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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."
So, not sure why your mainstream press isn't covering this story?
Uh, I saw this on both the PBS Newshour and CNN yesterday. Not sure how much more "mainstream" you can get (unless you expect People magazine to do a story too). Now, if by "not covering" you mean "aren't running around like Chicken Little alarmists screaming 'WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!'" then that's true, yes. But in a world with much more present and pressing issues like war, hunger, unemployment, recession, etc. you can't very well expect every newspaper to lead with a "Average Global Temps Expected to Rise By 1-2 Degrees Celsius Over the Next 50-100 years" headline.
Yes, it's noteworthy. Yes, we certainly need to address it. But, no, it's not the kind of thing that has people immediately scared or in present danger, nor the kind of thing that has the press running out with cameras to get the dramatic shot. It's more the long-term story that sort of simmers in the background.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Therefore it isn't happening.
Brace yourselves. The end is near.
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/
Yeah, but what about this?:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/09/19/antarctic-sea-ice-sets-another-record/
Gaining on one end and losing on the other . . . . .
This should raise the low water levels around lake Michigan and I'm sure there won't be any consequences.
I'm assuming he's a guy with good credentials, held in high-regard, data and conclusions backed up by peer-review, etc.
Great.
So what do we do? Because we haven't been able to answer that question for decades and now we NEED to know the answer before we continue, if that's the case.
As fabulous as all this detective work is, what are we supposed to do about it and what effect does that work have? If it means we have to forgo electricity (say), then maybe we're better off just letting the climate rise and the icecaps melt (for instance). Maybe not. Who knows?
Because for DECADES people have been shouting doom with no reasonable, practical explanation for it, solution of it, or analysis of the impact of said solutions.
Let's work from the assumption that I believe you and you're 100% correct. What do we do now?
There will be a demonstration of the effects of global warming on food supplies next year. Be sure to watch.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Does anybody watch Real Time with Bill Maher? Just about every republican on the panel has said, with a straight face, that there is no sufficient evidence for global warming being real and/or being man made. That's the real emergency, the fact that we have a bunch of people who outright ignore science. And, it's not like I'm talking about some random Joe off of the street. These are the people that have influence in this country.
Holy hyperbole batman!
If anything, I expect the third world to be punished the most. When the rising tide and drought becomes too much for them to handle without taking on debt from nations and corporations all too eager to lend, some of them could effectively return to a more occupied colony-like status.
Is this man made or part of a natural cycle?
Is 30 years enough to make a conclusion? Or should we wait another 50 to 100 years to see if humankind has contributed to this?
Also, what about Russia's thousands of leaky natural gas pipelines (and possibly more that have been undocumented) that reportedly dump 8 times more natural gas into the atmosphere per year than the amount of oil Deep water horizon' well had dumped in 2010???
Last I checked methane is more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 (which we humans do put out more) and don't forget the numerous natural emissions of CH4 into the atmosphere.
We as humans know way too little. It's not one thing thats causing this, which is what is being fed to us by the Media. It is many other things. From a mathematical perspective... we only have one equation, but too many variables.
Previewing comments are for sissies!
many of us dependent on a rather thin surface of the hydrosphere, however, are not going to like what happens next.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
What's funny is if the entire north pole melted, it wouldn't affect sea levels in the least. Not one millimeter. Greenland, on the other hand, would bring the sea level up about 20 feet or so.
There's the concern for the ocean temperature increasing, causing expansion and making water more voluminous and thus causing the same amount of water (mass) to rise; but I don't believe it. The south pole is never going to melt--it simply cannot. It never comes above -37C down there; if it gets hot enough to melt, the rest of the earth is molten slag and we don't really care much about rising sea levels. However, there will always be a free flow water border against antarctic ice. This causes antarctic ice to melt. Since the whole ice cap can't and won't melt, this melting simply draws heat away--80 times as much heat as a 1 degree difference in the same mass of water, in fact, plus the temperature of ice (so -37C would draw 37 degrees PLUS 80 degrees = 117 degrees gram for gram from water). The ice at the border of these temperature zones should be warmed to about 0C, so talk about 80 times the mass equivalence of 0C water.
In short, antarctica will keep the oceans cool as long as ocean water circulates past antarctica.
So the solution is to desalinate water in antarctica and dump it on the ice cap. We need to move basically the mass of the ice on Greenland as it melts--not insubstantial. Note that the new ice must be stored above sea level, because bobbing in the sea it will be expanded and will displace a large mass of water. Such ice, once melted, takes up less space and so the part above the water doesn't become a rise in sea level. Of course, while this means ice bergs and ice caps don't raise sea levels when they melt, dropping additional such ice into the water DOES raise sea levels, hence why it must be sequestered above sea level.
Ham?
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You know we do raise cattle in the East as well right?
While I would love to fix global warming, a more pragmatic approach maybe the only option. Stop raising cattle in the southwest, and as the temperatures allow move that activity north. Even invading Canada is probably easier than getting our government to regulate CO2.
Why even desalinate it?
At -37C salt water freezes just as well as fresh.
"So, not sure why your mainstream press isn't covering this story?"
I think two of the primary reasons are Al Gore and Michael Moore. A losing presidential candidate and a filmaker famous for leftist hatchet jobs took the lead role in publicizing global warming. That made at least half the population of America immediately suspicious or simply unwilling to listen. Then the methods that were used - e.g. Al Gore famously declaring the debate over before most people had even started paying attention - just made things worse. The trend continues to this day when it seems that attempts at meaningful debate are shouted down usually by people claiming AGW is real.
In my personal experience I tried reading some AGW pages on Wikipedia because I wanted to learn more and get a better idea of whether AGW is real (it certainly seems plausible). I found a few minor mistakes that I attempted to correct. Instead of reasoned debate or explanations I mainly encountered vitriol and ridicule. Based on what I read, I would think AGW is definitely real, but based on the attitudes of the people editing the Wikipedia page I have to question whether the article I read is sufficiently unbiased to be useful.
There are a lot of people for whom, unfortunately, the decision has largely been made largely by prejudices based in politics - I'm pretty sure this applies to both sides. Al Gore and Michael Moore created that situation. However I'm sure there are a lot of people who are still open-minded but who feel they can't get good trustworthy information because the debate (or lack thereof) became so politicized.
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Already started if one tracks prices and supply closely.
I really like quinoa, but have stopped purchasing it since it has to be imported from so far away and the exportation from the countries which raise it has led to dramatic price increases there.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Antarctic Sea Ice Sets Another Record
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/09/19/antarctic-sea-ice-sets-another-record/
"Antarctic sea ice set another record this past week, with the most amount of ice ever recorded on day 256 of the calendar year (September 12 of this leap year)."
It seems the only practical way to get everyone on board is when there's a dollar amount. When the issue is as global and integrated into our daily lives as that of global warming, the only way to make everyone move in another direction is when economics come in to play. The only *real* way to get India, China, the US and all the other large CO2 emitting countries is to push the price of alternative fuels below that of their CO2-emitting counterparts.
From what I can tell, the only way to make a huge, quick reduction in CO2 is to beat it with something cheaper.
There is no one "something" unfortunately. It's a huge mixture of different technologies, but I don't see anything else more motivating that cash, and motivation is something the world lacks when it comes to CO2 reduction...
Then again, there is this article from the Register today.
Nobody knows for sure what is really going on. The satellite record is too short for us to know if this is an extraordinary event, or part of a normal cycle.
