Yahoo News: Climate landmark as Arctic ice melts to record low

[PeterMP]

http://news.yahoo.com/arctic-ice-mel...171243395.html

This is being covered multiple places. I just grabbed this link because it is one of the first I found in a search that I'd trust to be accurate.

Essentially, arctic sea ice extent (how much area is covered by sea ice) is at an all time low in the period of time that we have been measuring it (since 1979).

And the minimum doesn't normally come for a few weeks so it seems likely we will end up with a new record by quite a bit.

Sea ice isn't the best measure of warming because it is dependent upon factors other than temperature, and globally, this year hasn't been extremely warm (though we are still going to end well above average (maybe not top 10 though)).

I do think it is a good indication of CHANGE and what happens when you pile one warm year on top of another over and over again.

(This is my last thread for the night. I promise.)

[DeaconBlue]

I'm hesitant to even offer this but you state that it's the lowest since 1979 when we started monitoring this. That's 33 years. I know thats all we've got but in the grand scheme of things thats a fairly small sample size. In the context of the longer history of the arctic I still don't know where this falls and exactly what(or how much) it means I know theres a greater issue here but never the less I wonder about exactly what conclusions can be drawn from this data.

[PeterMP]

I'm hesitant to even offer this but you state that it's the lowest since 1979 when we started monitoring this. That's 33 years. I know thats all we've got but in the grand scheme of things thats a fairly small sample size. In the context of the longer history of the arctic I still don't know where this falls and exactly what(or how much) it means I know theres a greater issue here but never the less I wonder about exactly what conclusions can be drawn from this data.

As a single piece of data, it probably doesn't have a lot of value.

However, it is only a piece of the puzzle and most important it is a piece of the puzzle that was predicted.

Going back until at least the late 1970s (http://www.springerlink.com/content/h07756442w684w45/) (and likely even further back) scientists that thought global warming have been saying that one consequence will likely be less Arctic sea ice.

At that time, you could imagine that Arctic sea ice might increase, decrease, or stay the same. These people made a prediction that has come true (on a general level).

Since we have started collecting data, we have seen a general trend of less Arctic sea ice extent.

That is the real value of good science and a good hypothesis. It makes a prediction that than be evaluated in the future.

To stand here today and say I think that the Earth is warming because of CO2 and that there is less Arctic sea ice has minimal value.

To stand in 1979 and say that if CO2 keeps going up, the temperature will keep going up and that will cause a decrease in Arctic sea ice and the over decades see that is true has a lot of value.

If there was no relation, there is no real reason to believe what has happened would happen.

Does that make sense (That's an honest question. Sometimes people have a hard time understanding the idea, and I don't think I've done the best job explaining it there (I've only been up to see how my WhiteSox would do against Detriot and now that they have lost I am headed to bed tired and depressed.). If it doesn't make sense, I'll take another crack at it in the morning.)

[frostyj]

I agree 33 years is not much to go by since the last few hot/cold cycles have lasted 300+ years each.

[RedskinsFan44]

I agree 33 years is not much to go by since the last few hot/cold cycles have lasted 300+ years each.

300 years ago we weren't pouring 30 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually.

http://www.usatoday.com/MONEY/usaedi...01-ST_ST_U.htm

It astounds me that people dismiss the idea that we (humanity) could be having an affect on the climate. There has been a measurable change in the composition of the atmosphere

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ma...Dioxide-en.svg

Not to mention the changes in land cover that have occurred. But it is far more comforting to pretend that the world is so big it couldn't be us.

BTW, I know I am not going to change any minds, and climate science is extremely complicated, but to scoff at the notion of AGW is ludicrous. I guess we should just wait another 250 years or so and find out.

Edit: The temperature record supporting AGW is much longer than 33 years, the significance of the satellite record of Arctic ice is that it is far less questionable as far as the measurement method go, and imagery tends to be more tangible to people.

[PeterMP]

I agree 33 years is not much to go by since the last few hot/cold cycles have lasted 300+ years each.

In 1979 given no data on the long term arctic sea ice trend, there are 3 options:

1. The ice will go down.
2. The ice will go up.
3. The ice will not significantly change.

Only one of those possibilities is consistent with the theory related to climate change and that is what ended up happening (and people in 1979 were saying that it would happen if CO2 is going up). Standing in 1979, any one of those possibilities would have been consistent with "natural variation". Simply stating a hypothesis of natural variation is a WEAK scientific hypothesis because it does not make a prediction.

Those people and their theories should be given a degree of respect not given to theories that would not have specifically predicted that sea ice would go down.

[RedskinsFan44]

The global temperature data supporting AGW go back much further than 33 years. Satellite imagery is less disputable than point measurements of a continuous phenomenon, though, and people tend to respond more strongly to visual data. There is also anecdotal evidence going back to the 1850s with regards to the Northwest Passage that suggests things are changing in the Arctic.

