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Shrinking Waves May Save Antarctic Sea Ice
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "It's a nagging thorn in the side of climatologists: Even though the world is warming, the average area of the sea ice around Antarctica is increasing. Climate models haven't explained this seeming contradiction to anyone's satisfaction—and climate change deniers tout that failure early and often. But a new paper suggests a possible explanation: Variability in the heights of ocean waves pounding into the sea ice may help control its advance and retreat."
Both sides of a debate ignore facts that don't match their veiw of the world. Shocker.
We should burn the Climate Deniers. If we burn enough of them, it'll create a haze that will block out the Sun, and send the Earth into a multi-years long winter. Just like a meteor strike or super-volcanic eruption. If you disagree, you're obviously a Climate Denier. Into the furnace you go.
Just to drive my point home:
in this article titled 'Shrinking Waves May Save Antarctic Sea Ice' we get
" You may like to read:
Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans As Antarctic Ice Melts "
what is it?! How many fingers am I supposed to be seeing here??
This is just another one of the many, many balancing mechanisms in nature. Another obvious one is that more heat causes more evaporation, which causes more clouds, which causes less heat. Mother nature I has thousands of such negative feedback cycles that tend to buffer against changes.
... and poorly recorded ones at that.
Look... if its relevant then its relevant... its just inconvenient to have yet more variables complicating the calculations.
Do we have a proxy value for these waves yet? Some correlating calculation like the orbits of the planets/moon/oscillation of the earth somehow boiling down to wave heights in location X? Because that would be useful. Short of that, we're back got square one with our historic calculations and we need to put some buoys out around Antarctica to build up a data set.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
let's say the ice is thinning in shedding a lot of frigid water... that stuff may make new ice at the edges which makes it look bigger in terms of area, but volume has been lost. It's the loss of volume that translates into rising sea levels.
Actually I've never seen a single model assume that there's a positive feedback cycle and no negative feedback cycle. All published climate models have assumed that climate is a complicated system that is stable in some conditions (implying negative feedback) and unstable in others. That's the thing about systems, they change depending on the conditions. Interestingly none of them have suggested we are all going to die next week either.
So thanks for confirming for us something that we already know, that armchair scientists aren't worth the time of day and don't really understand shit.
On any other topic this name calling is derided as an ad hominen attack.
We're in for a new ice age...
"Climate models haven't explained this seeming contradiction to anyone's satisfaction". /s
But apparently any climate model that shows warming/change is completely reliable and the science is settled.
There's no such beneficent entity as Mother Nature, keeping everything just so. Species go extinct often, because their environment changes.
Wooah there. Lets not forget that the ice mass is decreasing as it thins, even as the expanse increases. The glaciers and Ice-sheets are becoming unstuck from the land as it thins and this allows more warm sea water under the glaciers which increases the thinning and pushes the glaciers upwards (Ice floats remember) causing the seawater to ingress further under the ice sheet. This positive feedback mechanism is now in operation and will lead to irreversible collapse of the glaciers within 200 years. On a geological timescale this is very fast- human timescales are not an appropriate yardstick to benchmark this stuff.
Climate systems are dominated by negative feedback, or else the Earth would long since have turning into an ice ball or another Venus
Thats a complete non-sequitur The earth could have positive feedback systems that make climate unstable and oscillate between extremes. We have good evidence that it has oscillated in the past on a regular basis (the climate change is natural crowd are saying this all the time).
Also clouds- Clouds don't just cool the planet they also warm it. They have a cooling effect during the day when they reflect sunlight and a warming effect at night when they trap radiation. It's complicated- that is no excuse to pick and choose the few effects that back up the hypothesis you are clearly desperate to believe and ignore the rest.
Negative feedback means that changes will be slow, gradual and contained within certain boundaries. Boring but true...
Conclusion not supported by more than hope, prayer and wishful thinking.
Are you paid to post this crap?
Obviously this proves that the climate change deniers must be correct!
Wasn't the increase in ice-area attributed to the melt from inland not being salty, and thus having a higher freezing-point?
What do you say to that then. Idiot!
The moon! Of course!
This is why climate change deniers are so strong. Of course we are facing climate change, but this scientific community does not help when "may" is cited as fact. You see a war of two industries, in one hand, companies and government destroying the planet, on the hand, university students, professors and politicians trying to profit from climate change.
Every day a new paper is put out on climate change. Speculation after speculation, that would never get you a serious job for a real employers.
