UK ice boffin: 'Arctic melt equivalent to 20 years of CO2' A prominent British Arctic scientist and researcher says that the continued and accelerated melting of the polar sea-ice cap is not only a result of climate change, but is also a massive contributor to it. To explain in an overly simplistic nutshell, sea ice is reflective, bouncing solar energy back into space. When it melts, …
It still baffles me how anyone with a brain could believe something like 97% of scientists are engaged in a mega-conspiracy to defraud the public to gain research grants, and refuse to even CONSIDER the possibility that the people who make Billions selling oil and gas could be the ones lying to try to protect their profits.
Maybe that's not the case, maybe all the climate-change sceptics are just people paid to sow doubt...but it does seem that there's plenty of people around utterly convinced that oil barons are decent, honest people, and it's the climate scientists who are the greedy, money-grabbing liars. Very weird.
Indeed, given the deeper pockets, more desperate motiviation (Shell and BP dont want to be the next BAT or Phillip Morris), and less people taking the cash (meaning all the more for me), if I were to get into the climate science game for money, I'd be taking the sceptics cash.
This straw man is getting tiresome. Let me summarize the position of most reasonable skeptics.
1. Is the global climate changing? Yes, that's it's inherent property.
2. Is the global climate warming? Yes, there's sufficient data to that effect.
3. Is the warming caused by CO2? Significantly, but it's not that straightforward. CO2 effect would be most prominent in the dry regions (e.g. deserts) and would be negligible in humid regions, dwarfed by effects of water vapor. Linear relationship that IPCC and alarmist try to present is bullshit.
4. Are we causing the change? We significantly contribute, but precise extent is not clear.
5. Is the change beneficial or harmful? That depends on specific regions. Warming may benefit fauna enormously. Harmful effects are also likely. However, the alarmism and politics has basically shut up moderate scientists and polarized the debate.
6. Can we reverse or stabilize the trend? Maybe. More importantly should we? Again, question 5 needs to be studied. The basic point is the answer to that is not an automatic Yes. Perhaps we should let things change? How many people considered that?
7. If we decide to prevent more warming (and the debate shouldn't have reached this point yet, given miserably incomplete climate models), what's the most efficient way to do it? This is where even most reasonable advocates of preventing climate change fail miserably. Carbon is simply too expensive to address by preventing the use of fossil fuels. There are 2.5 billion people in China and India and they want to have the same quality of life that you have. That takes energy, and thanks to the previous crusade by 'environmentalists' (people who have actually done most harm to the environment with their ignorance) nuclear was off the table for 2 decades. That only leaves fossil fuels. Whatever CO2 output can be reduced by Western countries at enormous expense to their economies, it will be dwarfed by India and China. That takes CO2 emission reduction at best stupid and at worst counter-productive. Western economies that adhere to some environmental standards are shot in the foot, while manufacturing moves increasingly to China to escape CO2 regulation.
True, but the evidence doesn't care who says what.
Don't grace deniers with the term sceptic. True sceptics look at *all* the evidence and draw conclusions that are always provisional, even when they are strengthened by each new data set.
Deniers ignore the vast bulk of evidence (like the plummeting sea ice, say) and focus on anomalies, claiming that the provide falsification, rather than merely showing the boundaries of knowledge.
In this respect their logic is identical to that of holocaust deniers and every bit as disreputable. So the little shits can whine all they like about the comparison; they chose this method.
Feel free to focus on the extremists, if it makes you feel that your position is more defensible. However, evidence doesn't do anything by itself, it has to be interpreted - context and observer are important. The fact is, right now we have sufficient evidence to say the earth is warming and that we contribute to that to some extent. However, there seems to be a bizarre jump from point 4 to 7 on my list without doing the intervening steps. Trying to reduce carbon emissions is inefficient (if your goal is to reduce global warming) and short-sighted. Feel free to deny that fact as much as you want.
Also, I invoke Godwin's law.
And your post is exactly the sort of swivel eyed rearrangement of the facts top create an ad hominem one comes to expect from AGW supporters. Never facts, always ad hominems, and ad hominems that are simply NOT justified on the face of the evidence.
No he is not saying what you claim he is saying. He is saying that irrespective of whether any warming that may or may not be happening is human made or not, there is nothing we can do to stop it in real practical terms.
Ergo we should not waste money and destroy our economies trying.
Now the fact that you attack this very rational statement suggests you have an ulterior motive for wanting us to spend money on alleged palliatives. I wonder who your employer is? If we are going to bandy ad hominems....
There's a well known prediction from yesteryear when climate skeptics were busy denying the world was warming (this was the late 90s/early 2000s).
It said that once it became impossible to deny the warming anymore they would switch to denying the cause. Then when it became impossible to deny the cause they would turn to denying the changes would cause harm. Finally when that failed they would claim it was too late to do anything about it. It looks like the last stage of denial is coming into play above with references to China, etc.
What you're describing is a healthy skepticism that every scientific theory is subject to. That is how science works. A hypothesis is subjected to scrutiny which changes and becomes more granular as time progresses and understanding of it grows. You describe a reaction to the theory as evidence for it grows. What kind of reaction did you expect? An instant embrace?
For some reason, global warming and other environmental causes (e.g. anti-nuclear) represent the only area of science where adherents of certain theories expect to be excluded from this inherently scientific process of skepticism. Not only that, but any kind of skepticism or opposition is considered malicious, delusional, or worse, compared to Holocaust deniers (see above in the thread). Now why is that? Even the debate is coached in terms that have nothing to do with science, but are political in nature. "Incontrovertible" and "scientific consensus" spring to mind. Science done by consensus is not science.
Take this thread, for instance. I laid out my view and supporting arguments. The summary of my position: if (still a big if in my opinion) global warming is such a huge problem, we're going about it the wrong way. Did I get arguments to the contrary? Told I was wrong? A suggestion of alternatives? Links to studies that support CO2 (rather than methane or albedo) as the factor to be addressed? Nope, I was compared to a Holocaust denier and got a bunch of straw men arguments in response. If you honestly believe that global warming is a threat, how do you expect people to actually pay of addressing it if those are the tactics you use? It's not surprising then that in latest surveys more and more people don't believe in the doomsday scenario of global warming.
"No he is not saying what you claim he is saying. He is saying that irrespective of whether any warming that may or may not be happening is human made or not, there is nothing we can do to stop it in real practical terms.
Ergo we should not waste money and destroy our economies trying."
Aha, I suspect this is actual mindset of most climate-change "sceptics", but rather than flatly admit it as itzman just did, they dress it up with this "we don't know quite enough about it, so let's just do nothing" argument, or vague defamations about how it's all just fabricated or exaggerated by the scientific community/environmental lobby groups.
Basically, all but the most ignorant of people would know by now - whether they admit it or not - that climate change is clearly happening and it's in all likelihood being dramatically caused by human activity. The most obvious and only realistic way to begin to combat that is to start to reduce CO2 output via various means - potentially at some economic cost, admittedly. Obviously, you can't just turn off a fossil fuel economy overnight, but baby steps are going to have a more positive effect than doing absolutely nothing. Most sceptics surely are blatantly aware of all this yet choose to espouse otherwise due to a selfish, short-sighted attitude of "I can't be arsed with the negative implications of this, plus it probably wont affect me in my lifetime or generation or two after, so why bother?".
Your Aha! reminds me of South Park moment when Mrs. Garrison finds out Dawkins is an atheist. Well, I wasn't hiding. It's curious you chose to address itzman's post describing what I'm saying, rather than what I'm saying directly and what I suspect (and number of up votes confirms) position of most reasonable skeptics is. It's telling that most responses, including yours, chose to address an imaginary extremist view and then claim a debate isn't possible, all the while ignoring the actual skeptic position. Let me try again.
1. It's pretty clear that the earth is warming and that we significantly contribute to that.
2. It actually doesn't matter if we contribute a lot or not at all. If an asteroid is hurtling towards earth, who cares if we caused it, right? Let's first find out how big it is.
