Polar ice cap
Posted by Stuart Staniford on March 14, 2006 - 2:53am
Sea ice in the Arctic has failed to re-form for the second consecutive winter, raising fears that global warming may have tipped the polar regions in to irreversible climate change far sooner than predicted.I wanted to check out the data for myself (not trusting the spin of headline writers), and I found the absolutely incredible website The Cryosphere Today at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They already made all the graphs I needed, and have animated GIFS of the icecaps to boot.Satellite measurements of the area of the Arctic covered by sea ice show that for every month this winter, the ice failed to return even to its long-term average rate of decline. It is the second consecutive winter that the sea ice has not managed to re-form enough to compensate for the unprecedented melting seen during the past few summers.
You can see that the summer (green) line has been heading pretty steadily down since the middle of the last century. However, the trend in the winter (blue) line only started clearly down in the 1970s, and experienced a bit of a reprieve in the late 1990s (for reasons I don't know). It is really the apparent rapid end of that reprieve since 2000 that the Independent is highlighting.
You can also pretty clearly see why folks think the Arctic will be ice free in the summer by the end of the 21st century or so. If you go down from 12 to 8 from 1950 to 2000 in more-or-less a straight line, you'd hit zero in about 2100.
This obviously is behind the major warming of the Arctic - as the Independent puts it:
Scientists are now convinced that Arctic sea ice is showing signs of both a winter and a summer decline that could indicate a major acceleration in its long-term rate of disappearance. The greatest fear is that an environmental "positive feedback" has kicked in, where global warming melts ice which in itself causes the seas to warm still further as more sunlight is absorbed by a dark ocean rather than being reflected by white ice.Well, this positive feedback would have been operating ever since the ice started shrinking around 1950. So far, it hasn't succeeded in bending the summer trend away from its rough straight line, so it's not clear there's really any evidence of some new threshold being crossed. It's also worth noticing that winter ice cover is almost completely irrelevant to the albedo feedback since the Arctic gets no sunshine in the winter. However, in high summer the Arctic gets nearly the same insolation as the tropics (the lower angle in the sky is largely offset by getting 24 hours of insolation instead of 12). So summer ice cover is extremely relevant to the Arctic heat budget.
All in all, I don't see any evidence here for the Independent's sudden crossing of some threshold of irreversibility. Rather, just the linear continuation of what is certainly a very worrying trend. Overall this can't be good for Greenland and sea level.
One thing that does seem a little more solid in the Independent's story is this:
Professor Peter Wadhams, of Cambridge University, who was the first Briton to monitor Arctic sea ice from nuclear submarines, said: "One of the big changes this winter is that a large area of the Barents Sea has remained ice-free for the first time. This is part of Europe's 'back yard'. Climate models did predict a retreat of sea ice in the Barents Sea but not for a few decades yet, so it is a sign that the changes that were predicted are indeed happening, but much faster than predicted."Sure enough that does look like a pretty big anomaly:
Perhaps there's hope after all for completing Prirazlomnoye sometime this decade?
Here's the situation across the Arctic right now:
Sure does seem like as the thin ribbons of sea ice down either side of Greenland retreat, it can't possibly help the stability of the glacier ends.
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situation is actually a lot worse than the
Independent article suggests. The discussion
has been centred around the area of sea ice,
but in fact the thickness of the ice is just
as crucial and there have been several reports
over the years indicating that the ice is very
much thinner than it was two or three decades
ago.
You say that positive feedback mechanisms have
been operating since the 1950s, but surely the
effect of the positive feedback is intensifying
almost annually. Sure there have been a few
years when the Arctic ice has grown on the
previous year's figure, but for the past three
years the loss of ice has been progressively
greater. Wasn't it around 8% last September?
In simple terms doesn't that equate to an
8% reduction in reflective area on 2004?
There is also the matter of the recently
reported sudden surge in CO2 level in the
Arctic region (as yet unexplained, but maybe
the result of release of CO2 from warmer ocean
of even tundra release.
I believe we are witnessing the effect of
synergistic mechanisms (Greenland ice sheets,
tundra emissions, warmer Arctic waters,
thinner sea ice -breaking up and drifting away,
lower sea ice area) all working together to
bring about a catastrophic meltdown of northern
regions within a couple of decades.
