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."

Comments

shocked to learn nature is full of balancing mecha

[raymorris]

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.

Great, more variables...

[Karmashock]

... 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.

area is one thing, volume is another

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:area is one thing, volume is another

[jkflying]

Volume loss of sea ice doesn't affect sea levels, since it was displacing sea water to begin with. Volume of land ice on the other hand, even if it migrates to an equal volume of sea ice, will cause rising sea levels.

Armchair scientist

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

"and climate change deniers tout that"

[magarity]

On any other topic this name calling is derided as an ad hominen attack.

Re:"and climate change deniers tout that"

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't reason a man out of a position he wasn't reasoned into.

The "climate change deniers" hold the position they do as an article of faith or wishful thinking. Scientifically the debate was over decades ago. So a collective noun to describe them like "creationists" for the anti-evolution crowd is entirely appropriate.

If this collective noun has negative connotations then that is entirely appropriate for a group of people trying to hold back society from addressing a very serious issue.

Re:"and climate change deniers tout that"

[BasilBrush]

No avenue of anti-science earns respect.
Deniers of the earth being millions of years old.
Deniers of man being a species of ape.
Deniers of evolution.
Deniers of tobacco being a carcinogen.
Deniers of the moon landings.

When you put your politics, religion or paranoia ahead science, you deserve to be marginalised.

Re:"and climate change deniers tout that"

[KeensMustard]

On any other topic this name calling is derided as an ad hominen attack.

I'm not convinced that that is true. For one thing, it pre-supposes there is debate, which would require an exchange of ideas, which requires at least two sides to present axioms they consider to be true with some foundational reasons why we should think that those ideas are true. That is not what is happening here. It is not clear, for a start, that many denialists think of their arguments as factual - merely as a position that they hold because they self identify with a group of people who hold that as a position - a political/tribal 'view' if you like. They expect a debate on this in much the way that two opposing political ideologies might debate for the sake of finding a common ground. So they will repeatedly make the same debunked claims, e.g. Ice mass in the Antarctic is increasing! because even though this statement is debunked by observation they expect to negotiate from some middle ground. Whether the statement is factual or not is irrelevant - what matters is that an opposing view is stated, regardless of how extreme, because after that, we try to compromise on a position that is mutually satisfactory. That is how the world works, right?

Wrong.

Reality is more powerful than ideology. Reality will always win. Doesn't matter if you reject gravity, gravity still acts. You can't negotiate for, say, acceleration due to gravity to be 4.5 m/s/s. You can't negotiate with Global Warming either. It is, and will continue to be.

People who deny it, like people who deny gravity, or a terminal cancer diagnosis after a biopsy, are in denial. Thus the term "denialist" or "denier". It describes a mental condition. It doesn't preclude debate, as an ad hominem would. It's just coincident with tthe fact that there is no debate, just a group of people reporting on observations, and another group of people stating a position absent observation or factual grounding.

Re:"and climate change deniers tout that"

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't reason a man out of a position he wasn't reasoned into.

Blind faith doesn't exist, there is always reasoning no matter how shallow it is. Thinking that someone didn't reason is just another way of dehumanizing him.
Everyone can be reasoned out of a position, you just can't do it by calling him an idiot.
Claiming that someone is following blind faith when your argument is referring to authority is also not a good choice. If I don't know the climatologist refereed to and believe in him then there is just as much blind faith in that argument as there would be if you referred to a priest.
You have to listen to the other persons point of view and argue from that context. It takes a lot of time but I have occasionally done it.
Having a whiteboard available helps tremendously but you also need to understand why the person reasons as he does and where he made an incorrect conclusion.
Also, if you patronize him for just a moment you might just as well give up for the day, you are never going to convince anyone that way.

Personally I think that the environmental movement have taken the wrong approach to global warming.
If you want to shut down coal power plants and make people switch to electric vehicles it would be a lot easier to argue about the health benefits of not having the emissions.
There are plenty of studies about the subject and it is a lot more tangible for people to see the difference between how often you have to clean the windows in a city compared to a rural area and it is not hard to imagine the difference that does on your lungs.

It also doesn't help that a lot of environmentalists are more concerned about fighting the opposition rather than to convince them.