What is a "climate change denier"? Who is denying that the climate is changing?
Oh, you mean "catastrophic man-made global warming deniers". Why didn't you say so?
www.climatedepot.com
...is that dire predictions aren't as bad as they wish they would be? Really? Or is the "thorn in side" that the panic over climate change is overblown and now it's coming to bear? Should we be more worried that the climate is changing or that people who are so damn sure that they can predict the effects really can't?
This. And the planet isn't even remotely as hot as it USED to be either. (not even talking the early days of lava pools and chaotic surface, I mean even only a good billion years back)
Are the scales going to break one day? Sure they will, but it ain't now.
They'll maybe break a good billion years from now. Possibly.
But for now, Earth is pretty damn stable. We ain't becoming Mars just yet.
And just to throw this out here, humans actually HELPED make the climate MORE stable on average.
And that was through the killing of billions of animals over thousands of years, the stable controlled burning of forests to prevent total meltdown in hot times, and create huge hot spots around the world (cities) that made the weather more variable.
Our whole carbon increase is still less than all of that combined.
Undo human history and we'd likely be in a chaotic society of wildfires out of control, dangerous levels of radiation breaking through the heavy cloud layers when they can, if not an ice age outright. Another ice age is coming sooner or later, we just don't know the exact time.
We know that ice ages come about when the weather gets out of control, but we still have some distance left before we hit the chaotic bouncing between hot and colds before the eventual collapse of ocean streams that carry most of the heat through convection to the north and south.
Right now this is baby steps at best between summer and winters chaos. It is going to get MUCH more worse over the coming decades.
Coastal areas are going to get smashed so hard. Even mines when it is relatively safe behind a huge chunk of land that mostly protects it from the Atlantic.
1. Sea ice is thin and temporary and has no effect on sea level. It grows and shrinks according to SHORT TERM weather.
2. The collapsing glacier is massive and land-based so its melting will raise sea level. It is melting because of LONG TERM climate change.
3. The collapse of the ONCE-PERMANENT glacier is cooling the surrounding water, causing a TEMPORARY increase in surface ice.
If you look at the diagram that they used to describe the collapse of the glaciers, you will see why. http://gph.is/1mWdkPK Warm water at the ocean floor melts the permanent glacier. As the water cools, it rises to the surface, causing it to lower the temperature of the surface water, increasing the amount of surface ice.
In effect, the PERMANENT, LAND-BASED glacier is quickly becoming TEMPORARY, SEA-BASED ice. Even if this sea-based ice remains or even expands, it will have already raised sea-levels.
There is no such balancing effect. Clouds can reduce or can increase heating, both, depending on local climate and time-of-day.
Furthermore, water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas. You don't want more of it!
"Because water vapor is a greenhouse gas, this results in further warming and so is a 'positive feedback' that amplifies the original warming."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"On balance, scientists arenâ(TM)t entirely sure what effect clouds will have on global warming. Most climate models predict that clouds will amplify global warming slightly."
http://www.earthobservatory.na...
"Therefore, the overall net effect of contrails is positive, i.e. a warming effect. However, the effect varies daily and annually"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
why can not anyone admit that they clearly do not completely understand or know what is going on or what is going to happen. the planet earth like it or not, good or bad is in a state of changing, the whole universe is changing. everything we do or do not do affects everything else. our efforts might be more valuable if applying them on how to survive these changes rather than there cause.. by the time someone figures out what is going on and tries to convince everyone else it will probably be to late.
Your all ants. This giant rock moving through space at great speed does not care in the least that you exist. It produces CO2 all by itself and does not even notice the scurrying ant.
There are FOUR LIGHTS!!!!!
I blame the Obsidian Order.
As any review of the last million years of temperature history would show anyone, we've had (relatively) sharp temperature surges followed by even sharper declines.
It's happened pretty much like clockwork, every 120,000 years or so.
It's almost like there's a feedback mechanism.
-Styopa
This is just another one of the many, many balancing mechanisms in nature.
No, it's not. Ice albedo feedback is strongly positive. In fact the west Antarctic ice sheet is over the tipping point and will collapse
.
Another obvious one is that more heat causes more evaporation, which causes more clouds, which causes less heat.
No it doesn't.
The largest feedback from evaporation is water vapour feedback which is very strongly positive.
But observations show that cloud-feedback is small or positive.
