Yes, NSIDC shows it best.

http://www.nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20070810_index.html

Animated table 4 on the above link is showing constantly moving, thickening and thinning sea ice. It was once in color, now in less informative B/W. Can someone follow up on this to change it back to what it was?

Thanks for the charts Stuart - I learn something every day. The general idea of water flowing in through the Bering straights and out through Baffin straights and E Greenland holds though. And the water coming in the top is warm.

The main point I wanted to make here is that the Arctic Sea Ice is on average very young - a handful of years old - and is renewed on an "annual" basis. Its not like the Greenland and E Antarctic ice sheets which have taken hundreds of thousands of years to millions of years to form. If we lose these then I'm prepared to accept that they are lost "forever" to all intents and purposes for Homo Sapiens. All we need is one (or a series of 2 or 3) really cold Arctic winter to restore the Arctic Sea Ice to its former glory in terms of volume. Whether or not that happens soon is another issue.

Your first chart showing perennial sea ice extent is extremely interesting. Would you agree that the 1957 to 1971 we have some form plateau and that the current trend of accelerating loss began in 1972? 1972 looks like a really dramatic year in the Arctic. What happened?

To my eye what we are experiencing now, started then. So is this anthropogenic GW or is it something else? My chart up the thread has 126,053 million tonnes oil equivalent (mmtoe) burned 1900 to 1972 and 251,166 mmtoe burned 1973 to 2007. So we have burned more than twice as much in the last 34 years than in the preceding 72 years.

If the onset of Arctic Sea ice loss in 1972 was due to human activity then we are well and truly screwed. The thermal and kinetic inertia of the ocean atmosphere system will ensure on-going highly unpredictable climate change for decades - and there is absolutely nothing man kind will be able to do to prevent this. At best we can mitigate effects by building coastal defenses and prepare to cultivate Greenland - like the Vikings did 1000 years ago!!

If on the other hand the onset of sea ice loss in 1972 is due to a natural cycle then is it not the case that what we are experiencing now is a continuation of that same cycle that has presumably happened many times before? And Planet Earth and all its species survived.

Where my position differs I believe from your own and certainly from the GW advocates is that I am uncertain which of these options is true. I actually lean quite strongly towards the latter - that is perhaps down to denial - but also down to the fact that we know The Vikings cultivated Greenland as I already mentioned. I would see some danger that anthropogenic GW may amplify the natural cycle - unquantifiable and unstopable.

If it is the case that we have jumped off a GW cliff then we had best prepare our parachute. Flapping around hysterically trying to regain the cliff edge just ain't going to get us anywhere. If we have jumped we can't go back.

I think one could argue that there is a strong aspiration towards personal transportation, whatever is available at the time. Once individual wealth reaches the necessary level, a sizable fraction of people look to become independent of public transportation, with its schedules and/or sometimes limited availability. Technology and cheap fossil fuels have (temporarily, at least) greatly lowered the threshold for the amount of wealth needed to reach that point.

I aspire to anti-gravity flying vehicles and space-timewarp travel to other planets and suspended animation and eventually uploding myself to the galactic wide web and living forever! Please can't I have my fantasy for just a little while longer? None of these things are dependent on fossil fuel - I promise. Not in my fantasy anyway.

You don't need a supergrid for nuclear, as you can put them where they are needed.
You don't really need one for renewables either, as long as you use them where they are most appropriate, fro instance solar in the South of the US, but not trying to power the North by that means- all you need then is overnight storage.

Limited extensions of the grid for wind would help to reduce variability.

It was clear from Stuart's earlier article on energy that costs are greatly reduced if you allow some nuclear energy in the mix, and alternatives would be very expensive, if indeed they can be done, as they relied on continued massive improvements in the costs of solar energy at the same rate as has happened in recent years - personally I feel that this rate of increase will level off to some degree before long, as maintenance and installation becomes a larger part of total cost, but solar should be good to provide at minimum peak load capacity and probably almost all capacity in sunny areas.

I prefer however to base proposals on what we can be sure we can do - we know that we can power society with nuclear energy,and only modest engineering development is required to get better burn of fuel and so on - we have thousands of operating years of experience, and one whole society, France already gets most of it's electricity from nuclear power.

