Given what the global scientific consensus is (AGW is real, ice is melting, humans are to blame), it is my first impression that your graph and stance is probably crap, but I don't know enough about climate science to make a reasonable argument one way or another (or even interpret the data for that matter).
What's a layperson to do? You can learn basic Python in an afternoon, but basic climatology?
I haven't the first clue about climatology. It seems like magic to me that you can see the climate twenty years from now, but not e.g. whether it is going to rain next week.
Still other things like e.g anesthesia is also magic to me, but I know for a fact that it works.
What bugs me about GW research is lack of focus on mitigating GW, other than by cutting greenhouse gasses (ain't gonna happen) and especially things like this:
Lots of non-sceptics would tell me that some scientists would break ranks if they found an issue, but those emails suggests that such attempts would be prevented. Considering how much money is given to these scientists by the government and how much their funding would be cut if it was found out to be a none issue, I can't consider them impartial.
So it boils down to a lack of trusts in scientists and an inability to interprent the data.
>It seems like magic to me that you can see the climate twenty years from now, but not e.g. whether it is going to rain next week.
If that seems magical to you, then most of the world should seem like magic rather than science. We can predict all sorts of things over long time scales that we can't predict over short time scales, and we do it all the time. We can't predict turbulence or the exact way that steam will rise from a hot cup of tea, but we can predict the amount of steam and the average speed of its rising.
And if you think that you have any sorts of technical chops, familiarize yourself with things like the Lorentz attractor, for which we can not predict exact trajectories, but we can predict where the two attractors are.
Life (including human life ant its apurtenances) is transformative. It maximizes entropy generation and energy throughput. It's dramatically affected Earth's climate several times in the past, and many of the life-forms responsible for those dramatic effects didn't survive them.
You can learn basic climatology in an afternoon. The fiddly details scientists make careers out of? Probably not.
You can also learn the germ theory of disease in an afternoon. The fiddly biological bits of how antibiotics actually interact with germs? Probably not.
For the companies that rake in tons of cash selling fossil fuels, it's been an incredible bit of propaganda to lie about the details and get people to doubt scientists.
I guess if there were enough money to be made keeping people sick with bacterial infections (heh, Big Disease), we'd probably see the same thing, but with germ-theory deniers.
That's always been my other reason to believe that the anti-AGW folks are likely full of it - yeah, there's money in science, but it's a lot less than the money being thrown around by Big Oil.
To explain the issue: sea ice floats, is thin, is seasonal, and correlates to wind speeds since it is mostly just the top of the ocean freezing due to evaporation.
But sea ice does not really matter if you care about sea level. Ice cubes melting in a glass does not really impact the level of drink in your glass. What does matter is the thick glaciers over landmass, which, when they melt, add water into the ocean.
Science is not a democracy. There no such thing as science consensus, that is absolutely ridiculous and one more added to the fallacies around the issue. If all living things and the non-living things as well decide there is no gravity, we won't start floating just because 200% of the scientists or whatever got to a consensus that there is no such thing as gravity!
It only take one counter argument to debunk a theory. The defenders of the AGW cannot prove their argument (burden of the proof) and so use of fallacies (ad hominem arguments and others) to keep their farce. I don't know their reasons; but their "scientific" arguments has no ground!
Well, them prove your claims, because 100 billion dollars spent in research in the past 20 years has proved nothing. The defenders of the AGW are the ones misinformed and lying. But as I said, it is very simple. All that is required is for them or you to present the arguments. This is science, not mythological interpretation.
Why is Antarctica melting more now than when the ozone hole was a major issue in 90s? That was centered on Antarctica and has been largely fixed I think. Why is this happening now and not then? Or is now because of then? Can anyone provide a clear answer?
(edit: wtf? why would anyone downvote this? it's a legit and perfectly fair question.)
The ozone layer is AFAIK not correlated with heating. It blocks UV radiation which is harmful to humans and other living things but plays no significant role in temperature changes.
Because conflating the ozone hole with global warming (two different and unrelated phenomenon) can be a legitimate product of confusion, but it's more commonly a denialist tactic on a par with "if evolution is real, why are there still monkeys?" See enough of it, you get uncharitable.
