
An expert’s view on unusually warm Arctic temperatures - Mz
https://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2016/11/25/an-experts-view-on-unusually-warm-arctic-temperatures/
======
lisper
I am as concerned about climate change as anyone. I think it's the most
serious problem we face today. But it is very important to keep some
perspective here, if for no other reason, so that we who believe this is a
serious problem don't lose credibility in the political battles to come.

1\. Earth is not going to become Venus. The surface of Venus is hot enough to
melt lead, hot enough to completely sterilize the planet. That is not going to
happen here even under an absolute worst-case scenario.

2\. Homo sapiens is almost certainly not going to go extinct even in a worst-
case scenario. We are a very robust species capable of adapting to an
extraordinarily wide variety of situations. We are very, very tough to kill en
masse. We ourselves have tried to wipe out segments of our own population in
the past and barely made a dent. The biggest killer in our history, bubonic
plague, barely killed a third of us.

3\. What _is_ at risk, and what IMHO is worrisome, is the modern technological
civilization we have built for ourselves. Our infrastructure and political
systems are highly dependent on a stable climate. If we lose that, would could
easily go back to the middle ages. (We probably won't go back to neolithic
times because knowledge is also pretty robust, and we will almost certainly be
able to keep basic technologies alive. But a Mad-Max type scenario is a real
possibility.)

4\. Colonizing the moon or other planets won't save us. All extra-terrestrial
environments accessible to use with current technology are _much_ harsher than
earth will be even in a worst-case scenario. If we and our civilization can't
survive here, we can't survive anywhere.

~~~
cel1ne
> 1\. Earth is not going to become Venus

Not sure about that on a couple-of-hundred-years-from-now time-scale.

> 2\. Homo sapiens is almost certainly not going to go extinct.

I agree. But it's possible that 90% of humanity dies, mainly because of
starvation after the oceans become lifeless.

I also think there are going to be massive refugee streams in the order of
more than 100 million people.

~~~
lisper
> Not sure about that on a couple-of-hundred-years-from-now time-scale.

It's really not possible. Even if you took all of the oxygen and carbon on
earth and converted it to CO2 (which is not even remotely possible) you still
wouldn't get Venus. Venus's atmosphere is almost 100 times denser than earth,
and it's nearly 100% CO2. Venus is also closer to the sun, which isn't the
deciding factor, but it certainly helps keep Venus nice and toasty warm.

Look, earth is 4 billion years old, and life has existed for about 3.9 billion
of those, give or take a few hundred million years. Environmental catastrophes
have come and gone and life has persisted through all of them. But
_civilization_ has only existed for 10,000 years or so, and those 10,000 years
have been climactically stable. Unusually stable. It is far from clear that
civilization can survive climate change. That experiment has never been done.

> it's possible that 90% of humanity dies

Yes, that is definitely possible. Maybe even likely if we stay on the current
trajectory.

~~~
wcoenen
> _you still wouldn 't get Venus. Venus's atmosphere is almost 100 times
> denser than earth, and it's nearly 100% CO2_

That extremely high amount of CO2 in the atmosphere of Venus is not the
original cause but a _consequence_ of runaway warming. At a few hundred
degrees C, the carbon dioxide bound in rocks starts to sublimate into the
atmosphere. For example, limestone would go CaCO3 -> CaO + CO2. 10% of all
sedimentary rock is limestone so one can see how that leads to a Venus-like
atmosphere.

That said, I agree that a Venus scenario doesn't seem to be possible for Earth
right now. In this paper published in Nature, even 3000 ppm of CO2 (i.e. all
fossil fuels burned) was calculated not to trigger such a thing. It would
require more like 30,000 ppm, which is not really breathable atmosphere
anymore:

[http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n8/full/ngeo1892.html](http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n8/full/ngeo1892.html)

Coverage in scientific american:
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-
fiction-r...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-
runaway-greenhouse/)

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rjtobin
Most of the articles I've read about this refer to a "tipping point": that
we're crossing some line where the behavior of the system will change
dramatically. But what are the actual consequences of this? Can anyone on HN
explain the real-world effects that this might have, apart from slightly
higher sea levels?

I tried searching, but the fluff to substance ratio is so high out there.

~~~
lsadam0
I believe the tipping point usually refers to the release of Methane trapped
in permafrost? Meaning the permafrost melts, releasing methane, and thus
triggering a runaway greenhouse effect. Something like Venus.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Release of all the stored methane would not cause the Earth to turn into
Venus. We know this because the process has happened several times, and not
only did the Earth not become Venus, it did not come anywhere even remotely
close. There is no known process by which climate change would render the
Earth uninhabitable.

This doesn't mean it's okay. Release of methane has always happened at the
same time as major mass extinctions, possibly as the cause of it. It would
create massive warming which would make large inhabited parts of the planet
much less desirable, play havoc with the biosphere possibly making large areas
of farmland unproductive, and in general being a massive economic drain and
probably killing a lot of people.

~~~
jamesblonde
If we talk about the 5 great extinctions on Earth to date, with 96% of life
dying out after one of the great methane releases, i think our chances of
survival in such an event is minimal. I don't think even a tiny group of
humans could retain enough resources and technology to survive the millions of
years that would be needed before life regenerates itself.

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guelo
Pet peeve, don't spend 5 paragraphs discussing a graph when actually showing
it is much more informative! [http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-
interactive-sea-i...](http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-
sea-ice-graph/)

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coldcode
My assumption is that we will see a continued change in the arctic sea ice
pattern over the next decade. The effect on weather will be interesting to
see, if the arctic isn't all that cold the annual pattern of wind and heat in
the northern hemisphere will be very different; how I don't really have any
idea. In a complex heat engine if you change the distribution and amount of
heat it's not easy to predict what the end result will be.

Of course if we stop studying it everything will go back to normal /s.

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patcon
Reading that article feels... unsatisfying. I realize they have a technical
audience in mind, but all the data crammed into english sentences feels
reminiscent of the days when complex math problems were described in words.

I feel like the dense information in that post could be described much more
concisely in visual form, and I'm disheartened that it is instead hidden in
paragraphs.