Proverbs 21:19
Has anyone studied what would happen if GW was much worse? Vast areas of Russia and Canada would be opened up, yes, but those in low lying coastal areas would be forced to higher ground, losing their homes. How disruptive would it be? How much would that cost us all? What would the predicted increased rain do to the vast Chinese and African deserts? Would there be a vast increase in food production. Would there be increased populations, with the danger of horrendous starvation if the world started to cool again? Would the northern parts of the US be like, say, South Carolina (nice), or like the Caribbean(too hot)?. Would Florida be inundated with constant rain? Disruption is not necessarily bad. Does anyone know of any studies in this area?
Hansen is not a scientist he's a activist with scientific credentials. It's his horse in the race and he should be stripped of his title at NASA. We need scientists to report not react.
Anyway, the "epic" melt now being leverages is not a temperature melt. There was a huge artic storm that broke up the ice, which increased the surface area, which the water then melted. If we take a look at a temperature graph for the arctic: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php We see that it was an "Average" year with no additional time above the melting point than normal. What created the melt was not warmer weather, it was increased surface area.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
One would expect arctic ice to melt more and more during the exit stages of an ice age.
It was such a horrible event...All civilizations which used all that land are now gone...under water.
Well, it took tens of thousands of years and we lost coastline, but gained almost all of Canada and the Northern US, Europe and Asia back from a deep ice sheet to usable land, so I guess we lost some land and gained some land.
I get a feeling I am being force fed a media manipulation based on our individual lifetime experiences rather than the long long term cycles that man can not affect in more than tiny ways. Man certainly has not affected the prior 2 dozen major worldwide ice age cycles.
"The will" is economic at this point. Everyone speaks $$$... if someone offers a cheap alternative to CO2, it will change policies faster than anything else. If people burning coal are loosing money because they decided to invest in fossil fuels, they'll be scrambling as fast as possible to shut down their fossil fuel plants and fire up whatever the cheaper alternative is.
Unless the entire world, or at least the major CO2-emitting countries quickly agree on a universal policy (read Montreal-type Protocol for CFC reduction) the world won't agree on anything. Fossil fuels are the very lifeblood of the modern era, they are the bedrock of our very infrastructure. The likelihood is that something cheaper will come a long well before policy makers decide to legislate their way out of this mess.
"The planet will be fine. WE'RE fucked."
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
When was the last time tornadoes were a seasonal occurrence in New York City?
Palm trees and 8
The water frozen in Greenland is fresh water. I'm just being consistent.
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Wow, just wow.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Ok, the greenie morons in the USA needs to quit thinking this is their fault. China and India are the main problem... Take a look at this pic from Hangzhou, CN from about 2 years back: ImageShack.us The spire on the hill is 3/4mile away from where I was sitting. No it's not foggy, that's just how polluted it is ALL THE TIME over there. If you truly are an environmentalist, voting for Obama isn't going to save the planet. America has already won this battle.... but since climate science is now in mainstream pop culture, no one actually wants to travel overseas to do the hard work to save the environment.
Could we not just ignore that though and save a ton of money?
"... 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe."
Anyone else see anything wrong with this statement?
Apart from having a national Open-Your-Freezer day to cool things down [joke], what realistically can be done? We can't impound all fossil-fuel burning vehicles. We can't shut down the coal electric plants. We can't stop China and other developing regions from buying hundreds of millions of cars and refrigerators and electronics.
The random environmentally conscious person may trade in her Explorer or Accord for a Toyota Prius and feel nice and self-righteous about it, but has she truly helped the environment? The amount of energy expended to manufacture that Prius, and to dispose of that older vehicle (or merely to pass it on to another driver who'll use it for ten more years) far exceeds the trivial few barrels of oil per year that it conserves. Long term, sure, if we were all driving electric hybrids or pure electrics, we'd be generally reducing atmospheric carbon content, assuming the electric plants weren't making up for it by burning more coal and oil. (If we all switched to bicycles, an argument could be made, but of course our economy would all but shut down.)
So what can we do other than wring our hands and worry fruitlessly? Well for one thing, we can at least maximize our efficiency which in the U.S. is pretty easy because we're so wasteful. An engineer famously observed that California's rolling blackouts a few summers ago could have been prevented had they merely painted white the roofs of all public buildings in that state.
Technology is gradually solving these problems, without particular government intervention and sometimes despite such intervention. For example, solar panels are coming down in price, led by the increasingly dominant Chinese manufacturers. You know it's happening because American panel manufacturers are demanding an anti-dumping injunction. At the same time, a variety of new solar-to-electric technologies are in the pipeline, ranging from spray-on applications to bendable and foldable sheets, to bandwidth-specific crystals, to 3-D blocks that are more efficient per area, and on and on. DARPA is experimenting with 50% efficiency solar cells.
Ultimately, most homes and commercial buildings can and should have some form of solar on the roof; as costs of building these features into new construction or retrofitting them to existing structures fall, it will make enough economic sense that it will happen all by itself, and peak demand for electricity will fall even as demand for storage batteries and fuel cells and solar panel equipment skyrockets (now you know where to invest your money).
The other big trend is the availability of cheap natural gas from fracking, which is driving the construction of new gas electric plants and gas-heating in homes. Fuel oil is expensive; gas is dirt cheap. The simple economics will force a mass conversion to this relatively clean and cheap power source.
Ultimately, we will diversify away from reliance mostly on fossil fuels to a mixture of about half fossil and half clean. The impact this will have on the atmosphere is not fully understood, however, and probably would take decades to be observed. Nonetheless, in the latter half of the 21st Century we can expect to have cleaner skies, at least. If we can actively foster reforestation across the Americas and Asia, and if we can somehow reduce the pollution of the oceans which is killing the plankton that furnish most of our oxygen, we may long term reverse the CO2 increase and perhaps eventually this will drive down temperatures.
Or, maybe these climatic changes have little to do with human activity and nature will simply take its course, regardless of what we do. But at least we should, in my opinion, un-do some of the obvious damage we're causing and optimize conditions for a healthier planet.
My other pet solution is to push a trillion ton block of ice out of Saturn's orbit and dump it onto the North Pole, which might buy us a couple extra decades at least.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Wow, with all the "Antarctic ice" link posts at the bottom, this place is starting to remind me of Digg. At least when I last saw it years ago...
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Or, we could use politicians who degrade American liberties as objects of a new fart sequestering program.
Glacier ice is aging, and in typically fashion old northern ice is moving south to a nicer climate. It's like how nearly all retired New Englanders seem to move to Florida (why anyone elderly person would move to a hot muggy swamp is beyond me - perhaps it's a government plot to trick elderly folk into dying more quickly to keep the Social Security budget balanced).
But likewise, Arctic ice is now inclined to moved south to the Anarctic...
Can it not be grown in the US?
I like it as well and it does seem to come primarily from South America.
I always have coastal cities and their production lines are far too important, to disrupt with a build order for domes. When sea levels rise (and to be fair, I'm usually the most to blame for it), there's always a planetary council call to launch a solar shade. I don't always get my way, but those who oppose me on the issue will the dominated ASAP if I can, so that we can re-vote on the issue at the next opportunity.
I'm not saying Earth's current factions are wrong simply because they don't play like me, but... it sure looks dumb. And as is typical, those who you'd think have the most to lose (or at least should think they have the most to lose) are the ones most responsible for the problem and best equipped to do something about it.
