The Arctic Sets Yet Another Record Low Maximum Extent (nsidc.org)

Layzej writes: Arctic sea ice was at a record low maximum extent for the second straight year, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA. This year's maximum extent is 1.12 million square kilometers below the 1981 to 2010 average of 15.64 million square kilometers. Ice extent increases through autumn and winter, and the maximum typically occurs in mid-March. Sea ice then retreats through spring and summer and shrinks to its smallest or minimum extent typically by mid-September. Ice melt in the region is reducing the transport of warm southern waters brought north by the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). "Some studies suggest that decreased heat flux of warm Atlantic waters could lead to a recovery of all Arctic sea ice in the near future," said NSIDC senior research scientist Julienne Stroeve. "I think it will have more of a winter impact and could lead to a temporary recovery of winter ice extent in the Barents and Kara seas."

Comments

No amount of evidence is enough

[PvtVoid]

It really doesn't matter how much compelling evidence continues to pile up that global warming is an imminent threat, deniers will continue to deny. If I believed in an afterlife, I would sincerely hope that those choosing inaction would spend eternity hearing the cries of the billions who will suffer as a consequence. But there will be no such luck.

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[avandesande]

The problem isn't the science behind warming it's the ridiculous solutions that are being proposed.

Kill the ban on breeder reactors in the United States and license French reactor designs. Could be done in 10-15 years and cut our carbon output 50%. Unfortunately there is no political will to do what needs to be done.

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[PopeRatzo]

Ice very well may come back, and soon. Spare us the hysterics.

Sure and Jesus very well may come back, and soon. But that's not exactly a strategy, is it?

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[religionofpeas]

The problem isn't the science behind warming it's the ridiculous solutions that are being proposed.

The problem is that half the people are denying the science, so we can't even start a proper discussion about any proposal.

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[aron1231]

That's actually a complete lie. Do some research on how Humanity was pulled out of the Dark Ages - the answer might surprise you.

Nonetheless, many people on this planet miss those dreadful times.

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Tired of hearing about climate change/warming what ever, I accept we have screwed the pooch.

I bought a house 400ft above sea level in a location that rarely gets storms or temperature extremes .
I avoid carbon emitting activities where its practical to do so - I leave the car at home and ride the bus and train to work, have made effort to get my house energy efficient with a heatpump waterheater, and a heatpump for heating the house, next I'm replacing windows, at that point I've done as much as I can with out getting all greenpeace about it.

What I cant control are disruptions to the food supply, electricity generation or a steady income. Hopefully we'll make it the next 30 to 40 years with out any drama, by then I'll be old and wont care. However I do wonder what a mess of a planet my kids are going to inherit, and the kids of the morons that run the evil carbon spewing activities, do these guys not worry about that?

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[Pinkoir]

Also known to be bearish on surface ice.

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[Smidge204]

Well, there are roughly 7 billion people on the planet, and even if only a relatively small proportion of them are screwed (realistically, MOST people will be screwed...) it's a safe bet that problems will persist for *many* generations.

Sea level rise alone stands to displace over a billion people, and that doesn't account for all of the other problems like violent weather and impacts to food and fresh water supplies.

I don't think "billions" is at all histrionic, or even much of an exaggeration.
=Smidge=

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[alvinrod]

Then don't talk about it as a mater of global warming. Say that you're doing it to reduce pollution. Is there anyone against reducing pollution? Sell it as reducing pollution, improving efficiency, eliminating our dependence on foreign energy.

The obtuse fools who keep banging their heads against the wall in this way are just as idiotic as the people burying their heads in the sand and ignoring that there's any kind of problem at all.

It doesn't matter if you have people who normally accept science. Odds are there's one or more things that they'll argue against for exactly the same reason. Ask people about GMO food safety, homosexuality and gender identity, vaccines and autism, sex-based intelligence factors, or any number of other topics and you'll likely find at least one instance where a person disagrees with the current scientific consensus and they'll invariably start using the same kinds of excuses you see with people denying climate change and you probably won't get them to budge much either, even though they agree with all of this other science in various other matters. Even really smart people are capable of being pig-headed idiots and trying to pound the table isn't an effective way of changing their minds or getting them to go along with you.

