The Arctic Sea Ice Blog has been my go-to for cold hard facts about the arctic. The main author of the blog has been quite a bit less active over the last year, but his data aggregation page[2] is still alive and ticking.
For example, I can see from the DMI (Danish Met Institute) Daily Arctic mean temperatures north of 80N graph that area-averaged temperatures in the farthest north have been well above average all season.
There is also a plot of the total freezing degree-days over the entire winter season, and its anomaly relative to the past several decades. From there, I can see that while this season has been far less cold than average, it was not nearly as warm as last year.
Last year's winter season set a new minimax record for arctic sea ice coverage over the winter, but that didn't turn into a minimum coverage record over the summer.
It looks like the total arctic sea ice extent is currently setting a minimum-coverage record at this date, but its too early to tell if it will set another minimax record. From the regional graphs page[3], it looks like most of the anomaly is coming from the Bearing Sea.
The heat spikes in the Arctic now so early on in the year and the jet stream which previously brought cold towards the Arctic now shifts the cold down in cold spikes and record cold fronts to north east and Europe. It seems we will no longer have an Arctic soon and the jet stream will be permanently shifted due to anthropogenic climate change.
We had record heat in Southern California in early February and around the same time these graphs show the Arctic temperatures spiking our temperatures began to drop. I'm afraid once the ice is almost wiped out we will expect more record high temperatures and while all the heat builds in the Arctic more record colds as the cold that was in the Arctic is dissipated to other places.
There is no sun light for months in Arctic winter. Usually jet streams/polar vortex keep the cold air within the high latitudes. Due to Climate Change or more specific Arctic Amplification the pressure gradient from the Equator to the North Pole flattens and tends to fail to contain the cold air which in turn can 'escape' to lower latitudes in exchange for warmer air moving into the Arctic. The whole northern hemisphere trends towards a less structured more chaotic circulation regime.
These datasets were collected from various government agencies as part of a larger collaboration with John Baez and a couple of other scientists from the Azimuth Climate Data Project: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/azimuth_backup_project/
My server has a 1Gbps connection and can support sustained downloads of very large files. Unfortunately, the data isn’t well documented, but I’m working on improving that in the future. It’s organized roughly according to the agency it’s sourced from on a directory basis.
The archive includes datasets from NASA, NOAA, EPA, USGS, NCDC, CDC, EIA, FDA, USDA, DOE, and various subdepartments thereof.
The way the pie is shared is a huge problem. It means that we're collectively responsible, thus everybody will ask the others to do something, we'll need consensus.
It'd be easier if there were only one source of problems because all the others would look at him. Here we'd just need "finger pointing".
I can't answer on where to best find this data, but it is compounded by many industries. Particularly, manufacturing and the transportation of raw materials that are transformed into products by other manufacturers and then distributed to distribution centers, and then again distributed to local regions and retailers. This, for every last little thing. If you want to talk just plastic bottles, we consume 1 million bottles a minute. In the summer, when working outside or when I used to work in smoldering hot factories, I would drink about 4 large sports drinks a day during an 8-12 hour shift (there were 2500+ employees and never shutdown).
Now add just vehicle emissions. Everyone driving to and from work, or to buy all the things. You drive and purchase a banana. That banana probably traveled 2k-3k miles in fossil fuel powered transportation. It's a compounding problem, of all the things. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace...
I had such an holy fuck moment and turned part-time vegetarian when I learned livestock are fed the very same vegetable protein I could eat.
Couple this with the (probably false) rule of thumb that 90% of the energy is lost at each step in the food chain. The beef I eat could literally feed ten people if they ate the vegetable proteins instead[1], with nearly no loss of quality of life for me. It's very hard to rationalise eating large amounts of beef at that point.
That said, I still do enjoy it at times, but as the expensive luxury it is, not an everyday staple.
[1] If not directly, then in the long run by reduced emissions etc.
well, all that makes our present life "being what it is". It doesn't mean that you can't have another way of living, that is quantitatively as comfortable and convenient.
I don't really agree with the proposed list. It is listed based on the reduction certain solutions could potentially offer, but the limits of the reductions they offer are not correct.
So for example, the impact of cement is way higher but their proposed solution isn't carbon negative or carbon neutral concrete but just a reduction in the carbon footprint. So if they were optimistic about the outcome, the order in the list would greatly changed.
They limit themselves to only those solutions which have been vetted by the scientific process, and that could be readily implemented with currently available technology. In a way you're right that that's not an optimistic take, but in another way there's a lot of optimism there: they show that adding up the impacts of only that limited set of solutions could already achieve drawdown!
That's a list of the potential reduction in emissions various solutions offer. You'd need to add together all the solutions relating to electricity generation (for example) to determine the impact of electricity generation as a whole. (And that's assuming that the listed solutions combined will address the whole of the problem, which I doubt.)
See https://www.carbontracker.org/ and their 2014 report for some good information. The target audience is the financial sector, but its still readable if you are careful about the infographics.
But that report is only looking at fossil fuel reserves, rather than industries that consume those fossil fuels, thereby releasing greenhouse gases and causing climate change.
Further, there are other sources of greenhouse gases not related to fossil fuels, principally agriculture/livestock.
Maybe the "industry" is called capitalism and where one part might spew massive carbon in whatever form to the world, another part provides fake data, fake arguments and fake theories to say "it's okay"/"it will work out"/"it's a conspiracy!!" and the other publicizes these till everyone forgets.
Your reasoning is akin to a logical fallacy, capitalism being what contributes the most to climate change does not mean that anything that is not capitalism is carbon neutral.
Then there are other option than capitalism/communism to consider. Look at the only carbon neutral (actually carbon positive) country on the planet: Bhutan. Neither communism nor capitalism are at play in this incredible achievement, but IINM it's Driglam namzha[1].
Well capitalism is about concentration of wealth in little group of individuals. This little groups holds much power and power corrupts, hence the irresponsible people in position of power is a consequence of capitalism.
Of cours this is not the only cause, but this one is significant. From what I gather the underlying issue is one of culture of self and selfishness.
So if the culture was non selfish, why would capitalism be a problem? The wealthy capitalists would use their power for good. Thus, capitalism is orthogonal to the issue.
As often if you want a deeper and much more nuanced overview Omega Tau has an amazing episode which discusses this and the reasons why this is such a big deal: http://omegataupodcast.net/229-ant-arctic-sea-ice/
I regularly have discussion about climate change with my dad.
He doesn't deny that human interference does influence weather and climate, but he says there isn't enough evidence that this is the only reason why the climate is changing.
The Greenhouse effect once was something natural and positive - we couldn't live on a planet without the Greenhouse effect. But now the meaning changed and it includes that human race is guilty, because of air pollution.
He doesn't deny an effect, but he says other possible explanations like water vapor (which apparently is one of the biggest impacts for the Greenhouse effect) aren't regarded that much in the discussion.
He says, the ice around the Antarctic even grows, but almost nobody talks about that. And volcanic activity north of Greenland might also boost the temperature there.
I’ve upvoted your comment. It’s flawed logic, but I see it as highly counterproductive to downvote people who seem to be reasoning about a problem or discussing their perceptions in good faith.
So many revered scientists have made comments that today would sound jackass silly. I doubt anyone here doesn’t have such comments under their belt.
Thinking or asking alone can never be wrong. As long as it’s well intentioned and open to the possibility of accepting counter arguments.
I upvoted your comment because we need more people like you who are able to disagree without turning the other person into a villain or idiot just because they disagree.
Personally, I have become more skeptical of not climate change or even whether humans have an effect but of whether it's catastrophic and I have shifted my thinking quite a lot to accept that humans will not only have an effect on earths climate, we will conquer it and control it.
That and not stopping the world, is the moral thing to do.
Your dad would benefit from a crash course in critical thinking.
Climate is changing humans or not is one thing, but that current climate change is a consequence of human activity is another which as factual as the first. We even named the mass extinction accompanying the anthropocene mass extinction event to point out that it's man made.[1]
The greenhouse effect is still the greenhouse effect and its meaning has not changed a bit. But the anthropogenic greenhouse effect (additional greenhouse effect caused by human activity) came on top of the natural one and push the system towards a tipping point where the current climatic system loses its balance and evolves into a different system. For example a positive feedback loop in greenhouse effect, called a runaway greenhouse effect, could make the oceans boil away.
