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Extent of Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches Record Levels
schwit1 writes Scientists have declared a new record has been set for the extent of Antarctic sea ice since records began. Satellite imagery reveals an area of about 20 million square kilometers covered by sea ice around the Antarctic continent. Jan Lieser from the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) said the discovery was made two days ago. "Thirty-five years ago the first satellites went up which were reliably telling us what area, two dimensional area, of sea ice was covered and we've never seen that before, that much area."
or getting ready for the next Titanium?
Instead of talking about the impending melting of the polar ice caps, we should now talk about polar ice cap change.
Well given that 5 years ago Al Gore said in 5 years time the Arctic will be completely ice free and it's completely covered in ice still, I would say they have a point. Back to the drawing board with the models at least. If there is one. Which I doubt.
Agreed. The "spreading out" of thin ice might just be due to a lot of ice falling off the Antarctic and more precipitation -- if it were cooler, you'd have less.
This might a good "negative" feedback mechanism that reduces overall infrared absorption -- at least in Antarctica, but likely not enough to curb the trend.
But those who say " we need more research" before affecting someone's profits -- well, they will think this proves something.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Let no one be distracted; it will be flooded here with nutcases very soon who will all claim that this -obviously- does NOT mean global warming isn't happening. As always, they "will just have to incorporate this new information into their models" :/.
Bunch of climate terrorists :-|.
You could, you know, read the article, too:
As the area covered in sea ice expands scientists have said the ice on the continent of Antarctica which is not over the ocean continues to deplete.
CEO of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, Tony Worby, said the warming atmosphere is leading to greater sea ice coverage by changing wind patterns.
"The extent of sea ice is driven by the winds around Antarctica, and we believe that they're increasing in strength and part of that is around the depletion of ozone," he said.
So that's one theory. What, precisely, was your theory? No need to dumb it down for us, just give us the scientific "if this then that" hypothesis in regards your kneejerk reaction about climate change when the theory is that ozone depletion causes problems for antarctic ice.
NOTE: Ahead of the expected misconstruing of what I'm saying; the Antarctic is considered a desert due to it's very low rainfall. However, if there is more fresh water rain -- that could be creating the ice, or when we have many icebergs calving that are the size of Rhode Island -- that means the ice gets broken up or sloughs off, creating a spreading.
The ice may also be very thin. More or less ice doesn't automatically mean anything -- and I don't KNOW the facts, I'm just throwing down reasons for what we see. It's very likely this does NOT mean the Antarctic got cooler.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Whether or not you know weather is not climate, you won't know how thick the ice is until you climb it.
Science is never settled, you clod.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=al+gore+arctic+ice+5+years
One cannot help the motivation behind posting this.
Is the Earth melting? is this "killer ice"? or "massive ice sheets"?
File under "climate change" - lots of ice, run for the...err...I mean paddle for land!
I thought slashdot was new for nerds, stuff that mattered? please kindly shed some light on the relevance?
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
I think one thing is clear. All these studies are way to focused and fine grained. They look at micro aspects of the climate and then try to apply the observations to a system that is many orders or magnitudes larger.
It's like examining 1" square sections of the Sistine Chapel paintings and then trying to predict the color in the next 1" square based on the color in the current square. Hit and miss, misleading successes and baffling failures because you don't understand the totality of the entire painting.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Yes, hide the dissenting data! Don't look at it! We need to evangelize the narrative, people.
Is that how this science works?
sig: sauer
The arctic and the Antarctic are two completely different places.
That has nothing to do with this. But it does demonstrate how fucking clueless your conventional wisdom is.
Everyone who makes a comment about how this "disproves" global warming is a drooling moron.
Citation please!
Here, let me Google that for you
Also, from 2008 Davos:
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
nutcases very soon who will all claim that this -obviously- does NOT mean global warming isn't happening.
Your double negatives threw me for a second there, but I think I see what's happening. You're concerned about their opponents. (I'm referring to the opponents of the nutcases who claim that this obviously does not mean that global warming isn't happening.) No doubt, you're familiar with the movement opposing those nutcases, and you with to make sure they don't get a foothold in the media, public perception, or in the legislature. There are a number of groups involved in that, and several of those are politically active. There is a bill in the legislature kowtowing to those groups, and a number of committees are organizing to keep them from making any progress. They aren't sufficiently organized at present, but with enough help they will be able to push forward enough to reach their goals. I think you'll be relieved to learn that I'm thoroughly opposed to the groups seeking to weaken the proponents of the bill making illegal the actions of committees organized to oppose the nutcases who claim that this obviously does not mean global warming isn't happening. At least...so far as it's consistent with the first Amendment.
~Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
Driving clicks.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Doesn't everyone remember that heat rises and cold settles. Antarctica is colder and has more ice because it's at the bottom of the world.....
ManBearPig is REAL!!!!!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
n/m
This isn't dissenting data, jackass. Read the article.
There's a difference between 'may' and 'will'. At the same time that Al Gore made this statement, most scientists were more comfortable with an estimate of 2030.
Except he didn't say that, you lying sack of shit. He said "may nearly vanish", "not will be gone".
There's also this. Prepare to get wet feet.
It's important to note that the Antarctic has been recovering ozone for 40 years since CFCs were banned. That means more protection from the sun. More ice, more rain, less UV, etc. It stands to reason that the Antarctic would grow ice as the natural greenhouse effect of having an ozone would take effect.
IIRC, back in the 80s, we used to see satellite pics of Antarctica and the effects of ozone depletion
there was a *huge* evironmentalist movement to ban CFC's from aerosol cans...and of course the conservative/big biz backlash saying that "there is no ozone hole" or "it's a natural cycle" or [insert anti-science argument]....**just like the global warming debate**
well...the laws passed and the ozone layer recovered...
i can't help but think this might be a factor in the new ice...and a useful guide as to how to handle our current problems with idiot conservatives/big biz types who irrationally deny that pollution harms the environment
that's the final analysis of the situation **pollution is harmful & should be regulated**
Thank you Dave Raggett
Everyone who makes a comment about how this "disproves" global warming is a drooling moron.
This disproves global warming. I love to drool on smart people like you.
This is already in the models. Sea ice comes and goes each year as each variable season heats and cools the oceans in turn. This is transient ice that has now reached a high point in its oscillating cycle. Irregularity year-to-year is to be expected, with or without climate change. The land ice on Antarctica is the real issue related to the climate changes we are observing and further predicting. That ice has been accumulating for thousands of years and is very thick. The water locked up there has been locked away from the oceans for a very long time, and that ice is getting progressively thinner as it melts and leaves the land to add to the ocean water. Land ice melt is a change between millenniums while sea ice melt is the change between seasons. Seasons vary in strength each year, but it is the continuing reduction in land ice that raises sea levels and alters the face of the Earth. You are welcome to be okay with that, but coastal residents might have a different view.
Further reading: http://www.wunderground.com/climate/facts/antarctica_is_losing_ice_sheet.asp?MR=1
http://skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm
Antarctica gaining SEA ice is neither new, nor contradictory to global warming.
More sea ice does not in fact mean more ice total. Au contraire, the extra sea ice comes from all the continental ice sheets flowing into ocean. Continental ice sheets are in fact getting thinner at unprecedented speed.
Al Gore has made a fortune peddling "global warming", and even received the Nobel Peace prize for his peddling (not surprising, Obama won it for merely speaking an opinion).
Yes, we need to change how we interact with the Earth and there are some real problems. Pollution is a real problem, long term energy without fossil fuels is a problem, and I could co on. A "Carbon Tax" is not the way to solve the problems, and this is the solution that has been peddled by Al Gore and countless others trying to implement Agenda 21.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
This data doesn't contradict global warming. It's a local effect, and it's been known for years.
Sorry to the warmists...the earth's temperature has not risen for the last 14-22 years, depending on which temperature series you look at.
And that despite the heavy manipulation and "adjustments" on the surface temperature records.
The best data we have for the USA is the USCRN (US Climate reference Network), well sited (not by jet exhaust on the hot tarmac !) rural stations with tripple reducndant aspirated Pt sensors.
The result, since inception, no temperature rise in ten years.
Because the sun is in a low activity cycle, and the ocean decadal oscillations are heading into the cool phases, we are probably in for a cooling trend.
And humans do poorly in cooling climates, crops fail, and more die from cold than heat.
1.The land Ice is moving to the sea (due to warming, increasing sea level).
2. Fresh water run off and/or higher precip cause the sea to be slightly fresher, causing it to freeze at higher temperatures (still warming caused, and if from runoff still increasing sea level).
3. It is colder, causing more sea ice.
We know for a fact that on average it is not colder ( http://www.ipcc.ch/publication... ), so my money is on some combination of the first two.
More sea ice does increase albedo and thus reduce infrared absorption, which is a negative feedback, but is it enough to reverse the trend locally or globally? That is beyond my ability to predict.
Silence is a state of mime.
Science is never settled, you clod.
It is when it has become religion.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
this sort of thing! It hurts the case for AGW so therefore it is morally wrong.
The problem here is that what's important isn't areas so much as volume. Please read and learn something.
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
Just another day in Paradise
That has nothing to do with this. But it does demonstrate how fucking clueless your conventional wisdom is.
Everyone who makes a comment about how this "disproves" global warming is a drooling moron.
Thanks for that. I feel better now, but it still doesn't mean that we won't get a flurry (ha ha, snow!) of denier bullshit to follow. Sigh.
We can adjust our climate/weather models to match.
That puts us one step closer to having models that can predict what is going to happen.
How many more steps before we have models that work?
Well a clue is when they are able to predict this new stuff before it happens.
An article that shows a major surprise like this is not a sign of confidence.
But at least it's better that getting the sign wrong (Global cool versus warm.)
Since when does science reject new data? That's not the empirical science I was taught.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Yes, because 1 and 1 is eleven.
Just another day in Paradise
I don't get it. Doesn't thin ice melt faster? I spread my ice to make it melt more quickly.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
So Al Gore said that, what did a real scientists say? Guys like Al Gore are the problem with science. He takes what scientists say, wraps it in a worst-case scenario narrative, and then sells the fear. He's not a climatologist now nor has he ever been a climatologist. Get me a quote for Dr. Mann saying the Arctic will be ice free in five year then you've got something, but he's never said that.
It's ironic you're talking about being clueless...
In the conditions aplicable to this article (make it 1 atm.) water ONLY freezes at 0 celsius. so there is no way "hot water freezes faster than cold". You're probably repeating something someone told you about the energy it takes to raise/lower the teperature of water being related to it's actual temperature, but that's a diferent thing.
Learn some thermodynamics before spewing shit like that...
They just call global warming skeptics "deniers and "morons," because it's so much easier than trying to explain why why there's been no warming for 19 years, in violation of all global warming models.
Global warming is no longer theory, it's a religion, as well a mechanism for the transnational left to transfer power and money from individuals to national and transnational governments.
Global warming no longer has anything to do with science; it's a faith-based doctrine.
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"
I waited to post this to see if the usual "this means global warming is a lie" posts began, and indeed they have. So let me cut this off: Increased arctic sea ice is caused by global warming. This is a CONFIRMATION of warming, not a CONTRADICTION.
Short version:
1. Summer: Arctic land ice melts
2. Melt spreads over water
3. Winter: Old ice freezes. Newly melted ice freezes.
4. Repeat steps 1 - 3 forever
At step 3, there is more frozen ice on the surface than there was last year because more ice melted. A separate measure, the arctic ice "volume" decreases every year while the arctic ice "extent" which is the surface area of the ice increases.
Previous discussions on this:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
http://news.slashdot.org/comme...
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
No, that's not what they're saying. Rather, it goes like this: all unusual weather events, whether they be powerful hurricanes in summer or severe blizzards in winter, are proof of warming. Record Antarctic ice is proof of warming because the effect of global warming is to make all weather scary.
There are some pretty freak weather conditions caused by long term wind/water currents. The UK has pretty mild winters (usually doesn't drop below freezing), despite being higher north than the more inhabited areas of Canada which have brutal winters (regularly hits single digits)
Let me count the ways you are wrong:
. Wrong pole
. He didn't say that
. Even if he did (which he didn't) it wouldn't mean shit
. Most climate scientists didn't agree with what he actually said (which isn't what you claimed)
. Again even if the statement he said would be falsified it changes nothing in the science and models
. You doubt something that is proven to exist which is frankly a very stupid thing to do
I know it's a lot to ask on /. but if you plow past TFS and actually RTFA then you will find they say exactly why they think this is *realted to global warming not a contradiction of it.
"As the area covered in sea ice expands scientists have said the ice on the continent of Antarctica which is not over the ocean continues to deplete.
CEO of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, Tony Worby, said the warming atmosphere is leading to greater sea ice coverage by changing wind patterns."
Conjecture but they at least have gone down this road already...
"Here we show that accelerated basal melting of Antarctic ice shelves is likely to have contributed significantly to sea-ice expansion. Specifically, we present observations indicating that melt water from Antarctica’s ice shelves accumulates in a cool and fresh surface layer that shields the surface ocean from the warmer deeper waters that are melting the ice shelves. Simulating these processes in a coupled climate model we find that cool and fresh surface water from ice-shelf melt indeed leads to expanding sea ice in austral autumn and winter." http://www.nature.com/ngeo/jou...
Since 9/15 is also the day of lowest ice cover in the Arctic, how does this year's minimum compare with history?
Is it bush's and AGW if it gets colder and the sea has more ice extent as well?
Just want to get my man bear pig rules right
Tsarkon reports
Second and more importantly, this is the Antartic, not the Artic. For those of you that are ignorant, the antartic consists of a huge land mass with ice sitting on it, and a little bit of ice surrounding it. The Artic on the other hand is just one solid mass of ice.
What that means is that more sea ice in the Artic is called by cold weather. More ice freezes, etc.
But more sea ice in the ANTARTIC is caused by global WARMING. hat is, the sea ice in the Antartic is caused by ice sitting on the land mass, sliding off into the water because it is just a tad too warm to stick to the land.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Tell us... Is there any data that you are aware of that does contradict global warming?
No? We can help you with that.
As the area covered in sea ice expands scientists have said the ice on the continent of Antarctica which is not over the ocean continues to deplete. CEO of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, Tony Worby, said the warming atmosphere is leading to greater sea ice coverage by changing wind patterns.
This isn't dissenting data.
It certainly is how clickbaiting works: make a sensational headline that implies the opposite of the real story.
Read the article. The increase in sea ice is from rising temperatures in Antarctica. The land ice is breaking up and getting blown offshore by stronger winds driven by the larger temperature deltas.
I think his alarmist point would have been a little less convincing if he had said "may nearly vanish, or may be at record levels--one of those."
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Man bear pig and and the high priest of the cult of the church of climatology al goreleone agree
Is that we still don't have a clear understanding of how climate works and what is going on with climate change caused by humans. Weather is generally getting more extreme. When it's hot, it's crazy hot, and when it's cold, it's crazy cold. Overall sea level rise? Yeah, we can plan for that. Super cold hurricanes and droughts, not so much.
Well given that 5 years ago Al Gore said in 5 years time the Arctic will be completely ice free and it's completely covered in ice still, I would say they have a point. Back to the drawing board with the models at least. If there is one. Which I doubt.