I know what you're thinking: it's zero sum. Sure, the developed countries will lose many cities, but so will their opponents. (Earth example: US might lose New York but Nigeria will lose Lagos, and Nigeria is poor so their loss of Lagos will hurt more, ergo, US wins by this disaster.) I would point out, though, that the more advanced factions will have a greater investment in their cities. Also, if you know what you're doing, your HQ will be coastal (always put your HQ on a coast) so that you can send sea crawlers to ocean hotspots. Winning a large map game is always about energy, in the end, because more energy means more tech, and more tech means both 1) better weapons and 2) first shot at the best Secret Projects. And hey, your coastal HQ probably has some mighty fine Secret Projects in it. Those are irreplaceable. This isn't the kind of situation where zero sum thinking is wise.
Drought? I thought there would be more water....
Hey, maybe we could stop burning so much coal and switch to lower-CO2 emitting natural gas? Oh wait, we already did.
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/08/in-a-surprise-co2-emissions-hit-20-year-low/1#.UFx1MI2PVkY
Or maybe we could raise the gas mileage requirements on cars?
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/rick-newman/2012/08/27/tough-government-gas-mileage-rules-good-for-drivers-auto-industry
Anyone who thinks we aren't doing _anything_ isn't paying attention. Personally, however, I won't think we are serious until we start building newer, safer, CO2-free nuclear power plants. If you don't support more nuclear power, you aren't serious about stopping Global Warming, and you haven't studied the problem enough. Yes, I'm looking at you, Greenpeace.
Necron69
So we start our satellite observations in a trough of global cooling, and then compare arctic ice levels now with then, and get hysterical. Junk science again by NASA, who also recently made absurd claim of "unprecedented melting" in Greenland, when in fact it is a 150 year cyclical thing right on schedule.
We'll never be able to have an proper discussion of the bad effects of our pollution on the planet with this anti-scientific fear mongering, by our "scientists." (actually agenda driven funding controlled propagandists)
A carbon trade system could be workable (I do not claim to be the originator of this idea).
The article states that we have an 80% chance of not permanently screwing up the world if we only dump 565 gigatons more of carbon into the atmosphere.
Divide that up to all nations based on their current carbon emissions. The US and China combined for instance would be allowed to 'print' 226 gigatons of carbon credits.
Anyone who adds carbon to the atmosphere will be required by their government to purchase the requisite amount of carbon credits. Initially the only supplier will be the Treasury, but more suppliers would emerge. New carbon credits could be "printed" and sold by anyone who permanently sequesters carbon.
The price of burning carbon would eventually come to include the price of sequestering it. I realize that this fantasy would never happen, but it is at least workable as a theory, and builds on the existing "carbon credits" idea already in place.
Where does the science say that melting sea ice causes sea level rise?
NOWHERE.
Now what other ice is there.
Land ice. Glaciers.
Do any exist up there in the Arctic?
Yes.
Will the ice there be melting for the same reasons that the arctic ice is?
Yes.
It's interesting to me, as someone who grew up during the Cold War, with the constant threat of Nuclear Annihilation from the Soviet Union to now be faced with the replacement for that world ending paradigm. Call it what you want, "Climate Change", "Global Warming", etc; it appears that the build up of greenhouse gases in the Earths atmosphere is causing shifts in the Earths weather and climate, for better or more likely for us, worse.
Back in the late 80's when I first heard about what would be termed "Global Warming", I read with fascination, the way you would read about a multi-car auto wreck on the freeway or descriptions of the siege of Leningrad, how the trapped heat could wreak havoc on the planet. Back then I thought that surely it could be averted, like the CFC problem had been addressed.
With the fall of "Communism" and the dismantling of the Soviet Empire; the U.S. being left as "The Winner" in the Cold War, there was a sigh of relief, a hope that the Nuclear standoff was coming to and end. The early to mid 80's, when the Soviets changed leaders often and Nuclear War had been more likely than any time since the Kennedy years, were a period of Nuclear Dread. A time when many of that generation thought they wouldn't be around for long.
So in hindsight it's almost funny to see how this new "Existential Threat"(yes, one of the most overused terms in the MSM) has evolved, after the years of "fast living on the edge" because many assumed our time was near.
How will the generations that are now facing this threat going to respond?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Is that if you look at this thread you see that a supposedly somewhat technical audience cannot even agree on the relative characteristics and density of sea water vs. fresh water let alone the ultimate fate of the planet. You need to get more granular on this issue. If I need to build dikes to keep New York from becoming the littoral version of "Rapture" from Bioshock that is something you need to let us, the Engineer's know. Other than that. Suck it up princess.
Just try getting this crowd to agree on a Friday night pizza topping.
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
As many posters already have said, the arctic melt was thoroughly covered in the "mainstream media". What I found interesting is that the reports of a newly tropical arctic area did not also include the information that the Antarctic ice pack is larger than we ever have seen it and still growing, This sort of omission is typical in the highly political discussion that surrounds climate discussions now.
The climate has changed drastically over the centuries, sometimes warming, sometimes cooling. I am willing to bow to the evidence that the globe is warming by fractional degrees each year -- though the Northern hemisphere just experienced one of the coldest winters we have had for a very long time -- but I fail to see how changing the amount of carbon dioxide my car emits will reverse any change that is happening. I certainly doubt that passing new taxes on energy use in Europe and the US will cause the weather to change. If we really want the globe to cool down for a couple of years, what we need is a big volcanic explosion that blankets the earth with smoke for a good long time. This would cool things off, but the other effects might not be so desirable.
I think nothing demonstrates our corporate addiction to short-term gains quite like the end of the world as we know it.
We know what generally needs to be changed. But the changes required are controlled by large money interests. They don't what that change.
This is simple but still quite accurate.
We see this problem all over the financial globe. We see it in the fact that bad practices caused the global financial problems we are seeing today and the same parties who participated and are still going unpunished are pushing for even less regulation... regulation that was put into place to keep the global economy stable and worked well for over 7 decades.
Of course any and all of this can be fixed in a variety of ways by correcting a variety of behaviors. Among these include the ways money can influence government and the way business can influence government.
The people benefitting from the current conditions, of course, will not hear of any change and certainly will do everything they can to prevent it. They have what they want and don't want to lose it. And the suffering of the rest of the world isn't on the radars of their conscience.
Of course we will all die and suffer the same in the end, but their denial is at the source of global doom. This denial was somewhat understandable when the actual effects weren't quite so visible or measurable. But now things are profoundly demonstrable. But then again, we're still a planet populated by extremely superstitious people... we believe in gods and stuff like that. So I have little doubt that we cannot stop the end which is coming.
Money will be worthless when the end is here... but bullets will be pretty valuable. Invest in precious metals... like lead.
0) all 40 major climate models are in agreement and new tweaks over last couple of years do not adjust any of them significantly
1) previously assumed 2'C crisis point is looking bad. Current conditions indicate 1'C is likely edge of strange world. We are at 0.8'C now.
2) 265 GT of carbon release will get us to 2'C point
3) 2,795 GT of carbon in known preserves slated for exploitation
why does it matter -->>
In the course of this month, a quadrillion kernels of corn need to pollinate across the grain belt, something they can't do if temperatures remain off the charts. Just like us, our crops are adapted to the Holocene, the 11,000-year period of climatic stability we're now leaving... in the dust.
