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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."
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.
There's no such beneficent entity as Mother Nature, keeping everything just so. Species go extinct often, because their environment changes.
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.
I stole this Sig
Wasn't the increase in ice-area attributed to the melt from inland not being salty, and thus having a higher freezing-point?
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.
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
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?
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
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
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
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.
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
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...
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.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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.