3. The runaway global warming scenario presented by IPCC and espoused by most proponents is bullshit. It relies not on greenhouse effect of the CO2 but on increasing number of speculative positive feedback loops, all the while ignoring negative ones. Doomsday scenario is sexy as, if you're a politician or an environmentalist, it allows you to force people to do a lot of stupid shit if your really convince them. This, however, is not the crux of the disagreement.
THIS IS:
4. If you truly and honestly believe in the runaway scenario of global warming and are trying to prevent it - YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG! If burning of fossil fuels can lead to a catastrophe, why are we faffing about with wind and solar? They are 2X as expensive and even if they weren't, they cannot be load-bearing without additional expense and so can make up no more than 15% of national infrastructure of most countries. Why isn't each country, pressured by environmentalists, developing a strategy to move most electricity generation to nuclear instead of fossil fuels? Could it be because the group of people who screams about global warming the loudest is the same one that killed nuclear 25 years ago? Why are environmentalists still screaming in Germany and France to close nuclear stations?
It gets worse. Not only are real and working solution of nuclear energy is not utilized in favor of renewable pipe dream, but a completely ludicrous solution of carbon caps is pushed. You can dismiss people who mention India and China, but you cannot wish away those countries existence. Whatever carbon you prevent from release here by handicapping manufacturing, will be released in double there because that's where manufacturing would move and their standards and equipment are a lot less efficient than our. Therefore, if you really and truly believe in the doomsday scenario, you would not argue for carbon caps, unless they were globally enforceable.
That's not to say there's nothing to be done if we decide to prevent warming (something I'm not yet convinced we need to be doing). There's methane, which has 23x more radiative forcing than CO2. There's agriculture: not ploughing before planting certain crops increases growth of topsoil which sequesters carbon. There's geoengineering and some ideas from it may actually be viable. But no, "only realistic way to begin to combat [global warming] is to start to reduce CO2 output". It is by pure coincidence that it also lets politicians tax any economic activity and environmentalists dictate how companies should behave to be on their naughty or nice lists. Well, good luck with that. But keep this in mind - if the wolf is as real as you say, then you, my friends, just royally screwed everyone.
You're lumping in a bunch of other arguments assuming that I have that position that the solution is renewables, you're also assuming I actually care strongly about climate change and stopping it - I don't really, but I don't make up a load of BS denials and smear attempts at those who do, which is where we differ.
As you said yourself:
"1. It's pretty clear that the earth is warming and that we significantly contribute to that."
Then it's pretty obvious the first thing to be done is reducing carbon emissions. Whether you go about that via nuclear or renewables or carbon caps or whatever isn't the debate here. I'm not sure why you've switched from that to the details of how it's done or why you think the statement I made that "the only realistic way to begin to combat [global warming] is to start to reduce CO2 output" somehow differs from the nuclear solution you just proposed, which is just a specific method of achieving exactly that.
Actual AGW sceptics don't share your views openly at all, they're blatantly stating that they either doubt climate change is a) happening at all (less so these days, but that used to be the norm) or b) is influenced by human activity. You seem to acknowledge both of those as facts, which leads me to think you're confused about what side of the debate you're actually on, and slightly delusional as to how sane/honest AGW sceptics really are.
Basically, to summarise solidsoup: you're not a AWG sceptic, you just think you are, and not only that but you mistakenly assume that actual sceptics are people that share your ideological position - they're not.
Debating whether provisions to reduce human impact on climate change and if we do so then what methods should be used is absolutely fine, no-one here has really addressed that other than you. The problem is there's still a large chunk of people who for reasons of either ignorance, convenience, vested interest, or self-delusion are denying that AGW actually exists. That's the issue here.
The irony that to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels we should use windmills which need massive cement foundations (even more so for offshore) is laughable. Perhaps some of the wind fanatists would like to consider the amount of CO2 released in the production of cement needed to hold down the windmill!
Then we get to solar, great for central heating but when it comes to electricity generation you need storage batteries for the overnight use to keep your fridge and freezer running so alongside the enviromental cost of the panels and batteries you need a backup power source.
And both will need a backup for when the wind doesnt blow.
The only way we can generate sufficient power without the use of fossil fuels is with nuclear energy but the AGW brigade cannot bring themselves to admit that the way to lower man made CO2 is to do so, instead we have windmills and some crappy hybrid cars, neither of which make the blindest bit of difference to CO2 output and have a massive environmental cost that no one in the AGW camp likes to talk about.
So rather than deal with the nuclear elephant in the room they would rather leave the economy in tatters and return us to the stone age with half baked answers whilst the Chinese look on, laugh and take over the worlds economy.
"The only way we can generate sufficient power without the use of fossil fuels is with nuclear energy but the AGW brigade cannot bring themselves to admit that the way to lower man made CO2 is to do so"
That's rubbish. You're just equating pro-renewable environmentalists with everyone that openly believes in AWG (which is basically just everyone who's at least half-intelligent and honest). You yourself are practically saying AWG exists in your post, so why aren't you pro-windmill if you're technically part of this "AWG brigade" you seem to think everyone belongs to.
You are confusing many things, not surprising really given the quality of your comment.
Firstly, believing we are chucking our more CO2 than we did before we had mass industry does not equate to a belief in AGW.
Secondly, you find a single current AGW supporter in the public eye who will make the nuclear argument over renewables, I have yet to see one, what we occasionally see is mutterings about nuclear but no one has the minerals to say what most of us realised a long time ago, and that is, with increasing energy demand it is, currently the only viable solution if we want to lower are demand for fossil fuels.
But worst of all, if we are to do something about this issue then we need to look much further than just CO2 but also at intensive meat farming and methane amongst others, which given our rising populations is not an easy fix either.
Wasting money on unworkable solutions and smokescreens whilst using carbon credit trading and imaginary offset stuff as a psychological panacea is not going to cut the mustard, but it does make banks and others very wealthy, whilst actually solving the problem by providing abundant nuclear energy at low cost doesnt pay the bonuses.
"Secondly, you find a single current AGW supporter in the public eye who will make the nuclear argument over renewables"
George Monbiot.
There are plenty of people who believe in AGW and also believe in nuclear power. The problem is that the big environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth, are dominated by older people who have serious prejudices against nuclear power and keep a lock on the voice of environmentalism as much as possible. When the media want a comment on an environmental matter, they call a spokesperson for FoE or Greenpeace or whoever. So you seldom hear from any but the Old Guard on environmental activism. Unfortunately.
"[...] Never facts, always ad hominems, and ad hominems that are simply NOT justified on the face of the evidence."
"Ad hominems" are not always fallacious, and can be acceptable arguments in certain kinds of discussion-types. See Walton, D. N. (1998). _Ad hominem arguments_. Alabama University Press, ISBN: 0-8173-0922-5.
As to whether this discussion is one of those types: the fact is you and your supporters have already conceded that it is! The first time one of you suggested some conspiracy or dishonesty on the part of someone is disagreement with you all on the matter, you also made use of an _ad hominem_ argument. So, you cannot now claim that having them used against *you* is necessarily always the sign of bad arguments. In fact, there are interesting issues about why some people routinely try to allege large-scale conspiracies that are totally unfeasible given the number of people involved who have to coordinate their untruths.
So, if you don't like the heat, I suggest you get out of the kitchen of your own making.
Re "In this respect their logic is identical to that of holocaust deniers and every bit as disreputable. So the little shits can whine all they like about the comparison; they chose this method"
I don't see the comparison. The holocaust is a historical fact , that happened , we have LOTS of records. Only the wilfully ignorant, and idiotic choose to deny historical facts that are backed up by a wealth of evidence.
Climate change on the other hand almost certainly happens, planet Earth has been warmer in the past than it is now , it has also been a lot cooler.
No one is denying the climate can and will change.
What some people do deny is that human kind burning lots of fossil fuels is going to create a lot of atmospheric CO2 that is in someway going to lead to runaway global warming. As a species we haven't fully run a test case on planet earth on this yet.
The logic of denying historical fact , and being sceptical about every chicken-licken-the-sky-is-falling-in-guesstimate-science are quite different.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Releasing billions of tonnes into the atmosphere swamps the natural carbon cycle, which causes CO2 to accumulate fast. Current concentration of CO2 is over 30% higher than at any time in the last 500000 years. Global temperatures are increasing as expected, sea levels are rising, ocean heat content is increasing, artic ice is melting fast.