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[RevDisk]

Most sane people agree that climate change is a thing. I certainly do. Ice core samples show it rather convincingly. I'm also mostly fine with our recent sample collection though I think the datasets aren't as good as some people believe. They rarely are for large scale projects, but still there's a natural bias towards thinking your collection methods are always better than they really are. Third party auditing to try to correct bias gets expensive and politics get involved as well.

On the other hand, there's legitimate issues. There's a very vocal component of climate change that are constant Apocalypse callers. You would be a good example. "Cries of the billions who will suffer." Folks have a hard time taking serious action based on this especially when we've been hearing "end of humanity within five years" for over a decade.

The other hand is that there's no good supplied solutions. I mean, concrete realistic options that have a full roadmap, reasonably accurate cost projections and acceptably accurate levels of risk and mitigation. If it costs $10B to fix 80% of the problem, but $10T to fix 99.99% of the problem, well... Maybe we should explore that 80% solution, as it's much more realistic to implement. Any solution that is too expensive or too restrictive simply won't be implemented, because human nature and common sense. Humans will simply not voluntarily remove 90% of earth's population or go back to living in yurts. I place myself in that bracket. I think it's an issue that is meaningful, if not overstated by some, that I'd be willing to pay if it could be mitigated in a meaningful but not ruinous process.

Think the chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) ban. We paid an economic price for less efficient or more expensive alternatives, but it did the job well enough. That's not strictly a climate change thing. I've seen plenty of projects were people were shocked that a business or government unit didn't want to spend tens of millions of dollars for vague promises with absolutely no numbers backing them up.

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[msauve]

" it's now how science should work. Science allows you to actually reach actionable conclusions about the world. "

Sure, by following the scientific method. You know, that thing with testable and falsifiable hypotheses, which climate "science" doesn't bother with?

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[AthanasiusKircher]

Since when is this not EXACTLY how the scientific process should work?

Well, as the evidence piles up, it becomes more and more difficult to rationally accept opposing views. Yes, the exact models and magnitude of various changes are still under discussion, but denying climate change entirely is pretty hard to maintain given the evidence.

I'll verify a hundred times before blind acceptance any day.

Indeed. It takes me a long time to get going every morning. Since I don't believe in settled science, I don't trust mirrors. That whole "law of reflection" thing could turn out to be bogus. So I spend an hour calibrating the mirror in my bathroom to shave and then testing the mirrors on my car before driving.

I also don't buy this "gravity" thing. It's just a theory. So I'm a little afraid to flush the toilet after using it, since stuff could come flying upward instead of moving downward into the drain. So, I run a bunch of experiments on the water in my house to verify gravity still seems to be working before I flush.

Also, I calibrate my stove and verify that it will actually heat my breakfast. Those "laws of thermodynamics" are science, but they of course aren't "settled." That's not how science works, after all. There's no reason heat couldn't start flowing backward and freeze my whole kitchen when I turn on the stove.

Just to avoid problems, I run my scientific experiments every day to "verify" that these "laws" still seem to work. I know it's a hard life, and I have to get up at 2am just to get to work on time. But, I'll verify a hundred times before blind acceptance any day!!

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[religionofpeas]

Folks have a hard time taking serious action based on this especially when we've been hearing "end of humanity within five years" for over a decade.

You accuse people of hyperbole, and yet you give the worst demonstration I've heard in a million years.

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[hey!]

"Billions who will suffer"? This sort of histrionic exaggeration is why no one takes you seriously.

It seems odd to me that anyone could believe that nobody would suffer if climate changes.

You can argue that climate isn't changing, although you'd be holding the short end of the evidence stick in that one. You could argue that some people will also benefit from climate change, and that'd even be unquestionably true. But you can't argue that rainfall can shift as much as climate models are predicting without billions of people suffering, both directly from bad harvests and indirectly from the destabilization of the countries they live in.

If you want to see what that hypothetical situation would look like, look at Syria. The Assads have been ruthlessly but effectively putting down Islamist uprisings for decades, so what was different in 2011 that allowed Al Qaeda in Iraq to metastasize into ISIL? An internal climate refugee crisis touched off by four years of drought-ravaged harvests and a spike in international commodity prices. Across Syria 160 agricultural villages were depopulated, and in some provinces 85% of the livestock perished. This provided ISIL with an army of angry, hungry, unemployed young men ripe for radicalization.

