Shrinking Waves May Save Antarctic Sea Ice 298
sciencehabit (1205606) writes "It's a nagging thorn in the side of climatologists: Even though the world is warming, the average area of the sea ice around Antarctica is increasing. Climate models haven't explained this seeming contradiction to anyone's satisfaction—and climate change deniers tout that failure early and often. But a new paper suggests a possible explanation: Variability in the heights of ocean waves pounding into the sea ice may help control its advance and retreat."
shocked to learn nature is full of balancing mecha (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just another one of the many, many balancing mechanisms in nature. Another obvious one is that more heat causes more evaporation, which causes more clouds, which causes less heat. Mother nature I has thousands of such negative feedback cycles that tend to buffer against changes.
Re:shocked to learn nature is full of balancing me (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no such beneficent entity as Mother Nature, keeping everything just so. Species go extinct often, because their environment changes.
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We're a species too.
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We're a species too.
And some scientists believe that we have been drawn much closer to extinction [wikipedia.org] that one might think. Our close relatives the Neanderthal [wikipedia.org] and Denisovan [wikipedia.org] were not so lucky.
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I entirely agree. After I posted I thought something along the lines of "just another species" was closer to what I meant.
Surprised nobody's been along to say that we're different because we were created in His image, or somesuch.
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There's no such beneficent entity as Mother Nature, keeping everything just so.
No, but there is a condition of relative homeostasis which has persisted longer than humanity, which our actions have managed to perturb in a way which may not be recoverable on a human timescale. By all means, ramble on about the particulars of nonsense while reality sneaks up on you and prepares to bite you in the ass.
Re:shocked to learn nature is full of balancing me (Score:5, Informative)
There is no such balancing effect. Clouds can reduce or can increase heating, both, depending on local climate and time-of-day.
Furthermore, water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas. You don't want more of it!
"Because water vapor is a greenhouse gas, this results in further warming and so is a 'positive feedback' that amplifies the original warming."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"On balance, scientists arenâ(TM)t entirely sure what effect clouds will have on global warming. Most climate models predict that clouds will amplify global warming slightly."
http://www.earthobservatory.na... [nasa.gov]
"Therefore, the overall net effect of contrails is positive, i.e. a warming effect. However, the effect varies daily and annually"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Go outside. San Francisco underwater by 2010? (Score:3, Insightful)
> On balance, scientists aren't entirely sure what effect clouds will have on global warming. Most climate models predict that clouds will amplify global warming slightly.
That sentence lumps professional alarmists in with actual scientists. Never been outside on a cloudy day? Those "scientists" (alarmists) who say clouds make it hot are the same ones who you said San Francisco would be underwater by the year 2010. Don't let their silly pseudo-science make you doubt the obvious facts of your experience. Y
Re:Go outside. San Francisco underwater by 2010? (Score:5, Informative)
Your intuition fails you in this case (and the scientific method is in fact your friend). It turns out we can measure this with the CERES satellite and we find that low thick clouds cast a refreshing shadow and reflect sunlight back into space, while high wispy clouds reflect little sunlight but will trap the infrared heat beneath them.
CERES is a package of three telescopes that watch our planet from Earth orbit. "One telescope is sensitive to ordinary sunlight," says Wielicki. "It tells us how much solar radiation is reflected from clouds or ice." The other two telescopes sense longer-wavelength infrared heat. They reveal how much heat is trapped by clouds and how much of it escapes back to space. - http://science.nasa.gov/scienc... [nasa.gov]
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while high wispy clouds reflect little sunlight but will trap the infrared heat beneath them.
No no no no you are mistaken my friend. These high wispy clouds are the result of the Chemtrails! This is being used by the government to make us obey. Look around, some people are now even wearing apparel that brings this message. *folds another aluminum hat*
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Not only that but clouds at night will always hold in heat and clouds near the terminator may actually reflect sunlight back down toward the Earth.
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Only in summer, during the daylight hours. Clouds at night unquestionably keep temperatures WARMER than it would be without them.
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Yep, thats what they were saying on Venus and Mars just a billion years ago.
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^^ That! ^^
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"(relatively) sharp" meaning approximately 10,000 years for the transition. The current temperature transition is more on the order of a few hundred years. It's not the change that is the problem so much as the rate of change.
Great, more variables... (Score:3)
... and poorly recorded ones at that.
Look... if its relevant then its relevant... its just inconvenient to have yet more variables complicating the calculations.
