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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.
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.
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...)
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.
Um. Any one else see a problem with using surface area to describe a volumetric substance?
Yes, it's misleading. Since the 1960's, 40-50% of the ice has melted when measured by surface area, but 70-80% of has melted when measured by volume. The volume measurements come from the US navy who declassified historical ice thickness data from it's nuclear submarine fleet about a decade ago. More recent data comes from satellite measurements.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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.
Sure, but they aren't describing a volumetric substance; they're describing a parameter -- sea ice extent. Sea ice volume is a different parameter.
These two parameters are of course correlated, but not in a simple way. For example wind can blow ice away from regions of ice formation, resulting in much greater extent and volume, but less volume/extent (e.g. thinner ice). This by the way is why sometimes Antarctic ice extent increases as temperatures increase -- because winds can also increase.
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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.
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.
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.
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?
Indeed, there is a good xkcd about it. But what you have stated does not imply further measurements: it is also a valid description of a fishing expedition. Dating mining for correlations does not imply causations. Your description covers both approaches rather than implying one of them.
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