Perfect timing to note that today the arctic sea ice anomaly hit a new record in excess of 2.5 Million square kilometres, although how much in excess is not clear, as the line falls off the graphs...
This will be the second time in 2 months they have to rescale the y-axis (sea ice anomoly) to include the most recent data. Nonlinearity is the name of the game.
Already the critics are complaining that climate change has nothing to do with peace. Good grief, have they been living in a cave? Even the Pentagon is warning that climate change will fuel warfare and unrest.
There's nothing wrong with climate change as a topic linked to peace. For those who don't get that one yet, just wait a few years more. But Gore and the IPCC are the exact wrong bodies to award it to. It's one-on-one the same as giving Kissinger the prize in 1973.
The IPCC has by now sufficiently been proven to be a hopelessly backward, always-late and inadequate panel. When 2000 scientists have to reach consensus on every single word published, that is no surprise, All that sort of organization requires is a handful of industry stoogies, and they'll never get anything right. It was set up that way for precisely that purpose: to be a huge failure. And that's the only part of it that actually works.
Gore waxes incessantly about the growth opportunities offered by climate change, if only we all get "green jobs". The 180 off-the-mark message, either utterly clueless or intentionally misleading. No, we cannot keep this economy rolling and save the planet's climate and ecosystem at the same time.
And, really, this was the message:
"This live coverage of Live Earth was brought to you by Chevy".
If that's not clear enough, we have nothing left to talk about.
Gore is as wrong as the IPCC is, and both are the completely and gloriously wrong parties to hand this award to for global warming. They fail in every sense there is. And hereby, so does the Nobel committee. And whatever still might have been done to prevent the worst outcomes, fades ever further into the distance, receding beyond horizons. It's not as if there were no other candidates with a connection to the subject. There are activists like Sheila Watt-Cloutier, and there are scientists like James Hansen.
The one word that truly fits the occassion is perverse.
Giving Hansen the prize would have been my choice for this years prize, as the theme seems to be AGW, but that's not the way the system works. The peace prize is a tool for the nobel comittee to highlight something they feel is important, and that is in some way related to peace. Last year it was microcredit and economic development among the extremely poor, before that nuclear proliferation.
This year it's global warming. I have not seen Gore's movie, but a lot of people have. Gore is very famous, and the comittee decided that awarding the prize to him would get the most bang for the buck when it comes to publicity. The fact that he is just an ordinary politician and that the IPCC seems to be always hopelessly outdated doesn't matter, because most people doesn't know that.
Personally I believe Norway should give the prize back to sweden, the reason we got to hand it out in the first place was that Norway hadn't started a war in modern times, and it probably seemed like a nice gesture towards the Swe-Nor union's "little brother". After Norway went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan I don't see how we can credibly hand out this prize.
After Norway went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan I don't see how we can credibly hand out this prize.
Well, it is only fitting that the prize is awarded by the wrong people to the wrong people. That is an excellent way to make sure the wrong message is delivered.
Fortunately, I'm not the only one who sees the perversity.
Well, Al Gore and the IPCC won the Nobel Prize, something I'm more than a little ambivalent about. On the one hand, they both did an enormous amount to draw attention to climate change, and that's really important.
On the other hand, in re: Al Gore, I'm reminded of what Tom Lehrer said when Henry Kissinger was given the Nobel Peace Prize, that it made political satire obsolete.
I mean the man was a participant in the Clinton policies that, among other things, allowed half a million kids in Iraq to die from sanctions.
But then again, I would have thought "never was a Nazi" was a criteria for Pope, and that's clearly untrue. And obviously the "never was a mass murderer" bar for the Nobel Peace Prize, if it ever existed, is long since broken. Probably my standards are too high.
I think you misjudge him. I have evolved (devolved?) to a realist (i.e. doomer) point of view, as I do not see any "solution" that would result in making our present lives and lifestyles viable again. But painting a picture of what I think is coming our way would never work, even though I really believe it is true. The fact is that with regard to climate change, the trigger has already been pulled, and the changes are already locked in for the remainder of my natural life, and that of my children as well. But we could still help change things for the longer range, and that is worth while.
To my thinking, the discussion should really be moving to mitigation strategies, as opposed to prevention, but even there I see many problems that appear to be unsolvable. Nonetheless, how can we possibly move to a discussion of mitigation, when people still deny the possibility of anything happening? Gore's efforts are targeted at the mainstream center, and I think they are well targeted too. Al Gore is clearly a bright man, and he has been thinking about these issues for a very long time. He has access to all of this information, and I think the odds that he might fail to understand the implications are slim. But he could not possibly come out and show the more dire situation reflected by reality to the masses. The blowback would destroy the message and the messenger, and nothing would be accomplished.
