Scientists Marvel At 'Increasingly Non-Natural' Arctic Warmth (msn.com) 481
mmell writes: Recognizing that this is a dreadfully old story (at least by Slashdot standards), current developments make this once more a current story. Scientists studying the Arctic environment are used to seeing broad variations in average temperature readings, but recent results have been so far beyond the normal range that they are only able to conclude that they are being caused by human activity. The temperature data (which includes a great many days with readings above 0C) is bolstered by measurements showing that the Arctic ice shelf is both thinner and less extensive than has ever been previously recorded. I wonder if the Arctic ice cap will reform in the winter, or if it's possible that its absence will cause irreversible changes to the Earth's ocean currents (and by extension, Earth's climate)? "[A]fter studying the Arctic and its climate for three and a half decades, I have concluded that what has happened over the last year goes beyond even the extreme," wrote Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, in an essay for Earth magazine. According to The Washington Post, the scientists' simulations predict some places in the high Arctic will rise over 50 degrees above normal. One chart, embedded in the report and shared by several meteorologists online, shows a "jaw-dropping and emblematic display of the intensity and duration of the Arctic warmth. It illustrates the difference from normal in the number of 'freezing degree days,' a measure of the accumulated cold since September."
slashdot standards? (Score:2)
Nothing of value will be lost (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nothing of value will be lost (Score:4, Funny)
I feel reminded of the Dead Parrot sketch by Monty Python
cue a flooded street, two men standing in front of a wall of sandbags that tries its best to keep the flood out
A: Hello? I'd like to register a complaint. About the climate change. ... rain.
B: Oh yes, yes, the climate change, the biggest science hoax of the century, yes, what about it?
A: What about it? It's coming right up to my front door here!
B: Oh no, no, that's just
A: Look, matey, I know a flood if I see one, and that's a flood, no rain.
B: No, no, that's rain. We get that a lot lately. Wonderful weather, ain't it? Relaxing and soothing the pitter-patter of drops...
A: Pitter-patter? No pitter-patter enters into it, it's a flood!
B: Oh, that water you mean? Yes, that's coming down the hill. Happens sometimes.
A: Down the hill? The hills are dry as bones since the glaciers went away, but there's no beach anymore. Actually THIS IS the beach!
B: It's not (take a pump and pumps some of the water back out behind the sand bags) See? It's reciding!
A: You pumped it out.
B: That was you moving the water.
A: I never did such a thing!
B: (pulls a sand bag out of the wall, an arm thick stream of water starts to flood the area). See? It's flooded!
A: You made it!
B: I what?
A: You made the water appear. You're trying to trick me into believing you.
and so on.
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Claiming that humans will go extinct just hands the denialists a convenient straw man to attack. Scientists aren't predicting anything that humans can't adapt to. But they are predicting changes that spell the end of things that many are emotionally attached to, like species endangered by changing habitats, or ways of life which are no longer possible in certain places (e.g. drought-driven failure of family farms in certain locations).
Another way of looking at climate change is purely as an economic tradeo
A more understandable graph (Score:5, Informative)
Pettit's Ice Volume Death Spiral graphs are somewhat more understandable, but no less depressing.
https://sites.google.com/site/pettitclimategraphs/sea-ice-volume [google.com]
Let's hope it's true! (Score:2)
There is a reason I chose to live at elevation in the colder north of England.
At 50 degrees (Fahrenheit right?!) I should be living in a tropical environment very soon. If sea level rises significantly land value will rise as well.
This simulation model really does sound fantastic...but for full disclosure, was my estate agent involved in the creation of this model?
I mean, not that it does not sound awesome but isnt a computer simulation a thing in which scientists make educated guesses as to parameter
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At 50 degrees (Fahrenheit right?!) I should be living in a tropical environment very soon. If sea level rises significantly land value will rise as well.
You know what happens in a tropical environment? Tropical storms. You know what tropical storms plus sea level rise equals? You're fucked. HTH, HAND!