So let me get this straight. Some grandstanding politician makes some dumb-ass statement about climate change and, by your logic, all climate change science is broken. Have I got that right? Or did you have a point that was supported by some kind of actual logic?
Citation please!
Here, let me Google that for you
Also, from 2008 Davos:
Tha fuck is wrong with slashdot today!? Jesus Christ, Donny!
Quite recently a team from CIRES recovered imagery from the NIMBUS satellites, a series of spacecraft launched in the '60s. From the press release:
“By extending the satellite record back to the 1960s, we can understand more about the history and natural variability in things like sea ice extent in the Arctic, and the Antarctic,” said David Gallaher, technical services manager at NSIDC. The modern satellite record of sea ice goes back only to 1979.
In the Arctic, sea ice extent was larger in the 1960s than it is these days, on average. “It was colder, so we expected that,” Gallaher said. What the researchers didn’t expect were “enormous holes” in the sea ice, currently under investigation. “We can’t explain them yet,” Gallaher said.
“And the Antarctic blew us away,” he said. In 1964, sea ice extent in the Antarctic was the largest ever recorded, according to Nimbus image analysis. Two years later, there was a record low for sea ice in the Antarctic, and in 1969 Nimbus imagery, sea ice appears to have reached its maximum extent earliest on record.
http://cires.colorado.edu/news/press/2014/nimbus.html
If this isn't dissenting data, can't you think of anything that actually would qualify as such? There's less ice = global warming/climate change. There's more ice = climate change. Winters are colder = climate change. Winters are more mild = global warming. More Hurricanes = Less Hurricanes = Global warming. Etc. etc. etc. They can't model it or predict it, but they're sure it's happening, as no matter what happens it's clear "evidence" of global warming.
And most curiously of all, that no matter what happens - if it's hotter or colder - the prescriptions for fixing it are always the same (even from when they panicked about the coming ice age in the 70s). Regulate every aspect of business, and force them to near bankruptcy, and higher taxes with a more powerful government to oversee it all. Curious, no? This seems to be the only constant in the climate change debate...
Ignoring science in favour of conspiracy theories is ignorant.
Citing the errors of celebrities as evidence of the failings of science is... jibberish.
Clearly a case of HOT HAIL!
Last time I checked, it was still called GLOBAL warming, no? Are the arctic and Antarctica on different planets?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Agreed. The "spreading out" of thin ice might just be due to a lot of ice falling off the Antarctic and more precipitation -- if it were cooler, you'd have less.
That is just as speculative as those who argue differently. The article specifically mentions the role of wind patterns as the primary factor in ice generation, and there is no statement that overall ice has thinned at the same time this expansion has occurred. AFAIKT, there is no established basis that ties this ice growth occurrence to either side of the warming debate. It doesn't need to be defended, it is happening, and it is not completely understood.
That's funny. I haven't heard rhetoric like that since the Doomsday Cult was just about to prove they were right!
Let me guess... because all the models that predicted the future so far were wrong up to this point, the absolutely have to be right from here on?
Does your Anthropomorphic Global Warming/Global Climate Change/Climate Disruption/Blame the Capitalists/White Guilt Cult have an official name yet? Or is it still in flux?
I predict that in five years, Al Gore will be peddling some new form of environmental alarmism.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
And betting your life savings in Vegas may make you rich; that doesn't make it alarmist to say "Bet your life savings in Vegas and you'll likely end up broke". By your, faulty, logic you basically can't say anything may/may not happen without saying the opposite as well. Which means you should probably have said his "alarmist or not alarmist point, may have been a little, or lot, less, or more, convincing" because god forbid you actually imply something is more likely than something else if it isn't an absolute certainty.
I mean that Al Gore said "may", but the GP pretended that he said "will". That's a big difference. Also, Al Gore is not a scientist, and he was not expressing scientific consensus at the time.
that politician had HEAVY influence in setting up laws and markets to profit from climate change fear mongering, and not just in the USA
It's about Antarctic ice.
Last time I checked, it was still called GLOBAL warming, no? Are the arctic and Antarctica on different planets?
Brilliant logic and scientific thought! Well, let's see ... umm, hmmm, well, Siberia and Australia are on the same planet, right? So why did we ban CFCs to protect the ozone again? Hmmmmmm?!
Oh, right! ELEMENTARY CAUSE AND EFFECT! Go back to Reddit. Go, go, get. Look at this mess you've made. Get. Shoo. Bad poster. Bad. Look what you've done. Out. Now.
^^^ That.
Several celebrities were recently outed as supporting a geocentric model of the solar system, while observation reveals a heliocentric model. Clearly, the theory of gravity is, therefore, completely bunk.
Way down in the congo land sitting in a coconut tree,
There was a monkey and a chimp--and Lordy how she loved him.
Everynight in the pale moonlight sitting in the coconut tree, These love words she always said to he...
"Herpa derpa herpa derpa herpa derpa derpa"
Said the monkey to the chimp.
"Herpa derpa herpa derpa herpa derpa derpa"
Said the chimpee to the monk.
All night long they chattered away.
All day long they were happy and gay,
Swinging and swaying in a honky, tonky way.
"Herpa derpa herpa derpa herpa derpa derpa"
Said the chimp, "I love but you."
Herpa derpa derpa in monkey talk means
"Chimp, I love you too."
Then the ol' baboon, one night in June,
Married them and very soon,
They sailed away on an herpa derpa honeymoon.
As my ice cream melted yesterday, I discovered that this process CREATES MORE ICE CREAM! After all, it extended a greater distance across the bowl than before, and this means MORE ICE CREAM, right, samzenpus?
The physical foundation is the same of course, but the circumstances are totally different. Hence the effect that Arctic sea ice is shrinking, while Antarctic sea ice is growing.
It's one of the lowest in history but not the lowest. It's very close to tieing with last year.
Sea-ice volume appears (it's harder to measure reliably although it's more significant that area or extent) to be up on last year which in turn was up on the previous year. That might be a good sign for Arctic ice feedbacks or it might not - 2-3 years is far too short a time to separate signal from noise. Volume is still exceptionally low compared to the historical record.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
Only the crap that came straight from Rush Limbaugh's ass.
But the summary made it sound like it would be, and that's enough for deniers to latch onto.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I did just consider telling you that you were an idiot.
So I'm doing that.
You are an idiot.
But Artic ice is receeding. Thus denying global warming?
So just to be clear. Ice melting = global warming. Ice forming = global warming.
Unfortunately not. it's night in the Antarctic so the Antarctic sea ice has negligible effect on the albedo of the planet, melting out each year (almost) completely.
Arctic sea ice is significant for planetary albedo because millions of square km (still) survive though the peak sunlight summer months.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
Well given that 5 years ago Al Gore said in 5 years time the Arctic will be completely ice free and it's completely covered in ice still, I would say they have a point. Back to the drawing board with the models at least. If there is one. Which I doubt.
Why are you talking about the Arctic in an article about the Antarctic?
Furthermore why are you talking about Al Gore and models? Sure Gore is somewhat important in his role as an advocate, but Al Gore saying something wrong doesn't mean the models are wrong, it's means Al Gore is a politician who doesn't know the science. I'm not up to date on the models but I never got the impression that an ice free artic in this timeframe was the consensus of the scientists (sure, some thought it could happen, but that's not the same thing).
Btw, on that topic the Arctic ice is still shrinking.
I stole this Sig
Exactly. Not even close to dissenting with the idea of climate change. In fact, it fits in perfectly. The whole idea about global warming is that as the temperature goes up the world is thrown out of stasis. End result is higher highs and lower lows. No stability of weather pattern or temperatures. This matches exactly with the predictions of global warming.
Gosh, if only there were a way to search the available information and see if there’s an explanation of why this is happening!
What’s this? Google? It says that we have had exactly this same discussion before? In fact, the ice in that area has been growing for decades and we basically had this discussion in 2007?
http://www.skepticalscience.com/increasing-Antarctic-Southern-sea-ice-intermediate.htm
Thanks Google!
Somehow a quite conservatively formulated claim (subjunctive mode, "some models, 75% chance, 5-7 years, during some month of the summer") magically morphed into the strong claim "Al Gore said in 5 years time the Arctic will be completely ice free". How much did you pay for that perceptional filter? And can you get a refund?
Stephan
Ice-shmice. I wonder whether any of those nice theories of man-induced global warming survived the ultimate test: predicting events ahead of time. Couldn't find any, but it may be just me not being thorough enough.
I wouldn't care about "52 explanations why theories and real life diverge". It's mere "here's what we predicted and look, it works exactly as we thought it would" what gives theory some weight. Otherwise it's just an "oomph" factor, which isn't really a science.
No NO NO! Its: Record Ice melts are due to climate change. Record Ice accumulation is due to weather, which has nothing to do with Climate change.
Global Warming is religion, not science. It is religion because:
1. Neither side can use a common set of facts to support their opinion.
2. Neither side can debate without resorting to name calling.
3. Neither side proffers a theory that can predict or explain the scientific observations.
My OPINION is that long term global warming is happening. I have no idea if that is a bad or a good thing. I have no data to suggest a a simple causation. I have no data but anecdotal evidence to suggest that changes to our actions will slow, stop or reverse global warming.
My OPINION is that we should move away from fossil fuels as fast a economically possible. We should do this for political security and future economic considerations.
My 2 cents.
Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels.
this directly contradicts the academic literature...for you to make this claim you need to link to some kind of evidence
also, the fact that you say "To assume is wasn't a natural cycle is ridiculous" shows you are misrepresenting your opposition...
pollution harms the environment...you cannot contradict that fact
Thank you Dave Raggett
The real whole-world study has no control. You have to have a control to draw conclusions from a study. You don't know whether the ozone hole would have shrunk in the absence of curtailing CFCs. The real world is a very complex system.
I sneezed and an hour later the sun rose. I guess I better sneeze every morning or we are all in trouble.
P.S. - I'm not actually criticizing the curtailment of CFCs. I am much, much closer to agreeing that CFC curtailment is a Good Idea than I am that CO2 reduction, entailing energy starvation, is a Good Idea.
I saw this bit last week- It may explain part of this:
http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/996
This is true. There is no such thing as gravity, the reason we don't fall off the Earth is because it sucks. It's suction that holds us down.
There's still a bit less than two years left on at least one of his gloom and doom predictions.
Convenient Arctic Armageddon countdown clock
Except we don't have satellites measuring volume of Antarctic ice, just some guy making guestimates. We do have satellites measuring area.
Which university did Al Gore get his climatology degree from again?
Oh, you mean he's just a spokesperson? Like Bill Cosby was for JELL-O? Why would you give a shit what he said?
Of course if you have the reference for the prediction he was just repeating that might be from a slightly more believable source than Mr "I have a nobel peace prize, and an Oscar!". Though chances are pretty good that actual source says something like "X% chance" making it less of a slam dunk.
Also north != south, but that doesn't invalidate the claim, you could be going off topic on purpose.
completely covered in ice
Depends on your definition of "completely". It is at the lowest ice coverage in recorded history. The Antarctic on the other hand, which is what this article is about, has been gaining ice, but at a lesser rate than the Arctic has been losing it.
What's the deal with posting as ACs, deniers? There's an awful lot of posters with those two attributes every time /. posts an article touching on climate change.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Al Gore isn't just a "celebrity", he is also a powerful politician, author, lobbyists, and influential policy advocate. If he makes wrong statements about the policies he advocates, yes, it matters.
What record accumulation? You missed the important bit:
"two dimensional area,"
It's still loosing MASS.
Please fucking learn.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
We saw the exact same thing when conservative pundits criticized Al Gore for claiming he "invented the internet" (http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp).
I think it makes it much easier to dismiss global climate change if you pretend it is the creation of a few celebrities rather than the international scientific consensus.
Prediction: Al Gore's comments will continue to be mangled and misquoted.
" Record Antarctic ice is proof of warming"
Please learn the difference between a thin surface on top, and overall mass.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
False.
Most of the laws came from Reagan(mostly just lip service) and GWB.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Important" for what?
But, but, but, he invented the internet! For science!
Like the climate instability stuff I heard a few years ago with Super Storm Sandy? Remember who the storms were supposed to get worse each year? The last two hurricance seasons have been a dud at least in east.
Bitch, please.
If you're going to lawyer on technicalities, at least know what the fuck is being discussed.
Wrong predictions, and the science is correct in spite of what a politician says about it. BTW, even if the area covered is bigger, the actual ice volume is much much lower.
Scientific theories have been proven wrong time and time again throughout history.
Nobody wants to talk about the real reason krill is vanishing and krill-eating penguins and other animals are starving...it is because of commercial fishing for krill. The whole ecosystem is being destroyed and everyone wants to blame climate or ice when it is just plain old greed. It should be illegal to harvest krill.
Likewise, every time AGW is brought up some fuckwit will bring up Al Gore as though it proves something... besides that person's tribalism and ignorance, I mean.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
You know, salt water freezes at a lower temperature than fresh.
If I were melting a sh*t-ton of fresh water into a pool of salt water that had a temperature < the freezing point of fresh water, I might expect that fresh water would freeze when it hit that cold salt water. Given that the density of fresh water < the density of salt water, I might even expect that the freezing would occur at the surface.
This isn't rocket science, nor is it especially confusing. The ice in one place is turning into ice in another place. The critical feature is, given these curiously sudden changes being observed, what sort of factor when increased would melt that ice in the first place? I know I'm voting for The Great Liberal Conspiracy, but maybe someone here has other ideas...
Ignoring science in favour of conspiracy theories is ignorant.
No, science should not be ignored but that does not mean that conspiracies do not exist. They do.
Citing the errors of celebrities as evidence of the failings of science is... jibberish (sic).
Al Gore is not just a celebrity. Sadly, many people are influenced by his gibberish. I agree with your basic premise but most AGW advocates ignore and will not address contrary evidence, preferring instead to ridicule and cast aspersions, as you do. What is there to fear from an open discussion and equal treatment of all available evidence, unless a predetermined outcome is the goal?
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
I would not say its a lie. Just maybe a bit of bad science.
Maybe if climate scientists could predict this phenomenon before it happened instead of trying to explain why global warming is still valid after it happened they would be a lot more credible. At this rate literally anything could happen and it would confirm global warming. Melting ice? Global warming. Increased ice? Global warming. No rain this year? Global Warming. Increased rain this year? Global warming.
The US Navy has officially made a statement in which they expect "no sea ice". This means that it will be mostly navigable, but may require ice-breakers or similar because of large ice drifts.
This would only occur during the peak of the summer, and not be a year-round phenomenon.
This is a significant event, but it can quickly get tangled. They are not predicting that there will be no ice at all in the arctic sea for the entire year. The prediction makes sense for meteorologists, but it can be confusing for the average person.
So if the amount of sea ice was instead decreasing, could we conclude that the earth is cooling?
How can you tell a politician is lying? His lips are moving. The point isn't that what Al Gore or George Bush says doesn't matter because plenty of people will blindly believe and follow them no matter how wrong they obviously are on a variety of things. It's that it's very much beating a dead horse while ignoring the elephant in the room. That's why the GP spoke of it being jibberish.
Put another way, even Hitler would say the sky is blue.
Interesting how incivility rules at slashdot. Can't we have discussions without resorting to this sort of language?
You have to get the language correct. It's "global climate change" when something doesn't fit the "global warming" meme.