And pretty well every action by every citizen in
the industrialised world is adding to the
problem by way of out of control CO2 emissions.
And not one government on the planet is even
thinking seriously about the problem, (except
maybe a couple of Pacific islands) though the
Blair government makes a pretence of it by
talking about cutting emissions, whilst planning
additional airport runways for expected surges
in airline travel.
The disconnection between policy and reality
is nothing short of staggering.
or Complexity Theory
To summarize:
Like a sandpile, gradually adding grains of sand
will have little/no effect on the pile untl the Critical
Grain hits it causing an avalanche.
We're seeing the flickering of the Flourescent Tube
Light before it goes "critcial" or out.
James
Winter in parts of Canada has been as much as 6 degrees above normal -- six degrees Celsius, that is, or about 11 degrees Fahrenheit.
Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories were more than 6 degrees above normal, the story says.
Just a jet stream aberration? At least in part due to global warming?
Or, a climatic tipping point from global warming?
oh, and we're running out of oil.
-pop
NASA says ozone is contributing to Arctic warming.
Question: While CFCs continue to be phased out, how much ground-level ozone from things such as automobile exhaust survives to be a factor in this cycle?
But on earth we are and have been able to influence our world no matter who you are we impact the rest of us in some way.
For thousands of years we never got beyond a few 100's of millions of people then bang! We hit 1 billion, then 3, now 6.5 billion give or take a few 100 million who counts, who can guess the exact number. We all make an impact, not just the guys who drive to work in a single car, but the mom who burns the last tree within walking distance for the meal she fixes her kids.
Reduce us all to burning trees and we become one big Easter Island, Pretty fast too!! There is nothing simple anymore, There is to many people here to make anything simple. Even death is no longer simple, Not that I wish anyone dead. I am not painting a doom and gloom story, yet I know how some of you will take it. We are living in a section of time that is both scary and exciting. And can be happy too.
Removal of floating sea ice will not impact sea level but will change the albedo and result in greater warming.
There is the danger of futher positive amplification of this warming trend due to the release of GHG from the once frozen arctic tundra.
The Greenland ice cap is not floating. Scientific opinion is changing with regard to impacts. It was believed that increased warming would result in increased snowfall and sequestration of water in the Greenland ice cap. Current data shows continued abalation of the ice cap and glaciation retreat. This would contribute to significant sea level rise.
Likewise the albedo thing doesn't seem the major issue; the poles are very cloudy anyway.
I expect the real positive feedback is in the changing ratio of surface area to mass of the ice as it melts. Surface area decreases with the square, mass with the cube (pardon!), so the less ice, the faster it retreats. I suppose this is why we're seeing so much greater warming at the poles.
I suppose then the problem is the loss of heat sink. The phase change of melting ice soaks up a lot of heat. As the ice shrinks that sink goes away.
To dramatize this my old physics teacher would set a paper cup full of water on top of a bunsen burner. The cup sits there happily ignoring the blue flame underneath it right up to the point that the last of its contents is gone. Then it ignites.
So we may expect that more equatorial regions of the globe won't experience the full effect of warming until the polar ice is gone. At which point ... well, I'm too busy moving to Tasmania to think about it.
I would it expect it to suffer severly from changes to the Antartic.
It is not just the Artic that is changing
Another data point: Canada is reporting its warmest winter in recorded history. One caveat - the historical record in this instance only goes back to 1948.
Blow Out Preventer. The assembly of valves which sits on top of an oil well to control the fluid / gas pressures.
.http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/oilandgas/drilling/wellcontrol_bop.html
I guess many contributors use TOD as a BOP :-).
Therein lies the positive feedback.
Sadly, rather than becoming alarmed, the world seems to think we need to figure out new technologies in order to continue our planet destroying ways.
But the planet will fight back, or rather, that is not quite right. The planet is more like an elephant infected with lice. It will simply roll over in annoyance and scrape the lice from its hide. The changing environment will take care of the pesky organism that is upsetting the balance of nature. The environment does not care. Humans? Schmumans.
We are like a frog sitting in the proverbial pan of water on a slowly increasing flame. Except we are a tech lovin' frog equipped with all manner of technology designed to increase the heat. And we KNOW this. Yet we do nothing. We will not started screaming and hopping until we are specifically harmed. Until we wake up with no food on the table, or the ocean encroaches onto our front step, or the plankton population collapses and suddenly, almost no fish remain in the ocean, we will keep thinking of new and better technologies, which can only exist with the petroleum base we have now, in order to keep the heat on.