So what can he accomplish? I do not know, but somehow I cannot help but feel it is right to let people know the truth, even if you don't believe they'll do anything useful with it, and even if there isn't anything useful they can do with it. And the masses will need to have their truth dispensed in small doses before they are receptive to the whole picture.
Where have we been fighting? Oh, Somalia, under great stress due to climate change, and Afghanistan, facing the same?
There is a very strong correlation between climate change that affects humans and humans affecting those around them. Any assertion to the contrary is purely Faux Noise style stupidity in motion ...
Mr Gore's assertion that a sea-level rise of up to 20 feet would be caused by melting of ice in either West Antarctica or Greenland "in the near future". The judge said this was "distinctly alarmist" and it was common ground that if Greenland's ice melted it would release this amount of water - "but only after, and over, millennia".
I don't really blame the judge; the science is moving so fast in this area. But 20' is looking like it's way conservative.
Have you read The nine alleged errors in the film?
This judge's ancestor filled the Ozzie Penal Colony with
people stealing loaves of bread.
Exact same mentality.
1-He agreed that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water - "but only after, and over, millennia"
1a-IPCC says Arctic to be ice free by 2013.
2-Pacific atolls "are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming" but the judge ruled there was 2a-Leader of imperiled Maldives issues stark warning on sea level rise. www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/04/news/maldives.php - 45k
3-the judge said that it was "very unlikely" that the Ocean Conveyor, also known as the Meridional Overturning Circulation, would shut down in the future, though it might slow down.
3a-"very unlikely" is a legal term?
4-The judge said that, although there was general scientific agreement that there was a connection, "the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts".
4a-proof that the judge is into obfuscation.
And on and on. Grasping at straws the Old Guard
slowly dies off.
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
I assume he was just repeating what the scientist witnesses told him.
I don't know how it works in the UK, but in the US, the whole "expert witness" thing is nauseating. A lot of the "experts" don't know much about anything, except how to get lawyers to pay them big bucks to say whatever will help their case. And the judges and juries don't know enough to tell who's the more reliable "expert."
Heck, juries are chosen for their ignorance. I was once rejected for jury duty, on the grounds that I was an engineer. What's wrong with being an engineer? They were afraid I would rely on my own expertise, rather than accept the expert witnesses' testimony unquestioningly. (And they had very good reason to fear that. ;-)
I assume he was just repeating what the scientist witnesses told him.
(Because I can refute the 9 "errors" off the top of my head.)
Then the judge is being bought off by BP.
But I curse this judge and the Media for equating this
verdict with proof of being alarmist.
But we move on as does Mother Earth.
Non Linear is now the order of the day.
From PO, to Tipping Point in Climate, to Peak Grain,
to Peak Population.
The Black Swan floats into view ina ll her glory:
Under the NEB predictions, Canadian gas supplies will shrink to a range between 14.5 bcf/d to 15.8 bcf a day during 2007 to 2009. The flow of natural gas from Western Canada will decline to 13.7 bcf/d, from 16.2 bcf/d during the same period.
Daily output at Mexico's biggest oil field, Cantarell, highlights the problem. Production there dropped by a staggering half a million barrels in the last 18 months, to 1.5-million barrels from 2-million. Once the world's second-biggest oil field, it is expected to continue losing production, down to as little as 600,000 barrels a day by 2013.
USDA: Wheat Stockpiles Shrinking Fast
Friday October 12, 9:21 am ET
U.S. Wheat Stockpiles Poised to Fall to Lowest in 59 Years on Robust Foreign Demand, USDA Says
And the Big Lie continues out of Australia:
Wheat exports lie in WA crops after welcome rain
Geoff Easdown-this guy must be the Judith Miller of Ozzieland-;}
September 25, 2007 12:00am
THE nation's biggest wheat-growing region has been given a much welcome drink after a rain squall passed across a large part of the Western Australian wheatbelt yesterday.
Yes, non-linear does indeed seem to be the order of the day.
As I point out (and this just infuriates some people): "The numbers and the laws of physics do not care one wit what you or I think about them or whatever meaning is assigned to them or to the person discussing them.
They simple are and that's really all you need to know."
Yes, I agree about jury duty. I and a friend of mine, on different summons, were also dismissed due to education.
I made the point in the Marie Antoinette thread that just accelerating melting will release increasing amounts of water, steadily flooding coastlines over the next 15 years, yielding steady, ongoing damage.
If massive parts of the ice sheet break apart and suddenly slide off the land into the ocean, we can expect a series of destructive tidal waves, punctuating sudden large rises in sea level, likely killing millions worldwide living near coastlines, leaving tens of millions more suddenly homeless and jobless, leaving businesses large and small in ruin, possibly bankrupting the insurance industry or crushing the economy.
Hmmm... what would one well placed suitcase nuke be able to do to the ice shelf? One nuke can destroy a city center and contaminate a wide area but sticking it where it can cause a huge area of ice to crash into the ocean seems like it would exponentionally increase the damage. Terrorists seem to really like methods that leverage into higher degrees of damage.