There is nothing here one could be sceptical about. Either you do accept the evidence or you deny the facts.
The only kind of scepticism left is what exactly we should do about it. Continue burning fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow and find out the hard way whether we end up with runaway warming? Or trying to be more energy efficient and switch to cheaper alternative energy resources? Which choice will be cheaper and benefit humankind more in the long run?
> ...and refuse to even CONSIDER the possibility that the people who make Billions
Maybe it's a kind of low-level fear; if you consider it could be your fault then you have to do something about it. But what are you going to do? Protests make no difference, voting is hopeless "lesser-evilism" anyways, you don't have enough money to make a dent, and to take personal responsibility and ditch your car / electricity / etc will require a huge effort which many people are already too stressed (emotionally and financially) to be able to implement. So to remain sane you deny it. I'm not quite sure how I remain sane sometimes, to be honest!
> ...scientists are engaged in a mega-conspiracy to defraud the public to gain research grants
And there's the other side: scientists ("scientists"?) aren't exactly saints and certainly will beef up their claims and statements ("novely and significance" in the parlance) in the competition for grants and exposure. Few if any people given airtime in this debate are truly impartial - that's the way the media distorts debates unfortunately (people who are impartial are 'boring' and also not likely to claw for media attention).
Basically, you are going to have to make up your own mind and decide what you are going to do about it. Which seems to apply to most major questions of substance nowadays.
@Pperson: All the data are available, just go to NASA or the Met office web sites also most scientists do debate they will discuss. However, they won't discuss with people who just shout abuse or are so ill informed that a discussion is worthless.
Nice straw man, though.
Do you actually know where the "97% of climate scientists" claim came from? In short, from a survey where 3000 responded but only 77 of those 3000 were used and of those 77, 75 said man-made global warming is real. Don't take my word for it, please verify this. Do your own research into the matter.
Do you want to know why I believe man-made global warming is a hoax? (1) If the science behind it is real, then why do the scientists refuse to follow the scientific method and make their data available and results reproducible? (2) If the science behind it is real, then why do the scientists who promote refuse to have an open, honest debate with those scientists who do not believe? If you are right, what do you have to lose? Science isn't the legal system where you have the right to remain silent. (3) If the science behind it is real, then why do the scientists work hard to avoid Freedom of Information laws.
I will conclude with this: Why is that these scientists ONLY talk about the Arctic and never talk about the Antarctic? Did you know that the Antarctic has had unusually high ice extent for years? Did you know that most of the melting in the Arctic is unrelated to temperature but to ocean currents and wind? Did you know that a strong polar storm caused the Arctic ice to sink a record low? Did you know the measurable ice records we have only go back to the 1970's?
Description of the Doran 2009 paper that surveyed 3146 Earth scientists is here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm
To the question "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?", 82% answered yes. Breaking down the yes's and no's into levels of expertise found that the no's were coming from those scientists with the least expertise. 77 is the number of those 3146 earth scientists who actually publish research on climate change. Of those 75 answered yes (97.5%).
Some climate skeptics would have people believe there is a 50/50 split among scientists on the issue, but really there isn't. Even many skeptics would answer yes.
"Do you want to know why I believe man-made global warming is a hoax? (1) If the science behind it is real, then why do the scientists refuse to follow the scientific method and make their data available and results reproducible? (2) If the science behind it is real, then why do the scientists who promote refuse to have an open, honest debate with those scientists who do not believe? If you are right, what do you have to lose? Science isn't the legal system where you have the right to remain silent. (3) If the science behind it is real, then why do the scientists work hard to avoid Freedom of Information laws."
Scientists are human too. Some climate scientists were turned off by character attacks on themselves, their peers and their field and as a result became hostile and resistant to cooperating with skeptics out of a personal dislike for them. That of course made them look bad in the long run as there is a string of events where they should have cooperated and shared data.
In any case the fundamental science behind man-made global warming is reproducible and available. In fact as a result of the extra demands and scrutiny of climate science there's probably more publicly accessible data available on the internet for climate science than any other scientific field. As to individual scientist behaviors, I would have to see evidence that other fields would behave differently in the same situation to think things were awry. I note that some skeptical scientists have refused or ignored requests to supply code or data for their own claims. It happens and it's because scientists are human and not perfect.
In other fields I can well imagine individual biologists dismissing and refusing to cooperate with creationists for example and ending up getting into a sticky situation where they are labelled anti-scientific for not sharing data. Indeed in particular to one of your points about debate, professor Dawkins has said he won't debate creationists because it's a waste of time, which of course makes him look bad in respect to your point and it could be argued he isn't engaging in necessary debate. I think scientists tend to expect scientific debate to occur in the traditional place in the peer reviewed literature, so the burden is on skeptics to publish their arguments. On the otherhand it would be nice to have written debates on the internet, but as this is a new idea I can't really condemn scientists for not adopting it already.
You ask: "Why is that these scientists ONLY talk about the Arctic and never talk about the Antarctic?"
The significance of the changes that are occurring in the arctic are far greater than what is happening in the Antarctic. Arctic sea ice decline has been much faster and greater than Antarctic sea ice gain. Plus the milestone of zero arctic sea ice beckons which is a step change that could affect the whole arctic climate and weather. There is no such imminent milestone with Antarctic sea ice.
"Did you know that most of the melting in the Arctic is unrelated to temperature but to ocean currents and wind?"
The decline in sea ice is very much related to temperature. The annual cycle of arctic sea ice has always followed temperature: shrinking in the summer and growing in the winter. There's a reason why the minimum occurs in early September, it's because that's when the water temperatures peak. The 2012 storms contributed to the record low, but even without it there still would have been a record. It was already going that way. Storms are not independent from temperature anyway. Why are we only just hearing about storms smashing the ice this year? As the arctic warms and more open water forms in summer there will be more evaporation and probably more and even bigger storms than in 2012. In addition the thinner ice will be more easily smashed to pieces by those storms. If a storm like the one we had this year had hit in 1990 the ice would have been thick enough to shrug it off.
"At least we wont have to worry about East Anglia for much longer. The middle of Essex must be worth investing in as the future new coastline with a mediterranean climate...."
EXCELLENT. That'll make my house worth shit loads, and I can have long boring conversation how I only paid a couple of hundred thousand for it , when it is worth several million, and all the super rich yachts are berthed a about 10 miles away in Chelmsford. Of course I've got to make it to 2050 , by which time I will either be dead (most likely) or some seriously old codger .
I think it is the default assumption that the prime motivator for anyone is not a desire for a greater shift towards scientific objective accurate models of what is going on, but is based on conspiracy, untruths, and desire for monetary rewards that drives all of this. Perhaps the people so enamoured with this "deniers approach" (I refuse to dignify it with the label skeptic or sceptic) do so because they are either merely reflecting their own motivations in theior own daily lives, or they are so taken with the capitalist dream, that they distort it to fit others who do not behave in accordance with it, and hence transform it into the conspiracy theories. In other words, it may also be a reflection that they think everyone, deep down, embraces capitalism as some kind of universal principle for human behaviour, which also necessitates the need for conspiracies, lying, falsification of data on a massive scale.
"It still baffles me how anyone with a brain could believe something like 97% of scientists are engaged in a mega-conspiracy to defraud the public to gain research grants, and refuse to even CONSIDER the possibility that the people who make Billions selling oil and gas could be the ones lying to try to protect their profits."
Your words imply that 97% + of all scientists are involved in the same, single conspiracy, and tied with your title, this implies the conspiracy is involved with climate change.
Do you really think 97% or more of ALL scientists are even remotely qualified to study climate change, or are involved in such? What about CERN? What about pharmaceutical research? What about.... oh, the (made up figure here) 99,9% of all OTHER science out there? Has all that just gone away?
So I am calling your bullshit for what it is. A made up statistic, inflated to idiotic levels to support your view.
Ignoring that bullshit statistic, however, we have a slightly different stance: It is not the scientists who are corrupt, it's those who take the research data and report it inaccurately, adding their own politically motivated interpretation to it to 'big it up', just as you did with your 97%. They are the mega-conspiracy participants, and they are milking the scared public for all they can get.