There is a distinction between the two, of course, but it is without difference to the topic of this thread. Both ice-caps were supposed to shrink (with dire consequences for the rest of the world, of course).
One expedition set out to measure the loss of the ice, found itself stuck in it — not that it changed the leading professor's opinion about the global warming...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
True...Einstein's theories state that all mass distorts space/time.
The USA is only 4X older than me...perspective
"...because all the models that predicted the future so far were wrong up to this point..."
No, that haven't been wrong.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Instead of talking about the impending melting of the polar ice caps, we should now talk about polar ice cap change."
Why shift away from talking about the ice caps melting? Or did you read the article?
"As the area covered in sea ice expands scientists have said the ice on the continent of Antarctica which is not over the ocean continues to deplete.
CEO of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC, Tony Worby, said the warming atmosphere is leading to greater sea ice coverage by changing wind patterns."
Well, let me tell you that this does not mean global warming isn't happening, and in fact, it makes perfect sense that this should be happening.
When you have ice breaking off due to global warming, that ice will slide off its base and drift into the ocean, thereby increasing the water surface that is covered with ice.
How many times did your boss tell his customers it would be ready next week after you told him it would take a month. I've seen that too many times. This is just another example of the top wig tailoring the information for his needs.
Not saying that's what happened but I'd be surprised that the scientists would put the end of ice in the north pole so close.
BTW, how did we start talking about the north pole when this article is about the south pole? or am I confused as usual?
It's called the 'Mpemba effect '. You might want to look it up.
It doesn't apply here, but it's a real thing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The actual scientists may be formulating their claims conservatively indeed. And the morphing does occur.
But it is not the critics, but rather the politicians and journalists — peddling the global warming panic — who are doing the morphing. "The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff," — are the actual words of Al Gore from 2007 — "It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now."
Yeah, he said "could be" — about as evasive as Geico's "could save you 15% or more"... But it increased — a lot — instead of shrinking so he was not even in ball-park. And thus, any scientific models used by to make that dire prediction are invalid and any policies based on those models ought to be abolished at once — regardless of how many solyndras have been financed already following those policies.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Yeah, not enough degrees of freedom to support global warming hysterics specious hypotheses.
The Antarctic has land. The Arctic does not. Hence different processes occur.
If Mexico was buried under 30 feet of snow, people would still be argue about climate change.
If Greenland was 80 degrees in winter, people would still argue about climate change.
Reading the article and comments, it is clear that nobody understands exactly what is happening here. Instead theories are thrown around like gospel on a Sunday morning. There is no consensus. There is hardly any method. Climatology has been so poliicized and glamorized I don't trust anything I read anymore.
Speaking of gospel I'm going to share a prayer...
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
I'm done fighting, arguing and whatnot. I offer to you what I offered everyone so far: I move inland, you move to the coast. If you're right, you get a wonderful piece of seaside real estate. If I am right, I get to shoot you if you try to escape drowning.
Deal?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"North Polar ice cap" is not "Antarctic sea ice". Wrong side of the planet. Note here that the one that is increasing is increasing because the Antarctic land ice is melting. That adds a lot of fresh water to the ocean around Antarctica, so it freezes at a higher temperature. Temperature is up a little, but the freezing point is up much higher, so the sea ice is forming more easily. Look up Freezing Point Depression to understand the science behind this.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
It is proof of increased temperature if you understand the scientific principles involved. The sea ice extent is increasing because the Antarctic land ice is melting. That adds a lot of fresh water to the ocean around Antarctica, so it freezes at a higher temperature. Temperature is up a little, but the freezing point is up much higher, so the sea ice is forming more easily and further out in the winter. Look up Freezing Point Depression to understand the science behind this.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
For the libshit retards to pretend they were right all along and all those hippy policies weren't just to benefit their friends and family working in hippy communes and "educational" gigs to corrupt future generations into their idiotic hippy beliefs, of course.
That's like saying 'the guy has plenty of blood in him, look at the size of the puddle around him'
No, but one is a mix of land and sea ice, and one is entirely sea ice. Note here that the one that is increasing is increasing because the Antarctic land ice is melting. That adds a lot of fresh water to the ocean around Antarctica, so it freezes at a higher temperature. Temperature is up a little, but the freezing point is up much higher, so the sea ice is forming more easily. Look up Freezing Point Depression to understand the science behind this.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
Yes, wrong. Here, let me graph that for you. I see you didn't get the memo.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-90-models-global-Tsfc-vs-obs-thru-2013.png
WRONG. There is data that shows significant increases in CO2, (relative to the tiny amount present in the base-line), but no associated rise in Global Average Temps, for at least 17 years since the last anomaly. That's not weather, my friend, that's climate. And that's just fine. No correlation, no causation.
So more ice means global warming and less ice means global warming... lol!! I love it when liberals try to use science to get what they want. However it's a little troubling when otherwise well educated logical human beings buy into it...
It's about controlling you at the most intimate levels folks.. nothing more. Hitler was a big government, environmentalist, veggie eating, religion hating, gun control freak too. it's all long hair and free sex til they start locking you up for not smiling while they screw you....
You also have a lot of fresh water being added to the oceans around Antarctica due to the land ice melting. That brings down the salinity, and reduces the effects of freezing point depression. That sea ice forms at a higher temperature than it used to, so while the temperature is up a little, the freezing point is up more, hence more sea ice even with higher temperatures.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
>Guys like Al Gore are the problem with science.
He's a politician, not a scientist. That's his job.
And it's better than scientists expressing policy opinions masquerading as scientific findings.
Distinction without difference. Both ice caps were supposed to melt — dangerously increasing water-levels planetwide.
Citation needed.
This would explain, why the water levels have not risen. And it would illustrate, how the "conservatively formulated claims" of the scientists become shrill calls for immediate action ("We must do something!"), when the politicians get to them — and dangerously wasteful such actions can be...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It stands to reason...
...that the Earth is flat.
"It stands to reason", "it just makes sense", "it's common sense"... these are not just not arguments, they are anti-arguments: anyone using them is saying loudly and clearly "I have nothing to contribute to this discussion but here's some noise to dilute the signal."
Any time you find yourself offering an opinion based only on your imagination, please don't. Get some data, learn some modelling, do some statistics before you speak.
Philosophers attempted to understand the world for thousands of years based on what "just makes sense" and failed completely and utterly. After three hundred years of scientists showing us a better way--and showing that what "stands to reason" has absolutely nothing at all to do with the way the world actually is--there is really very little excuse for continuing to promulgate this erroneous and basically useless way of knowing.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Just one question - if the ice was getting less, would you say that it is getting cooler? Somehow I don't think so.
citation please
Riiiiight. "I took the initiative in creating the Internet." -- taken directly from your link. Did I need to bold the word "creating" or did you pick up on that?
Of course, the hotter it gets the more ice we'll see.
Arctic sea ice is rebounding too. So Antarctic sea ice is at record levels, and Arctic sea ice has moved well away from it's record low, FYI.
You criticize his logic by citing two places, one of which is as near a pole as the other is near the equator?
http://news.slashdot.org/story...
Well given that 5 years ago Al Gore said in 5 years time the Arctic will be completely ice free and it's completely covered in ice still, I would say they have a point. Back to the drawing board with the models at least. If there is one. Which I doubt.
According to
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/18941-arctic-sea-ice-and-al-gores-prediction-2013
All gore did NOT say in 5 years time the Arctic will be ice free. Do you have some better reference?
No, you do not need a control to draw conclusions.
What control do we use for the conclusion we have about gravity?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No, Arctic sea ice extent has not increased a lot since 2007. 2007 set a record at the time. 2014 has a somewhat greater extent than 2007, though still historically on the low side. 2012, though, holds the current record for minimum sea ice extent in the Arctic.
Aaa... Am I the ONLY one that doesn't understand this article? Is it a negative or a positive number? Extent can't be used by itself, ie "the "increase" is size to the extent of which has never been seen before."
So is this article saying that the arctic sea ice has increased, or decreased?
Fuck.. is it THAT difficult to learn English?
Maybe, but freezing is what the ice is doing currently (it's winter in Antarctica).
mobydisk says it well in his comment above - but unless you're talking about VOLUME of ice, the argument is all but meaningless for you deniers. and oh, the volume is shrinking.
Somehow a quite conservatively formulated claim (subjunctive mode, "some models, 75% chance, 5-7 years, during some month of the summer") magically morphed into the strong claim "Al Gore said in 5 years time the Arctic will be completely ice free".
And two years ago the summer arctic ice cover dropped to the lowest level ever recorded, only 1/3 of the average cover from 1981-2010, which is a divergence of more than three standard deviations, with all of the ice coverages since 2010 being far below that long term average.
It is pitiful how the existence of random variation superimposed over a very strong long term trend seems to succor the fantasies of denialists.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Polar opposites, you might say
Everyone is not getting it....
It is not global warming, CO2, solar output, it is planar sinking!!!
You see, the earth orbits the sun on an eliptical path. (Yes, everyone is exclaiming we know that.) Okay, but there is also an elevation to that. And clearly, the earth's elevation has sunk, and this results in the northern hemisphere receiving a greater share of the sun's output and the southern hemisphere less. All of our favorite snowflakes have decided it is just getting to warm in the Arctic and have begun a global migration south toward the Anarctic.
Downward Frost Migration
Er, that's kind of misleading. In 2007, Arctic ice coverage reached a record minimum. It also dipped a record amount below normal.
Both of those records have since been broken by quite a lot (in 2012). The 2014 low is/is going to be higher than 2012's. But I'm not sure whether it's sensible to say that ice coverage has increased since 2007, when that was a record low and the time since then includes a mixture of years with both greater and lesser amounts.
Many of us in Norway were promised global warming and now you f-ers are talking this crap about recovery!!!!!
What do we have to do to get you jerks to mess up some more ozone!!! I'm really not liking how this is turning out!
Does your Anthropomorphic Global Warming/Global Climate Change/Climate Disruption/Blame the Capitalists/White Guilt Cult have an official name yet?
It's short for "Fuck Yo Mama Up The Ass".
You like it? We dedicated it to YOUR mom. And her ass.
Sheesh! Sea ice has essentially zero effect on sea level whether it forms or melts. It's the land based ice like the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets that have an effect on sea level. If you're not paying enough attention to the science to understand even that simple concept why should I think anything else you have to say is worth listening to.
Citing the errors of celebrities, powerful politicians, authors, lobbyists, or influential policy advocates as evidence of the failings of science is... also jibberish.
Ignoring science is being ignorant. Pretty much by definition.
As for Gore being wrong, I'm not so sure about that:
I'm sure you can find one instance where he spoke off the cuff and oversimplified, but whatever.
Do you deny the opening of the arctic passage?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/27/us-shipping-coal-arctic-idUSBRE98Q0K720130927
Are you supporting this conspiracy theory of a "global warming hoax?" If you know something, speak up, it could be one of the greatest upsets in the history of science.
You mean if you drill down a bit it isn't millions of degrees down there? I feel betrayed!
Bringing up Al Gore does prove something. That there exists powerful people who have exaggerated the impact of climate change in order to accumulate further power and wealth. Of course, this doesn't change any scientific facts, but its an important consideration when evaluating any proposed policy changes.
So tell me Mr Troll....
what drives the creation of antarctic sea ice?
The scientists arent confused by this, because they know the answer already.
Only you and your fellow trolls are confused by this development.
And this at the same time that Arctic sea ice is still are record lows
(and no, it hasnt "recovered 41%" unless you want to ignore the past 3 decades of data to focus on only the past year or two, when it hit its lowest level ever)
And now cue my mod point stalker who mods every factual post i make "flamebait".
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Al Gore is not a scientist.
He is an activist, and he can draw attention to issues because of that.
He is also a lightning rod for dogwhistle politics.
The only individual who triggers a bigger "do the opposite of anything he says" spite reaction for certain folks is President Obama.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
That's a good attitude to take. Even though I am on the other side of the AGW debate, I'll agree with you there.
Small change I might suggest is that some of the beachfront homes in Malibu are getting hammered now due to erosion (nothing to do with sea levels or AGW, just plain beach erosion). So let's just say a coastal city such as LA or New York. I'll stay in NYC, you move inland.
I do stand corrected, "gibberish" is spelled with a "j".
Now tell me what evidence there is that global warming is a hoax?
as opposed to the hundreds of Republicans in congress who make wrong statements daily?
Statements like "God created the Earth, and as such global warming is impossible", "CO2 is a natural, harmless gas", "Coal ash is harmless", "CFCs have no effect on ozone", "Nicotine doesn't cause cancer", etc, etc etc etc?? Seriously, the list is endless. I dont have to post em all. And these are the same individuals on the science committee btw.
Al Gore is an activist with little real power unless he decides to run for office again.
He's also not that influential anymore, as basiaclly everyone has alrady taken a side in regrards to him (hint: only one side is backed by actual science!)
However all those Congress critters are actually current serving politicians. I'd be far more worried about them if you're going to play the "what he says matters" card.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Neither are the vast majority of politicians, activists, laymen, personalities, intellectuals and academics who lecture us on this issue. Still, he claims to represent the paradigm and if he does not, it's a real shame that none of these "scientists" (I use the term in its broadest possible sense) speak out against him. That they do not is indicative, don't you think?
Perhaps the only denialist is yourself, who sees trends in red noise data and claims apocalypse is near.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Its not a distinction without a difference.
the volume, age, and coverage of Arctic sea ice exhibits a very clear, very strong trend downwards. scientists have been repeatedly wondering if this will be the year we see an ice free summer, especially after 2012's record minimum.
in comparison, Antarctic sea ice shows a weak upward trend.
so yes, its a very important dinsticntion.
and the reason for action is simple: do you have any idea how much energy it takes to increase the temperature of entire ocean or continent to change the rate of ice formation or loss? hint: ITS A LOT.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
A thin surface requires colder temperatures to maintain as there's greater surface area and not as much insulation.
Isn't that true for everything? While at it, with all bias aside, I don’t get what is there to gain by reducing CO2 emission. If it’s all a "liberal" conspiracy, what are they trying to gain? Will they start charging for clean air? I can see what you get to gain by denying the problem exists but not the other way around. I can't see any logic in it.
What if it's on topic? Say, I dunno, when discussing climate change and citing a celebrity that won a noble prize for their related work?
I'll whole heartedly agree if you want to lay the failing at the feet of ever giving Gore the time of day in scientific circles, let alone a Noble prize. You'll have to forgive people for continually bringing Gore's statements on the matter forward though. His videos are showing up in schools to 'teach' kids about the important scientific research on climate change. My kids came home having watched before they were in grade 5. When the indoctrination is pushed that far out, people are NOT remiss to start pushing back.
IMO it's not much different than the situation with Islamic Jihadists and moderate Muslims. The fact some might claim common cause with a larger group doesn't make it so, but some denouncement from the greater community starts to become of importance. Regrettably, there has been little to no efforts made from the scientific community to distance itself from Gore's extreme proclamations and warnings. Yes, I know scientists don't appreciate having to come out of their research labs where they are doing actual real work to do stuff like that, but it's important. It's all the more important the more impact you believe your research has to society as a whole.
ahem...all **matter** AFFECTS its environment...