Ya know.. I used to be kinda worried about the whole environment, global warming thing... but as time goes on and I keep seeing sheeple brainwashed into stabbing themselves in the eye with the same political an religious asshattery.. Ive come to root for these "planetary emergencies". So.. is it time yet? (looks out window) damn. sigh.. no..not yet.
All the fervor and energy spent on the Global Warming should be spent in R&D on alternatives to fossil fuels. We have the means and the motive to innovate our way out of the climate crisis, but we need every cent on R&D!! Fossil fuels are intrenched in our society. We can try the political approach, but the sure-fire and ultimate solution is a technological approach.
Start here and make something cheaper goddamit! Innovate, demonstrate and the first innovator to scale effectively will make tens of billions in the process, while the world will get off CO2 faster than any other means.
Innovate Goddammit!
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?
I am not convinced that the current 'gloabal warming' trend is solely due to human activity. James Hansen may be NASA, but some of his conclusions seem dubious. And then the climategate scandal. There is so much pro and con and hysteria about global warming, it's hard to know who is a reliable source of information. To me, there seems to be natural warming and cooling cycles, wetter and dryer cycles. The drought this summer made me think we are in for another 'dustbowl' period like in the thirties. Sure we have better agricultural practices now, so we won't have huge dust storms, but we could be in for the same type of severe drought. I remember reading a story that in the 1920s, ships were able to sail over the ice-free north pole in the summer. My though here is this points to a cycle covering decades. There is another cycle covering centuries. There was a medieval warm period from around 800 or 900 CE to about 1300 CE where the climate warmed enough they were growing grapes in Britain. In this time the Vikings colonized Greenland and Iceland and reportedly landed in Nova Scotia. Some archeological evidence for Vikings has been found in NS. But the one thing that has puzzled archeologists is the mention of the Vikings finding wild grapes in NS-which doesn't make sense unless the climate was warmer at that time than now. In the early 1300s the climate changed to what is termed 'the little ice age'. It got cold enough that the Thames would freeze hard enough and the British has Frost Fairs on it. It was cold enough that the picture of George Washington's crossing with all the ice chunks in it was correct. Around the 1850s, the earth started warming up again. And there is a cycle of tens or hundreds of thousands of years where the earth is warm or the earth has a big ice age--yet the planet is still habitable. There are also news stories where some scientists have found evidence that the earth was warmer in the human past than now, or that not all the ice is going away. Here is a sample of some: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/02/1930s_greenland_glacier_retreat/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2012/09/19/antarctic-sea-ice-sets-another-record/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/07/27/new-nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-in-global-warming-alarmism/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/10/global_warming_undermined_by_study_of_climate_change/
It's not like resurrecting a Shuttle, throwing a bunch of climatologists and oil drillers on board, and blowing up an asteroid will solve this, nor are we apaprently able to seed clouds and shield earth from the sun and get a few extra years' time to go back to hose and buggy transportation.
In fact, it's not like we are going to make decisions about climate changes that would entirely disrupt the world's economies for the sake of a change in a single season's ice melt. And certainly not when we are within days or weeks of the cooling season in the Arctic, and all this will become moot for another 6 months.
Once again, the climate change alarmists go off the deep end and squander their credibility. Please, please start acting like scientists, ok? I'm ready to, and have, accepted the evidence. In Phoenix, the record high temperature (122F) was recorded in 1990. This year seems to be about average. But we don't need uniform record highs. We need sound analysis, not alarmist 'the Arctic is melllltttiiiinnggggg....' proclamations of imminent doom.
The Arctic is going to freeze over this winter. So of you're not going to put up a continental shade sail, please come back with science, not fear.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
If we suddenly found a StarGate and dialed an 8 chevron address and found a warehouse with a few dozen ZPMs (and other "toys") we would have a full bore World War 3 THE NEXT DAY.
Way too many folks have a vested interest in keeping things STATUS QUO for anything to be allowed to disrupt things.
besides how are you going to get folks to allow a NUKE PLANT in their city?? even if it was a sealed unit that could be trucked in (and then Bolted In Place) you would have folks lining up to scream how unsafe it is.
SlashMind Challenge find credible and recent links of a design for a semi portable reactor (not counting ship mounted types).
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
The "we can't predict weather with any accuracy and predicting climate is going to be even harder" argument is the crappiest of crappy arguments. Consider a toss of a fair coin. Toss it once and I have a 50% chance of calling it incorrectly. Toss it 1000 times and my guess that it came up heads 50% of the time will come quite close to the actual percentage of heads.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Sounds clever, but remember that Antarctic ice doesn't have to *melt* to be a problem. It just has to fall into the water. Glacial movement is enough for that. Adding extra weight to the glaciers won't make them move *slower*.
Well, it's going to raise the sea level by 20 feet. 2/3 of the earth's surface is covered with water, by 20 feet. Honestly, it's diameter of the earth at sea level, area of a sphere of diameter plus 40 feet minus the current diameter, that's the volume of water added. That's a lot of water. There's also quite a lot in the ocean though ... I don't know the impact on salinity. It may be negligible. On the other hand, stuff on the surface of an ice cap may prefer non-salty ice.
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Because all the stupid government programs to turn all our dent corn into inefficient alcohol, and the fed printing US money like crazy, those things have nothing to do with food price inflation?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The US mainly grows corn and soy because the government protects those industries from ever having to retool for more viable crops.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
2) Just last week I read that climate models had been using positive feedback to predict moisture (rain and drought) where in fact negative would be more accurate.
Moisture is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon. A hotter climate is able to hold more moisture. In fact, atmospheric moisture has increased by about 4% over the last 40 years. This is why it is a positive feedback - and a powerful one at that.
4) We are in an inter-glacial period and no one knows exactly how far the ice is supposed to recede.
We have been at the hight of an interglacial for the last 10,000 years. Temperatures have been relatively stable over than time, and should be slowly dropping as we head back into a glacial period. Over the last 50 years they have taken a sharp detour.
5) Had CO levels not been elevated by our actions, plant life would soon die - it's been decreasing for millions of years.
And would take millions more before this became a concern.
6) CO2 helps plants grow. Which will also take it out of the atmosphere.
Unfortunatly not at the rate that we are putting it in.
8) The prehistoric record shows significant vegetation (rainforest?) at higher latitudes - like Montana.
There are rain forests in Canada... what of it?
10) Alarmist articles bring eyeballs and ad-click revenue.
No argument there. I wish we could have a more reasoned debate but the media favours the extremes. That said, what is happening in the arctic is truly amazing. We have just about hit rock bottom. There ain't much left to lose! https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/
Which one changed in time to effect next year's food supplies: Biofuel production and the US financial situation, or the amount of rainfall over the US' farmland this year?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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
I was thinking brined penguin could become a new delicacy. Since we will be making them extinct it also has limited availability going for it.
Funny you should mention the 80s. My grandfather told me that there is a 30 year drought cycle. It is here now. It was here in the 80s when my uncle went broke trying to be a farmer, and according to my granfather they slept outside during the 50s because it was too damn hot to sleep in the house. That said, I don't think this possible drought cycle explains it all. I have no idea how much is natural and how much is man made.
As far as the article goes, the mention of Ky (where I live) and the current corn crops is accurate. Farms that usually get around 130 bushels/acre this year are producing about 30. Many corn crops aren't even being harvested because it is not worth it. The stalks can't even be used for feedstock for cows and chickens. Soybeans have been hurt, too, just not as bad as corn.