So really your strongest argument here would be that climate is not changing at all -- that the Syrian was an anomalous weather event and that there won't be more of them in the future (as the models are predicting).

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[The Grim Reefer]

What, precisely, would you like to do about that?

I suggest that 30 years ago we accelerated the building of nuclear power plants and expand the grid.

So the first step is to start working on time travel?

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[religionofpeas]

Correlation is not causation.

Agreed, but that's a pointless remark, since the mechanism behind CO2 induced warming is well understood on a physical basis. It was already understood more than a century ago, and the global warming effect was already predicted then.

Re: No amount of evidence is enough

[PvtVoid]

PS: Look into a city called Venice (the one in Italy).

You couldn't have picked ironically appropriate example.

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[msauve]

That is also pointless. We also know that over the extended record, CO2 follows temperature, and that temperature variability is such that a 40 year term is completely insufficient to draw any sort of conclusion.

I'm done, you obviously don't have anything scientific to add.

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[ledow]

And quite what are those people saying, for instance? Because there's shockingly little air-time ever given to that.

Let's say we tax all cars over a certain engine size, applicable to the US. Will that reduce emissions by any noticeable amount? Will that amount recede the ice-caps by anything significantly measurable? Because, pretty much, as far as I can tell the answer is no.

I'm playing devil's advocate here, but I'm also quite serious. As someone of scientific mind, "What's happening?" is a good question, but not one millionth as interesting as "What does that mean?" and "What are the alternatives?"

What, precisely, are the listed actions that - if we impose them immediately, world-wide, without anyone trying to find a way around them, would reduce the danger and NOT introduce more problems (e.g. if we taxed ALL cars, would that push people into poverty and/or would it mean that people instead started overcrowding the train systems?). And how feasible is that of ever happening?

Stop using oil?
Start taxing it heavily?
Start rolling, scheduled power-cuts to reduce usage (like the UK did in the 1970's?)?
Stop the sale of cars, appliances, etc. that are less than super-efficient?

And how long, if we do all that, do we have to do it for? Centuries? Permanently? Until we spot a difference?

And, playing absolute devil's advocate, what if we notice NO difference? What if we ban oil-use and nothing changes and we continue to flood the world? What did we gain by doing so? Could we have predicted that? What other mechanisms could be responsible.

Sorry, but it's really not as simple as "stop buying SUV's". The engine sizes in Europe are tiny compared to the US, so we're already effectively doing what a ban on SUV's in America would do. And it's always been that way. So do we spot differences in emissions? Not really, our scientists are still saying the same as the US scientists. And while China is just burning coal like there's no tomorrow, would/could anything we do actually make a difference if they don't also co-operate?

I'm being serious here, and have had this conversation many dozens of times online.

I believe you. NOW WHAT?

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[lucm]

"Billions who will suffer"? This sort of histrionic exaggeration is why no one takes you seriously.

It seems odd to me that anyone could believe that nobody would suffer if climate changes.

The fact that you jump from "billions" to "nobody" is, essentially, what "histrionic exaggeration" means. There's a huge fucking amount of numbers between 0 and >2,000,000,000.

Just pull out your calculator, for god's sake. There are 7 billions people on the planet at the moment. The odds that at least 25% of them will die (i.e. "billions") because of a projected global increase of 4 Celsius in temperature over a century would require a lot more explanation and hard data than what has been provided so far to be considered anything than ludicrous. Just look at a fucking map and see where the bulk of those 7 billions people live, how the fuck is such a slow change supposed to kill them all?

This is the kind of bullshit number that people make up as a scare tactic, like"1/3 of women will be raped in their lifetime". It doesn't help take the climate change proponents seriously, it actually make them look like liars to those who are not convinced that there's a problem.

This kind of tactic is harmful to the cause. The more you try to scare people with end of the world scenarios, the less they listen because this has been tried many times before (acid rains, ozone layer, GMO, etc.) and the world did not end. Only people who respond well to that FUD approach is people who are already convinced, which means it's totally useless.