**some** matter is harmful to systems and the life those systems support
"too much of a good thing is bad for you"...that's a helpful maxim for you to undestand the fallacy of your logic
"pollution" by the very definition of the word is an AFFECT that has crossed the barrier to become "harmful"
if it's not harmful to the environment, it's not pollution...
this really ends the debate...people can verify the definition of pollution...you cannot escape the fact that human processes produce matter harmful to the environment...after that fact the rest follows logically right up to the EPA's mission
Thank you Dave Raggett
Sorry, but El Nino isn't cooperating.
Actually, given the likely solar activity we're going to see for the next twenty years, I fully expect a cooling trend of some type.
The right policy prescription is pretty simple - ton of research should go into cheap, clean energy sources like LFTR. Displacing coal power with clean energy is a win regardless of climate issues.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
If you're going to troll, at least try to do a decent job.
1. Al Gore is not now, nor has ever been, a climate scientist.
2. His remarks were purely speculative and had absolutely zero scientific support. There is not a single peer-reviewed research paper anywhere that makes such a claim.
3. The AR4 and AR5 model ensembles show an ice free summers in the arctic around the middle of this century.
4. The article is talking about ANTARCTIC SEA ICE, which has absolutely nothing to do with the ARCTIC SEA ICE.
Climate model ensembles have consistently predicted an overall increase in ANTARCTIC SEA ICE in the near term as a result of increased freshwater runoff from the continent. The decrease in salinity allows for ice to form at higher temperatures, thus expanding the sea ice extent.
~X~
Your objection is completely meaningless and is a logical fallacy besides.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
There is a distinction between the two, of course, but it is without difference to the topic of this thread. Both ice-caps were supposed to shrink (with dire consequences for the rest of the world, of course).
One expedition set out to measure the loss of the ice, found itself stuck in it — not that it changed the leading professor's opinion about the global warming...
The Antarctic sea ice extent was not and is not projected to shrink in the near term. It was expected to expand as a result of the influx of fresh water from increasing land ice melt. As the planet continues to warm it will reach a point where the ice extent will start shrinking again (as the 0C starts pushing further south), but that isn't projected to happen until later this century.
~X~
And citing a very specific effect in very specific conditions instead of nature, without context impliying that it's the general effect isn't a technicality. Right...
Bunch of climate terrorists
That word...I do not think it means what you think it means.
Ignoring science in favour of conspiracy theories is ignorant. Citing the errors of celebrities as evidence of the failings of science is... jibberish.
Now, if we could just get public policy to be based on the former instead of the latter...
Climate models are exercises in curve fitting. They're programmed to fit the data. They are adjusted to fit actual reality, not predict it in advance. This is the pea under the thimble.
Is there a website dedicated to Gore misquotes? There should be, but I can't find it with Google.
The GW one didn't even make it on Snopes.
Concern troll is concerned.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I and many others would like to see this contrary evidence you speak of, along with the physics that model the scenario AND can adequately explain observations from both present and past AND does not violate little things like thermodynamics and conservation of energy.
~X~
[edited] I agree with your basic premise but most Creation Science opponents ignore and will not address contrary evidence, preferring instead to ridicule and cast aspersions, as you do. What is there to fear from an open discussion and equal treatment of all available evidence, unless a predetermined outcome is the goal?
There was a good comment on some /. thread last week, talking about finding the balance between proving scientific theories and repeatedly disproving the same fallacious data.
The issue here is that of confusing scientific research and politics/religion. AGW crosses the line quite often, but opponents to AGW spend most of their time across the line. Actual discussion can start once these two are separated, and they can both be presented for what they are, instead of studies being presented as proof for a political agenda, and politics prompting scientists with finite resources to "run the numbers again".
when I say "this ends the debate"...I'm referring to the debate about "global warming " or "climate change" and whether it exists
the *only* logical question is "how much pollution is too harmful?"
defining "too harmful" is certainly up for debate...that's a productive direction...we get together and use science to see what levels of pollution from our modern society are managable
now, specifically "carbon"...a person can acknowledge that carbon pollution contributes to global warming and not support a policy like "cap and trade"...and we can have a debate and draw a final conclusion on this issue.
we can know scientificially whether too much carbon emissions harms the environment...it's testable with science...and the results are in my friend...
Thank you Dave Raggett
Back to global cooling?
Its funny how people like you manage to be pompous and dismissive despite being on the losing side. Do you think AGW is a real threat? Do you think that policy should be enacted to counter it? Then you need to get off your high horse and address the concerns of the people opposed to you. Calling people "fuckwits" isn't exactly the convincing logical argument that you think it is.
Thats the whole reason I came to this thread. To watch the "Anthropogenic Climate Change" crowd vs the "Global Warming is a Myth" crowd flame war. *munches popcorn* I stopped trying to reason with either side ages ago, now I just come to learn new and more interesting ways of insulting people.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Oh, you're a denier.
*plonk*
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Precipitation occurs closer to the freezing point. The colder it gets, the less there is, in general(because there's less moisture in the air, which makes it hard to have precipitation).
Talking about snow, specifically, that is. Not precipitation in general
Al Gore
DRINK!
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
It makes no difference to the topic of dire predictions not materializing... Because it means, that other predictions made by the same people using the same methods aren't likely to materialize either — and thus any public policies based on such predictions should be scrapped.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
FTFA: "As the area covered in sea ice expands scientists have said the ice on the continent of Antarctica which is not over the ocean continues to deplete." Next time, RTFA.
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
Actually in terms of volume both are shrinking.
The Arctic is in the north, this article is about the Antarctic, which is in the south. The artic had indeed lost nearly all is winter I've cover, including ice that is multiple years old (which is the most important stuff)
You're just being willfully ignorant. The north polar cap is sea ice. Its melting does not affect sea levels. The albedo change could have some consequences like feedback to increase warming, and changes in weather patterns, but the most "dangerous" melting is that of land-based glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica. Ice sliding off continents into the ocean is what will cause the most sea level rise in the long term (and incidentally increases the amount of sea ice - others have covered it well).
All people already in government would gain increased governmental control over the citizenry's lives — the vast majority of them believe, they "know better" than their subjects — bless our little hearts — how to live. Which is why you haven't yet seen a "green" measure proposed, that reduced that control, have you?
In addition, the "green" measures cause the Capitalism to slow down — a cause dear to the Illiberals and the foreign handlers of some of them. Seriously, scratch a "green" activist, and you'll find a Che Guevara T-shirt underneath...
Could you be more specific? What do I get to gain? Do you suppose, I — or the KKKoch brothers — have a wonderful new planet for ourselves (or our children) to emigrate to, when Earth becomes too polluted? Some kind of Elysium being built for the 1%?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The North Polar ice cap
increased — a lot — instead of shrinking so he was not even in ball-park.
The North Polar ice cap increased in the last seven years? On what planet?
I see you don't let reading comprehension slow you down on jumping to conclusions.
You can keep looking for an excuse to ignore me — or just close your ears and sing "La-la-la". Truth remains — global warming was "oversold" to the general population by the usual alliance of the dishonest seeking to profit from the implementation of measures proposed to fight it and the stupid, who agreed with them.
The various dire predictions are failing to materialize — and even when they were made, none of his allies have questioned, why Al Gore himself purchased a wonderful piece of real estate on the coast rather than in the mountains somewhere.
To continue to push forward policies based on the same predictions — and the (pseudo-)scientific models that lead to them in the first place, is irresponsible if not outright criminal...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Bzzz! False. Quoting the above-mentioned professor of "Climate Change" from Australia (emphasis mine): "Sea ice is disappearing due to climate change, but here ice is building up".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Gain control? For what purpose? That sounds illogical. Before the 20th century, it was normal to throw the contents of chamber pots out the window, into the streets. Are you suggesting that by telling people they should not do that and instead investing in a proper infrastructure to handle the waste was done solely for gaining control of people’s lives? The way I see it, if this all bogus, we end up with cleaner air, less pollution and a better place to live. If it’s real, we did something about it. You win either way.
As usual, geekoid comes outta the woodwork with awesome, informative posts like these. Let me go ahead and respond with an equally awesome response:
Yes, they have.
A cube of ice melts and some reforms into a thinner plate of ice.
Area increase, ice still lost by volume.
NYC had a hurricane.
Larger winters have occurred.
Northern California has 90% humidity where it normally has low.
It's almost like some energy source is pumping water into water vapor and causing problems.
For the same reason politicians become politicians (and policemen become pigs) — the feeling of control over fellow human beings gives them a high...
Not obviously, actually. Tesla's wonderful batteries, for example, are a hell to make and aren't particularly easy to dispose of either. The early "green" toilets don't use enough water to do the job quite often — requiring multiple flushes, where an old one would've done with one. The mandatory recycling of this and that requires additional trucks on the road to haul the "special" refuse without clear benefits to the environment — in fact, often enough the stuff ends up in general refuse anyway after incurring all of the costs (financial and environmental) of the separate handling. The certified "green" buildings (sometimes?) use more energy, than regular structures...
Yeah. There is this line of thinking — Blaise Pascal, in his time, put forth the same idea on whether or not God exists.
Good to see, you aren't (any longer?) claiming it is the science, that drives your thinking about global warming... You aren't alone.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Well, if Al Gore was as full of it as we all now know him to have been, you would think that someone would have called him out on it, but the "consensus" of scientists that agreed with the catastrophic predictions of AGW (and that it was happening) didn't do so. Either they didn't know he was wrong, or they didn't correct him because he was supporting their views. Either way, it's not a good track record for the scientists.
It would have given all sorts of street cred for climate scientists to say something like, "Now hold on there, Mr. VP. AGW is happening, etc., etc., but your predictions are way off base. Here's what we believe will happen." Now maybe that is what happened, but I don't recall reading about it. So yes, the entire AGW "crowd" does take a credibility hit for letting the Veep speak for them.
Also, I thought his Nobel Prize was for playing himself on "Futurama". He was one of the best non-actors ever to play a part on a Matt Groening cartoon. I'll give him credit for that... but I think Hank Aaron narrowly edged him out because "hollygram" was his idea. :-)
Has it been "gaining ice"
I thought ice over land was melting, the local salinity drops, the freezing point rises, some ice forms, but not as much as melted from the landmass.
This is "gaining ice", in the same way that changing a hundred into tiny 80 $1 bills gains money.
Sure, you can cover more area with your $1 bills. But the true moron says they gained money.
there is no dissenting data.
theres more sea ice because it USED TO BE land ice. before it melted. and ran into the ocean.
if there was a giant stream of fresh water (and continent worth of melting ice) in teh arctic, we would probably see expanding sea ice up there too.
conversely, if you could block all that fresh water in Antarctica from reaching and mixing into the ocean, we'd probably see decreasing sea ice down there.
the science is consistent, regardless of your ability to grasp it.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
It is dissenting data, doofus. This is because it flies in the face of the bullshit claims made by the alarmists that the polar ice caps would be melted by now. And, it's dissenting data, because the anonymous coward I originally responded to, who obviously prefers to suckle at the disinformational teet of the alarmists, wants to bury it.
sig: sauer
Learning is against his religion.
Your response is just makes it evident that politics are more important to you than the science. The various "dire" predictions are materializing on schedule or in some cases ahead of schedule and you would know that if you paid attention to the science. Yes, there have been a few hyperbolic statements here and there but they are not mainstream science.
BTW, Al Gore's place on the coast is far enough above sea level and won't have problems with SLR for several hundred years.
A more accurate, but much less attention grabbing headline would have been "0.15% annual increase in Antarctic Sea continues for 35th year". Given the strong trend, most years would be expected to be "record years".
No.
AGW is a concept. Proponents of AGW can cross the line.
Compare apples and apples, please. It helps things go more smoothly.
The North Polar ice cap increased in the last seven years? On what planet?
Mars?
If it’s all a "liberal" conspiracy, what are they trying to gain?
Not to pick sides, but just to answer your question:
Carbon Credits
Vast Government agencies to oversee environmental regulations
Alternative fuel research and corporations
Grants and associated kickbacks for "green" and "clean" industry
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I agree with your basic premise but most AGW advocates ignore and will not address contrary evidence, preferring instead to ridicule and cast aspersions, as you do.
Increasing seasonal sea ice in Antarctica is not "contra-evidence", it's a prediction that most models have been making for over 20yrs now, the mechanism that causes the counter intuitive result is well understood. So called "skeptics" are flogging a dead horse in their attempts to cite it as some sort of "smoking gun" that climate scientists are attempting to hide. The often intentionally misleading claim is ranked at #10 on skeptical sciences list of most popular climate myths.
As for Al Gore, any internet idiot can play "gottcha science" by taking words out of context and deliberately misinterpreting them. However the scientists who were lead authors of the IPCC reports that Gore's documentary was based on gave it a good review for it's representation of the report. Of course there were minor errors, and yes, the scientists pointed them out. The reason Gore shared the Nobel prize with the IPCC is that he put the IPCC's monumental lit-review effort squarely at the center of public policy debate.
Useful idiots? - As someone who has followed climate science with interest since the late 70's, Gore's documentary was an excellent (but imperfect) explanation of the science and it's real world consequences. It's a shame so many slashdotters mindlessly join in when the Gore bashing starts, he's the only well educated geek that has come close to sitting in the whitehouse for a very long time. History will admire his charitable public education efforts, even if most american's currently do not.
Disclaimer: I've been well known on slashdot for commenting on climate related stories for around 15yrs now, I'm not and have never been an "AGW advocate", I'm a science advocate.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Regrettably, there has been little to no efforts made from the scientific community to distance itself from Gore's extreme proclamations and warnings.
Sigh, the scientific community almost unanimously came out of the lab to praise the documentary because they felt it was a "bloody accurate" representation of their work.
Yes, I know scientists don't appreciate having to come out of their research labs where they are doing actual real work to do stuff like that, but it's important. It's all the more important the more impact you believe your research has to society as a whole.
Agree, now if you do some fact checking you will find the vast majority of climate scientists have already come out of their labs to loudly defend Gore's work, I'm not sure what your reading/viewing habits are, but you obviously missed the last 10yrs of debate, so the question is now - what will you tell your kids? - Can you set a good example by demonstrating a true skeptic changes his mind when confronted with inconvenient facts, or will misplaced pride take you down the creationist road?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Hint: Al Gore is not a scientist. If you're serious about learning things, you look at the actual climate science instead of politicians whose job is to dumb things down and make them sound dire enough to motivate the public.
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Another way of looking at it is that Gore puts his money where his mouth is, and considering the profits are fed back into his educational charity it's hard to see how it has given him more power and wealth than (say) a post-political career as a corporate lobbyist. For the most part I find American's in particular are generally for/against his charitable work based not on the contents of his documentaries, but on the perceived colour of his politics. The rest of the world don't really know him as as a politician, and are therefore less inclined to instinctively "shoot the messenger".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
No, you do not need a control to draw conclusions.
What control do we use for the conclusion we have about gravity?
Please, be ignorant somewhere else. It's not that hard to do gravity experiments with controls. For example, a good example is the Cavendish experiment. Here, there are two heavy movable weights which pull via gravity on two smaller weights. You can move the heavy weights around so that they pull on the small weights in the opposite direction or remove them altogether, giving you a control.
Further, we can observe dynamics of regions of low density space and see how those are far less dominated by local gravity that the surface of Earth is. This is another study of gravity that gives you a control.