If solar turns out to be economical I would be all over it though! - that is not going to happen without major breakthroughs for the cold and wintry north though.

But the end of fossil fuels does not have to mean the end of development and the reversion of society to some more primitive state. There would be no moral good in that.

I don't see that morality has anything to do with it. A supply crunch possibly coming in 2012:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/09/AR200707...
Is likely to reverse economic growth. Mr. Staniford appears to be leaving any cost analysis for a future article, but as he himself states a lot of the scenarios he is suggesting will depend on economic growth:

The world economy is able to grow on average over the period - modestly in developed countries, faster in developing countries.

Is this likely ? The same thing worries me for Nuclear power. The cost is so prohibitive the British government wants to leave it all to private investors. How much of that nuclear infrastructure is likely to be in place before we start to see an "oil supply crunch" ? Relocalizing food distribution chains would appear to be a far more realistic solution in the short term.

Stuart, I like The Poseidon Adventure movie analogy.

They see the wave coming try evasive action but the wave hits and the ship capsizes. (The world around them is turned upside down, nothing is quite the same).
Some are killed immediately.
The survivors gather and most decide to wait for rescue. (Trusting in the great power of human technology to save them) They are ultimately engulfed as rescue never comes.

Some decide to try and find a way out.
Along the way there are right and wrong turns to make, there are obstacles to overcome and people die along the way. All the way, time is running out, the ship is sinking (the climate they could rely on is changing).

Eventually a small percentage of the original ships passengers and crew survive.

The end

Stuart - a great speech and a great analogy - though I missed your reference to Posiedon.

If you are on the mountain in bad weather the last thing you want are members of your party in panic and worse than that, others breaking down in tears saying they never wanted to to climb the mountain in the first place.

You have no control over the storm and don't know whether it is going to blow over or get worse. All you can do is dig a hole, put on a hat gloves and fleece, take stock of your provisions, break out the whisky and start telling cannibal jokes.

It would also be cool if some members of your party were watching what was going on before the storm blew up - those cornices on the cliff above looked mighty dangerous. Have you dug your hole in a safe place? Or is it in line with the energy decline avalanche that will most surely wipe you out if it hits you.

Personally I don't think there is anything we can do to prevent anthropogenic GW if it is indeed an issue. But we can take many precautionary measures to avoid the avalanche and I'm with you 100% of the way in building a bridge to that future.

To use your analogy, we have a difference of opinion on the route to take. You think that your route is passable, I do not, and all we have for definitive data is a topographical map with inadequate data#. Your path is the path of least resistance to change in our current culture.

In either case (passable or not) your path has a tight margin for error and can easily lead to catastrophic failure.

What I advocate has a wide margin for error, and a series of soft failure modes.

I want to rely on existing technology, with adjustments made as improved technology arrives, instead of planning on continued advances arriving at specified times.

To briefly outline an overview, I want the thrust of government policy to promote a massive build-out of a Non-Oil Transportation system (EVs not heavily promoted but mainly left to market forces) and a massive build-out of renewable energy with associated HV DC transmission and pumped storage in the near future. Those two thrusts will take all the effort we will likely be able to muster.

Non-Oil Transportation includes:

Electrified intercity railroads (hopefully with some semi-high speed express tracks that can handle passengers and low & medium density freight at 100 to 125 mph. See CSX proposal for DC to Miami).

Urban Rail is all flavors (Rapid Rail (subway), Light Rail, Streetcars, Commuter/Regional Rail) and associated TOD (The low hanging fruit is that about a third of Americans want to live in TOD, and less than 2% do. Meeting this unmeet existing demand for low energy living should be a top priority).

Some Electric Trolley Buses where streetcars will not work well.

Bicycles for Transportation

Walking

I would be willing to include Seqways as a adjunct.

All of these (except Segways) have significant elasticity of supply. In a crisis, they can surge their supply on short notice and even more supply over longer periods of time, with marginal new supply of transportation often costing less than the average, but certainly no more.

And all supply enormous gains in energy efficiency (on the order of end use 20 joules of gasoline or oil for 1 joule of electricity, even better for bicycling). These efficiency gains have enormous implications for GHG and GW.

