North Pole Ice On Track To Melt By September? 978
phobos13013 writes "Recently released evidence is showing the North Pole ice is melting at the highest rate ever recorded. As a result, the Pole may be completely ice-free at the surface and composed of nothing but open water by September. As reported in September of last year, the Northwest Passage was ice-free for the first time known to man. The implications of this, as well as the causes, are still being debated. Are global warming experts just short-sighted alarmists? Are we heading for a global ice age? Or is the increase in global mean temperature having an effect on our planet?"
Natural? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why no rising sea level (Score:3, Interesting)
What surprises me is that there has not been any significant change in sea level [grida.no] even though the sea level rose about 130m [wikipedia.org] since the last ice age.
I thought flooding was one of the major dangers of global warning. Where did the ice go?
Watch the ice melt (Score:3, Interesting)
Cyclic? (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod me down if you will, but I heard one report that ice levels right now are higher than at the same time last year.
The NW Passage [wikipedia.org] has been open in the recent past from (1905 [wikipedia.org] - 1948 [hnsa.org]). Accurate measurement of the "melting" began in 1979, probably about the time ice coverage peaked. [newsbusters.org] As a cursory search will show, it has also been open in the more distant past as well.
The freeze/thaw of the arctic is clearly cyclic. Whether it is clear evidence of global warming or not is a question to be considered. Man's impact on this warming, if the warming is actually happening, is another question altogether.
Re:Natural? (Score:5, Interesting)
I rather agree with you--people should stop kidding themselves. Global warming is not about saving the planet--this stuff has happened repeatedly and all this life is still here--its about saving humanity. Because if the other species out there that we require start dying off because there's too much C02 or its too hot or the ocean is to acidic, then we're screwed unless we can evolve fast enough. It gives a lot of credence to the idea of being stewards of the planet, since at this point we are realizing that what we do /can/ have an effect on the planet as a whole. At this point, we've already worried about polluting the world's oceans, causing worldwide nuclear winter, and now global warming. Either way, it seems to me that carbon is too good of an energy transport to give up, so we should leverage it. Biofuels anyone? What if I said we genetically engineered algae to make them for us? Well, sure, not yet, but that's the logical next step.
Re:You know who I feel sorry for? (Score:2, Interesting)
If the "?" should be a "." then you 'might' need to feel sorry for yourself.
But, I even doubt that seeing as how there is no massive coastal flooding already taking place AND the fact that the middle ages saw hotter weather than we are seeing now... meaning the Sun has caused these fluctuations before, is now, and will likely do so again.
Re:What about that volcano under all that water? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a possibility, but I don't think it's an overly likely one.
My bet is that the difference between Northern and Southern ice cover trends is a lot more obvious if you care to look for it: Soot.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=impure-as-the-driven-snow [sciam.com]
Money quote: "and may be responsible for as much as 94 percent of Arctic warming."
Not that this is Scientific American talking here, which is hardly a hotbed of AGW skepticism, to put it extremely mildly.
So "just" clean up all those dirty soot-emitting Chinese factories, and the Arctic will start freezing more.
This policy has the advantage of being A Really Fucking Good Idea(TM) whether you're a true believer in AGW all the way over to denying it completely.
Of course, in the real world, not only do we not discuss China's possible particulate-based contribution to GW, we even exempt them from even discussions about adhering to Kyoto, despite the fact that they've been the largest global C02 emitter two years running now and the rate of increase is accelerating...
Re:Natural? (Score:3, Interesting)
Also no matter if we are contributing or not, the climate _is_ changing. This means we are going to have millions, if not billions of climate refuges, and the world as a whole need to work out how to handle it.
As others have pointed out this also means new diseases in areas previously thought to be rid of them. Going to be some quite interesting times to live in. (Worst curse according to Terry Pratchett - "May you live in interesting times")
Re:Cryosphere Chart (Score:3, Interesting)
So by that chart you referenced there is 600,000km^2 more arctic ice now than last year? From the title of the article I would expect less ice now than before if it were in the process of disappearing. What gives?
I have also read that there is more antarctic ice now than in the last 30 years. Is there a similar picture for antarctic ice cover?