There has been plenty of news about it, but what's the call to action? Maybe we should get ready for major winter snows in the US Northeast, like happened the winter after the last record was set? There is increasing acceptance that the rise is human accelerated, but there is no common wisdom on what can stop it or even the degree to which the rate of change can be slowed down. What we see here is just another snapshot of the ride towards a warmer planet and we'll have to deal with the impact as it happens, what ever happens.
Firstly what can be done about it?
Second what should be done about it?
We have had satellites in the air for less than a drop in the bucket of time in earth's history. How can we use data that only covers less than a drop in the bucket to predict an outcome? Is Earth's climate changing? Hell yes! There is evidence of oceans where there are none. There is evidence of oceans where there was once civilizations. There is evidence of an "Ice age". There is evidence of many species and fauna that USED to exist. Maybe we are the next?
The only thing certain is death and increased taxes....
"Change happens"
There is no call for doing a Chicken Little imitation.
If we (collectively) are responsible for the change, it's a little late to do anything about it. There are too many humans on the earth now to go back. And the mechanism's (that is earth's climate) pendulum is in mid swing and there is no stopping it. It is most likely to late to even affect how far it swings, even if we were able. And think about it even if we were able to affect it we would have to stop it from swinging back the other way. And then the cold people would want warm and the hot people would want cold and there would be whining and gnashing of teeth about where the pendulum should be stopped. "Some things never change"
Rick B.
With apologies to small island nations, the sea level isnâ(TM)t among the important risks of melting this ice sheet. The ice sheet serves as more than just a moderator.
[napkin math]:
Ice reflects over 50% of light energy; whereas open ocean absorbs about 90% (approx: albedo ice=0.5, snow+ice=0.9, ocean=0.06).
The artic ice normally varies between 3.3% and 2.5% of the surface area.
The 3.3% figure is less interesting because it occurs when there is little sunlight to absorb or reflect anyways. That is due both to the short days, and the angle of incidence of the suns rays.
At the new lower bound of 1%, this means that fully 1.5% (2.5 - 1) more area is available to absorb sunlight, at a 90% efficiency means that this fact alone will increase the earths heat absorption by about 1.4%.
There are likely other moderators (I hope so) which will diffuse this, however there is a disturbing pattern in play to overtax these moderators.
The point is, what is the significance of this 1.4% gain?
I have a hard time taking either side (true believers of global warming vs. deniers of global warming), in part due to the use of weasel words. For example:
"All time low" vs. "all time low within the satellite record."
This level could be common over the last few hundred/thousand/tens of thousands of years. How far back does the satellite record go? I know it goes back further than this, but you could say something like 'the arctic ice is at an all-time low for measurements made in the last 5 minutes." The time range might make it a meaningless statement, but it would still be designed to project the idea of "all time low."
"NASA climate scientist James Hansen has declared the current reality a 'planetary emergency' " vs. "NASA has declared the current reality a 'planetary emergency' " vs. "NASA has declared a planetary emergency."
This third option is what it sounds like the article is trying to project. But it's not NASA, it's one guy who works / has worked for NASA. I have, for instance, a great deal of respect for astronauts, but I don't automatically take their word for everything because I might be talking to that a diaper-wearing, boyfriend-stalking nut case. "...the current reality..." smells weasel-y. Either there is something that warrants a declared emergency or there isn't. Use of "the current reality" feels like it's saying "there is disagreement over the meaning of these data, but what I think is the correct interpretation, so everyone should accept my perception of these data as reality."
"The thaw this year broke all the records we had previous to this and it didn't just break them, it smashed them."
See above RE all records, last 5 minutes, etc.. "It smashed them" tries to project an idea but doesn't actually mean anything. Let's say my highest annual income was $50,000 prior to last year, but last year I made $50,001. I can say, truthfully, that I 'smashed my previous earnings record' because 'smashed' isn't tied to do any quantifiable meaning.
"Not sure why your mainstream press isn't covering this story."
There's a post above where another Slashdotter note several mainstream sources covering the story. Similar to my issue with "smashed," "mainstream press" doesn't really mean anything either. Side A: "The story isn't being covered in the mainstream press." Side B: "The story is being covered by PBS and CNN- those are mainstream." Side A: "But it's not on the front page of the New York Times or the cover of People." Because the term "mainstream press" isn't quantifiable it doesn't mean anything. If, instead of "mainstream press isn't covering this story," it said "neither news source A, B, C...Z are covering this story," then it might mean something. Also there's the "your" in "your mainstream press." This implies a difference between "your mainstream press," "my mainstream press," and "the mainstream press." The idea the statement "not sure why your mainstream press isn't covering this story" is trying to project is that the story isn't being covered. Stripping away any weasel words leaves only "there is some undefined list of news sources that aren't covering this story."
"Global warming's terrifying new math."
"Terrifying" doesn't actually mean anything here because it's a subjective statement. I might watch a comedy movie and my wife might walk into the room, remark that "this movie is stupid," and walk away. It is incorrect to say, in absolute terms, that "this movie is stupid" because that implies the person making the statement to be the ultimate arbiter of what is or isn't stupid. A correct statement would be "I like this movie but my wife does not." Someone may find the data in the article to be terrifying, but that doesn't mean the data are terrifying or that anyone (ex: the reader) should find the data terrifying. There may be someone who is terrified that somewhere there is a duck staring at them, but that doesn't mean I should be terrified if I see a duck staring at me.
Overall
What the a
News presenter: "Sea ice in the Arctic at lowest levels EVAR! (Since 1979.)"
Ah, but there has been less ice before 1979, hasn't there? In fact, the rising, choking sea ice is why scientists thought, for a time, that global cooling was what was happening, careening the planet headlong into a new Ice Age. Surely a few Slashdotters are old enough to remember this.
Do we have a problem? Yep. Should we be doing things to clean up our environment? Absolutely. But beware any "solution" that comes from the realm of politics. Think about it. Only a handful of Congressmen have science education. Most are lawyers.
Considering the general fear and loathing of politicians around here -- I mean, really, Slashdot! We all know politicians are morons. Now you want to trust them to change the climate of the entire planet? Or, in trying to do so, pass the most tyrannical laws America has ever seen? You're off your rocker.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
Emergency? Planetary emergency, you say?
Dellow felegates! In response to this direct threat to the Republic, mesa propose that the Senate give immediately emergency powers to the Supreme Chancellor!
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Shorter arctic shipping routes are opening up due to the rapid disappearance of route-blocking ice.
Why is this Artic meltdown so important?
Three words: "postitive feedback loops."
All the "scary math" up until now has ignored this one very fundamental thing that could make things much, much worse than even the worst case estimates in the IPCC reports until now. The possibility of positive feedback loops accellerating climate change was explicitly excluded from the IPCC reports because they are poorly understood and introduce potentially wildly chaotic responses. They actually say litterally: we're ignoring this because we don't understand it.
The rapid Arctic meltdown has proven that at least some positive feedback loops are already operating, that for this part of the global system the curve is exponential, not linear.
Now the very real and very great danger is the Arctic meltdown will or already has triggered other, even more significant positive feedback loops. Such as releasing the vast stores of Methane in sub-sea hydrates and the permafrost. If that turns out to be the case, then fasten your seatbelts... we're on the fasttrack to global meltdown already.
Take a look at this site: http://www.ameg.me/
There is just one recipe for chili. Cubed beef, pork fat or suet, onion, cumin, chiles, and a little water. Simmer for at least 4 hours. That's chili.
