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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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...