OTOH, the ozone hole is in tiger-repelling rock territory. We don't know how often or under what circumstances ozone holes have formed over the past few million years. Is it a regular thing or is it very unusual? Your assurances aren't worth the effort of making them. We need actual evidence instead.
Remember, the science is settled.......move the fuck on.
This cant be true.....remember, the science is settled....move on
Climate models are exercises in curve fitting. They're programmed to fit the data. They are adjusted to fit actual reality, not predict it in advance. This is the pea under the thimble.
You couldn't be more wrong.
FAQ on Climate Models
FAQ on Climate Models: Part 2
How's your liver L. J. Beauregard? After this tread I don't imagine you're in the hospital because of alcohol poisoning.
I already lead you to the water, it's up to you to drink or continue to troll.
For the jackass AC below, I'm nowhere near liberal. Go look at my history of posts, even on this topic, where I was accused numerous times of being a "denier" (that term is still for assholes to use), but I've recently spent significant time reading up on the topic, and have come to the conclusion that there's no logical argument against AGW. If you think you have one, I'd love to hear it.
Just another day in Paradise
PS: Bad form to reply to own post but I'd also like to say I agree with your post, those consideration are a matter of due-diligence in my mind.
Of course you will also want to apply the same standards to the claims made by those upholding the status quo. After all, the FF industry is one of the most powerful economic entities on the planet, it has a lot more power and wealth than Gore, they are at least an order of magnitude higher in assets than the clean energy industry as a whole.
We have already seen the US senate abused in a failed attempt to discredit a single scientific paper. What I would like to see now is a repeat of the "tobacco trials" for the coal industry and their pet politicians (yes senator Inhofe, I'm looking at you)..
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Yes, because Al Gore is the high priest of climate change and whatever he is (mis)quoted as saying is axiomatically the Scientific Truth of the day.
Grow up.
This isn't the ice cap. Also look at a diagram showing the average extent and the current extent.
This is a clear case of arguing about apples while using oranges as an example.
You are using Fox news as a thing to cite!
What's your next source - Uri Gellar?
Nothing is ALLOWED to contradict global warming.
Bullshit. He had both power and wealth before he took that line and has less power and not much more wealth now.
Al Gore is a powerful person who has exaggerated the impact of climate change in a (possibly misguided) attempt to make policy makers take the threat more seriously.
The fact that he personally gets wealthier from it - is an example of someone putting their money where their mouth is. He believes in AGW, and the sooner everyone accepts he's right, the sooner his investments will pay off big. That's what you're supposed to do, in a capitalist system.
Sorry, the *sea ice* volume is probably much higher. You can't as easily measure that from a satellite, but it's what is to be expected. What's happening is the glaciers that were on the Antarctica land mass are moving out into the ocean and floating. This increases the area of sea ice coverage and decreases the amount of ice on land. But sea ice melts as it moves around, so it keeps disappearing as it moves towards the equator.
P.S.: Another way of saying the same story is "Antarctica has been spawning icebergs faster than the bergs have been melting".
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
unhhh.... you do know that the Arctic Ocean is essentially clear of ice during the late summer these days don't you? And that passenger ships are starting to ask for the right to route their trips through that area? (It's still not safe enough for a standard ship, because one iceberg can ruin your whole day...but it's getting there.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Studies have determined there is no "Convincing logical argument" that will persuade climate change deniers, and the same applies to anti-vaxxers. So call them names or anything else you desire, since it is impossible to change their minds no matter what you do.
And here I thought we were talking about ice. Snow is precipitation, ice is frozen water. Generally snow may or may not melt upon reaching the earth depending on surface temperature. Ice of course is formed by freezing temperatures causing water to freeze. I'm not a climatologist but I do have a general idea of the basics.
AGW?? I read that as "Anti-Global Warming", but it doesn't match the rest of your message. Perhaps you should spell out your abbreviations a bit more. I suppose it could also be "Anthropogenic Global Warming", but I see that phrase much less often.
When the same TLA could mean two totally opposite things, it might be a good idea to avoid it...or at least to define it in context.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Sorry, but while it adds fresh water *ICE* to the ocean, it gets added almost entirely as ice without undergoing a melt phase until it gets far north of Antarctica. So you aren't getting a lot of fresh water added to the Antarctic ocean. You're getting ice (which is, indeed, fresh water) added to the ocean. It gets a considerable distance from Antactica before it typically melts. (Except, of course, a little bit, which lubricates the flow of the glaciers.)
OTOH, if the sea ice were trapped around Antarctica, I suppose it would melt. Fresh water has a higher freezing point than salt water. But I don't believe that's what typically happens.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Ice is also made by snow. Glaciers are formed by snow. The geological definition of an ice sheet, like the Antarctic ice sheets, is a continental glacier.
Here's a very straightforward summary from wiki: Ice enters the sheet through precipitation as snow. This snow is then compacted to form glacier ice which moves under gravity towards the coast. Most of it is carried to the coast by fast moving ice streams. The ice then passes into the ocean, often forming vast floating ice shelves. These shelves then melt or calve off to give icebergs that eventually melt.
Proof please.
Them hurray, the science really is over and the majority of the population has decided to do nothing. Move on now please.
Matters to who? The Earth doesn't care. The Earth's going to do what it's going to do - regardless of anybody's opinion.
The best we can do is to take into account all the information we have and make sense of it with models. What we know makes it pretty clear that A) avg global temperatures are rising, and B) it's because we're dumping fossil carbon into the atmosphere.
Gore's prediction 5 yrs ago that the N Pole could be ice free by now is trotted out by anti-scientific types who want to change the subject from science to politics. Physics doesn't care about politics. If we were smart, we'd focus our thinking on just the physics.
Oh please.
Um, nicotine doesn't cause cancer. Sure, tobacco use causes cancer, but nicotine is no more cancer causing than caffeine. Although, both are bad for your heart. Otherwise, we would be in big trouble in a few years when hostipals become engulfed by patients with arm cancer, caused of course by their nicotine patches.
Bringing up Al Gore does prove something. That there exists powerful people who have exaggerated the impact of climate change in order to accumulate further power and wealth. Of course, this doesn't change any scientific facts, but its an important consideration when evaluating any proposed policy changes.
Bringing up the Koch brother conspiracy does prove something. That there exists powerful people who have actively degraded the message of the impact of climate change in order to accumulate further power and wealth. Of course, this doesn't change any scientific facts, but its an important consideration when evaluating why there are no effective policy changes.
Cryonics - Keep cool and carry on.
The link you point to simply points out (rightly or wrongly) that volume is different from surface area. It does not explain why it matters. It certainly doesn't matter for sea levels whether the sea ice is thick or thin. And for positive/negative feedback, it is area, not volume that counts.
The troll here is you. And you're an arrogant idiot to boot.
Correct: the Earth doesn't care. It just keeps getting warmer. What matters is what we do, and when politicians like Gore lie, it hurts us all.
Physics has little to do with it. The primary science concerned with deciding what to do about global warming is economics, and it's pretty clear: we should do nothing.
Google "Mpemba effect"
You may be correct, but you are not serving your position well. Whether or not your "facts" are or are not in fact facts, the strident use of an emotionally loaded, provocative term like "denier" is in fact Name- calling. It is ad hominum. It is unhelpful. It is annoying. It damages the persuasiveness of your position.
BTW actual citations from the literature are more credible than "Testable? Yes. Tested? Yes."
I'm guessing most people will feel pretty stupid, and should, for falling prey to the word choice in the headline...
I'd like to remind folks the derivative of a volume is a surface (area).
Now for the only article I could quickly find not blatantly directed at fourth graders...
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface-area-to-volume_ratio
As many others have said, a record "area" for sea ice means nothing when we are concerned about its volume (quantity).
Don't either bother arguing about it, it's a waste of breath.
krill overlords.
Here you go: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/ear...
You're welcome!
Procrastination Man strikes again!
There's more sea ice, because there is more movement of the land ice. Antarctica is actually a *continent* (you arctic-centric fools!), covered in a land-bound ice cap.
That land-bound ice cap is thinning, getting undercut by water streams, and being pushed off into the sea where it creates silly headlines, before it melts.
It would seem that we have reached an agreement. If you need me, I'll be in the Midwest.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Luckily you're the only one talking about "energy starvation", so that's a moot point. There are many ways to reduce CO2 without "energy starvation".
What an awesome religion to have actual evidence to back it up.
He didn't what?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
No wonder you are confused about AGW: you seem to get your scientific understanding from politicians.
See what the scientists are claiming, not what Al Gore is saying. Conflating the two only reflects poorly on you, not on the science.
Back to the drawing board with your snide, trite comments. Maybe the next one will not make you look like a fool. Here's hoping.
Scientific theories have been proven wrong time and time again throughout history.
yep! therefore we can take all of Science with a grain of salt. no, we're not riding around in technologically-advanced automobiles, that couldn't be without the grace of TAH LAHRD almighty! Instead, they're obviously Intelligently Designed JebusVehicles that grew naturally on the bush of God just over yonder ridge.
It doesn't change the underlying science, though, which is what the OP was claiming. So no, in the context of models, it doesn't matter one iota.
Gore didn't even lie. He said there was a strong chance it could be ice-free in the summer months within a few years. That nearly came to pass - we can see the summer ice lessening. He was right, but as most people left out the language he used (which pointed at it being a possibility, not a certainty), it's another one of those misquotes trotted out by people with an axe to grind and a terrible education.
No, it's definitely spelt with a G.
No, using "could be" is correct scientific terminology for denoting a prediction is not entirely certain. That's it. The rest of your diatribe is a mix of misunderstanding, conjecture, and political nonsense. You seem to be confused as to whether you are lambasting the science or the politics - it just looks like an angry mess.
Your educators should be fired, as they messed up greatly.
It's fun to ignore science! You're my hero!
It would help if you stopped confusing two years of local hurricanes with a long-term global trend... That just makes you sound like you have no idea what you're talking about, but value your own opinion so much that nothing will stop you telling everyone about it.
The world getting hotter due to human activity = Anthropogenic Global Warming
The changes in the climate due to the world getting hotter = Climate Change
It's not hard to understand what these terms mean if you decide for one heartbeat to be open and actually try to educate yourself.
"tribalism and ignorance"
Name em. cause otherwise its still just hte same garbage you always spout.
What markets? Green energy industry? That market already exists.
What profit motive? Seriously...what? He's already rich.
While he was an important and successful politician before, these days he's more involved in charity work and activism. His influence is nothing compared to the current sitting members of congress.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
they do not because their more concerned with actual sitting emmbers of congress, on the science committees, who say things like "god wont let the planet cook" and "CO2 is harmless".
if a non scientist is generally right, but wrong on specifics, or overstates, but is still generally on the right side of the debate, they might be excused for ignoring hm to focus on the non-scientists who put their fingers in their ears and go "lalallalalaitsnothappening".
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
We will adapt.
We should adapt because anything else is bad both for us and for the planet.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
That's from 2 years ago friendo.
Al Gore claimed there would be no ice left by now. None. That's a bit different than "slight decrease in volume and large increase in area."
Reading that article on Snopes one gets the idea that they're just splitting hairs. He definitely took credit for the rise of the Internet.
You are wrong on all counts.
One: he never said it. The relevant passage in his speech, which you so thoughtfully left out in order to misconstrue what he said, is:
Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is "falling off a cliff." One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years. Seven years from now.
http://www.truth-out.org/opini...
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobe...
Two: It's only recovering if you ignore the past 3 decades of observation in order to focus on the past 2 years. The trend is down down down. 2012 was the lowest EVER RECORDED. So low it broke all records and even went beyond standard statistical deviation expectations. The last two years were more ice than 2012, but so was EVERY YEAR EVER RECORDED. That's what happens when you set a new record low. Make no mistake: The past 2 years of ice coverage have still be below average, and the trend is still down. It is NOT recovering, it is NOT increasing.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...
Thank you for playing, but your lies and half truths have no place here.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Mod this joker down. he is neither insightful, nor correct, and he deliberately misquotes in order to create false impressions.
To Mi:
You are wrong on all counts.
And the morphing is being done by you.
One:
The relevant passage in his speech, that is to say, THE FULL ACTUAL QUOTE, which you so thoughtfully left out in order to misconstrue what he said, is:
Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is "falling off a cliff." One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years. Seven years from now.
Emphasis added to show the oh so important part you left out.
http://www.truth-out.org/opini...
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobe...
Two:
It's only recovering if you ignore the past 3 decades of observation in order to focus on the past 2 years. The trend is down down down. 2012 was the lowest EVER RECORDED. So low it broke all records and even went beyond standard statistical deviation expectations. The last two years were more ice than 2012, but so was EVERY YEAR EVER RECORDED. That's what happens when you set a new record low. Make no mistake: The past 2 years of ice coverage have still be below average, and the trend is still down. It is NOT recovering, it is NOT increasing.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...
Three:
Oh hey, you tossed in Solyndra too (Drink!). Do we really REALLY need to cover how Slyndra is just another dogwhistle distraction from the facts? How Solyndra and its ilk represented not even 3% of all monies loaned out by the DOE? How the other 97% have not onlyy been successful, but the Government has actually earned a profit, such that over the course of the program it was made more money that it loaded out? How the government earned a return on its investment and success rate unseen and generally unheard of in the private venture capiltal world? How Solyndra's, and other solar panel startups, failing was not due to their own mistakes, not due to any scam or con, but due to the fact China's panel amkers are heaviliy subsidized and undercut the international market? Or how some of the companies who initially failed, are now getting up and back on their feet again?
Bringing up Solyndra is akin to saying "global warming can't be real because it's cold outside".
It's that kind of ignorance and posturing. It's that kind of denial of, or ignoring of, reality.
Thank you for playing, but your lies and half truths have no place here.
Go away.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
furthermore, here's images to illusrate how bad the arctic polar ice situation is. Just 10 years ago the arctic ocean was not navigable except by specially built boats (ie: icebreakers), even in summer/fall (minimum is reached ~September). Now it is. So again, Mi: nothing you say is correct or factual.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-co...
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Deniers have nothing interesting or worthwhile, or even reality-based to say at this point, so there's no point in annoying myself by reading their drivel.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
wow are you an idiot.
Arctic ice has long been predicted to decrease. And it has been. We've already covered how you are wrong about it "increasing". It's not. YOu're wrong.
Antarctic SEA ice has long been predicted to increase. And it has been.
Antacrtic LAND ice has long been predicted to decrease. And it has been.
The two are connected.
The predictions HAVE BEEN materializing.
You have yet to post anything approaching a factual statement.
Your continued posts on the subject only serve to further expose your ignorance of the subject.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
ah yes.
"we got stuck in ice, therefore GW is not real"...
who keeps modding this fool informative?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Fox news... ...one of the biggest climate misinformers and climate misquoters and "simply doesnt know what they are talking about concerning...anything"... ...is your source....
Ya.....nope. At best, in court, it would be hearsay. As in "my friend said that jonny said that beth said..."
Here's what actual science has to say on the subject:
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Who mods this garbage insightful?
1) It's not "completely" covered in ice.
2) You're misquoting Gore. The full statement he made is:
"Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is "falling off a cliff." One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years. Seven years from now."