Re:"and climate change deniers tout that"

[KeensMustard]

What many skeptics "deny" is that global warming is likely to be big problem. They agree that global warming exists at some level.

Agreed - they believe several fundamentally contradictory things at once. This is yet more evidence that their position has no basis in fact.

Why should we take someone like you seriously who argues against strawmen?

You are begging the question by assuming that it matters whether you take the facts seriously, either to me or to anyone else.

Re:"and climate change deniers tout that"

[physicsphairy]

By all means, less likely views should be marginalized, but they should be marginalized as a side effect of their having only a marginal chance of being correct, not because you've built up some vicious characterization of their adherents. It's interesting that in the reasons you list for your opposition -- politics, religion, mental illness (?) -- you forgot to include anything about their explanations of the observed phenomena being less satisfactory.

My first problem with this attitude is, who decides when the best response is simply treating the adherents as unworthy neanderthals and making sure that no legitimate scientific criticisms get swept in? Will that be you? I don't trust that this is always going to work out. I do, however, always trust in a dispassioned comparison of evidence, or at least, there's nothing I trust more.

My second problem is that it much more difficult to reason with people when you start your arguments by giving them a bloody nose. At that point they're just in it to retaliate for the bloody nose, assuming they don't stop reading entirely. IMHO you are making it ten times more difficult to actually stamp out these bad thinkings just so you can have the satisfication of wielding a few insults. What does referring to anyone snidely actual accomplish in the scientific discourse?

Re:"and climate change deniers tout that"

[tbannist]

I do, however, always trust in a dispassioned comparison of evidence, or at least, there's nothing I trust more.

Unfortunately, that comparison is rarely disappassionate. In fact, some recent studies have found that the "just the facts" approach to education on controversial topics tends to backfire. Among the general populace, there a high tendency to acknowledge only the facts that support a pre-existing position and the ignore the facts that contradict it.

Frankly, that's why there is an entire cottage industry built around denying something that 97% of the people researching it have concluded is true. However, that 97% may actually be low-balling the consensus, since James Powell says he's reviewed 25,182 scientific articles in peer-reveiwed journals mentioning global warming and climate change since 1991 and only 26 of them reject the anthropogenic cause. That's would be a disagreement rate of about 0.1%.

The people most qualified to evaluate the evidence seem to be in a near universal agreement that is rarely accurately represented by the media.

Re:"and climate change deniers tout that"

[tmosley]

What if you just refuse to see the reasoning that lead them there?

Creationism would be a reasonable position if there were significant evidence of a creator (there isn't). AGW "denial" would be reasonable if there were an argument that the amount of CO2 we have put and are putting into the atmosphere won't cause a feedback loop.

And there is, if you would put pen to paper and make the calculations yourself, assuming you understand a little physical chemistry. CO2 has a very thin IR spectrum chart that integrates to a very low number, meaning it is shit at absorbing heat. Water vapor has a gigantic broad "peak" that swamps most other signals to the point that you can't even tell when other stuff is present with highly sophisticated equipment that only looks at the IR spectrum.

Of note, the other product of combustion is water vapor. Irrigation forces more water vapor into the air. Paving forces more water vapor into the air. Even the cooling towers of nuclear power plants force more water vapor into the air. These things happen on a continuous basis, so the world is on average more humid by perhaps 1% than it was 100 years ago. Which would be more than enough to account for ALL observed warming.

What are the implications for this? It means that most of the wild scenarios dreamed up by the AGW people that lead to mass death and starvation or extinction are unlikely. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years on average, where water vapor falls out in a few days. This tight equilibrium means that we can self correct easily, as economic deterioration due to climate change will decrease the amount of water vapor we push into the air by a mechanism of tearing up unused roads (seen in recently in Detroit), reducing combustion, less irrigation, etc.

But by all means, paint everyone who doesn't blindly agree with the god "Science" (rather than following the scientific method) with the same brush. It's not like your nonsensical belief will change physics in your "favor". One can only hope that those of you who continue to cling to AGW theory are rightfully marginalized, and removed from your priest-like positions in government, as those guys can and do do REAL damage based off of bad theory.

