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Stronger Winds Explain Puzzling Growth of Sea Ice In Antarctica
vinces99 writes "As NOAA announces a new record for the extent of sea ice in Antarctica, a new modeling study to be published in the Journal of Climate shows that stronger polar winds lead to an increase in Antarctic sea ice, even when Earth's overall climate is getting warmer. The study (abstract) by Jinlun Zhang, a University of Washington oceanographer, shows that stronger westerly winds swirling around the South Pole can explain 80 percent of the increase in Antarctic sea ice volume during the past three decades. The polar vortex that swirls around the South Pole is not just stronger than it was when satellite records began in the 1970s, it also shoves the sea ice together to cause ridging. Stronger winds also drive ice faster, which leads to still more deformation and ridging. This creates thicker, longer-lasting ice, while exposing surrounding water and thin ice to the blistering cold winds that cause more ice growth. A computer simulation that includes detailed interactions between wind and sea shows that thick ice — more than 6 feet deep — increased by about 1 percent per year from 1979 to 2010, while the amount of thin ice stayed fairly constant. The end result is a thicker, slightly larger ice pack that lasts longer into the summer."
So it's still code as buggery down there?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Smells like "Snowball Earth" scenario.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
I really did believe in global warming, but now even I am beginning to wonder about the way every event that seems to discount climate change predictions is attributed to an outlying event, while everything that seems to prove climate change is attributed to human caused global warming...
This isn't the northern sea ice. The Antarctic sea ice has been trending slowly upwards, overall. With strong loss near the peninsular.
No it's real my friend. You just need to believe.
Now put these flowers in your hair and come dance with us.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
is his inability to imagine he cannot explain every single thing. No matter where you mark time in history, you may rest assured that thinking men were fairly smug regarding the technology and science of their day.... there will hopefully always be much we have yet to comprehend.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
You never will accept because what you are saying is until they can predict the weather a year out you will not trust climate models.
All that damage control.
I don't understand why all the libs are butthurt, though. If you want an excuse to shut down industry, then you are looking in the wrong place. Ocean acidification is definitely real, and isn't disproved by a simple analysis of the IR and Raman spectra of CO2.
Seriously. Ocean acidification is far more dangerous than AGW could ever have been. Fisheries are already in a state close to collapse. Additional pressure from acidification could push them over the line and into extinction. That would be monumentally bad, on par with, say, the extinction of rice.
I'd settle for predicting the weather 5 days out. I am lucky if they can get it right two days out.
You are not winning your argument here.
Look up the meaning of variation. Prediction. Accuracy.
Both the weather and climate are vary and fluctuate greatly. Both are unpredictable. Both have a habit of showing mankind's predictions to always be wrong.
You "twerk" the truth brother....
Weather: the state of the atmosphere where you are today.
Climate: change over time. Length of time? Whatever's convenient to your argument.
Sure, but with this article we should admit there is still a lot of climate phenomena we do not understand, and therefore cannot accurately predict what will happen in the future
I think the Coward was referring to this here, which curiously is about the northern ice.
Not to call you stupid, but there's a difference between the arctic and antarctic. This is talking about the antarctic, not the arctic.
It looks rather like the "global-warming-is-man-made-sound-the-alarms" people have been cherry picking. First it was the higher temperatures. Then when the temperatures did not support their theories, it was "well global warming causes extreme weather!". When THAT got disproven, it was "look-look-look, all the ice is melting!" Now that THAT part of the scam is getting clobbered by the earth itself, what will the GW people predict next?
Quite a few "inconvienent truths" seem to be getting in the GW peoples' way. Carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant. It is stupid to treat it that way - unless you are a politician, who wants to tax the very air we beathe.
Anthropogenic global warming is causing the wind, of course!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
How was this modded insightful? None of those have been disproved. Look at any of glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere for example. Not 1 of them is even as large as it was 25, 50, 75, or 100+ years ago. Many of them don't even exist anymore. Same in South America and anywhere along the equator. If you are trying to say this Antarctic ice difference makes up the total difference for a net 0 result, then you need to check your facts.
While I agree with you that trying to stop the change is foolish, I don't disputing that global warming exists. I just don't think we can do anything about it (even if Americans change their ways drastically China and India will compensate as their standard of living improves). Adapt or perish. That's how life has always worked on Earth.
Send him to the arctic to look for penguins and the first polar bear he sees will teach him the difference between the poles rather quickly.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I work in a government remote-sensing role, where we generate a lot of derived data (backed up by ground truth data we collect in the real world to compare against).
We've got a bit of an unspoken law about models: they're shit.
No matter how hard you try, when you attempt to model/simulate large-scale natural phenomena - where you have so many different systems affecting one another, and so much to keep track of - you end up with a realistic workload of dozens of man years of scientific development just to come up with the mathematical model (ignoring the software side to actually simulate it on a computer).
The end result of this is: People simplify, and then simplify again - to take what should take the better part of a couple years, and do it in 6 months to get reviewed and presented at their next conference of choice; ultimately coming up with useless results - which on the surface if they're lucky may look valid, but just end up proving to be horribly incorrect in a different spatial or temporal domain (eg: on another continent, or in your case - a year later...)
There's are of course a few exceptions to this rule (typically around radiative transfer models, and flood plain modeling - and a few other places where you're either working at such a low level and scale or an incredibly well studied field (eg: radiation/light physics has centuries of scientific backing)).
Needless to say though, 'climate change' is a worst case scenario here - large scale, many complicated systems, and in aggregate everything needed to model this accurately doesn't have the solid scientific understanding.
...and I'll believe your bullshit ranting when you learn some geography.
There's nothing insightful about the AC's comment. Instead it just demonstrates a very shallow understanding of of the subject that shows the AC has no idea what they are talking about.
While last year was a new record low for Arctic sea ice very few people in the cryology field thought it "would be gone in a few years with cataclysmic results". It's true though that late summer Arctic sea ice could be gone sometime in the 2020's and it's impossible to rule out cataclysmic results from that at this time. This summer the Arctic sea ice is no where near a record high but has merely moved back to the general declining path it's been on after last year's exceptional melt.