Do we have a proxy value for these waves yet? Some correlating calculation like the orbits of the planets/moon/oscillation of the earth somehow boiling down to wave heights in location X? Because that would be useful. Short of that, we're back got square one with our historic calculations and we need to put some buoys out around Antarctica to build up a data set.
area is one thing, volume is another (Score:2, Insightful)
let's say the ice is thinning in shedding a lot of frigid water... that stuff may make new ice at the edges which makes it look bigger in terms of area, but volume has been lost. It's the loss of volume that translates into rising sea levels.
Re:area is one thing, volume is another (Score:4, Informative)
Volume loss of sea ice doesn't affect sea levels, since it was displacing sea water to begin with. Volume of land ice on the other hand, even if it migrates to an equal volume of sea ice, will cause rising sea levels.
"and climate change deniers tout that" (Score:2, Insightful)
On any other topic this name calling is derided as an ad hominen attack.
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You can't reason a man out of a position he wasn't reasoned into.
The "climate change deniers" hold the position they do as an article of faith or wishful thinking. Scientifically the debate was over decades ago. So a collective noun to describe them like "creationists" for the anti-evolution crowd is entirely appropriate.
If this collective noun has negative connotations then that is entirely appropriate for a group of people trying to hold back society from addressing a very serious issue.
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You can't reason a man out of a position he wasn't reasoned into.
Blind faith doesn't exist, there is always reasoning no matter how shallow it is. Thinking that someone didn't reason is just another way of dehumanizing him.
Everyone can be reasoned out of a position, you just can't do it by calling him an idiot.
Claiming that someone is following blind faith when your argument is referring to authority is also not a good choice. If I don't know the climatologist refereed to and believe in him then there is just as much blind faith in that argument as there would be if you
Re: "and climate change deniers tout that" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"and climate change deniers tout that" (Score:5, Insightful)
Creationism would be a reasonable position if there were significant evidence of a creator (there isn't). AGW "denial" would be reasonable if there were an argument that the amount of CO2 we have put and are putting into the atmosphere won't cause a feedback loop.
And there is, if you would put pen to paper and make the calculations yourself, assuming you understand a little physical chemistry. CO2 has a very thin IR spectrum chart that integrates to a very low number, meaning it is shit at absorbing heat. Water vapor has a gigantic broad "peak" that swamps most other signals to the point that you can't even tell when other stuff is present with highly sophisticated equipment that only looks at the IR spectrum.
Of note, the other product of combustion is water vapor. Irrigation forces more water vapor into the air. Paving forces more water vapor into the air. Even the cooling towers of nuclear power plants force more water vapor into the air. These things happen on a continuous basis, so the world is on average more humid by perhaps 1% than it was 100 years ago. Which would be more than enough to account for ALL observed warming.
What are the implications for this? It means that most of the wild scenarios dreamed up by the AGW people that lead to mass death and starvation or extinction are unlikely. CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years on average, where water vapor falls out in a few days. This tight equilibrium means that we can self correct easily, as economic deterioration due to climate change will decrease the amount of water vapor we push into the air by a mechanism of tearing up unused roads (seen in recently in Detroit), reducing combustion, less irrigation, etc.
But by all means, paint everyone who doesn't blindly agree with the god "Science" (rather than following the scientific method) with the same brush. It's not like your nonsensical belief will change physics in your "favor". One can only hope that those of you who continue to cling to AGW theory are rightfully marginalized, and removed from your priest-like positions in government, as those guys can and do do REAL damage based off of bad theory.
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Of note, the other product of combustion is water vapor. Irrigation forces more water vapor into the air. Paving forces more water vapor into the air.
Possibly, but how much water vapour air will hold is a function of how hot it is. Spray water into the air in winter and you will still have low humidity. Heat the planet and you will end up with more humidity. This is a feedback - and as you note - a serious one.
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And further, human addition of water vapor is a slowly moving equilibrium that will be quickly pushed back when something "breaks" and thus causes economic damage. For example, depleting a major aquifer will lead to decreased irrigation levels which leads to an economic decline that causes roads to be torn up and emissions to be reduced d
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The site you have linked shows that atmospheric moisture holding capacity increases dramatically with increasing temperature. The increase is exponential across the curve. That is exactly the opposite of what you are trying to claim. Further, oceanic lower-tropospheric water vapour has increased by about 4% since the 1970's, which is consistent with what we should expect given temperature increases over the period.
"Observations of oceanic lower-tropospheric water vapour reveal substantial variability d
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Silly person, water is in statistical equilibrium with the oceans, direct human inje
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No avenue of anti-science earns respect.
Deniers of the earth being millions of years old.
Deniers of man being a species of ape.
Deniers of evolution.
Deniers of tobacco being a carcinogen.
Deniers of the moon landings.