It does not take much effort to find out that water vapor is actually taken into account in the discussion as water vapor strengthen other greenhouse gases such as CO2 through forementioned positive feedback[2]. warmer world means more water vapor in the athmosphere whichs means more potent greenhouse gases which means warmer world, etc.
I don't know where your dad got the idea that nobody talks about the growing ice in Antarctica, it's been discussed and studied and we know that ice melting in the arctic far exceeds the ice growing in the antarctic so global sea ice is rapidly diminishing[3][4]
Volcanic activity release of CO2 is about 1% that of human activity[5] so it's a non starter, but then interesting detail is that this is also a positive feedback loop as climate change is likely to increase volcanic activity[6].
Everyone in this debate could use a crash course in critical thinking, not the least people who claim to be certain about things not even the scientist who debate it actually are.
Pointing to a bunch of links prove nothing which any debate between respected scientist will show you.
Providing links is not a question of proving anything but simply sourcing the claims I make so they can be verified and allow people to check them and make their own idea.
A 1+ hour video debate without transcript is the worst possible thing. Not only it is a privacy nightmare because google but also a waste of time and energy. I'd rather read text than watch video because it is much faster, easier to understand and simpler to use (not ctrl + f to jump to a specific part of a video).
So sorry but I don't have time to spend in watching this video. Why don't you write the counter arguments addressing all the points I raised instead ?
What's the difference between asking others to read a bunch of links vs. asking them to watch a video? My source is both sides debating you, on the other hand, is only showing evidence to support your claims.
Here is one of the people from the first link you provided.
From Hansens "Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save the Planet"
The dangerous threshold of greenhouse gases is actually lower than what we told you a few years ago. Sorry about that mistake. It does not always work that way. Sometimes our estimates are off in the other direction, and the problem is not as bad as we thought. Not this time.
Then only to turn around later:
Stopping human-made climate change is inherently difficult, because of the nature of the climate system: it is massive, so it responds only slowly to forcings; and, unfortunately, the feedbacks in the climate system are predominately amplifying on time scales of decades-centuries.
The upshot is that there is already much more climate change “in the pipeline” without any further increase of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs). That does not mean the problem is unsolvable, but it does mean that we will need to decrease the amount of GHGs in the relatively near future.
The ponderous response of the climate system also means that we don’t need to instantaneously reduce GHG amounts. However, despite uncertainties about some climate processes, we know enough to say that the time scale on which we must begin to reduce atmospheric GHG amounts is measured in decades, not centuries. Given the fact that the fastest time scale to replace energy systems is decades, that means that we must get the political processes moving now. And that won’t happen until the public has understanding of what is actually needed and demands it.
Just one example and I could give many others of the claims of catastrophes not living up to the scaremongering.
That is exactly what makes people like me skeptical. Hyped alarmist claims which then turn out to be not even close to true once you dig into it.
Everyone agrees that climate is changing also the "Catastrophe skeptics", everyone even agrees that humans have an effect, what they don't agree on is how much.
Try and find one source that tells you exactly how much humans affect or exactly the temperature. The links from the IPCC gives a wide range.
How do you know what you think about the climate is true?
I often see people talk about potential positive feedback loops involved in climate change, but rarely are potential damping mechanisms mentioned. So let's talk about them. I'll share one.
"The scientists say that if their analysis is correct, it could mean that a large reservoir of methane thought to lie under the vast West Antarctic Ice Sheet -- which encompasses 25.4 million cubic kilometers (6.1 million cubic miles) of ice -- is less likely to be released into the atmosphere."
Lots of suffering and death. Unless we act using our ability to make predictions about the future. Act now, speak out, reach for common ground with critics, avoid spending to much energy on trolls and lost causes.
Not that there are no worries, but the worst case scenarios being put forward are almost certainly not accurate. In fact it has been acknowledged that the worst case models submitted to the Paris Climate Accord talks were misleading in their assumptions.
yup. There was one published study that basically says that if they are right which is not proven then the worst case scenario is slightly less probable.
But Paris Climate Accord are now dated, 2017 report from IPCC says the 2°C objective has already failed and we're heading for a 3 to 5°C average global temperature increase whatever we do by the end of the century, such a global average increase translate into a 6 to 10°C average continental temperature increase. With a 6 to 10°C temperature increase no known agriculture is possible.
Another dampening mechanism. It turns out burning all that fossel fuel dims the sky. So while we made it hotter , we also have been cooling. Which means when we get off fossil fuels, the earth will warm faster and all that built up CO2 will reach it's full warming potential.
Such an outlier is not completely unprecedented it looks like from his chart, but only if it immediately and rapidly corrects downwards in the coming days...
Please don't just downplay such an event if you don't know anything about it. This temperature measurement may not be completely unprecedented, but as DMI write about it:
Plus degrees are unusual
DMI has measurements from Kap Morris Jesup back to 1980, and reveals that in February, above zero degrees are definitely not usual at the world's northernmost land-based measurement station. In fact, DMI has only twice previously measured similar high temperatures. The first time was in 2011. Second time last year; ie in 2017. Both times, "føhn"-winds may have contributed to the high temperatures.
(https://www.dmi.dk/nyheder/arkiv/nyheder-2018/februar/plusgr...)
I see how that could seem like downplaying, but I just meant that as a hopeful observation that if the temperature rapidly corrects perhaps we're not as screwed as one might get the impression from the partial information. As it happens, the next day the temperature did immediately begin plummeting to our good fortune, and four days later now it is nearly 15 centigrade lower.
Assuming we need to worry about climate change in the short term, what are the best mitigations on individual level? What can a person do to prepare for climate change? Move somewhere less affected? Hoard money/resources?
Walk or bike to your workplace instead of taking the car. Use public transportation.
Oh, sorry, I misread what you asked about. You don't want to do something against climate change, you just want to mitigate the effects on you.
Best thing is to avoid all those people who will migrate because it doesn't rain anymore in their place so they have to starve because of bad harvests.
You presume a person does not already do those things.
Doing the right thing now, and preparing for the worst just in case are not mutually exclusive (a smart person can have more than one plan going at a time).
You don't want to do something against climate change, you just want to mitigate the effects on you.
I've might sounded selfish. Obviously reducing footprint is important, but there are several other factors one can't control. I'm interested in what is the best course of action if push comes to show.
Surround yourself with good and trustworthy people and be good and trustworthy yourself. If the worst case scenario becomes real you will probably not want to be around for it anyway and if you do manage to survive, it won't be alone.
Vote with your money, a.k.a. boycott. do not support any product/service that contribute to climate change.
Aim for the level of life of a regular Indian citizen, or even better Bhutanese.
Invest in insulation of your home, learn survivalist skills (how to make a fire, make a shelter, grow food, treat disease, make medicine, etc.) prepare for a scenario where you have to live a nomadic on the go for a while, join a group of similar minded individual.
Or if you have the required kind of budget, follow the step of the ultra rich and buy yourself a piece of land in a remote place (new zealand is hot right now) and build yourself a bunker with enough ressources to live on your own for as long as necessary.
Basically you want to find a way to ride out the collapse of civilization and be equipped to rebuild afterwards.
Exactly, today we call them survivalist skills, but really these are skills your grand parents skills had and got from their parents.
IMHO it is a matter of bridging a gap that span only a couple generations. My grand parents were growing food and covering 95% of the needs for a family of 12 with only animal traction. It was a life of much less comfort and convenience but it was sustainable and mostly a happy life.
"What can a person do to prepare for climate change?"
If global climate goes haywire, I would guess grain prices are first to go up, leading to instability in the poorest areas (qualitatively, the price of food seems to be related to regional instability).
On the short term I would guess the best guess is to have enough money to buy food, and live somewhere where there are strong governments that will mitigate problems to their constituencies on the short term (USA, Europe, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, etc)
No, it's still if. Climate scientists are not seers. It's an if with bloody lot of concerning data points and estimates. If should be good enough to take action.
Currently we are running a global empirical experiment on what happens when we increase CO2 in the atmoshpere, and no one has any conclusive answer what will actually happen, given that Earht's weather is a highly complex dynamical system.
Will the clathrate gun explode? What happens then? Who knows! Roll the dice, enjoy the show.
Create a company that deals with some of the consequences.
