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Study Links Human Actions To Specific Arctic Ice Melt (sciencemag.org)

Posted by BeauHD on from the cause-and-effect dept.

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.

12 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Time to take nuclear seriously.... by pollarda · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Time to take nuclear seriously.... by ClickOnThis · · Score: 4, Informative

      Try telling a Green that Nuclear Power is a vastly superior and cleaner alternative.

      Actually, the "Greens" have been telling us that very thing:

      http://www.wsj.com/articles/en...
      https://www.washingtonpost.com...
      http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06...

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    2. Re:Time to take nuclear seriously.... by pollarda · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The problem with the Titanic is that it failed because of an engineering failure. Something didn't work as planned. Reactors such as pebble bed reactors and molten salt reactors do what they do because of the laws of physics (vs the laws of engineering where everything gets screwed up if a valve breaks.). For example, with both pebble bed and molten salt reactors, they have run tests where they have turned off all coolant. Yea, they get hot but they self modulate because of how they are designed. For them to not work would require the laws of physics to stop working as well. To dive further into the example, pebble bed reactors are basically a giant tub of balls. Each ball has a specific amount of nuclear material in the center and are surrounded by an outside shell. As the reactor runs, they get hot as you'd expect. However, as the balls heat up, they also expand and when they expand, they push the neighboring balls away which slows the reaction. For pebble bed reactors to overheat, the laws of physics that cause hot items to expand would have to cease working. Molten salt reactors work a bit differently though not that much differently.

      I like solar. It is great. I'm considering installing it on my house. It just doesn't have the energy density needed to drive modern societies. How many solar panels will it take to power a steel mill? The solar projects in the Nevada desert have been a failure by and large and are more a kickback for Harry Reid than anything else. Wind it cool too. Not many places where you can install it. My brother works for the company that fixes windmills. He says they are far from environmental and are frequently abandoned as soon as the federal funding runs out. The fiberglass blades need to be constantly repaired and then replaced while the old ones go to the landfill as there isn't any way to recycle fiberglass. They leak oil like a sieve and the gearing breaks down due to the immense torque needed to ramp up the RPMs. (They gear up the RPMs from approximately 6 RPM to 1,000 RPM to get the generators to work.) I'm all for alternative sources of power. In fact, I think that most new houses should have passive solar as a matter of course. I've always been puzzled why people don't do this as it is basically free power / lower energy bills. Even so, nuclear is the only power source that can power a modern society.

  2. Re: OK I believe you this time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...)

  3. Moderator guidelines by TapeCutter · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
    1. Re:Moderator guidelines by Troed · · Score: 5, Informative

      To be fair, I'm not sure the actual quote is better.

      "North Polar Ice cap....75-80% chance that during summer months it will be completely and totally gone in five years..."

      If you want to check the authenticity, here's the video. I was in the audience at Web 2.0 Summit when he said this.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      (He's also factually wrong on the "millions of years" since there was no ice cap during summer in the beginning of the Holocene, or during the last interglacial)

      --
      it's in my head
  4. Re:3 square meters? by TapeCutter · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  5. Re:DGW - Dinosauric Global Warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  6. Re:Just to be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...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.

  7. Re: 3 square meters? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Bullshit. If it was impossible to build conclusions then it would be impossible to do any science at all. Viz:

    * Hey look, F=ma
    * No ma is *correlated* with F.
    * Uh but I have this nice equation which describes all these results perfectly
    * Correlation is not causation.
    * ... but I have good reason to think it's the case too
    * 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.
  8. Re:Doomsday Cult by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.
  9. Re:DGW - Dinosauric Global Warming by nukenerd · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.