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You know what happens in a tropical environment? Tropical storms. You know what tropical storms plus sea level rise equals? You're fucked. HTH, HAND!
One tenth of an inch a year, I'm just not feeling your sense of urgency here; especially since
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One tenth of an inch a year, I'm just not feeling your sense of urgency here
Yeah, let's wait until it's urgent, and then find out we're too late to change anything.
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At 50 degrees (Fahrenheit right?!) I should be living in a tropical environment very soon.
Says who? Another likely outcome is that ocean circulation patterns will change and we'll lose the North Atlatic drift. The northernmost point of England is comfortably above Goose Bay in Canada, just across the Atlantic. You might like to look at pictures of the area in Winter, in order to see what a not entirely unlikely outcome for England is.
Global warming means the amount of thermal energy stored by the planet is
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That is not what will happen. History shows us that people dispossessed of land (by, say, flooding) don't just roll over and disappear. They don't turn up on your street, decide it's too pricey and meekly head off somewhere else where they won't be a bother.
They are refugees. They need somewhere to live. If they can't buy property, they will squat. They will set up a tent in your front garden, and to
Meanwhile in the ocean (Score:2, Interesting)
It's been hot this summer, really hot so naturally, I'm catching some waves.
The water is cold, icy cold and I'm only half joking when I say, 'now we know where the icebergs are melting to'. I know it's subjective, I posted this in previous years, however I have decades of experience in the ocean and I remember by month just how cold the water should feel for that time of year. My mental map of the way the ocean should feel is changing enough to notice.
I can sustain a 2+ hour body surf if I have time. I
There's a bug in your code (Score:2)
It's still a friggin' simulation. Occam's Razor says it's a bug in your code.
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It's still a friggin' simulation. Occam's Razor says it's a bug in your code.
Occam's Razor says the simplest answer tends to be correct, when your trying to model systems with multiple nonlinear dependant varibles; the simplest answer is any output is chaotic crap, no matter how good your code is.
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Occam's Razor says the simplest answer tends to be correct, when your trying to model systems with multiple nonlinear dependant varibles; the simplest answer is any output is chaotic crap, no matter how good your code is.
OK, tell you what, I'll model a chaotic simulation and you bet against me being right.
The weather is chaotic and so unpredictable.
Bet you $1000 that it doesn't snow on August 1 in London.
Of course the warming is caused by humans... (Score:2)
... specially those scientist living there warming the place, if they moved out it would obviously cool down again.
The Earth will do just fine (Score:3)
Once the humans are gone.
"non-natural" (Score:2)
Whatever happened to "unnatural" or simply "abnormal"? Why do people keep insisting on using "non" as a prefix?
The Arrival - It's aliens (Score:2)
It's aliens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Turn it up to 10 again (Score:5, Insightful)
I love how Slashdot champions every feat of engineering and scientific discovery, until it relates to climate.
The cognitive dissonance is deafening.
Re:I AM OFFICIALLY PUTTING YOU ON NOTICE! (Score:5, Funny)
Here's your broom. Now push back that ocean.
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Call me when the sea level actually rises more than a few cm.
Wouldn't you prefer it not to?
Venice seems to cope with much more than that.
No they don't. They're in constant panic and expensive shoring-up operations.
Plus: The Mediterranean will be among the last to rise - not many places for ice to melt into it..
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It's open at one end.
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Narrow enough, You could probably place a lock at the straights of Gibraltar if there was a desire. Even as far back as world war 2, Germany had envisioned doing such a thing if they won the war- they also planed on lowering the water level of the Mediterranean substantially.
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"Wouldn't you prefer it not to?"
I'm not sure. Seasteading seems like a massive opportunity just waiting to happen for the person who owns a styrofoam billet store.