Of course I could be way off on scale here about the force needed to cause such an event. I just remember a few years ago talk of part of the Canary Islands possibly breaking off and causing a tidal wave that would wipe out the eastcoast of North America.
Interesting theory, but a suitcase nuke is not needed. My speculative prediction is that Mother Nature is working just fine with her Climate Change Toolset to collapse most of the Ross Ice Shelf in the next five years or less. The collapse of the Larsen Ice Shelf was just a preview of worse things to come.
Once this floating shelf is gone: the ice in the subsea Bentley Subglacial Trench [basically the size of Mexico] is free to fracture to pieces. Then the whole of the WAIS is free to slip and slide away downhill to the ever-rising sea level.
The downthread link to a graphical tool on sea level is fascinating [my thxs to the poster]. The damage from surface saltwater encroachment will be bad enough on its own, but the tool doesn't show how rising sea levels will turn many aquifers brackish. I posted much earlier on how aquifer depletion in Hermosillo, Mexico combined with porous sedimentary layers extending into the ocean have allowed seawater to migrate miles inland.
IMO, it would be interesting to have some expert hydrologists/geologists evalute our coastlines for subsurface saltwater intrusion. Could the sedimentary layers in the GoM make many freshwater aquifers far inland useless if sea levels rise 5 meters? How about the Colorado River Delta: could the Salton Sea and even Death Valley see saltwater seepage. How far would subsurface seawater migrate into the Saramento Delta? Other areas of aquifer concern: Florida aquifers, Chesapeake Bay, etc.
Excellent thoughts, as always, Bob. Time to get those notepads on desalination ideas again, the ones where power plants can no longer provide sufficient electricity.
This would be a very serious problem in FL, Bob. The soil is very porous (measured in feet of water movement per day typically) and we get virtually all of our water from aquifers. Already there has been saltwater intrusion to the point that the Cocoa Beach water treatment plant (which just pumps groundwater) is located a good 30 miles to the west in Orange County.
Actually, did ANYBODY on this site notice that ANTARCTIC sea ice is at an all-time maximum? The collapse of the Southern ice shelfs will take a bit longer I suppose...
Because anybody actually reading CRYOSPHERE TODAY would see it. Go to Cryosphere Today, http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
(the same site with the off-the-charts graph of Arctic sea ice mentioned upthread)and scroll down through the announcements until you get to
UPDATE: Monday, October 1, 2007 - Record SH sea ice maximum and NH sea ice minimum
Just when you thought this season's cryosphere couldn't be more strange .... The Southern Hemisphere sea ice area narrowly surpassed the previous historic maximum of 16.03 million sq. km to 16.17 million sq. km. The observed sea ice record in the Southern Hemisphere (1979-present) is not as long as the Northern Hemisphere. Prior to the satellite era, direct observations of the SH sea ice edge were sporadic.
therefore, in the Arctic: high temperature =>sea ice and glaciers melt
in the Antarctic: low temperature => lots of sea ice, little melting of glaciers, West Antarctic will not "collapse" any time soon
Conclusion: total melt until 2100 will be more than people thought a few years ago, but less than the prophets of doom predict (Alpha Male Prophet of Doom was actually the name of one of the posters a few months ago)
Yes, the Antarctic ice shelf has been discussed here.
The new maximum is only a tiny bit higher than the prior maximum, meaning that it is statistically insignificant and the deviation is not much more than "noise" unless or until a clear trend of increases in established.
The Antarctic is in the dead of winter right now which is exactly when the ice sheet is supposed to be growing the most.
The item with which you are concerned is of extremely little importance at the current time. We will need years of repeated maximums setting a clear trend before this year means anything by itself for Antacrtica. And frankly, I do not expect those repeated maximums to ever occur at this point in time. On the other hand, the Arctic low was so much lower than normal (approximately 22% lower) that it clearly is of concern which is why there is so much interest in it.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett Into the Grey Zone
"The scientists observed less perennial ice cover in March 2007 than ever before, with the thick ice confined to the Arctic Ocean north of Canada. Consequently, the Arctic Ocean was dominated by thinner seasonal ice that melts faster. This ice is more easily compressed and responds more quickly to being pushed out of the Arctic by winds. Those thinner seasonal ice conditions facilitated the ice loss, leading to this year's record low amount of total Arctic sea ice.
Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.
"The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century," Nghiem said."
END SNIP
Note it said "winter perrenial ice". So Greyzone, why are you arguing that the WINTER permanent ice in the Antarctic is not a valid comparison. By what method are you deciding that. Winter ice in the Arctic is gone, and winter ice in the Antarctic is growing. Why are you trying to discount winter ice as a non valid comparison.