When you put your politics, religion or paranoia ahead science, you deserve to be marginalised.
Re:"and climate change deniers tout that" (Score:5, Insightful)
By all means, less likely views should be marginalized, but they should be marginalized as a side effect of their having only a marginal chance of being correct, not because you've built up some vicious characterization of their adherents. It's interesting that in the reasons you list for your opposition -- politics, religion, mental illness (?) -- you forgot to include anything about their explanations of the observed phenomena being less satisfactory.
My first problem with this attitude is, who decides when the best response is simply treating the adherents as unworthy neanderthals and making sure that no legitimate scientific criticisms get swept in? Will that be you? I don't trust that this is always going to work out. I do, however, always trust in a dispassioned comparison of evidence, or at least, there's nothing I trust more.
My second problem is that it much more difficult to reason with people when you start your arguments by giving them a bloody nose. At that point they're just in it to retaliate for the bloody nose, assuming they don't stop reading entirely. IMHO you are making it ten times more difficult to actually stamp out these bad thinkings just so you can have the satisfication of wielding a few insults. What does referring to anyone snidely actual accomplish in the scientific discourse?
Re:"and climate change deniers tout that" (Score:5, Informative)
I do, however, always trust in a dispassioned comparison of evidence, or at least, there's nothing I trust more.
Unfortunately, that comparison is rarely disappassionate. In fact, some recent studies have found that the "just the facts" approach to education on controversial topics tends to backfire [skepdic.com]. Among the general populace, there a high tendency to acknowledge only the facts that support a pre-existing position and the ignore the facts that contradict it.
Frankly, that's why there is an entire cottage industry built around denying something that 97% of the people researching it [iop.org] have concluded is true. However, that 97% may actually be low-balling the consensus, since James Powell [jamespowell.org] says he's reviewed 25,182 scientific articles in peer-reveiwed journals mentioning global warming and climate change since 1991 and only 26 of them reject the anthropogenic cause. That's would be a disagreement rate of about 0.1%.
The people most qualified to evaluate the evidence seem to be in a near universal agreement that is rarely accurately represented [youtube.com] by the media.
Re:"and climate change deniers tout that" (Score:5, Informative)
Well, if you had read the paper you cited then you would have written:
He and a bunch of other people frequenting "www.scepticalscience.com" had a look at 11944 ABSTRACTS of arcticles that explicitly deal with the topics "global warming" or "global climate change". NOTHING ELSE. To put it bluntly, even the phrase "global cooling" doesn't pass muster. If the topic was something objective like "climate modelling" without explicitly putting "global warming" or "global climate change" in the topic it didn't pass muster.
The abstracts were evaluated among the 12 people who read them and the allowed to compare notes and re-evaluate their findings, thus building further consensus among the already biased evaluators. In the end, about 8000 of those abstracts evaluated by biased examiners chosen through a biased selection process were evaluated to contain no such statement and were hence excluded. That's 66.4%. Some 32.6% were found to agree with the global warming or global climate change hypothesis necessarily expoused as a topic. Oh the surprise.
You can't find disagreement if you close your eyes. or pretent they don't say anything.
Re:"and climate change deniers tout that" (Score:4, Informative)
We already know how it works with peer reviewed journals. Opposing AGW is a sure way to ensure that your paper is not published. Pretty easy to get those kinds of numbers when you can control who gets published.
So you think there is a conspiracy among all journals to keep out contrary evidence? Really? Don't you think one of them would break from their secret pact and scoop the others?
Show me the peer reviewed article published in 1999 that correctly predicted global average temperature throughout the 2000s. Show me the article published in 2005 that correctly predicted the state of the antarctic sea ice in 2014. You can't because they don't exist.
http://news.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org] - When the 1981 paper was written, temperatures in the northern hemispheres were declining, and global mean temperatures were below their 1940 levels. Despite those facts, the paper's authors confidently predicted a rise in temperature due to increasing CO2 emissions.' The prediction turns out to be remarkably accurate
http://www.theguardian.com/env... [theguardian.com] - The paper, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Geoscience, explores the performance of a climate forecast based on data up to 1996 by comparing it with the actual temperatures observed since. The results show that scientists accurately predicted the warming experienced in the past decade, relative to the decade to 1996, to within a few hundredths of a degree.
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And you just showed your ignorance in a marvelous combo.
It's a misconception that people thought the world was flat - we have known it to be round since the ancient greeks.
And predictions coming true? Well you are sort of correct, they aren't exactly coming true as actual events tend to happen a whole lot quicker and worse than IPCC predicts.
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And it's been much much less wrong on its subject matter expertise than any other group of humans throughout history.