Climate scientists are trying to predict climate, not weather. The World Meteorological Organization's definition of climate is:
Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the "average weather," or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The classical period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). These quantities are most often surface variables such as temperature, precipitation, and wind. Climate in a wider sense is the state, including a statistical description, of the climate system.
To expect them to predict in detail the weather next year or even in 10 years is expecting too much. What they're predicting is what the average weather will be over a 30 year period given a specific input scenario. If you don't understand that in the first place you have no business commenting on the subject.
I predict humans will observe the earth warming, then cooling, then warming, etc.. in a cycle that repeats itself over and over again with varying frequencies and amplitudes until such time humans become extinct and are replaced by a more evolved species that lacks the pretense of understanding a system as complex as the earth's macro climate.
There is a lot of active research in climate science.
... The number date a bit, and you can argue the discount rate, but the orders of magnitude are pretty robust)
But this article doesn't discuss what they all are. It shows that with better modelling of wind-sea interactions in the southern ocean, we can get a much better handle on what is happening to the southern sea ice.
I might be hypersensitive to the climate conspiracy theorists on the internet, but I read "therefore cannot accurately predict what will happen in the future", as the common wrong argument that therefore trying to reduce emissions is not justified, and this is why you try to hit this point despite its irrelevance to the article?
Higher uncertainty of the regional effects of global warming is not a good argument for not taking action, unless those regional effects have a very significant effect on global costs of adjustment. The CBR is running at about $10 in benefit for each $1 in emission reduction costs at the moment. With the developing world bearing most of the disbenefit of inaction, and that coupled with the least ability to finance. (You may remember the Stern Review
It looks rather like the "global-warming-is-man-made-sound-the-alarms" people have been cherry picking. First it was the higher temperatures. Then when the temperatures did not support their theories, [Stee-rike one!] it was "well global warming causes extreme weather!". When THAT got disproven, [Stee-rike two!] it was "look-look-look, all the ice is melting!" Now that THAT part of the scam is getting clobbered by the earth itself, [Stee-rike three, ye're outta here!]
Something that you will again totally misunderstand the meaning of.
I seem to recall Superman having the ability to create ice by blowing a strong wind. Yep, must be Superman.
Until you understand the difference between the Arctic and the Antarctic you really can't understand why the two react differently to stimulus. Simply stated the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by continents while the Antarctic is a continent surrounded by ocean. That is one reason why the sea ice in the Arctic tends to persist over the summer while the sea ice in Antarctica melts completely away over the (southern hemisphere) summer every year. Because of those differences don't expect wind to have same effects on the Arctic sea ice as it does on the Antarctic sea ice.
It looks rather like the "global-warming-is-man-made-sound-the-alarms" people have been cherry picking
No, this is not cherry-picking. There's not question that the earth is warming due to the enhanced greenhouse effect. The oceans are expanding. The surface temperatures are increasing.
This paper looks at the response in the Antarctic Sea Ice, and has found a possible improvement to its understanding.
No cherry picking involved.
Then when the temperatures did not support their theories, it was "well global warming causes extreme weather!".
It was always suspected that global warming would increase extreme weather events because hurricane intensity is highly related to sea surface temperature when they form, and more energy in the atmosphere gives more evaporation so heavier rainfall.
But the theories are thermodynamics, fluid mechanics and optics. They are not challenged if warming is only 0.1C per decade for a decade instead of the long term trend of 0.16C per decade.
When THAT got disproven, it was "look-look-look, all the ice is melting!" Now that THAT part of the scam is getting clobbered by the earth itself, what will the GW people predict next?
The northern sea ice is in steep decline. The Antarctic Ice Sheet and Greenland Ice Sheet are in accelerating decline.
How on god's green earth do you manage to get to "THAT part of the scam is getting clobbered by the earth itself" for there?
Carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant. It is stupid to treat it that way.
You've not heard of the greenhouse effect then?
actually. no. Please find 1 - just one - study that claimed that the polar ice was going to increase. What you will find is that study after study explains why what has already happened does not match what was predicted. Plain and simple - find the "om the good news side" part of the study. The weather is better in some plain in Chile. Some small part of Africa gets better... But you won't find it. All worse everywhere. All the time. Oh - those record hurricanes, both in frequency and size... well, actually now the models predict decreased hurricanes .....
The reason for this mess is that some climatologists fail to distinguish between their personal beliefs or gut feeling and what the scientific method really allows them to state with precision. They regularly claim that their observations "prove" their preferred interpretation despite the absence of any validly predictive theories in this area yet. All we have today are piecemeal components for some future theory.
The GCMs of climatology are helpful and fun, but they're just extremely rough approximations and full of known kludges (generously called 'shortcuts') to make the extraordinarily complex natural systems computable this side of eternity. The GCMs are certainly not accurate physical simulations of Earth's systems. The unknowns in our models are utterly vast.
It'll require many hundreds of years of further research before we have a deep understanding of how the biosphere and many circulatory systems operate and interact, not to mention the similarly complex effects introduced by humans. We're barely on the first rung of the ladder at the moment.
Right now climatologists are just handwaving, and can't be expected to do more than just handwave. Their observed data is very valuable as input, but any interpretations they might make are totally unsafe in a scientific sense, because the necessary foundation of a predictive Theory of Climatology that combines all the parts of the puzzle in a valid scientific way just doesn't exist yet.
Making conclusions in advance of predictive theory is not how the scientific method works. The honest scientists in the field know that, and they don't pretend otherwise.
Apparently I'm the only one that noticed this article is about Antarctica and not the Arctic. Different side of the globe. The predictions for what will happen in the Arctic do not apply to Antarctica...