Oil companies just milk the public for all they can get without resort to scare tactics. They don't have to lie or cheat... although they do that anyhow, possibly just because they can or feel they are left out from all the bull others are spouting.
In the mean time, there are real scientists out there trying to understand how the world works, and who are quite diligent and careful in what they report so as not to claim something they cannot prove. Instead, they produce theories that, in a polite and well run society, can be reviewed, challenged, criticised and corrected. Climate study is not polite and well run: Politics have gotten entangled in it and are messing up the process. As such, theories are reported as fact and attempts to check and challenge those theories are being blocked. This is why there are so many skeptics out here: We want real science, not politically twisted science. We want to know what the real data is, so we can look at what weighting is used and compare it to what else we know. Else we have floods that are attributed to climate change when in truth it's simply because some idiot cut all the trees down a mile or two up river. The latter was easy to fix, the former... well, that's still debatable.
The problem is NOT the science, its that its been hijacked by scammers like Al Gore who have set themselves up to be carbon billionaires by leeching and scamming the system they intend to set up. Have you EVER, even once, heard Al Gore and CO talk about putting Tariffs on China, who is belching so much pollution we in the USA pick it up on our west coast? Nope because they make mad MONIES off Chinese slave labor, you stupid peasant you!
Many of us are all for pollution being lowered, in fact there are several things we could be doing that don't need carbon credit scams to actually make a difference. putting a layer of light concrete to keep roads from being giant heat sinks, painting roofs white to reflect sunlight, and most importantly in the USA we need a "people's car" that costs less than $15k and gets 45MPG with subsidies to get the poor out of their used cars which get less than 16MPG here in the states.
But you'll NEVER hear or see any of those things come to pass, because the ALgore and friends at Goldman Sachs have already hijacked the platform and made sure the ONLY thing you'll hear about is cap&trade. The results of cap&trade? Since there will be ZERO penalty for sending your company to a country not part of cap&trade (which India and China have already said they won't play the game) the factories in the west that are left will be wiped out overnight, since it'll be cheaper for the companies to build a new factory in China than comply, and the 1% like Al will simply pay THEMSELVES through their Carbon shell corps to drive their SUVs and Lear jets, nope the ONLY ones being hurt will be the poor and middle class who will get more taxes because they can't set up shell corps and move overseas.
So offer REAL solutions? Many of us that fight the AGWers will be on board. Offer us the same old 1% scams designed to enrich the top, like crap&trade? then please go jump off the nearest bridge into the ever rising ocean, because the cap&trade scams will do absolutely ZERO to change anything, unless you consider making Al Gore a billionaire a positive change, I don't.
It just occurred to me that the earth, in order to exist for 4.5 billion years, must has great survival instincts. Also I have been observing the sun's, current, and it's long term activity. Currently the sun is experiencing the lowest activity in hundreds of years. Particularly, it is similar to the maunder era when we had a very cold phase and severe freezing.
With these thoughts in mind, I began to wonder if the earth is preparing itself for a cold era. What I mean is this....If the ice cover reflects the sun, it would be an advantage for the earth to reflect the sun back to space. I understand that this is the current fear. Conversely, the oceans, without the ice cover, will absorb the suns rays and store the heat that it absorbs. Now if the earth and mother nature, God or whatever, knows that a cold phrase is upcoming, wouldn't it be an advantage to have the oceans free of ice covering so to have the ability to store as much heat as possible.
Maybe we are looking at this all wrong. After all, humans are, by nature, fearful of change and we usually apply whatever knowledge or fearful thoughts we have. I think that this could be a instinct that we are endowed with so that we protect ourselves but, as we all know, sometimes it doesn't always work to our advantage.
As the current phraseology would put it.....I'm just saying!
or not, of course. Let's take your idea as an extension of the Gaia hypothesis, in which the planet and its biosphere are a self-correcting mechanism. Since humans are part of the mechanism we could be unconciously polluitng in order to maintain global temperatures in the face of the oncoming cold. Conciously we believe we are doing something wrong, but it's not our fault, Gaia is making us do it ;-)
Now, I want to see an oil company executive use tha argument in public...
Look its perfectly simple
Once upon a time the plants ruled the planet: there were no animals. And over a period of aeons the plants sucked up all the carbon dioxide, and turned it into coal. Then along came animals, and they ate a lot of the plants life, and turned it into useful manure for more plants, which was Good For Plants. Except some of them died and made pools of icky oil at the bottom of lakes and stuff instead.
The Plants put on their thinking caps, and decided the best thing to do was to breed a race of animals smart enough to dig up all the coal and drill all the oil and burn it, thereby making the planet warmer and rich in carbon dioxide and suitable for more plants. .
And everything is gouing according to plan.
@Sandman: Gaia states that the planet is a globally regulating system, not a self correcting system. There is a subtle, but very important difference. Also, humans can do what they want, over time (and it'll be a long time) the planet will regulate, although we'll probably be extinct.
The *rate* gets bigger as the amount gets bigger.
Like the greenhouse effect the *basic* physics of it have been known for decades.
I've always thought a layer of ping pong balls would float on the water and return the reflectivity to allow refreezing.
The question is how many *other* non linear effects are at play.
hm... let's think..
missing summer Arctic ice - 4,000,000 km2 or 4,000,000,000,000 m²
Number of 40mm ping-pong balls in 1 square metre with hex packing = pi/6 * sqrt(3);
(1000/40)² * pi/6 * sqrt(3) = 567 ping pong balls per square meter.
567 * 4,000,000,000,000 = 2,268,000,000,000,000 ping-pong balls... hm...
I'll leave it to you to calculate raw materials extraction, processing and manufacture, storage, transportation and deployment, and the carbon footprint involved to make it happen...
Clue - about 22 million ping-pong balls would fit in a 747 airliner.
We had the summer ice for free. Now it's really going to cost.
We had the summer ice for free. Now it's really going to cost.
Nah, I'm sure we've all woken up after a night at the pub and found we've walked off with the ping-pong ball more than once. If we pool our resources we can do it for free! Maybe chuck in some egg-shells or something to make up the shortfall
More stormy conditions would increase average UK windspeeds which would increase wind power generation. The data needed to make this assessment is present in the Oxford Uni study (google for Oxford University Wind Study sinden05-dtiwindreport.pdf )
The fraction of time an individual turbine has to be shut down due to excess windspeed is trivial in relation to its annual power output ( less than 0.1% of hours/year on average and less than 2% at windiest UK sites in the Oxford University study ). The fraction it is not generating, or more commonly generating less than capacity due to insufficient windspeed has a much greater impact. Consequently onshore wind generators have a 30% duty cycle and offshore up to 40%. That's the fraction of annual GWh the thing actually generates compared to what it would generate if running at full capacity 24x7x365. Increasing storm conditions would increase the duty cycle towards 50% affecting output positively by much more than the increase in downtime due to unsafe windspeeds would reduce the duty cycle.
More stormy conditions would affect us badly in many other ways (e.g. crop failures, need more energy to keep dwellings warm, increased difficulty of installing wind generators by reducing wind calm time windows needed for erecting these ) but would be good for wind energy output in general.
> wind power will be an even more cost effective source.
Up to the point - when storms would get so strong, that they will be demolishing the wind farms.
Just to realize the scale of the things, how huge the things we're are dealing with, I can recommend to read The Swarm by Frank Schätzing.
It's still to be seen how really fragile the balance the biosphere is built up on us. But I really do not want to be here if/when it hits the fan.
'Surely the Arctic was warmer a thousand years ago when Scandinavians settled in Greenland to farm?'
The Norse didn't settle the Arctic areas of Greenland, only the very margins in the far south.
But to answer your question - the settlement was from about 980CE into an environment slightly cooler than modern Greenland, and cooling from its maximum. Even at the best it was a lousy climate and the Norse only really survived because they could import materials from Norway, Iceland and (briefly) North America. Their agricultural economy was taken from their experience of Norway and Iceland - marginal pasture and hay to see their animals through the winters. As the climate cooled the growing season collapsed and they followed it into extinction.