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" Venice DOES seem to have major problems with flooding, something that will be very expensive to fix"
Mainly because Venice is sinking:
http://www.livescience.com/191... [livescience.com]
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And you've done what? So you're going to sling insults at the guy who hasn't been in power for a full month but forgive everything before?
I bet you're one of the same people who are outraged and terrified about a temporary stay in immigration but didn't blink when the US was actually bombing places like Syria and Libya.
But all that aside, Americans are naive in thinking that the scrawling of a presidential pen is going to fix this problem. Your lifestyle probably isn't helping and you likely have no intenti
Re: The end is near? (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Take a look at China to see what happens when you expect capitalists to self-regulate"
Or take a look at what many parts of the USA was like 40+ years ago. China has done it all on a larger scale but they haven't done anything new wrt pollution.
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Would you want customs agents making their own regulations? How about police departments? Hell no.
The laws and regulations ought to come from Congress.
Oh - "but Congressmen don't have the time and energy to work on such laws". That's why a lot of the "responsibility" given to the Federal Go
Re: The end is near? (Score:4, Interesting)
So you're assuming that everything the EPA is good?
It sounds like you're arguing that if something isn't perfect then it isn't worth having. I think that mindset of no nuance stems from the puritanical influence. Sex outside of marriage? Yeah you're going to hell. Genocide? Also going to hell.
In reality, nothing is perfect and so perfect is the enemy of good. If you strive for perfection and discard anything falling short, then you will never get anything.
Re: The end is near? (Score:4, Informative)
The objection is that it oversteps its role; that it's acting as an unaccountable agency and therefore it needs to be reigned in.
Based on your claim, I had a look around. As far as I can see, just about all of it is whining that the EPA rules will cost big companies money. Well, yes, that is true. It is much cheaper to operate if you can offload the true cost of operation onto other people.
Reigning in the EPA is not the same as eliminating the EPA or not wanting clean air and water.
I disagree. It's generally action from people who want to keep the profits private, but nationalise the costs.
Re:The end is near? (Score:5, Insightful)
Long story short. We're all fucked..despite what president Cheeto says.
In geological terms, the Earth normally doesn't have ice caps.
In geologic terms humans don't exist.
Re: The end is near? (Score:3, Insightful)
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We almost killed the ozone layer, we've driven countless species to extinction, we're destroying the rainforests, the oceans have literally 50% of the fish they did since the 1970's, we pollute the air, we pollute the water, we pollute the soil, we're heating the planet and fucking up countless ecosystems, etc.. etc..
You don't think that's destruction of our habitat?
Re:The end is near? (Score:4, Insightful)
But overreacting just kills credibility. Telling everyday people that they have to pay twice as much for electricity and $5/gal or more for gasoline to get to work because CARBON BAD!!! while China India, Brazil and Al Gore game the system to their benefit just pisses people off.
Yep. Also, refusing to build zero emission nuclear plants to replace dirty coal plants, proves that the issue must not be that big of a deal.
Why is it that all climate change responses are about people giving up personal freedom and living under more restrictive laws and any change that really wouldn't be noticed by people is not really fought for...?
We can build the necessary nuclear plants, except the very same people saying "we're all gonna die unless we do something!!" are also out in force to protest against nuclear being one of the answers....
Oh and as for Gore and Leo and all the other celebs lecturing us on how much more control over our lives is needed to save the planet , they continue to fly around the world on charter jets. It is literally the worst thing you can do, carbon footprint wise. We should ban charter flights because of they uselessness and wastefulness. Fly commercial Al and Leo!! Or do you just not care about the environment..?
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Why is it that all climate change responses are about people giving up personal freedom
You're going to have to give up your personal freedom when we run out of fossil fuels anyway. Better get a head start on the rest of the world.
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"...build zero emission nuclear plants to replace dirty coal plants..."
If we really wanted to screw the Green left, we would accept the carbon warming hypothesis in full so we could resume doing exactly this.