Any time "experts" flawlessly explain occurances after the fact, even when it contradicts their predictions, it makes me believe they have no idea what they are talking about
Correcting your theories after they've been proven incomplete or incorrect is part of the scientific process. The alternative, declaring reality wrong if it disagrees with you, would be religion.
I guess this is why people seem to listen to religious experts more often than scientific experts.
To all the idiots who modded this up: just one key mistake from the last few weeks is that there are no record ice caps, just that the growth from summer minimum has been going at an unusually high pace. We're still way below average ice coverage and volume.
And this is how you lie to ignorant people and make them believe whatever you want: tell them something that is close enough to the truth that they sort of remember something like it and that tells them they are going to be alright. They won't catch the error, happily repeat it to everyone, and then wonder why WW2 broke out.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
until such time humans become extinct and are replaced by a more evolved species that lacks the pretense of understanding a system as complex as the earth's macro climate.
Why wait?
I already understand earth's macro climate... it's very simple: When God cranks up the thermostat, the temperature increases. When God thinks it's too hot, he lowers the thermostat, and the temperature decreases. If he feels particularly sneaky one day; he lowers it a little more than usual, thus creating an ice age.
I think all the warming/no-warming climate-change/no-change argument misses an important point. There may be controversy and uncertainty, but it's got to be to our advantage to act prudently and reduce emissions. In other words, do we dare take a chance? It's a shame this has been reduced to politics instead of objective science.
Laws related to reducing global warming are good for the environment so it does not matter a damn what the data says.
Evey now and then these people say what they really think and show their true intentions. The whole AGW thing is merely a cover for their agenda.
Do it because "it's for the children".
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
They aren't correcting anything. They are making up new ones: A causes B. OK, except when it doesn't because C is happening...maybe.
This was the same "logic" that parent used when they refused to give their kids vaccines. Now their kids are dying of preventable diseases. Do we dare take a chance? FUCK YES! Reducing CO2 emissions is a huge waste of money, and hurts everyone. We absolutely should not make policies based on fear-mongering and bullshit pseudoscience.
Truth Quark was just examining one of the arguments between inaction and action in a logical way. Put explicitly, climate change is a sufficient condition for reducing emissions, but not a necessary one. If an Oracle appeared and told you climate change was definitely not happening, would you stop trying to reduce pollution?
Slashdot likes car analogies, so here's one: When your mechanic says he can't find a problem, it doesn't necessarily mean your car is fine.
Plan My Week for iPhone
Despite the obvious fallacy of comparing the two, he does make a valid point. Every time you see something that discounts global warming impacts EG: Growth of ice in Antarctica increasing. It rapidly gets dismissed as "oh that is just natural variation" but you get the opposite EG: Loss of ice in the Arctic and it is end of the world global warming doom all the way down.
This kind of reporting is really very troublesome for both sides of the argument. Pro-AGW folks get painted as biased alarmists and Anti-AGW folks have any evidence they might use immediately dismissed.
I know enough to know I don't have the truth one way or the other about the whole AGW issue, but I sure as hell can tell when people are putting spin on things and everyone on both sides is doing that.
When a theory cannot be falsified because ad hoc adjustments explain every discrepency, it has become a belief.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Hmm... I guess y'all want a more serious answer.
It looks rather like the "global-warming-is-man-made-sound-the-alarms" people have been cherry picking. First it was the higher temperatures. Then when the temperatures did not support their theories,
While the slope of temperature increase in the atmosphere is lower than it was in the 1980's and 1990's, the 2000's was still the hottest decade in the modern temperature records and 2005 & 2010 are tied for the hottest year in most of them (1998 still is hottest in HADCRUT3). The oceans are still warming and the ice is still melting. None of this is a surprise to climate scientists who realize that natural variability can overcome the forcing of greenhouse gases for a decade or more. The oceans, where over 90% of the heat of global warming goes anyway are still warming and the next time we get a moderately strong El NIno (which reduces the heat going into the ocean) you can bet we will set a new global temperature record (unless we coincidentally get a large volcanic eruption).
it was "well global warming causes extreme weather!". When THAT got disproven,
You've got a little bit of truth in this because global warming doesn't cause any kind of weather in and of itself. What is does is affect the context within which weather occurs. So for instance if the climate is warming then the high temperature events will be a little warmer and the peaks a little higher. There is more energy in the system to drive weather. There is more water vapor in the atmosphere to drive precipitation.
it was "look-look-look, all the ice is melting!" Now that THAT part of the scam is getting clobbered by the earth itself,
When you look at natural ice on the Earth it can be divided into a number of categories. The ice sheets (Greenland & Antarctica), the lesser ice fields and glaciers, the ice shelves (the tongues of glaciers floating on the sea) and sea ice in the Arctic and in the Antarctic. Of all of those kinds of ice the only one that has had a net increase is the Antarctic sea ice which is a very small portion of all of that ice. The net volume of all of the ice taken together is on a strong downward path.
So what you are saying is they change the models to fit what happens? But that is science! You've stumbled onto the scientific method.
But it must be declining. If the temperature is like 20 degrees hotter than it was a decade ago the ice has to melt. Doesn't it? Oh, now I'm so confused.
We have to pass it to find out what's in it.
What has the study of rocks got to do with it?
I just have a hard time with people who piss on my leg and tell me it's raining.
Very Scientific! Brilliant!
If an Oracle appeared and told you climate change was definitely not happening, would you stop trying to reduce pollution?
Ooh, I like this question and how it is phrased. Of course I would continue to advocate reducing pollution; however, CO2 wouldn't be defined as a pollutant as a corollary to the Oracle's statement.
No reason not to use fossil fuels then, unless scientists discover that the underground reservoirs of petroleum are reducing the Earth's density and are the only thing keeping our planet floating in space. Then I would advocate reducing consumption to fight Global Sinking.
Flamebait??!!
When did slashdot become a stronghold of science-denialist crackpots?
There are about ZERO scientific organizations: (as of 2007, when the American Association of Petroleum Geologists released a revised statement, no scientific body of national or international standing rejected the findings of human-induced effects on climate change), and about ZERO scholarly papers (Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position ) that support your denialist bullshit.
