Huge Freshwater Bulge In Arctic Ocean 382
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by
Soulskill
from the lumpy-planet dept.
from the lumpy-planet dept.
New submitter turkeyfish writes "UK scientists are reporting today in the journal Nature Geoscience that a huge bulge of freshwater is forming in the Western Arctic Ocean caused by a large gyre of freshwater. The gyre appears to indicate that the ice is becoming thin enough over the Arctic Ocean that the wind is beginning to affect the motion of water under the ice. A sudden release of this water or its emergence to the surface will greatly accelerate the melting of the remaining polar oceanic ice and likely alter oceanic circulation in the North Atlantic."
How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get (Score:2, Insightful)
This is all going according to the long-term global warming forecast laid out by Al Gore in his book and movie "An Inconvenient Truth" where ice at the poles melting means more water and less ice in the ocean which leads to flooding in coastal areas... and it all goes downhill from there.
Re:Don't panic. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that is not the question.
The question is, what could happen, how likely is it, and how would it affect us.
I don't know if you are being a denier, but I'm now getting more tired of hearing from the "I don't have to care if it's Nature" crowd as I am from the "Oh no we are hurting Gaia, humans deserve to die out" crowd.
Why can't we all agree that shit is happening and we should investigate what to do about it?
Crap. I'm running behind...... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm way behind schedule on my plans to gather everything up and git my ass to the mountains before it all goes to hell. Anyone interested in swapping some land up the hill a ways for some coastal Carolina soon to be beachfront property?
Re:Don't panic. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't even need to read the article to recognize the flaw in your thinking.
Wind blows water in the parts of the ocean not covered by ice. That water pushes on other water, which is under ice. Tada! Wind affects water under the ice, no magic required!
Level is not the danger (Score:5, Insightful)
It is the breaking of the well established currents.
More water in the system will destroy some of the well established ocean currents that drives the weather on the planet and have caused some stability for the last 15000 years or so.
Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get (Score:4, Insightful)
a change in those currents means a change in water temps and that means a change in weather patterns.
It sure does seem like lots of stuff is melting all over the place and faster than "expected".
LoB
Re:Day After Tomorrow (Score:5, Insightful)
What happened in that movie was that the resulting super hurricane created an enormous low pressure cell which pulled extremely low temperature upper atmospheric air down to the surface.
This does not seem to contradict some observed "fossil" data, which shows mammoths frozen solid with food in their mouths. (Sorry, can't find a suitable citation. Most reports of this finding are from old field journals in the 1600s to 1800s.)
(Word 'fossil' in quotes, since subjects are not actually fossils, but chryopreserved corpses.)
I don't know if a reversal of the north atlantic current would do what was depicted in that movie, but there is evidence of previous cataclysmic and sudden climatological events in earth's history.
Personally, I prefer to think that if anthopogenic co2 is not responsible, it certainly can't be helping things any given what we do know. Eg, if you are genetically type 1 diabetic, eating super fatty foods and becoming obiese doesn't help you very much, and can compound the problem. (Because then you get type 2 on top of the type 1.)
We can control the amount of co2 that mankind releases, and not so much what nature releases with volcanism, etc. As such, if we are to try to mitigate the problem, anthropogenic sources are the first target of interest regardless of ideological position on the matter. (Unless you choose to ignore over a century's worth of scientific inquiry into the greenhouse gas nature of that particular compound.....) limiting and attempting marked reductions in such emissions would undeniably be a good thing, in terms of postponing a hypothetical carbon dioxide cascade scenario from occuring. (The arguments over source just limits how effective such measures might prove to be. If most of the problem is anthropogenic, such reduction could postpone indefinately, and if the bulk is natural, we might just stave if off a few decades. Something to consider when chosing to blame nature for this problem, as the implication is far more dire in the long term. Regardlss, limiting the rate using the variable we *can* control is simply a good idea, given the currently available information.)
I can't think of any other potential driving factor for such extreme climate changes without including major greenhouse gasses, such as co2, methane, and water vapor.
The cessation of the north atlantic current would deffinately change the weather in europe and north america, since warm, moisture rich air wouldn't get pushed to europe (europe would get much colder and drier) and cold, nutrient rich north ocean water wouldn't make its way into the caribbean, greatly impacting the food chain in that region, among other things.
The impact on climate, though, is dependant upon how long the current is suspended, the outcomes of snowfall in suddenly much chillier areas altering wind patterns, and the amount of water vapor staying in the atmosphere from equatorial regions taking over/enhancing the effects of co2 levels.
I don't know if the cessation of the NA Current would initiate a chain reaction or not, but it certainly would decimate many human industries, ranging from fishing to farming. That alone makes it a "bad thing" worth worrying about.
doh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. The Greenland glaciers melting may be bad. Now, would you so kindly tell me how a fresh water plume will affect glaciers ON LAND?
noone would need to tell you what will result when that happens - if you had used your brain to think this more than just 2-3 seconds.
freshwater plume forming means that there is some source that is supplying that freshwater. freshwater, therefore, will grow unless the current trend changes. and when it grows, it is going to affect EVERYthing in that ecosystem. especially arctic is populated and dependent on endless plankton that would not take the transition from salt water to fresh water well. ALL of these creatures and the higher ones are parts of the climate there with their activity and byproducts. and when the sea gets affected with that ecosystem change, it will also affect the land microclimate.