Actually I've heard this confusion more (i.e. on two separate occasions, IRL) from well-meaning environmental aficionados attempting to "prove" that global warming is real. I love "why are there still monkeys?", though. I think I'll be using that line sometime. b^)
There is no link between ozone and global warming. No scientist has ever claimed there is. The problem with reduced ozone was increased ultraviolet radiation and health problems associated with that.
Legit and perfectly fair questions can also be incredibly stupid. So... that's it. Your question is legit and perfect fair (whatever the hell that means), and it's also brain-numbingly stupid.
It's not reasonable to call this a "brain-numbingly stupid" question. The question is legit for someone who has either not studied or not read about the subject matter, but primarily is aware of it via news reporting and random discussions. It's somewhat fair, though still impolite, to call it ignorant. It's fairest to call a question (or questioner) confused. But ignorance and confusion are things that we can fix: by answering the posed question or providing a source to material that can answer the question.
Best solution? Don't call someone's question ignorant or stupid. Instead, be a decent human being and help alleviate the confusion by answering the question.
> wtf? why would anyone downvote this? it's a legit and perfectly fair question
Because all science operates on the principle that theories are subject to reinterpretation upon new evidence, all science except climate change, whose dogma is not to be questioned.
The ozone anomaly is still there. CFC gases has never really harmed it because those gases are heavier than the air, so it is a bit hard (not impossible, though) for them to get up there. The "hole" has always been over the poles because, obviously, there's no much sun rays there, which are required for the formation and un-formation of the ozone in the first place.
As to the relation of the subjects, I have seem many of the AGW defenders to claim that CFC, HFC and all the other gazes they claim is harmful to the "ozone" also are "greenhouse gases", which as I said before is a complete stupidity.
That is ice area, most of it over water. The paper the article is referencing is about the thickness of grounded ice sheets and their stability, not the extent of sea ice.
You should really watch the special Vice HBO did on the current situation.
You're citing the levels of sea ice, which are at an all time high right now. But the sea ice is only around a meter thick max! Land ice on the other hand is far deeper, therefore containing more water. Sea ice form quickly, like on a lake during winter. Land ice is a lot thicker and harder to form, and we are losing that in Germany size chunks.
> This is a very click-bait-ey title. Maybe it could be changed to something more appropriate for HN?
It's the actual story title. Since Bezos bought them, my impression is that the Washington Post has published much more click-bait and strident writing. It's sad to see that from what used to be one of the best news sources in the world.
Ten years ago there were three top-notch serious news sources in the U.S. IMHO, the Post, the NY Times, and the Wall St Journal. The Journal was purchased by News Corporation (who also own Fox News, the former News of the World, and other beacons of credibility), the Post seems to be slipping; if the NY Times doesn't survive we could have a very serious problem. Without quality, credible, independent information, how can the public have any power?
The headline accurately reflects the content of the article, which is a hysterical mishmash of speculation that does a massive disservice to the science. We "may" have learned about something that "could" happen "if" something else turns out to be true.
Antarctic melting is a particularly nasty consequence of anthopogenic climate change. It's a fairly robust first-order prediction of almost any analysis that gets anthropogenic heat balances correct--so unlike almost all other detailed predictions, there is a good chance of it happening--and the consequences, apart from maybe submerging Florida, are unequivocally bad for humans.
But in a debate as emotionally charged as the one over climate change and what to do about it, the last thing we need is the Washington Post ranting on in purely speculative terms.
If a friend told you, "Ten years from now, you may remember 2014 as the year that you first learned that I may have gotten a new job. Meanwhile, 2015 could be the year of the double whammy — when you learned the same about our buddy Joe, which could set in motion a road trip," you would probably look at them funny and say, "Hey, why are you telling me all this stuff that may or may nor or could or could not or might or might not happen as if it's the most important thing in the world? It sounds kind of pretentious and stupid."
To bring this iceberg around a bit closer to tech culture...
California is already being hit by drought, and NASA's climate change models suggest the drought can be expected to get worse as the temperature shift due to AGW increases [http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/todays...]. Silicon Valley is, of course, located in California. Does / should this news make people bearish on further deep investment in the Valley if a possible consequence of resource loss is a destabilization of that region (I don't mean "Mad Max", but one would assume that water rationing will have some negative impact on the startup scene in CA)?