Chili flavored bean stew, with or without tomatoes, is a fine meal. I will gladly eat it and ask for seconds. But it's not chili.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
It is good for Canada, Russia and Alaska.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Amen, brother. We may not agree on much, but this, absolutely.
Mann, Hanson, Gore, et al. have squandered a resource more precious than the environment they claim to be saving.
As with most conservatives, I stand ready to conserve nature. Trees, parks, and wildlife are great.
But these chaps who aren't publishing code, data, or models, especially where taxpayer dollars have been funding their research, leave something to be desired.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Our corrupt monetary system has a much bigger effect on food supplies and prices than any climatological 'occurrence', other than the planet splitting apart, ever could. We throw away more than we consume. All of our present difficulties are man made, politically and economically motivated for personal advantage. All technical issues were resolved during WW2. We can drop a pallet of any thing, any time, anywhere, with hardly more than 24 hours notice.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/Bpiomas_plot_daily_heff.2sst.png
As we can see, arctic ice thickness has been picking up. This is consistent with the weaker ice being broken off and stronger thicker ice remaining.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I don't know what you're seeing in that graph, but I'm seeing significantly higher temperatures than normal after the melting point, which is exactly what TFA mentioned. The average temperature may be below melting, but that doesn't mean the temperature everywhere is below melting. A higher average temperature means more melt. If you look at years before and after about 1980 on that page, you see that the curve has in general been showing higher temperatures most years after the general melting point.
Nine out of ten posts will always fall into a couple of categories from it's no big deal or it's a natural cycle. The change is so small it'll have little affect or who cares because any change is hundreds of years off. What people need to look hard at is the last 12 years of stories and the progression. 12 years ago the general belief was if the ice cap is melting we might see no ice cap in summer by 2100. Most thought we'd see a stable summer northwest passage by then maybe as soon as 2050. We already have that and now some are saying the ice cap may collapse as soon as 2015 to 2017. That means no year round ice cap just floating bergs in the summer and those growing gradually smaller. We weren't supposed to see a major impact on climate yet but we are seeing severe droughts and bad weather like tornadoes. We've got hotter summers and worse snow in winters. Most say it's a trend that will soon reverse but the trend started in the early 80s and is accelerating and showing no sign of reversing. People argue about sea level rise but some islands in the Pacific are already under threat. They are seeing the island's water supply poisoned with seawater and waters flooding areas it hadn't historically before. No one on small Pacific Islands are debating global warming they are preparing to eventually abandon their countries. We're facing the classic frog in a pan of hot water scenario. If they saw ice melt and weather like we see now suddenly in 2001 there would have been panic. Stretch it over 12 years and the changes are less noticeable. Just imagine in 12 more years the potential changes? Already if we see another drought next year there will be severe corn shortages. In the past we had a year's worth in storage. Now it's down to a few months. Just look at this one thing, remember history class. Remember all the talk of finding a northwest passage? When they were originally looking some years one would briefly open in the summer. Most years there was no passage. The passage only opened within the last ten years and already we may be a few years away from no summer ice pack. In geologic time that's overnight. They are planning to drill for oil at the north pole! Forget the arctic because no one seems to care about sea ice. Forget sea level rise because until it starts flooding New York no one cares. How's this for hitting home, food prices are likely to double or triple over just the next five to ten years and that may be the conservative estimate. Alarmist? Far from. The aquafers are already badly depleted and we could easily be facing a ten year or more drought. They happen even without global warming. What if the corn crop gets cut in half. That could easily happen. Cattle, Chickens and pigs are all fed corn. Even many fish like catfish are fed mainly corn. Most of your processed food is corn based. Check the labels and you'd be shocked. Almost everything has some corn in it whether from corn syrup or oil or the starch. Corn is now better than $8 a bushel. What happens when it hits $25? There's no substitute. Corporate America has made sure of that. It would take years if not decades to switch over to other sources. Just import what we need? Well that means some one else goes hungry and in order to make sure we get our corn that's where $15 to $25 a bushel comes from. Most won't starve in this country because we'll stop buying toys to buy food but your lifestyle will change dramatically and the third world will start starving in the tens of millions to keep us stocked with what we need because we'll pay anything for it.
All the people who have ever lived on the earth would fit in a 1 mile by 1 mile by 1 mile cube. That cube would fit in the grand canyon. Now think about how big the ocean is. The amount of water locked up in people is a literal drop in the bucket.
Too bad they fail to mention that this has happened before, repeatedly, over, and over, and over again. We're headed for a warmer, more diverse world where more of the land area is habitable by a wide diversity of species. We're in a cool period right now and things are correcting. Don't get confused or distracted by "Global Warming" or "Climate Change". The real issue is toxic pollution. PCBs, etc. Pay attention.
1) We don't have temperature or arctic ice data going back even thousands of years. Never mind millions (that's CO2 data from ice cores). ;-) ;-) Perhaps you guys should plant trees instead of cattle.
2) My point was the models were predicting more floods and droughts due to warming, but just got revised LAST WEEK. i.e. we still don't know
3) Post 9-11 the spread of temperatures increased (high-low) which reveals jet contrails may be a primary cause of... something, possibly warming
4) Do you really want the glaciers to return?
5) What? Current thinking (as I understand it) is that coal is in fact dead biomass.
6) Plants grow faster with increased CO2 and IIRC die a little below 180ppm (which is where we would be without intervention).
7) Based on where we think coal came from. Oil is thought to form deep in the earth and seep upwards - hence they look for (and find) it under large geologic formations that trap it. Not sure why agreeing with the oil companies on its origin makes me a moron
8) Point is, the earth was just find when it was substantially warmer.
9) Point was that less ice in the arctic has probably happened before and is therefore not a "planetary emergency" as TFA says.
10) Agreed.
11) Texas should be under water... no, just kidding. Your anecdote is no more valuable than mine
You think that pallet-dropping is cheap, or is expensive due to a corrupt monetary system? You think food gets thrown away near where it's needed?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You think food gets thrown away near where it's needed?
Yes, most definitely
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Planetary emergency? Total planetary ice is up (the arctic compensated in Antarctica). Ill effects from melting arctic ice: none. The only emergency was Hansen not having enough publicity...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
We need scientists to report not react.
You're wrong. Conscience has to come into it at some point.
Insinuating that Hansen is some kind of vested interest is pretty ironic, considering that the small number of climatologists who denied AGW have received funding from the fossil fuel industry.
The reason a storm could even break up the ice is because of the trend in thinning of the ice. If you look at animation on the Arctic front page of the site you linked to, it debunks your (incorrect) interpretation of their chart. The ice progressively gets thinner from 2000 to 2009. So 2012 is not a fluke.
As for the chart, it does show significant additional atmospheric warmth in the cooler seasons which indicates additional heat was stored in the ocean and some of that released to the air. If both air and sea temps were shown it would paint a very different picture from what you claim.
i mean we never had any fires before this year
We never had half as many acres burn as happened this year. No heavy rain where I'm at, in fact it's the worst drought in half a century. This was Illinois' hotest July on record. This has been a mild hurricane season -- but man, there sure were a lot of tornados down south this year.
the Native Americans learned long ago you have to set small fires so that large ones can be avoided.
No. They set fires to catch game; they set teh fires for a cheap meal.
illegal to do controlled burns in forests in most places
That's because it's easier to set the whole damned state on fire with a "controlled" burn than it is to control a burn.