And all are long lived. Things built today, with cheap energy, will not need replacement in a period of prolonged crisis.

As the existing Oil Based Transportation System is stressed##, transportation can shift quickly and easily over to the Non-Oil Transportation System (remember elasticity of supply) IF THE NON-OIL TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM EXISTS !

## I do NOT expect a smooth decline on oil availability, but a disjointed series of crisis. These repeated shocks to our Oil Based Transportation System (if there is no alternative) will tear at our social and economic fabric and reduce our ability to adapt (see our doomer friends).

I also support a plan to convert the North American electrical grid to 90% non-GHG. The last 10% will have to wait on new technology and events as they develop. My guess is 30 years best case, even with strong gov't incentives. A future TOD article.

The problem with EVs and why I do not support a strong push for them is that

1) They have little or no elasticity of supply
2) we are several decades away from the marginal source of electricity being non-GHG and
2b) they are not as energy efficient as Urban Rail (see #4)
3) They do not promote TOD, with it's inherent energy efficiency
4) They are not on the market today (except for GEM) and this creates a wide range of unknowns.

I would have no problem with $400 tax credits for Segways and $1000 tax credits for EVs *IF* this does not detract from higher priorities. The market, given our culture, will give adequate support for a rapid conversion to EVs and there is little that the Gov't can do.

Returning to your analogy, I see one member of the party (France) clearly heading down this path for the last 35 years. They seem to like the feedback and are increasing the pace as the storm clouds gather.

BEST HOPES !

Alan

# A couple of decades ago I had an "interesting life experience" in the Rocky Mountains due to going down a stream that could not be scaled back up and running into a shear 12' cliff with a steep scree at the foot. It did not show on our topographical map.

Stuart:

My frustration is that you are asking me to do the impossible: give you specifics about "self-sacrifice" and "income loss" in a situation that I consider to be paradigm shifting and too complex. Does a general going to war tell the soldiers--we expect these many losses of limbs, this many losses of eyes, this many losses of lives, this many losses of future mental stability? Can that even be done? It is too messy. In an emergency you lay out the problem, people agree it is an emergency, they have the attitude of "whatever it takes" and we go from there. Actuaries, accountants, engineers can all give ball park estimates of the scale and rate of change but this level of detail can wait. What is first needed is agreement of what needs to be done and how fast, something like: 300-320 ppm, fossil-fuel free economic transition within 20 years, possible geoengineering for ice caps, carbon sequestration projects.

Stuart, the mountain analogy is great, but there's two problems with it:

1. More a boat than a mountain
On the mountain, if somebody panics and runs off, it's mainly their problem, and they will be the ones to pay the price. But with GW, and to some extent Peak Oil, we are all in the same boat. Even if you manage to get a group behind you, your efforts will be meaningless unless most people agree to follow your plan. You showed it very well with your biofuel-food articles.

2. Who has the magaphone?
We didn't just end up on a mountain. We went on an organised trip. The tour-leaders assured us it was safe and good for us, actually they're still saying so. But we paid them good money; they are making a profit from this adventure. Their words and actions are motivated by profit.

Unfortunately, the tour-leaders still have the megaphone. And they're shouting out loud that it's all fine. You, on the other hand, are standing in the corner, with a compass and a map, quietly and calmly explaining to the small group around you that it's not at all fine, it's really very dangerous, but you have a way out. Some look at you with amazement. Then they lose interest. The group leaders said there's free videos starting now.

Correct, there is no economic law that states that economic growth is unsustainable. However, natural limits will always trump economics. Even if intellectual capital can grow, it is not the economy and will require resources to exploit. An increase in economic activity ultimately requires more stuff to be produced, more stuff to be used, more services to be provided. Whilst efficiencies can help alleviate natural limits, they will never be able to make them irrelevant.

I agree that development can reduce population growth, but if it requires more economic growth, you had better keep your fingers crossed that natural limits are not hit before population stabilises. However, if it does stabilise, do you think people, especially those who have benefited most from the economic growth, to happily give up future growth, in order to maintain their current standards of living? If they won't do it now, they won't do it then and that is also a pressing problem.