I've been thinking about this recently, wondering whether or not it's another reason to move out of California.
There are still a lot of different ways this could play out. We could have another moderately difficult Summer followed by one of the wettest and coldest Winters in recent history, and everything will keep limping along. Or, we could have a season of dry thunderstorms that cause one of the worst wildfire seasons in recent history, complete with thick smoke and the health effects that causes. Or, conflicts over water rights could add fuel to the State of Jefferson movement and turn that into years of political wrangling that drains the energy from a state government no longer being led by Brown. Or, California agriculture could suddenly take huge steps towards better water management, either due to rising water costs or public outcry as municipal water rates skyrocket and rationing is imposed. Or, agriculture might fail to adapt and there will be economic ripple effects felt in food costs and a hit to the state GDP.
Usually, things like this sort of muddle along for years and nobody really notices an acute impact. Sometimes the conditions are right for a disaster and you get something like 2008. The conditions are right now for things to get pretty awful over the next couple of years, but there are still a lot of people involved that can have some impact over how it all turns out. I hope those people get started soon.
If things do take a turn towards the worst, there really is less and less reason for most people to stay in this state. It's a nice state, but there are lots of other really nice places too, and there's been a tech diaspora over the last decade that's bearing fruit in a lot of different places around the country.
The Antarctic ice sheet is not only gigantic, larger than the continental United States, but it is kilometers thick.
Take the fraction of the volume that's anticipated to melt and spread that over the ocean, and you get that 11 foot number.
The Wikipedia page, for what it's worth, estimates that the sea level would rise 70 meters if the whole thing melted. Plus, if Antarctica melted, then all ice would've melted, including Greenland, so we'd be even more screwed.
You're right that there's not enough data here, though. I'm sure the calculation is far from simple since the ice-sheet varies dramatically in terms of topology both on the surface and underwater.
"We estimate that at least 3.5 m of eustatic sea level potential drains through Totten Glacier, so coastal processes in this area could have global consequences."
For some context (which media rarely provide), Antarctica has about 12.3 million cubic km of ice sheet. The latest measurements I've seen show that between 2011 and 2014, the Antarctic ice sheet lost 125 cubic km per year.
The HN community was (and apparently still is) incredibly hostile to the idea that global warming is a grave threat to humanity. I would think that such a technology-oriented group would be swayed by the now-massive collection of solid data pointing towards this conclusion, but the opposite seems to have happened. Comments attempt to refute even the existence of global warming with irrelevant data of their own or strange nitpicks at the perimeter of an article that seem bent on derailing discussion of the main point (i.e. DH4 at best [1]). If solid evidence is presented, it's usually dismissed with arguments like "this popular news article doesn't even say how exactly they computed <extremely complicated result>, therefor it must be bunk. There could be an error in there somewhere, so I shall assume there is one."
Since you aren't making personal attacks, like others on this message board, I'll explain my personal point of view.
I don't deny that humans can influence earth's climate. But the tone of climate change media is beyond hysterics.
For instance, the headline from this article is, in full, "The melting of Antarctica was already really bad. It just got worse."
I posted below links to scientific studies showing that Antarctica has 12.5 million cubic km of ice. 125 cubic km of ice is "melting" each year. On top of that, surveyors noticed reductions in Antarctic ice at least as far back as 1932, far far before "climate change."
My naturally skeptical alarms go off when I realize that headlines like the OP are pure hysterics. At the current rate, Antarctica will melt in 1 million years. Of course, climate changes dramatically on that geologic time scale, so the headline completely destroys the credibility, in my mind, of the central argument -- that Antarctica is "melting."
One look a tide gauges shows that the sea level rise we've been seeing has been going on for about 150 years with no change in the rate of rise.
So, naturally, I'm going to be skeptical of hysterical claims.
As to your point about HN being hostile to climate change, I see it the complete opposite way. Any skeptical arguments, even links to objective scientific facts, are immediately flagkilled and downvoted into hell.
On top of that, surveyors noticed reductions in Antarctic ice at least as far back as 1932, far far before "climate change."
We have been increasing atmospheric CO2 since long before 1932 and Svante Arrhenius predicted that the burning of fossil fuels was increasing the earth's temperature back in 1896.