Re:"and climate change deniers tout that" (Score:5, Insightful)
On any other topic this name calling is derided as an ad hominen attack.
I'm not convinced that that is true. For one thing, it pre-supposes there is debate, which would require an exchange of ideas, which requires at least two sides to present axioms they consider to be true with some foundational reasons why we should think that those ideas are true. That is not what is happening here. It is not clear, for a start, that many denialists think of their arguments as factual - merely as a position that they hold because they self identify with a group of people who hold that as a position - a political/tribal 'view' if you like. They expect a debate on this in much the way that two opposing political ideologies might debate for the sake of finding a common ground. So they will repeatedly make the same debunked claims, e.g. Ice mass in the Antarctic is increasing! because even though this statement is debunked by observation they expect to negotiate from some middle ground. Whether the statement is factual or not is irrelevant - what matters is that an opposing view is stated, regardless of how extreme, because after that, we try to compromise on a position that is mutually satisfactory. That is how the world works, right?
Wrong.
Reality is more powerful than ideology. Reality will always win. Doesn't matter if you reject gravity, gravity still acts. You can't negotiate for, say, acceleration due to gravity to be 4.5 m/s/s. You can't negotiate with Global Warming either. It is, and will continue to be.
People who deny it, like people who deny gravity, or a terminal cancer diagnosis after a biopsy, are in denial. Thus the term "denialist" or "denier". It describes a mental condition. It doesn't preclude debate, as an ad hominem would. It's just coincident with tthe fact that there is no debate, just a group of people reporting on observations, and another group of people stating a position absent observation or factual grounding.
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What many skeptics "deny" is that global warming is likely to be big problem. They agree that global warming exists at some level.
Agreed - they believe several fundamentally contradictory things at once. This is yet more evidence that their position has no basis in fact.
Why should we take someone like you seriously who argues against strawmen?
You are begging the question by assuming that it matters whether you take the facts seriously, either to me or to anyone else.
Re: "and climate change deniers tout that" (Score:2)
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That is not what I would call a convincing argument.
Re: "and climate change deniers tout that" (Score:2)
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Is this Richard Lendzen MIT dude not at all respectable?
Would that be the Richard Lindzen [rationalwiki.org] who has been funded by Exxon and OPEC, who actually does accept the basics of anthropogenic global warming, but disagrees with exactly how high the earth's climate sensistivity is (ie the amount of temperature increase you'll see from a doubling of CO2 levels). The man who been a keynote speaker at the Heartland Institute [theguardian.com], who writes opinion pieces for the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Stree Journal, and who recently joined the Cato Institute [cato.org]?
Not so much, no. [skepticalscience.com]
Re: "and climate change deniers tout that" (Score:2)
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Richard Lindzen is somewhat respectable when he publishes in peer-reviewed journals---and there he hardly denies the influence of greenhouse forcing on climate, but he hypothesizes a string of various mechanisms to make the climate sensitivity somewhat lower than the consensus. These are usually refuted by observations.
He isn't respectable when he publishes completely misleading BS in right-wing newspaper editorial pages.
And the point is that he is the only name people seem to know, and there are thousands
salty seawater vs melt ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wasn't the increase in ice-area attributed to the melt from inland not being salty, and thus having a higher freezing-point?
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It's seasonal, and one of the reasons for the increase is increased precipitation (caused by, you guessed it, global warming).
The sea there is actually warmer, and the land ice is shrinking.
In short, this is only interesting if you need facts with superficial interpretations that can "refute" global warming to the uninformed masses.
http://www.skepticalscience.co... [skepticalscience.com]
p.s. - I notice in another skepticalscience link that gw deniers have joined evolution deniers in invoking the second law of thermodynamics as "p
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PHLOGISTON!
Sea ice is direct result of collapsing glacier (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Sea ice is thin and temporary and has no effect on sea level. It grows and shrinks according to SHORT TERM weather.
2. The collapsing glacier is massive and land-based so its melting will raise sea level. It is melting because of LONG TERM climate change.
3. The collapse of the ONCE-PERMANENT glacier is cooling the surrounding water, causing a TEMPORARY increase in surface ice.
If you look at the diagram that they used to describe the collapse of the glaciers, you will see why. http://gph.is/1mWdkPK Warm water at the ocean floor melts the permanent glacier. As the water cools, it rises to the surface, causing it to lower the temperature of the surface water, increasing the amount of surface ice.
In effect, the PERMANENT, LAND-BASED glacier is quickly becoming TEMPORARY, SEA-BASED ice. Even if this sea-based ice remains or even expands, it will have already raised sea-levels.