Re: "and climate change deniers tout that"

[tbannist]

Is this Richard Lendzen MIT dude not at all respectable?

Would that be the Richard Lindzen who has been funded by Exxon and OPEC, who actually does accept the basics of anthropogenic global warming, but disagrees with exactly how high the earth's climate sensistivity is (ie the amount of temperature increase you'll see from a doubling of CO2 levels). The man who been a keynote speaker at the Heartland Institute, who writes opinion pieces for the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Stree Journal, and who recently joined the Cato Institute?

Not so much, no.

Re:"and climate change deniers tout that"

[tp1024]

Well, if you had read the paper you cited then you would have written:

He and a bunch of other people frequenting "www.scepticalscience.com" had a look at 11944 ABSTRACTS of arcticles that explicitly deal with the topics "global warming" or "global climate change". NOTHING ELSE. To put it bluntly, even the phrase "global cooling" doesn't pass muster. If the topic was something objective like "climate modelling" without explicitly putting "global warming" or "global climate change" in the topic it didn't pass muster.

The abstracts were evaluated among the 12 people who read them and the allowed to compare notes and re-evaluate their findings, thus building further consensus among the already biased evaluators. In the end, about 8000 of those abstracts evaluated by biased examiners chosen through a biased selection process were evaluated to contain no such statement and were hence excluded. That's 66.4%. Some 32.6% were found to agree with the global warming or global climate change hypothesis necessarily expoused as a topic. Oh the surprise.

You can't find disagreement if you close your eyes. or pretent they don't say anything.

Re:"and climate change deniers tout that"

[Layzej]

We already know how it works with peer reviewed journals. Opposing AGW is a sure way to ensure that your paper is not published. Pretty easy to get those kinds of numbers when you can control who gets published.

So you think there is a conspiracy among all journals to keep out contrary evidence? Really? Don't you think one of them would break from their secret pact and scoop the others?

Show me the peer reviewed article published in 1999 that correctly predicted global average temperature throughout the 2000s. Show me the article published in 2005 that correctly predicted the state of the antarctic sea ice in 2014. You can't because they don't exist.

http://news.slashdot.org/story... - When the 1981 paper was written, temperatures in the northern hemispheres were declining, and global mean temperatures were below their 1940 levels. Despite those facts, the paper's authors confidently predicted a rise in temperature due to increasing CO2 emissions.' The prediction turns out to be remarkably accurate

http://www.theguardian.com/env... - The paper, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Geoscience, explores the performance of a climate forecast based on data up to 1996 by comparing it with the actual temperatures observed since. The results show that scientists accurately predicted the warming experienced in the past decade, relative to the decade to 1996, to within a few hundredths of a degree.

Re:"and climate change deniers tout that"

[Layzej]

The site you have linked shows that atmospheric moisture holding capacity increases dramatically with increasing temperature. The increase is exponential across the curve. That is exactly the opposite of what you are trying to claim. Further, oceanic lower-tropospheric water vapour has increased by about 4% since the 1970's, which is consistent with what we should expect given temperature increases over the period.

"Observations of oceanic lower-tropospheric water vapour reveal substantial variability during the last two decades. This variability is closely tied to changes in surface temperatures, with the water vapour mass changing at roughly the same rate at which the saturated vapour pressure does. " - www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-4-2-1.html

So you are right. "AGW "denial" would be reasonable if there were an argument that the amount of CO2 we have put and are putting into the atmosphere won't cause a feedback loop." ...and... Water vapor is a very powerful greenhouse gas that "has a gigantic broad "peak" that swamps most other signals". Increased water vapour is an expected result of global warming from CO2, and one of the more powerful feedback mechanisms. You are also right that all this can all be derived from first principles without any need for climate models. You can use "pen to paper and make the calculations yourself, assuming you understand a little physical chemistry."

Re:shocked to learn nature is full of balancing me

[BasilBrush]

There's no such beneficent entity as Mother Nature, keeping everything just so. Species go extinct often, because their environment changes.

Re:and just to drive my point home

[quantaman]

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??

Both.

This article is talking about the increased sea ice extent. Basically the amount of the ocean that's covered ice. It affects the albedo a bit, but mostly it's an interesting mystery because you'd expect it to shrink in a warmer climate.