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You are arguing against scientific fact. Let's examine your thesis. It seems they are political in nature, stemming from a desire not to be told what to do. If I can restate it, you seem to be suggesting that the physical properties of carbon dioxide depending on which plane certain celebrities travel on.
We've been studying climate change for about 200 years now, mostly in the context of trying to explain ice ages. The CO2-mediated theory of climate change was first described in 1896, and despite a scientif
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Brazil has a population density of 22 people per square mile. To put that figure in context, the US has a density of 84, China of 142 and India of 386.
It is easy for Brazil to lead the way on renewables because, per capita, they have way more resources than others.
That isn't to say they shouldn't, but they cannot be a realistic example for all countries to follow.
Re: Evil Humans (Score:5, Insightful)
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How exactly does combating climate change "cripple Western civilization"? I think what you really mean is that it inconveniences you and threatens your greedy opulent lifestyle as a privileged species. How can you possibly live without hamburgers and your Ford F350?
He doesn't even have to do that. Cows can be de-methane'd with seaweed. Or probably we could come up with a GM fix for their gut biota. That Ford can be made out of Aluminum (it's about to be) and it can be a hybrid (likewise.) Some things will become more expensive, and some redundant things have to go away, and lots of things have to get better — no more disposable garbage electronics, for example. Now THOSE are killing the fucking planet.
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Re:More fake climate news (Score:5, Funny)
By slashdot. Winter is usually the off season for these nuts. Not hard to drum up a leftist hysteric whenever they need one.
Hey, is that you Donald?
Re:Prepare for deluge of stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
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You're entitled to that opinion. And, if so many people can suffer denialism, how do you or I know that we aren't also suffering from some sort of political bias? I mean it is funny isn't it, that it is always the other people who are the stupid deluded ones. I am, for example, reading a book at the moment that goes into the massive scientific cockup that was nutritional science over the last fifty years. The book got a review in the BMJ to the effect that, admitting indeed that, we all thought science was
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It's not about the answers, it's about the process.
Re:Prepare for deluge of stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about the answers, it's about the process.
And the most important part of the process is not assuming the answer ahead of time.
Re: Prepare for deluge of stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the delay while we debate this issues is costly. The cost for new infrastructure is cheaper the sooner you start. The potential risk is to the tune of trillions of dollars, a major fraction of GDP, and extremely disruptive to business was and society. The threat of this problem, just fiscally, warrants attention at least equivalent to the other big US economic issues, eg military and social service spending.
It's also deteriorate US leadership in the world and doubling down on dead industries (fossils are dying for increasingly non agw reasons, eg coal is not competitive, EVs will diminish oil demand) in a world that is moving on. Economies like China are going to control the Industries of tomorrow, control that the US obviously takes for granted today
We are giving away if not out right destroying future prosperity and leadership. Add to this new policy of provoking allies, trade protectionism, ceding trade relationships, and threatening military invention, defying courts on immigration. What is the play here, to be come the isolated asshole no one likes?
Re:Prepare for deluge of stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you can follow the money. Our nutritional science was cocked up by those with money. There's not a "fat" industry, but there is a sugar industry. Sugar is literally the product. In the field of climate change, who is the one with nearly all of the money: the folks who deny climate change exists or the scientists who claim it does exist?
There's another thing going on with climate change that you don't see in nutrition. Sugar is making us fat. Take a 400 lb person. That's like the sugar industry coming in and saying "How do we know that scale works? Scales work with gravity and aren't an accurate representation of total real mass. How do we know this person's bone density and size isn't higher than normal?" Those who deny climate change is a legitimate phenomenon that is happening constantly assail obvious fact such as measurements. Climate scientists are becoming worried that the Trump Administration will shut off the stream of temperature data et al coming from the EPA and NOAA for these scientists to use. Why? If science is to be self-correcting and it turns out this whole climate change thing is overblown, it will be shown with data. It will never be shown without data.
