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NOAA: Arctic Likely Free Of Summer Ice By 2050 — Possibly Much Sooner
Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have published research into the shrinking levels of sea ice in the Arctic. They wanted to figure out how long it would take before summer sea ice disappeared entirely. Since there's no perfect model for predicting ice levels, they used three different methods. All three predicted the Arctic would be nearly free of summer sea ice by the middle of the century, and one indicated it could happen as early as 2020. Two of the methods were based on observed sea ice trends. If ice loss proceeds as it has in the past decade, we get the 2020 timeframe. If ice loss events are large, like the 2007 and 2012 events, but happen at random some years, the estimate is pushed back to 2030. The third method uses global climate models to 'predict atmosphere, ocean, land, and sea ice conditions over time.' This model pushes the timeframe back to 2040 at the earliest, and around 2060 as the median (abstract). One of the study's authors, James Overland, said, "Rapid Arctic sea ice loss is probably the most visible indicator of global climate change; it leads to shifts in ecosystems and economic access, and potentially impacts weather throughout the northern hemisphere. Increased physical understanding of rapid Arctic climate shifts and improved models are needed that give a more detailed picture and timing of what to expect so we can better prepare and adapt to such changes. Early loss of Arctic sea ice gives immediacy to the issue of climate change."
The only chance (and it's a damned small one) of getting the various political entities motivated to actually do something is for major shifts to happen in a time frame so obvious that even Rush Limbaugh can figure out there is an issue. If the Arctic weather system collapses, pushes the jet stream away and lets Europe freeze ...
Damn it again.
That'll just confuse them even more.
We're doomed.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Do you know how long we've waiting for the Northwest Passage to open up? Finally we will be able to move goods between Europe and Asia in weeks rather than months!
Professor Wadhams at Cambridge already predicted the collapse by 2015. Here is a reference. This site predicts 2030 at the latest.
Climatology isn't a dart board, you don't make a ton of predictions and then claim you are right when one of them hits. You go back and do further research to understand the climate better.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
One approach looks only at ice volume measurements, and explicitly ignores theory because the existing theoretical models failed to predict anything like the ice loss that we observed. Using the simplest accelerating-curve-fit, we get first ice free in September 2017, and six months per year ice free by 2025.
http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2012/08/more-on-arctic-sea-ice-volume.html
Predicting sensible weather in the short term is quite different from predicting broad climate trends. And as it happens, short-term weather prediction is actually pretty good these days. Hurricane tracks, for example, have fairly low error rates these days, outside of some exceptional scenarios. In what other field besides astronomy do we have that level of predictive ability and accuracy? Can we predict the economy? Social trends? What Egypt will do in a year? No. But we can predict the weather, regularly, and do a pretty damn good job. So stop shitting on the one field that is actually able to predict the future with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
I will be able to water ski from North America to Russia, always wanted to do this.
You already can. And Sarah Palin might even wave as you go by!
Seriously, check the map. You don't actually need to cross the Pole to reach Russia from Alaska.
how can you predict the average of 100 dice rolls, when you can't even predict what the next dice roll will give?
Weather and climate are not the same thing. Just as you can't predict whether a given coin toss will end up heads or tails, but you can pretty accurately predict the results of 50 or 100 or 1000 coin tosses in ensemble.
Second, there isn't a whole of precision in those climate estimates, as they range from 2020 (7 years away) out to 2050 (30 years later).
It's Slashdot. Despite being a tech and science nerd gathering spot, there's a strange strain of climate change denialism here. Maybe it's because the non-denialists don't bother commenting on these stories any more, leaving the denialists to defecate all over the comment section.
hey, give them some credit - at least it's a testable prediction that can falsify their model. That's progress.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Let's do only pick this one particular time when the ice is still below normal, but not by the much, and pretend like there's absolutely nothing going on. That's a winning strategy!
Take a look at the two year trend. At no point has it ever been at normal, much less above it, and many times it's been significantly below normal for significant periods of time. The trend is unmistakable.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
I'm not surprised that ice recovers in the winter when it's still quite cold. The Earth's tilt hasn't changed. The summer trends are unmistakable, though, and not be ignored.
The most unambiguious measurement of arctic ice at the moment is from the GRACE satellite (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment), a satellite that is measuring the mass of ice on the poles.
These results do not support your statement "the amount of multi-year ice is increasing." In fact, it is significantly decreasing
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/news/grace20121129.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/multimedia/chart20121129.html shows the graph.
Here's an animation showing specifically the data from Greenland: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/archive/PIA13955_Greenland_Ice_Loss_20111205-640.mov
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Only climate scientists care about funding and it's clear it's all they care about, to the point that they don't even bother doing real science anymore. Everybody else in the world does things for the right reasons and never worries about funding or PR. And the "skeptics" are only in it to save humanity from the evil climate scientists. They have nothing to gain monetarily or in political capital. Straight from the goodness of their hearts. It's only those zany climate scientists we have to worry about, with their scheme to, uhh, take over the world by, uhh, convincing us to use clean energy sources and, uhh, their zeal to understand an interesting part of the planet. Yeah, those guys are pure evil moneygrubbers, I tell ya.