Before you do that though, I would urge you to spend some more time looking into what people are saying on both sides. I did and it made me realize that there is a certain kind of "climate alarmist" fraction of the environmental movement that's a far cry from the more balances actual views and that they, unfortunately, are boosted by the media quite a lot probably because media likes catastrophes.
3 things I learned which made it click for me.
1) The so-called "climate deniers" aren't denying there is climate change, they aren't even denying humans affect the climate some degree. What they say is that climate is always changing and that the degree to which humans are affecting the climate isn't as clear as the most alarmist would like you to believe.
2) The 97% consensus is extremely misleading and you will find that the questions asked put the so-called climate deniers into the same bucket of the consensus because of what I mentioned in one. There is however not 97% certainty with regards to how much humans affect. The IPCC numbers are all over the map and they ex have to adjust the heat down over time. http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg2/index.php?idp=29
3) You will not be able to get anyone to give you a straight answer when it comes to how much humans affect the environment and that's because there isn't any clear answers.
So educate yourself then decide what to do after that.
There really aren't 'both sides' to this. There's as much scientific controversy as there is over gravity or evolution.
The deniers used to deny there was change ("it's cycles!"). Then they denied it was humans (it really is, attribution is getting good). They're denying it's bad ("CO2 is plant food!"); and once things get really in train, they'll be denying ever being warned by those mean old scientists.
But you can take the same argument and turn it against the climate alarmist.
First, they said new york would be under water by now.
Then, they said the temperature was rising rapidly (but they had to adjust that claim down quite dramatically)
Then, they said the oceans are getting toxicated.
There is no clear consensus on this. We might or might not effect the climate more or less than we think.
But try and find any official number for how much humans affect the climate and you will be very dissapointed.
Science is not about certainty it's about testing hypothesis. The way climate scientist teste them is by using computer models. That's nowhere close to providing us with the scientific evidence and testability of gravity.
And evolution is a model, the best model we have to explain the evolution of species there is a lot of discussion inside of evolution.
Trying to close down any dissent or argument simply by saying there is nothing to discuss because science, is the most anti scientific thing you can do IMO.
Are you familiar with CAFE? Or the EPA in general? You were the one who made that statement about New York being underwater. Find me a date and a quote and I'll tell you exactly how things changed afterward.
The point I'm trying to make is that we've already taken steps to limit impact which is why the apocalyptic scenarios of yesteryear haven't come to pass.
"Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice.
Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.
Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss.
Summer melting this year reduced the ice cover to 4.13 million sq km, the smallest ever extent in modern times.
Remarkably, this stunning low point was not even incorporated into the model runs of Professor Maslowski and his team, which used data sets from 1979 to 2004 to constrain their future projections.
In the end, it will just melt away quite suddenly
Professor Peter Wadhams
"Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007," the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC.
"So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative."
Where exactly does this predict that new york would be under water by now ? The BBC article quotes: "In the end, it will just melt away quite suddenly. It might not be as early as 2013 but it will be soon, much earlier than 2040." and "A few years ago, even I was thinking 2050, 2070, out beyond the year 2100, because that's what our models were telling us. But as we've seen, the models aren't fast enough right now; we are losing ice at a much more rapid rate." "My thinking on this is that 2030 is not an unreasonable date to be thinking of."
The snopes articles says Al Gore sometimes inaccurately represented studies that predicted the timeline for an ice-free Arctic.
Not sure what the point about whether new york or not. The general point was that there was alarmist claims as those I linked to in the previous post.
I was responding in the same style of the claims about what the so-called "climate deniers" had claimed. I could ask the same questions with regards to the claims about what climate catastrophe skeptics have said if I wanted to be that pedantic.
I am still waiting to hear how our decisions curved those predictions as you can't have it both ways.
jschwartz is trying to have it both ways. Both claim that we curved a catastrophe by our actions while questioning it was ever claimed it would happen.
This discussion illustrates the two major views debate back in 2007
I don't want rhetorics, this is not a matter of winning an argument, I'd like to see your claim substianted to decide if they are valid and receivable.
Until now I've only see unsubstantiated bold claims, cherry picked provided evidence actually not supporting them when read and various logical fallacies attempts to get out of providing data supporting your point (You waiting for someone else to support their point is not proving yours, appealing to authority by linking to 1hour video debate, etc.)
What claims? I have provided plenty of links. What claims have I made and been asked to provide links to that I haven't?
I am not cherry picking anything. I giving examples as the only one in this thread btw. Go back and read the thread.
Where on earth am I appealing to authority? I link to a debate with two sides debating this very issue to prove a point which is that experts disagree about this which was one of my points. It's a proof of that. You on the other hand link to things and appeal to consensus, how is that useful for anything?
I literally gave you links not only to claims about New York being under water but other similar claims. The video is experts warning about the warming and the consequences being imminent.
So that critical thinking crash course you talked about, perhaps you should start by applying it to yourself.
I read the weather report (in Danish). [1] The local warming in Greenland has already happened in previous years at that particular weather station.
The spike in temperature was caused by a foehn-like wind -- same as a chinook wind in the Colorado or Wyoming Rockies; the temperature in Boulder CO can easily climb 10-20 C over a few hours and rapidly melt the snow, then return to a deep freeze the next night.
I haven't said anything about arctic sea ice levels, have I?
I just provided a factual summary based on the original Danish report about the cause of a one-day temperature spike recorded at one weather station in Northern Greenland.
It was not presented with appropriate context, and was not left out. It undermines the argument and thus should have been left out. That makes it interesting.
I'm guessing that the downvoters don't know what chinook winds can do nor what causes them. [1] The temperature swings can easily be double what I mentioned above, i.e. 40 C from -20C to +20C and back.
Or it's a heresy to point out that a particular weather event is neither uncommon nor a sign of doom.
that requires a very specific topographic configuration (nearby tall mountains with warm moist air flowing over them from one side, and the other side in their rain shadow).
It is by no means a widespread phenomena, and absolutely does not explain events in the arctic.
The Danish meteorological report I linked to explicitly states that the temperature spike was caused by a foehn-like wind, and that the same phenomenon has already been recorded at the same weather station in past years.
My favourite dream megaproject is putting a mile high immersion heater into Pechora sea, making its hundred kilometers of coastland tropical not unlike Thailand.
Or any other sea in the proximity. With palm trees and other signs of life success.
So if the earth heats up, and more water evaporates, and more clouds form to block the sun, will this lead to a global cooling effect? My understanding is this was the old worry, that all our pollutants were going to block out the sun and lead to a new ice age, or at least the Matrix.
Clouds reflect sunlight but they also trap heat, by absorbing infrared radiation and re-emitting it. (In Winter, notice how much colder it is in the morning when it's been clear all night.)
There is a positive feedback loop, more water vapor in the athmosphere double the CO2 greenhouse effect, and factoring in other feedback loops we get over 3 times more greenhouse effect, which warms the earth and increase water vapor in the athmosphere, etc.
This process could lead to oceans boiling out (though not on Earth, but it may be the case for Venus).
I was referring to the well defined cybernetics concept of feedback loop[1] which is simple: a feedback loop occurs when the output of a system applies to the input of the system.
In the discussed case it is a positive feedback loop as outputs adds itself to input [2].
I don't understand what you are trying to say by pointing out earth was warmer and cooled down, but you can read about positive and negative feedback loop during glacial period on wikipedia[3].
Too bad we can't create a dyson sphere that we could partially close to limit sun exposure enough to refreeze parts of the planet as needed and also use the sphere to power everything on earth.
An international effort could easily deploy reflective materials here to reduce solar radiation on Earth. Though I wonder how much it would cost to achieve even a 0.01% reduction in radiation, as well as what material would be most cost-effective to deploy.
There are easier methods to control the climate. E.g solar updraft towers can be used to create cloud cover, and to increase convection in the atmosphere.
Possibly, but I thought he/she was putting serious point in a light hearted manner. Expected sea level rises are .5 to 2m by then end of the century. Anyone with property less than 2m above the current sea level should be concerned.
There is a common misunderstanding in sea level rise. When the number says .5 to 2m it is a planetary global average, but sea level rise distribution is not uniform across the planet.
Some places, such as the US east coast[1][2], are expected to have to deal with sea level rises 3-4 times the global average or 2m to 8m of sea level rise. So property up to 8m or more from the current sea level may be concerned.
"The government-run National Flood Insurance Program is, for now, virtually the only source of flood insurance for more than five million households in the United States. This hurricane season, as tens of thousands of Americans seek compensation for storm-inflicted water damage, they face a problem: The flood insurance program is broke and broken.