As someone who's seen sea-ice breakups in Antarctica, they don't happen when the temperature warms up, but when there's a storm in certain directions, usually from the north, leading to waves breaking and carrying away the ice quickly. Emperor penguin chicks pay a heavy tribute to those every few years.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
This. And the planet isn't even remotely as hot as it USED to be either. (not even talking the early days of lava pools and chaotic surface, I mean even only a good billion years back)
That doesn't help us toady. Nor any other species alive.
Are the scales going to break one day? Sure they will, but it ain't now.
This is wrong. The scales have broken. Western Antarctic ice sheet collapse has already begun, scientists warn.
But for now, Earth is pretty damn stable
This is also wrong. It is unstable.
We ain't becoming Mars just yet.
We are, however becoming an earth with continuous sea level rise for the foreseeable future, and acidifying oceans.
And just to throw this out here, humans actually HELPED make the climate MORE stable on average.
WTF? According to science the big greenhouse effect you see since the industrial revolution is caused by greenhouse emissions. Particularly CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels.
the stable controlled burning of forests to prevent total meltdown in hot times
Deforestation doesn't make it cooler if you burn the wood. It releases the greenhouse gas CO2.
Another ice age is coming sooner or later, we just don't know the exact time.
We were quite happily in an Ice Age, which means that there are significant ice sheets in both hemispheres. We may well be coming out of the ice age, and that means 15-80 metres of sea level rise over time. (Depending on whether the East Antarctic Ice sheet goes too or not.)
We know that ice ages come about when the weather gets out of control, but we still have some distance left before we hit the chaotic bouncing between hot and colds before the eventual collapse of ocean streams that carry most of the heat through convection to the north and south.
WTF?
Right now this is baby steps at best between summer and winters chaos. It is going to get MUCH more worse over the coming decades.
There are going to be more weather extremes. But the mean difference between summer and winter is reducing.
Coastal areas are going to get smashed so hard.
Yes. Sea level rise+warmer ocean surface, does smash coastal areas.
Even mines when it is relatively safe behind a huge chunk of land that mostly protects it from the Atlantic.
Huh?
It's the volume. If the area is larger but the volume is less, climate-wise, that's bad. Who the hell writes this shit?
"Even though the world is warming"
No it isn't. See, that's exactly as much proof as you have.
Within the past 3 months we've heard both.
Conclusion: it's all _theory_ on both sides of the climate debate. There are enough examples and counter-examples on both sides that leads to the conclusion that no one knows for sure, and both sides have a vested monetary interest in being seen as 'right'.
Action Required: stay the course, keep doing what we're doing, and adapt when we _have_ to.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
"this", as a meme, is dead.
Nobody make a splash..
Yay! Fire up the Hummer! It's my constitutional right.
--
roman_mir
We're a species too.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Negative feedback cycles can still end up stabilizing at a different set-point, if the negative feedback is in the rate of change rather than the absolute value.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
Within the past 3 months we've heard both.
What you have heard within the past three months is that the extent of the ice is increasing, and that the mass of the ice is decreasing. Both of these things can be true at once.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The summary misses an important point, while at the same time mentioning it: " Climate models haven't explained this seeming contradiction to anyone's satisfaction" The entire idea of AGW is based on climate models, yet these models have repeatedly failed to actually explain certain, specific observed phenomena. This leads people to question basing policy that will cost a large amount of money and freedom on those models. When you want to give bureaucrats authority to determine what I can and cannot do based on models which have with significant frequency failed to predict real-world phenomena, I am going to question the wisdom of such actions.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Exactly, and any climate changes caused by us are natural climate changes because they were caused by a naturally evolved species!
You are no an ant
You are a sloth
We're a species too.
And some scientists believe that we have been drawn much closer to extinction that one might think. Our close relatives the Neanderthal and Denisovan were not so lucky.
> On balance, scientists aren't entirely sure what effect clouds will have on global warming. Most climate models predict that clouds will amplify global warming slightly.
That sentence lumps professional alarmists in with actual scientists. Never been outside on a cloudy day? Those "scientists" (alarmists) who say clouds make it hot are the same ones who you said San Francisco would be underwater by the year 2010. Don't let their silly pseudo-science make you doubt the obvious facts of your experience. You know that when it's cloudy, it's cooler.