People who have been hammering this point home for nearly 30 years are sick of it. Because to deny these data and to deny these trends, it takes willful ignorance, most likely due to financial incentive. And there is plenty of evidence for that. There is 99% certainty that a person who denies climate change is financially incentivized to do so.
Re:Prepare for deluge of stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the greenhouse effect is a lot more straightforward - and well understood - than the effects of various foods on health. Even the 'massive scientific cockup' in the area of nutritional science validates the scientific method - in that if new evidence proves it wrong, that new evidence is accepted and added to the body of knowledge.
Nothing about the dynamics of climate change has been disproven. Yes, we don't know how fast it's happening and what the exact results will be, but to deny that it's happening is nonsense. There is such a thing as denialism. The most clear-cut cases are the ones where deep-pocketed interests have a stake in the denial - like the tobacco/lung cancer example. Certainly, corporate money pouring into unsuccessful attempts to counter scientific research would be a red flag, no?
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When all of the scientists agree, either science has been destroyed or reality has asserted itself.
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Sure, there is somewhat of cultural difference. Sarcasm/Humour without-a-stupid-ass-picture doesn't go over very well on Ars. Both places are overflowing with Arm-chair experts. At least some of the /. experts are actual experts though. Granted it's much harder to get a visible comment on Slashdot. And if you sway from the popular opinion, you are much more likely to get voted down into oblivion on Ars.
Whereas Slashdot is much more likely to suppress what you said entirely. If an article gets a post count n
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I am a scientist who has done some work on climate change issues. I usually completely ignore Slashdot stories about climate because I know that the whole comment thread will be people repeating the same arguments to each other about whether or not climate change exists, or is anthropogenic, or is a bad thing, or whatever. What value is there in repeating these stale talking points to each other over and over again? How many of the deniers are just trolls who don't care one way or another, but enjoy bait
Re: Prepare for deluge of stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Ars is a sickening bastion of groupthink, though.
You must be new here, coward. (So go away. We have enough cowards already. More than enough, in fact. We're drowning in them. And they don't believe in climate change because it's scary.)
Re: Prepare for deluge of stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Better a "coward" than an attention-whoring idiot with an embarrassing username.
In order for my username to be embarrassing, I would have to be embarrassed by other people's cultural ignorance.
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Ars is a sickening bastion of groupthink, though.
I agree. I can't read the comments there anymore. If people disagree with the article, they get lambasted by The Ars Borg. That's becoming the "increasingly non-natural" norm in society.
Re:Prepare for deluge of stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Prepare for deluge of stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you a an expert climatologist? or a geophysicist? or a oceanographer? Are you an expert in ANY field that covers climate change?
No?
Well... there are about 30,000+ scientists out there who wholeheartedly agree that global warming/man-made climate change is real.
I'll take their side instead of some random know-it-all on the internet who thinks he knows better than the scientific community.
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Not quite. The reference is to theater, which is something people had in the days before Netflix.
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I always find this funny that so many studies say "The Arctic is warming and there should be no more ice cap by 2050". I remember some US scientists said there would be no ice in the Arctic by 2013 [bbc.co.uk], and look at this graph. The arctic ice cap is currently a little over 13 million square km [nsidc.org].
Yes, it may be shrinking a little, but the sampling period is extremely short, compared to our planet's age. This can or cannot be caused by humans. But hey, anyway humans won't survive Earth, which is scheduled to disappe
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We only have about a billion years before the Earth is uninhabitable though...so we'd better get cracking!
Re:Paging Dr. Faustus (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, were Greenland's ice sheet to totally melt, we get roughly 24 ft of sea level rise. So if only 10 % of it melts, we get 2.4 ft rise. There goes Miami and most of southern Florida, Louisiana is...reduced. Virginia can kiss Norfolk goodbye. And if that rise also causes a shift in ocean currents, we can expect more effects.
So please, let's gamble with the future. What do we have to lose, eh?