The OP is a perfectly scientific discussion of a finding about the changes in Antarctic Sea Ice. How the hell did the average IQ in here drop so far that this became a George-C-Marshall deniomatic thread.
The problem is that it's tough to decide which outcome is preferable -- avoiding the next ice age, or making it inevitable. As the southern ice sheets expand, more solar radiation is reflected back out, and when a tipping point is reached the ice age takes full hold until it basically exhausts itself of the ability to increase further and bounces back the other way. Which is more survivable? My money is on warmer.
How about a slightly different one.
If an Oracle popped up and said that increases in atmospheric carbon levels and reduction in atmospheric oxygen levels would not change the global climate one bit.
Would you continue felling trees and burning fossil fuels until the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide would kill a human being.
No, you've mistaken science with tossers faffing about with Math and Computers, two items they have scant if any qualification that might indicate that they have a clue.
Everything in access is pollution and if an Oracle appeared and stated that climate change would not happen no matter the amount of CO2 we added to the atmosphere, the Oracle should be treated like if she stated gravity didn't exist. Anyone can do the experiment that shows CO2 is a greenhouse gas and we have the example of Venus. All the Oracle could state was that we've put negligible CO2 into the system so far.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
This summer the Arctic sea ice is no where near a record high but has merely moved back to the general declining path it's been on after last year's exceptional melt.
Unfortunately, Earth is on that "general declining path" since the planet formed from frozen gases and other debris a few billion years ago. But I guess if we take our last money away from our children and give it to some salesmen, we can fix this problem in less than a century or two! Where do I sign up?
The villager: Tell me, the learned Haji Nasruddin, is it true that you agreed to teach Emir's donkey to speak in ten years, and took a sack of gold for that?
Haji: Yes, this is true.
The villager: But, Haji, this is surely impossible!
Haji: It is impossible indeed. But I gather that in ten years either the donkey dies, or Emir dies, or, Allah forbid, I die.
In other words, do we dare take a chance?
The answer is obviously yes. There is no global or even national controls over CO2 emission. It's businesses that produce it or sell the products that produce it. Businesses aren't concerned with potential long term climate disasters. In fact, rebuilding what environmental disasters have destroyed could be good for business.
Have you actually sat down and talked with an actual scientist in the field?
Instead of only reading laymans interpretations of what they say?
You might be surprised that they can actually answer all of the dumb questions.
Deniers usually attack a simplified view made to explain extremely complex things to layman and then find some holes in the simplificiation and then deny everything based on it.
They aren't correcting anything. They are making up new ones: A causes B. OK, except when it doesn't because C is happening...maybe.
This works out just fine when C leads to predictions and can be tested.
Ocean acidification.
The was the little ice age. Of course when we'll go into another is anybody's guess.
I hate Microsoft as much as the next geek, but blaming global cooling on Oracle and MS Access is going a bit too far don't you think?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Ah the missing heat lurking in the deep unmeasured ocean.
Your time window is too short! The northern glaciers have still not shrunk back to the point they were before the medieval 'little ice age' of about 500 years ago (people are still finding medieval artifacts melting out of the glaciers). The current temperature of the northern parts of the earth is only now approximately back where it was 1000 years ago and millions of years ago, the northern clime was much warmer between the real ice ages.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Congratulations, you've won climate myths #5, #9, and #16 (for starters).
[FUCK BETA]
I put the most interesting words in bold there. She actually said regardless of whether or not scientists are wrong you plebs can pay more for your fucking fuel, bitch. Amazing.
I will believe these pig fuckers when they can accurately predict what will happen next year. Otherwise, why would I believe what they say will happen 10 years from now. Computer models are only as accurate as the assumptions programmed into them.
And this got voted insightful?!
Let me give you an analogy. I am going to write a simple computer model that predicts how many sixes you'll get if you roll a die 1000 times. In fact, here's the source code (Python 2 compatible):
print 1000.0/6
By your argument, this is wrong because it can't tell me whether the next roll of the die will be a six.
I think this shows one big problem in climate science and in science in general: There are only certain things that get funding, and there is no incentive to research other things that are as important and interesting.
Climate science gets funding for research into things that are potentially dangerous. So they look for effects that make climate change worse. But they would never get much attention for a report on a mechanism that slows down the temperature rise, like growing antarctic ice that will increase reflection of sunlight. So we only see reports on effects that emphasize the temperature changes, but not on the ones that slow it down, even though these should exist in a comparable number.
To add to that, real scientists are almost never on the tee vee talking about their research because they fail to give answers that can fit in the weakest link's attention span.
Um, did you read my post. I think it was clear that I was differentiating between the two. Hence, noting the lack of wind in the arctic and the need for big giant fans. ;-)
What do you call the theory of natural selection as it relates to human evolution? There's no predictive power there. Are you suggesting Darwin was not a scientist?
Furthermore, a lot of medical research these days are screens, people dumping random chemicals on cells to find one that works. Is that not science? The theory they have in advance, if there is one, would be something like "If I keep testing chemicals, eventually I'll find one that works."
Perhaps science is not as simple and neat as you imagine it to be, and there are multiple ways of doing science.
Edit: I realize, looking back at my original post, that I'm a bit of a hypocrite here... Sorry for the cheekiness. I shouldn't have said "THE alternative." Jesus, I'm an arrogant prick.
Hey idiots, as I was a marine science major for 5 1/2 years. I'm kind of familiar with the two. And nothing in my post has any confusion on that fact.
Yes, Anarctica is a continent covered in ice and surrounded by more ice. Arctic is a big super iceberg floating at the top of the planet. But the truth is, that the article is postulating that wind blowing freezes more ice (usually true, especially if you've ever raced in the Boston Snow row in January - I have).
But you're making a couple of mistakes. First you wrongly misapplied a failing on my part that did not exist. Second, you seem to think that a huge mass of ice cannot act in a similar fashion as an ice covered continent and provide a barrier for strong winds to beat and pack ice against. It can. In fact it happens on much smaller scales.