The other article is talking about the decreasing ice volume. The thickness of multiyear ice on both land and sea is shrinking. This is expected given the warming climate, it's also worrying because it causes sea levels to rise.

salty seawater vs melt ?

[GNious]

Wasn't the increase in ice-area attributed to the melt from inland not being salty, and thus having a higher freezing-point?

Re:salty seawater vs melt ?

[Black Parrot]

It's seasonal, and one of the reasons for the increase is increased precipitation (caused by, you guessed it, global warming).
The sea there is actually warmer, and the land ice is shrinking.
In short, this is only interesting if you need facts with superficial interpretations that can "refute" global warming to the uninformed masses.

http://www.skepticalscience.co...

p.s. - I notice in another skepticalscience link that gw deniers have joined evolution deniers in invoking the second law of thermodynamics as "proof that it couldn't happen". As if scientists are ignorant of the 2LoT.

Sea ice is direct result of collapsing glacier

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:shocked to learn nature is full of balancing me

[evilviper]

more heat causes more evaporation, which causes more clouds, which causes less heat.

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/...

Seen it

[dargaud]

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.

Re:Inreasing or Decreasing - which is it ?!

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:and just to drive my point home

[TapeCutter]

It affects the albedo a bit, but mostly it's an interesting mystery because you'd expect it to shrink in a warmer climate.

Counter intuitive yes, but it ceased being a mystery decades ago (largely due to climate models that would run on a retail video card these days), if anything this paper is a refinement in the details of the accepted explanation - hint fresh water freezes at a slightly higher temp than salt water. Also the sea ice has always completely melted in the Antarctic summer and its dark in winter, so Albedo is not (currently) as important down south as it is up north.

As for the denier angle - this topic is currently ranked #10 on the climate myth list.

It's up at #10 because the physics of collapsing ice sheets is not well understood and thus difficult to model. Deniers depend on conflating sea ice, land ice, ice shelves, ice bergs, permafrost, ice volume, ice coverage, north pole, and south pole. Someone who is not deliberately trying to mis-inform the reader will also attempt the be clear about which particular "ice metric" they are talking about ( which brings us full circle to the main point of your post :).

Re:and just to drive my point home

[Layzej]

Skeptical Science has a good summary of the science. It looks like there are many contributing factors to the apparent contradiction of warming temperatures, shrinking antarctic ice volume and growing antarctic sea ice area. The new paper referenced in this article is possibly another factor: http://www.skepticalscience.co...

Antarctica is a continent with 98% of the land covered by ice, and is surrounded by ocean that has much of its surface covered by seasonal sea ice. Reporting on Antarctic ice often fails to recognise the fundamental difference between sea ice and land ice. Antarctic land ice is the ice which has accumulated over thousands of years on the Antarctica landmass through snowfall. This land ice therefore is actually stored ocean water that once evaporated and then fell as precipitation on the land. Antarctic sea ice is entirely different as it is ice which forms in salt water during the winter and almost entirely melts again in the summer.

Importantly, when land ice melts and flows into the oceans global sea levels rise on average; when sea ice melts sea levels do not change measurably but other parts of the climate system are affected, like increased absorbtion of solar energy by the darker oceans.

To summarize the situation with Antarctic ice trends:

Antarctic land ice is decreasing at an accelerating rate

Antarctic sea ice is increasing despite the warming Southern Ocean

Antarctic Land Ice is decreasing

Measuring changes in Antarctic land ice mass has been a difficult process due to the ice sheet's massive size and complexity. However, since the 1990s satellites have been launched that allow us to measure those changes. There are three entirely different approaches, and they all agree within their measurement uncertainties. The most recent estimate of land ice change that combines estimates from these three approaches reported (Shepherd and others, 2012) that between 1992 and 2011, the Antarctic Ice Sheets overall lost 1350 giga-tonnes (Gt) or 1,350,000,000,000 tonnes into the oceans, at an average rate of 70 Gt per year (Gt/yr). Because a reduction in mass of 360 Gt/year represents an annual global-average sea level rise of 1 mm, these estimates equate to an increase in global-average sea levels by 0.19 mm/yr, or 1.9 mm per decade. Together with the land ice loss from Greenland, this represents about 30% of the observed global-average sea level rise over this period.