Cheers,
_GP_
Re:Why is this even being debated? (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's look at the motives of either side and see what's really going on. The Al Gores of the world have a personality order commonly referred to as "Chicken Little" and are so full of self-importance they feel the need to save the world. The idiots on the opposite extreme hate to be bothered by facts and science (hey, if it ain't in the Bible...), so they regurgitate a bunch of phony old-wives-tales they heard on Rush Limbaugh. The truth is somewhere in the middle, and thus is worthy of discussion.
Re:1421 (Score:5, Interesting)
I just finished reading 1421, and my completely-layman, don't-know-enough-history-to-comment opinion was that it was interesting (and, sure, possible), but the author seemed to play pretty fast and loose with his evidence. Some of his claims (like the idea that the Bimini Road [wikipedia.org] was a construction to slide ships back into deeper water after repair) sounded pretty outlandish and not well researched. Others, such as his analysis of old maps and the routes ships would have taken, seemed plausible, but I don't have the background to evaluate them.
I've been looking for a good analysis of his claims, but haven't been able to find much beyond "he got detail X wrong, so it's all bogus." I'd like to read some better thought out critiques. If you have any links handy, I'd be much obliged.
Re:1421 (Score:4, Interesting)
It is actually an American word:
from http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-pop1.htm [worldwidewords.org]
OED reminds us, the word is actually American in origin, first turning up there about 1852. The OED is firm in dismissing one often-heard view of its origin, from the Dutch word pappekak for soft faeces. It says firmly "no such word appears to be attested in Dutch" but points to the very similar word poppekak, which appears only in the old set phrase zo fijn als gemalen poppekak, meaning to show excessive religious zeal, but which literally means "as fine as powdered doll shit". The word was presumably taken to the USA by Dutch settlers; the scatological associations were lost when the word moved into the English-language community.
The first half of the word is the Dutch pop for a doll, which may be related to our term of endearment, poppet; the second half is essentially the same as the old English cack for excrement; the verb form of this word is older than the noun, and has been recorded as far back as the fifteenth century.
Despite some uninformed speculation, there's no link with the vulgar meaning of cock. Nor is it linked to the sense of cock for rubbish (as in phrases like that's a load of old cock), as that's a shortened form of cock and bull story, which comes from a fable concerning a bull and a cockerel.
It is also a brand of candied popcorn....
Re:From TFA (Score:2, Interesting)
Thank God it's impossible that there could be two separate factors influencing one thing.
Re:Go watch BBC's Earth serries. (Score:2, Interesting)
Check this link.
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/bear-facts/ [polarbears...tional.org]
While polar bears merit some attention, from the sounds of it we're doing quite well at keeping them around. Even if all the ice melts on the surface of the poles it sounds like there are plenty of other places the polar bears are alive and well and will do fine.
Re:bullshit (Score:2, Interesting)
So no, the scientists do not back him up. And I have the UN IPCC document to back me up. What do you have?
Re:santa? (Score:4, Interesting)
That would explain all the recent volcanic activity [sciencedaily.com] in the area and the phenomenal eruptions being recorded.
Re:You know who I feel sorry for? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You know who I feel sorry for? (Score:3, Interesting)
it's counter-intuitive, but just as timberwolves are good for deer, polar bears are good for seals.
because there are polar bears eating the slow, weak seals, the strong healthy seals have better feeding grounds, and are less likely to go hungry.
Re:You know who I feel sorry for? (Score:2, Interesting)
1: Don't be so serious. This is slashdot.
2: Also, catastrophic ice ages have obviously happened before. Who cares if humans get wiped out? That doesn't mean the planet is uninhabitable for the species that exist after the fact and those that will eventually adapt for later.
Re:You know who I feel sorry for? (Score:3, Interesting)
The Polar Bears. No place to go any more.
Ya know, I grew up in Barrow around Polar Bears, and I gotta say... I never did like them bastards.
While from an intellectual standpoint, I appreciate that it is a shame they're on the verge of extinction, the emotional part of me that grew up with them being a part of my everyday life can't help but be glad to see them go.
On the other hand, I've never even met some of the other uber-deadly creatures in the world, and I hold no love for them either. Scorpions, Piranha, Sharks, and so on... again, the emotional part of me is scared silly of the lot and that seriously colors my opionion.
sorry your misinformed... (Score:4, Interesting)
Mammals are a huge reservoir of the disease, all the medicine in the world wont clear the disease from an area..