Even the IPCC doesn't claim human-induced climate change until the 1950s. The amounts of CO2 added to the atmosphere didn't seriously ramp up until after 1950.
"It is very unlikely that climate changes of at least the seven centuries prior to 1950 were due to variability generated within the climate system alone. A significant fraction of the reconstructed Northern Hemisphere inter-decadal temperature variability over those centuries is very likely attributable to volcanic eruptions and changes in solar irradiance, and it is likely that anthropogenic forcing contributed to the early 20th-century warming evident in these records." - http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-...
Well, I stopped dead reading the article right on the first paragraph. I really could not believe. Ice on water does not raise it a millimeter whatsoever. Once again it is just stupid media writing the next Apocalypse just to sell papers or whatever because really they have nothing better or more intelligent to do.
Sea level has not changed at all in the past 200 years, I would dare to say they probably have not changed at all since the formation of the Mediterranean Sea.
On sea level, it is very simple, the moment the Dutch start fleeing The Netherlands, then I will start worrying; but if they are not buying land on the Himalayan, I will really not to worry about it.
CO2 has nothing to do with temperature of planets, whatsoever! And by the way, "greenhouse effect", the is commonly described, with irradiation and CO2, etc., does not exist!!! And call some gases in the atmosphere "greenhouse gases" is a stupidity that makes no sense whatsoever.
Volcanoes alone on any ordinary year (and last year was nothing ordinary) put at least five times more CO2 on the atmosphere than humans activities today!!! Insects, at least seven times more!!
So, no, humans are not that powerful. CO2 does not control climate. Arrhenius prediction is as much bogus as Malthus. There is no proof whatsoever, nor there can be since the whole scheme is a Physical impossibility.
CO2 is also not a pollutant, never was, never will!
All that said, yes we must find better and renewable sources of energy, since something that is not renewable will end someday. Moreover, our energy system is very inefficient (of course is a Physical impossibility to have 100% efficiency, but we should try harder).
Notwithstanding, some of the apocalyptic scenarios proclaimed may indeed come to happen, because climate (noun) changes (verb). That is what it does. If it stops changing than we would have a problem because that would be not normal! It has been cold before, it has been hotter before. Places that today are land has been under water. Deserts had been green. The planet is in constant change. We do not understand much of the process and that is the reality, not a bogus, deceitful, and damn right ridiculous idea that goes against even the most basics concepts of Physics. Any high school kid should be able to point right at it, were it not so wrapped up in fallacies.
Could you use the words "hysterics" or "hysterical" a few more times? You didn't quite hit the once/paragraph ratio I was really hoping to see...
EDIT: In seriousness, so much of the "climate skepticism" I see around here is so overloaded with this kind of hyperbolic dismissal of positions that assume or support it, that it's hard to engage with them, rather than just downvote for destructive (or at least non-contributory) tone. You might try being easier to engage with, and see if that changes how your points are received...
Are you asking in good faith? You seem to assume right off the bat that anybody who is skeptical is irrational since there is a "massive collection of solid data pointing towards this conclusion". And yet I disagree. I think that the warming estimates were grossly overstated, and I don't think it's difficult to justify my position. I must be crazy, right?
For example, relating specifically to the article, I could simply point out that the REGIONAL Western Antarctic melting is most certainly due to volcanic activity and that Antarctic ice levels were at all time record highs for much of last year. The article doesn't even mention the recent record-breaking ice levels?! Doesn't that seem strange? It seems any information that doesn't confirm the prevailing view is neatly filtered out. It's bizarre to watch, but strangely fascinating.
I could show you that the lynch-pin of the CAGW argument is simply assumed in the climate models. It is highly uncertain, unproven, and is not born out by observation. It's easy to do and relies entirely on mainstream climate science.
And for all this I get called a "climate denier", a term that is meant to associate me with "holocaust deniers". From your article: "DH0. Name-calling. - This is the lowest form of disagreement, and probably also the most common."
Yes, it is the most common response I get from CAGW advocates. Ironic, isn't it?
Sure. The big example is "climate sensitivity". Basically the models assume the earth's climate will amplify any CO2 heating by an extra 3 - 4 times. Without that extra heat there is no catastrophe.