All these 'reports' have to be taken wit a shovel full of salt. This particular one is showing a reduction of sea ice recorded after a storm that drove to ice to another place - after all it is floating on water and waves will break up most things given time.
Another thing that all the warmists ignore is the fact that the UK and other EU countries CO2 reduction is totally negated by on new power station being opened in China.
They also ignore the fact that any CO2 reduction energy production is casting everyone a small fortune and don't give me the bull about reducing energy usage when people are having to decide between heating or eating.
From the Royal Academy of Engineering come the figures for cost of production per kwh.
Gas 2.2p, Nuclear 2.3p, Coal 2.5p, Onshore wind 5.4p, Offshore wind 7.2p
With those figures in mind I say lets get fracking.
"All these 'reports' have to be taken wit a shovel full of salt. This particular one is showing a reduction of sea ice recorded after a storm that drove to ice to another place - after all it is floating on water and waves will break up most things given time."
The ice is melting and getting thinner and easier to break up and storms are becoming more common and bigger as more moisture evaporates from the open arctic ocean and the atmosphere warms up.
In 2007 climate deniers were using the excuse that "winds" had pushed all the ice out of the arctic. They then predicted arctic sea ice would recover. Now in 2012 when it reaches an even lower extent they blame it on a storm. Never wondering just why it keeps getting lower. We'll hit zero and they'll still be trying to deny it's getting thinner.
Ivan 4: "All these 'reports' have to be taken wit a shovel full of salt. This particular one is showing a reduction of sea ice recorded after a storm that drove to ice to another place."
Hmm... There certainly seem to have been a rapidly and relatively steady increase in the number of storms since 1979, eh? Check out that first chart, mate, and stop grasping for denialist straws.
the graph only goes back to 1970 !
What was happening in 1959 when USS Skate surfaced at the North Pole ??
What was happening 100 years ago ?
What was happening when Greenland was green and did NOT have permafrost ?
How did all those plants grow in Siberia that now constitute the permafrost layer
30 years is not enough time to even start to guess at what 'normal' INTERGLACIAL state of the poles actually is historically.
We do know the Chinese navigated round the Artic Ocean c1300.
Read the logs from the Whalers (18 & 19 th centuries) to understand that the 'fringes' of the artic ice pack don't half change a lot.
WE DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THE STATE OF THE ICE PACKS IN THE 1930s never mind the Middle ages Warm Period or the Roman Optimum.
We DO know that the earth has been in its current Ice House stage for a long time; and the current interglacial is colder than average and has already lasted LONGER than average; we are due another glacial period; the last one almost wiped out H Sapiens - conversely H Sap has always prospered during this interglacial's mild warm periods. Incidentally; periodically (in hundreds of millions of years time scales) the earth becomes a 'Hot House' when; unlike the present Ice House phase; there is NO ICE AT ALL at the poles.
Get a grip on the time scales involved compared to the pathetic 30 years of data we have.
Over 30 years of data is plenty to prove a clear trend. I presume you'd like to get more data, and continue monitoring the arctic until there is no more ice left (which will happen fairly soon) and then claim it is perfectly normal as it has happened before during earth's history of 4 billion years? In what way is that relevant to our current climate?
Note submarines can punch through several metres of ice, so it is not unusual for them to surface in arctic ice.
"30 years is not enough time to even start to guess"
Yes it is, the doyens of Climat Science (I think Jones was involved) many years ago annointed the 30 year period as the time scale dejour and for all time henceforward as the boundary between weather and climate.
What do 30 years of satellite temperature data tell us about temperatures at the pole? Seriously, does the pole area show and trend? (now that we have the magic 30 years of data)
>Gas 2.2p, Nuclear 2.3p, Coal 2.5p, Onshore wind 5.4p, Offshore wind 7.2p
Enhanced Geothermal is even cheaper than gas, is often discovered accidentally while searching for other resources, and also can involve fracking. And it doesn't involve burning hydrocarbons.
So frack away, and maybe you will find some of each!
"[Writing in Nature, a team of polar scientists reveals] that the rapid warming of this region over the last 100 years has been unprecedented and came on top of a slower natural climate warming that began around 600 years ago."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120822131212.htm
Yes, but it is really only in the Antarctic peninsula. So the explanation for it needs to take that into account. The rest of the Antarctic is warming, but nothing like as fast. Also, it;s worth pointing out that ground measuring stations are few and far between in the Antarctic and any paper based on their data has got to be indicative at best.
But if 50% of the temp rise during the last x years is due to decreased albedo, then the temp rise that's been directly attributed to CO2 + other feedbacks (over that time) must be 50% or the original estimates.
Or have I misunderstood something? Just satiable curtiosity...
good question
we do not know what all the feedbacks are; so how can anyone attribute any % to any feedback ?
(Sanity check; just why did the price of wheat track the sunspot cycles so closely ? No; don't ignore the question; the CAGW people have to be able to explain that piece of empirical science to justify ignoring solar variance).
The IPCC use models that are predicated on the theory that CO2 is a major (the major) feedback. They still have clouds as positive feedback - when the empirical science would seem to indicate that most cloud is a negative feedback. They ignore all solar variance despite revcent work in CERN (CLOUD experiment) which suggests that the sun has a far more complex interaction with the earth than its luminosity.
The IPCC then take the outputs of these very poor models and (read the various reports) use the models as the basis of all their 'predictions'. As an example; see the Stern report which is heavily reliant on Model outputs which it uses as 'proof'
If you have not used models before; then also be aware that it is incredibly hard to model a simple thing like a fractionation column (a few well understood major variable; a few moderately understood minor variables and lots of small and ignored variables). What do we use the model for ? Mostly training; and getting some rough idea of what would happen if ONE variable was changed. The answer btw is ALWAYS taken with a massive pinch of salt. That is for a simple model. The climate is CHAOTIC and about as far from simple as you can get. And they believe the output of this models run through 100s of iterations (each iteration multiplies the errors created in the last iteration) ?
>>Sanity check; just why did the price of wheat track the sunspot cycles so closely ? No; don't ignore the question; the CAGW people have to be able to explain that piece of empirical science to justify ignoring solar variance
I don't see it tracking at all
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/images/2008/soft-commodities-june08_image003.gif
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1970
"The IPCC use models that are predicated on the theory that CO2 is a major (the major) feedback"
The models are predicated on what is known about the climate, there's no biasing for CO2. The overall positive feedback of the climate itself and large global warming in response to a CO2 increase is an emergent behavior of the models.
"They ignore all solar variance despite revcent work in CERN (CLOUD experiment) which suggests that the sun has a far more complex interaction with the earth than its luminosity."
Until such a mechanism can be proved and an effect can be calculated it cannot be included in models.
"Until such a mechanism can be proved and an effect can be calculated it cannot be included in models."
So, the physicists need to extract the science (in the parlance) from their exquisitely defined CLOUD experiment results in order to be able to describe precisely the already observed atmospheric phenomena in order for the knowledge to be included in climate models. Well, I am sure the CERN lads will do just that, since they are after all real scientists.
Compare and contrast with the pseudo science that comprises the climate models.
"[H]ave I misunderstood something?" Yes, definitely.
It's not the case, as you suggest, that 50% of the temperature rise in the last x years has been due to decreased Arctic albedo.
What this group of experts is saying is that in addition to existing anthropogenic global warming another effect is now cutting in quite rapidly. The recent and forthcoming decrease in Arctic albedo will further shift the Earth's heat balance. In the near future this will lead to even greater increases in overall temperature; and the amount of this extra warming is non-trivial.
Every time this debate rears its ugly head in the media I get really annoyed. Why? Not because I don't believe it. But because it is used as a bludgeon by certain parties (Greenies and other political interests) to put the willies up the general populace. Yet another means to subjugate the people. I bet the stasi are rubbing their hands together with glee including the energy companies readying themselves to raise the costs again (and probably getting nice government kickbacks in the process). Self justified by them having to 'invest' more into 'greener' energy extraction techniques.