Even in a harbor during winter when pack ice floating on the surface is pressed between the outgoing river flow and in-coming tidal flow. You essentially get a wall of packed together ice. Now this is on a very small scale. But it is the same fundamental process.
I am sorry that you guys got focused on a straw man. But my point still holds.
Is there anything about CO2 that would make it pollution outside of the scope of AGW? If so, what is the impact of CO2? If there's no other area where CO2 is a pollutant, then why should we support restricting emissions when there's no harm coming from it? Why should we be increasing energy prices, which would impact the lower classes more, when there's no gain from it if CO2 doesn't affect AGW?
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
You seem to have confused carbon dioxide with carbon monoxide. It's an easy mistake to make, if you don't know what you're talking about.
Yes.
Also, ditto on arctic sea ice volume, which is a more meaningful metric
Not so unmeasured since the advent of the the ARGO Floats.
The point is, that the OP was saying "Why wouldn't we reduce emissions, even if climate scientists are wrong" and the correct answer is, because you can't do it for free. You have to determine what your ultimate goal is. If it is saving human lives, then reducing emissions can clearly be shown to save more lives today due to increased fuel costs and decreased standard of living. It's not like we can just cut emissions at no cost or say "it's just money". Climate science, wrong or right, has done a very poor job of weighing costs on both ends. Maybe if we are making the world warmer, we would actually have to sacrifice more lives today to stop it then would be lost due to the change in the climate. You never see those reports...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
*Ring* *Ring*
Hello? Oh hi! Broken window fallacy, I haven't seen you in forever... Oh, this call isn't for me? It's for Sperbels? Ok, I'll hand you over.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
What's wrong with her saying that?
It's always sensible to conserve your limited resources, while making more efficient use of your (effectively) unlimited resources.
which is totally what she said
The sea ice in the Arctic is mostly constrained by the land that surrounds it and once it freezes up to that land in the winter winds have less effect in that regard. Since the Antarctic sea ice is not constrained by land the ice near the edge can still be affected by wind even in the middle of winter when freezing conditions are good.
If you can show me a model of car that weighs less than the previous model, I'll give you a billion moles of CO2 that you can do with what you wish.
I have no problem with reducing pollution, it's a matter of how much pollution is dangerous. There is lead, arsenic, mercury, and all kinds of other horrible things in drinking water. They are so low it's not a hazard, so you stop caring. What level of CO2 in the atmosphere is so low that it isn't a hazard? What is the threshold? I am breathing fine right now, and I can't think of anyone who has died from CO2 poisoning (maybe O2 deprivation if the CO2 is too high), so I don't think CO2 is a pollutant. A greenhouse gas maybe, but not the only one and certainly not solely responsible for global climate.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Interestingly, being libertarian allows for government control over emissions -- you are polluting, i.e. using, something which does not belong to you (only a miniscule fraction.)
How much pllution, and what type, is a reasonable domain for democratic process for tradeoffs. Lives in London skyrocketted in length during the Industrial Revolution even as pollution (and terrible working conditions did too. Clobbering that process would have been murderous, not helpful, as measured by length of life.
The real fear is the use of environmental protection as a crypto method for control of industry to the detriment of advancement. I'd rather sit here with 2013 level tech than 1970 level tech such massive takeover might have left us with had people in 1900 tried to be "helpful". We know burdens slow things down.
I guarantee you'd prefer a world in 2150 with rising seas and 2150 level tech to lower seas and 2080 level tech, if saving lives is your concern.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Fracking is creating the most energy efficient and cleanest source of energy we have. It is largely responsible for the reduction in CO2 emissions in the US over the past few years.
Deforestation isn't caused by expanding cities and suburbs. It is caused by the increase in agriculture which is needed to provide all of the biomass to make ethanol in response to stupid policies to fight climate change.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Sure, but with this article we should admit there is still a lot of climate phenomena we do not understand, and therefore cannot accurately predict what will happen in the future
There's lot we don't understand about biochemistry, but we still know that arsenic is poisonous to humans.
There's a lot we don't know about physics, but we still know that a sphere of plutonium-235 around ten kilos will undergo a sustained nuclear chain reaction.
We don't know a lot about climate phenomena, but we do know that increasing global CO2 concentrations from 280 to 400 ppm will trap more energy in the Earth's atmosphere.
Not knowing *everything* is not the same as knowing nothing at all. Often the limitation of our knowledge is not *accuracy*, but rather *precision*. We know that an oral dose of 200 mg/kg of arsenic is fatal to the average human in under ten minutes, and that the fatal dose varies with body weight. That is accurate toxicological knowledge. We don't know *precisely* the minimum dose needed to kill any specific individual. We know that increasing average global CO2 concentrations to over 400ppm will cause a reduction in the total extent of seasonal ice, but not whether any particular ice structure will decrease or even increase in any particular year.
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Any time "experts" flawlessly explain occurances after the fact, even when it contradicts their predictions, it makes me believe they have no idea what they are talking about.
This is the same kind of bellyaching people do about "revisionist history". It's actually the job of historians to revise history; history isn't what happened, which of course is fixed; it's the set of *our beliefs* about what happened, which ought to change as we learn more. Likewise it is the job of scientists to incorporate new data into the scientific consensus, either by retracting part of that consensus, or elaborating part of that consensus.
This case called for elaboration, since that was the explanation that fit the facts best. Your beef seems to be that the explanation fits the facts too well.
By the way you are confusing arctic and antarctic ice caps. This year's *arctic* (northern) ice cap had a greater minimum extent than last year's, but still very low by historic standards. If you are using *last year's* minimum arctic ice extent as a baseline, that's disingenuous because last year was a historic low. This is like the way denialists try to prove climate is not warming by choosing 1998 as their baseline; that's dishonest because '98 was a record high year (it has since dropped to third place).