The very notion that the climate will amplify CO2 heating by as much as 4.5 times should raise red flags. Without all that extra heat amplification there is no global catastrophe and therefore no drama. There are lots of papers on climate sensitivity and the estimates are all over the map. This should indicate less certainty, not a "the science is settled" attitude.
Rather than acknowledge the uncertainty, climate scientists like Michael Mann appear to be trying to create the illusion that their climate models are more accurate than they really are. For example here is a slide from a 2012 presentation he gave: https://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/hansen1988-...
Notice that he simply lops off the temperatures after 2005 because they don't neatly fit the curve! It's bizarre to see. It's this sort of behaviour from climate scientists that initially piqued my skepticism.
When I first started looking into the CAGW debate with any scrutiny I honestly believed I would find skeptics using fake data pumped out by right-wing think tanks. Instead I found what appears to be fake data pumped out by government agencies. Go figure.
Don't get me wrong - I don't think these individuals are pumping out fake data on purpose. For example, they may believe in global warming so strongly that when the data doesn't show the expected warming they a) wonder why the data isn't showing more warming, b) come up with a plausible sounding reason as to why the data isn't showing more warming, then they c) 'fix' the data via a series of 'adjustments'. Also known as confirmation bias and group-think.
It turns out that a significant portion of the recorded warming is due to these data adjustments. We're talking as much as 20% or more, depending on the data-set. That should also raise some red flags.
Been meaning to get to a better reply. As to sources, in the case of temperature adjustments, it's all there in the mainstream data-sets. I could point you to some skeptical sites that are picking the data apart if you like. There are some newspaper articles on this, all right wing outlets of course. It seems both sides only print the stuff that caters to their audience.
Haha, no. I'm genuinely new and my account is 18 days old. But I can see why many people wouldn't want to be identified as 'deniers' if that's what you mean?
That's what I though as well, but after I went investigating, I found out that actually, Antarctic sea ice levels were at record highs, which basically means that glaciers were melting more than usual (and shedding huge pieces of ice into the sea) - apparently because of winds bringing more hot air from northern (hotter) regions.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 149 ms ] threadGiven what the global scientific consensus is (AGW is real, ice is melting, humans are to blame), it is my first impression that your graph and stance is probably crap, but I don't know enough about climate science to make a reasonable argument one way or another (or even interpret the data for that matter).
What's a layperson to do? You can learn basic Python in an afternoon, but basic climatology?
----
Quoting the now-deleted comment for context:
Yep. It's already been debunked multiple times, but they just keep rehashing it to sell newspapers. Here's a trend for those interested in the actual numbers: http://www.climate4you.com/images/NSIDC%20GlobalArcticAntarc...
Source (for those that REALLY still want to believe in climate change): http://www.climate4you.com/SeaIce.htm
Source's source (for those that are just being silly at this point): ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/
Still other things like e.g anesthesia is also magic to me, but I know for a fact that it works.
What bugs me about GW research is lack of focus on mitigating GW, other than by cutting greenhouse gasses (ain't gonna happen) and especially things like this:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/11/23/climatega...
Lots of non-sceptics would tell me that some scientists would break ranks if they found an issue, but those emails suggests that such attempts would be prevented. Considering how much money is given to these scientists by the government and how much their funding would be cut if it was found out to be a none issue, I can't consider them impartial.
So it boils down to a lack of trusts in scientists and an inability to interprent the data.
If that seems magical to you, then most of the world should seem like magic rather than science. We can predict all sorts of things over long time scales that we can't predict over short time scales, and we do it all the time. We can't predict turbulence or the exact way that steam will rise from a hot cup of tea, but we can predict the amount of steam and the average speed of its rising.
And if you think that you have any sorts of technical chops, familiarize yourself with things like the Lorentz attractor, for which we can not predict exact trajectories, but we can predict where the two attractors are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishful_thinking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences
Life (including human life ant its apurtenances) is transformative. It maximizes entropy generation and energy throughput. It's dramatically affected Earth's climate several times in the past, and many of the life-forms responsible for those dramatic effects didn't survive them.
https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/5l_8MqtVwLLvX_DabPjY-g
You can also learn the germ theory of disease in an afternoon. The fiddly biological bits of how antibiotics actually interact with germs? Probably not.