The program, administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has been in the red since Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans in 2005. It still has more than a thousand disputed claims left over from Sandy. And in October, it exhausted its $30 billion borrowing capacity and had to get a bailout just to keep paying current claims."
NPR Planet Money did an episode on this: "The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is $30 billion in debt to the U.S. Treasury. If it were a private company, it would be bankrupt. And instead of preventing risky behavior, the NFIP may be encouraging it. Among the NFIP's many problems are houses that flood again and again and again. Throughout the program's history, one percent of homes have been responsible for more than 25 percent of the claims. The NFIP can't drop these homes."
It seems like we keep discovering new positive feedback loops for global warming. Less ice means less reflection. Warmer arctic means more methane from permafrost. Desertification means less carbon capture. There was a recent article in Scientific American about likely changes in cloud formation from AGW. Some clouds reflect sun (cooling), while others trap heat (warming). Guess which are likely to increase?
I doubt humans will go extinct, but yeah... we're screwed.
I’m not sure what I think about the “climate change” issue, but I maintain a reserve of skepticism towards proclamations of apocalyptic doom.
A) Humans, and all living things, are screwed from the get go. A guaranteed calamity awaits us all.
I think contributes to a lack of perspective that is not helpful, and possibley harmful. On a number of levels, personal and political.
B) The fact that climate change gets far more discussion and attention than the ongoing calamity of US military conduct is telling. It tells me that climate change, which is complex, and only ameliorated by levels of global cooperation never seen before, serves as a “boogie man” for the “politically aware.”
Organizing against the conduct of corporate war, as it operates globally, presents far more “low hanging fruit” for positive outcomes, at doable price levels.
Yet, there are no serious (meaning electable) politicians in the US who have an opposition to the crazy influence of corporate money. The military spending (and its corruption) is protected from scrutiny by seemingly insurmountable social structures.
Yet, achieving meaningful reductions in military activities, if not spending, is within the realm of imaginable. It is far more doable than the level of global cooperation that is required to reduce carbon emissions. But people who might be inclined to support collective efforts to clean up the corporate-military-political complex are demoralized.
The Republicans apparently pride themselves on taken the worst possible courses of action on challenging problems. They are working to undercut the science of climate change!
Frankly, I see global action on significant greenhouse gas reductions as impossible.
So, somehow, liberal minded folks have found a perfect subject to project their sense of hopeless futility in “global warming”, an almost intractable problem.
In the meantime, there are unexplored opportunities to improve our communities, and world, all around us.
If we, the US, could somehow turn the corner on the lunatic resistance to gun control, and then make some active progress on military misadventures, maybe Americans might think about giving up on meat.
(1) Global warming is a runaway process already well underway.
(2) Our political and economic system are too short-sighted to deal with existential threats that will only come to fruition 100 years from now. CEOs look at quarterly numbers; political leaders think as far as the next election.
(3) Humans do not seem to naturally plan beyond their own lifetimes. This makes evolutionary sense, but we evolved back before we could cook the planet.
(4) Global warming is happening way faster than most natural selection. Fruit flies may be just fine.
> achieving meaningful reductions in military activities, if not spending, is within the realm of imaginable. It is far more doable than the level of global cooperation that is required to reduce carbon emissions.
I disagree here. There are extremely low-cost ways to wean humanity from fossil fuels. Solar energy prices have been coming down dramatically, to the point where utility companies might switch away from coal out of self-interest. A nudge in the right direction, instead of "drill baby drill" and "bring coal back," could have a huge effect down the line. Unfortunately, we seem unable to plan on those timescales.
> Frankly, I see global action on significant greenhouse gas reductions as impossible.
I see it as inevitable.
It might now be voluntary but it will happen as eventually we will reach a point where choice will not be an option and it will be a direct consequences of the lack of cheap energy sources, lack of food, economic collapse, massive reduction in population and so on.
Doing it voluntary now would help dealing with the upcoming catastrophic events and not doing it means playing it the hard way. But eventually human production of greenhouse gases will be greatly reduced, probably to pre industrial levels.
I love this type of analysis and call to action. If each person following this type of reasoning in their own lives, our societal issues would start clearing themselves up pretty quick.
Out of curiosity what makes you doubt human will go extinct.
It is quite obvious that we are collectively failing to deal with climate change and that this could be the great filter according to the fermi paradox where humans disappear. Climate change sure has the potential to remove current condition favorable to human life on the planet as it has already happened in the past.
I think we're adaptable and numerous enough that a stable breeding population would survive somewhere. Maybe Elon Musk's descendants will stop trying to shoot things at Mars and instead build a self-contained mini-ecosystem here on Earth. Who knows?
That's not to say it would be pleasant -- a rapid population reduction from 7 billion to under a million would not be pretty -- but extinction is hard.
I don't think we're adaptable enough to survive without food. Collapse of the food chain have happened on Earth before humans and is among possible consequences of climate change.
Same with breathable air, how would humans adapt to an athmosphere composition without oxygen as happens when earth magnetic field is weaken during geomagnetic reversals ?
My point is we are facing an ongoing mass extinction event and based on current knowledge of previous events humans being wiped out is a possibility. Based on the number of species that are extinct, extinction is not that hard specially during a mass extinction event.
I'm of the opinion that all of life on Earth evolved over a long period of time to match the more or less steady state environment.
When you go and disturb that steady state by say releasing a million years worth of carbon sequestration over a century, you destabilize the whole thing.
Like a top spinning it all of a sudden collapses. And then humans realize that we were really just along for the ride & do not have a chance to re-stabilize.
I can smell the Gaia daisies in that opinion. But this is a big perturbation and it'll take a long time to settle back down again. Fine for life overall, but troublesome for hairless monkeys and their agricultural base.
I discovered, the hard way, that the Android Gmail client, using naked HTML (with a default naked DTD specification), does exhibit this problem. It only responds to <img /> [i.e., not <image />]. gmail.com is fine with <image />, but not the Android gmail client.
It does indeed have <image> tags as part of the spec, in order to account for about 0.2% of websites per a study done in December 2005. See this comment for the link in the spec: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16462230
I heard someone in the lift of my soul destroying corporate gig this morning talking about how great the electrolytes in her drink were... I think it's finally happening https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
Except, as many have pointed out before, Idiocracy was far more reasonable than what some countries are doing right now - even when the world was composed of nothing but idiots, they recognized they had a problem, found the smartest person in the world, and put them in charge of fixing the issue
> Other than displacing a large number of people who live on coastlines, what's the big deal?
"Other than that, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"
The displacement of large numbers of people will cause immense strife. Just look at the nasty reaction to the relatively small migration away from the Syrian civil war.
The problem is basically that all the land near populated coastlines is already owned, and those owners are not going to be inclined to let millions of their neighbors move in without some compensation.
But if those neighbors' coastal property just got swallowed by the sea, they probably don't have many assets left to pay.
Though the Syrian civil war can be used to illustrate this, a better example is the india - bangladesh fenced wall. Bangladesh is one of the first country and most severely impacted by climate change and this wall has been put in place to stop people bangladesh migrating away from climate change consequences into India.
I was also convinced that this was a reasonable way of looking at things because often the "climate change debate" is portrayed as two-sided; one arguing that climate change isn't a big deal and one arguing that it is. This leads to the false supposition that the true answer lies somewhere in the middle, but unfortunately it does not.
For me, one of the most eye-opening experiences was reading an article from the New Yorker the worst of what may happen due to climate change.[0] Because the "climate change is happening" side often tries to ground their claims in research and climate-models, they are rarely apocalyptic or even the slightest bit exaggeratory, while the other side often argues at the opposite extreme of "nothing will happen." I found this article to be helpful in orienting the debate, as it helped me realize that the expected value of doing nothing is really far worse than what I imagined.
The New York Magazine is not research. Want to know what the actual research says?
Look at figure 10.1 on page 690 of the IPCC’s AR5 WG II report. As it shows, most of the studies on the total impact of climate change for increases between 2.6 and 4.8 °C, which is the range for the IPCC’s highest emissions scenario during the 21st century, result in estimates of the impact on welfare equivalent to a change between 0% and −3% in GNP. Positive effects are included in the estimates, so 0% and two positive values appear outside the range. This is not about the economic impact but about the total impact on welfare, so it really is what is relevant. The factors considered by the studies include variation in agricultural yield, water availability, changes in tourism flow, energy demand, impact on human health, labor productivity.