I guess the better question, is why didn't you know about this study. Or has JPL/NASA now been bought off too. And you try and call me a conspiracy theorist. Pot kettle, as they say, ehh.
if YOU actual read his post and it would be clear that he was replying to biologist not GZ.
If you check out http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20070810_index.html
you can see the winds an animation of the wind described by S. Nghiem in the NASA press release in Fig 4 of the 26 September 2007 post and the ice flowing out of the Arctic basin past Greenland can be seen in the animation in Fig 4 of the 22 August 2007 post.
I don't suppose that one might consider that the wind currents which are said to have pushed the sea-ice thru the Fram Strait might also be changed due to AGW. Naa, that would be too obvious. However, there has been some suggestion that the so-called Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) may have flipped into the cold phase. Since everything is coupled, it becomes really difficult to sort thru the chain of cause and effect.
Last winter, there was an apparent change in the THC in the Greenland Sea as seen in the sea-ice data, perhaps an indication of an overall slowdown. I would look for more unusual weather this winter, especially so if there are no more tropical storms entering the Gulf of Mexico before the end of the hurricane season. All that warm water in the Gulf acts like a fully charged battery, which will dump it's energy in some direction under the right conditions. If that isn't overhead, as a tropical storm, then I think the resulting winter storms and precipitation later in the may be a shock.
As for the Antarctic, remember the Ozone Hole? Ozone is a greenhouse gas and there being less of late, the result should be colder conditions. All that cold air flows off the Antarctic continent over the ocean, which freezes. More cold air would result in more sea-ice at the end of the freeze season.
I am not so sure about this whole tidal wave business in connection with tidewater glaciers.
When something that big moves horizontally it moves very fast in terms of geological time, but not that fast. I think rapid ice sheet slide is something like kilometers per day rather than kilometers per year, and probably not the many multiple kilometers per hour needed to generate a tsunami.
Calving events can and do create fairly impressive waves in constrained spaces but the energy isn't there for an ocean spanning slosh - they're impressive, but local events. The Lituya Bay tsunami is of this type, but it began at the head of the fjord, with the high sides and constrained spaces making it more impressive than had the collapsing face been directly on the sea. This was not an ice event but rather unstable rock, the similarity is found in the scope of the event.
Someone references the La Palma volcano collapse - this definitely the hand of $DEITY slapping the surface of the Atlantic, should that come to pass, but the events are totally different. When La Palma lets go it'll be similar to the event at Lituya Bay in Alaksa in that its rock, and on a much larger scale, but the physics are just not the same.
A La Palma eruption will drop a massive amount of volcanic rock from a pretty good height essentially instantaneously - E = 1/2 M * V^2. A tidewater glacier is basically a long tube of ice on an inclined plane - so we're talking about the kinetic coefficient of friction between this flexible ice mass and its fjord. Ice is brittle on a small scale and brittle when not under pressure, so the sheet won't simply slide into the sea wholesale, it'll break up as it exits the fjord the glacier has carved. The calving events may produce impressive local waves but they'll be just that; local events.
As further proof I'll offer that there are many studies regarding the effects of ice dams failing and large glacial lakes draining on land as well as current photos of glacial dams blocking fjords with locally impressive results, but I've never seen any suggestion that ocean spanning tsunamis would result from rapid ice sheet draining other than here on TOD.
I would welcome proof that this is possible, as many have seen that televised special about the Lituya Bay and La Palma tsunamis, and being able to connect the Greenland sheet draining to that simple, visual reference point might get folks moving who are currently sitting on their hands. I just don't think an ice sheet draining is an ocean sized tsunami producing event.
We didn't anticipate the moulins, either, to be perforating the interior of the ice sheet, resulting in the now-nonlinear melt.
What happens to trees when they are infested with termites? Can parts of an infrastructure-compromised tree suddenly collapse and fall off?
The idea is definitely possible.
But, you are right, and I did make the same statement. If we are talking about meltwater drainage, then no, no sudden, punctuated damage. Just a long, huge bleed.
Congratulations to Al Gore on the Nobel Peace Prize. Let's hope this encourages people to take the matter more seriously.
P.S. Long time lurker, first time poster. Thanks to everyone at TOD for the top class intelligent analysis and news. You people have changed my life.
Perfect timing to note that today the arctic sea ice anomaly hit a new record in excess of 2.5 Million square kilometres, although how much in excess is not clear, as the line falls off the graphs...
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/sea.ice.anomaly.timeserie...
This will be the second time in 2 months they have to rescale the y-axis (sea ice anomoly) to include the most recent data. Nonlinearity is the name of the game.
Yeah, check out these scary pictures:
October 12th 2005
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/20051012.jpg
October 12th, 2006
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/20061012.jpg
October 12th 2007
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/ARCHIVE/20071012.jpg
Already the critics are complaining that climate change has nothing to do with peace. Good grief, have they been living in a cave? Even the Pentagon is warning that climate change will fuel warfare and unrest.