I feel it is too late.
There are also natural methane sinks:
src: www.ghgonline.orgThat equipment is either a flare, to burn the methane, or a small, low BTU-capable engine/generator set. Of course, some landfills like in LA can generate MWs of electricity.
Not a huge source of anthrogenic methane but not trivial either.
The thinning ozone layer has increased the UV radiation reaching the lower layers of atmosphere. The UV rays cause the formation of more OH radicals in the atmosphere, which react with CH4 and oxidize it (via a chain of recations) to CO2 and H2O:
http://www-as.harvard.edu/chemistry/trop/publications/jacob2000/text.html#77032
The atomic oxygen O(1D) is the cause of formation of OH radicals in the atmosphere via the reaction:
H2O + O(1D) -> 2OH
Thus the more UV light reaches troposphere, the shorter the CH4 lifetime.
http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/gallery/annual_meeting_2004_dlugokencky/Slide1?full=1
Another point of view
Or maybe it all those cattle.
having been sick a lot in the recent months, not mention a second devorce and moving and etc etc. Laughter is the best medcine for what Ails us. Including the End of our worlds as we know them. Lighten up, burn some propane and go hot air Balloning, Its great fun and you get to see the world from a bit of a different view.
Unless you think global warming is a good thing because you live in Greenland or something.
This also affects the global conveyor belt and temperature excursions causing hurricaines in the Gulf and blizzards in Europe.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4803460.stm
"the latest data shows CO2 levels now stand at 381 parts per million (ppm) - 100ppm above the pre-industrial average.
The research indicates that 2005 saw one of the largest increases on record - a rise of 2.6ppm.
The figures are seen as a benchmark for climate scientists around the globe.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) has been analysing samples of air taken from all over the world, including America's Rocky Mountains. "
"The Navy has been recording ice data for decades, but like most Cold War calculations, the information has been top secret. If an unfriendly nation obtains information on where and when submarines had taken their measurements in the past, they might be able to guess where those subs would travel in the future.
But -- like the Arctic ice itself -- military secrecy seems to be thawing. About a year ago, Rothrock convinced Navy brass that measurements taken in the 1950s could be helpful in figuring out whether the data from the '90s was statistically significant. Armed with a pile of new numbers, Rothrock guessed that they might show that the polar cap had shrunk perhaps 18-20 inches over the past half century.
He was wrong. The actual shrinkage left him astonished.
On average, the University of Washington team found that ice had thinned by four feet (1.3 meters) -- a 40 percent decrease since 1953. The "trend" of the 1990s seemed to be an indisputable fact. "
from http://archives.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/01/03/arctic.ice/index.html
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/thinning/thinning.html
Will the ice melt be a long bumpy plateau that is hard to evaluate, or will melt occur fast and clearly enough to convince skeptics that it is happening and is a big deal?
With our exceptionally big brains we humans ought to be able to gather and interpret the data and then create plans based upon those interpretations.
If only.....
It is much more important to focus on the thickness. There is a lot of thermal mass in thick ice. It takes an enormous amount of energy to melt it completely. Therefore only limited reduction in geographic area is seen for awhile as the environment heats up. Most of the energy is going into reducing the thickness not shrinking the size. Thin edges are easily recaptured the next cold period, but are meaningless.
Think of ponds or even large lakes coming out of the winter. Many times the margins of the ice retreat from the shore even as there is thick ice out on the middle. The edges refreeze intermittantly during cold nights in the spring giving the impression that there is no net loss of ice. The reality is that the entire ice mass is undergoing net loss. The same warm day later in the spring doesn't just shrink the margins again, at some point the whole geographic surface melts in essentially one day.
Previous warm days, even very much warmer days, did not have the same effect because the ice mass was so much larger. The data is clearly indicating this is happening in the high arctic. Ice mass is diminishing rapidly even if the geographic area is shrinking at a slower rate. At some point that geographic loss will increase significantly. But it will only happen after the total mass has been reduced to a very thin layer.
So yeah I agree that we should worry a lot more about thickness than coverage as a first sign of Global Warming.