How bad do you think −3% is during the 21st century? That’s less than 0.035% less economic growth starting in 2014 when the Fifth Assessment Report was published. Even a policy that was completely effective at entirely preventing any global warming could only be justified if its cost was otherwise less than 0.035%. The policies we could implement would not be completely effective and would certainly cost more than 0.035%. Therefore the expected value of doing nothing about global warming is higher than the expected value of doing something.
An overly simplistic conclusion based on a pick-and-choose approach to the report. First let me quote from the summary just a few pages down: "In sum, estimates of the aggregate economic impact of climate change
are relatively small but with a large downside risk. Estimates of the
incremental damage per tonne of CO2 emitted vary by two orders of
magnitude, with the assumed discount rate the main driver of the
differences between estimates. The literature on the impact of climate
and climate change on economic growth and development has yet to
reach firm conclusions. There is agreement that climate change would
slow economic growth, by a little according to some studies and by a
lot according to other studies. Different economies will be affected
differently. Some studies suggest that climate change may trap more
people in poverty."
Note that the literature diverges in its estimation of the impact. Much of the report on the economic impact basically says "there's a lot we don't know about most of these things" because the event haven't taken place yet. But that doesn't mean we can't extrapolate. Economic forces push populations. And, the effects will differ by geography, which is the crucial point. If only coastal areas are affected, that will still incentivize people to make decisions that affect inland economies. And these are the risks that a high proportion of the world's population would face (from the very same report):
The key risks that follow, all of which are identified with high confidence, span sectors and regions. Each of these key risks
contributes to one or more reasons for concern [RFC].
i) Risk of death, injury, ill-health, or disrupted livelihoods in low-lying coastal zones and small island developing states and other small
islands, due to storm surges, coastal flooding, and sea level rise.37 [RFC 1-5]
ii) Risk of severe ill-health and disrupted livelihoods for large urban populations due to inland flooding in some regions.38 [RFC 2 and 3]
iii) Systemic risks due to extreme weather events leading to breakdown of infrastructure networks and critical services such as electricity,
water supply, and health and emergency services.39 [RFC 2-4]
iv) Risk of mortality and morbidity during periods of extreme heat, particularly for vulnerable urban populations and those working outdoors
in urban or rural areas.40 [RFC 2 and 3]
v) Risk of food insecurity and the breakdown of food systems linked to warming, drought, flooding, and precipitation variability and extremes,
particularly for poorer populations in urban and rural settings.41 [RFC 2-4]
vi) Risk of loss of rural livelihoods and income due to insufficient access to drinking and irrigation water and reduced agricultural productivity,
particularly for farmers and pastoralists with minimal capital in semi-arid regions.42 [RFC 2 and 3]
vii) Risk of loss of marine and coastal ecosystems, biodiversity, and the ecosystem goods, functions, and services they provide for coastal
livelihoods, especially for fishing communities in the tropics and the Arctic.43 [RFC 1, 2, and 4]
viii) Risk of loss of terrestrial and inland water ecosystems, biodiversity, and the ecosystem goods, functions, and services they provide for
livelihoods.44 [RFC 1, 3, and 4]
Many key risks constitute particular challenges for the least developed countries and vulnerable communities, given their limited ability to cope.
IF you were correct in your assertion that the economic cost of doing nothing is lower than the economic cost of doing something, the ETHICAL cost of doing nothing is immeasurable because we'd willingly be exposing current and future generations to all of the above higher risks.
Uh, all of these things are happening already, and will continue to happen. The biggest causes of unnecessary misery in this world are political (which of course encompasses the physical environment.)
The questions are what the best course of action would be: for individuals, neighborhoods, states, continents.
We cannot escape the physical environment we live in, and to fantasize that somehow compiling a list of risks could lead to some dramatic action is not illuminating. Taking such talking points out of context is confusing.
Yes, all of these are happening, and they're going to get worse and affect more people.
This list isn't taken out of context. It's from a detailed report outlining causes and effects, followed by policy recommendations and methods for governments to address each risk as well as mitigate climate change to reduce those risks. (It's also not out of context because I posted it in a comment thread about the effects of climate change [context])
What you're seeking is found in the report I quoted from
"global warming is said to have played a role in sparking the 2011 uprising. Severe drought plagued Syria from 2007-10, causing as many as 1.5 million people to migrate from the countryside into cities, exacerbating poverty and social unrest."
A not unreasonable hypothesis. Yet the bulk of the destruction is the result of ghastly military actions, aimed at direct destruction of the society. To worry about the contribution of climate change is not pointless. Close to it though.
The life cycle of countless animals and plants is finetuned to our current climate. Crops are also at the mercy of weather patterns. We have no idea whether our food sources will get through the changes. Example of unknown unknown: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/australia-green-...
Widespread and severe agricultural issues, drought, an increase in extreme weather (hurricanes / typhoons / etc), unprecedented heat waves, and others I'm forgetting.
This along, with the issues you've mentioned, could result in significant political instability across the world, massive migration issues that could easily dwarf the migration issues of the last decade, perhaps even severe wars, and other disastrous situations.
I'm not qualified to give a full description. Some form of the above seems fairly plausible to me if we don't take serious pragmatic action.
It's of course incredibly difficult to give meaningful predictions about something this complex. But let's not bet the damn farm on it.
It is very well established that there are serious risks. The time has long come for anyone in a relevant position of leadership to accept the responsibility and take effective action.
Your comment is a bit greyed out, meaning you are getting downvotes. However you are right. Climate change means migration of disease vectors such as ticks and mosquitos into places they didn't survive before. One only has to look at Zika virus and the Aedes mosquito as an example.
A huge part of world's population lives on coastal cities. When cities like Mumbai and Dhaka will start to submerge, you can imagine the havoc that will cause. Also, some countries like maldives will completely submerge. I don't think europeans would be very happy about accepting these people, given the situation that has arisen from Middle eastern migration.
A lot of wildlife requires specific environmental situation. A lot of species won't survive changes in temperature.
Most poor people will have hard time surviving either increased flooding or increased droughts. Where I live(South MH, India), we are already facing drought every other year, and I am preety sure this is going to get worse. Millions live in this area. Where do you think we will move when we don't have water? (clue: look for places with more water)
So in short, huge parts of world either get submerged in sea, suffer from severe droughts/flooding, from desertification, or from the destruction of crops. Without food, water and land, people migrate in large numbers, and thus exert more pressure on those places.
Some experts believe that a war is likely between India and China over water in next decade.
I haven't touched the issue of lack of antibiotics and resurgence of old diseases at all.
Most of what you mention is actually a problem solving itself. One of the cause of man made climate change is overpopulation, with most of the human population being crammed into megacities of which many are coastal it means the overpopulation will probably fix itself with people living in big cities mass dying.
Big and not that big cities do not produce enough food and water for themselves, density of population means they will be hotspots for contagious diseases, means of transportation out of those cities do not allow for mass migration, all these and more means those people are likely to die.
On the other hand people living in the countryside, are able to grow food, have knowledge of local plants and generally can sustain themselves have much better chance to survive the catastrophic events to come.
Though some experts think a war over water between India and China is possible, other think the collapse will happen so fast that it will wipe all possibility of military action and leave only people that will have no choice but work together to survive. This scenario is also likely.
It's been a while since I've been in India but imho this is one the places on earth with potential to survive climate change.
I think the north eastern India, which has lot of forest cover and is close to Himalayas, might be able to sustain local population. Similarly, the islands which don't submerge my also do fine. But the real problem will be with coastal metros(esp. Mumbai) and with central India. I have quite some friends from central India, and the situation isn't good there. Already, this region receives much less rainfall than the coastal regions, as the two mountain ranges on both coasts block most clouds. Change in weather would very severely affect this region.
https://youtu.be/LJf5JjZjsGI have a look at this video, this region which suffered hailstorm destroying most crops, is supposed to be a somewhat dry region.
> When cities like Mumbai and Dhaka will start to submerge, you can imagine the havoc that will cause.
Actually, no, I can't. This won't happen overnight, cities will just slowly move away from the coastline. It will take hundreds of years to cover such cities with water (if ever).