What you may not know not know is that islands near San Francisco have recently re-appeared after having been underwater for the last 60 years, the exact opposite of what the alarmists claimed. There is some important science around climate change. Earth HAS warmed a bit more in the last 100 years than the other planets have. There's also a metric ton of snake oil being sold by alarmists whose pseudoscience is nothing more than patter for their act. Confusing one with the other ends up getting you confused and making you look silly. You end up believing things like "it gets hot when it's cloudy", which is of course ridiculous.
There is no contradiction here. The statement in the headline is wrong. In fact, we just recently had this discussion here on Slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Even though the world is warming, the average area of the sea ice around Antarctica is increasing.
True. But the volume is decreasing.
Climate models haven't explained this seeming contradiction
*shrug* I can't say who is or is not satisfied. But my understanding is that the melting ice is freshwater, and that during cold periods a small amount of surface freshwater can freeze again.
This is to be expected: imagine an ice cube sitting on your countertop. As the ice melts, a small amount of freeze will stick to the countertop. From above, an orthogonal view might actually show the area of ice is increasing. There is still a frozen square, but there is also a small amount of ice spread onto the countertop. But of course, we would not say there is *more* ice because the ice cube is now much shorter.
Here is an even better summary of factors that influence arctic sea ice: http://www.skepticalscience.co...:
Here are some of the leading hypotheses currently being explored through a combination of satellite remote sensing, fieldwork in Antarctica and numerical model simulations – to help explain the increasing trend in overall Antarctic sea ice coverage:
Increased westerly winds around the Southern Ocean, linked to changes in the large-scale atmospheric circulation related to ozone depletion, will see greater northward movement of sea ice, and hence extent, of Antarctic sea ice.
Increased precipitation, in the form of either rain or snow, will increase the density stratification between the upper and middle layers of the Southern Ocean. This might reduce the oceanic heat transfer from relatively warm waters at below the surface layer, and therefore enhancing conditions at the surface for sea ice.
Similarly, a freshening of the surface layers from this precipitation would also increase the local freezing point of sea ice formation.
Another potential source of cooling and freshening in the upper ocean around Antarctica is increased melting of Antarctic continental ice, through ocean/ice shelf interaction and iceberg decay.
The observed changes in sea ice extent could be influenced by a combination of all these factors and still fall within the bounds of natural variability.
The take home messages is that while the increase in total Antarctic sea ice area is relatively minor compared to the Arctic, it masks the fact that some regions are in strong decline. Given the complex interactions of winds and currents driving patterns of sea ice variability and change in the Southern Ocean climate system, this is not unexpected.
But it is still fascinating to study.
What makes me nuts about the climate changers is that they seem to believe that humans have more impact than the sun and other natural events and then have built a de facto religion around it. It's another example of scientific dogma where anyone who dares to challenge them becomes something 'other' and put on worldwide notice that they should be shunned. The other thing that makes me nuts is that they use the word 'denier;' it's offensive since the subtle equation is the Holocaust and, as a result, it discourages critical thinking and intellectual honesty for everyone. That's how cults operate, not how scientists should be pursuing science.
^^ That! ^^
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Until the models are refined to the point that they make useful (and correct) predictions, how can we rely upon them to produce environmental policies with serious economic impacts?
Have gnu, will travel.
Another day, and another excuse from the anthropological global warming cult. They can be quite creative!
There's no such beneficent entity as Mother Nature, keeping everything just so.
No, but there is a condition of relative homeostasis which has persisted longer than humanity, which our actions have managed to perturb in a way which may not be recoverable on a human timescale. By all means, ramble on about the particulars of nonsense while reality sneaks up on you and prepares to bite you in the ass.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"We expected the Antarctic sea ice to be gone by now, but what we observe is that it has not only grown but is trapping ships in austral midsummer, so to save the Church of Warminetics' bacon we have to come up with a new handwave"
So climatologists are pissed that the ice is not melting? In a sane world they would be happy to be wrong. But at least someone finally writes an article saying the ice is not shrinking finally, something we knew for years.
If you're really interested in science, why haven't you taken the last several years of cooling into account? None of the "scientific" models predicting disaster match what actually happened. A real scientist would look at the data and go back to the drawing board. Of course, the man-made global warming myth isn't really about science at all, is it?
Nice analysis.
The IPCC, normally the bastion of global warming alarmism, disagrees with the simplistic headline that global warming will melt the antarctic ice and cause sea level rise.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/28/ipcc-findings-dispute-abc-cbs-nbc-and-bbc-alarmist-and-flawed-antarctica-sea-level-rise-claims/
Amazingly the UN IPCC AR5 report says this:
“Taking all these considerations together, we have medium confidence in model projections of a future Antarctic SMB increase, implying a negative contribution to GMSL rise (see also Sections 13.4.4.1, 13.5.3 and 14.8.15).”