You and Mi, if you're not the same person, are two of the biggest liars and misinformers on this subject on this site.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
You're confusion about what was actually predicted, doesnt make it reality.
The prediction are, and have been, that:
-Artcic sea ice will decrease (it is)
-Antarctic sea ice will increase (it is)
-Antarctic land ice will decrease (it is)
The two antarctica ones are linked. Which if you read the article, you owuld understand.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
1. You do know CO2 is natural, right?
2. You do know CO2 is harmless, right? Well, CO2 is harmless like water is harmless. Yes, you can use it to sufficate/drown somebody, if you really want to. Yes, both can act as a blanket to hold in heat. But, water is actually significantly better at traping heat and by GW impact more harmful. You do understand without either, plants would die? You anti-plant bigot.
3. You do know that CO2 is not a pollutant?
4. It is awesome that in your post talking about other people being wrong, you were incorrect. Thank you for making my morning
What about when he said in his movie "Inconvient Truth" that next year we'd have a record number of hurricanes and we had ... 1?
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Could not agree more regarding climate models and state of Antarctic ice. The cooler temps over last decade+ and increased ice doesn't change anything with models. The models are just as irrelevant and flawed today as they were yesterday and in the 90s.
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The models/predictions have failed to fit real-world observations? That being umm, a huge component of science.
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Properly pronounced political propaganda always leaves wiggle room.
Everybody should have "an ax to grind" with progressives, given how destructive their policies have been.
Sea ice cover (and that means surface area, not volume) matters a great deal "in the context of models", because it changes reflectivity.
(Of course, while various descriptive parts of climatology are scientific, climate models are little more than the reading of goat entrails and based on numerous guesses and assumptions. They also haven't been very good at actually predicting the future.)
Right, tribalism and ignorance. I can flip your statement to: "Alarmists have nothing interesting or worthwhile, or even reality-based to say at this point, so there's no point in annoying myself by reading their drivel."
But besides that, he gave a nuanced argument about Al Gore that had nothing to do with denying the scientific position of climate change. Yet you immediately labeled him a denier and ignored him.
Every religion thinks it has actual evidence to back it up.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
And you'd be factually wrong. There is such a thing as being so open-minded your brains fall out, and you're unwittingly demonstrating this with your false equivalence.
His "argument" about Al Gore was hardly nuanced, he's just giving the argumentum ad Goram cover because he happens to sympathize with the deniers, and that's enough in my book.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
water is necessary for human life
yet, humans can **poison** themselves by drinking too much water: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wo...
water = necessary for life
too much water = deadly poison
Thank you Dave Raggett
It would help if you wouldn't pretend the long term global hurricane trend wasn't also running against your team.
The article states "two dimensional area". A couple of years ago satilite images showed more ice coverage then expected. What they found was that instead of the meters thick ice they found chucks of ice that had melted and then refroze, it was thin and brittle with notice loss of over volume of ice.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Envir...
The same decline can be seen in northern lakes
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activit...
Are you trying to suggest that the earths ice sheets are NOT diminishing?
Can you clarify that? Because from my understanding some predictions have been off on one side or the other. Some changes have been faster or more dramtic then expected, while others have been a bit slower or less dramatic but still heading in the same general direction. In fact hasn't the underlying trend has been confirmed over and over by observation? So if a prediction was for all sea ice to be gone but only half is, what would that be proof of to you?
troll be trolling.
or troll needs to learn to read a graph:
http://static.skepticalscience...
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/...
Courtesy: http://www.skepticalscience.co...
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Did you read the part of the summary that says " two dimensional area". The volume of ice is not increasing, not even a little. Below is a link with a pretty thorough explanation with lots of citations pertaining to how the data is gathered and measured. The last line clearly states "Antarctica is losing land ice as a whole, and these losses are accelerating quickly." http://www.skepticalscience.co...
I'm far from the only one talking about realities. Sucks to be you, volunteering no specifics that work.
So OK, oh wise one. What are you going to use if not carboniferous fuel? Nuclear? The sole place I can see where that is advancing is China and India. The Luddites elsewhere will never allow it, even if safety and waste disposal are ever adequately addressed, which they never have been to date. Fusion? Snort. See you in 1,000 years. Maybe. Solar and wind? They are extremely unsteady and require topping from - wait for it - carboniferous sources. And they cost vastly more. That's going to put the lower part of the 99% into energy poverty because they can't afford it. Oh, you're going to socialize and subsidize energy costs? That's going to hammer the economy into a depression.
In the real world, as in the game of Hammurabi, you have only so many resources and you can either spend them wisely and effectively, or unwisely and with sad effect..
Arctic and antarctic ice are in different situations and behave differently. Al Gore is not a scientist, and should not be taken as any sort of climate authority. For those two reasons, your post is inapplicable.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Sure they aren't? Some of them disagree with him publicly. How much responsibility does a scientist have for debunking an erroneous spokesperson? Bear in mind that Gore is a high-level politician, and has ways of getting information out to the public that scientists don't.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
And you'd be factually wrong. There is such a thing as being so open-minded your brains fall out, and you're unwittingly demonstrating this with your false equivalence.
All I'm demonstrating is your tribalism and ignorance on display. You can be emotional and unintelligent on any side of the issue.
His "argument" about Al Gore was hardly nuanced, he's just giving the argumentum ad Goram cover because he happens to sympathize with the deniers, and that's enough in my book.
On display.
True, Al Gore has influence, but that doesn't affect the underlying facts.
As far as I can tell, climate scientists do examine evidence carefully. However, there's a limit to how many times they want to address the same long-discredited arguments and lack of evidence. An open discussion is useful, provided all sides support their claims and are willing to change their minds. Lots of anti-AGW people use the same stupid arguments, lie about the evidence, and aren't willing to change their minds, and bringing them into a discussion merely raises the noise level.
In my experience, ask an intelligent question and you'll get an intelligent answer. Malign people, claim they're stupid for not considering something already thoroughly considered, and make the same stupid arguments over and over, and you'll get properly labeled a denier.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
So, you argue that Fox News is biased and wrong. Then, you post links to a website owned and operated by a single individual with a clearly biased view of his own.
Your logics are lost on me.
Except that the people opposed tend to be opposed on political or economic or emotional grounds, and are not subject to conversion by rational argument. (I've seen evidence that presenting evidence against a false but strongly held belief increases the belief.) It is not possible to address their concerns rationally. No convincing logical argument is going to work (or it would have already), so using expletives and insults doesn't make things any worse and may make those of us who actually do think feel better.
I'm not including people who ask intelligent questions here, since they do tend to get them answered intelligently and are not normally insulted. However, if we have to convince large numbers of people who are anti-science, anti-intellectual, or financially committed to AGW being wrong before, we're in really deep trouble.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If the warming continues, and is not reversed, we probably will have both ice caps melting. As it is, we're seeing much less Arctic sea ice, and a bit less Antarctic land ice. It's going to take a long time to raise the water level enough to drown coastal cities, though, as ice takes a lot of energy to melt.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
WRONG.
A question for you and everyone who thinks that CO2 controls the climate. How long with rising CO2 and flat or falling temperatures before you admit your theory is wrong? 20 years? 30? Never?
All 5 of the major datasets (RSS, UAH, HadCRUT4, GISS, NCDC) show no warming for between 14 and almost 18 years. In that time CO2 has risen 8-10%.
Here are 2 predictions. First I predict that CO2 will continue to increase because
China and other countries don't care about CO2. They don't even care about real pollutants much less CO2. Second I predict it will get colder over the next 20-30 years. Why?
Dr Libby in the 1970s said that "looking forward it will stay cold until the mid 80s (it did), then it will warm by about 1/4 degree F until the end of the century (it did), then it gets cold". When asked how cold she was predicting a 1-2 degree F drop with an
outside chance of a 3-4 degree drop. Pray it is the former.
Dr Easterbrook in 2001 said the PDO was done it's positive warm cycle and that we were in for 25-30 years of cold weather. How cold? We have his good, bad and ugly predictions based on previous negative cold phases of the PDO. Pray it is the first one.
Dr Abdusamatov in 2006 said we are at the top of the temperature sine wave and it will be 200 years of cold weather. Pray he is wrong.
Why do I join with them and side with their predictions? While past performance is not a guarantee of future correctness it is a lot better record than the IPCC and their
dozens of models of which none have been accurate. They are all based on CO2 controlling the climate and the other 3 are all cyclical natural cycles. I'll go with those who have a good track record at predicting future climate. Dr Libby is the most impressive as her prediction is 30+ years going and still accurate.
Not to mention that sea ice is very thin and disappears quickly when sunlight starts hitting it.
Contrast and compare with land-ice which is thousands of metres thick across much of the continent.
The better measurement is _volume_ of ice, not _extent_ of ice.
"Distinction without difference. Both ice caps were supposed to melt — dangerously increasing water-levels planetwide."
Arctic ice floats on water. Melting it makes no difference to sea level.
Greenland ice is a different matter and Greenland's glaciers are moving quite fast now.
So true! This is why I stay away from Cleveland and subways cuz that's where its the sucks the most.
If it’s all a "liberal" conspiracy, what are they trying to gain?
Not to pick sides, but just to answer your question:
Carbon Credits
Vast Government agencies to oversee environmental regulations
Alternative fuel research and corporations
Grants and associated kickbacks for "green" and "clean" industry
Save 600 Million People from having to fight wars to get land to farm on, because their land has been swamped by seawater.
There, FIFY
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company -- Mark Twain
A complete rhetorical toolbox should have more options than just logical arguments or expletive insults. Especially since the argument that you're making isn't purely logical. True that proving the existence and causes of global warming is a purely logical and scientific argument. But determining the effect of global warming on human society is speculative, at best. And asking people do something about it is a political, economic and emotional issue. You need to make your arguments on those terms or your cause will fail.
According to the "HAB Theory", the point where the earth tips over due to weight imbalance at the poles should be reached any day now...
Personally, I'd prefer a liveable planet to any amount of money. Have some common sense!
As he listened to the words, a tear fell from his eye.
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Anybody seen Al Gore?
Well, fortunately, there is no evidence that climate change will make the planet overall less livable. At worst, climate change will impose some temporary costs on some vested interests.
On the other hand, it is clear that the kind of programs people propose to combat climate change are not only ineffective but economically destructuve.
I prefer a livable planet and a free society and a high standard of living to a livable planet in which people live in non-free societies and in poverty.
Yes, please do!
Here is basically how science works, you make a "guess" or write mathematical "equation(s)" or develop a "theory" or you build a "model" to explain some part of the real universe we live in.
You then compare your guess against real world observations. If your guess fails to predict or describe reality, it's WRONG.
Every global warming model has failed in this regard. Now, You should be presenting to skeptics how your model correct fits. Not demanding they disprove your guess.
However, I'm game. So just a warning, this is going to sting really bad, but here is proof the global warming models are SHIT, I mean really WRONG. I.e. they suck at describing the real world, fall flat on explaining the last 13+ years of no warming, etc., while the skeptic models, where CO2 is not given an invalid force multiplier do work and match reality.
Climate Scientist Murry Salby Demolishes the Globâ¦: http://youtu.be/HeCqcKYj9Oc
Respect the Constitution
your mom
What you prefer - endless exponential economic growth combined with a liveable planet - is not on offer by the universe we inhabit.
Bullshit, I said no such thing. That's both a straw man and a false dichotomy.
Fossil fuel use is self-limiting: there is only so much of it we can burn, and even if we burned all of it, we'd still be on a livable planet (where do you think fossil fuel came from?). Furthermore, fossil fuel use is going to be limited far more effectively through economic development and free markets; if governments don't intervene, we'll likely stop using fossil fuels much sooner and deal with climate change much better than if governments do intervene in the way climate change activists advocate.
Your error isn't with what you desire for the long term future of the planet, it's with the harmful policies you advocate: ineffective and corrupt policies justified as solutions to the wrong problems.
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
I believe the article said *Antarctic*, not *Arctic*? Has nobody noticed that?
OK, let's run the numbers on fossil fuel. Here's the total inventory of the biosphere's carbon. "gtc" means giga-tons of carbon. All the numbers are in terms of carbon alone.
800 gtc in atmosphere
1,500 gtc in surface biomass (ocean + land)
2,300 gtc in soil
6,000 gtc in deep-ocean "reactive sediments" (clathrates, I assume)
10,000 gtc in fossil fuel
27,000 gtc in deep-ocean sediments
The total is 47,600 gtc. That's 60 times as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere. Currently, the atmosphere is 0.04% CO2. So, if we put all the fossil carbon back into the atmosphere, we'd have 2.4% carbon dioxide.
Let's even set aside the apocolyptic greenhouse effects this would have. At this level, your own personal well-being would be impinged upon. In an auditorium, at 1% concentration of carbon dioxide, some people begin to feel drowsy. At 2%, most people feel its effects. Above 2%, it may cause a feeling of heaviness in the chest and/or more frequent and deeper respirations. Acidosis (an acid condition of the blood) may occur.
You see, a couple of things have changed since that carbon got fossilized. For one thing, the Sun is hotter. While the Earth used to be on the outside of the habitable zone, now we're on the inside. So while high levels of CO2 may have helped life along on a cold Earth, now that carbon must remain sequestered or we are hosed.
Which brings me to the other thing that's changed. Early, single-cellular life was adapted to whatever temperature the Earth was at. The first life may well have been extremophile - living off the energy of hot water vents on the bottom of the ocean. Life has adapted over the eons, eventually producing complex creatures such as ourselves, which/who are relatively picky when it comes to environmental conditions. What is now being contemplated is a step function environmental change from which Life will have no time to adapt. At least, not complex life like us. I'm sure the bacteria will figure out it. They always do. Clever little fellows.
Most of that carbon is irrelevant because it can't possibly be released. Putting all recoverable fossil fuel reserves into the air might possibly get us as high as 2000 ppm, roughly what existed during the Jurassic and Cretaceous ages. There were no catastrophic positive feedback mechanisms and no runaway greenhouse effect (and the sun is not significantly hotter today than back then). The climate was warm, the ice caps had melted, sea levels were a bit higher, huge land animals roamed the continents, and mammals and primates prospered, but it was a fine, livable earth, arguably nicer than what we have today. Really, stop the pseudoscientific fear mongering.
This comment isn't a troll. Claiming the area covered is bigger but the volume is much much lower needs a citation. All I've been able to find are "theories" on why the ice is growing in Antarctica.
I responded to this comment of yours:
"... even if we burned all of it, we'd still be on a livable planet (where do you think fossil fuel came from?)"
As I have demonstrated, it is fallacious to assert that because the fossil fuel was once non-fossil, and living things got along just fine, that it would be OK if the carbon were once again in the biosphere - what's the big deal?
What we have to do is to consider our actual circumstances now. It matters not to us whether some other creatures in some other time could survive the environmental conditions we are propelling ourselves into.
Concerning the Cretaceous, there is a critical factor you have not considered. The so-called fossil fuels (i.e. carbon laid down by land plants eons ago) was deposited in the Carboniferous, i.e. around 300 million years ago - i.e. before the dinosaurs. The term "dinosaur juice", referring to oil, is misleading. During the dinosaur period, the vast fossil fuel deposits were already - deposited. If the dinos ever figured out how to burn the fossil fuel, they'd be in the same trouble we are today.