Current estimations say this could happen around 2040-2050 and will happen before the end of the century. so not centuries but decades. And it will happen as the rise of sea level would not stop even if we stopped the increase of temperature instantly due to inertia.
If the temperature increases several degrees, hundreds of million - maybe even billion - of people will be displaced not just from the coastlines, but also from areas becoming desertified. Can you imagine the economic distress, humanitarian crises, and the conflicts this can generate?
I think you are downplaying it a bit here. The temperature is already well on its path of increasing several degrees. Economy will probably cease to exist. There will be no humanitarian crisis but simply people mass dying. The "conflicts" may be nukes or sticks and stones but there's also a possibility that there will be relatively few conflicts depending on the strength of the culture of selfish in the local area.
I honestly think you're overplaying it, instead. Whatever the scale of the changes, they will happen during decades, not years. "Economy cease to exist": what does it even mean? There was an economy during WWII, there was an economy during the worst of the middle ages...
I don't know where you get the idea that this kind of change will necessarily happens over decades, a tipping point triggering a change so fast a collapse happens in a matter of days is also among the possibilities.
I was referring to things like the Bundeswehr (German military) study that was leaked in 2010 in der spiegel which explored the probable future to better prepare themselves to face it. Here you'll find page 2 of the english version of the der spiegel article reporting on the partial to complete market failure and global chain reaction causing global economy collapse.
Fun thins is that this report places the collapse around 2025-2030 same as predicted by the world3 in the 1970's.
The other thing I was referring to is a report about the transition period which had a part about risk of violence and war in the event of a societal collapse (they actually evaluated the whole range from steady decline interspersed with rupture points to full civilization collapse), and among the possible scenarios without violence were the ones where the collapse happened fast enough.
Sorry I don't have source readily available IIRC I found this report while documenting myself on post oil agriculture in the EU.
It is a common misconception to not understand that the upcoming change is unprecedented in human history, it will be nothing like what we have faced before. Expecting it to be something like past events would be a mistake.
Poor people in equatorial regions that are already on the edge of uninhabitability without air conditioning will start to experience actual uninhabitability unless underground or air-conditioning solutions are procured (and even then, things will get very very uncomfortable outdoors for portions of the year)
Again, this will affect the most vulnerable people on the earth first: "A study by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2009)[120] estimated the effect of climate change on human health. Not all of the effects of climate change were included in their estimates, for example, the effects of more frequent and extreme storms were excluded. Climate change was estimated to have been responsible for 3% of diarrhoea, 3% of malaria, and 3.8% of dengue fever deaths worldwide in 2004. Total attributable mortality was about 0.2% of deaths in 2004; of these, 85% were child deaths." (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming)
I'm a first worlder and I've been seeing the difference for over a decade now. I'm close to convinced that first world is the worst place to be as the chances of survival are the worst due to the country being almost entirely dependent on importations for its needs and has outsourced most and lost its ability to sustain itself while lacking reserves.
I think first worlders will be among those hit the harder because they will lose almost everything they're used to and left with the inability to live as the grand parents did for they have forgotten this knowledge.
Is the problem really not knowing? Because even you don’t know, is it not enough that virtually all credible scientists are warning us of the very bad things we are at risk of?
I know you are not debating the issue, but to me one of the most interesting questions is why do people deny this even when they have no vested interest?
One obvious answer is that it’s become a party platform issue and those that do have an interest have poisoned the well of thought for large numbers of people.
Maybe that’s part of it, but it’s hard to believe it’s that simplistic and there is no other psychology at play. Whatever lack of respect one has for an opposing political party, you’d think after hearing enough doomsday scenarios it would at least be worth digging in a little to see what all the fuss is about.
For me it is hand wavy doomsday scenarios that makes me skeptical, along with hand wavy predictions that don't come true. My thought is that if it truly was as serious as people say, the evidence and argument would feel a lot more solid and there would be less fearmongering.
I'm not sure what doomsday scenarios and failed predictions you're referring to but even though for some reason it feels otherwise to you evidence and argument is quite solid.
Seems you may be victim of a bias of some kind here[1], or have been exposed to some misinformation of some kind.
Doomsday scenarios in the public imagination. For instance, I saw a commercial in a UK theatre that showed people drowning in city streets due to global warming. That's ridiculous. I've heard claims the Maledives will be submerged in X years, even though the Maledives are coral islands that will rise with the sea level increase. Then I see lots of conjecture that this or that tragedy is attributable to global warming. In general, there is a lot of alarmism, but it is hard to pin down what exactly the problem is. Maybe you can clarify. What is a specific problem we face that is directly attributable to global warming?
is it not enough that virtually all credible scientists are warning us of the very bad things we are at risk of?
The public perception is that science keeps warning of imminent disasters that keep not happening. Climate profiteers like Al Gore have totally undermined the credibility of science.
I would posit that if Al Gore is all it took for science to have its credibility undermined in your eyes, you don’t actually know what science is, how it works, or much about the issues at hand.
I’m not having a problem reading what you wrote, although I admit that my psychic powers are for crap. In other words, I read what you wrote, not whatever subtle variation you felt. Taking context into account, I suspect that what you actually wrote was pretty much accurate, without the post hoc qualifications.
>>Other than displacing a large number of people who live on coastlines, what's the big deal?
Those people won't peacefully move somewhere else. Especially in Europe as the middle east becomes literally unliveable and millions of people will start walking north to just survive another day - I can't imagine even the most tolerant european countries willingly accepting this, especially since it won't happen overnight, but over many decades, with more and more people flowing in. That is bound to cause huge amounts of unrest, possibly civil war/ or just war.
Not just warmer: less stable.
Most likely feedback loop to you is crop failures, mass starvation, conflicts.
Do not rule out extreme weather events as well.
Would melting sea ice lead to a rise in sea level? The ice is floating, so it's displacing the approximately same mass of water as it contains. If it melts the overall water level shouldn't change.
1. Thermal expansion. It's a tiny effect, you won't see it in a glass of water in science class but when you've got oceans a few kilometers deep and humans living a few meters above them it can have an impact.
2. It's a feedback effect. Less ice means less light reflected means more energy in our oceans/atmosphere. In turn this creates more ice loss that won't be sea ice.
Water crystallization is a different effect and not relevant here. It has the same mass so it doesn't effect sea levels when it's frozen and it's not a linear effect, it won't continue to shrink as it warms.
But like everything else (to various extents) it will expand when it's warmer.
The maximum density of water is at 4 degrees. If you heat it above that it starts expanding quickly. If you freeze it below that it starts expanding slowly.
This is correct, melting sea ice does not lead to a rise in sea level. It’s the melting of glaciers and ice sheets (on Greenland for example) that cause the sea level to rise.
As far as sea-level rises are concerned, the Arctic sea ice will probably be a net sea-level fall, except around the Equator. If all of the Greenland glaciers were to disappear, well then, we would see a sea-level rise, globally. But it would be distributed unevenly across the world. The higher levels would again be around the Equator with decreasing levels the further north or south of the Equator you go.
But to get even a 1/3 of the Greenland ice cover to melt requires an unimaginably large amount of energy to do so. I'd have more concerns about the devastation of that much energy on the atmosphere than I do about any trivial amount of ice melt and associated sea-level rise.
The planet is close to being a steady state system, that is the energy inflows from the day side is about equivalent to the energy outflows on the night side. This varies throughout the year due to various factors, including orbital position, solar energy output, climate factors like clouds, etc.
The required energy to get 1/3 of Greenland glacial melt is approximately about the amount of energy received by the Earth on a single day, without any of that energy being released on the night side. Due to the slow conductivity of water in both solid and liquid forms, the atmosphere would need to essentially hold all of that energy. Even over a hundred years, that would probably mean atmospheric temperatures that would probably kill most, if not all, life on the surface of the planet.
There has been one study (that I know of) that has looked at the retention of energy over a period of about 50 years and the conclusion was that only 2 to maybe 5% of the energy retained managed to get into ice-melt. So to get the required ice-melt energy needed, we would need, say, 20 to 25 days worth of solar input radiation to be fully retained within the atmosphere (no leakage back into space).
In addition, I somehow think that even a 5 or 10 degree Celsius temperature rise would lead quickly to a sharp fall in global temperatures and would the initiation of a global ice-age. Since the planet has an approximate coverage by oceans and sea ice of 70%, an average rise of 5 to 10 degrees would more than likely see a huge rise in cloud coverage and subsequent reflection of energy back out into space, followed by a subsequent rapid cooling of the globe.