That’s right – the IPCC says that its Surface Mass Balance (SBM) models for Antarctica show that its projected future climate behavior causes sea level to decline not increase!
Furthermore it explains this finding by saying:
“Projections of Antarctic SMB changes over the 21st century thus indicate a negative contribution to sea level because of the projected widespread increase in snowfall associated with warming air temperatures (Krinner et al., 2007; Uotila et al., 2007; Bracegirdle et al., 2008).” (13.4.4.1)
The IPCC AR5 report acknowledges that Antarctica is losing ice from some of its glaciers in West Antarctica and the Antarctica peninsula with the following findings:
“The Antarctic ice sheet has been losing ice during the last two decades (high confidence). There is very high confidence that these losses are mainly from the northern Antarctic Peninsula and the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica, and high confidence that they result from the acceleration of outlet glaciers. {4.4.2, 4.4.3, Figures 4.14, 4.16, 4.17}”
“There is very high confidence that these losses are mainly from the northern Antarctic Peninsula and the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica. {4.4}”
“The Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica is grounded significantly below sea level and is the region of Antarctica changing most rapidly at present. Pine Island Glacier has sped up 73% since 1974 (Rignot, 2008) and has thinned throughout 1995–2008 at increasing rates (Wingham et al., 2009) due to grounding line retreat. There is medium confidence that retreat was caused by the intrusion of warm ocean water into the sub-ice shelf cavity (Jenkins et al., 2010; Jacobs et al., 2011; Steig et al., 2012).” (4.4.5)
“There is low confidence that the rate of Antarctic ice loss has increased over the last two decades (Chen et al., 2009; Velicogna, 2009; Rignot et al., 2011c; Shepherd et al., 2012); (4.4.2.3)”
“As with Antarctic sea ice, changes in Antarctic ice sheets have complex causes (Section 4.4.3). The observational record of Antarctic mass loss is short and the internal variability of the ice sheet is poorly understood. Due to a low level of scientific understanding there is low confidence in attributing the causes of the observed loss of mass from the Antarctic ice sheet since 1993. Possible future instabilities in the west Antarctic ice sheet cannot be ruled out, but projection of future climate changes over West Antarctica remains subject to considerable uncertainty (Steig and Orsi, 2013).” (10.5.2.1)
“Due to a low level of scientific understanding there is low confidence in attributing the causes of the observed loss of mass from the Antarctic ice sheet over the past two decades. {4.3, 10.5}”
Most deniers dispute CATASTROPHIC global warming, of the runaway type as espoused by Gore, Hansen, Mann, et al. Most deniers make simple claims about the fundamental claims made by global warming cheerleaders, such as CO2 sensitivity (Arrenhius got it right, the second time), the existence of negative feed backs (really, all feedbacks are positive?), the existence of past warming without a human influence, the existence of mega-cycles (also called ice ages), the lack of any warming for the last X number of years, the perversion of peer review, the lack of error bars, the splicing together of differing data sets, the removal of data that doesn't support the cause, that adjustments are made yearly to the temperature record including adjusting past years multiple times, and on and on and on.
If the world had warmed as predicted by Gore, Hansen and Mann, then I would understand calling your opponents 'deniers'. I don't mind or care about the 'creationist' label, because that is accurate. Deniers aren't claiming God did it. They claim your science is weak and flawed. They claim your models don't match reality. They claim your solutions won't solve the problem.
And your answer is 'neener, neener'.
Yep, thats what they were saying on Venus and Mars just a billion years ago.
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
Contradictions, we don't need any stinking contradictions, this is global warming, cut and dry. (pun intended)
um, that's because we're very good at murdering our close relatives.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
+4 insightful for the burning of a strawman. Welcome to the new slashdot, how low can it go?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
I don't dispute man made climate change is possibly happening.
However, "Climate Change" has happened many times in the past in relatively recent history (e.g. Maunder Minimum). Climate is not, and never will be "stable". It is however, a largely self balancing system. Yes, one day, New York may be underwater, but I'm not sure that's entirely without its own set of merits, as thousands of greasy pizza joints and disreputable pawn brokers will be replaced with smiling Greenlandic cattle.