It is well known that there is a considerable exchange of gases between the atmosphere and the upper layers of the soil environment. The exchange takes place in both directions - gases going into the soil and gases leaving the soil. Much of this exchange is the result of microbial activitity in the soil.
It's been postulated that a thawing of the tundra would essentially take the cover off of a very large area of soil and allow CO2, methane, and other gases formerly trapped in the soil to evolve into the atmosphere. I believe the main concern is with large amounts of methane hydrates turning into vapor and migrating into the atmosphere. However, what I don't have any feel for is how extensively this mechanism has been studied and how well it is currently understood. Do we really know what's going on with this one?
Back to a question on polar ice melt: If the polar ice cap recedes, that would expose more sea water to the atmosphere. And when that happens there is more surface area made available for an exchange of gases between the polar sea water and the atmosphere. Is it possible that this extra water surface could result in more CO2 being transported from the atmosphere to the ocean and thus improve its role as a sink for CO2? If that is indeed the case, might that not serve as a negative feedback mechanism and serve to slightly retard the build-up of CO2? Or is this just not significant?
I would not rely that much on this effect. The sea covered by ice is some 3-4% of the global ocean, the best you can expect is that if all of it melts the global rate of CO2 absorbtion will rise by that percentage.
Now the CO2 absorbed by all the algae and seaweeds flourishing where all the ice used to be, that may be more significant.
In many ways, our addiction to combusting all forms of fossil fuels has been both a blessing for human technological advancement and a prime mover in a large majority of the social, economic, and environmental ills we face today.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/03/the_fate_of_the_ocean.html
"Among the most frightening news for coral reefs is the increasing acidity of the ocean as a result of rising levels of carbon dioxide. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently estimated the ocean has absorbed 118 billion metric tons of CO2 since the onset of the Industrial Revolution--about half of the total we've released into the atmosphere--with 20 to 25 million more tons being added daily. This mitigation of CO2 is good for our atmosphere but bad for our ocean, since it changes the pH. Studies indicate that the shells and skeletons possessed by everything from reef-building corals to mollusks to plankton begin to dissolve within 48 hours of exposure to the acidity expected in the ocean by 2050."
Study suggests climate models underestimate future warming
There was also an article in the Economist two weeks ago (Feb 23rd 2006).
There is a related discussion on the Google group alt.global-warming:
It is not possible to model the ocean/atmosphere circulations and heat transport that far back in Geological time given the different configurations of the continents, only rough approximations of CO2 in the atmosphere, etc.
As for this Arctic result, it is not clear what the future trend may be. We may be witnessing the beginning of an abrupt climate change in the Arctic--that's the fear. The trend may remain linear for a while, however. It's only 2006. Paradoxically, I think we can be more certain about the longer term (2050 or after) than what will happen in the next 5 or 10 years assuming "business as usual" regarding GHG emissions. Still, there is no doubt that it possible that it may soon when the SHTF.
You don't have to control everyone with a grand plan. But you can still PLAN (study, engineer, debate, cooperate), and if we aren't going to sink into some angry-melancholy, then that's what we are going to do. There will be lots of plans, probably lots of attempts, and some might catch on as more workable than others, and there will be opportunities to get people onboard as the dangers become more clear.
All of this was from a natural injection of aerosols. If we did an engineered injection of aerosols...
The positive feedback may not seem to have any effect in the previous half a century, but this is not a proof it will not kick in increasingly in the future.
The water that is now warmer as a result of less sea ice in the artic will take a long time to complete its journey through the thermohaline circulation. Wikipedia says some thousand odd years, so I certainly wouldn't expect to see mich non-linearity over a period of 50 years.
That said, if it only takes 100 years for the linear trend to hit zero, the non-linear effects may not have time to kick in.
reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation
http://zfacts.com/p/224.html
The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare
The climate could change radically, and fast.
That would be the mother of all national security issues.
By David Stipp, FORTUNE Magazine, February 9, 2004
Excerpts:
Though triggered by warming, such change would probably cause cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, leading to longer, harsher winters in much of the U.S. and Europe. Worse, it would cause massive droughts, turning farmland to dust bowls and forests to ashes. Picture last fall's California wildfires as a regular thing. Or imagine similar disasters destabilizing nuclear powers such as Pakistan or Russia--it's easy to see why the Pentagon has become interested in abrupt climate change.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/science/14conv.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
I'm not saying the positive albedo feedback doesn't operate, but rather that it's been operating all along, and is part of why the pole is clearly melting. There is no evidence in the data of some sudden cutin of positive feedback that wasn't there before. Now maybe the trend will change in the future, but I don't see any evidence in the data yet. I think the Independent piece is inaccurate.