Examining how this change is spread over time (Figure 1) reveals that the ice sheet as a whole was not losing or gaining ice in the early 1990s. Since then ice loss has begun, and is clearly seen to have accelerated during that time:

Shepherd et al. 2012

Figure 1: Estimates of total Antarctic land ice changes (bottom) and regions within it (top) and approximate sea level contributions using a combination of several different measurement techniques (Shepherd and others, 2012). Shaded areas represent the estimate uncertainty (1-sigma).

The satellite mission that is best suited to measuring land ice mass change is the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). The GRACE satellites measure changes in Earth's gravity and these can be directly related to surface mass variations such as the Antarctic ice sheet. Recent GRACE estimates of mass change show the dramatic mass loss in West Antarctica and mass gain in East Antarctica (King and others, 2012):

King and others, 2012

Figure 2: a, GRACE estimate of ice-mass change (2002-2012), with ice drainage basins numbered (boldface italics where trends are statistically different to zero with 95% confidence). b, c, Basin-specific lower and upper bounds on ice-mass change, respectively, reflecting the potential systematic error in the basin estimates (King and others, 2012).

The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is growing slightly over satellite period (Figures 1&2) but not enough to offset the other losses. It is not yet clear

Re: Burn the Climate Deniers

[beatle42]

No, the poster was clearly asking to back a very specific assertion, namely that many scenarios have already been proven wrong, which is the claim that needs to be proven.

I also don't accept your claim that the claim must be bullet proof. The expected costs and values can be a combination of likelihood and significance of the effects. If the effects are dire enough and the likelihood not sufficiently remote then it becomes a bad value to not make those changes even accounting for the costs they incur.

Besides, a lot of the money being spent isn't just being thrown into a hole and buried, it'll have positive effects as well even if they don't completely offset the effects you're concerned about.

Go outside. San Francisco underwater by 2010?

[raymorris]

> 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.

Re:Go outside. San Francisco underwater by 2010?

[Layzej]

Your intuition fails you in this case (and the scientific method is in fact your friend). It turns out we can measure this with the CERES satellite and we find that low thick clouds cast a refreshing shadow and reflect sunlight back into space, while high wispy clouds reflect little sunlight but will trap the infrared heat beneath them.

CERES is a package of three telescopes that watch our planet from Earth orbit. "One telescope is sensitive to ordinary sunlight," says Wielicki. "It tells us how much solar radiation is reflected from clouds or ice." The other two telescopes sense longer-wavelength infrared heat. They reveal how much heat is trapped by clouds and how much of it escapes back to space. - http://science.nasa.gov/scienc...

Re:Go outside. San Francisco underwater by 2010?

[evilviper]

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.

Only in summer, during the daylight hours. Clouds at night unquestionably keep temperatures WARMER than it would be without them.

Fascinating to Study

[Layzej]

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.

A New Religion

[docwatson223]

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.

Re:A New Religion

[drinkypoo]

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.

We are all climate changers. What makes the people who embrace science frustrated about the denialists is that they either continually mischaracterize the debate in order to seem to have a valid argument, or they are too stupid to comprehend simple sentences. The argument is not that humans have more impact than the sun, and anyone who claims that is a liar or a moron. Which are you? The argument is that human output is throwing a system in a condition of nominal stasis out of balance in a way that is inconvenient for life similar to us. However, we do know that humans are more powerful in some regards than some dramatic natural processes, like volcanism. Humans produce vastly more CO2 than volcanism does, on average, year by year. What makes you think we aren't capable of perturbing the global climate in a way that we will find inconvenient? All evidence points in the other direction, and you're willfully ignoring it. Willful ignorance impresses no one but other people who are engaging in the same willful ignorance, and feel validated by membership in a herd.

Physics says human activity is capable of causing climate change, and physics works.

What makes me nuts about the climate changers [...] The other thing that makes me nuts is that they use the word 'denier;' it's offensive

You are a hypocrite.

Re:News at 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Both sides of a debate ignore facts that don't match their veiw of the world.