There is a huge amount of money behind the climate change agenda. That's my issue. We haven't really made any progress as a society in the last 20 years, but folks like Al Gore have gone from millionaires to billionaires on something that is probably too complex for us to understand or model fully with the best tools at our disposal. Climate change is more a religion than a science at this point, complete with established dogma, undeniable truths, a priesthood, heretics, etc. Sadly, the argument that God sent hurricane Katrina to punish Americans for debauchery is established by almost as many correlations as the idea it was due to man-made climate change.
I firmly believe that pollution and environmental destruction is a much larger issue for us and that needs to be addressed. Chemicals are building up in the ecosystem that are damaging our health and the health of the next generation, huge swaths of land are unsafe to live in (oil sands, chernobyl, fukushima, to name a few), rivers are running red with chemicals in China, seafood is possibly unsafe to eat due to Mercury buildup. As well, natural ecosystems that absorb and break down harmful pollutants are being paved over and turned into "box stores". Even building a wind farm means destroying the local environment, building roads, running power lines and clearing the land.
We need to start pushing an anti-pollution, anti-environmental destruction agenda. It will have more direct positive benefit for all of us.
Use of the term "denier" with it's association to "holocaust denier" tells you just how political this debate has become. Politicized science is very, very dangerous. Here is a link to a short excerpt from a book by the philosopher Karl Popper, a man all too aware of how dangerous science in the service of governments can be. He set for himself the question of "What is a scientific theory?" I wish everyone would read the first four pages of this excerpt. It would tone down the rhetoric of the global warming debate and send the creationists back to their pews. http://keck.ucsf.edu/~craig/Ka...
Try not to draw conclusions before you work on your reading comprehension.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Sure, except that's pretty much precisely the opposite of how things actually are: those who offer up data supporting anthropogenic climate change are routinely shouted-down in both the scientific and political arenas, as the gobs and gobs of money thrown at such noise-makers by the very entities whose pollution is the problem goes to work squelching anything that diverges from a narrative that leads to continued profits for the stockholders. People like you are keen to pretend that there's some overbearing conspiracy to silence the climate deniers, ignoring completely the actual, verifiable flow of funds from corporate entities to PR groups with exactly the reverse as their goals. Your "both sides are bad" backpedaling toward the end is transparent for exactly what it is, so just go back to the bald-faced lies, you shill.
I'll just pause here.
I entirely agree. After I posted I thought something along the lines of "just another species" was closer to what I meant.
Surprised nobody's been along to say that we're different because we were created in His image, or somesuch.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I've never met a person who denies climate change. I think most people learn in grade school that Earth's climate has changed since the beginning when it was a molten, soupy mess. The inaccurate "climate change deniers" label helps the AGW "industry" (another cheap label, but untrue?) keep ongoing debate to a low, inconsequential level.
When it comes to climate science I am an ignorant layman so my default position on AGW would be agnostic. I already know climate change is a feature of the planet, so I'm bored to tears reading articles about pro-AGW zealots proposing fines, imprisonment, death, concentration camps, etc for "deniers" and downright put-off by quotes from hypocrite Al Gore or the dubious Michael Mann.
Then there's the "it's already decided, so don't even ask" posture that useless zealots adopt. It is NOT decided because you are assuming the wrong debate - climate change predates man and is not in question. What amount of current climate change is anthropogenic and how do you arrive at such numbers? What are effective responses to this, if it is worthy of response, and why do you think it will work? What are the costs - are any economies going to come crashing down? Will the price of corn become such that 3rd world children go hungry while thier Western counterparts enjoy a smug ride in ethanol powered SUVs? What impact have AGW measures had so far, if at all measurable? Answers to these questions may be available, but the public won't know because their bandwidth is overwhelmed by the school-yard nonsense of name-calling, lawsuits, and Jessica Alba rockin' a bikini for the cause.
Kyoto turned out to be a blunt political instrument that hardly anyone intended to adopt anyway. Other suggestions have a passing similarity to wealth redistribution schemes. AGW "solutions" should be reviewed for such features. AGW deserves rigorous criticism if only due to the tremendous amount of resources already comandeered to study and address it, and the social engineering measures proponents appear to be licking their chops over. Get rid of school-yard posturing and name-calling, Michael Mann, and regarding people who would challenge you as imbeciles. Then maybe your efforts will get more traction.
"(relatively) sharp" meaning approximately 10,000 years for the transition. The current temperature transition is more on the order of a few hundred years. It's not the change that is the problem so much as the rate of change.
