ran very long, and probably few people will even read it. However I wrote it so I'll post it.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
To be fair there is a very high correlation between bio-fuels and food. Any plant based fuel source is going to compete with food for land, water, fertilizers and pesticides.
Algae does not compete with food for land, water, fertilizers, or pesticides, and the USDOE proved the technology in the 1980s at Sandia NREL. You grow it (in theory) on desert land currently owned by the BLM using seawater (or any other non-potable water, really) pumped in from some distance. Wastewater is put back into the aquifer, but now inland, so everyone wins. The waste parts of the algae from the process are fertilizer.
The municipal sewage is not an energy source in itself.
The municipal sewage is an energy source, powered by poop.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Oh yes, I have no doubt that some climatologists have predicted disaster.
However, if you say 97% think there will be a disaster, then you are either deceived, or a liar. There is no such consensus.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Wind turbines produce way more than 12% of their nameplate rating, unless you're talking silly ones for home use. The rest of your conspirational garbage is just not worth reading.
A quote from the article: "corporate cronyism that preyed upon public ignorance of earth science to create a crisis — global warming — to exploit and loot the Treasury."
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Are you saying that Gore personally got that loan or just that a company he is invested in got a loan. If you're referring to the Fisker Automotive loan so far only $193 million has been drawn and the loan has been frozen because milestones were not met. Also I believe all of that money has remained in the US.
But again, what does all of this have to do with the science of global warming? Isn't Gore allowed to invest where he wants to like any other capitalist? Why do so many hate that Al Gore is getting rich but don't care that others do the same thing?
Concrete streets are not white. "White" in this case means a "highly reflective surface", which concrete is definitely not. The whole point of this silly idea was that the streets would have to reflect as much light as possible.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Oh, and let's not forget to mention the lunacy of white streets in places where it snows.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Of course algae competes with food for land. Anywhere that has enough sunlight and a firm enough foundation to place an algae factory is also suitable for a greenhouse to grow tomatoes. I'll concede that it does not compete for water, fertilizers, and pesticides since something that is not used as food does not have the same safety constraints as something that is used for food.
I'll admit that I did not read the entire PDF you linked to but I did read enough to find that the process described does not free us from the use of fossil fuels. They point out that even in a desert environment there is a need to provide heat to the algae to keep it alive and productive. There was also a need for a CO2 source, they describe using the exhaust from a coal fired power plant to provide the highly concentrated CO2 required. I would assume in a production environment that waste heat from the coal fired plant would be used to keep the algae warm.
Also, your example of a municipal sewage plant that is "powered by poop" makes considerable mention of the use of sunlight. Seems to me that the plant is largely powered by the sun. I saw no mention of energy actually being extracted for use outside of the plant. While the process described may not need an external energy source (excepting solar heating) to process the sewage it cannot be called an "energy source" since no energy leaves the plant.
Both the algae bio-diesel and the sewage treatment examples you gave rely on photosynthesis to provide the energy needed. If there is enough sun for that photosynthesis then there is enough sun for photosynthesis for food crops. Since they both require the sun to work they are not energy sources, the sun is the energy source. These processes make use of the sun in interesting ways but deriving work from the sun is a trivial task any more. The hard part is getting the sun to do work for us at a cost competitive with fossil fuels.
This gets back to my point from an earlier post. We will continue to burn fossil fuels so long as it remains cheaper than the alternatives. Right now the only energy sources we have that are competitive with fossil fuels are nuclear, hydroelectric, and maybe wind. There might come a day when algae and "poop" can provide energy as cheap and abundant as fossil fuels. Until that day comes we'll need to keep digging up coal and drilling for oil to maintain our standard of living.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Of course algae competes with food for land. Anywhere that has enough sunlight and a firm enough foundation to place an algae factory is also suitable for a greenhouse to grow tomatoes.
Wrong. Tomatoes don't travel well. Biodiesel or its feedstocks can. You put the algae fields far from everyone. You put the tomatoes close to civilization. Also, tomatoes either need soil, or you can put them anywhere. Algae doesn't need soil, so you can put it in places where it's not convenient to grow tomatoes.
I'll admit that I did not read the entire PDF you linked to but I did read enough to find that the process described does not free us from the use of fossil fuels. They point out that even in a desert environment there is a need to provide heat to the algae to keep it alive and productive.