Which is not to say that I think the North pole melting is a good thing. On the contrary the rapidity of the melting seems to me extremely alarming. While sea ice melting will have no impact on sea level directly, it seems that the implications for the stability of the Greenland ice sheet are quite alarming.
I took a look at the thickness data and I agree they suggest a somewhat faster course of melting - end-of-summer ice thickness hitting zero by mid-century rather than the end of century. However, the data quality is much poorer, and there is still no sign of a threshold, as opposed to a more or less linear trend.
Values of NH sea ice area for the dates of annual historic sea ice minima
The slope is (5.5-6)/(1998-1983)=-0.0333 million km2/year, so the minimal surface extent could be 50% smaller than today in only 90 years.
about it.'
I guess you know that Australia is not melting
like the Arctic, but it is overheating and
drying out as never before. Tassie will
probably be the last inhabitable state of
Australia when climate change really
starts to bite. But London, New York etc.
will be largely under water by then.
I repeat my previous comment: the meltdown
of the environment is underway and all
[influential] governments are more or less
ignoring the issue altogether and are still
pushing ahead with policies that will ensure
the meltdown accelerates. If that is not
insane, then I don't know what is.
Even those nations that are making some kind
of effort to address CO2 emissions are
offering 'too little, too late' poliices
because they are still trapped by the ideology
of GDP and economic growth.
And along come China and India.
The coming decades are certain to be dominated
by attempted mass migrations by environmental
refugees, if not actual environmental wars.
Indeed, it seems to have started in East Africa.
And it seems there is absolutely nothing we can
do about it, except prepare for the worst.
The chickens are comiing home to roost. The
failed policies of the 70s, 80s and 90s (and
present) are resulting in their inevitable
consequences.
Greenland will presumably become an increasingly
attractive destination. I believe the first crop
of potatoes in a thousand years was grown there
a couple of years ago.
But it has been hot.
Anyway Tasmania isn't the last stand of the Australians. We'll be settling Antarctica just as soon as the big thaw is done. That's a gigantic, virgin continent full of natural resources of all sorts.
But no trees.
We in WA have a huge advantage of lots of land and only a few people. Where else can you fly in a jet airliner for 3 hours and still be in the same state. (Perth to Broome)
Perhaps the failure of thermohaline conveyance in both hemispheres could account for this.
If the gulf stream slows then there's less warm water circulating down to antarctica. Plus runoff from the melting ice there to increase the coolness; you expect southern Australia to get cooler and wetter.
Up to 60,000 years ago Australia had a vast internal lake system - the whole center of the continent was jungle and forest. Wombats the size of rhinos and carnivorous kangaroos like furry velociraptors. Then men and dogs turned up and that was that.
I wonder how long it will take for the kangaroos and wombats to re-evolve to their former dimensions? And I wonder what makes Tassie go dry?
It this is of course true. But here we have THE SAME situation - just in reverse...
WINTER icecup is CRITICAL for positeve feedback loop! Forget about albedo and insolation! While all ice melted in summer is fully replaced by winder feedback loop can not start. If some small part of ice melted in summer is not refrosen by winter it means next year there will be less ice. And the next wintnet ice cup will be even smaller. And so on. Like graciers just in reverse. Think about it...
I'm going to go way out on a limb here and make a daring statement: the arctic is too cold! I know, I know, it's radical, it's crazy, no sane person could ever think such a thing.
But if we could manage to put ourselves into this wild, crazy frame of mind for a few moments, and suppose that maybe the arctic really is too cold, then maybe, just maybe, arctic warming could actually be something good. The arctic might become more livable. Northern lattitudes that previously were just wastelands could become fertile ground for agriculture. The arctic ocean could develop major shipping routes.
Basically what we are talking about here is reducing the temperature variation between northern and southern lattitudes and making the earth a more temperate place. For some reason, warming is presently concentrated at the poles, with very little occuring at the equator which is already arguably too hot. This is actually an ideal situation. It would be far worse if the tropics were becoming hotter while the poles were becoming colder. Moderation is generally good, and in a way we seem to be heading towards a geographically more moderate world with fewer extremes of climate.