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Have you seen the oil price? The market is very well able to do that all by itself. All she is achieving is the destruction of jobs and prosperity in Europe.
What is wrong with you people?
In other words you completely missed the point.
You missed it completely, didn't you? Oh well.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Scientists always explain surprise occurrences after the fact, which indicates that they don't know everything and have to keep adapting theory to observation. There's tons of things that contradicted details of more general theoretical predictions without invalidating the general theory. However flawed, science is our best way of figuring things out, and has a very impressive track record in producing useful things. The scientific consensus is almost always reasonably accurate for things well within the limits of measurement. The scientific consensus is that we're warming the planet, and this is shown by a lot of measurable evidence.
Last year was a record low for arctic ice, but I doubt any real scientist seriously suggested doing a linear projection. The climate being complicated, there's lots of things that vary from year to year on top of longer-term trends. 1998, for example, was an extremely hot year for the late 90s, and idiots have been drawing lines from it for years and claiming it disproves a general warming trend.
What this means is that it isn't really possible to predict what will specifically happen next year, but predictions of trends over decades are much more reliable. 2023 is probably going to be warmer than 2013, but it might be an exceptionally cold one for the 2020s and therefore be cooler than 2013. It's much more likely that the 2020s will be warmer than the 2010s, unless the species takes some action.
What that means is that I have no fricking idea how you got (+5, Insightful), except insofar as there are idiots with mod points.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The NYT link does not back up your side of the story. In fact, it explicitly debunks the other two links.
Emphasis mine. Every time someone says "global temperatures are not going up" - literally, every single time - it is because they use 1998 as the starting point. 1998 sets off all kinds of alarm bells, because it's a cherry-picked date.
Worse, it's not even proper statistics. These people are using high-school-level point-slope form; (Y2-Y1) = m(X2-X1). That's the only way you can get "flat". If you do a proper undergraduate-level Least Squared Linear Regression, even using 1998 as your starting point isn't enough to claim "flat". If you don't feel capable of performing undergraduate statistics, you can always use Excel, or any number of free online spreadsheets, to do the Linear Regression for you.
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Every time you see something that discounts global warming impacts EG: Growth of ice in Antarctica increasing. It rapidly gets dismissed as "oh that is just natural variation" but you get the opposite EG: Loss of ice in the Arctic and it is end of the world global warming doom all the way down.
Who said anything about natural variation? One thing you should expect with a global climate change is for wind patterns and currents to change.
This is from 2007.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2007/feb/18/climatechange.theobserversuknewspages
So yes this is someone saying "Global warming can cause increases in ice and decreases in ice." But that's not ridiculous in the slightest. If you have a refrigerator you can safely say "this refrigerator will reduce the temperature inside the fridge while raising the net temperature of the system."
There is a lot of active research in climate science.
So what? There's a lot of active research into how people use Facebook.
But this article doesn't discuss what they all are. It shows that with better modelling of wind-sea interactions in the southern ocean, we can get a much better handle on what is happening to the southern sea ice.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, we aren't perfect at understanding and predicting global climate systems...but we're this close!"
I might be hypersensitive to the climate conspiracy theorists on the internet, but I read "therefore cannot accurately predict what will happen in the future", as the common wrong argument that therefore trying to reduce emissions is not justified, and this is why you try to hit this point despite its irrelevance to the article?
Oops, "wrong" is an assertion, not an argument. You also generalize all emissions as harmful.
And if you think that there are not conspiracies abound regarding AGW/climate change--on both sides of the issue--then you are naive.
Higher uncertainty of the regional effects of global warming is not a good argument for not taking action...
Oops, again: you turned it into a regional issue, while there is also uncertainty about the global climate.
unless those regional effects have a very significant effect on global costs of adjustment.
Not just significant, but "very" significant. Wow. I guess we'd better be completely, absolutely, 110% sure that these "adjustment" costs are negative before we tell people to not make adjustments.
Remind me again, why is change the default choice? Why isn't the burden on those demanding change?
The CBR is running at about $10 in benefit for each $1 in emission reduction costs at the moment. With the developing world bearing most of the disbenefit of inaction, and that coupled with the least ability to finance
That's absolute balderdash. It would drive the cost of energy through the roof, which would most strongly affect the "developed world"--the ones who most depend on energy. The "developing world" would feel the least impact.
And China would keep on smoking up the place no matter what the rest of the world does. (Do you think China cares? Go for a walk in one of their big cities without a mask.)
So the net effect would be to make the "developed world" poorer. Which would reduce the gap. Which is what the whole agenda is really about. Guilt.
Gotta punish those evil fossil fuel burners! How dare they be more prosperous and have a higher standard of living than those poor people in other places! Let's make their lifestyle too expensive to sustain! That'll teach 'em! That'll reduce world poverty! ...oh, wait...
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Mod the man up for speaking the truth.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Your definition of "limited" requires quantifying.
What is not sensible is bankrupting the world economies by forcing a change to much more expensive energy sources while we still have puh-lenty of the "limited" resources left.
Let the "unlimited" resources continue developing until they become cost-effective. Then we can start switching, and then we all truly will benefit.
There's no need for two-steps-backward, one-step-forward.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
No, we do not know for certain that CO2 levels increase temperature significantly.
And we do not know for certain what the net effect of a small temperature increase would even be.
I'll turn your analogies around on you. We know that in drinking water, an arsenic level of 0.01 mg/L poses a risk of 6 in 10000 chance of lifetime skin cancer risk. We do not know for certain how little is "safe"--we do not even necessarily agree on what a "safe" risk level is. The WHO may say one thing, but when you discover arsenic in your backyard, you may not feel the same way.
But it's as if you're advocating spending enormous amounts of money to reduce the arsenic level to 0.0001 mg/L just in case it might make us healthier. Because, hey, we might find out in a few years that 0.01 mg/L results in a cumulative effect much worse than 6:10000!
Never mind that the money it would cost to do that would result in an overall reduction in quality of life and other aspects of health.