For the companies that rake in tons of cash selling fossil fuels, it's been an incredible bit of propaganda to lie about the details and get people to doubt scientists.
I guess if there were enough money to be made keeping people sick with bacterial infections (heh, Big Disease), we'd probably see the same thing, but with germ-theory deniers.
But sea ice does not really matter if you care about sea level. Ice cubes melting in a glass does not really impact the level of drink in your glass. What does matter is the thick glaciers over landmass, which, when they melt, add water into the ocean.
It only take one counter argument to debunk a theory. The defenders of the AGW cannot prove their argument (burden of the proof) and so use of fallacies (ad hominem arguments and others) to keep their farce. I don't know their reasons; but their "scientific" arguments has no ground!
(edit: wtf? why would anyone downvote this? it's a legit and perfectly fair question.)
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/sci...
Because conflating the ozone hole with global warming (two different and unrelated phenomenon) can be a legitimate product of confusion, but it's more commonly a denialist tactic on a par with "if evolution is real, why are there still monkeys?" See enough of it, you get uncharitable.
Because the mechanism behind the melting is already explained in The Fine Article.
This comment violates the HN guidelines. Please follow them when posting on this site:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Best solution? Don't call someone's question ignorant or stupid. Instead, be a decent human being and help alleviate the confusion by answering the question.
Because all science operates on the principle that theories are subject to reinterpretation upon new evidence, all science except climate change, whose dogma is not to be questioned.
As to the relation of the subjects, I have seem many of the AGW defenders to claim that CFC, HFC and all the other gazes they claim is harmful to the "ozone" also are "greenhouse gases", which as I said before is a complete stupidity.
Yep. It's already been debunked multiple times, but they just keep rehashing it to sell newspapers.
Here's a trend for those interested in the actual numbers: http://www.climate4you.com/images/NSIDC%20GlobalArcticAntarc...
Source (for those that REALLY still want to believe in climate change): http://www.climate4you.com/SeaIce.htm
Source's source (for those that are just being silly at this point): ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/
Bonus stat, antarctic sea ice set maximum ever in Oct 2014, from source confirmed to still believe in global warming: http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-sea-ice-reache...
As you warm the poles, the weather patterns become less tight, leading to a larger area that is below freezing.
You're citing the levels of sea ice, which are at an all time high right now. But the sea ice is only around a meter thick max! Land ice on the other hand is far deeper, therefore containing more water. Sea ice form quickly, like on a lake during winter. Land ice is a lot thicker and harder to form, and we are losing that in Germany size chunks.
edit: This post used to read as "The melting of Antarctica was already really bad. It just got worse." It has since been changed.
It's the actual story title. Since Bezos bought them, my impression is that the Washington Post has published much more click-bait and strident writing. It's sad to see that from what used to be one of the best news sources in the world.
Ten years ago there were three top-notch serious news sources in the U.S. IMHO, the Post, the NY Times, and the Wall St Journal. The Journal was purchased by News Corporation (who also own Fox News, the former News of the World, and other beacons of credibility), the Post seems to be slipping; if the NY Times doesn't survive we could have a very serious problem. Without quality, credible, independent information, how can the public have any power?
Antarctic melting is a particularly nasty consequence of anthopogenic climate change. It's a fairly robust first-order prediction of almost any analysis that gets anthropogenic heat balances correct--so unlike almost all other detailed predictions, there is a good chance of it happening--and the consequences, apart from maybe submerging Florida, are unequivocally bad for humans.
But in a debate as emotionally charged as the one over climate change and what to do about it, the last thing we need is the Washington Post ranting on in purely speculative terms.
If a friend told you, "Ten years from now, you may remember 2014 as the year that you first learned that I may have gotten a new job. Meanwhile, 2015 could be the year of the double whammy — when you learned the same about our buddy Joe, which could set in motion a road trip," you would probably look at them funny and say, "Hey, why are you telling me all this stuff that may or may nor or could or could not or might or might not happen as if it's the most important thing in the world? It sounds kind of pretentious and stupid."
California is already being hit by drought, and NASA's climate change models suggest the drought can be expected to get worse as the temperature shift due to AGW increases [http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/todays...]. Silicon Valley is, of course, located in California. Does / should this news make people bearish on further deep investment in the Valley if a possible consequence of resource loss is a destabilization of that region (I don't mean "Mad Max", but one would assume that water rationing will have some negative impact on the startup scene in CA)?