Looking at the larger environmental picture, there can be no doubt that life thrives in a climate much warmer than the average of the earth as a whole. The tropics are by far the most fecund region on the planet. Earth is clearly colder today than the optimum for life. Increasing temperatures will increase biomass and improve conditions for life worldwide.
Now, obviously that requires a much larger view than most of us have, including me! I wouldn't want to live in the tropics - too many bugs and other nasties. I don't look forward to the whole planet being that way. But for those of you with a more ecological bent, you should welcome global warming. Even though it may not be ideal for Man, the bugs will love it.
Sir! I have a plan!
Mein Führer! I can walk!
Mr. President, we cannot allow a mineshaft gap!
Where to start.
First the greatest increase is at the poles, but the tropics are heating as well. The energy conveyor systems strips most of the heat out of the tropics and deposits it to the poles. It is hard to heat up a hot area if that heat is constantly bleeding to colder areas. How will we know the affect on the tropics until the poles become very much warmer?
Second, I am very tired of people trying to tout the benefits of warm temperatures at high latitudes and altitude. Just because Ontario Province might have the climate that Iowa used to have doesn't mean you can move all the crops north by 500 miles. The soils won't allow it. You can't substitute recent alpine soil for old prarie soil. Neither can you substitute recent alpine or coniferous forest soil for deciduous forest soil. They are completely different ecosystems that took centuries to form.
You don't remake an ecosystem in a couple of decades. You can destroy one in that time, but not make a new one. Try and remake productive land out of clear cut, eroded, abused, desertified, or strip mined land. This is very difficult even without a radically changing temperature system.
The natural world, the food web, is a very complex interaction of uncountable organisms all contributing to the stability of that ecosystem. These interactions took many human lifetimes to become optimized. You can't change the temperature, or precipitation, or species diversity radically and expect that system to improve in the blink of a geologic eye. They always become less diverse and less productive from a biological standpoint. Even the bread basket and midwest U.S. is much less diverse and productive than 200 years ago. It makes more products that humans value, but is not more biologically productive. Human impact is the number one cause of desert spreading. A very warm high latitude land mass is just as (more?) likely to become a cold desert as productive farm land or forest.
It would be unwise to put this idea on the positive side of the balance sheet of global warming effects, when most past human impacts on environments have not led to that result.
Fully agree!
Just because temperatures rise in Alaska doesn't mean that one day you'll be growing pineapples in Fairbanks. As you quite correctly pointed out, soil composition is a very important part of the equation. The natural soils in the various region took many thousands of years to develop the way they are now, and cannot be change overnight. The soil in the tundra is quite thin and fragile, while the soil in a place like Iowa or the Nile delta is rich and thick as the result of millenia of vegitation and a microbial action.
As a factor in this whole global balance think, soil is like Rodney Dangerfield - it gets no respect. When in fact, and if I am not mistaken, there is more biomass in the soils of the world than in all the aboveground forests and farms, as well as in all the oceans of the world. A cubic inch of rich Iowa soil probably has more biodiversity and also more raw genetic information than you could probably fit on the largest Cray computer.
If we mess of our soils, we've screwed the pooch.
And let's not mention the hurricane power growth we've seen so far. Imagine how equatorial coastal regions will fare with the weather when sea surface temperatures are above 90 degrees for months at a time leading to far more Cat 3-5 hurricanes. Also, we're seeing reports that the warming has altered the jet stream and is creating drought and even desert conditions in various regions as we move down towards the equator.
Halfin further conveniently ignores that warming of 10-30 degrees appears to have killed 95% of all species 250 million years ago. Given that the current warming is projected to do at least 8 degrees of increase globally eventually, and that our models are excessively conservative, this doesn't look like a very intelligent thing to do, does it?
if i remember my biology, one of the species that survived that mass extinction(called the permian mass extinction) was the common ancestor of both mammals and dinosaurs.
Yes, of course we do live in the best of all possible worlds.
1. Look at opportunities for real-estate development in Greenland--fabulous opportunities there.
2. NW passage open all year around for navigation will help Asians to get more oil from Alberta tar sands via north-flowing pipelines, thus increasing global transportation efficiency.
