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Rapid Arctic Melt Called 'Planetary Emergency'
Freshly Exhumed writes "Drawing on new data released Wednesday by the National Snow and Ice Data Center that the Arctic ice pack has melted to an all time low within the satellite record (video), NASA climate scientist James Hansen has declared the current reality a 'planetary emergency.' As pointed out by Prof. David Barber from the University of Manitoba, 'The thaw this year broke all the records that we had previous to this and it didn't just break them, it smashed them.' So, not sure why your mainstream press isn't covering this story? 'It's hard for the public to realize,' Hansen said, 'because they stick their head out the window and don't see much going on.' Thankfully, some people are noticing, as Bill McKibben's recent Rolling Stone article, Global Warming's Terrifying New Math has gone viral."
But at the same time Antartic sea ice is being added per http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/09/19/antarctic-sea-ice-sets-another-record/
Archimede principle: ice occupy as much space in water as it does once it has melted. The level of the oceans will only raise if inland ice melt such as in Antartica or Groenland.
Um, no. You've just shown you don't understand buoyancy. A given piece of ice, when it melts, *will take up only as much space as the part of the ice that was underneath the water.* Ice floats because a volume of ice weighs less than the same volume of water. It only displaces in water the volume of its weight in water, and so it floats. And therefore, when it melts, it shrinks exactly enough that the water doesn't rise an inch.
As global temperatures rise, ocean temperatures rise and they are almost certainly going to push more water in to the atmosphere in the form of clouds and rain on land. Earth does have natural mechanisms to adapt to climate changes. More rain could mean floods, could mean places that aren't getting enough precipitation like the Sahara will get more and be more habitable.
There will undoubtedly be areas that benefit from global warming, but sub-tropical areas such as the Sahara, Mexico, and the southern U.S. will not. Sub-tropical areas are getting dryer. Sub-polar regions are getting wetter. This is due to the amplification of the global hydrologic cycle and it is expected to continue as the atmosphere gets warmer. The linked video describes the process: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/09/05/799721/climate-change-how-the-wet-will-get-wetter-and-the-dry-will-get-drier/
Yet not a one climate model (to my knowledge) takes into account the biggest heat source and the biggest driver of that heat source.
https://www.google.com/search?q=climate+change+sun+spots
First hit is:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=sun-spots-and-climate-change
most up-to-date climate models—including those used by the United Nations’ prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—incorporate the effects of the sun’s variable degree of brightness in their overall calculations.
This wasn't difficult. Are you being willfully ignorant?
1) No, that's not true. We have data extending back millions of years, although its quality does decrease with age.
2) Oh good, their models will become more accurate. Where's your model?
3) No, it is certainly a part of the discussion. The 3-day halt in air-traffic post 9/11 showed a spike in temperatures, revealing the fact that jet contrails are probably hiding some of the warming.
4) We are already in the part of the Milankovitch cycle where the glaciers should be returning.
5) This is a wonderfully ignorant statement that ignores feedback cycles in the biosphere and geological sources of CO2.
6) Yes, but at what timescale? Will the plants we happen to eat have the same nutritive value? What ecological shifts will occur?
7) Historically? So there were historians writing down what happened during the Pennsylvanian period 300 million years ago? Also, the "not true of oil" statement reveals you to be one of those morons that believes in an unlimited supply of abiogenic oil. Good luck with that.
8) So what? That occurred with a different configuration of continents and a different orbit around the sun.
9) So what? This argument confuses weather with climate. It looks like the Northwest Passage will be permanently open during the summer.
10) The Kardashians get far more clicks. It's actually very hard to get fat, lazy Americans interested in the planet they're destroying.
11) Move to Texas, then see how much you like the summers.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
The Antarctic is a different situation entirely than the Arctic. Much of the sea ice there is annual, and winter ice doesn't have the effect on local weather that summer ice in the Arctic does.
In any case climate models do not predict a dramatic change in Antarctic sea ice. The change is predicted to come first in the Arctic then the Antarctic. The reason is that the Arctic ocean is surrounded by land. The Antarctic ocean is surrounded by vast extents of moderating ocean. Region-wide changes under a warming scenario would come to the Arctic before the Antarctic. The Antarctic would see local changes, depending on the prevailing winds.
This is similar to the situation in temperate continental weather. Under an AGW scenario not every place gets warmer; some get cooler. What you get is a very subtle shift in averages over large areas of the globe punctuated by unusual events like drought and excessive rainfall. If you throw all that into a pot you get a slight change in the global average. It'd be better to call "global warming" "more energetic global climate".
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