Of course, these figures are dependent on common available information and could be wrong by some percentage. It's not hard to do your own calculations if you want to get some feel for what might be possible.
Your reasoning omits that there is also a large amount of energy stored im the oceans. The greenlandic glaciers have already sped up and are calving into the oceans where there is plenty of energy to melt them.
That's the whole point of the study of energy storage over fifty years. The interesting point is that the amount of ice calving off from the Greenland glaciers is minute compared to the amount of ice on Greenland. It doesn't matter how spectacular these calves are and they are spectacular and from our point of view they are huge, you can think of them as flaking skin off an elephant.
The problem I see here is that the energy flows and pathways required are of such a magnitude and are so complex that the simplistic modelling being used basically ignores it.
For every kilotonne of ice being calved, it will require, at a minimum, the energy stored in 4 kilotonnes of sea water at 20 degrees Celcius. The resulting temperature of that sea water would be reduced to just above freezing point of water. If you, say, set the limit at a 1 degree Celsius drop, then we are looking extracting the energy of about 84 - 85 kilotonnes of sea water. You still need to take into account the energy conduction through water and also from water to the ice.
At this end of the globe, we see stories often enough of the end of small icebergs that have calved off the Antarctic ice mass. Many of these have been tracked from the initial calve to their final demise and it takes many years for even small ones to finally disappear.
To get any serious ice melt, you have to have serious amounts of energy flowing into that ice.
One question to ask is how the calving is occurring? There can be a variety of ways this can happen and they are not all caused by temperature increases. This, in itself, is a very interesting subject and there are some quite complex processes involved.
The world around us is extremely complex and we have very little understanding of how things work, irrespective of what is portrayed in popular media.
Historical records do indicate that the Arctic Polar ice mass has been of varying sizes. Some of these have essentially indicated that the ice mass was very small at some points in history and at other times very large. Some of these records and reports go back many hundreds of years.
Once they fall into the sea the displacement occurs. It doesn't matter after that how long they take to melt, all that matters is that they fall off land and into the ocean.
So melting is an issue only for ice that melts on land and then flows into the oceans because that represents new water volume.
It's not that simple. You must take into consideration the amount of ice that is deposited onto the ice mass from snow and condensation of water vapour.
If the rate of deposit is greater than the rate of calving then there is a nett addition to the ice mass. If the rates are equal, then you have steady state. If the rate of calving is greater then you have a nett loss.
This has to be looked at over a longer period of time to see what the variation is in the data.
It is interesting the other comments in this area are vague and emotional, whereas the only thought out comment is downvoted because it is critical of global warming. This constant dynamic is what makes me skeptical of the whole global warming thing.
Comments criticizing evolution in favor of intelligent design will also be downvoted for the same reasons. The scientific consensus is that climate change is happening, and it's caused by us. The evidence in favor of the theory is overwhelming, so you'd have to publish a pretty substantial study, not a comment on an internet forum, if you would want to sensibly argue against anthropogenic climate change without being ridiculed.
Well, I'm glad the consensus of scientists has never been wrong. It's also helpful the scientists can tell us who the true experts are, otherwise we'd never know.
Maybe, you can look at the evidence presented and determine for yourself what conclusions you come to. It may be that you will determine that the evidence is for anthropogenic climate change. But then again, you might determine that the evidence is for natural processes and that anthropogenic climate change is extremely minor.
It's up to you to decide how and what you will believe.
[Afterthought edit]. Many years ago, I was given the following advice:
Surround yourself with experts, but make your own decisions as you see fit. Experts are just that, specialists in a narrow field and they do not see the bigger picture. It is up to you to do that for yourself.
Maybe you don't have time to study a subject for 5+ years fulltime to become sufficiently qualified to read scientific papers and assess their results.
The whole point is that you don't need to study a subject for 5+ years fulltime to become sufficiently qualified to read scientific papers and assess their results.
You just have to have enough interest to look at the data and see if it matches the conclusions reached based on the fundamentals of the theories involved.
If you reading and interest is extensive enough, you can pick up a lot of information that will help you do this.
I am not an organic chemist, but I have enough knowledge of the subject to understand if there is hand waving or actual evidence for the conclusions. This really only involves what I initially learned at school and university and what I have picked up in the intervening decades.
What if scientists regularly engage in falsifying and otherwise manipulating their results to fit their agenda? What if the very statistical methodology they follow is open to abuse? If we are to give wholesale acceptance to anyone who is an 'official scientist,' yet they could well be corrupt, how is that epistemically responsible?
Furthermore, why must we blindly accept the status quo when there are legitimate dissenters? The very nature of scientific advance is that it overturns the status quo. Your methodology would seem to undermine scientific progress.
Finally, it is said that the mark of a true expert is the ability to boil a complex subject down to the lay level. If the layman must study fulltime for 5+ years to understand climate science results, is the field perhaps not at the necessary level of expertise?
No need to resort to FUD, the thing you are mentioning happen and we can look at them. One such high profile example is Andrew Wakefield study published in the lancet which is the starting point for the "vaccines cause autism" controversy.
What happened is the author got caught, found guilty of professional misconduct and removed from practicing medicine while the paper was retracted. But this had consequences as a growing and vocal fringe population used this to fuel their agenda and spread misinformation against vaccines playing a role in the resurgence of contagious diseases.
But your arguing about climate change makes no sense, climate change has been happening for a while now there's no denying it field measure all points to this; sea level rises gradually, ice cap disappear, athmosphere composition changes, mass extinction of species is happening, natural disasters are increasing, etc.
Instead of wasting everybody's time on minute details and discussing attribution you should focus on what can be done to minimize the consequences.
But what are these huge consequences people are alarmed about? A very slow increase in sea level rise over 100 years can easily be addressed. Warmer climates will mean more vegetation and a more habitable planet. Why is not more attention focused on the benefits?
We have enough evidence of cooking the books in lots of different fields. Retraction Watch is a good site to see this.
The problem today is that there is no encouragement to investigate ideas that are different to the accepted models. Nor are this encouragement to do full scale duplications of reported results. Anomalies are only investigated if they don't appear to dispute the current consensus.
I had a recent discussion with a nuclear physicist that I admire about this and his response was to the effect that he would discourage such experiments. There was a lot more in the discussion which is not relevant here.
What we must be careful of is blindly assuming that our theories and models are correct. We have to realise that our interpretations of the results are many times based on deeply held beliefs that are not provable but are assumed to be true.
Which scientific consensus? The IPCC climate scientists with their models or the physicists, engineers, climate scientists and others who are raising the questions and the information that disputes these conclusions?
There are many who don't dispute that climate change occurs, what they say is that anthropogenic effects are, at this time, unknown and that any anthropogenic causes are minor compared to the various other causes.
Since I started taking an interest in this subject in the 1970's, the evidence of anthropogenic causes has been underwhelming.
As far as evolution and intelligent design are concerned, I have consigned both to the field of religious discussion and belief. I was an avid evolutionist until I started reading the actual results of experiments in the field. The results did not support any evolutionary model and still don't. As a result, I started to question why these scientists were pushing the wheelbarrow of the this model.
Just because someone is a scientist doesn't mean that they will completely logical and fair-minded about some model or another. Scientists are no different to any other group of people. They are people too and as such, have their own foibles and unsubstantiated beliefs.
If these scientists can demonstrate fair results then certainly we must look at those results. But the conclusions about what those results mean will depend on what an individual's starting point is. Just remember that old adage, to someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
If you are standing on scientific consensus as your "authority" then you are not acting in a manner that says you are investigating the facts as they are.
It may well be that anthropogenic causes will disrupt the planets climate in dangerous and possibly even unalterable ways. But I have yet to see any such evidence presented, nor have I seen valid questions being answered by these same anthropogenic climate change scientists. From where I stand, it appears that money still speaks louder than the facts.
I agree with your point that we should consider the evidence, and conclusions, presented to us as the work product of scientists. Especially as much of the information is shaped by innumerable cognitive biases.
However, I’m fascinated that someone could realistically doubt the “theory of evolution.” For one thing, it is very much an active area of research, with new discoveries all the time. (Reading about the epigenetic aspects of hereditary traits kind of blew my mind. It turns out that animals adaptions to specific environments can influence later generations.)