They continue to behave like a combination of Spanish Inquisitors (denouncing and persecuting anybody who rejects "the faith") and the worst of the creationists (working backwords from problems pointed out by their critics to arrive at SOME sciency-sounding explanation that fits their pre-concieved notions). This was NOT a case of non-AGW scientists studying the seas, discovering some impact upon arctic ice, postulating a measurable and testable effect, confirming it, etc - this was supporters of "the faith" saying (in effect) "We have a problem our critics are using against us... what can we come up with to explain this?" Sadly, in situations like this, nearly anything plausible will do.
OK, I'll buy it... we have a plausible plug for the hole...problem solved: AGW is now true.... and I also buy Noah's ark... and people with pet dinosaurs... while I'm at it, I'll re-consider my take on the Roswell crash... I like being consistent.
It really is not a problem when you realise there has been no global warming for 17 years.
Same AC here. I am NOT defending the climate deniers or corporate entities that are saying everything is OK. Climate change is happening. Your attempt to falsely bunch me in with that group is a perfect example of the tactics that zealots use. Dare to point out occasional pieces of evidence that say things aren't *as bad* as some have predicted and you are instantly a denier. So when the occasional scientist finds some effect or data that suggests current models should be adjusted downward he or she will be reluctant to share the findings.
As for the corporate efforts you rant about. They are debunked. Your argument rests on a red herring.
Was that simple enough to get past your religious/political blinders?
Actually, it is not ridiculous. You, too, have experienced the double effect of clouds: they block sunlight, but they also hold heat in.
You have already provided a great example of clouds blocking the sunlight. You might also have noticed that at night, the ground stays much warmer than it does on a crystal clear night. All the heat that builds up during the day (even if it was a cloudy day) will stay trapped by the insulating power of the cloud layer.
A cloudless day will be hotter during the day but cool off faster and get colder at night.
A cloudy day will not get as hot during the day but will stay warmer at night.
Because clouds cause both light-blocking and insulating effects, it is not clear what more clouds will do.
You might be warmer putting on a windbreaker even though it blocks the sun. You might be cooler taking off that jacket even though it lets the sun hit your skin. Depends.
By putting pen to paper, you have come up with an alternative hypothesis to CO2 warming of the earth. If, indeed, it is an increase of water vapor that has caused the last hundred years of warming, it free up a trillion tons of oil, coal and gas reserves that might not be tapped.
I would suggest that you perform some tests or gather some data to support that hypothesis. If you could prove it, it would be a very worthwhile investment.
Until then, most scientist will treat your theory as a hypothetical and continue to rely upon the C02 theory that seems to have the weight of data on its side.
Call the other side "deniers" to associate them with holocaust deniers. Surely, that will trigger some useful dialog without triggering a defensive posture.
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We know almost nothing about planets outside of our solar system, of course. We do know that the planets in the solar system have gotten warmer recently. We also know that earth has warmed slightly more than other nearby planets. We know that there are no humans on mars, so the warming throughout the solar system is not caused by humans. On the other hand, earth has warmed slightly MORE than neighboring planets have. That could be because a) human-caused greenhouse effect, b) earth's atmosphere is more affected by the increased output of the sun, c) some of each or d) some other cause.
What? How would increasing humidity free up hydrocarbons? You think people are stopping drilling because they are afraid of AGW?
I am in no position to perform a detailed study, and would simply be blacklisted for trying. I'd never be able to get a government grant again. No thanks. Leave the politics to the many parasites.
If your hypothesis is as good as you think then why hasn't some qualified contrarian climate scientist like Richard Lindzen or Roy Spencer taken it on? If it was as obvious as you think it is someone would have published on it by now.
The IPCC, normally the bastion of global warming alarmism
Bullshit. The IPCC reports are a synthesis of the existing science. If you are alarmed by the findings of the IPCC reports then you are alarmed by the science.
I notice you are being pretty selective on what you quote (Watts is probably the worst place to go for science reporting). For instance, you quote "There is low confidence that the rate of Antarctic ice loss has increased over the last two decades" (BTW, this means that evidence is sparse but indicates that the rate of mass loss has in fact increased over the last two decades.), but you did not quote the next line "however, GRACE data gives medium confidence of increasing loss over the last decade."
So yes, we have observed that it is currently losing mass. All evidence indicates that the rate of mass loss has been accelerating over the last decade or more. Our confidence in this finding is increasing as newer instrumentation is developed and deployed.