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Seen it (Score:3, Interesting)
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In Antarctica, isn't every storm from the north?
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Most storms come from the west.
...and the most violent winds, the 300km/h katabatic winds, come full blast from the south. But they just slide over the sea ice: it's flat so there's no resistance, no traction. I have plenty of info and pics on my site [gdargaud.net] as I used to be a climate scientist, the kind that goes on the field to take measurements.
Careful (Score:2)
Summary misses an important point (Score:2)
There is no contradiction (Score:2)
There is no contradiction here. The statement in the headline is wrong. In fact, we just recently had this discussion here on Slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p... [slashdot.org]
Even though the world is warming, the average area of the sea ice around Antarctica is increasing.
True. But the volume is decreasing.
Climate models haven't explained this seeming contradiction
*shrug* I can't say who is or is not satisfied. But my understanding is that the melting ice is freshwater, and that during cold periods a small amount of surface freshwater can freeze again.
This is to be expected: imagine an ice cube sitting on your countertop. As the ice melts, a small amount of free
A New Religion (Score:2)
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What makes me nuts about the climate changers is that they seem to believe that humans have more impact than the sun and other natural events and then have built a de facto religion around it.
We are all climate changers. What makes the people who embrace science frustrated about the denialists is that they either continually mischaracterize the debate in order to seem to have a valid argument, or they are too stupid to comprehend simple sentences. The argument is not that humans have more impact than the sun, and anyone who claims that is a liar or a moron. Which are you? The argument is that human output is throwing a system in a condition of nominal stasis out of balance in a way that is incon
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I see another High Priest of Climate Religion is calling anathema to their dogma.
I see that you are too cowardly to do any better than prevarication when someone answers your challenge directly. That's how I know you have nothing useful to add to any conversation. You will always defend your bad behavior even in the face of massive evidence that it is bad behavior.
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My point is, it took 350 millions years for all that carbon to accumulate and
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As many others have pointed out, the *unedited and unbiased* data directly shows that the impact of human CO2 is insignificant in relation to other factors.
Again, as many others have pointed out, that is a blatant lie. It is less significant than other factors, but that doesn't make it insignificant. You will be taken more seriously when you stop lying.
Armchair scientist (Score:4, Informative)
Actually I've never seen a single model assume that there's a positive feedback cycle and no negative feedback cycle. All published climate models have assumed that climate is a complicated system that is stable in some conditions (implying negative feedback) and unstable in others. That's the thing about systems, they change depending on the conditions. Interestingly none of them have suggested we are all going to die next week either.
So thanks for confirming for us something that we already know, that armchair scientists aren't worth the time of day and don't really understand shit.
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Negative feedback cycles can still end up stabilizing at a different set-point, if the negative feedback is in the rate of change rather than the absolute value.
Re:and just to drive my point home (Score:5, Informative)
Just to drive my point home:
in this article titled 'Shrinking Waves May Save Antarctic Sea Ice' we get
" You may like to read:
Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans As Antarctic Ice Melts "
what is it?! How many fingers am I supposed to be seeing here??
Both.
This article is talking about the increased sea ice extent. Basically the amount of the ocean that's covered ice. It affects the albedo a bit, but mostly it's an interesting mystery because you'd expect it to shrink in a warmer climate.
The other article is talking about the decreasing ice volume. The thickness of multiyear ice on both land and sea is shrinking. This is expected given the warming climate, it's also worrying because it causes sea levels to rise.
Re:and just to drive my point home (Score:5, Informative)
It affects the albedo a bit, but mostly it's an interesting mystery because you'd expect it to shrink in a warmer climate.
Counter intuitive yes, but it ceased being a mystery decades ago (largely due to climate models that would run on a retail video card these days), if anything this paper is a refinement in the details of the accepted explanation - hint fresh water freezes at a slightly higher temp than salt water. Also the sea ice has always completely melted in the Antarctic summer and its dark in winter, so Albedo is not (currently) as important down south as it is up north.
:).
As for the denier angle - this topic is currently ranked #10 on the climate myth list [skepticalscience.com].
It's up at #10 because the physics of collapsing ice sheets is not well understood and thus difficult to model. Deniers depend on conflating sea ice, land ice, ice shelves, ice bergs, permafrost, ice volume, ice coverage, north pole, and south pole. Someone who is not deliberately trying to mis-inform the reader will also attempt the be clear about which particular "ice metric" they are talking about ( which brings us full circle to the main point of your post
Hockey Sticks (Score:3, Insightful)
Most deniers dispute CATASTROPHIC global warming, of the runaway type as espoused by Gore, Hansen, Mann, et al. Most deniers make simple claims about the fundamental claims made by global warming cheerleaders, such as CO2 sensitivity (Arrenhius got it right, the second time), the existence of negative feed backs (really, all feedbacks are positive?), the existence of past warming without a human influence, the existence of mega-cycles (also called ice ages), the lack of any warming for the last X number o
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Most deniers dispute CATASTROPHIC global warming, of the runaway type as espoused by Gore, Hansen, Mann, et al.
