Slashdot Mirror
Study Links Human Actions To Specific Arctic Ice Melt (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes from a report via Science Magazine: Since at least the 1960s, the shrinkage of the ice cap over the Arctic Ocean has advanced in lockstep with the amount of greenhouse gases humans have sent into the atmosphere, according to a study published this week in Science. Every additional metric ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) puffed into the atmosphere appears to cost the Arctic another 3 square meters of summer sea ice -- a simple and direct observational link that has been sitting under scientists' noses. If current emission trends hold, the study suggests the Arctic will be ice free by 2045 -- far sooner than some climate models predict. The study suggests that those models are underestimating how warm the Arctic has already become and how fast that melting will proceed. And it gives the public and policymakers a concrete illustration of the consequences of burning fossil fuels. For instance, a U.S. family of four would claim nearly 200 square meters of sea ice, based on U.S. emissions in 2013. Over 3 decades, that family would be responsible for destroying more than an American football field's worth of ice.
If greenhouse gases are truly a concern it is time to take nuclear seriously. As plenty of people on /. already know, our current reactors are based on nuclear submarine technology so there is cross pollination of ideas and techniques. However, there are plenty of alternative reactor designs such as pebble bed and molten salt reactors which are self modulating and are physically impossible to have a "melt down" or get into runaway situation. Similarly, there are plenty of ways to deal with waste that are safe and won't be disturbed for 100,000 years if we are willing to actually move forward and not get stuck in the same ruts we've been running in for the last 50 years. Nuclear is one of the few (if only) alternatives to oil that has the energy density to power a modern civilization like it or not. It's that or we continue to spew greenhouse gasses and in that case we should stop whining about it as we made our choice.
Bullshit. If it was impossible to build conclusions then it would be impossible to do any science at all. Viz:
* Hey look, F=ma ... but I have good reason to think it's the case too
* No ma is *correlated* with F.
* Uh but I have this nice equation which describes all these results perfectly
* Correlation is not causation.
*
* Correlation is not causation.
You can't wave away every causative relationship simply because there's a correlation in there. Causation does imply correlation so the presence of a correlation is not a negative thing.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Arctic ice is floating and hence, unlike glacial and continental ice it has a limited range of total thickness - you can look it up.
Sorry, why didn't the writer of the article (or at least the summary here) look it up and quote it to us? The GP's point was that an area seems to be meaningless without a thickness being given (which his mention of 1um was surely meant only to highlight, not as a serious suggestion *). The same point brought me up short too when I read TFA.
* Technically, it is a Reductio ad absurdum, a valid debating tool.