There's nothing wrong with climate change as a topic linked to peace. For those who don't get that one yet, just wait a few years more. But Gore and the IPCC are the exact wrong bodies to award it to. It's one-on-one the same as giving Kissinger the prize in 1973.
The IPCC has by now sufficiently been proven to be a hopelessly backward, always-late and inadequate panel. When 2000 scientists have to reach consensus on every single word published, that is no surprise, All that sort of organization requires is a handful of industry stoogies, and they'll never get anything right. It was set up that way for precisely that purpose: to be a huge failure. And that's the only part of it that actually works.
Gore waxes incessantly about the growth opportunities offered by climate change, if only we all get "green jobs". The 180 off-the-mark message, either utterly clueless or intentionally misleading. No, we cannot keep this economy rolling and save the planet's climate and ecosystem at the same time.
And, really, this was the message:
"This live coverage of Live Earth was brought to you by Chevy".
If that's not clear enough, we have nothing left to talk about.
Gore is as wrong as the IPCC is, and both are the completely and gloriously wrong parties to hand this award to for global warming. They fail in every sense there is. And hereby, so does the Nobel committee. And whatever still might have been done to prevent the worst outcomes, fades ever further into the distance, receding beyond horizons. It's not as if there were no other candidates with a connection to the subject. There are activists like Sheila Watt-Cloutier, and there are scientists like James Hansen.
The one word that truly fits the occassion is perverse.
It's amazing Hansen was passed over for the prize.
Giving Hansen the prize would have been my choice for this years prize, as the theme seems to be AGW, but that's not the way the system works. The peace prize is a tool for the nobel comittee to highlight something they feel is important, and that is in some way related to peace. Last year it was microcredit and economic development among the extremely poor, before that nuclear proliferation.
This year it's global warming. I have not seen Gore's movie, but a lot of people have. Gore is very famous, and the comittee decided that awarding the prize to him would get the most bang for the buck when it comes to publicity. The fact that he is just an ordinary politician and that the IPCC seems to be always hopelessly outdated doesn't matter, because most people doesn't know that.
Personally I believe Norway should give the prize back to sweden, the reason we got to hand it out in the first place was that Norway hadn't started a war in modern times, and it probably seemed like a nice gesture towards the Swe-Nor union's "little brother". After Norway went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan I don't see how we can credibly hand out this prize.
Well, it is only fitting that the prize is awarded by the wrong people to the wrong people. That is an excellent way to make sure the wrong message is delivered.
Fortunately, I'm not the only one who sees the perversity.
Sharon Astyk wrote this morning:
I think you misjudge him. I have evolved (devolved?) to a realist (i.e. doomer) point of view, as I do not see any "solution" that would result in making our present lives and lifestyles viable again. But painting a picture of what I think is coming our way would never work, even though I really believe it is true. The fact is that with regard to climate change, the trigger has already been pulled, and the changes are already locked in for the remainder of my natural life, and that of my children as well. But we could still help change things for the longer range, and that is worth while.
To my thinking, the discussion should really be moving to mitigation strategies, as opposed to prevention, but even there I see many problems that appear to be unsolvable. Nonetheless, how can we possibly move to a discussion of mitigation, when people still deny the possibility of anything happening? Gore's efforts are targeted at the mainstream center, and I think they are well targeted too. Al Gore is clearly a bright man, and he has been thinking about these issues for a very long time. He has access to all of this information, and I think the odds that he might fail to understand the implications are slim. But he could not possibly come out and show the more dire situation reflected by reality to the masses. The blowback would destroy the message and the messenger, and nothing would be accomplished.
So what can he accomplish? I do not know, but somehow I cannot help but feel it is right to let people know the truth, even if you don't believe they'll do anything useful with it, and even if there isn't anything useful they can do with it. And the masses will need to have their truth dispensed in small doses before they are receptive to the whole picture.
Where have we been fighting? Oh, Somalia, under great stress due to climate change, and Afghanistan, facing the same?
There is a very strong correlation between climate change that affects humans and humans affecting those around them. Any assertion to the contrary is purely Faux Noise style stupidity in motion ...
I seem to recall a Pentagon report which predicted global climate change in the future, where "Once again, warfare would define human life."
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0222-01.htm
Oh, and there's this:
Gore climate film's 'nine errors'
This is one of them:
I don't really blame the judge; the science is moving so fast in this area. But 20' is looking like it's way conservative.
Can we have that judge stand down on the beach and litigate the tide away?
Like that medieval king, whatsisname...
| The problem will solve itself.
| But not in a nice way.
Canute
Have you read The nine alleged errors in the film?
This judge's ancestor filled the Ozzie Penal Colony with
people stealing loaves of bread.