Or maybe climate science deniers just understand the science so poorly that they are not capable of really judging what the climate science side is saying. Maybe climate science deniers focus in on possible worst case scenarios, even exaggerating them instead of understanding the full range of scientific predictions. Scientifically speaking nothing that has happened is outside of the range of projections so far. If you want to criticize science you need to understand it well enough to do it scientificall
Re:and just to drive my point home (Score:5, Informative)
Skeptical Science has a good summary of the science. It looks like there are many contributing factors to the apparent contradiction of warming temperatures, shrinking antarctic ice volume and growing antarctic sea ice area. The new paper referenced in this article is possibly another factor: http://www.skepticalscience.co... [skepticalscience.com]
Antarctica is a continent with 98% of the land covered by ice, and is surrounded by ocean that has much of its surface covered by seasonal sea ice. Reporting on Antarctic ice often fails to recognise the fundamental difference between sea ice and land ice. Antarctic land ice is the ice which has accumulated over thousands of years on the Antarctica landmass through snowfall. This land ice therefore is actually stored ocean water that once evaporated and then fell as precipitation on the land. Antarctic sea ice is entirely different as it is ice which forms in salt water during the winter and almost entirely melts again in the summer.
Importantly, when land ice melts and flows into the oceans global sea levels rise on average; when sea ice melts sea levels do not change measurably but other parts of the climate system are affected, like increased absorbtion of solar energy by the darker oceans.
To summarize the situation with Antarctic ice trends:
Antarctic land ice is decreasing at an accelerating rate
Antarctic sea ice is increasing despite the warming Southern Ocean
Antarctic Land Ice is decreasing
Measuring changes in Antarctic land ice mass has been a difficult process due to the ice sheet's massive size and complexity. However, since the 1990s satellites have been launched that allow us to measure those changes. There are three entirely different approaches, and they all agree within their measurement uncertainties. The most recent estimate of land ice change that combines estimates from these three approaches reported (Shepherd and others, 2012) that between 1992 and 2011, the Antarctic Ice Sheets overall lost 1350 giga-tonnes (Gt) or 1,350,000,000,000 tonnes into the oceans, at an average rate of 70 Gt per year (Gt/yr). Because a reduction in mass of 360 Gt/year represents an annual global-average sea level rise of 1 mm, these estimates equate to an increase in global-average sea levels by 0.19 mm/yr, or 1.9 mm per decade. Together with the land ice loss from Greenland, this represents about 30% of the observed global-average sea level rise over this period.
Examining how this change is spread over time (Figure 1) reveals that the ice sheet as a whole was not losing or gaining ice in the early 1990s. Since then ice loss has begun, and is clearly seen to have accelerated during that time:
Shepherd et al. 2012
Figure 1: Estimates of total Antarctic land ice changes (bottom) and regions within it (top) and approximate sea level contributions using a combination of several different measurement techniques (Shepherd and others, 2012). Shaded areas represent the estimate uncertainty (1-sigma).
The satellite mission that is best suited to measuring land ice mass change is the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). The GRACE satellites measure changes in Earth's gravity and these can be directly related to surface mass variations such as the Antarctic ice sheet. Recent GRACE estimates of mass change show the dramatic mass loss in West Antarctica and mass gain in East Antarctica (King and others, 2012):
King and others, 2012
Figure 2: a, GRACE estimate of ice-mass change (2002-2012), with ice drainage basins numbered (boldface italics where trends are statistically different to zero with 95% confidence). b, c, Basin-specific lower and upper bounds on ice-mass change, respectively, reflecting the potential systematic error in the basin estimates (King and others, 2012).
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is growing slightly over satellite period (Figures 1&2) but not enough to offset the other losses. It is not yet clear
Fascinating to Study (Score:3)
Here is an even better summary of factors that influence arctic sea ice: http://www.skepticalscience.co... [skepticalscience.com]:
Here are some of the leading hypotheses currently being explored through a combination of satellite remote sensing, fieldwork in Antarctica and numerical model simulations – to help explain the increasing trend in overall Antarctic sea ice coverage:
Increased westerly winds around the Southern Ocean, linked to changes in the large-scale atmospheric circulation related to ozone depletion, will see
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Somewhat of an oversimplification, but useful as far as a counterpoint example to the AGW crowd claiming that increased sea ice must disprove climate change.