Storm
Re:bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, what would have given them all that hubris? Possibly scientific education and specialisation? Years spent studying the planet's climate?
Well no shit Sherlock.
As a PhD in control theory, I can solemnly declare you a charlatan. Space shuttles are controlled. Nuclear fission reactions are controlled (and they are both nonlinear and unstable). Hell even chaotic systems are controlled. And I am supposed to believe a Sci-Fi writer that has been called a moron by every competent climatologist that hey, you can't help complex stuff? I don't believe in penis-enlargement pills, therefore I don't believe in Michael Crichton.
Your foolish statement may be reworded as "Since you cannot understand a system as complex as the human body, you cannot possibly cure people".
You know, I have this sick, sad habit of looking at politically incorrect sites. Nazis, racists, holocaust deniers—it's a little philosophical exercise, to think how the would would be absurd if these retards actually were right. There is however a line to draw, and Crichton, in that video, passed it after five minutes, when he said that Chernobyl was not really that much of a disaster because only "50 people died". Such a claim indicates a spectacular level of intellectual dishonesty: he's counting only the firefighters who died in the accident, and since nobody traced the isotopes, well, all those malformed children born in Belarus, all those cases of thyroid cancer, they could all just be a statistical anomaly, right? And that's only counting deaths, the really alarming numbers are the people who develop conditions because of the poisoning: in the Ukraine alone, the authorities estimate that 2.4 millions people [www.rfi.fr] were affected by the radiation. Note that Ukraine did not even get most of the fallout, Belarus did.
Well, that's enough to make up my mind for now: he's a shill paid by industry lobbyists to deliver lies. Call me up when they actually find a climatologist backing him up.
Re:You know who I feel sorry for? (Score:5, Interesting)
Fear not my contentious friend, when a massive die off of humanity roles over our planet it will take such slacker attitudes with it as it passes. The fewer other humans are left, the more important the contributions of each remaining human become. Reputation, not just for quality of work, but for quality of character will be far more important in a world where it is possible to know everyone who lives in your community. When a person's best and worst qualities both get lost in the crowd the slacker approach makes sense. A few decades of stringent, nature enforced Darwinism might do well to counter our current trend of dysgenics. [youtube.com] Humanity thrives in challenging situations... at least the survivors do.
Re:You know who I feel sorry for? (Score:3, Interesting)
If the poles melt, I believe the estimate is up to a 30 meter rise.
As for "warmer in Europe":
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11644 [newscientist.com]
I suggest reading the entire story:
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn11462 [newscientist.com]
Re:glass is half-full (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You know who I feel sorry for? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:You know who I feel sorry for? (Score:3, Interesting)
The Polar Bears. No place to go any more.
That actually makes me wonder though... since polar bears have been around for a couple of hundred thousand years [umd.edu] or so, what did they during the periods [wikipedia.org] when the planet was warmer than it is today?
Re:this would prove the skeptics right! (Score:3, Interesting)
short summary of TFA: there's uncertainty in models, so they add error bars. There is major uncertainty in how to model clouds (some argue that the sign of the effect isn't known). Models are used to predict financial markets, so that's OK.
As a professional modeler working on another complex system (financial time series prediction), it is my view that the climate modelers are taking some serious shortcuts. In my industry, one wouldn't dream of committing real money to a model until it had made correct predictions of the target market going forward, without post-hoc tweaks. Constantly tweaking model constants is an indicator of curve fitting. And curve fitting is not prediction.
When a frozen climate model can correctly predict global temperature (objectively defined beforehand), week by week, for a significant time (say, five years), then it can be said that the climate modelers understand climate. Until then, curve-fitted models coupled with a rousing round of "trust us" doesn't make for a falsifiable hypothesis. And without a falsifiable hypothesis, the climate folks aren't doing science. Indeed, Gavin Schmidt at realclimate.org asserts that nothing in the next few years can falsify the models (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/01/uncertainty-noise-and-the-art-of-model-data-comparison/) (!!!)
It blows my mind that unvalidated climate models are used as the rationale for multi-trillion dollar/euro investments.
Re:glass is half-full (Score:2, Interesting)