3. Depopulation of Texas will mean that fewer lawyers get shot there by being mistaken for quail;-)
4. We may find more oil under where all that ice has melted, thereby postponing Peak Oil indefinitely.
5. More open water means more room for Sailorman and his all-girl crew of pleasure boaters.
6. Depopulation of the tropics due to ecocatastrophes solves the Global population probem, thereby removing one big worry.
7. Malaria moving north twenty degrees in latitude will increase the demand for medications, thereby increasing profits for big pharma and thus boosting stocks toward their alltime highs. Invest now, for big profits!
8. Decreased heating bills for U.S. and Canada will increase spending power and send GDP rates soaring up to the bliss point of endless exponential growth, thus proving that all those nattering nabobs of negativism were just a bunch of Chicken Littles.
Ah Dr. Pangloss, where would we be without you.
step back two steps and look at the big picture....
It seems the Saturn moon Enceladus has some water and the moon Titan has a supply of hydrocarbons.... What would it take to knock these two moons out of their Saturn orbit into orbit around the earth so they could be mined for their resources?
...and while you were at it why not move Mars into an orbit opposite the earth..... ready to terraform and occupy....
...coming soon to a new world near you! martian condos..
purchase incentive FREE WATER and FREE GAS!
wow! this port is really good!
It seems to me that there is more truth in this view than folks might realize.
Ignoring those who deny climate change is happening or is even possible, people are worried about it because of the possible effects the modified ecosystem will have on our civilization and our lives. Higher sea levels will threaten our coastal cities with flooding. Different weather patterns will result in more severe weather that can damage our infrastructure and take lives. Regions that were once food-producing areas will turn to dust bowls. Etc.
It has been claimed that humans are not to cause of this global warming, that it is just part of a natural cycle. Others claim that it's caused by human activity. It may be that it's a combination of both. It doesn't matter. It is beside the point.
The idea seems to be that climate change is bad and that we want to prevent it from happening. We ask ourselves, "What can we do to prevent global warming?" No matter the cause, this is the question if we assume global warming is a bad thing. The answer is similarly valid whatever the cause: "Maybe something, maybe nothing."
Traditionally, the human-activity camp has argued the former while the natural causes camp has argued the latter. Now it seems that the latter is increasingly the answer from both camps. There's nothing we can do to prevent it, global warming is happening and the climate is going to change.
So now the question for both camps is "What can we do to minimize the effects of global warming?" Again, the answer is "Maybe something, maybe nothing."
In the mean time however, we should be asking ourselves another question: "How do we adapt to climate change?" Given that it is occuring and the only open question is how extreme it is going to be, we should be identifying those areas were change will effect our civilization and how to roll with the impact.
All that understand have a moral duty to act.
The Feedback loops have to factor in that while its winter in the North it is Summer in the South. We have two poles that are covered by ice. 23 degrees of a tilt, and only a short span of time to understand it all in before the system changes to the point that we can no longer live as we do now.
We have several things that are all ramping up at the same time. Great story making ideas, HollyWood has to sell movies, They can't write the stories Others or I could write. We can use fact and fiction and have bad endings, bad endings never have sold well to the movie popcorn popping public.
Population, ice caps, Oil peak, all the things to make a great story, and to scare everyone too. Right here and right now to a front yard near you.
The curve is still a straight line, when it does curve, there is not going to be any stopping it, though I really doubt we could stop it now even if we tried, if we had 5 billion fewer people, if we could just leave here and go elsewhere and let it alone for a few centuries, maybe the cycle would fix itself.
I do not think the cycle has only been a few decades in the making, I would go as far back and the first major uptick in human population and start from there. But the Worldwide data matrix that you would need might tax even the best computer minds that we have. Sci-fi Authors have been writting these kinds of stories for years, all the while its been going on right here on earth under our very noses.
It is not over just wait for it.
experienced a lot of rain, but the parts where
most people live (especially NSW) are looking
very parched and have been very hot: temperature
anomalies of up to 12 degrees Celsius have been
recorded over the past summer. It is the local
differences that are so unbelievable. Torrents
of rain in one region, but just a few hundred
kilometres away, sever drought (as in East
Africa).
As for warmer poles bringing advantages, it
might be useful to think how much hotter the
tropical regions might become: India has been
recording mid to high 40s. Temperatures in the
50s appear to be quite possible in the future.
We could well be creating the conditions that
lead to the complete desertification of the
tropical forests of Africa and South America.