Exact same mentality.
1-He agreed that if Greenland melted it would release this amount of water - "but only after, and over, millennia"
1a-IPCC says Arctic to be ice free by 2013.
2-Pacific atolls "are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming" but the judge ruled there was 2a-Leader of imperiled Maldives issues stark warning on sea level rise.
www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/04/news/maldives.php - 45k
3-the judge said that it was "very unlikely" that the Ocean Conveyor, also known as the Meridional Overturning Circulation, would shut down in the future, though it might slow down.
3a-"very unlikely" is a legal term?
4-The judge said that, although there was general scientific agreement that there was a connection, "the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts".
4a-proof that the judge is into obfuscation.
And on and on. Grasping at straws the Old Guard
slowly dies off.
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
I assume he was just repeating what the scientist witnesses told him.
I don't know how it works in the UK, but in the US, the whole "expert witness" thing is nauseating. A lot of the "experts" don't know much about anything, except how to get lawyers to pay them big bucks to say whatever will help their case. And the judges and juries don't know enough to tell who's the more reliable "expert."
Heck, juries are chosen for their ignorance. I was once rejected for jury duty, on the grounds that I was an engineer. What's wrong with being an engineer? They were afraid I would rely on my own expertise, rather than accept the expert witnesses' testimony unquestioningly. (And they had very good reason to fear that. ;-)
I assume he was just repeating what the scientist witnesses told him.
(Because I can refute the 9 "errors" off the top of my head.)
Then the judge is being bought off by BP.
But I curse this judge and the Media for equating this
verdict with proof of being alarmist.
But we move on as does Mother Earth.
Non Linear is now the order of the day.
From PO, to Tipping Point in Climate, to Peak Grain,
to Peak Population.
The Black Swan floats into view ina ll her glory:
Under the NEB predictions, Canadian gas supplies will shrink to a range between 14.5 bcf/d to 15.8 bcf a day during 2007 to 2009. The flow of natural gas from Western Canada will decline to 13.7 bcf/d, from 16.2 bcf/d during the same period.
Daily output at Mexico's biggest oil field, Cantarell, highlights the problem. Production there dropped by a staggering half a million barrels in the last 18 months, to 1.5-million barrels from 2-million. Once the world's second-biggest oil field, it is expected to continue losing production, down to as little as 600,000 barrels a day by 2013.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/071012/crop_report.html?.v=1
USDA: Wheat Stockpiles Shrinking Fast
Friday October 12, 9:21 am ET
U.S. Wheat Stockpiles Poised to Fall to Lowest in 59 Years on Robust Foreign Demand, USDA Says
And the Big Lie continues out of Australia:
Wheat exports lie in WA crops after welcome rain
Geoff Easdown-this guy must be the Judith Miller of Ozzieland-;}
September 25, 2007 12:00am
THE nation's biggest wheat-growing region has been given a much welcome drink after a rain squall passed across a large part of the Western Australian wheatbelt yesterday.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22475335-664,00.html
What's really happening:
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=159&ContentID=42146
Drought continues to eat into wheat crop
2nd October 2007, 11:45 WST
Even the banks are praying for rain.
The National Australia Bank today warned of a “desperate” need for rain across much of the nation’s farm lands.
Economist Skye Dixon warned the outlook for the wheat crop, already in great stress, was only getting worse.
Ozzie satellite Infrared:
http://www.bom.gov.au/gms/IDE00005.200710121430.shtml
Not a cloud in the sky. Maybe 7 million tons.
BTW-you're doing great work, Leanan.
Yours,
James
Arkansaw of Samuel L Clemens
Yes, non-linear does indeed seem to be the order of the day.
As I point out (and this just infuriates some people): "The numbers and the laws of physics do not care one wit what you or I think about them or whatever meaning is assigned to them or to the person discussing them.
They simple are and that's really all you need to know."
Yes, I agree about jury duty. I and a friend of mine, on different summons, were also dismissed due to education.
I made the point in the Marie Antoinette thread that just accelerating melting will release increasing amounts of water, steadily flooding coastlines over the next 15 years, yielding steady, ongoing damage.
If massive parts of the ice sheet break apart and suddenly slide off the land into the ocean, we can expect a series of destructive tidal waves, punctuating sudden large rises in sea level, likely killing millions worldwide living near coastlines, leaving tens of millions more suddenly homeless and jobless, leaving businesses large and small in ruin, possibly bankrupting the insurance industry or crushing the economy.
If peak oil doesn't do that first.
Hmmm... what would one well placed suitcase nuke be able to do to the ice shelf? One nuke can destroy a city center and contaminate a wide area but sticking it where it can cause a huge area of ice to crash into the ocean seems like it would exponentionally increase the damage. Terrorists seem to really like methods that leverage into higher degrees of damage.