BTW and OT, I see you refuse to use standard conventions, like starting sentences with a capital. You must be a Microsoft fan, following your own "standards" like they do. Here's a hint, son: it doesn't make you look cool, it makes you look incredibly stupid. Of course, it doesn't nake you look as stupid as the comment itself did.
Free Martian Whores!
Because at o degree it will stay melted almost the entire year?
I'm not sure how cold you think it gets in the antarctic. HInt: Wind Chill won't matter.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
All time low since satellite record... That is how long? 20,30,40,50 years maybe. Not to mention the accuracy of those "records" would be much different today than what could be remotly sensed say 30 years ago...
Please. Now lets extrapolate in geologic time from a statistical sample that is the equilivent of randomly watching 3.6 seconds of a hockey game, and making some sort of observation of who is going to win (and that is being very kind).
Stop the chicken little already. Remember what happened there? Well that is quickly becoming the case here where people become fatigued with all the sensationalistic BS. Particulary when all the vanted models they use, I have yet to actually hear about one that offers reproducable and predictable results.
This is like the, OMG its the coldest/hotest X in Y years! Which just means for values greater than Y it was colder/hotter, and what the heck does that really mean?
I am not saying that this is nothing, or that we shouldn't be concerned, however at this point I am so skeptical of just about anything one way or another I have trouble taking much of these statements seriously.
The other big trend is the availability of cheap natural gas from fracking, which is driving the construction of new gas electric plants and gas-heating in homes. Fuel oil is expensive; gas is dirt cheap. The simple economics will force a mass conversion to this relatively clean and cheap power source.
You have some factual errors regarding hydraulic fracturing. You have accepted known-false statements as true, due to hearing them repeated many times by a very well funded public relations campaign. Please allow me to correct your (understandable) misconceptions.
1. The availability of cheap gas from fracking is very temporary. We currently have a glut, but don't expect it to last more than a couple years. These reservoirs have a very high decline rate. It is unlikely that we'll see the unusual confluence of circumstances that caused this resource to be overproduced this past few years. By 2017 or so North American natural gas won't be cheap anymore.
2. Natural gas derived from hydraulic fracturing is NOT 'relatively clean'. The actual gas is the same as 'normal' natural gas, but the fracturing process is quite dirty. This (false) claim that fracked gas is 'clean' has been an important aspect of the paid marketing campaign.
3. While I am dispelling marketing-campaign-induced mythology, readers should also be aware that the 'USA will become energy independant' myth is just that, a myth. The numbers don't even come close to adding up. When you hear that myth repeated, you are hearing propaganda.
Rather than link to a whole host of scholarly articles highlighting my myth busting, I'll point to this well-researched story which nicely explains the reasons for the deception.
We don't really have data over a very long time.
Wrong. We have tree ring data going back thousands of years, and ice core data going back millions.
We know air traffic has an immediate affect on weather
Yeah? And how do we know that?
Had CO levels not been elevated by our actions, plant life would soon die - it's been decreasing for millions of years
All plant life would die? I'm afraid you've left out a few variables in your calculations.
Coal is essentially compressed biomass. Burning it will put it back in the biosphere where it was historically. (not true of oil).
Yes, it's biomass, but it's biomass millions of years old. We are releasing carbon that nature itself sequestered. And for the record, you're wrong about oil, as well -- it, too, is biomass.
The prehistoric record shows significant vegetation (rainforest?) at higher latitudes - like Montana.
Montana isn't where it was then, and mountains grow and flatten over those time scales.
There is evidence that the northwest passage has been clear at some points in the last 1000 years.
Citation?
Alarmist articles bring eyeballs and ad-click revenue.
Well, you got one thing right.
Free Martian Whores!
And I read an article last week that said the SOUTH POLE ice was at an all time high! Now, this WINTER, the south pole will melt, stirring the "earth first" crowd to go nuts, all the while, the NORTH pole ice will be increasing. The the TOP of the world is tilted TOWARD the sun, the ice MELTS. When the TOP of the world is tilted AWAY from the sun, it grows. Plus, 30-50 years worth of data MEANS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING compared to the age of the planet!
Does it matter whether this is man-made or a natural cycle? Is "natural" climate change going to somehow be more forgiving to our society and economy than man-made climate change of the same magnitude?
I never understood this line of reasoning, excessive climate change is bad regardless of who is responsible.
Also, regarding methane, there is 200 times more CO2 (380 ppm) in the atmosphere than methane (1.75 ppm). Additionally, methane stays in the atmosphere on the order of decades, while CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years.
:(){
Somehow my links didn't make it into the post.
CO2 and CH4 concentrations in the atmosphere: http://www.skepticalscience.com/methane-and-global-warming.htm
CO2 and CH4 lifetime in the atmosphere: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhouse-gases-remain-air
:(){
barakn did a great job of tearing your arguments apart, but I would like to add...
6) This is only true if CO2 is the limiting factor. If water or nitrogen or something else are the bottleneck for plant growth, excess CO2 will have little to no impact.
7) Coal and oil are what is known as *sequestered* carbon. The carbon in those fossil fuels is not part of the atmosphere, it is locked away where it has no impact. Burning those fossil fuels puts that carbon back into the atmosphere where it can enhance the greenhouse gas effect.
:(){
I suspect it was too late to stop it even if we had gone all-in at the first warning. We're up against a wall of wombs ten miles high.
(...I said the alarmists are people who claim that the specific action of purchasing a fuel-efficient vehicle will save the world.)
Its you who bandied about the favorite denier straw-man, "alarmists". Toyota may claim hybrids will save the world (though I doubt it), otherwise I don't know who you're talking about. Maybe you take all of your messages about the environment from corporate advertising. Who knows.
Using a hybrid can help. It is a starting point, like light bulbs, to eventually grapple with the enormity of the pollution that we are generating. It is an attempt to do something while the big environmental problems are being evaded by the political sphere.
"Do you know what a straw man is?"
Yeah, Its something farmers put out in the fields to scare birds at harvest time. They seem to be common household ornaments in october for some reason.
How much does a volume of water expand given a rise of temperature of 1-2 degrees Celsius? Assuming that all the water in the ocean was warmed by 2 degrees, how much bigger would the volume be?
The reason is that it would require China to make REAL HONEST CHANGES, and that is not going to happen. Right now, they are by far the largest polluter in the world. By 2015-6, they are expected to account for 1/2 of all CO2 emissions. Before 2020, they are expected to account for more than 1/2 of all emissions that man has EVER done.
So, what would it take to stop this? Well, China is building 1-3 new 1GW coal plant EACH WEEK. Worse, they do not run pollution controls on these. At the same time, USA is shutting down ours, and switching to NG (due to economics).
Here is a list of closing coal plants and here is a list of proposed or intended to be constructed coal plants.
If you sort the closing plants based on the year, you will see several hundred plants are scheduled to be closed (with more expected).
OTOH, if you sort the NEW coal plants on status, and then go to the end of the table, you will find that there are 4 new plants in upcoming, 4 in progressing/projected/startup. More importantly, there are a LARGE number of ABANDONED and CANCELED plants. Why? Because NG is too cheap to go after Coal.
As such, America's Co2 emissions will continue to plummet. The problem is, that even if we shut down 100% of our emissions today, within 2 years, China will emit our same amount.
