Arctic Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979 - fastest rate of change on record | Hacker News Reader

Arctic Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979 - fastest rate of change on record

dailytech.com

14 pointsgibsonf120 comments

Climate-change denialists will of course look at this and say "see? no problem!" when actually massive and unexpected fluctuations -- both colder and warmer -- of exactly this kind are what you'd expect from dangerous climate change.

What would constitute evidence against a dangerous climate change model? What would falsify the hypothesis?

Researchers had expected the newer sea ice, which is thinner, to be less resilient and melt easier. Instead, the thinner ice had less snow cover to insulate it from the bitterly cold air, and therefore grew much faster than expected, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Their assumptions where wrong, but coverage area is not the same as thickness. When you look at the average temperature over 10 years and it starts to drop then we can say global worming is wrong but local effects are so complex we don't really know which areas will worm vs cool.

> the average temperature over 10 years and it starts to drop

So the last 10 years then? http://www2.nationalreview.com/dest/2008/12/15/clintontemps....

(If the data is wrong, let me know, but don't just complain about the source)

Looks wrong to me. If you're after climate/temperature data it's out there.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature_record_of_the_past_...

Both from a google search: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=graph+global+mean+temperat...

ps. Your source sucks.

From 1970 to 2008 that graph shows a slow increase in temperatures. If you plot the average every 10 years it's increasing. Was that trying to refute my point?

Anyway, graphs don't help they show people what they want to see. I just want data and then we can break out some statistics.

Second, is that the global average temperature or some local measurement? Because individual local measurements are also meaningless.

Anyway, take global data over 200 years averaged into 10 year blocks and see what best fits the data. Hint: it's probably not linear.

Oh please. We don't have anywhere near enough information to be able to say what sorts of fluctuations are normal.

The only long term data we have is "fuzzed" to the point that we can only see long terms trends, not the short term cycles.

Take a look at ANY natural process and you'll see that in the long term it's stable, and in the short term fluctuates wildly. That's EXACTLY what's happening here, and is totally normal.

You're both correct, actually. The "it's all ok" dolts will simply take this as evidence that it's all fine, and it IS the sort of thing that we should expect from global warming... but we don't know enough to say with any certainty that global warming is in fact the cause; there could be lots of other causes behind it that we don't know about.

And we could get another massive volcanic eruption that makes our mucking about look trivial by comparison, rendering the whole debate moot :)

Do not confuse people who don't think global warming is a problem (or even happening) with "it's all OK" dolts. A lot of people, myself included, point out that pouring trillions of dollars into a non-problem does nothing to solve the real problems, such as the Pacific dead zone or massive overfishing. If global warming is not happening or not a threat, those who support it anyhow should earn the same contempt you spew for the "it's all OK dolts", for their opportunity cost of their solutions to non-problems will be the worst thing to ever happen to the environment.

Believing in climate change doesn't make you holy regardless of the evidence.

Plus, it would take some kind of international war to really do something about it. Some of the countries that contribute the most CO2 are the least likely to be concerned about the consequences, and will only take advantage of the surplus energy left over by countries that do try and reduce their CO2 emmissions.

"o not confuse people who don't think global warming is a problem (or even happening) with "it's all OK" dolts."

You're putting words in my mouth. If you're going to engage in a discussion, that's a mistake, as it invalidates anything further you say, regardless of its merit.

That said, I agree -- and if you're read the rest of my post, you probably wouldn't have felt compelled to respond, since I pointed out that global warming is also not definitively proven...

The "it's all OK" crowd may be half right in that they see Earth's climate as a stable system. It is pretty clear that there are many negative feedback loops involved. The question, however, is how far can we push these built-in regulations?

Is there any science that shows that increased co2 will actually cause cooling? I haven't seen any, but am very interested in a link if you know of one.

There is some, most of it that I've seen is related to vulcanology.

There was also an article in Discover magazine in the late 90's (which formed the basis for "The Day After Tomorrow" even though it was blindingly obvious that the writers didn't understand any of the article's science) that described some simulations that the author's had developed. They found that the runaway greenhouse effect lead to an ice age, but not from global cooling.

Instead, it lead to an ice age because the melting ice submerged the North Atlantic Gyre, preventing it from transferring heat to New England and Europe, leading to a drastic drop in their temperatures. So while the arctic and sub-arctic zones experience plunging temperatures, the equatorial waters end up getting warmer since the currents that normally convey their heat elsewhere aren't flowing... so the hurricanes get stronger and more frequent.

The buffoons that wrote the movie script somehow got the impression that it was possible for a hurricane to form in the arctic. They should have consulted a 4th-grader about how things tend to move downhill rather than uphill.

It sounds like your reference is to ideas predicated on melting arctic ice, which is not happening. Everything I've read on co2 theories and models only predicts increased warming, never cooling, so since 1998 the climate reality seems to be diverging with increasing acceleration away from any predictions about co2. The solar scientists, on the other hand, have been predicting global cooling given the recent extreme lack of solar activity with very good accuracy: http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/01/peer-reviewed-global-cooli...

Agreed.

The part you misunderstood is that the mini-ice age doesn't come from cooling, but rather from a lack of convection currents -- it's a result of warming.

The same is true of extreme weather; we're getting raftloads of snow out here in the Pacific NW, and considerably colder than usual weather; although it's most certainly not proof, it is consistent with what the weather models predict are side effects of global warming: more extreme weather.

I read a few articles about scientist theories relating to solar activity and global cooling; it's interesting and a bit worrisome to think that we might be getting less heat from the sun, and yet warming anyway. :/

"...yet warming anyway"

Where is the warming right now? Any recent evidence?

Increased CO2 and warming will change weather patterns, including wind and rainfall, so it's possible to have localised cooling while still having a global temperature increase.

The other hypothesis that I've heard is that increased CO2 could lead to more evaporation, which means more rain and snowfall, which gives you increased albedo and then cooling. If there's enough delay in that feedback then you could potentially trigger an ice age/mini ice age, but I haven't seen any modeling so it's hard to say how likely it would be.

>Climate-change denialists

Be careful of using emotionally-charged labels such as "denialists/deniers". You will be destroying your credibility regardless of your arguements.

I always like those "on record" qualifiers when talking about climate.

fastest rate of change on record

Dudes. We only got 150 data points (for arctic ice, probably less than 100) to compare out of, er, 4 billion or so. It's not like the "X-est on record" statements mean a heckuva lot.

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