You do it the same way you do it in a pool, with a cover. If you designed the cover correctly, you could get solar distillation cheaply. Also, read the entire PDF before you comment on algae fuels again, you'll be much better-informed.
Also, your example of a municipal sewage plant that is "powered by poop" makes considerable mention of the use of sunlight. Seems to me that the plant is largely powered by the sun. I saw no mention of energy actually being extracted for use outside of the plant.
Methane collects under the plastic liner, and it can be captured. So not only does this approach produce stored energy in a form that we already know how to use (biogas) but it also captures methane which would otherwise be released into the atmosphere but it also gives us a chance to burn it and turn it into CO2, which is a less-warming gas than methane.
IOW, you are wrong on all three counts.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
IOW, you are wrong on all three counts.
Perhaps I am wrong, I just don't care enough to argue any more. What you have not addressed is the cost. Until these alternatives are demonstrably cheaper than fossil fuels these technologies will remain in the realm of science fiction and wishful thinking.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Global Rotation of SeaWiFS Biosphere Decadal Average with Land
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Perhaps I am wrong, I just don't care enough to argue any more. What you have not addressed is the cost
This is the attitude that will sign humanity's death warrant. What of the cost of burning fossil fuels? They are only "cheap" economically if you ignore the externalities.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This is the attitude that will sign humanity's death warrant. What of the cost of burning fossil fuels? They are only "cheap" economically if you ignore the externalities.
Wow, you totally didn't read what I wrote. I'll try again.
The "externalities" of fossil fuels require us to develop alternatives. Until we create those alternatives we will have to burn fossil fuels. Barring the use of fossil fuels before the alternatives are economically viable means people starve.
Right now bio-diesel from algae is a theory. It might be a very good theory but as of right now I cannot go to the corner filling station and buy bio-diesel. Until I can I'm going to have to fill my truck with gasoline derived from petroleum crude. If you cut off my gasoline before I can get the bio-diesel, and a truck that runs on that bio-diesel, then I will get very upset, then very hungry, then very cold, and then very dead.
Perhaps that is an unlikely scenario. People won't end up dead, at least not those that just want to eat. The people that will end up dead are those standing between the fossil fuels and the very cold and hungry people that need that fuel to eat and stay warm.
There's a lot of people in this world that like to eat and don't like being cold. Until you get that algae farm producing bio-diesel you are going to have to keep the petroleum flowing. Talk about "externalities" all you like but it won't do much good. People aren't going to pay attention to ice caps melting away in fifty years if they don't have breakfast in the morning.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
"externalities" of fossil fuels require us to develop alternatives. Until we create those alternatives we will have to burn fossil fuels.
We have had the technology for the alternatives (in every category) for thirty years. It's not the ability that is missing, it is the will.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
More like it looks like a hockey stick.
So record low article ice extent means we will have an ice age? Now that's something to be worried about. We need to find ways to raise global temps. Any ideas?
Apparently 33 years of satellite ice mapping is no match for geologic time scales.
What problem is that?
Perhaps satellites cause global warming then?
You said:
we might well be looking at the so-called "sixth extinction" which could be worse than any of them
That is, you didn't just claim AGW may cause mass extinction, but that it may be the worst extinction event ever. Claiming AGW will trigger an extinction event is in the realm of possibility, but claiming it will be the worst ever is definitely overhype.
Symbolset then suggested we won't manage a record-setting extinction event, saying:
Humans could have no greater nor swifter impact on the CO2 balance than the evolution of white-rot fungus
You then, unwittingly, agreed with him, saying:
Well great. We can assume that human beings can't affect the environment any worse than a fungus that altered that altered the ecosphere beyond all recognition. Hey, that makes me feel a lot better.
He did not disagree with your claim that AGW may lead to extinction, and neither he nor I are saying AGW isn't to be worried about. We are just dismissing the most extreme claim ("worst ever" extinction event), that is all.
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If you have a steady source of income, and aren't betting with borrowed money, you won't get a solvency problem on intrade. When shorting stock, the downside is potentially infinite. When "shorting" these contracts (really, selling them), your losses are capped, because the most they can be worth is 100 - and you have to tie up that much money in order to sell the contract in the first place.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.