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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.
yeah, it's porn
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.
Think globally, act locally. Or individually.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Spoken like a true troll.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
Um. Any one else see a problem with using surface area to describe a volumetric substance?
A) Gore isn't a scientist, and B) his statement was that "some models" predict it in summer months. For what it's worth the summer arctic sea ice extent did fall to half of the 1981 to 2010 average in 2012. (Middle of the road models may have been spot on...)
We're killing this planet and I don't know what to do about it.
Well, how hard are we killing the planet? Global warming is pretty mild stuff as such things go.
We're the only organisms on the planet that can't live in harmony with it (with the exception of maybe beavers).
Except for all the many, many other plants and animals that don't live in harmony with Earth either. Unlike the vast majority of plants and animals, we've actually figured out how to control our population (in the developed world, of course).
I know I'm not going to have kids for this reason.
There you go.
Misquoting Al Gore is "funny" not "informative".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It's not that Koch pays so well, it's that Soros is overextended with the election.
I think that a better mark against this (TFS at any rate) is that they mention this:
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.
So we have a length and width, but no height. So say we assume a height of 1um...doesn't seem like much ice.
So which model is the accurate one?
If only your parents felt the same way.
The one that makes us the most money.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
And in related news, US spending on science, space, and technology correlates with suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation. http://tylervigen.com/spurious...
No no no. Its Botanogenic Global Warming. The plants are farming humans for food - waiting for them to die and decompose, using fungi and microbes to render them into digestible food. And they have selected for the strains of humans that produce the most CO2, since plants thrive on that stuff.
I, for one, am turning vegan right now.
...there is no intrinsic necessity that the arctic be iced over.
You are absolutely correct. Just like there is no intrinsic necessity that New Orleans, New York, and Miami are above water.
This is what is happening to the arctic sea ice:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicen...
the line is noisy so predicting the next year is always a crapshoot, but the one thing that isn't going to happen is that the trend will change.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
So the Arctic ice will be gone, but this time we are prepared: This is precisely the reason we have a backup Gentlemen, we have the AntArctic.
What?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
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.
What's selfish is those asshats who have more than two [children] (on purpose).
Bin Laden's father had 56. Bin Laden only had about 25 himself; such restraint.
Surely you are not suggesting that billionaire arabs should alter their lifestyle?
(I won't call it "math"). This is exactly analogous to saying "five million penguin farts are unleashed every year. there are 300 million people in the USA. Therefore, over a 30 year period, a family of four is directly responsible for two penguin farts."
You don't understand how modelling works.
As a professional statistician, I say: "Right back at you".
Models make assumptions. They contain errors, which is to say, variance (Some climate scientists deny their models have 'errors' - ignore these). Thus, the models have what is frequently called a confidence interval, or margin of error.
As long as you made the correct assumptions, and those assumptions hold true for the entire predictive interval, then the predicted confidence interval is likely to contain the true value (dependent on the alpha chosen).
But the assumptions made by most predictive climate scientists aren't justified. They aren't verified, and frequently are proved incorrect in just a few years. Take the ever-changing value over the CO2 forcing value. Is it 1.1 W/m^2? Is it 8.5 W/m^2?
Many times, scientists manipulate data to make it easier to work with - rounding, eliminating outliers, ignoring measurement or proxy model errors, smoothing or averaging the data, even applying data from one location to other places hundreds or thousands of miles away. This violates your assumptions, and reduces the accuracy of your models.
In addition, some of the most famous predictions are based on pure bunk 'science' - such as producing a data set with mean and variance from just one observation.
Each model needs to have the methodology clearly explained, the data made available for everyone to access, and any supposed conclusions need to include accurate error bounds. If a released report doesn't include these, it isn't science - its PR.
The whole AGC platform is based on the premise that CO2 is the driver of global temperatures to a degree that makes all other sources infinitesimal in comparison, and its doctrine does not allow dissent from the premise.
The way science works in the real world is by comparing models to observations,and excluding the models that don't match the observations. The null hypothesis-- that the average temperature isn't warming-- is strongly excluded. So, if you want to propose that the effect is due to other variables: do the numbers. Make a model and show that it fits the data.
Right now, anthropogenic global warming is a model that fits the data. If you think it's wrong, find another model.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
For what it's worth the summer arctic sea ice extent did fall to half of the 1981 to 2010 average in 2012.
Good point. Here's a graph of Arctic summer ice extent: Fairly stable until 1995 and then it seems to have fallen off a cliff. 2016 isn't shown here but it was the second lowest value on record after 2012. http://woodfortrees.org/plot/n...
(Middle of the road models may have been spot on...)
In fact the IPCC report projected much less arctic ice loss than has occurred.
warmer polar regions = less ocean circulation.
less ocean circulation = more extreme climates. ie, if you live someplace cold, it's gonna get colder. live some place hot, its gonna get hotter. dry? drier. wet? wetter. ocean circulation is a gigantic moderator of planetary climate and weather.
and no, the NW Passage never existed with human memory, until now.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
"Another ice age?" - published in Time magazine 1974, with lots of quotes from scientists.
Out of interest are you one of the people that laughs at the popular press' poor reporting of tech related issues?
Global cooling was never more than a very much minority opinion among scientists. You'd know this if you were interested in actually what's going on rather than taking cheap shots based on two very old, thoroughly debunked popular press articles.
It seems they (you) have a belief that they're so sure is correct that any indication to the contrary must be a lie.
Says the guy quoting a "Time Magazine" article from 1974. Do you even listen to yourself?
Now, it is true that the majority of published science predicted warming even in the 1970s,
Yes.
but it's also correct that there were some studies that predicted cooling.
It was a minority opinion then and it rapidly became not even that. Science moves on. I love how you're pretending to be all sciency while cherry-picking minority opinions which have long since fallen out of the small favour they ever had.
"I don't believe the world's present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row." source:
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
That quote isn't in that article.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I'm not sure that one data point is a great way to understand the trend over time. This animation shows sea ice evolution since the 1980s. It's quite dramatic: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4510
Spoken like someone who has no damn clue how close he came to not growing up.
Take the ever-changing value over the CO2 forcing value. Is it 1.1 W/m^2? Is it 8.5 W/m^2?
The first order forcing of CO2 is 5.35*ln(C/C0)Wm^-2 . Not a lot of controversy there. You've given it as a constant without regard to relative C. Are you sure you understood what you were looking at?