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So we move the capitol of our country to Topeka, and continue on as normal.
Re:Paging Dr. Faustus (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, Ironically, the worry is global warming will make Europe colder (it is at the same latitude as Canada but is saved the brutal cold because of warming ocean currents).
If the ice melts, especially if it melts quickly, the relative lower salinity that results in the Northern Atlantic could screw up the ocean currents. That warm water that makes Europe warmer than say, Mongolia and Siberia no longer warms Europe. Europe freezes over like much of Canada.
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So how much has actually melted?
Re:Paging Dr. Faustus (Score:4, Interesting)
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So please, let's gamble with the future. What do we have to lose, eh?
Well of course anyone with money and power to protect are going to do that, they only care about what happens while they're alive, not what happens hundreds of years from now, they figure that's someone else's problem, why should they care? Then there's the religious types who are absolutely certain that the World Is Coming To An End Real Soon Now anyway, so again, why should they care? It's all part of 'gods plan' or somesuch nonsense, this Earth and this Existence is all supposed to be temporary so far as
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I assume that when you say "we don't exactly have a shortage of land..." you assume that people who have to move will move to empty areas.
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Also, if I'm following the thread correctly, the argument is being made that coastal, urban areas that may be threaten by sea-level would be moving to more rural, in land areas. I don't have no idea what that would cause.
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Re:Paging Dr. Faustus (Score:5, Informative)
You are not taking into account any changes between then and now, but even worse, you have no data on the depth of the ice, only on the area. The square kilometers says nothing about the volume, this however, does: https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/q... [nsidc.org]
Just because one model (and your BBC article was about ONE model which contradicted other model) didn't accurately predict when all the ice will be gone, doesn't mean that you should throw all models in the bin. Right now, most models say that the ice will be mostly gone somewhere between 2040 - 2100.
Ice Caps (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, it may be shrinking a little, but the sampling period is extremely short, compared to our planet's age. This can or cannot be caused by humans
This is very true. However, in this case we are certain that it is, in fact, being caused by human activity. The Keeling curve leaves very little room for interpretation.
Re:Paging Dr. Faustus (Score:5, Informative)
I always find this funny that so many studies say "The Arctic is warming and there should be no more ice cap by 2050". I remember some US scientists said there would be no ice in the Arctic by 2013 [bbc.co.uk], and look at this graph. The arctic ice cap is currently a little over 13 million square km [nsidc.org].
Yes, it may be shrinking a little, but the sampling period is extremely short, compared to our planet's age. This can or cannot be caused by humans. But hey, anyway humans won't survive Earth, which is scheduled to disappear anyway in the next 5 billion years... Unless we disseminate elsewhere in our universe, we're doomed.
How can you link to a text that says "could be ice-free in summers" and claim it says "there would be no ice (full stop). The ice cap is not "shrinking a little", it's shrinking massively. "Currently" it's the middle of winter, when the sea ice is always expanding to nearly the same level (basically, it covers the arctic until it runs out of ocean). In the arctic ocean, the summer minimum is the most important measurement. That said, the arctic ice has been at or near record low for the entire winter [nsidc.org], and for good measure in this year antarctic sea ice also is unusually low. The newly formed first-year ice is so thin that it melts very quickly in the summer, probably giving us another record low, and leading to more heating, as the sunlight is absorbed by the water, not reflected by the ice.
You have a point about the 5 billion years, but most of us have a somewhat shorter perspective - and even those with the long perspective may want to give us enough time to escape this doomed planet before things get really ugly.
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I don't know where you live but it's not winter in Antarctica:
Well, good that you mention that. We were, however, talking about the arctic, where it is the middle of winter right now. In the antarctic, the situation is differently - every southern summer essentially all of the sea ice melts, and the winter maximum is the important indicator to track. This is because we have the arctic ocean, mostly surrounded by land (which limits sea ice growth in winter, as the ice mostly runs out of sea to grow on), and the antarctic continent (which stops sea ice melting in summer
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I remember some US scientists said there would be no ice in the Arctic by 2013 [bbc.co.uk],
Sure, some scientists said that, the TV/media decided it was a good story, and that's the part that you heard.