Here's the solution:
1) rebuild the credibility of climate scientists by providing clear, simple data that isn't presented in an alarmist way
2) stop saying "ample evidence" or "the science is there" or other generic label that may look like you don't know the fuck what the numbers are, otherwise the other side uses the same and nobody knows what the fuck is going on
3) crunch numbers to show the economical impact of climate change, not just the "billions of death and mayhem and suffering and crying babies" to make the dialogue more inclusive
4) vote for people who have a balanced, pro-environment agenda, as opposed to shallow rockstars, right/left extremists or obvious frauds
5) vote with your dollars when it comes to heavy polluters (computers, cars, etc)

It's not sexy, not cool, not spectacular, it's just fucking common sense, and that's probably why it's not happening. People want drama, so that's what you get.

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[GameboyRMH]

That is also pointless. We also know that over the extended record, CO2 follows temperature

Wrong:

https://www.skepticalscience.c...

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[LynnwoodRooster]

We know that buying gas-guzzling SUV is bad for the environment. Before you start blaming the government for imposing legislations, please consider that the problem has been known for a while, but people feel that a status symbol is more important that the sustainability of our planet. We only have ourselves to blame.

No, we don't know that. In some uses it may be bad for the environment; when it's used to haul food, deliver medicine, or provide goods and services to many people that cuts down their net effect on the environment, it's a good thing. Blanket statements are why there is a debate in the first place.

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[lucm]

True that.

Another example is people complaining about urban sprawling. What about a place like Arizona or Nevada where temperature stays in the oven spectrum half or more of the year? It gets exponentially more expensive (and resource-consuming) to cool down upper floors when you stack people on top of each other, that's why if you drive around Phoenix or even Las Vegas you won't see a lot of duplex or affordable condo towers.

Re: No amount of evidence is enough

[Hylandr]

* Citations Required.

With as much hyperbole as the media and politics has been pumping out something like this would be pasted on every headline, every day.

It's a *sad* state of affairs when you get all your education from the entertainment industry.

Looks like Chicken little season is ramping up for the summer again.

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[msauve]

LOL. Your own source shows that CO2 follows temperature rise. They then go on to rationalize that the CO2 rise causes further temperature rise, which isn't any different than claiming that since you came after Jack the Ripper, you're here because of him.

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[hey!]

World bank projections in agricultural productivity in 2050 show reductions in productivity across the Middle East, Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, Australia and large swaths of North America. This takes into account longer growing seasons and places where rainfall increases. Russia, for example, does extremely well under the warming scenario with longer growing seasons and increased rainfall in currently arid areas.

The US and Australia being rich countries with relatively low birth rates will be able to import food from places like Russia. But Africa, which current sports a population of 1.1 billion, will have a population of two billion and less food production to feed them. Large areas of India are expected to receive much less rainfall and to be less productive. India currently has a population of 1.2 billion, expected to grow to 1.5 billion.

Now everyone in these places won't be suffering. India currently boasts a middle class larger than the US middle class. They'll continue to be able to buy food. But they have an enormous underclass who are already living in conditions that are very precarious.

This is not an alarmist picture. Simple math gets us to the 10^9 benchmark in South Asia alone. That's should be alarming. But it's not hopeless. Even if we can't reduce the rate of the climate change we expect to take place, there are other things we can do, like develop drought-resistant crops, better agricultural technology, etc. The "billions suffering" isn't much of a stretch provided we assume we do nothing to avoid that happening.

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[angel'o'sphere]

Russia won't have a longer growing season.
The cycle of arctic winter and arctic summer does not change at all due to global warming.
The problem in most parts of Russia is light not temperature.

And to the contrair: Russia is fucking hot in summer. If it gets warmer there, the growing season might start 5 days earlier and die abruptly in the middle of it in a heat bowl.

Re:No amount of evidence is enough

[riverat1]

That is also pointless. We also know that over the extended record, CO2 follows temperature, and that temperature variability is such that a 40 year term is completely insufficient to draw any sort of conclusion.

I'm done, you obviously don't have anything scientific to add.

You really should take the time to listen to this lecture at the annual AGU meeting in 2009 by Richard Alley:

"The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth's Climate History"

It's nearly an hour long but it covers over 4 billion years of how carbon dioxide relates to the climate.

Sea ice evolution

[Layzej]

This web app shows the evolution of northern and southern hemisphere sea ice evolution over the satellite record. Use left and right to change month. http://phosphorus.github.io/ap...

BEWARE!

[Zeromous]

Beware, the Tides of March!!!

My goodness!

[aron1231]

You mean the planet is still warming up (recovering) from an ice age? Inconceivable!