Meanwhile in China and other rising economies anything 'we' supposedly do to prevent climate change will be made to seem totally useless whilst wrecking our own economies in the process. I can see why the USA is pretty much not interested in participating in our delusional climate treaties.
BTW I love the term 'fracking' being somewhat of a BSG fan. :)
lest we forget our basic physics, remember that all that dark, albedo-challenged water is currently entering six months of winter darkness, when it won't see any sunshine to absorb or reflect. Given that a good absorber is a good emitter, it'll be radiating thermal energy into space more efficiently than it has done for years, which should encourage rather more ice formation as a result.
Well, unfortunately the increased levels of greenhouse gases will keep more of the heat rather than radiating it into space. Basic physics indeed - this is why it is much better to have ice and snow cover as that reflects most sunlight rather than absorbing it.
Also given the large loss of ice during recent summers, a lot more heat has been absorbed. So it will take longer for the arctic to refreeze during the winter. That means less ice will form during this winter, and next summer we're likely going to see even less ice cover. So it is a strong positive feedback. This graph shows clearly that is what is happening:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/arctic.sea.ice.interactive.html
Note also how big this new record is - it's ~40% of what it was in the 80's and 90's.
"
The annual World Nuclear University (WNU) short course in China closed this week, with 200 participants from all over the country attending. After five years in Beijing, it was held for the first time in southern Guangdong province.
This year's venue was the Changwan Nuclear Power College, run by China Guangdong Nuclear Power Corporation (CGNPC) at the Daya Bay nuclear power plant site near Shenzhen. With six reactors in operation and 15 under construction, CGNPC has a huge requirement for highly qualified staff. Accordingly, it has established a training effort spanning five departments and is taking on 1000 university graduates this year alone. "
China have planned, built and started up nuclear power stations in less time then it takes to argue about placement for one in the UK. They understand Nuclear is the way to go and that you need to train people and get on with it with 27 new reactors by the end of 2015 in addition to the 15 about to complete.
and 6 in operation.
China also source something like 75% of the project from Chinese companies the rest they are learning fast, the UK for example is going the opposite way with most nuclear jobs being given special visa status and we will need Chinese engineers to help us as much as we need the French today.
Nuclear is the only non-carbon-based source that can provide the energy density that modern civilization demands. I'm nominally an environmentalist, but I've come to the conclustion that we need to be designing and building nuclear plants as fast as we can.
Well, there's always the crazy idea that given that humans as a whole are fabulously wealthy (thanks you evolution!) we can actually afford to spend some more money on trying to develop a clean, sustainable, low-risk energy supply.
So yes, more nuclear please (and sustainably, which means we need to crack fast breeder and thorium), but keep at it eco-boffins!
The problem with nuclear is that it takes many decades from idea to working reactor. Then there is the cost, not just for building but also decommissioning, fuel and waste. By the time you have going past the planning stages, renewable energy will be so much cheaper that existing designs will look ridiculously expensive. So unless someone comes up with a way to do nuclear both cheaply and safely (and solves the NIMBY issue), it doesn't seem like a good plan to bet on nuclear saving humankind.
The problem with nuclear is that it takes many decades from idea to working reactor.
Only if you are an idiot. As mentioned above, China goes from blueprint to running before the UK (or Bob forbid, the US) can get approval on where to hold the meetings to discuss where the plant will go.
So unless someone comes up with a way to do nuclear both cheaply and safely Done, 20+ years ago, probably closer to 30+. (and solves the NIMBY issue) Well, I guess we can all learn to swim on the new inland seas.....
We're not China where the government can just force people to move and imprison them if they protest. Try that here and see how long you stay in government! As long as we are not building inherently safe reactors there will be an accident eventually (as we've seen with the many accidents from large scale releases - such as losing a few hundred kilos of plutonium in Sellafield - to complete meltdowns), so few people will be keen to live next to one. And I wouldn't be happy either if my house price halves as a result.
Which reactors have been built which are inherently safe? The only design I've heard of is the AP1000 which looks promising but is as yet unproven (they're still building the first ones in China).
But what about the costs? And the waste? You didn't address those. In most cases the government ends up taking all the risks as well as the storage and cleanup costs, ie. the tax payer pays through the nose in order for nuclear power companies to take all the profits in the good times... When are the power companies going to be honest and pay for the true cost of nuclear power?
maybe the plan all along was put into place from a bunch of forwards thinking nuclear physicists...
through the late 70's and 80's when people where shitting themselves over nuclear power and how dangerous it was, and that the environmentalists were bleating on about three eyed fish and our kids glowing in the dark, the only way forward for nuclear power was to get the environmentalists on side....
we all know that the so called renewable power generators although do produce not insignificant amounts of power, it costs too much and the economy really cant afford it. The Arabs have a stranglehold on oil, every time someone as much as throws a stone in protest in the middle east the price of oil goes up (but never comes down again) coal is running out, here in the UK we cant settle on a site to store gas extracted in the north sea during the summer months to last us through the winter...
Throw into the mix the situation that all fossil powered generation may or may not be screwing up the environment, The only way forward at a price we can afford which in normal operation has very little impact on the environment is nuclear power. Even the environmentalists have come around to this way of thinking. But it took the panic over AGW to make them reconsider nuclear...
The last 30 or more years should have been spent in making reprocessing nuclear waste and making nuclear power stations as safe as possible instead of wasting it on renewable follies. Instead, by the end of 2014 we are going to be suffering from brownouts and a general shortage of generated power along with increased prices. It will end up mains electric supplies are going to be for the rich !!.
Nuclear power is cheap if you don't count the cost of the long term risk and the cost of waste disposal - which is how we're accounting it today. The risk is borne by the public, waste disposal is deffered until it disappears from the accounting because accounting rules don't understand half-lives of fissionables. And we're supposed to accept that is OK, because the books balance. Eventually though the cost of replacing 100s of square miles of land, the cost of quickly replacing it when it proves untenable. Men seem incapable of managing this much risk. Japan is in this spot now, and the current estimate of when they'll be able to complete their cleanup of Fukushima is at least 30 years hence. Maybe 50. Until they've secured the vast amount of spent fuel stored there in something approaching secure storage we cannot even begin to estimate the cost. They're counting themselves lucky though, because the outcome could have been much worse. But not for some brave souls who stayed at their work despite certain danger, and a favorable wind, almost half of Japan would now be uninhabitable for 100 years. Has any major Japanese nuclear operator got a plan for a major Fuji eruption? No. Such a thing is not possible.
And now despite the obvious dangers with recent precedent, and the imminent eruption of Mount Fuji, Japan is telling its people that they cannot afford to cease nuclear power immediately, no matter how high the risk because they lacked the forethought to save some of the dividends of cheap nuclear power to have a replacement ready should the promise sour.
Don't get me wrong: I'm a HUGE fan of the potentials of nuclear power to provide electrical energy in appropriate places where cheaper riskless alternatives like geothermal aren't available. But if we're going to let people play with fission we have to be able to trust them, and they have to consider the whole lifecycle including disposal of waste in the cost. And we have to be able to trust them to execute to plan and dry cask that stuff instead of stuffing cooling ponds until they're almost undergoing spontaneous fission without an adverse event. That is not too much to ask. If they won't even figure taking out the trash in the cost they don't seem trustworthy to me.
Resolution Day for the AGW controversy must surely be closer.
Either its baloney, and we can sustainably house all "prominent AGW scientist and researchers" in low-carbon (steel) boxes atop their windmills. Or its not... and we can immediiately do likewise to the (proven) irritating smartar*e*.
Bring it on!
As a skeptic of AGW, this stuff just gets boring. It used to be funny. The "Day after Tomorrow" scare stories had some novelty value a few years ago. But the data on Arctic Sea Ice Extent is limited, going back to the 1970s, and it's not at all clear that recent warming could not be part of a larger cycle.
But before anyone tries to call me a denier, or what not, call me scientifically illiterate, brain dead, whatever, consider this: Belief in AGW around the world is collapsing. And even with the last strongholds of belief, government beauracracies, the truth is that preparing for the prophesied future of doom is becoming too expensive. Germany is opening coal plants, Spain is cutting subsidies to solar power.