Just one problem. "We don't know why this apparent contradiction exists, but we're researching it" is pretty much the exact opposite of "ignoring facts".

Re:News at 11

[microbox]

This article is just another PRATT. No scientists are not ignoring the increase in sea ice. I think the parent comment reflects the depth of AGW opposition.

Re:shocked to learn nature is full of balancing me

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re: Burn the Climate Deniers

[drinkypoo]

the amount of money and societal upheaval this incurs means that the level of demonstrable proof required here goes up significantly.

No, no it doesn't. The level of demonstrable proof required to believe the theory doesn't change depending on how much it might cost. That's politics, not science.

You want us to spend all that cash your case better fucking be bulletproof.

You have this shit seriously backwards. You want us to continue to permit you to tear apart the biosystem upon which we all depend, your case had better fucking be bulletproof. "And it isn't."

So fuck you, that's what.

Yes, that's what the denialist argument always boils down to. Fuck you, and fuck everyone else, while they do whatever they were going to do anyway.

Hockey Sticks

[Anonymous Coward]

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'.

Re:shocked to learn nature is full of balancing me

[Jmc23]

um, that's because we're very good at murdering our close relatives.

Re: Burn the Climate Deniers

[something_wicked_thi]

You must prove your case, which has not happened.

Oh yes? Has it not?

AGW makes a handful of claims. First, that the earth is getting warmer.

Second, that the oceans are getting warmer.

Third, that sea levels will rise

Fourth, that arctic ice will retreat.

Fifth, that Greenland's ice will melt..

Sixth, that antarctic ice will melt.

I could go on, but let's make #7 that man is causing it.

So do tell what's missing here. Again, please use scientific evidence in the peer reviewed literature. Most of the links I've provided above refer you to their sources and extra reading and come from such things as IPCC reports. And again, I'll wait.

Re: Burn the Climate Deniers

[riverat1]

You mean the visible shrill climate alarmists, Michael Mann included.

They are all scientists who are well respected in their fields. Despite all of the vilification of Michael Mann no one has found any scientific misconduct by him. His original hockey stick graph still holds up as shown by around a dozen similar studies done by different scientists using different proxies and techniques. If you think the past 17 years disproves the graph it's more like a nick in the blade of the hockey stick than anything significant.

You might do better not to trust anyone, and look at everything with a critical eye.

I could say the same thing to you. I'll admit that after over 25 years of following this issue I may tend to give climate scientists the benefit of the doubt but over the years I've found very little evidence that they haven't earned that trust. I've also read papers by such noted climate science contrarians as Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen. Even they admit that more CO2 means more warming. They just disagree on how much. They nibble around the edges but don't get much traction.

I seem to have a pretty good understanding, for a layman, anyway. And there are major problems with the inputs and assumptions in the prevalent models. You should look into that. It's pointed out in the peer-reviewed literature every month where the issues are, but the shrill alarmist nutjobs seem to want to put more effort into shutting those people up and controlling the mainstream messages than they are addressing those issues.

Perhaps you can be more specific about what some of those major problem with inputs and assumptions are so I know what to look for. Climate models are far from perfect but we don't have anything better to do the job. As the Real Climate post pointed out the temperature observations are still within the range predicted by climate models. Climate modelers are well aware of the problems and limitations of their models, no doubt far better than you or I. Here's some more posts from the "shrill alarmist nutjobs" at Real Climate about climate models and some of the issues with them. You may dismiss it as a propaganda site but how can you effectively argue against them if you don't know what they're saying in the first place?

FAQ on Climate Models
FAQ on Climate Models: Part II
On mismatches between models and observations

The point is they don't do what they are claiming they do - which is predict climate changes and the (all bad, disastrous, something-must-be-done-think-of-the-children) effects of those changes. That makes them BAD science, and screaming for politicians to make expensive and damaging policy changes based on those untenable predictions with major deviations from observation make them REALLY BAD scientists.

So far the climate has been changing within the bounds projected by those models or in the case of ice loss faster than most model projections. Just because you want them to predict something other than what they're capable of predicting doesn't make them wrong. If you think it's too costly to respond to the threats of climate change just wait until you see what it's going to cost to not do anything. If you're young enough you certainly will experience that.