Finally, I thought it was CO2 from our SUV's and coal fired plants causing glaciers to melt. Now it's fresh water?
so, in light of the above, just stop posing funky statements without thinking for a few seconds.
there is no easily detectable dynamic of CLIMATE CHANGE. the climate, will change with average global warming. other than the measurable average global warming of a mere 1-3 degrees - which is so pathetic a difference in daily life that you would not feel it by the way - it is a totally chaotic system ; because the average 1-3 degrees worldwide is the result of all temperature averages averaged worldwide - from minus 50s to high 50s.
there is no telling what will happen to your microclimate in your locale as the globe warms up on average. you may remain unaffected, or get hit by freak weather or conditions.
Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get (Score:4, Insightful)
Think plate tectonics. The land surface of the Earth does not stay in one place. Heck, there are some areas on the California coast that were once attached to Antarctica.
Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to be a total dick, but they weren't telling you that "sky is falling" as you are pretending. At least not the credible sources.
They were telling you, and everyone else who listened that this is a self-feeding accelerating process with a known effect in the end however. So when you see evidence that supports the claim like the OP, it gets harder and harder to claim ignorance. Other then by using strawman argument, like you did.
Of course, given the modern trend of "give me everything now, fuck the future", who really cares?
Re:Level is not the danger (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess you have never seen west Texas... And for that matter, lots of other places currently not very nice to live in that will be much nicer in a warmer and wetter world.
Perhaps the climate will be nicer in those places... but that pleasantness will be largely cancelled out by the presence of all the desperate refugees with no more houses to live in or food to eat.
It takes a lot of time and money to (re)build a coastal city, and it's not like you can just pick up the city's buildings and move them all whenever the coastline moves.
Re:doh. (Score:2, Insightful)
skepticism should go away when the biggest proponents of that skepticism is industries who will be inconvenienced by global warming if it is widely accepted.
Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get (Score:5, Insightful)
Except Gore never lied about inventing the internet.
You're right, of course -- but the denialist side wins the argument anyway, because now we're no longer discussing global warming, we're discussing a politician's history and alleged misdeeds instead. Any discussion that ends up on a completely different topic counts as a tie, and ties count as a win for the status quo.
Re:doh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty serious people, whose livelyhood depends on grants given to those who have the ability to make others worry, are pretty worried.
I'm not denying anything. I just think a little scepticism isn't always a bad thing.
That's not "scepticism", that's hubris. You're either a parrot or you're simply projecting your lack of morals onto others.
Re:Level is not the danger (Score:3, Insightful)
I really wish people would stop panicking over what amounts to very little.
And I really wish people would stop digging up the rotting corpses of long dead talking points [wikipedia.org].
Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Climate change will be as bad or worse than predicted and we do nothing - basically we create our own nasty future and the next generations get our mess dropped in their lap and who knows we just might even wipe out our own species but hey at least we got that new ipad.
2. Climate change is not as bad as we think and we over-react in moving to a more localized and carbon neutral economy - this MAY create a short to medium term financial constriction for the time we are doing it but when the change has been made it most likely will increase the productive capacity since there will be less waste and more efficient energy usage as a result.
I really have a hard time seeing terrible fallout from this in the long term unless of course you happen to be an oil company.
You mention that you are giving up your freedoms to the government to battle climate change. What freedom exactly are you giving up? To be honest I've seen a lot of freedoms in the U.S. given up to "keep us safe from terrorism" which seems a side effect of the U.S. middle east policy. It sure seems to me that if we didn't need oil from the middle east tensions would most likely decrease there and maybe, just maybe we can get some freedoms back (say like the freedom to go through an airport with dignity in tact and without your wife/mother/daughter getting molested or the freedom to not be arrested without warrant and tossed in some foreign prison, you know things like that). Climate change would most likely be battled through regulation on energy/transportation/other energy consuming industries. How exactly will that impinge your basic freedoms or do you have a right to cheap foreign goods?
Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it odd that there would be oil anywhere near the poles? It would mean that area had to have had a massive amount of plant and animal life there at some point in the past. Exactly how hot was the Earth back then?!
Two reasons -- one, land masses move. The physical rock under the poles are part of the contentinental plates that used to be near the equator, which is why there's so much oil sands in Canada. Secondly, there are two "normal" states for the Earth -- frozen (30-40% ice coverage) and hot, with conditions like you see in equatorial regions today everywhere, with no permanent ice. The reason we have ice at the poles and warm everywhere else is because right now we're in an interglacial period *in an ice age*. It is a *weird* condition, historically. Now, its entirely plausable that the "global warming" is working to keep us from slipping out of the interglacial period -- we're already significantly beyond the point where most of them appear to have ended in the past. So that's arguably a potentially good thing. Humanity spent most of its existence during the glacial periods, but the planet sure can't support 7 billion people that way.
A bigger concern is if global warming was to tip us *out* of the existing ice age. Humanity *hasn't* lived through a warm period on the Earth. In fact, large mammals in general haven't. No one is particularly sure if the planet can support *any* people that way.
But in either case, there's oil at the poles because that land was near the equator when the deposits that turned into oil were layed down.
Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to be a total dick, but they weren't telling you that "sky is falling" as you are pretending. At least not the credible sources.
Maybe not, but they were perfectly willing to stand by and remain silent while "non-credible" sources were using their data to scream that "the sky is falling". Please tell me the credible source who called Al Gore to task for his over the top advertisement for his carbon credits business, "An Inconvenient Truth".
Re:How "An Inconvenient Truth" can it get (Score:3, Insightful)
Once you have compromised your integrity for short term gain, it's a tough row to get it back. There is no more referring to generic "credible sources", give me specific names and we will judge them on their merits and whether or not they distanced themselves from the Alarmists before the Alarmists were revealed as self serving liars.