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Actually lots of idiots are in total denial.
Beliefs range from "we're actually cooling, not warming" to "of course it's warming, but that's a good thing".
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Actually a lot of those 'idiots' are simply looking at the models, the stats, the actual _knowledge_ science has about the Earth and it's climate processes, and the _long_ view of history. If you do that, there is a lot of reason to doubt and question.
The real idiots are those who would buy wholesale what the media promotes or who trust to their own observation (which the long history of 'eyewitness' testimony in the courts will tell you is likely very very flawed).
Best Regards,
An Idiot (who took the time
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Actually a lot of those 'idiots' are simply looking at the models, the stats, the actual _knowledge_ science has about the Earth and it's climate processes, and the _long_ view of history. If you do that, there is a lot of reason to doubt and question.
Yet, apparently you can't articulate what the actual problem with theory is, and thus, stick to blustering generalities.
Repeatedly shouting "It's Wrong! It's Wrong" is not going to convince anybody.
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In the industry, we call them "strawmen".
Re: Burn the Climate Deniers (Score:2)
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Oh, really? Name three. Please provide citations of peer reviewed scientific research, not whatever bullshit you read in the popular press.
Don't worry, I'll wait.
I know you're just trying to build a straw man, but I'll bite anyway.
First is this paper, which finds Inspecting commonly used parameterizations for subgrid-fluxes, we find that some of them obey the Second Law of thermodynamics, and some do not. The conforming approaches are the Smagorinsky momentum diffusion, phase changes, and sedimentation fluxes for hydrometeors. Conventional turbulent heat flux parameterizations do not conform with the Second Law. [wiley.com]
Next shows that prevalent climate models (CCSM3) canno
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No, the poster was clearly asking to back a very specific assertion, namely that many scenarios have already been proven wrong, which is the claim that needs to be proven.
I also don't accept your claim that the claim must be bullet proof. The expected costs and values can be a combination of likelihood and significance of the effects. If the effects are dire enough and the likelihood not sufficiently remote then it becomes a bad value to not make those changes even accounting for the costs they incur.
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Claims need to accurate. So far not one AGW model has been shown to be correct by actual climate. No one needs to prove them wrong, the fact that their predictions aren't accurate prove them wrong.
Is the problem inaccurate projections by climate models or is it poor understanding by people like you of what climate models are capable of in the first place? I really doubt you know enough about how climate models work and what they are expected to do to make a useful judgement about their accuracy.
Here is a comparison of model output to observations [realclimate.org] to help you understand the situation a little better.
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Claims need to accurate. So far not one AGW model has been shown to be correct by actual climate. No one needs to prove them wrong, the fact that their predictions aren't accurate prove them wrong.
Is the problem inaccurate projections by climate models or is it poor understanding by people like you of what climate models are capable of in the first place? I really doubt you know enough about how climate models work and what they are expected to do to make a useful judgement about their accuracy.
Here is a comparison of model output to observations [realclimate.org] to help you understand the situation a little better.
There is so much confirmation bias in that site (you could have picked something more rational than a shrill propaganda site like Real Climate), I don't even know where to start with it. Instead of pointing out the clear inability of the models to predict anything that someone would be able to rely on, they just sum up with "hey, it's all going along as predicted." WUT?
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Real Climate is run by some of the leading climate scientists in the world and that post was written by one of the principals of the NASA/GISS Model E climate model. I trust what they say about the science and how to interpret it far more than some random person on the internet. If you expect climate models to "predict" the current slow down in warming in such a short time period you really don't understand how climate models work and how their projections are made. While individual model runs do show pe
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Real Climate is run by some of the leading climate scientists in the world and that post was written by one of the principals of the NASA/GISS Model E climate model.
You mean the visible shrill climate alarmists, Michael Mann included.
I trust what they say about the science and how to interpret it
You might do better not to trust anyone, and look at everything with a critical eye.
If you expect climate models to "predict" the current slow down in warming in such a short time period you really don't understand how climate models work and how their projections are made.
I seem to have a pretty good understanding, for a layman, anyway. And there are major problems with the inputs and assumptions in the prevalent models. You should look into that. It's pointed out in the peer-reviewed literature every month where the issues are, but the shrill alarmist nutjobs seem to want to put more effort into shutting those people up
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You mean the visible shrill climate alarmists, Michael Mann included.