The ONLY way to stop this, is for America, and ideally the west, to put a tax on ALL GOODS based on where they come from. In addition, the CO2 should not be based on estimates, or local monitoring (china cheats horrible at this), but should be based on sat monitoring of CO2(out) - CO2(in). The hard part is getting nations to put the tax based on where the CO2 comes from. It is NOT ppl, but manufacturing that decide this. Basically, the emissions should be tied to emissions PER $ GDP. In addition, it needs to start low and build up over time. If you do that, you give nations and economies time to adjust.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I guess we do have some indication of temperature going back a long way. But the question remains: Where do we want to go from here:
Ice and Temperature data
No coverage of the storm that broke up the ice, which is already refreezing. It will be interesting to see if anyone actually makes it to the North Pole in a boat in the next few years, as some are suggesting is a certainty. I wonder if the bookies are making odds yet?
With 50-100 years to adapt, I'm sure it'll be fine. We survive much more immediate disruptions from natural disasters every year.
I'd say that that is the most likely possibility. The costs will be *huge*, but the project of civilization will continue.
There is a non-zero possibility of catastrophy, and a non-zero possibility of nothing bad happening.
So... what is the prudent risk-management thing to do? Nothing?? 'cause it'll all be fine???
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
This little canard about Antartic ice being okay will continue well beyond being a pants-on-fire bald-face lie. We will have to wait until it is *so* obvious that Antartica is losing ice, that even Glenn Beck has to admit it. But then, the forbes (and the conservative think tanks) will just slip right on to another canard.
History repeats itself. We've seen this before.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Because we haven't been able to answer that question for decades and now we NEED to know the answer before we continue, if that's the case.
A revenue neutral carbon tax would put the free-market to work at finding solutions. Far from picking winners and loser, a carbon tax would actually reflect the hidden cost of polluting the atmosphere. Such approaches have been implemented in many places in the developed world, and have been shown to have negligible impact on the economy. (An empirical argument can be made that they help the economy by ploughing carbon profits directly into new goods and services.)
Those who cry about economic armageddon are the real alarmists in the climate-change story, and that particular crowd made the same cries of economic armageddon over acid rain and the ozone hole. (Fixing these problems has negligible net effect on the economy.)
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Sea ice is not ice that comes off of land based glaciers but is ice that freezes directly out of the sea. The ice that comes off of land based glaciers is commonly called an ice shelf.
PHDs are overated.
Just do 1 post per day for one year, and thats equal to the text needed to write a PHD.
I therefore declared, most slashusers to have PHDs in Slashdot.
Id like to see slashdot give a PHD status to all users based on words posted.
We will have 3* PHD and 5* PHDs users.
Maybed based on the section, some users can have a PHD in Apple Postings, or PHD in Google Posts.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
This would be "Sky is Falling XVII", unless I miss my count?
Let me see if I can get them all:
"Peak oil" has been predicted at least 5 or 6 times already (I'm talking about peaks that should have happened, not all the future ones).
Overpopulation, concomitant with worldwide famine
Nuclear power will most certainly kill us all, and if not that, Ron Reagan will most certainly start a nuclear war.
DDT certainly will kill us.
Chlorofluorocarbons.
Acid Rain.
Ice Age *was* predicted by the mass media, but we didn't have the internet yet to debunk it immediately.
Oh GM crops/"Frankenfoods" for sure.
And then of course obesity, AIDS, SARS, bird flu but those are mainly just human killers.
This naturally sets aside 'wrath of god' stuff that Islam suggests we'll all face for letting women wear pants, or the Rapture that evangelicals suggest will resolve "Sky Is Falling VII and VIII".
Oh no, panic panic panic. Sorry, I simply don't care. If it happens, it happens; humans are the most adaptable eukaryote this planet has ever seen. If we can't adapt....oh well. And yes, during the adaptation, millions may die. (shrug). Perhaps it's 24/7 news coverage, perhaps it's just me - I can't summon up the energy to give a shit if 400 million nearly-starving South Asians are flooded out. I really don't care. If it helps, I don't expect THEM to care when a tornado goes through my town.
In a philosophical sense, I'm not certain that this universalization of tragedy - in which we shed a tear over every shitty thing that happens worldwide - makes sense, except to exploitative media organizations, who instinctively understand that we are morbidly interested in disaster.
-Styopa
How can we call bullshit on someone (justified or not) and make an incredible claim, supported by you failing at correctly reading an article? If you read till the end you'll know a huge ship rejects about 50 million more sulfure dioxide than a car, NOT 50 million times the greenhouse potential or even using 50 million times the energy. This figure is due to 1. the scale of energy use, 2. ships using the worst fuel, which would be terrible or unpractical to burn on land 3. cars use gasoline, or diesel fuel which had most of its sulphur artificially removed because of standards we imposed to ouserlves.
So glad we are relying on Rolling Stone magazine for science.
In other News, the Ice at the Antarctic is experiencing record highs. What's ironic is the Global Warming Fanatic Alarmists only point out what furthers their agenda: On NOES the ice is melting!1!!!1 ... wait ... don't look behind the curtain ... don't pay attention to the ice that is growing at the other pole ... don't look there ... don't pull back THAT curtain ... we only want to ALARM people to further our Agenda.
Seriously ... the earth warms ... the earth cools ... this is somehow news? Worse yet is we have very little to no control over it, and what control we think we have might end up doing more harm then good. Can you imagine allowing these nut cases to fly off the handle and try to seriously influence the temperature of the earth with some hair brained scheme?
When you look at the state of the billions of people in the "3rd World" countries and forecast what impact they "might" have on the global climate and the realization to "Save the Planet" (as the nut cases so speak) means literally imposing martial law on those billions you quickly come to the realization that all this is little more then "tilting at windmills".
Absolutely astounding at how many smart people out there that are so dumb with regards to the reality of the situation.
Littoral. Awesome.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
All of the above?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
And all this ice has melted, or vaporized, into water...
It went somewhere, it didn't go out into space, right ?
So why haven't the oceans already risen, why haven't the coastal cities already flooded, why hasn't the water line gone up ?
OK, it takes a while... I can half accept that - how long ? A year ? What can we do to stop or reverse it in what, a year ?
Something about all this "science" is rotten, the politicization of it, the partisanship, the accusations of partisanship for simply questioning science by headlines, the name-calling by people that come off as hysterical, and unqualified to even talk about the science behind the science by headlines tactics.
Nobody needs to go to a GW skeptic site to have questions, the questions are obvious, lets hear some answers. OK, slashdot has a great number of responses and some very credible explanations - but they are by no means even remotely in agreement as to the mechanisms, or even the time frames involved. If anything, the more detailed explanations here just elicit even more questions.
So, please, everybody, spare me your Armageddon-like almost religiously fervent certainty. If you were so certain you'd be able to talk the specific science. Admit it, you don't know, your'e going on faith. I don't need science for THAT, that's what people (who go to them) have churches for.
25 to -5
0 is drought.
now take 2 off every 30 years
Their will be a drought every 30 years. It will just last longer each time,
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
Have you lived in New York? Mostly when you look out of a window you see a dirty brick wall. If you're lucky is has no grafitti.
No sig today...
So, what does this do to the environments around the melt? Is this an area that has wildlife in the summertime?
This covers two of the stories I read today, but doesn't melting ice and a warmer climate lead to increased growing seasons and increased growing acreage? So the population is growing and food becomes a problem, but then you can grow crops in Canada and Russia now where you couldn't before. Distribution becomes easier as sea lanes open up that weren't there before due to so much frozen water. Seems like it's all much ado about nothing. We're all going to be fine until the big meteor hits.