And the analogy really falls very short, because if human-generated CO2 were to actually contribute significantly to the global temperature, we still don't know what the net effect of a temperature increase would be. It could be positive! But arsenic is a known poison.
So your analogies are fuzzy at best, and deceptive at worst.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
No, the scientific method is you change the model to fit what happens and you get a better model that more closely predicts what happens next. If your model predicts something and it doesn't happen and then you change your model and predict something and it doesn't happen, and you again change your model and it doesn't happen, etc
Luckily that isn't the case for the climate models, which get the majority of their predictions (especially the big trends) right. It's just that "climate models again shown to be mostly right" is a pretty boring headline and the media instead jump on every small detail that is predicted incorrectly, which makes climate scientists look like hacks in the eyes of the general public that doesn't know any better.
So it's not just me. I'm more and more getting the feeling that slashdot moderation seems to have acquired a mean right-wing "-1 disagree" streak over the last several weeks on a diverse set of issues including but not limited to climate change. Call me paranoid, but it looks like someone has figured out a way to game the system. Which is not all that surprising as such; if you think about it a bit, it more becomes a question of "what took them so long?" Maybe the site admins were not always asleep at the steering wheel?
First of all, we know very well that CO2 increases planetary temperatures. For it not to do so, it would have to act differently in Earth's atmosphere than it does in a laboratory, or in Venus's atmosphere for that matter.
You are missing my point. The original poster was in effect arguing that if we don't know *everything*, we essentially know *nothing*. My point is that much of the limitations of our knowledge have to do with precision. What *precisely* will happen if global temperatures increase by, say, 0.8 degrees? It's unknowable *precisely* until it happens. By "precisely" I mean exactly what will happen in every region of the Earth. It's unreasonable to expect a scientific theory to predict *everything*. But one can predict some things, and one can certainly paint a pretty accurate "net" picture well before you can paint a finely detailed one.
As for some of the effects of warming being positive, I'll go further than you do. It will almost certainly include some positive effects, by which I mean effects that will benefit *some* people. But it will also include some effects that are *negative*. If you spent much time in nature studying it, you'd know that the bulk of effects will be unfortunate. It's not because of warmer temperatures per se; it would be true of rapidly cooling temperatures as well. It's rapid widespread change *in itself* that's a problem for the environment, not necessarily the direction of that change.
Life adapts to change; a very gradual warming would only move habitats around, on average to the north in latitude and to higher elevations. The problem with rapid change is that few species can move as rapidly has humans; in fact the differences in adaptability tip the balance of power toward weeds and pests.
For example there's a large grove of magnificent Canadian Hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) a short walk from my house, many of them well over 30m in height. The milder winters we've been having over the last twenty years isn't a direct problem for these trees, many of which are centuries old and have seen many a mild winter. But a long string of mild winters favors a tiny insect called the wooly adelgid. The adelgid population has exploded after twenty years of unusually warm winters, and the number of them is astonishing. Quite literally every inch of the underside foliage on those giant trees is covered with adelgids.
Twenty years ago you could walk through this grove, look up and see hardly any sky. In mid-summer it was like walking into a refrigerator. Sometimes snow would persist on the ground there until early June. Today the sky is open leading to a weed choked understory where there used to be open old-growth forest floor. At this rate ten or twenty years this grove will be dead, as a secondary result of climate change. It's not the heat that will kill the grove, it's the change in range where it's safe from predation. The predator population can cross the continent in a few years, but it'll take thousands of years for a new grove to become established somewhere else.
Now hemlocks aren't going to go extinct. They'll just become very, very rare, like the American Chestnut. I've never seen an American Chestnut outside of an arboretum, but it was once the most common tree in North America. In its place we have millions of acres of crummy Norway Maples, which will likely replace the great hemlocks of this grove. If current warming trends continue we will see the emergence of larger, more uniform habitats, dominated by weed species.
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Of course, this does violate certain religous precepts, particularly the 6000-year age of the Earth ; but since that requires breaking pretty much all the laws of physics and other sciences, only cavemen freezing in the dark and dieing of measles could possibly believe that shit. It might interfere with your personal freedom (and mine) to make money by ass-fucking the rest of the world. But I'm willing to make the change to making money by saving the world instead. The underlying physics should work, but it'll require careful implementation, and I've got a thick CV in support of that.
(Bloody router dropped out half-way through that. Hope the reply connects to Fatwilbur's mesage.)
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Trying to restrict your analogies to the physics that you learned in the classroom and not what you learned while smoking a waterpipe and watching Star Trek on an unside-down TV would help you give an impression of credibility.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
What is wrong with you people?
We're apparently not quite selfish enough for you?
which is totally what she said
Yes. Wanting jobs and prosperity is totally selfish.
If you're only thinking of the short term (as in, say, the next 50 years), then yes, it is.
which is totally what she said
I think all the warming/no-warming climate-change/no-change argument misses an important point. There may be controversy and uncertainty, but it's got to be to our advantage to act prudently and reduce emissions.
No! You've presupposed that reducing emissions: 1) can reduce or stop or reverse global warming; 2) is possible at all, given that other nations will do what they want (e.g. China, India); 3) would result in an overall benefit to quality of life given the costs involved.
You have placed the burden on those advocating caution and study, rather than placing the burden on those demanding radical, immediate change. Do you really not have a clue what prudence is?
It's a shame this has been reduced to politics instead of objective science.
It's a shame that people like you don't have a clue what objective science is, and that other people fall for your balderdash. Look at this you said:
In other words, do we dare take a chance?
That is exactly like Chicken Little: "The sky is falling! We have to do something now!" It's no different. Shame on you for panicking and demanding that others panic as well.
Now my question is, are you truly so ignorant, or are you a liar and deceiver?
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
First of all, we know very well that CO2 increases planetary temperatures. For it not to do so, it would have to act differently in Earth's atmosphere than it does in a laboratory, or in Venus's atmosphere for that matter.