It's single axis of ranking that make it hard to sort out things, and find the signal amid the noise. If there were ways to flag a point of view, for example, you could find things you agree with (or don't) and want to read, and filter out all the rage post crap.
As it's strictly a popularity contest at present... stuff that appeals to the usual crowd self reinforces over time, and you end up with the crowd that stays here.
The current work around is to scatter our attention at a bunch of broken sites, looking for one that better matches our view... and always being disappointed.
I don't know about "long range", but the medium-range projections have almost always proven to be too optimistic.
I suspect IPCC feels political pressure to tone down the bad news.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
We took a look at past average temperatures and plotted the standard deviation and where the last 10 years of temperatures lie. The odds of this being a natural trend basically exceeded the age of the universe.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Hardly liberal. If you think that most conservatives like Mr. Limbaugh you live in an especially special place.
No, frakking isn't going to help much of anything except give us a few years before fossil fuel costs really go through the roof. It's not going to help unload the excess carbon from the environment. Natural gas is only marginally 'greener' than coal. Not enough to matter.
Nuclear power is another subject. IF we could do it correctly (better siting, upgrading, monitoring and decomissioning of plants as well as some sort of half reasonable way to deal with waste) it would be fine. Since we seem to be doing none of those things and since even solar and wind are cost comparable to nucs, it's not much of an answer, IMHO.
Kyoto was a bad political joke and had little to do with slowing global warming. It was simply a test of political will and as such, failed.
And yes, if humans, especially those in a 'leadership' position did something other than try to outrace the next guy in terms of carbon consumption it might help. However, the real problem is the several billion people trying to work their way up from dismal poverty to something better and scooping up all sorts of resources in the process. Can't say I blame them, but it is causing enormous, intractable problems.
All in all, Homo Industrialis won't deal with this problem very well. But it will get dealt with. It's just going to be ugly, protracted and scary.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Slashdot is also remarkably conservative. You see this regularly in terms of computer technology (anti-Wayland, anti-Gnome, anti-Windows 8....) but it is also true in terms of American politics. Climate change is going to require coordinated large scale governmental actions through incentives and regulation. Libertarians don't like it so they pretend there is no underlying problem
You do understand climate change is being used by politicians as argument for even greater government command-and-control of the economy, don't you? Even though there are plenty of solutions which do not require such; those are ignored because they don't fit with the agenda of politicians.
In this, the scientists are fulfilling their role as "useful idiots".
Secondly, moving inward from the seas over 100-300 years, when few modern buildings last that long anyway, is not the major trouble people think it is. Compare it to slowing the economy such that we lose 10 or 20 years' worth of tech every 100 years.
So after 300 years, we'd be at 2250-ish tech, compared to 2313 tech. Have we saved lives?
Imagine people in the 1713 thinking, thanks to an oracle, that they should do something about climate change. So they did, and the increased command-and-control caused lag. Now you're sitting here in 2013 with 1950-level tech.
Have you saved lives? Something on the order of several hundred million needless dead would suggest a foolish path was followed.
Similarly people in 2300 will think us idiots, us ape-like ignorant slobs with year 2013 level tech, who thought it wise to retard growth.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway.
Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.
Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.
- Washington Post, 1922
( based on this original: http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf )
it's in my head
Anti-firearm tends to correlate with urban more than conservative.
Before Greenland becomes arable, you should be able to figure what yo do with the hundreds of millons of people that will be displaced as the countries/cities they live today, and where they get their food, becomes underwater. You know, big cities and fertile lands usually are close to rivers and coasts. And if that is not enough, think in the lost crops all around the world because the weather will not be as stable, and much more extreme, as it used to be.
In what other field besides astronomy do we have that level of predictive ability and accuracy?
Ballistics.
Seriously, any part of physics that isn't significantly affected by quantum effects yields much more accurate predictions, as does chemistry.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Even in the worst case, it would take centuries for the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps to melt. People migrate so much faster than that that nobody would even notice even the most rapid sea level rise.
Yes, and there will continue to be rivers, coasts, and fertile deltas, just like there have been for the past 10000 years during the enormous sea level rise we have experienced so far. Those aren't static features in the landscape, they are dynamic and just adapt to whatever the sea level is. (Ditto for coral islands.)
The climate hasn't been stable in many millions of years. We're on a roller coaster ride between glaciations and interglacial periods, with frequent spikes and dips. The idea that climate has been stable and is being upset by human activity is the left wing version of young earth creationism; apparently neither creationists nor progressives can cope with the idea that the earth and humanity are constantly changing.
Dice rolls can be predicted because unlike weather and climate they are not non-linear chaotic systems.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Nooo...it was because many of us that was for actually FIXING the problem saw the AGW platform hijacked by scammers who don't give a flying fuck about the climate or the planet, they just want to fleece you for themselves and their friends.