All climate scientists are therefore dumbasses, right?
PS: The press was probably paid to make a big deal over that story. The climate change denial you're hearing is a well funded organization. Not a conspiracy either, one with actual names, published details of bank transfers, etc.
https://encrypted.google.com/s... [google.com]
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Ok, so some scientists and the TV media said that. Well, some scientists and the TV/media are saying it again. Why should we totally trust them this time?
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I always find this funny that so many studies say "The Arctic is warming and there should be no more ice cap by 2050". I remember some US scientists said there would be no ice in the Arctic by 2013 [bbc.co.uk]
Of course, the article says nothing of the kind:
Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers
Re: Paging Dr. Faustus (Score:2)
Coverage is only part of the equation. There's also thickness. And reflectivity.
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> This can or cannot be caused by humans.
And cancer can and can not be caused by smoking. So go ahead and smoke. Please. Lots, and rapidly. Thanks.
Re: Paging Dr. Faustus (Score:5, Informative)
Which part of that means it's perfectly OK to dump billions of tons of CO2 into the air now?
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fight CO2! Go NUCLEAR!
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Melting of Arctic sea ice is already causing an increase in precipitation in the region:
https://www.dartmouth.edu/pres... [dartmouth.edu]
Re: Paging William Shatner (Score:3)
Pretty low on commas too - they're all in your post.
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Historically, the artic, has, Been ice free. If you look at the history of the Vikings, you will notice an odd naming of Greenland.
Greenland wasn't named Greenland because it was green, it was named Greenland much for the same reason the US is full of small towns named "Greenville", "Mt Pleasant", "Pleasantville", "Spring Valley". It would have been hard getting a colony going if they called it "Frozen Piece of Shitland". By giving it a pleasant sounding name they hoped to attract people to come move there, as, for rather obvious reasons, most Danes were reluctant to move there.
Re: Paging Dr. Faustus (Score:5, Funny)
Historically, the artic, has, Been ice free.
Nice try, Mr. Shatner.
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If you look at the history of the Vikings, you will notice an odd naming of Greenland
The Greenland ice sheet is 100,000 years old, so it was there when the Vikings visited it. The Vikings did find some green parts along the edges, but these are green today as well. See this documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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remnants of 2016 El Nino? Or maybe it's accumulated pollution from China
I mean the warming of the last 40 years, not just this year.
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The same thing that caused it last time, a mix of planetary wobble and solar activity
Solar activity has been down lately, and wobbles are too slow or too insignificant.
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if the model simulation is saying 50C higher, I'd get a better model, some fruit loop must have messed with the parameters.
Then again all the present simulation models are fucking shit, biased to run way too hot. and don't model reality correctly. stop adding dumb fucking parameter kludges.
If they didn't use dumb fucking parameter kludges, the models wouldn't be able to even process fast enough to keep up with real time, forget about predicting the future.
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if the model simulation is saying 50C higher, I'd get a better model, some fruit loop must have messed with the parameters.
No, it's saying 50F higher. And since we've already seen 30-50F high anomalies this winter, the model output is perfectly plausible.
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They can't be very good scientists if they "marvel" at long predicted and long observed gradual changes in climate
The particular changes this arctic winter have not been long predicted, and aren't gradual.
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Trump, on the other hand, disdains the Republican-antithetic "Flip Flopper" epithet and is willing to change his mind, given sufficient incentive.
It's a little difficult to believe that, given Trump's extreme reluctance to ever, ever admit that he was wrong or made a mistake. He is always willing to pin blame on someone else for his decisions, and when it suits him he will flat-out lie, even about things that are easily fact-checked.