Nope. Historical data sometimes shows CO2 increasing after the temperature increases. At the very least it means that we don't truly understand the enormously complex mechanisms at work. And therefore we should not panic and make drastic changes based on the idea that CO2 will heat up our planet and ruin it.
You are missing my point. The original poster was in effect arguing that if we don't know *everything*, we essentially know *nothing*. My point is that much of the limitations of our knowledge have to do with precision. What *precisely* will happen if global temperatures increase by, say, 0.8 degrees? It's unknowable *precisely* until it happens. By "precisely" I mean exactly what will happen in every region of the Earth. It's unreasonable to expect a scientific theory to predict *everything*. But one can predict some things, and one can certainly paint a pretty accurate "net" picture well before you can paint a finely detailed one.
More generalization. "Pretty accurate 'net' picture" is simply meaningless, unquantified, unqualified babble. "We can't be precise, but we can be accurate!" I hope most people see through these word games. What I wonder is, do you realize you're playing them, or are you deluding yourself, too?
As for some of the effects of warming being positive, I'll go further than you do. It will almost certainly include some positive effects, by which I mean effects that will benefit *some* people. But it will also include some effects that are *negative*. If you spent much time in nature studying it, you'd know that the bulk of effects will be unfortunate.
Nope, that's just another unsubstantiated assertion. You are presupposing based upon unproven hypotheses, and you seem to be generalizing from your "time in nature" to most of the entire planet's multitude of ecosystems. I have the impression that you're reasoning from emotional attachment to "nature"--those poor, "unfortunate" animals and plants whose habitats will not be exactly the same forever!
It's not because of warmer temperatures per se; it would be true of rapidly cooling temperatures as well. It's rapid widespread change *in itself* that's a problem for the environment, not necessarily the direction of that change.
So what? You're just presupposing, again, that there will be a "rapid widespread change." And you're generalizing again to the entire "environment," as if there were a single one. And you're basically painting yourself into a corner, saying that either way, whether the planet warms or cools, we're in for it, so we have to do something ! More unsubstantiated assertions and presuppositions.
Life adapts to change; a very gradual warming would only move habitats around, on average to the north in latitude and to higher elevations. The problem with rapid change is that few species can move as rapidly has humans; in fact the differences in adaptability tip the balance of power toward weeds and pests.
More presupposing about rapid change. And I strongly disagree about the ability to move rapidly: animals don't suffer from economic problems and they don't have to build houses and infrastructure. Compared to humans, animals just go and do.
And what's wrong with weeds and pests? They are just part of the ecosystems, like anything else. Animals eat them too. Maybe they need to "go first" so the rest can follow. Besides, what even are "weeds" and "pests"? As defined by you? So now you're telling me that CAGW is going to mean more weeds growing in my garden?
For example there's a large grove of magnificent Canadian Hemlocks (Tsuga canad
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Global warming is being blamed for thicker and stronger ice in Antarctica, now I really have heard everything.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Sure, people like you protesting, then trotting off to pick up a benefit cheque to feed and house yourself that people like me have paid taxes on earned income to provide, muttering incoherently to yourself about how utterly selfish market economics is.
A quite hilariously stupid world view you have.
Modeling an open system with innumerable variables and then claiming it has any accuracy is the problem. Computer models are crude tools but useful occasionally. In this example it seemed to lead to an answer about Antarctic ice. There are lies, damned lies, statistics, computer models, and opinion surveys of scientists - B. Disraeli responding to a time traveling interviewer
Chill out (ha...ha...). The alarmists are just as active in downmodding their opponents as flamebait, too.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Mod the parent up!
Oh, he's "being a jerk and hurtful" by disagreeing with you. This is what the alarmists fall back on. "You big meanie! You just hate trees!"
Hey AC, if we bankrupt the world economies, a lot more children will suffer--and adults too. (Why is it more acceptable for adults to suffer than children? The majority of human life is lived as an adult. And one could argue that children are more adaptable, and therefore in some circumstances suffer less psychologically than adults.)
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
1. Nice strawman. He talked specifically about climate models, not something simple like Newtonian physics.
2. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
What exactly is a "person like me"? I have a job and a house, and pay taxes on them.
That doesn't mean that I think we should squander all of our resources for short term growth.
which is totally what she said
"long term growth" is simply "short term growth" integrated over time. What you're basically saying is, "there shouldn't be any growth" in the absence of an economically viable alternative.
"long term growth" is simply "short term growth" integrated over time
Have you ever thought about becoming CEO at a banking company? You'd make a good one.
which is totally what she said
Or, the tyranny of the planners, Soviet Union style. That worked out well, didn't it.
Yes, I did.
Wiki is a reliable enough source, as encyclopedias go.
But if you think that there are some scientific organizations of National or International standing that do reject the findings of human-induced effects on climate change, feel free to post them here.
Unfortunately that in itself will undermine any claims of inaccuracy in wiki, as I will update the wiki page if you do.
"Alarmist?"
WTF is that?
Climate conspiracy theorist terminology for someone who thinks science and the scientific process is probably making okay use of observations and data?
"Higher uncertainty of the regional effects of global warming is not a good argument for not taking action...blah blah blah"
Probably the clearest admission that Climate Science isn't about science, but about the redistribution of wealth.
The world is warming.
At a certain pace it becomes economic to reduce the warming rather than pay for damages. (Leaving aside that a central estimate of the CBR of reducing emissions is about $10 for the $1, and so action is economic even for very low climate sensitivities)
If you're unsure of the pace, that doesn't mean that the cost is going to be lower. It means that it could be lower, or it could be higher.
Therefore higher uncertainty does not mean that we should not act. Only certainty could show that.
These are the two graphs that I would have responded with.
Look closer. It does. And sorry, I don't debate anyone who claims to be Napoleon.
[FUCK BETA]
The amount of polar ice on the time scales you are talking about are a weather phenomenon. Many global warming advocates are certainly guilty of catastrophism and it does make their case harder to swallow, but you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.