For the idiots who thought we could run modern societies on wind and sunshine, the chickens are coming home to roost.
What's my point? My point is that debating the science, the statistics, is irrelevant now. People don't believe in AGW anymore, or they do, but not strongly enough to care about it. Before the Copenhagen Conference I was mildly worried we were heading into the path of utter catastrophe, with governments cutting power the society needs. The event showed, that even with the best intentions, nothing was ever going to be achieved. What happened in Rio only confirmed that. Forget Obama's tangential references to Climate Change, he is jumping on the oil bandwagon, and rightly so.
So in the end vote me down all you want, AGW believers. Unfortunately for you, it's game over. You lost. Society isn't going to turn out the lights and hide under the blanket, waiting for the climate boogie man to come. Getting some old ice researcher to tell us the arctic is gone won't change any of that. So you can read as many Grist.org articles about granola powered bicycles as you want, the rest of us will belch carbon on our jolly way to work and get on with life.
Hoefully soon we'll be drilling for Shale gas in the UK, following our American friends. Could be the only bright spot on our dismal economy.
You completely misunderstood my original point.
Your link has some pretty graphs. It's a shame they don't mean anything. For the general public, these graphs might as well be about the decrease of the number of angels on a pinhead. And this isn't being derogatory to the general public. They simply don't care, have time to care, about the fact that one wiggly line is a teeny bit below a bunch of other wiggly lines. The general public has smelled a rat. And this isn't Big Oil's doing or the ClimateGate affair, or American rightwing radio shows. People have important pressing worries, about mortgages, crime, jobs, education etc. This is fluff. It has become an irrelevance. We have have realized we have been sold a scare story, an exaggerated problem, with increasingly ludicrous solutions. Your graph changes nothing.
I don't quite get what point you're trying to make, AC. It seems like you're just making some petty argument out of the whole thing and treating the actual facts as irrelevant, but I'm hesitant to actually assume someone is really being that smallminded. The facts are the facts, what the general public believe doesn't affect that one way or the other. Is "nyah nyah no-one cares about climate change anymore" all you're actually trying to say here?
EEssentially nya nya is what I am saying. And not only me, everyone. I read telegraph, reuters, guardian every morning, just to skim the headlines. This kind of news is becoming increasingly pushed off the front page, if included at all. With the exception of the guardian, most of this news isnt read unless you specifically look for it. That is the reality. You speak as though the drop overn arctic is is dramatic akd catastrophic, when in actuality, you do not know if it entirely natural, entirely bad for us or that it is abnormal at all. What do you expect peope to do when they see this kind of news? As I said, it is an irrelevance. Since AGW jumped the shark in Copenhagen thewe "scientists say..." stories are being inceeasingly pushed off the headlines. If the reg had not reported it I may not have even noticed this news at all.
As I said, irrelevant.
"My point is that debating the science, the statistics, is irrelevant now. People don't believe in AGW any more."
"Unfortunately for you, it's game over. You lost."
Belief in Darwinism is actually dropping in the US, as the creationists take hold. Are you honestly suggesting that we should just accept that?
' Germany is opening coal plants, Spain is cutting subsidies to solar power.'
Germany is increasing its coal-fired electricity production because it is closing down its nuclear fleet and Spain is cutting subsidies to solar because its economy is - technical term approaching - fucked. Neither of these decisions have anything to do with the evidence in climate change.
Actually I'd say the contrary: there is far less controversy than there was even a few years ago. We've seen huge increases of fossil fuel prices in recent years, and they can only go up further as we've used up all the cheap oil and gas... Reducing our reliance on OPEC and Russia, improving energy efficiency, insulation, energy saving lighting, solar/wind power, more fuel efficient cars are now widely accepted - and at the end of the day they save you money! And I bet you have no argument against saving money.
We haven't used up all the "cheap" oil and gas. That statement would have been true about 10 years ago. We've used up the cheapest, fair enough. But it's still commercially viable, and energetically viable to drill for oil, along with new fracking techniques, off shore projects etc. You know the projects Obama says he hates, while winking at the Oil lobby. Just be careful your taps don't catch fire, because it's "drill baby, drill!" from here on out.
Oh sure, there's the white elephant wind farms we're plowing vast amounts of money into. Just ask Denmark how they're going. They have to import their energy now. Doh! I guess we can all attach power cabes to France and keep suckling at their nuclear teet, while pretending our wonderful windmills are ushering in a new age of ecological harmony between man and nature. Or we can get with reality and frack the hell out of Lanacashire and Northern Ireland and get the oil show on the road. (Hint: this is what is happening, slowly but surely. The political and economic will to frack the hell out of the UK is building.
I'm all for saving money, fuel efficiency, turning out lights when you leave the room etc. That's why I am opposed to windfarm lunacy. Anyway, none of this matters, my original point still stands: to be blunt - nobody cares about AGW anymore!
Well if you consider the Deepwater Horizon type of drilling or the Athabasca tar sands cheap then yes we still have cheap oil... It is viable indeed but only just and mainly due to significant rises in the oil price. The environmental impact of fracking is significantly higher than for traditional drilling so there won't be much fracking in the UK (luckily we don't have the "drill baby drill" attitude here!). Also with the UK safety measures and pollution controls I don't think it will be very cost effective either, especially since it turns out fracking wells run dry in a few years.
Wind power is already at grid parity and the Danish actually export power for pumped storage on windy days and import it back when it is less windy. Solar will be at grid parity soon, so solar, wind and geothermal combined with pumped storage can provide a significant proportion of our energy needs at low cost.
If you're worried about energy cost then what about the huge cost of our nuclear heritage? Nuclear cleaning up cost is £73 billion by the last estimate and rising fast. And you call windfarms lunacy? Imagine how many windfarms one could build from all the money we're wasting on the nuclear folly...
"Anyway, none of this matters, my original point still stands: to be blunt - nobody cares about AGW anymore!"
So why do AGW related articles attract so many readers and comments then? Clearly you care about AGW, otherwise you wouldn't be posting here.
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I beg to differ. There will be much fracking in the UK in the next decade. I suppose you haven't noticed that a veritable energy revolution (a real one, not the wind/sunshine care bear bunch) is taking place in the USA right now. I mean one, that could rival the dawning of the oil age (emphasis on "could"). This is the real future. Not paying the highest energy prices in Europe (or is it the world?) for the glory of sticking some windmills offshore. How is Vestas doing these days?
And actually, I don't care about AGW. If the reg hadn't reported it I wouldn't have known this news. And out of curiosity I read it and immediately smelled a rat, as many other readers did. Out of the slight sense of anger that pierced my general apathy to this news, I decided to write in the comments. I think you will find internet forums are not a general representative of society, in that, in the real world I have not mentioned any AGW related news whatsoever in years, or been talked to about it, or overheard it.
This is fluff news. I mean, what is anybody supposed to take away from this? "Oh I'll call my MP and demand he builds an extra windfarm! That'll put the ice back." This is ludicrous, ridiculous. This is the type of stuff that, in a couple of hundred years time, our age will be mocked for. Books will be printed about how in the early 21st century people actually believed they could control the climate. And would tear their hair out when summer ice levels were below normal. They built thousands of wind farms, wasting huge sums of money, they paid rich people to put vanity solar panels on their houses, while the poor people went cold, and praised themselves for it, etc etc, you get the idea. But I suppose, then again, maybe in 200 years time, all that will be left of humanity is a few dozen breeding pairs fighting off polar bears on the last remaining outcrops of summer ice. Either that or we'll have all succumbed to faucet fire induced deaths.
we've got AGW for supporters of the Anthropogenic (man made) Global Warming .
I think we need a few more acronyms :-
NAGW for non-anthropogenic global warming
CCHATT for climate change happens all the time
FMIIC for Frick Me it is cold (for use when we have another ice age)
FMIIH for Frick Me it is Hot (for the IMPENDING frying session that the true believers keep telling is going to happen)
HTITSIS for Hot Thing in the sky is shining . Also known as "The Sun".