Then there is that matter of drought closer to
home. Texas seems to be looking sicker by the
week and if present trends continue will not
have an agricultural sector at all by the end
of this year.
Meanwhile in NZ, a very temperate country which
normally gets plentiful rainfall, there is
currently concern for power generation (hydro),
due to drought.
We had a beautiful nest 50 years ago, but we
have shitted in it. To suggest that more
shitting in the nest might produce benefits
does not make a lot of sense to me.
In practice we are conducting a grand
experiment, for which we cannot predict the
result. But we can make some educated guesses.
At a stroke his simple technology removed all protozoan controls on human lifespan. Global human population graphs went exponential a generation later. Oil was touted as the cause of this, but it seems to me more an invention than a necessity. The real necessity was our sudden surge in effective fertility.
All human civilizations have followed a boom and bust pattern, overbreeding, destroying their agricultural base, falling into savagery, and brutishly moving on. Oil was our way of postponing the fall by leveraging all watersheds everywhere. But there is no place to move now. We must invent a new pattern to survive.
Most likely we will ditch biology. The oceans are turning to acid and our agriculture is growing too expensive to continue. We will dieback. The survivors will be forced to re-engineer their bodies to survive in a toxic, denuded ecosphere. They must become machines to survive.
I imagine metal flowers spreading over the dead earth and electronic voices mimicing the lost birdsong. We are natural creatures so by definition all our technology is natural too. If we are to survive, we must embrace this path - transhumanism - transbiotism - and engineer a new ecosphere in our own image.
That might seem unnatural to you. But your grandchildren might find their robotic bodies as natural as you find cars. After all, pops, what's the alternative?
The vast majority of Archaea were wiped out in that cataclysm. The remainder either evolved to live in places molecular oxygen doesn't occur - extremophiles inside geysers and black smokers - or built great hulking machines around themselves to shelter from the poison.
We call those machines eukaryotes - that's the domain of life you and I occupy. But each of our cells still shelters a degenerate prokaryote called mitochondria. I've made it sound as if this was some kind of intelligent plan on the part of the mitochondria, which of course it was not - just evolution doing its thing. But the point is clear - when your environment changes, you better change with it.
The way forward is Molecular Manufacturing. Beam me up? Nah, no new physics required, nothing but really extremely hard engineering problems to solve. Only real question is whether we can solve them in time.
No one has the foggiest idea how to command, control, or even orient just a single robot in a physical environment anywhere near as complex and demanding as that of one of Drexler's wild assemblers.
The nanotech guys' counter to this is that, with the advent of assemblers, real AI is just around the corner, and this AI can easily handle the command and control issues of an assembler. Or a pound of assemblers together. No worries. The trouble is this assumes the antecedent - that you can command and control a pound of assemblers well enough for them to express AI in order to create the command and control necessary for their own operation ... Catch-22.
As computer science stands at present we have about as much chance of creating real AI in a pound of assemblers as we have of creating it in a ton of PCs. Which is to say, none. All AI technologies founder on combinatorial complexity under a Turing/Von Neumann computing paradigm.
In other words you can get your expert system/neural net to pull cute tricks in small domains, but the moment you try to scale up, the time and space requirements of your program go exponential. In the last fifty years no one has been able to demonstrate any significant way around this "combinatorial explosion".
So why consider Drexler plausible?
Well, there's been no proof that it's prevented by any physical limits - just engineering ones.
Now say we have 100 years left before we go like yeast in a barrel of hops. 100 years ago was before Tesla hit his straps. Scientific staples like QM and relativity were academic twittery. "Get a horse!" was still heard on the roads. And the electric light was a curiosity that drew crowds. But 100 years ago E.M. Forster published "The Machine Stops", which accurately presaged both the Internet and, after a fashion, Peak Oil.
It's obviously implausible that Star Trek or anything like it has relevance to engineering possibilities today. But basing your judgement of engineering plausibility on the fact that any particular idea has been used in Star Trek is obviously stupid.
With the imminence of practical quantum computing a lot of the old computer science limits are questionable. So Drexler's stuff is still worth going at. It still might not get us there in time to avoid broiling or starving. But hey, pops, what's the alternative?
I wonder if I could convince my theatre group to stage R.U.R.?
Insurance industry reacts to global warming.