There are still a lot of different ways this could play out. We could have another moderately difficult Summer followed by one of the wettest and coldest Winters in recent history, and everything will keep limping along. Or, we could have a season of dry thunderstorms that cause one of the worst wildfire seasons in recent history, complete with thick smoke and the health effects that causes. Or, conflicts over water rights could add fuel to the State of Jefferson movement and turn that into years of political wrangling that drains the energy from a state government no longer being led by Brown. Or, California agriculture could suddenly take huge steps towards better water management, either due to rising water costs or public outcry as municipal water rates skyrocket and rationing is imposed. Or, agriculture might fail to adapt and there will be economic ripple effects felt in food costs and a hit to the state GDP.
Usually, things like this sort of muddle along for years and nobody really notices an acute impact. Sometimes the conditions are right for a disaster and you get something like 2008. The conditions are right now for things to get pretty awful over the next couple of years, but there are still a lot of people involved that can have some impact over how it all turns out. I hope those people get started soon.
If things do take a turn towards the worst, there really is less and less reason for most people to stay in this state. It's a nice state, but there are lots of other really nice places too, and there's been a tech diaspora over the last decade that's bearing fruit in a lot of different places around the country.
I would really like to see a more clear explanation as to how they extrapolated that estimation from the data.
Take the fraction of the volume that's anticipated to melt and spread that over the ocean, and you get that 11 foot number.
The Wikipedia page, for what it's worth, estimates that the sea level would rise 70 meters if the whole thing melted. Plus, if Antarctica melted, then all ice would've melted, including Greenland, so we'd be even more screwed.
You're right that there's not enough data here, though. I'm sure the calculation is far from simple since the ice-sheet varies dramatically in terms of topology both on the surface and underwater.
"We estimate that at least 3.5 m of eustatic sea level potential drains through Totten Glacier, so coastal processes in this area could have global consequences."
With calculations done here: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/extref/ngeo...
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-21692423
http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2014/08/Antarctic_ic...
Additionally, people have been noticing a loss of ice since at least 1932: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/23150667
Additionally, there has been no acceleration in sea level increases:
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.s...
Browse stations here: http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/mslUSTrendsTable.h...
Where does this animus spring from?
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
I don't deny that humans can influence earth's climate. But the tone of climate change media is beyond hysterics.
For instance, the headline from this article is, in full, "The melting of Antarctica was already really bad. It just got worse."
I posted below links to scientific studies showing that Antarctica has 12.5 million cubic km of ice. 125 cubic km of ice is "melting" each year. On top of that, surveyors noticed reductions in Antarctic ice at least as far back as 1932, far far before "climate change."
My naturally skeptical alarms go off when I realize that headlines like the OP are pure hysterics. At the current rate, Antarctica will melt in 1 million years. Of course, climate changes dramatically on that geologic time scale, so the headline completely destroys the credibility, in my mind, of the central argument -- that Antarctica is "melting."
One look a tide gauges shows that the sea level rise we've been seeing has been going on for about 150 years with no change in the rate of rise.
So, naturally, I'm going to be skeptical of hysterical claims.
As to your point about HN being hostile to climate change, I see it the complete opposite way. Any skeptical arguments, even links to objective scientific facts, are immediately flagkilled and downvoted into hell.
We have been increasing atmospheric CO2 since long before 1932 and Svante Arrhenius predicted that the burning of fossil fuels was increasing the earth's temperature back in 1896.
"It is very unlikely that climate changes of at least the seven centuries prior to 1950 were due to variability generated within the climate system alone. A significant fraction of the reconstructed Northern Hemisphere inter-decadal temperature variability over those centuries is very likely attributable to volcanic eruptions and changes in solar irradiance, and it is likely that anthropogenic forcing contributed to the early 20th-century warming evident in these records." - http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-...
Sea level has not changed at all in the past 200 years, I would dare to say they probably have not changed at all since the formation of the Mediterranean Sea.
On sea level, it is very simple, the moment the Dutch start fleeing The Netherlands, then I will start worrying; but if they are not buying land on the Himalayan, I will really not to worry about it.