If only they'd had another few million years of evolution before getting slammed by that hunk of space rock, they just might have gotten there, too! In which case they would possibly have wiped both themselves and us proto-mammals out along with them. So it's a good thing they got wiped out first. Now we have the honors of wiping ourselves out, possibly along with the last remaining dinos - the birds.
Correct. But atmospheric carbon concentrations were actually lower during most of the Carboniferous era and reached 2000 ppm only at the beginning. And no matter how much we try, we can't actually burn all the fossil fuel deposited during the Carboniferous era because much of it has become inaccessible. There was no runaway greenhouse effect and complex, multicellular life was doing just fine during the Carboniferous era.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide reached 2000 ppm again during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Again, there was no runaway greenhouse effect and complex land animals were doing just fine. And that period was recent enough that there were no significant differences in solar radiation.
My statement is correct: if burned all of the fossil fuel, we'd probably get to about 2000 ppm, the planet would be perfectly livable (and probably quite pleasant). Your calculation totaled up totally irrelevant carbon sources.
The problem dinosaurs had was that they had adapted to a stable climate and therefore couldn't deal with climate change; that's why they died out when the climate finally did change.
Mammals and humans succeeded precisely because we are capable of adapting to rapidly changing conditions. That's why we have well regulated body temperatures, strong immune systems, and big brains.
And no matter how much we try, we can't actually burn all the fossil fuel deposited during the Carboniferous era because much of it has become inaccessible. There was no runaway greenhouse effect and complex, multicellular life was doing just fine during the Carboniferous era.
So what you're saying is, as long as we don't get to a runaway greenhouse effect, we're good! I agree with you part-way: if we do get a runaway greenhouse effect, we're done for.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide reached 2000 ppm again during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Again, there was no runaway greenhouse effect and complex land animals were doing just fine. And that period was recent enough that there were no significant differences in solar radiation.
Let's revisit the numbers.
800 gtc in atmosphere
1,500 gtc in surface biomass (ocean + land)
2,300 gtc in soil
6,000 gtc in deep-ocean "reactive sediments" (clathrates, I assume)
10,000 gtc in fossil fuel
27,000 gtc in deep-ocean sediments
The bolded ones are potentially available to be dumped back into the atmosphere, once we figure out how to get to them.
800 gtc puts us at the present 0.04% CO2. If we dump all 16,000 gtc of potential fossil fuel in the atmosphere, that would put our levels up by a factor of 20. In ppm terms, we'd be in the vicinity of 8000 ppm. You're quite confident that at 2000 ppm, we would not have a runaway greenhouse effect which would surely kill us all (and perhaps all other complex life). Are you as confident at 8000 ppm?
The problem dinosaurs had was that they had adapted to a stable climate and therefore couldn't deal with climate change; that's why they died out when the climate finally did change.
The proto-dinos were the ones who survived the most devastating extinction event - the Permian - which was a long-term environmental-change situation. While the dinos were enjoying an adaptive radiation, the remaining proto-mammals lived in the margins thru the Dinosaur Age - perhaps detritus-eaters living underground. The K-T boundary appears to have been an asteroid which probably incinerated all plant life, causing the most complex creatures - the tops of the food chain, i.e. the dinos - to die off.
Mammals and humans succeeded precisely because we are capable of adapting to rapidly changing conditions. That's why we have well regulated body temperatures, strong immune systems, and big brains.
Mammals are delicate. There are lots of ways for us to go down. Complex is not good, in terms of being a hardy survivor.
The maximum we can actually recover and release is about 1/4 of that. A second, serious error with your assumptions is that you think all the released carbon goes into the atmosphere; much of it goes into the ocean and rocks. The upshot is that even 2000 ppm is probably not achievable under any scenario.
Primates have survived hundreds of glaciation cycles, with swings in global mean temperatures as large as 15F and much of the northern hemisphere covered by ice. Humans today survive in environments from the arctic to the Sahara desert without any significant technology (and with technology, we don't even break a sweat). None of the realistic climate change scenarios come even close to what mammals, primates, and even humans have already experienced many times already.
The maximum we can actually recover and release is about [4,000 gtc]
Which I guess you're comfortable with. In any case, what makes you so certain about this limit? Estimates for the amount of recoverable fossil fuel keep going up over time. In part, this is due to new discoveries. In part, it is due to improved extraction technologies. And then there's the combination: when we come up with a new technology which lets us exploit a whole new category of fossil fuel (e.g. clathrates).
Who's to say what will be recoverable in the future?
Is there any level of atmospheric CO2 which would cause you to worry? And if so, what would you propose doing about it?
Primates have survived hundreds of glaciation cycles, with swings in global mean temperatures as large as 15F and much of the northern hemisphere covered by ice.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about the primates. You seem to be suggesting that primates - or at least humans - are highly adaptable, so no worries about climate change. In fact, primates are rapidly going extinct. The most complex primates - great apes - are the most at risk. Excluding us, of course.
What's happening right now, as we speak, is the 6th Great Extinction event, evidently caused by the exponential economic growth of humans. This is partly due to habitat destruction, and partly due to the global warming (and other environmental change, like ocean acidification) already carried out by us. And there's much more to come which is already "in the bank", regardless of what we do right now.
You see, in times past, when global conditions changed, creatures were able to roam to new areas, increasing their chances for survival. We have shut that process down in a major way.
Ooops - missed a close quote! Here goes again...
The maximum we can actually recover and release is about [4,000 gtc]
Which I guess you're comfortable with. In any case, what makes you so certain about this limit? Estimates for the amount of recoverable fossil fuel keep going up over time. In part, this is due to new discoveries. In part, it is due to improved extraction technologies. And then there's the combination: when we come up with a new technology which lets us exploit a whole new category of fossil fuel (e.g. clathrates).
Who's to say what will be recoverable in the future?
Is there any level of atmospheric CO2 which would cause you to worry? And if so, what would you propose doing about it?
Primates have survived hundreds of glaciation cycles, with swings in global mean temperatures as large as 15F and much of the northern hemisphere covered by ice.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about the primates. You seem to be suggesting that primates - or at least humans - are highly adaptable, so no worries about climate change. In fact, primates are rapidly going extinct. The most complex primates - great apes - are the most at risk. Excluding us, of course.
What's happening right now, as we speak, is the 6th Great Extinction event, evidently caused by the exponential economic growth of humans. This is partly due to habitat destruction, and partly due to the global warming (and other environmental change, like ocean acidification) already carried out by us. And there's much more to come which is already "in the bank", regardless of what we do right now.
You see, in times past, when global conditions changed, creatures were able to roam to new areas, increasing their chances for survival. We have shut that process down in a major way.
Because the rest is simply too deep; it's heading for the mantle. Even if we could release it, it wouldn't go into the atmosphere as your naive calculation suggests.
I'm countering your preposterous statement that "Mammals are delicate." We can easily handle all the environmental conditions over the past few hundred million years.
Worst case IPCC predictions for atmospheric carbon are 1000 ppm by 2100. Even that crackpot prediction clearly isn't catastrophic. So the issue doesn't arise for at least a century; ask me again in 2100.
The fastest way to protect the environment and to reduce carbon emissions is to let countries develop as quickly as possible. Any attempts to reduce carbon emissions through government regulation only slow that down and are counterproductive to the very problem they are intended to address.
So, no worries - full steam ahead!
Correct. Fortunately, it's also what the majority of Americans want.
I refer you to this analysis of American attitudes toward global warming issues: http://environment.research.ya... (produced in 2007).
Short blurb from the beginning:
Overall, a large majority of the American public is personally convinced that global warming is happening (71%). Surprisingly, however, only 48 percent believe that there is a consensus among the scientific community, while 40% of Americans still believe there is a lot of disagreement among scientists over whether global warming is occurring.
What is striking is that there is ovewhelming consensus among climate scientists that global warming is occurring, and that it is being caused by humans - in effect, by "economic growth".
How do we explain the discrepancy? In part, I think, because people have a vested interest in believing that there is no problem with their lifestyle. But in a more sinister vein, the problem is that in their efforts to counter the solid scientific consensus, vested industrial interests have been marketing anti-scientific ideas to the general public. These efforts have had some success. Unfortunately, loss of scientific literacy among the general public has been part of the collateral damage.
I agree with all of that, as do most Americans. What's your point?
There is no "discrepancy". Your error is that you jump from "it's getting warmer and humans are responsible" to "government must intervene globally in order to curb carbon emissions immediately". There is no urgency to act, and government intervention wouldn't be able to have meaningful impact anyway.
I think you have demonstrated time and again in this discussion that arguments for government intervention are rooted in scientific illiteracy. Everything we know points to the notion that even if we could release all fossil fuels, we'd get to about 2000 ppm CO2 and a nice global climate; in reality, we can only release a fraction of those fuels. Your fear comes from calculating with unreleasable carbon, having preposterous notions about the supposed fragility of mammals or ecosystems, falsely believing that all released carbon says in the atmosphere, getting your climate history wrong, etc.
I used to be a strong advocate of government action on climate change: carbon taxes, emission limits, etc. It was after I dug into the science that it became clear that the arguments in favor of government intervention are hogwash, advanced by people largely as a pretext for their political, social and economic agenda.
There is no "discrepancy".
I'll spell out the discrepancy. From the Yale report:
And yet, as I think you and I agree, there is in fact an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that global warming is occurring. And I think it's fair to say that it's a given that it is ultimately caused by what is termed "economic growth".
If all Americans understood that A) global warming is occurring, and B) we are causing it, then I think you'd find much stronger support for action. Why? Because most people are not like you. Most people are, I think, willing to take some pain now for the benefit of coming generations. Your ideas about climate are reckless, to say the least. Most people aren't so reckless.
What "agenda" do you imagine the environmentalist lobby has, anyway? It's clear what the industrialists have to gain in trying to discredit climate scientists (and science generally, as fallout). But what ulterior motive (other than just trying to preserve the environment for future generations) do you imagine environmentalists have? Please don't tell me it's all about selling books!
No, it isn't caused by economic growth, it is caused by economic activity. Even if we had zero growth, we'd still be steadily increasing carbon concentrations in the atmosphere. That's why you are not going to appreciably reduce carbon emissions through any kinds of mandates: nobody is going to accept negative growth.
I'm willing to take some pain for the benefit of coming generations. But all you and climate change activists have to offer is a massive con job: take a lot of money, hand it over to greedy corporations, and not affect the climate one bit. And all of that for something that doesn't even look like it's going to be a problem for centuries to come, if ever.
Really? Like what do they have to gain? What difference does it make to "industrialists" whether they sell you fossil fuel-related crap or green energy related crap? And why would you believe green energy industrialists are any more trustworthy than fossil fuel industrialists?
There is no "environmentalist lobby". There are politicians, non-profits, journalists, bloggers, and scientists, and they all behave in the same way, whether they are conservatives or progressives. All of them get rewarded big for saving society from destruction; that's why both progressives and conservatives love to constantly invent threats. Progressives like to spread FUD about climate change, racism, inequality, while conservatives like to spread FUD about homosexuality, atheism, and socialism. Your fear of climate change is no different than other people's fear of homosexuality: you are both the victims of self-serving political FUD.
If all Americans understood that A) global warming is occurring, and B) we are causing it, then I think you'd find much stronger support for action. Why? Because most people are not like you. Most people are, I think, willing to take some pain now for the benefit of coming generations. Your ideas about climate are reckless, to say the least. Most people aren't so reckless.
I'm willing to take some pain for the benefit of coming generations. But all you and climate change activists have to offer is a massive con job: take a lot of money, hand it over to greedy corporations, and not affect the climate one bit. And all of that for something that doesn't even look like it's going to be a problem for centuries to come, if ever.
How can you say it's not going to be a problem for centuries to come, when it's already a huge problem, and we've already got decades more pain loaded into the pipeline? What does it take for something to rise to the level of "a problem" for you? When your ocean-front property is under the waves? I'll grant you, that might not occur for centuries to come (depending on the elevation of your property and rates of Greenland/Antarctic ice melting). Is it only "a problem" if you're uncomfortably hot? Does the ecosystem matter at all? Does the unprecedented (since the dinos) rate of species extinction come into play in your thinking? Or are those going-extinct species just another greedy vested interest?
It's clear what the industrialists have to gain in trying to discredit climate scientists (and science generally, as fallout).
Really? Like what do they have to gain? What difference does it make to "industrialists" whether they sell you fossil fuel-related crap or green energy related crap?
Money is what they have to gain. Energy companies (and the stock market) treat fossil fuel reserves as money. If it cannot ultimately be burned, that means the energy companies don't have that money after all - so they lost money directly. How much money? According to http://qz.com/139907/climate-c... (my first Google hit), about $6 trillion. Now _that_ is money! And it doesn't end with energy companies.
Ultimately, the issue is that we all depend for our delicate existence on the health of our Earth. And yet, companies pay no costs when they damage our Earth. Therefore, they have and will continue to do what any good profit-maximizing enterprise would do in such circumstances: not care about damaging the the Earth!
What "agenda" do you imagine the environmentalist lobby has, anyway?
There is no "environmentalist lobby". There are politicians, non-profits, journalists, bloggers, and scientists, and they all behave in the same way, whether they are conservatives or progressives. All of them get rewarded big for saving society from destruction; that's why both progressives and conservatives love to constantly invent threats.
You can't seriously believe this. You're going to equate the $6 trillion which energy companies have at stake, with, essentially, book sales. That's what I anticipated you would do earlier in the discussion. I was hoping you'd come up with more than that.
You're arguing as if energy companies are sitting on a huge amount of fossil fuel that they are gradually selling and that would lose value if we reduced carbon emissions. None of that is true. Energy companies are a business like any other: they produce something at cost and sell it for what the market will bear. Their profit margins are around 7%, boring and low compared to most other industries.
Well, I own those energy companies, like everybody who has a retirement fund or a 401k; they are publicly traded. And I tell you: I don't give a f*ck about fossil fuel per se; I could put my money into renewables any day, no big deal. But renewable energy companies have failed to deliver; several of them were outright frauds. There is no way we could replace fossil fuels with renewables today even if it were necessary (which, fortunately, it isn't).
For politicians and activists, spreading fear and outrage, on the other hand, is their livelihood and their entire ego.
There is no scientific evidence that it is "a problem" already, let alone a huge problem. Any scientist who claims this is a charlatan.
The world is fine, really. Our existence is not "delicate". The only thing that has ever hurt societies on a large scale is the kind of madness people like you fall prey to: "follow me or the world will end". Spreading FUD has been the bread and butter of politicians, dictators, and other leaders from Christ to Stalin. Gore, Clinton, and Obama don't quite make that league, but they are using the same political tricks.
You have never responded to the 6th Great Extinction issue.
It _does_ matter if we wreck our environment. Most people - Americans the same as everyone else - get that. The hangup for too many of _them_ is that they don't accept that A) global warming is happening, and/or B) that it being caused by humans. You, on the other hand, readily accept what the scientific community has so resoundingly concluded vis a vis AGW. Your whole position is based on the idea that wrecking our environment doesn't matter!
I have to admit - that's a new one for me. How can you sustain that idea in your head? Do you not understand how utterly dependent we are on the Earth? How tenuous is our position? I'm not talking about our lifetimes. Start thinking like a member of a species, rather than a single selfish individual.