Fear not gentle denizens, another ice age is coming! Then the faithful climateers will rejoice!

Re:Ice Melt Drives Ocean Currents

[religionofpeas]

Over the last 30 years, the Arctic ice has lost about 2 million square kilometers, or about the area of Mexico or Saudi Arabia.

Considerations...

[PortHaven]

Arctic vs Antarctic ice
https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/s...

http://www.nasa.gov/content/go...

http://www.climatechangenews.c...

***

The truth is, there have been times when the Earth did not even have polar ice caps. But I have a hypothesis regarding this scenario.

The orbital plane of earth is slightly lower. Think about it. The Earth's orbit around the sun is not perfect - no celestial body is. Look at the moon sometimes it's higher in altitude and sometimes lower.

So what if the Earth is slightly lower in altitude of it's planar orbit around the sun? The northern hemisphere would be warmer, ice would melt. The southern hemisphere would experience the opposite, with the antarctic increasing in the accumulation of ice.

Yet I have seen very little research into this possibility that could pose a valid explanation for Earth's present climate changes.

***

None of this means we shouldn't clean up our act, stop pollution, and move to clean renewable energy. Far beyond CO2, look at the damage coal mining has done to the neighboring environments. Streams poisoned until no life is in them. I think we can ALL agree we need to clean up our act.

Interactive daily diagram of sea ice extent

[MarchHare]

Personally, I love this diagram. I bookmarked it a couple of years ago and I like to show it to people. Climate change is pretty obvious if you hide all the series and then reveal them one by one in chronological order.

    http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html

(University of Illinois)

Strangely

[argStyopa]

...Antarctic ice has been setting maximums.

Even more curious (to me) are the different responses:
- Arctic ice is shrinking: CLEARLY THIS IS GLOBAL WARMING.
- Antarctic ice is growing: (shrug) we really don't have any idea why this is happening I guess we'll just have to figure it out (shrug, again)

http://www.nasa.gov/content/go...

When the "record" is only 35 years, 'record setting' really isn't that big a deal.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

The opening of the Northeastern passage? A herald of climatological disaster? Well, not so much:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

Re:Strangely

[religionofpeas]

- Antarctic ice is growing: (shrug) we really don't have any idea why this is happening I guess we'll just have to figure it out (shrug, again)

If you look at the volume, Antarctic ice is shrinking. There are some good theories about why the sea ice is growing, but scientist like to be careful. In any case, growing Antarctic sea ice area isn't really helping anybody, nor is it conflicting with global warming.

Re:Strangely

[LynnwoodRooster]

I guess NASA is wrong then about Antarctica adding 80+ billion tons of ice per year. Density of ice is fairly stable versus temperature so the volume of ice is actually increasing quite a bit. But then, maybe NASA doesn't know what it's doing.

Re:Natual cycles

[hey!]

Yeah, it's that scientific conspiracy to suppress ideas not supported by evidence.

It's worth noting that none of the lead authors of the NIPCC reports are climate scientists, except possibly Singer who has a background in remote sensing at least. He's also behind so-called "Leipzig Declaration", which is notorious for (a) misrepresenting the qualifications of many of its signatories (e.g. TV weather presenters) and (b) faking the signatures of actual climate scientists.

Re:Ice Melt Drives Ocean Currents

[Overzeetop]

You're thinking of entropy, which must always increase. Sadly, you're elementary level understanding completely misses the complexity of a system of the size of the earth, which can easily allow entropy to increase while allowing the *apparent* contradiction of cold areas getting colder and warm areas getting warmer. The earth functions on a scale which means that low entropy conditions are required for current patterns to continue. By increasing entropy those patterns (ocean currents) may be disrupted. Of course it means nothing to the planet as a whole, but humans - and the myriad resources they require for survival - occupy an exceedingly narrow range of conditions that support life, universally speaking. A small shift her or there won't change whether this planet exists for another billion years, but it's likely to change the duration that human life can be supported in the numbers which currently exist.

Re:Ice Melt Drives Ocean Currents

[riverat1]

The cold freshwater melt is heavier than the surrounding seawater and sinks straight to the bottom starting many of the worldwide ocean currents.

Actually fresh water is less dense than saltwater and it can form a cap over it that disrupts currents. It's cold saline water sinking in the ocean that drives some currents.