You should also understand that SMB can increase (reducing sea level rise), but if outflow also increases then you will still end up losing mass and increasing sea level overall. This is exactly what they find: "Overall, increased snowfall seems set to only partially offset sea level rise caused by increased outflow," Again, Watts doesn't seem to understand that SMB is not total mass balance and somehow glossed over everything else.
They also presciently warn that tipping points could be hit (and that have since been observed): "outflow from an ice sheet resting on bedrock below sea level increases if ice at the grounding line is thicker and, therefore, faster flowing. On bedrock that slopes downward towards the ice-sheet interior, this creates a vicious cycle of increased outflow, causing ice at the grounding line to thin and go afloat. The grounding line then retreats down slope into thicker ice that, in turn, drives further increases in outflow. This feedback could potentially result in the rapid loss of parts of the ice sheet, as grounding lines retreat along troughs and basins that deepen towards the ice sheet’s interior. Future climate forcing could trigger such an unstable collapse, which may then continue independently of climate.
Here is the full report on the cryosphere: http://www.climatechange2013.o...
It's actually EASIER to get an average for Venus than it is for earth - an average is just about all we can get from here, measuring the whole planet at once.
Also, the astronomers tend not to do things like take their measurements at the an active volcano and extrapolate that as representative of the whole planet. That's the kind of crap we get from the professional scaremongers on earth. THAT'S why there is "some doubt" about earth - people paid by political organizations come out with the stupidest "studies", then from there develop "scientific models" designed to be scary, but which don't pass the sniff test.
WE are not going extinct. WE is a dangerous word. One day YOU will die; one day I will die too. After that point, it matters not that the rest of the human race would die with or without progeny.
I beg your pardon, but we were NOT saying that on either Venus or Mars a billion years ago. It was 754, 314, 159 years ago when we were saying that. Please keep your facts in line.
Balancing shmalancing. It gets hotter (on a planet whose surface is mostly ocean), the atmosphere gets more humid, more ice collects on the surface of whatever remaining pieces are below freezing. The same reason your freezer frosts up in July and August, not in December; that doesn't mean your kitchen has a balancing mechanism to keep it from getting warm in the summer.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
This is just another one of the many, many balancing mechanisms in nature. Another obvious one is that more heat causes more evaporation, which causes more clouds, which causes less heat. Mother nature I has thousands of such negative feedback cycles that tend to buffer against changes.
That's Lindzen's "iris hypothesis", basically (in case you didn't know). Unfortunately, there isn't any evidence for it, http://www.sciencemag.org/cont... http://rain.atmos.colostate.ed... http://journals.ametsoc.org/do... http://journals.ametsoc.org/do... ftp://eos.atmos.washington.edu... http://journals.ametsoc.org/do... http://journals.ametsoc.org/do...
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
> that doesn't mean your kitchen has a balancing mechanism to keep it from getting warm in the summer.
My freezer sure does have a mechanism to keep the temperature stable , regardless of outdoor temperatures. Do you have a freezer made in 1872? It might be time to upgrade.
What our panic driven media (and too many so-called scientists) willfully ignore: Climate systems are dominated by negative feedback, or else the Earth would long since have turning into an ice ball or another Venus. The computer models showing catastrophe inevitably include positive feedback cycles, because otherwise there is no catastrophe.
The advance and retreat of Antarctic ice turns out to have negative feedback cycles, tied to waves and weather around the Antarctic. So, in fact, we aren't all going to die next week. Who would have guessed?
The continual attempts to get media attention through panic-inducing science are tiresome. The fact that the MSM plays naively along shows just how poorly the MSM itself understands science, or perhaps that headlines are more important than reliable content. No, the planet isn't going to cook in its own juices, nor are increasing sea levels going to drown us all. Negative feedback means that changes will be slow, gradual and contained within certain boundaries. Boring but true...
So, you have a two part hypothesis: 1) no climate models include negative feedback and 2) the models " inevitably include positive feedback cycles", which are hypothetical. Okay......
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
Clearly, I'm not making myself clear. It's not about what I believe or don't believe.
It's about the depth of conviction of those who believe that massive amounts of money must be spent to avoid a disaster due to global warming, because they are quite convinced it is real, and that the models are good predictors of global climate. Other people's money.
I want to learn of someone who is willing to wager a modest amount of money -- their own money -- on the validity of the climate models upon which they want to base public policy.
is that so hard to understand? -eric_harris_76