~~~
jameshart
I think the most bizarre part about it is the structure of this as a report of
'things Ed Blockley said' (or 'added', or 'continued' \- I was surprised not
to learn that he 'exclaimed' or 'averred' anything), mixed in with a different
set of additional facts and figures and context provided by the 'narrator'. It
seems we might have been better served to have just had Ed Blockley's
contribution unedited and in its entirety, without the contextualizing and
narration provided by the reporter. It is possible to copy/paste out all the
reported paragraphs attributed to Dr Blockley from the text and get a well
written overview of current Arctic climatology.

~~~
tc313
It's bizarre, but it's also typical for press releases from large
organizations.

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deepGem
Currently, all efforts are geared towards reversing climate change. OTOH I
feel that we should also be prepared for the ensuing eventuality of climate
change, as it is clear that the current civilisation as we know will collapse
under dramatic climate change. What can be possibly done to prepare for such
an onslaught ? I don't mean something ridiculous like the movie 2012, but
engineered ways to deal with the catastrophe that could possibly hit us or our
kids generation in the nest 50-100 years.

Either we have to engineer processes that can withstand climate change OR We
have to engineer the human gene to withstand the oncoming onslaught, so even
if current processes are gone, we'll be able to engineer new ones to deal with
the existing climate. AND we prepare underground or space facilities to wait
out the aftermath of a nuclear war

~~~
_ph_
We currently have all the means to prevent a catastrophic climate change. But
we are not using them. It seems to be controversial to replace coal with wind
and solar. How would you expect even more radical engineering project to
succeed? Besides, in between would be a collapse of our civilization -
something we really should try to prevent.

~~~
deepGem
I am 100% aligned with preventing climate change, but after Trump got elected,
my hopes of prevention are diminishing. Hence the rhetoric.

------
mirimir
GCC deniers like to point to growth in Antarctic sea ice. But it's clear that
Antarctic shelf ice is collapsing, which will increase glacial outflow.

So why is Antarctic sea ice growing? Explanations seem to focus on changes in
weather patterns, such as precipitation and wind.[0] Or perhaps, it's just
that they're measuring ice area, and not ice volume. But there seems to be no
explanation that's coherent enough to be persuasive. Or is there?

[0] [https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-sea-ice-
reach...](https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-new-
record-maximum)

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wallace_f
In the very, very long run wouldn't it be preferable to retain as much energy
within the earth system as possible, instead of letting it float off into
space and difficult to ever recapture?

I've never heard that argument. It certainly sounds very cold hearted, at the
very least.

~~~
CydeWeys
No it wouldn't. The Sun has many billions of years left to go before its red
giant phase, and in its red giant phase the problem will be way too much heat,
not too little. And anyway, heat is lost in timeframes much shorter than
billions of years. The Earth is warm now because of radioactive decay on the
interior and sunlight shining on the exterior.

~~~
wallace_f
It was actually just a question to illicit imaginative thought, it wasn't
seriously intended to garner a yes or no answer.

In the Kardashev scale a Type I civilization is able to harness the total
energy of its host planet. A Type II civilization can harness the energy of
it's neighbouring star.

Some scientists believe that we may be able to reach Type 1 status in a couple
hundred years.

>The Sun has many billions of years left to go before its red giant phase, and
in its red giant phase the problem will be way too much heat, not too little.

Not necessarily. If we continue to advance technologically the only limiting
factor besides scientific progress may likely well be how much energy we can
harness and the age of the universe.

~~~
CydeWeys
Your response is just so out of place in this discussion though. One single
second of the Sun's total energy output is enough to fuel the United States'
entire annual energy usage for _nine million years_. Lack of energy is not a
problem, and even if it were, worrying about stockpiling energy on Earth right
now in such low amounts to survive the heat death of the universe is like the
equivalent of giving a few molecules of water to someone in the desert who's
dying of dehydration. It's so many orders of magnitude below significance that
it's laughable.

We are facing the very real existential crisis of potentially destroying our
civilization through climate change before we can even get off this planet.
The heat death of the universe untold billions of years in the future doesn't
matter one whit if we don't survive to witness it, and anything we do nowadays
won't matter at all towards that end anyway.

~~~
wallace_f
I just told you that it wasn't a serious question, just one designed to
facilitate interesting thought. You missed the point though, the energy posed
in the question was not posed as a remedy to survive the end of the universe
but to reach Type II civilization. I would suggest you should calm down and
let your mind enjoy a little bit of adventurous thought and stop freaking out
about the media scare on climate change. The whole climate change business has
become like the War on Poverty -- doing more to preserve itself than to
actually affect the future for the better.

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rcarmo
A little thought experiment I Googled up, seeing as I live near a river
estuary and have been pondering the effects of sea levels rising for a few
years now: [http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/](http://geology.com/sea-level-
rise/)

(IIRC the realistic figures are more along the lines of centimetres rather
than metres over the next few hundred years, but it's sobering to consider)

~~~
zzleeper
Don't the figures depend on the latitude? (Northern Hemispher will see a
larger increase or sth lke that)

------
ommunist
"Snows always melt"
[https://youtu.be/FfeytbHBPFM](https://youtu.be/FfeytbHBPFM)

