
Ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year - sah
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-no-ice-at-the-north-pole-855406.html
======
Prrometheus
Since this thread is likely to devolve into a discussion of Global Warming
policy, I am going to link to Bjorn Lomborg's TED talk about why we still
shouldn't spend a lot of money or effort to fight Global Warming:

[http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global...](http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_priorities.html)

Text version:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Consensus>

I would love to hear any environmentalist's objections to Lomborg's
conclusions if you disagree with him.

~~~
mattmaroon
Well, first there's the question of how we should prioritize. Should we
Americans, put the interests for starving people in other countries ahead of
climate change in ours? I have no doubt that South Americans should worry more
about malaria, since they're dying of it now, I have serious reservations as
to whether or not I should.

If there were some global pool of money that needed to be prioritized, that
would be one thing. When you're asking individual citizens of individual
countries to prioritize, you're going to get very different results.

As an American, I want my money to go toward improving the lives of Americans.

~~~
dazzawazza
"As an American, I want my money to go toward improving the lives of
Americans" ... wow! That seems quite isolationist.

~~~
chollida1
I'm not an American but I don't think it's too "isolationist".

What's different about that than saying: "I want the food that I buy to feed
my family". "I want the money I pay on my shelter to shelter my family."

It seems that everyone, wants the money they spend to help them and their
loved ones to one extent or another. Saying I want to help my countrymen I
read as just being an exstention to this.

~~~
mattmaroon
Right. It's maybe nationalist, or even a bit solipsistic, but I don't see
isolationist.

~~~
dazzawazza
You're both correct of course. I used the term isolationist because America
has a reputation for outward generosity. If you ignore the past 25 years where
all aid (generosity) has been tied to extraneous religious/political demands
America has by far been the most generous world donor to disaster relief and
other world development programs (again I'm ignoring the accusations of world
manipulation that any super power does as it 'polices' the world).

More and more frequently I hear statements from Americans about looking after
'home' first despite the fact that looking at the statistics Americans should
lead an idyllic life while many go hungry every night.

Being the only world super power (at least for the next 20 years) the world
can't afford America to constantly look inwards. If it does, it will loose
it's super power status even more quickly.

------
briancooley
I'm not much for global warming debates, but I did find this sentence from the
article particularly ironic:

"If it happens, it raises the prospect of the Arctic nations being able to
exploit the valuable oil and mineral deposits below these a bed which have
until now been impossible to extract because of the thick sea ice above."

------
tdedecko
The article didn't include many of the satellite images that were mentioned.
Here is a pdf of the images with some discussion.

[http://belgingur.is/nmm2008/wp-
content/uploads/utdraettir/go...](http://belgingur.is/nmm2008/wp-
content/uploads/utdraettir/gorm_nmm2008island_extended-abstract_gormrl.pdf)

------
BrandonM
So the Earth is obviously getting warmer, but most people ignore the question
of whether humans are entirely to blame or if the larger factor is a natural
climate cycle. Certainly when the Bering Land Bridge melted (near the end of
the Ice Age), no one was blaming that on carbon emissions. Is all the
environmental hoopla really going to make a difference?

~~~
ajross
Stop. There is no meaningful argument: the current, epochally high rate of CO2
release is driving current climate change.

Yes, the climate changes on its own. Sometimes it does this "rapidly". But
there is no known mechanism in place to produce anything like what we are
seeing. Conversely, CO2 greenhouse effects have been qualitatively understood
(even it quantitatively modelling it is a bitch) for many decades. I'm not
sure which "most people" you think are ignoring the argument, but I assure you
it doesn't include climate scientists. It's just that it doesn't make any
scientific sense. We know with certainty that fuel burning is producing a
rapid spike in CO2 levels. We know with certainty that CO2 is an effective
greenhouse gas. We know to within reasonable error bars that the climate is
changing rapidly. Do the math. Occam's razor demands that we look at CO2 as
the undeniably best hypothesis. No one has a better one.

And the land bridge didn't melt, because it's made of land, and land doesn't
melt. :) What happened is that the sea levels rose due to melting glaciers on
the continents and flooded it. It's still there, it's just a shallow sea
instead of a connecting lowland between asia and alaska.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
The most important question to me is this: what can we realistically do about
it? Specifically, will major efforts on the part of the "first world" make a
difference when we consider say China, which is rapidly ramping up to modern
consumption levels without the commensurate environmental controls?

~~~
ajross
We can reduce consumption where we can, and pressure our governments to adopt
appropriate policies. I'm less pessimistic than you are about China's ability
to regulate itself, but even if you accept that China (or whoever) is going to
continue burning coal as if there were no tomorrow, that's not an excuse for
making things worse.

And in the worst case where we simply can't stop burning, there are at least
ideas out there about how to reduce atmospheric CO2 directly. Planting trees
in the tropics is one, burying biomass is another. There are even some
borderline-scary notions about seeding blooms in the ocean with iron.

But it all starts with a recognition that action is required. Get off your
butts, basically.

~~~
Prrometheus
>and pressure our governments to adopt appropriate policies

What if the policies on the table are feel-good policies meant to show that
they are "doing something", but the costs of those policies are higher than
any likely benefit? That is a good description of what I feel about the
current state of Global Warming "solutions".

------
oz
Oregon Petition , anyone?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_petition> [http://www.amazon.com/Deniers-
Renowned-Scientists-Political-...](http://www.amazon.com/Deniers-Renowned-
Scientists-Political-Persecution/dp/0980076315)

------
anamax
Which reminds me - when was the last time that the north pole was wet? What
were the ill effects?

------
DanielBMarkham
I don't want into this debate, but I'd ask the readers to use a little reason
and common sense here.

Pointing out that things will change over the next hundred years is not very
interesting to me -- it's what I would expect. Pointing out that we effect the
environment is also a non-starter -- of course we do. Assuming that since we
exist and change nature that somehow we must "un-change" it is muddle-headed,
in my opinion. It's a religion looking for a science. Since the first microbes
colonized the oceans life forms have been changing the climate. It is a
natural part of this planet's evolution. There is nothing immoral or unethical
about it.

Now if we want to have some artistic discussion about what the global
thermostat should be set at, let's have it. But let's be honest about what
we're doing and not wallow around in dire predictions of global calamity. It
seems to me the reason the environmentalists scream so loud is because they
have such a thin case.

I'm only trying to comment on the type of political discussion we're having.
The science may be sound or not. But science is just a prop in this
discussion. The real issue is all around the religious feeling that we should
feel guilty for existing, consuming, and changing our world to suit us --
basically for becoming an evolved species.

------
axod
.... until it comes back. Then we'll all be fretting about what to do about
"global cooling", and how it's obviously caused by us not doing enough
excersize any more which starves the planet of valuable body heat.

------
mattmaroon
Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Vacation in Santa's hood.

~~~
noonespecial
I, I think so Brain, but burlap chafes me so...

------
zandorg
Looks like ice is on the rocks...