So how do consign a relatively young area of research, that is making concrete contributions to science as being akin to religious belief?
The specifics, and controversies, of evolutionary theory, and it’s scientific cousins, are quite complex, and it seems rather capricious to wave it all away as if it was some cartoon theory of reality.
My own, very limited, view of the weakness of evolution as a theory, is that it can seem like a “just so theory,” almost true by tautology.
But the mechanisms of natural selection, and hereditary transfer of traits are so well established that to dismiss the lot of it strikes me as irrational.
My view was cultivated by the evidence of the experiments. The experiments exhibited certain outcomes. The conclusions by those scientists did not match the results they obtained. For me, that was the start of questioning the model in the first place.
In relation to consigning both views to the realm of religious discussion, I have found that proponents of both sides tend to dogma. I especially find that evolutionists tend to the ad hominem mode very quickly. When this occurs, I tend to the position that that person is incapable of holding a sensible discussion about the subject and is relying solely on "authority".
When the proponents of a particular theory or model will not get involved in reasoning discussions and simply wave away the question raise then yes they are in some sort of cartoon theory of reality. This applies across the board to all discussions.
I don't have a problem with natural selection nor do I have a problem with transfer of traits. What I have a problem with is the model of evolution (or its variants). Those who are proponents of the theory and model do a lot of hand-waving that does not match the evidence at hand.
In terms of active research, if you look at anyone who demonstrates odd data or finding that oppose the general evolutionary theory, they are treated as pariahs and infidels. This is a characteristic of religious thinking and does not bode well for any science.
Most intelligent design proponents merely think undirected evolution cannot work, due to a variety of mathematical and scientific reasons. This does mean things like common descent, natural selection and heredity are false.
Most evolutionists merely think undirected evolution will work. Yet when asked for the specific chemical pathways in a general environment cannot provide these nor are they willing to accept the current challenge to discuss this.
As an aside, I used to believe in all of the fanciful notions like "black holes" and "neutron stars". But after some specific questions and subsequent investigation into what was being proposed, I doubt the existence of these entities. I have very specific reasons for doubting these entities and after attempting to discuss these reasons with those more "knowledgeable" in the subject, I am left with the same impression that this is also a matter of dogma.
Can you provide some sources of your claims ? For example of the people going against IPCC conclusions, as the people I know disputing their result are actually telling based on actual measurement IPCC underestimated the situation.
Same, it would be nice if you would source some of the "many" saying anthropogenic effects are minor to other causes. Why not explicting those other causes by the way ?
Same again for the actual results from field experiments not supporting evolution, please source them so we can read it ourselves and apply the principles of making our own min that you are putting forward.
I do agree that there is a religion of science or scientism increasing with time even among scientists themselves and undermining actual science, but this existing is not enough to dismiss the theory of evolution as a religious belief.
Can you also tell us what are the unanswered valid questions you're talking about ?
Right now you're talking in very vague affirmation that are unverifiable, which means your point will be dismissed as personal opinion.
i would think that greenland melting wouldn't happen all at once (if that's what you're saying), but rather that due to higher average ocean temperatures more of it would melt in the summer and less of it would freeze in the winter, and cumulatively over years and decades it has a net loss of ice, and perhaps eventually loses most of it. am i missing something in your argument?
It is more nuanced than that. In any relatively short time span, we may see specific effects (higher temperatures for example) and we may see other effects (increase atmospheric CO2), but this doesn't mean that over a longer term we will continue to see these effects.
The other aspect is that there are some very specific physics involved and I have yet to see any discussion over these specific effects.
We have seen, in some areas, what appears to be increasingly variable climate conditions. Yet, if one is willing to look into and take the time to investigate the appropriate historical records, these variations have occurred before and were, in fact, much stronger.
The affects from these conditions were not felt to the same extent as today because we have vastly different population distributions.
Let me give you an example.
When I was a child, we had a family regime every spring to prepare for the cyclones that would regularly hit the region in summer. As I moved into my latter teens and forward into my twenties, the regularity changed and we saw quite a diminished number and size of these events. Further time passed and the events grew less frequent but were significantly stronger.
The general consensus was that climate variation was getting worse. I dug into the available historical records for the mid 19th century to the early 20th century for the same region. I found that the events during that time were significantly stronger. We talk about category 5 cyclones today and, honestly, I rather have a category 5 than the monster cyclones from 19th century.
As far as Greenland is concerned, even with higher global temperatures (as specified by the IPCC), the amount of ice melt is still to be expected in the range of dead skin cells being rubbed off the back of an elephant. The energy requirements are just so unimaginable that if you were to put the entire world's nuclear arsenal to the task, it would barely be a pin prick.
When you take time to investigate the historical meteorological records you find out that almost all the highest temperature records since we started recording data are concentrated after 2010.
If you have a basic scientific education you know that any example starting by "when I was a child" is anecdotal evidence and have very limited value because it is akin to confirmation bias and cherry picking.
About Greenland ice sheet disappearing your thinking is oversimplified by looking only at energy required to melt ice. There are several other mechanisms to take into account, for example the increase in cloud cover preventing refreeze at night, or the melted cover snow and ice running into moulins to the ground which then flow under the glacier lubricating it and acceleratiing its motion and thus glacial calving, etc.
When studying a system you need to have basic understanding of second order cybernetics and feedback loops. In climate change positive feedback loop are the reasons past a tipping point there's no stopping it.
I wasn't talking about temperature rises, I was talking about extreme climate conditions. Since all the who-ha is about the rising level of extreme climate events, it is significant that older historical records record more extreme events.
The problem of confirmation bias and cherry picking is not a problem with "anecdotal evidence". Anecdotal evidence is an opportunity to further look into the events related to the evidence to see what its veracity is. I have been involved in various experimental activities and I have found that in some of those activities that the results obtained were deemed unacceptable because they did not match the expectation of the reviewers. Even when the experiments were repeated (under further supervision) and were similar to the original results, they were not accepted.
With regards to the 19th century data, this information was supplied by the National Bureau of Meteorology. Since these records were not recorded in a time of Political Correctness for climate change, I don't expect them to have been manipulated either way. So at face value and for a first approximation we can regards them as accurate.
You additional mechanisms are all involved in the energy transfers and requirements. What you forget is that to have the phase change from solid to liquid requires a set amount of energy given a set atmospheric pressure. Irrespective of how much calving occurs, we have to consider what is the accumulation rate of ice to the back end and the total amount of calving at the front end. In addition, the required calving on a daily basis still needs to be measured in the cubic kilometres or in the gigatonne range.
The problem with feedback loops in climate is that we do not know, we only think we know. With very simple systems, we can and do get to a position of understanding the various feedback loops. With complex system, we do not. We often see unexpected results. Climate is a global phenomenon and is so complex that we will not understand it for the forseeable future. That does not mean we shouldn't try, but to rely on the current models as if they are "truth" is good way to end up in a blind alley with no way out.
I don't have a problem with cleaning up the environment and finding more efficient ways to run transport and waste handling, mining and manufacturing. But to take the position of climate change being mainly or only anthropogenic is foolishness at best and utter stupidity at worst.
We have no idea (that includes every climate scientists who pushes the anthropogenic climate change agenda) as to the real relationships being natural and anthropogenic causes for climate change.
If you were to put every one of those who believe such in the position of having to bet their life on it, how many would do so? I mean putting gun against the head and testing with that wonderfully reliable device called a polygraph and pulling the trigger if any doubt was shown at all. Since the polygraph is an unreliable piece of equipment, I don't think we would see too many takers, would you?
The above, I know, is a bit ridiculous, but think about it.
For example, I can see from the DMI (Danish Met Institute) Daily Arctic mean temperatures north of 80N graph that area-averaged temperatures in the farthest north have been well above average all season.
There is also a plot of the total freezing degree-days over the entire winter season, and its anomaly relative to the past several decades. From there, I can see that while this season has been far less cold than average, it was not nearly as warm as last year.
Last year's winter season set a new minimax record for arctic sea ice coverage over the winter, but that didn't turn into a minimum coverage record over the summer.
It looks like the total arctic sea ice extent is currently setting a minimum-coverage record at this date, but its too early to tell if it will set another minimax record. From the regional graphs page[3], it looks like most of the anomaly is coming from the Bearing Sea.
[1]: http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/
[2]: https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/
[3]: https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/regional