( Is it just me or has anyone else noticed how ALL global warming is caused by that hot nuclear reaction happening at the centre of our solar system ? )
CLNC for Complex life needs carbon. Just to remind us that WITHOUT carbon with its four electron bonds all the interesting organic chemistry probably wouldn't happen. Okay , Complex Life Probably Needs Carbon, there are a few other atoms that might be able to replace it somewhere else in the universe.
AIAIC for Another Ice Age is coming . At sometime there's going to be another ice age. That's what my teacher told me in 1978, so it MUST be so.
WAD for We're All Doomed ! Pick your scenario :- Global Warming, Global Cooling, Famine, Super Bug / Virus , Meteorite, Super Volcano, World War III, The Sun going Red Giant, Little Green Men from Mars, The Alien out of the Ridley Scott films, Terminator Robots from the future ... I could go on..
Enjoy and have a nice day, just remember (as the Monty Python team liked to remind us) it might be your last chance, give us a grin, cheer up you old bugger :-D
This rate of melting isn't likely to be AGW related. We need to look at runoff from land into the Arctic, probably from North Russia and Siberia. Warm water is far more effective at melting ice.
If this is so, we may have a different problem. There will be a massive outflow of near-freezing water from the Arctic. This could provide cold climates over Europe, and also push the Gulf Stream south and away from Europe. That might mean some really bad winters are coming, which lead to cold summers...In other words, this might be the vehicle that triggered the Maunder Minimum.
What evidence do you have it is not AGW related? It's more likely a lot of the heat is coming from the ocean itself as the heat content is increasing rapidly (and as ice disappears the open sea will then absorb even more energy as this article mentions). But even if there is a significant extra runoff, it would be melted ice, snow and permafrost. And guess why did it melt?
Christophe Kinnard et al, the source of data in this graph, used "terrestrial proxies" to gauge arctic sea ice extent for 1500 years. That's absurd. That's the quality of extrapolation we've come to expect from Warmists, that they can look back 1500 years and know how thick the ice was at the north pole in August of each year based on tree rings in Russia. Of course the error bars on the graph cover a huge fraction of the area. With all of the modern science at our disposal today we cannot estimate the current summer sea ice extent based on measurements taken from land ("terrestrial") within the error bars of this graph, and to rely on trace evidence of "proxies" is to be even less definite. We may as well put these "scientists" in a set with "One Tree Briffa." If this is science, so is Homeopathy. While they were at it why didn't they try to reconstruct (er, "model") a 100m year history of hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico based on the fossil record of New York mollusk populations?
The graph does, in fact, disagree with the historical record of exploration and colonization of North America. It is provably untrue. That you hold it out as evidence to prove your point is quite bizarre. Are you trying to discredit AGW theory by holding up weak arguments? If so, you're doing a stellar job.
Let's see some Arctic Ocean sediment studies before we figure this. Ocean sediments provably vary when ice is overhead and when it is not due to the presence or absence of insolation above them, thus varying the type of algae and other detritus that settle - and they stay where they settle forever, stratifying in discrete layers that vary with the seasons that provide a method of counting the clock in time with C14 dating, with major eruption ash and asteroid impact layers to provide the major beats. And doing so we may as well go back 250 million years or 500 million since the data is right there on the seabed. We even know most of how the seabed moves over time, thanks to plate tectonics.
In short I'm calling your graph a bunch of garbage that should not have been published in a self-respecting publication like Nature. You need to not bring this weak stuff. If you're going to call what you're doing science, then do the science. Don't rely on terrestrial data published by others as "proxies" to extrapolate things that are almost certainly not relevant when you can go out into the arctic, drill the cores, and have proof. Or at least beg the cores from Exxon or BP, who would are already drilling them anyway and would probably give up a slice of them up for free to improve their public image. A doctorate degree used to mean something.
We should worry about the next ice age as a race, not warming, an ice age would be much harder to deal with, think billions dead!
Global warming is very very easy to deal with, it just so happens that we already have the infrastructure in place to reduce warming at will.
The irony is that the very power stations that are partly being blamed for global warming are
the key to reducing temperature.
The vast majority of power station makes power the same way, they use fuel, gas,coal,oil, nuclear,
to turn water into steam to drive turbines, now after the steam has passed through we employ
cooling towers to condense the water vapour so we don't end up with huge clouds.
All you have to do is bypass the cooling towers and voilà we have as many cloud factories
as we have power stations all over the planet. The resulting clouds block the sunlight and
problem solved! What's more it costs NOTHING to do as the cloud factories already built!
This post has been deleted by its author
What matters is whether we are going to share the effort of building more lifeboats (now mostly equal to houses in more livable places) or fight each other to the death over places in the lifeboats. Apparently a lot of Americans think they should fight on the grounds that they have the most guns, but that usually doesn't work well. Even worse, by making it an insane political football, it's like they are running AWAY from the lifeboats.
A record minimum sea-ice coverage of 4.21 million sq km was observed by satellite on 24 August 2012, one month earlier than previous minimum record set on 24 September, 2007.
Daily Value Daily drop Running Drop
2007 Minimum 4250000
The latest value : 3,819,219 km2 (August 30, 2012) 3819219 430781 430781
The latest value : 3,801,406 km2 (August 31, 2012) 3801406 17813 448594
The latest value : 3,740,781 km2 (September 1, 2012) 3740781 60625 509219
The latest value : 3,710,625 km2 (September 2, 2012) 3710625 30156 539375
The latest value : 3,679,844 km2 (September 3, 2012) 3679844 30781 570156
The latest value : 3,683,281 km2 (September 4, 2012) 3683281 -3437 566719
The latest value : 3,628,125 km2 (September 5, 2012) 3628125 55156 621875
The latest value : 3,614,219 km2 (September 6, 2012) 3614219 13906 635781
The latest value : 3,601,875 km2 (September 7, 2012) 3601875 12344 648125
The latest value : 3,595,781 km2 (September 8, 2012) 3595781 6094 654219
The latest value : 3,593,750 km2 (September 9, 2012) 3593750 2031 656250
OMG! I was worried enough when it hit 3,595,781. But now it's at 3,593,750 I'm terrified. That's tipping point territory right there. I'm hiding under my bed. In all my life I never thought it would be less than 3,595,000. This is so scary! I can't understand how this happened. I mean I reduced my carbon footprint by buying those locally grown tomatoes, and I turned off my TV that time, before I went out for the evening. This is... IMPOSSIBLE!
Why has god forsaken us?
So is this the indication of the coming of the age of aquarius?
Probably many might have read about the 2160/2148 year cycle ending this year. It certainly looks that way!
More the ice that melts makes more water and more warm the planet gets more frequent will there be rains.
And someday it's going to be like in the film water world, that people hardly get to live in land.
But anyway life will adapt to the environmental changes naturally.
The IPCC has never said any crisis WILL happen, only "might" happen or "could" happen etc.
So the "crisis" isn't real enough to say it really "WILL" happen?
This planet lover needs better reasons to condemn helpless children to the greenhouse gas ovens of climate change crisis.
*Occupywallstreet does not even mention CO2 in its list of demands because of the bank-funded carbon trading stock markets run by corporations.
*Obama has not mentioned the crisis in the last two State of the Unions addresses.
*Julian Assange is of course a climate change denier.
*Socialist Canada killed Y2Kyoto with a newly elected climate change denying prime minister and nobody cared, especially the millions of scientists warning us of unstoppable warming (death).
Our continued fear mongering of the voter with a climate “crisis” all but guarantees a President Romney.
Occupy Wall Street... is that still a thing?
Obama knows he could never, ever get any meaningful CC legislation through the senate (not just Reps, but also some Dems are vehemently against this). So he is using the EPA as his weapon to force America to go green. It will continue until he is kicked out of office. Either this year or in 4 years. Then the EPA will be declawed. But really, I'm not sure Obama really cares that much about AGW. He is becoming hard to read.
Yeah, I enjoyed seeing Canada stomp its muddy (oily?) boots all over Kyoto. Saved us a lot of bother of having to watch endless negotiations, pictures of Obama, Merkel and Cameron discussing the stats, sleeves rolled up, frowns showing, trying to get the best deal for dear mother Earth.
Yep, the constant warmst spiel of "head for the hills! We're all gona die!" is getting old. Tone it down a bit.
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