What is there to respond to? We may or may not be experiencing the "6th Great Extinction", but if we are, we are at the very beginning of it, we don't know what to do about it, and there is no urgency to act either.
No, my position is that going to 1000-2000 ppm doesn't amount to wrecking the environment, it amounts to a benign and possibly desirable change. Since we couldn't reach those CO2 levels for several centuries even if we tried, there simply is no urgency to act.
My recommendation to you is: start thinking, period. As I was saying: I know where you are coming from; when I started looking at the climate change issue, I was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat and progressive and took exactly the positions you took; my views changed after I looked into the science and economics of it.
There is no urgency to act. According to IPCC's own projections, we can easily keep going until the end of the century with no change and suffer no grave consequences. And my prediction is that if we do nothing, the more rapid economic development will reduce emissions more effectively than any government intervention. You have failed to come up with any counterargument to either of those observations.
You have never responded to the 6th Great Extinction issue.
What is there to respond to? We may or may not be experiencing the "6th Great Extinction", but if we are, we are at the very beginning of it, we don't know what to do about it, and there is no urgency to act either.
You're being very blasé about the whole extinction thing. You seem uncertain that it is even happening. Let's look at our own order - the primates. According to http://www.usatoday.com/story/... (first google hit), 25 are on the brink of extinction. It goes on to say "More than half of the world's 633 types of primates are in danger of becoming extinct" (where "type" must be referring to sub-species). How about amphibians - again, first google hit for "amphibian extinction, at http://www.nzfrogs.org/Amphibi...: "... 32% of all amphibians are threatened with extinction.". Google "cat extinction" and we find this article: http://www.facekitty.com/2008/..., about 12 wild cat species that will be extinct by 2020 (out of, apparently, 36 wild cat species total). Sure, it's not a scientific journal. But I mean - please! This information is not hard to come by. It goes on and on. Pick a random complex animal genus, and see how its species are doing.
Is this a case of willful ignorance on your part? Or are you willing to admit that we "are" in a major extinction event, rather than "may be"? You have seemed ready to go along with the scientific consensus so far....
No, you are simply being sloppy in your terminology. There is no doubt that extinction rates have been elevated for about the past 10000 years, and that has been clearly due to human activity. But you claimed that we are in the "sixth mass extinction", and a mass extinction is different from simply elevated extinction rates. At the current rates, a mass extinction would likely take a very, very long time to happen. (It's also not clear that extinction events are bad, but that's a different discussion).
I don't see what you think that has to do with a discussion on climate change. There have been many periods of rapid and large climate change that had much lower extinction rates that we have now. On the other hand, elevated extinction rates started long before human fossil fuel use and long before industrialization, so there is no reason to believe that switching to renewable energy would reduce extinction rates.
The only plausible way of reducing extinction rates is, in fact, through economic development, since economically developed societies generally protect their environments better and have low or negative population growth. But limiting carbon emissions would actually impede economic development of developing nations, therefore prolonging high extinction rates.
You're being very blasé about the whole extinction thing. You seem uncertain that it is even happening
No, you are simply being sloppy in your terminology. There is no doubt that extinction rates have been elevated for about the past 10000 years...
I see. So you've rationalized to yourself that these extinctions are just the continuation of a trend which started 10,000 years ago (the megafauna?), and have nothing to do with us.
I would start by pointing out that humans quite possibly hunted the megafauna to extinction. But beyond that - seriously! The opinions you have developed are rooted in ignorance. There is a very strong correlation between human industrial development and species extinction. The extinction rate far surpasses anything that could be considered "normal".
I don't see what you think that has to do with a discussion on climate change. There have been many periods of rapid and large climate change that had much lower extinction rates that we have now.
"Rapid", in geological terms, is a much longer process than what we're doing to the Earth right now. An exception would be something like the K-T boundary, where the Earth was probably plunged into something like a "nuclear winter" for perhaps 10 years. The result was the extinction of almost all the dinos.
AGW is only part of the damage we're doing. Acidification goes along with it - including ocean acidification. But habitat destruction is no doubt the largest component. In the past, land animals could migrate to more suitable areas as the climate changed. That's becoming increasingly impossible.
In short, AGW will deliver a hammer blow to the scattered remnants of the natural world we have devastated. At least, to the complex land animals.
It is an uncomfortable fact that human industrial development is doing major damage to Earth's ecosystems. What is needed is A) for people to learn what the real situation is, rather than being fed lies by industrial interests, and B) to begin the process of undoing the damage we've caused.
How exactly do we accomplish this? That, I don't know. But at least I don't pretend it doesn't need to be done.
Which part of "There is no doubt that extinction rates have been elevated for about the past 10000 years, and that has been clearly due to human activity." did you not understand?
The idea that this started with industrial development is a fiction. In fact, as I pointed out, humans caused a high extinction rate long before industrialization or capitalism or colonialism (the usual scapegoats of environmentalists and progressives). Native Americans, Austrian aborigines, early Europeans massively cut down forests, hunted megafauna to extinction, and altered waterways.
There is nothing to "undo"; there is no natural, previous state to return to. Of course, that doesn't mean that the environment doesn't matter; quite to the contrary, it does. But the goal of environmentalism can't be to return to some fictitious natural state. As long as humans exist, the rest of the planet will always only be a managed zoo.
What should we do? We should avoid releasing heavy metals and organic poisons into the environment; we should maintain protected areas in which diverse and complex ecologies thrive; we should monitor and manage these areas to help species adapt to changing conditions; we should limit emissions of particulates, sulfur, NOx, and fluorocarbons. Mind you, those are nice things to do because humans enjoy clean air, forests, and animals; they are not essential to our survival.
But you know which countries are best at all of that? Wealthy industrialized nations. And the best thing we can do for the environment is to help Russian, China, South America, and Africa develop rapidly so that they are wealthy enough to protect the environment themselves. Imposing global carbon emission limits is counterproductive and doesn't accomplish anything useful right now.
Bringing up Al Gore does prove something. That there exists powerful people who have exaggerated the impact of climate change in order to accumulate further power and wealth. Of course, this doesn't change any scientific facts, but its an important consideration when evaluating any proposed policy changes.
If only we could get past the conspiracy theory 'feeling' that is evoked by talking about Al Gore and "big government" so a meaningful debate could be had about possible policy changes to address the current scientific facts and scientific predictions.
Right wing talk show/far right conservatives won't allow the public to move past the "its a power grab" or "it isn't happening at all, it is a conspiracy" talk to even begin to form policy in Congress, let alone evaluate it.
I see. So you've rationalized to yourself that these extinctions are just the continuation of a trend which started 10,000 years ago (the megafauna?), and have nothing to do with us.
Which part of "There is no doubt that extinction rates have been elevated for about the past 10000 years, and that has been clearly due to human activity." did you not understand?
It shows that you don't get that it's the Industrial Revolution which is the culprit - not pre-industrial people who probably killed off some megafauna.
You surprise me every time. That's what keeps me coming back for more, I think! So, you accept that humans have caused global warming, and are responsible for our current "elevated" rate of extinctions. You just don't think the rates are especially higher now than 10,000 years ago. In particular, you don't blame industrialization for any noticeable (or, I should say, problematic) increase in extinction rate. Is that an accurate assessment?
As long as humans exist, the rest of the planet will always only be a managed zoo.
Agreed 100%. Unless, in some unlikely scenario, we somehow survive a great cataclysm in the margins, bereft of our technological civilization.
What should we do? [ ... things I wholeheartedly agree with ... ]
Agreed.
But you know which countries are best at all of that? Wealthy industrialized nations.
Agreed.
And the best thing we can do for the environment is to help Russian, China, South America, and Africa develop rapidly so that they are wealthy enough to protect the environment themselves.
You could be right. In fact, you're probably right. But the critical thing we need to figure out is: how do we make people wealthy without further destroying the environment? And going forward, we need to figure out how to _reduce_ our environmental footprint.
Imposing global carbon emission limits is counterproductive and doesn't accomplish anything useful right now.
Here I disagree completely. It's absolutely critical that we figure out, poste haste, how to get energy some other way than from fossil fuel. We have massive amounts of energy raining down on us. We're just too technolgically undeveloped to know how to make use of it. Why? Because companies don't have to pay anything for the damage they do to the environment.
What a carbon tax does is to say, "Look, you can put CO2 into the atmosphere. But when you do, you take something away from everyone else who lives on the planet. Therefore, you must pay for the mess you make." It's very straightforward, sensible, fair, etc. It's outrageous that we don't do that now.
If we were to do that, the market would start finding the solutions to our problems.
... signifying nothing.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I don't understand why you believe that industrial societies would have higher extinction rates than preindustrial societies. For example, even 50 years ago, we used 50% more farmland than today, and using oil and gas for energy has much less impact than using wood.
Nobody knows whether extinction rates were higher 10000 years ago than today. I personally think they are probably lower today than they used to be, but whatever they are, they are not high enough today to pose a threat or to place us in the middle of a "mass extinction".
In any case, those increased extinction rates are mostly caused by habitat destruction; whatever they may be doing, carbon emissions just aren't a significant factor in current extinction rates.
When we can clearly attribute messes, people pay for them and we take action. That's what happened with DDT and fluorocarbons. But for carbon, there is simply no clear answer. That means that any attempts to charge people for CO2 emissions deteriorate into an orgy for lobbyists, big corporations, diplomats, and politicians. You end up with massive crony capitalism and rules that are riddled with exceptions and political favors. The only consequence is going to be to harm the economy without achieving meaningful reductions in CO2 output. That's what we have seen time and again when people have tried to negotiate over this.
A carbon tax doesn't incentivize the development of renewable energies because as better renewables are developed, it would simply get reduced or eliminated, leaving the inventors of new renewable technologies no better off than without the carbon tax. But the carbon tax would hurt the economy and feed crony capitalism, and thereby slow progress in general.
As I was saying, I think there is simply no urgency to act. A few hundred ppm more of CO2 won't hurt us significantly even under the IPCC analysis (personally, I think higher CO2 levels are actually good, up to a point). We can revisit this question in a few decades or at the end of the century if we're still using fossil fuels then (which I consider highly unlikely).
Nobody knows whether extinction rates were higher 10000 years ago than today. I personally think they are probably lower today than they used to be, but whatever they are, they are not high enough today to pose a threat or to place us in the middle of a "mass extinction"
How do you know that nobody knows if extinction rates are higher now? Have you researched it? Why do you consider this particular question to be subjective? Surely, any specific question can best be addressed scientifically.
In any case, those increased extinction rates are mostly caused by habitat destruction; whatever they may be doing, carbon emissions just aren't a significant factor in current extinction rates.
There are many environmental impacts of our industrial activities. One factor is acidification - a direct result of fossil fuel burning. This applies to both oceans and lakes. Of course, habitat destruction is no doubt a major cause of extinctions. Before about 50-100 years ago, the bulk of habitat destruction occurred in temperate zones. Now, it is occurring in tropical zones, which have far higher biodiversity. Global warming is only just getting going. It can be expected to do very major damage, especially to the "most-beloved" species - the large land animals. In part this is because these animals will be trapped in the wrong place. It's yet another stressor.
What makes AGW especially pernicious is that we've yet to really feel the effects of what we've already done. The warming will continue to increase over the coming decades, no matter what we do now. We have no idea what demons we may unleash. Already, the tundra is leaking major amounts of methane as they thaw. Same story the clathrate deposits along the continental shelves. Methane is 20x more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2. True, it doesn't persist nearly as long in the atmosphere. Only the future will tell how much of this "positive feedback loop" we will get. It could be quite terrible.
To be sure that all of this _won't_ affect our ecosystems is simply misguided - sticking your head in the sand.
But for carbon, there is simply no clear answer.
<jaw drops>
A carbon tax doesn't incentivize the development of renewable energies because as better renewables are developed, it would simply get reduced or eliminated, leaving the inventors of new renewable technologies no better off than without the carbon tax.
This is a total non-sequitur. How do you figure...? You're saying that incentives won't work because as people cash in on the incentive to create green energy technology, the success of that technology will make the incentive less important?! That is illogical.
Surely, harvesting all the free energy raining down on us, right where we want it, makes much more economic sense - in the long term - than digging stuff out from deep under the earth and shipping it around. The problem is, we need the technology. If everyone was as reckless as you are, we would (might) not get there until we had exhausted every ounce of available fossil fuel. Why? Because we've already sunk the costs for the fossil fuel infrastructure, and nobody has to pay for the damage it causes.
personally, I think higher CO2 levels are actually good, up to a point
Well, I hope they never put you in charge.
You read the literature. A good paper to look at is doi:10.1038/nature09678
I didn't say it was "subjective", I said nobody knows. There are a lot of things that science simply does not have an answer to. In some cases, we may find an answer, in others, we may never know.
These are reasonable beliefs, but not actually facts.
Good, so we can take some time to think about it before we do anything, which is what I have been saying.
Again, belief, not fact.
Well, impacting "beloved species" isn't the same as a mass extinction. All large land mammals could disappear, for example, and that would be tragic, but it wouldn't amount to a "mass extinction". And that's the problem with all the fear mongering: people keep switching their claims and the supposed threats.
We have a pretty good idea, because it already was warmer than this 100000 years ago.
No, it's economics. Until I have developed green technologies, I can't cash in on them. As soon as I have developed the technologies, the subsidies will stop.
There really is not much difference: solar cells and wind turbines don't give you perpetual free energy; they are devices that have considerable operating expenses and finite lifetimes.
That's not true either. The only reason we keep getting fossil fuels is because people constantly figure out new ways of recovering them, constantly invest in exploration, and constantly develop new equipment. We're just better at developing new fossil fuel technologies than new solar cell technologies.
Renewables are preferable to fossil fuel in the long term, but the obstacles are technological; the idea that there is some grand conspiracy by oil companies or "sunk costs" or any of that other stuff irrationally preventing us from going to renewables simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
How do you know that nobody knows if extinction rates are higher now? Have you researched it?
You read the literature. A good paper to look at is doi:10.1038/nature09678 [nature.com]
OK, I guess I'm starting to get it. This is all an elaborate prank! I'm in on the joke now, so you can stop.
The paper is behind a paywall, but what little I can see makes it pretty clear we're at the beginning of what can only be described as a mass extinction event. We're already part-way there, and we've only just started getting going!
There are many environmental impacts of our industrial activities. ... Before about 50-100 years ago, the bulk of habitat destruction occurred in temperate zones. Now, it is occurring in tropical zones, which have far higher biodiversity.
These are reasonable beliefs, but not actually facts.
Come - who are you? You must be someone I know. Pulling my chain! I admit it - you got me.
Well played!
You can get the full PDF online easily from the web; just use Google. You do know how to use Google?
If it "were clear", the paper would state that. What the paper states is that we are experiencing higher extinction rates, that they are difficult to estimate, why they are difficult to estimate, that there is a great deal of uncertainty, that conservation is important, that that, by some definitions, we might have a mass extinction for specific groups of species over maybe 500 years. You turn that into "mass extinction is coming, must act immediately". Your conclusions about climate change are equally rash, unfounded, and alarmist.
Really, these changes are slow. We have decades to study what is going on and draw conclusions. There is no rush. There is no need for draconian measures. Get over your fear.
Don't take it from me, take it from George Carlin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...