Slashdot Mirror
Sea Ice In Arctic and Antarctic Is At Record Low Levels This Year (cnn.com)
dryriver quotes a report from CNN: For what appears to be the first time since scientists began keeping track, sea ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic are at record lows this time of year. "It looks like, since the beginning of October, that for the first time we are seeing both the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice running at record low levels," said Walt Meier, a research scientist with the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, who has tracked sea ice data going back to 1979. While it is too early to know if the recent, rapid decline in Antarctic sea ice is going to be a regular occurrence like in the Arctic, it "certainly puts the kibosh on everyone saying that Antarctica's ice is just going up and up," Meier said. The decline of sea ice has been a key indicator that climate change is happening, but its loss, especially in the Arctic, can mean major changes for your weather, too. The report notes that air temperatures in the Arctic have been exceeding 35 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius) above average, while "sea ice in the northern latitudes is at a lower level than ever observed for this time of the year." October and November is when the Arctic region typically gains ice. This year, air temperatures are staying much warmer and closer to the freezing mark of 32 degrees Fahrenheit. What's more is that water temperatures in the Arctic Ocean are several degrees above average, as a result of having less sea ice.
As can be seen here: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/ the arctic has been losing ice for four days ( Nov 17-20 ) now. For the month of November this is an unprecedented event over the entire period of satellite observations collected from 1979 to the present.
By the way, a neat experiment which you can perform with this chart is to "turn off" all of the years, then turn on the first five years and note where they fall relative to the median and the 2nd standard deviation; then switch from the first five to the last five and make the same observation.
Fake skeptics don't actually disbelieve, they just pretend to for political or financial gain, or amusement.
Someone had to do it.
But...but..haven't we been told (screamed at) that weather is not climate?
Seems from the applications we've witnessed from AGW cultists that this is a mutable rule based on agenda.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Albedo differences are nonexistent in the polar night. So that's definitely not it.
Here is temperature data for the past several decades. If you look at it, the first thing you notice is that temperature in the winter (night) is hugely variable, mainly affected by winds rather than sun, and a 30 degree swing is not entirely surprising, although it is larger than normal.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
>If renewable energy is cheaper then why would anyone continue to use fossil fuels? Either renewable energy is more expensive or there is some aspect of renewable energy that makes it undesirable. But then whatever undesirable aspect of renewable energy that makes it nonviable is really just a restatement of saying it is too expensive.
Or, most people don't actually CHOOSE what gets used to produce power - governments and corporations decide for millions. ?And they don't have to do it to be dicks - they do it to make money. Those who already spent a lot of money building infrastructure aren't keen on seeing their revenues goes to another product (even though it's cheaper for consumers), so they lobby like hell to keep governments from investing in those newer, better, technologies.
Where people DO get to choose as consumers - they overwhelmingly choose renewables. Home solar is exploding as consumers choose to invest in renewables THEMSELVES rather than pay for fossil fuels. It's SO MUCH cheaper that even without economies of scale individuals can do the solar for themselves cheaper than large scale production can do it for everybody !
Here in South Africa the latest research suggests coal power costs R1.20 per Mw/H (that's without factoring in cost-overruns, construction delays, interest on loans during construction delays, any externalities - in other words it's an absolute best case scenario price)... solar comes in at about 62c per mw/h - half the price - and that's ACTUAL cost since construction is so much simpler that overruns are extremely rare to non-existent. And while bringing a coal plant online is 5 to 7 years in the BEST case scenario and more than 10 in the typical - a solar plant of equivalent capacity is online in two.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
What's corrupt about openly pitching to foreign diplomats to pitch down $20k a night to stay in the hotel that the president owns in DC? "No no, certainly no bribery going on here..."
If you don't like the situation where a president can own a network of hundreds of companies scattered around the world directly doing business with foreign governments and be directly under his family's control, call your rep and ask them to support H.R. 6340, which extends current federal conflict of interest law to the offices of the president and vice president, requiring that their assets be kept in a blind trust or potential conflicts of interest disclosed to the Office of Government Ethics when they make a decision that could affect their assets' worth. Hardly revolutionary, as that's what Obama, Bush Jr., Clinton, Bush Sr., Reagan, Carter, etc all did. The bill has teeth, too - “(f) A violation of subsection (a) shall constitute a high crime and misdemeanor for the purposes of Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution."
It's something that anybody who's nervous about the current situation and lives in the US can do to make themselves feel better.
Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!