CO2 has nothing to do with temperature of planets, whatsoever! And by the way, "greenhouse effect", the is commonly described, with irradiation and CO2, etc., does not exist!!! And call some gases in the atmosphere "greenhouse gases" is a stupidity that makes no sense whatsoever.
Volcanoes alone on any ordinary year (and last year was nothing ordinary) put at least five times more CO2 on the atmosphere than humans activities today!!! Insects, at least seven times more!!
So, no, humans are not that powerful. CO2 does not control climate. Arrhenius prediction is as much bogus as Malthus. There is no proof whatsoever, nor there can be since the whole scheme is a Physical impossibility.
CO2 is also not a pollutant, never was, never will!
All that said, yes we must find better and renewable sources of energy, since something that is not renewable will end someday. Moreover, our energy system is very inefficient (of course is a Physical impossibility to have 100% efficiency, but we should try harder).
Notwithstanding, some of the apocalyptic scenarios proclaimed may indeed come to happen, because climate (noun) changes (verb). That is what it does. If it stops changing than we would have a problem because that would be not normal! It has been cold before, it has been hotter before. Places that today are land has been under water. Deserts had been green. The planet is in constant change. We do not understand much of the process and that is the reality, not a bogus, deceitful, and damn right ridiculous idea that goes against even the most basics concepts of Physics. Any high school kid should be able to point right at it, were it not so wrapped up in fallacies.
EDIT: In seriousness, so much of the "climate skepticism" I see around here is so overloaded with this kind of hyperbolic dismissal of positions that assume or support it, that it's hard to engage with them, rather than just downvote for destructive (or at least non-contributory) tone. You might try being easier to engage with, and see if that changes how your points are received...
For example, relating specifically to the article, I could simply point out that the REGIONAL Western Antarctic melting is most certainly due to volcanic activity and that Antarctic ice levels were at all time record highs for much of last year. The article doesn't even mention the recent record-breaking ice levels?! Doesn't that seem strange? It seems any information that doesn't confirm the prevailing view is neatly filtered out. It's bizarre to watch, but strangely fascinating.
I could show you that the lynch-pin of the CAGW argument is simply assumed in the climate models. It is highly uncertain, unproven, and is not born out by observation. It's easy to do and relies entirely on mainstream climate science.
And for all this I get called a "climate denier", a term that is meant to associate me with "holocaust deniers". From your article: "DH0. Name-calling. - This is the lowest form of disagreement, and probably also the most common."
Yes, it is the most common response I get from CAGW advocates. Ironic, isn't it?
Rather than acknowledge the uncertainty, climate scientists like Michael Mann appear to be trying to create the illusion that their climate models are more accurate than they really are. For example here is a slide from a 2012 presentation he gave: https://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/hansen1988-...
Notice that he simply lops off the temperatures after 2005 because they don't neatly fit the curve! It's bizarre to see. It's this sort of behaviour from climate scientists that initially piqued my skepticism.
When I first started looking into the CAGW debate with any scrutiny I honestly believed I would find skeptics using fake data pumped out by right-wing think tanks. Instead I found what appears to be fake data pumped out by government agencies. Go figure.
Don't get me wrong - I don't think these individuals are pumping out fake data on purpose. For example, they may believe in global warming so strongly that when the data doesn't show the expected warming they a) wonder why the data isn't showing more warming, b) come up with a plausible sounding reason as to why the data isn't showing more warming, then they c) 'fix' the data via a series of 'adjustments'. Also known as confirmation bias and group-think.
It turns out that a significant portion of the recorded warming is due to these data adjustments. We're talking as much as 20% or more, depending on the data-set. That should also raise some red flags.
Been meaning to get to a better reply. As to sources, in the case of temperature adjustments, it's all there in the mainstream data-sets. I could point you to some skeptical sites that are picking the data apart if you like. There are some newspaper articles on this, all right wing outlets of course. It seems both sides only print the stuff that caters to their audience.
That's not against the rules per se, but there have been lots of sock puppets used on global warming topics.
That's what I though as well, but after I went investigating, I found out that actually, Antarctic sea ice levels were at record highs, which basically means that glaciers were melting more than usual (and shedding huge pieces of ice into the sea) - apparently because of winds bringing more hot air from northern (hotter) regions.