[Ken]

Oh Noes! We have to implement a global carbon tax and reduce the population or the Polar bears will all die!

Could it just be that the sun is burning hotter than usual? I mean, after all, it is at the height of its sunspot activity cycle and everyone should know that this year is the worst for it.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...334r/?page=all

(This article is from 2004 and this year was expected to be and has been the worst year for solar flare activity)

[PeterMP]

Oh Noes! We have to implement a global carbon tax and reduce the population or the Polar bears will all die!

Could it just be that the sun is burning hotter than usual? I mean, after all, it is at the height of its sunspot activity cycle and everyone should know that this year is the worst for it.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...334r/?page=all

(This article is from 2004 and this year was expected to be and has been the worst year for solar flare activity)

Solar flares are different than sun spots, and I do not believer there is any relations between solar flares and solar output, while there is one for sun spots.

The sun has an 11 year cycle, and pretty recently (the last few years) there has been a decline in solar activity.

So in fact, we are seeing increased melting with less solar output in the context of the 11 year cycle.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...may_longrange/

[Koolblue13]

Clean air and drinkable water should be the main goal for all of us.

We can go from there.

[RedskinsFan44]

Oh Noes! We have to implement a global carbon tax and reduce the population or the Polar bears will all die!

Could it just be that the sun is burning hotter than usual? I mean, after all, it is at the height of its sunspot activity cycle and everyone should know that this year is the worst for it.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...334r/?page=all

(This article is from 2004 and this year was expected to be and has been the worst year for solar flare activity)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/op...pagewanted=all

The solar flare correlation has been debunked. If the right wants to argue that climate change is likely happening, but they don't want to do anything about it because of they don't care about polar bears ( or the spread of disease, loss of land, etc.) as much as they care about money, I would respect that more than reaching for some bogus alternative explanation every time the subject comes up.

The Washington Times is a rag set up and funded by Rev Moon (RIP) to push his conservative agenda. Politics makes strange bedfellows.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Jun22.html

"More than a dozen lawmakers attended a congressional reception this year honoring the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in which Moon declared himself the Messiah and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be "reborn as new persons."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times

"The Washington Times has lost money every year that it has been in business. By 2002, the Unification Church had spent about $1.7 billion subsidizing the Times.[45] In 2003, The New Yorker reported that a billion dollars had been spent since the paper's inception, as Moon himself had noted in a 1991 speech, "Literally nine hundred million to one billion dollars has been spent to activate and run the Washington Times".[46] In 2002, Columbia Journalism Review suggested Moon had spent nearly $2 billion on the Times.[21] In 2008, Thomas F. Roeser of the Chicago Daily Observer mentioned competition from the Times as a factor moving the Washington Post to the right, and said that Moon had "announced he will spend as many future billions as is needed to keep the paper competitive."[47

[Jumbo]

(This is my last thread for the night. I promise.)

Don't neglect the stadium.

[AsiaticSkinsFan]

Oh Noes! We have to implement a global carbon tax and reduce the population or the Polar bears will all die!

Could it just be that the sun is burning hotter than usual? I mean, after all, it is at the height of its sunspot activity cycle and everyone should know that this year is the worst for it.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...334r/?page=all

(This article is from 2004 and this year was expected to be and has been the worst year for solar flare activity)

Solar flares are different than sun spots, and I do not believer there is any relations between solar flares and solar output, while there is one for sun spots.

The sun has an 11 year cycle, and pretty recently (the last few years) there has been a decline in solar activity.

So in fact, we are seeing increased melting with less solar output in the context of the 11 year cycle.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news...may_longrange/

hmmm, Washington Times article vs. NASA scientists... this is a tough one

[PeterMP]

The solar flare correlation has been debunked.

It is important to even point out that Solanki, who the WT piece quotes extensively, actually had an important role in demonstrating the minimal contribution the sun has had.

http://www.mps.mpg.de/homes/natalie/PAPERS/warming.pdf

"This comparison shows without requiring any recourse to modeling that since roughly 1970 the solar
influence on climate (through the channels considered here) cannot have been dominant.
In particular, the Sun cannot have contributed more than 30% to the steep temperature
increase that has taken place since then, irrespective of which of the three considered
channels is the dominant one determining Sun-climate interactions: tropospheric heating
caused by changes in total solar irradiance, stratospheric chemistry influenced by changes
in the solar UV spectrum, or cloud coverage affected by the cosmic ray flux."

And that was in 2003 and therefore before the current down turn in solar out put.

And here's more information on the current low solar cycle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle_24

[Thiebear]

Northern hemisphere is at the bottom
Southern hemisphere is at the top
whats the point of this again?

1979 chart:
Northern

and here's the southern hemisphere:


co2 looks the same the last 400k years or so.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html