They are all scientists who are well respected in their fields. Despite all of the vilification of Michael Mann no one has found any scientific misconduct by him. His original hockey stick graph still holds up as shown by around a dozen similar studies done by different scientists using different proxies and techniques. If you think the past 17 years disproves the graph it's more like a nick in the blade of the hockey stick than anything significant.
You might do better not to trust anyone, and look at everything with a critical eye.
I could say the same thing to you. I'll admit that aft
Re: Burn the Climate Deniers (Score:5, Insightful)
the amount of money and societal upheaval this incurs means that the level of demonstrable proof required here goes up significantly.
No, no it doesn't. The level of demonstrable proof required to believe the theory doesn't change depending on how much it might cost. That's politics, not science.
You want us to spend all that cash your case better fucking be bulletproof.
You have this shit seriously backwards. You want us to continue to permit you to tear apart the biosystem upon which we all depend, your case had better fucking be bulletproof. "And it isn't."
So fuck you, that's what.
Yes, that's what the denialist argument always boils down to. Fuck you, and fuck everyone else, while they do whatever they were going to do anyway.
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You have this shit seriously backwards. You want us to continue to permit you to tear apart the biosystem upon which we all depend, your case had better fucking be bulletproof. "And it isn't."
Exactly. Too many people are clueless about just how dependent human life is on the natural world and the ecosystem services it provides to our civilization. One of the great failings of capitalism is the undervaluing of the natural capital of the Earth system. Right now we're spending the principal of that system like there's no tomorrow and sooner or later that will come back to bite us in the butt.
Re: Burn the Climate Deniers (Score:5, Informative)
Oh yes? Has it not?
AGW makes a handful of claims. First, that the earth is getting warmer [nasa.gov].
Second, that the oceans are getting warmer [wordpress.com].
Third, that sea levels will rise [bhc.edu]
Fourth, that arctic ice will retreat [skepticalscience.com].
Fifth, that Greenland's ice will melt. [skepticalscience.com].
Sixth, that antarctic ice will melt.
I could go on, but let's make #7 that man is causing it. [skepticalscience.com]
So do tell what's missing here. Again, please use scientific evidence in the peer reviewed literature. Most of the links I've provided above refer you to their sources and extra reading and come from such things as IPCC reports. And again, I'll wait.
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Great! I like that crazy little prehistoric squirrel!
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Both sides of a debate ignore facts that don't match their veiw of the world.
Just one problem. "We don't know why this apparent contradiction exists, but we're researching it" is pretty much the exact opposite of "ignoring facts".
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Just one problem. "We don't know why this apparent contradiction exists, but we're researching it" is pretty much the exact opposite of "ignoring facts".
Which is fine, as long as this apparent open-minded and scientific approach is not regularly coupled with "The science is settled".
Researching methods to explain away the data that contradicts your forgone conclusion is not good science. Vilifying the science community that continues to probe the validity of that conclusion is even less so.
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Within the past 3 months we've heard both.
What you have heard within the past three months is that the extent of the ice is increasing, and that the mass of the ice is decreasing. Both of these things can be true at once.
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And good. I'd rather live in 200 years with higher seas and 2214-level tech than slightly lower seas and year 2114-level tech.
That's one possible result. It ain't the only one. Wishing won't make it so.
Proof: How stupid would our ancestors in 1814 have been to grind the economy to a halt to "help" us, leaving us with 1914-level tech to day and peachy-keen seas.
Proof: How stupid do you have to be to not understand that it isn't 1814, and we're facing a different situation? Further, what kind of idiot do you have to be to not comprehend that the people on the planet would be better off if we still had forests everywhere instead of having turned them into naval vessels so that we could make war on one another, and/or loot foreign lands for shiny metals?
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I'd rather live in 200 years with higher seas and 2214-level tech than slightly lower seas and year 2114-level tech.
Why wait for 2214? One solution to the current problem is to go full steam ahead with a technology revolution. Humanity has spent most of its existence getting energy by burning shit. We have an opportunity adopt newer energy technologies that could be disruptive in the same order of magnitude as the internet. This scares the heck out people heavily invested in existing industries who would like to hold us back, but that isn't a good reason to remain stuck with the technologies of the past.
"While sol
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Until the models are refined to the point that they make useful (and correct) predictions, how can we rely upon them to produce environmental policies with serious economic impacts?
This is one reason why mitigation is a lot cheaper than adaptation. Predicting how climate change will impact each city is more difficult than predicting that temperatures will rise and there will be impacts. Should a city invest in sea walls or desalination plants? That depends on whether you should expect more storms or less precipitation. You would need a high degree of confidence in the models before you could plan for adaptation. Seems like the obvious choice is to mitigate.