You watch me catch hell for pissing on their "dear leader" but Al Gore is the fucking worst of the lot, he actually has the giant brass balls to say farting around in a one man Lear jet or having a fleet of SUVs is CARBON NEUTRAL because he pays HIMSELF from his own little carbon bullshit company, and to top it off it lowers his fucking taxes to boot! That would be like moving money from my left to right pocket and not only demanding you tell me how wonderful i am for doing that but getting to take the money off my taxes for "moving fees". What a fucking scammer!
So many of us have gotten sick of the "don't do as I do, do as I say" and fucking scamming that has become the AGW platform. Its one thing if you have someone like Ed Begley JR who walks the walk and does without himself to make the world a better place, quite another when you have a fat fuck in a limo saying "You fucking peasants better tighten your belts" while he stuffs his fat fucking face. Fuck them, may they all fucking drown in the rising seas.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
What about the volcanoes on the Gakkel Ridge.
The comment I was replying to stated that the decrease in arctic ice thickness "has reversed." That statement is not correct, and I posted a link to the data.
Now you, apparently, are trying to come up with a hypothesis to explain this, other than the trivial hypothesis that since temperatures are increasing, ice is melting.
Fine. Do some back of the envelope calculations, and if you still think that's a viable hypothesis, well, uh, maybe you should get somebody else to check your calculations. Then, if you still think it's plausible, go get your ice model peer reviewed.
...
I tend to be a skeptic on all end of the world scenarios, until an asteroid or comet are heading in our direction.
This majorly pisses me off. I point out data showing that Arctic ice is thinning, and people jump immediately to "he's screaming about the end of the world"! That's a false dichotomy: either carbon dioxide has no effect on climate and everything's fine, or it's the end of the world, no other alternatives.
The planet is warming. This is very well documented. "End of the world"?? Why does everything have to be "it's the end of the world"? It's not the end of the world.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"The idea that climate has been stable and is being upset by human activity is the left wing version of young earth creationism"
If I had mod points then that sentence would be worth at least a million. Climate change alarm is based on a myth of past climate stability - it is disguised creationism.
Nice straw man you've put up there to cut down, too bad no real scientists say that. Hell, if the climate hadn't changed here since the last ice age this message would be coming to you from deep under the ice cap. Here for example is a graph of the last 2000 years, last 12000 years, last 450000 years. The climate changes naturally but not like now, which is all the time I'm going to waste arguing with a closed mind. And even though the planet has been hotter than it is now (look at the 450k year graph, nobody's denying this shit) a rapid man-made climate change won't leave nature or people time to adapt. Change that happens in a century is different than change that happens over 10000 years.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Climate can change and it will change but predicting these kinds of trends to 2050 with any kind of accuracy is ludicrous at best, since they cannot even predict whats the weather next weekend.
Again, the above is a perfect example of bullshit, or if you want a more polite term, "poppycock" or "humbug". Quoting from the above link...
Bullshit is commonly used to describe statements made by people more concerned with the response of the audience than in truth and accuracy, such as goal-oriented statements made in the field of politics or advertising.
"bullshit" can be sometimes be distinguished from lying...
"Bullshit" does not necessarily have to be a complete fabrication; with only basic knowledge about a topic, bullshit is often used to make the audience believe that one knows far more about the topic by feigning total certainty or making probable predictions.
The parent poster seems to implicitly (and deliberately?) confuse climate and weather. There are numerous quality discussions about chaotic systems, the differences between climate and weather, and how climate is predictable farther into the future than weather. The existence of these arguments, and the poster's seeming ignorance of them seems to indicate to me that the poster simply does not care about the truth, but cares rather only to appear to be truthful to those less well-read in science. As such, he falls nicely under Princeton Professor Harry Frankfurt's definition of a bullshiter given in his 2005 monograph 'On Bullshit':
It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Nooo...it was because many of us that was for actually FIXING the problem saw the AGW platform hijacked by scammers [nakedcapitalism.com] who don't give a flying fuck about the climate or the planet, they just want to fleece you for themselves and their friends.
Then let's look at the evidence: firstly you say that in general, people on slashdot adopting a counter position do so because emissions reduction schemes (i.e cap and trade, emissions trading, direct legislation for reduction) are a scam. But they think the actual phenomenon of anthropogenic climate change is real:
This guy thinks the reduction in arctic sea ice is caused by underwater volcanoes: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3645525&cid=43442631. If he thinks that anthropogenic climate change is real, why is he saying that it is not? This seems disingenuous.
This guys seems to think that the predictions of climate science can't be trusted - although bizarrely, he posted a link which indicates otherwise: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3645525&cid=43441341. If he though those predictions could be trusted, why not say so? This seems disingenuous.
This guy thinks that the arctic ice is not melting at all: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3645525&cid=43441403 - if he thinks that AGW is real (and evidenced by melting arctic ice) why did he not just say it? This seems disingenuous.
This guy thinks it's happened but won't get off his arse and do anything about it because it will mainly happen to poor people: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3645525&cid=43443501. If, he, as you claim, is genuinely concerned about climate change, why does he not just say so? This seems disingenuous.
Notably, these positions are all:
1. Notably lacking any hard evidence
2. In contradiciton with one another
As is yours.
Why is the true position?
Which out of the whole crowd of you is telling us the truth?