Of course I could be way off on scale here about the force needed to cause such an event. I just remember a few years ago talk of part of the Canary Islands possibly breaking off and causing a tidal wave that would wipe out the eastcoast of North America.
Hello EngineerAU,
Interesting theory, but a suitcase nuke is not needed. My speculative prediction is that Mother Nature is working just fine with her Climate Change Toolset to collapse most of the Ross Ice Shelf in the next five years or less. The collapse of the Larsen Ice Shelf was just a preview of worse things to come.
Once this floating shelf is gone: the ice in the subsea Bentley Subglacial Trench [basically the size of Mexico] is free to fracture to pieces. Then the whole of the WAIS is free to slip and slide away downhill to the ever-rising sea level.
The downthread link to a graphical tool on sea level is fascinating [my thxs to the poster]. The damage from surface saltwater encroachment will be bad enough on its own, but the tool doesn't show how rising sea levels will turn many aquifers brackish. I posted much earlier on how aquifer depletion in Hermosillo, Mexico combined with porous sedimentary layers extending into the ocean have allowed seawater to migrate miles inland.
IMO, it would be interesting to have some expert hydrologists/geologists evalute our coastlines for subsurface saltwater intrusion. Could the sedimentary layers in the GoM make many freshwater aquifers far inland useless if sea levels rise 5 meters? How about the Colorado River Delta: could the Salton Sea and even Death Valley see saltwater seepage. How far would subsurface seawater migrate into the Saramento Delta? Other areas of aquifer concern: Florida aquifers, Chesapeake Bay, etc.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Excellent thoughts, as always, Bob. Time to get those notepads on desalination ideas again, the ones where power plants can no longer provide sufficient electricity.
Yeah, well, delta G still equals delta H minus T delta S, so it'll take energy, lots of it, to desalinate water, notepad notions notwithstanding.
This would be a very serious problem in FL, Bob. The soil is very porous (measured in feet of water movement per day typically) and we get virtually all of our water from aquifers. Already there has been saltwater intrusion to the point that the Cocoa Beach water treatment plant (which just pumps groundwater) is located a good 30 miles to the west in Orange County.
Actually, did ANYBODY on this site notice that ANTARCTIC sea ice is at an all-time maximum? The collapse of the Southern ice shelfs will take a bit longer I suppose...
Is there a reason you provide no proof for this statement?
Because anybody actually reading CRYOSPHERE TODAY would see it. Go to Cryosphere Today, http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
(the same site with the off-the-charts graph of Arctic sea ice mentioned upthread)and scroll down through the announcements until you get to
UPDATE: Monday, October 1, 2007 - Record SH sea ice maximum and NH sea ice minimum
Just when you thought this season's cryosphere couldn't be more strange .... The Southern Hemisphere sea ice area narrowly surpassed the previous historic maximum of 16.03 million sq. km to 16.17 million sq. km. The observed sea ice record in the Southern Hemisphere (1979-present) is not as long as the Northern Hemisphere. Prior to the satellite era, direct observations of the SH sea ice edge were sporadic.
therefore, in the Arctic: high temperature =>sea ice and glaciers melt
in the Antarctic: low temperature => lots of sea ice, little melting of glaciers, West Antarctic will not "collapse" any time soon
Conclusion: total melt until 2100 will be more than people thought a few years ago, but less than the prophets of doom predict (Alpha Male Prophet of Doom was actually the name of one of the posters a few months ago)
Sea ice is made from water already in the sea.
The concern is regarding ice from land (the ice sheet, vs the sea ice) melting into the sea.
The Greenland Ice Sheet, when it melts, will contribute roughly 7m to the ocean levels.
The Antarctic Ice Sheet, if it melted, would contribute 70 meters to ocean levels.
So a 20 to 25 foot rise from the Greenland Ice Sheet is probably the minimum we can expect.
Best thoughts and actions for preventing the need to deal with a 200 foot increase in sea level.
Yes. It's been discussed at length here.
Yes, the Antarctic ice shelf has been discussed here.
The item with which you are concerned is of extremely little importance at the current time. We will need years of repeated maximums setting a clear trend before this year means anything by itself for Antacrtica. And frankly, I do not expect those repeated maximums to ever occur at this point in time. On the other hand, the Arctic low was so much lower than normal (approximately 22% lower) that it clearly is of concern which is why there is so much interest in it.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
Thanks for the explanation, Grey.
They certainly have not read that the large melt of sea ice is not CO2 related either.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-112
SNIP:
"The scientists observed less perennial ice cover in March 2007 than ever before, with the thick ice confined to the Arctic Ocean north of Canada. Consequently, the Arctic Ocean was dominated by thinner seasonal ice that melts faster. This ice is more easily compressed and responds more quickly to being pushed out of the Arctic by winds. Those thinner seasonal ice conditions facilitated the ice loss, leading to this year's record low amount of total Arctic sea ice.
Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.
"The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century," Nghiem said."
END SNIP
Note it said "winter perrenial ice". So Greyzone, why are you arguing that the WINTER permanent ice in the Antarctic is not a valid comparison. By what method are you deciding that. Winter ice in the Arctic is gone, and winter ice in the Antarctic is growing. Why are you trying to discount winter ice as a non valid comparison.
I guess the better question, is why didn't you know about this study. Or has JPL/NASA now been bought off too. And you try and call me a conspiracy theorist. Pot kettle, as they say, ehh.
eh, perhaps you might actually look at the link in GZ's post, referring to melting in the antarctic. It too was done by S. Nghiem from JPL.
Regarding your recent JPL news blurb, far be it for me to speak for GZ, but it has NOTHING TO DO WITH ANTARCTICA.
Other than that your comments are incoherent.
Foot mouth, as they say, ehh?
PS - Try replying to the correct post.
if YOU actual read his post and it would be clear that he was replying to biologist not GZ.
If you check out http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20070810_index.html
you can see the winds an animation of the wind described by S. Nghiem in the NASA press release in Fig 4 of the 26 September 2007 post and the ice flowing out of the Arctic basin past Greenland can be seen in the animation in Fig 4 of the 22 August 2007 post.
I don't suppose that one might consider that the wind currents which are said to have pushed the sea-ice thru the Fram Strait might also be changed due to AGW. Naa, that would be too obvious. However, there has been some suggestion that the so-called Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) may have flipped into the cold phase. Since everything is coupled, it becomes really difficult to sort thru the chain of cause and effect.
Last winter, there was an apparent change in the THC in the Greenland Sea as seen in the sea-ice data, perhaps an indication of an overall slowdown. I would look for more unusual weather this winter, especially so if there are no more tropical storms entering the Gulf of Mexico before the end of the hurricane season. All that warm water in the Gulf acts like a fully charged battery, which will dump it's energy in some direction under the right conditions. If that isn't overhead, as a tropical storm, then I think the resulting winter storms and precipitation later in the may be a shock.
As for the Antarctic, remember the Ozone Hole? Ozone is a greenhouse gas and there being less of late, the result should be colder conditions. All that cold air flows off the Antarctic continent over the ocean, which freezes. More cold air would result in more sea-ice at the end of the freeze season.
E. Swanson
I am not so sure about this whole tidal wave business in connection with tidewater glaciers.
When something that big moves horizontally it moves very fast in terms of geological time, but not that fast. I think rapid ice sheet slide is something like kilometers per day rather than kilometers per year, and probably not the many multiple kilometers per hour needed to generate a tsunami.
Calving events can and do create fairly impressive waves in constrained spaces but the energy isn't there for an ocean spanning slosh - they're impressive, but local events. The Lituya Bay tsunami is of this type, but it began at the head of the fjord, with the high sides and constrained spaces making it more impressive than had the collapsing face been directly on the sea. This was not an ice event but rather unstable rock, the similarity is found in the scope of the event.
Someone references the La Palma volcano collapse - this definitely the hand of $DEITY slapping the surface of the Atlantic, should that come to pass, but the events are totally different. When La Palma lets go it'll be similar to the event at Lituya Bay in Alaksa in that its rock, and on a much larger scale, but the physics are just not the same.
A La Palma eruption will drop a massive amount of volcanic rock from a pretty good height essentially instantaneously - E = 1/2 M * V^2. A tidewater glacier is basically a long tube of ice on an inclined plane - so we're talking about the kinetic coefficient of friction between this flexible ice mass and its fjord. Ice is brittle on a small scale and brittle when not under pressure, so the sheet won't simply slide into the sea wholesale, it'll break up as it exits the fjord the glacier has carved. The calving events may produce impressive local waves but they'll be just that; local events.
As further proof I'll offer that there are many studies regarding the effects of ice dams failing and large glacial lakes draining on land as well as current photos of glacial dams blocking fjords with locally impressive results, but I've never seen any suggestion that ocean spanning tsunamis would result from rapid ice sheet draining other than here on TOD.
I would welcome proof that this is possible, as many have seen that televised special about the Lituya Bay and La Palma tsunamis, and being able to connect the Greenland sheet draining to that simple, visual reference point might get folks moving who are currently sitting on their hands. I just don't think an ice sheet draining is an ocean sized tsunami producing event.
We didn't anticipate the moulins, either, to be perforating the interior of the ice sheet, resulting in the now-nonlinear melt.
What happens to trees when they are infested with termites? Can parts of an infrastructure-compromised tree suddenly collapse and fall off?
The idea is definitely possible.
But, you are right, and I did make the same statement. If we are talking about meltwater drainage, then no, no sudden, punctuated damage. Just a long, huge bleed.