What will climate deniers do when man made pollution melts the ice caps?
What is the tipping point for climate deniers? I use climate deniers and not climate skeptics because climate skeptics give skepticism a bad name. As more evidence that the planet is rapidly warming due to our pollution keeps announcing itself by melting before our eyes...
Arctic Sea Ice Shrinks to Smallest Extent Ever Recorded
Sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk to its smallest extent ever recorded, smashing the previous record minimum and prompting warnings of accelerated climate change.
Satellite images show that the rapid summer melt has reduced the area of frozen sea to less than 3.5 million square kilometers this week—less than half the area typically occupied four decades ago.
Arctic sea ice cover has been shrinking since the 1970s when it averaged around 8 million square kilometers a year, but such a dramatic collapse in ice cover in one year is highly unusual.
A record low in 2007 of 4.17 million square kilometers was broken on August 27, 2012; further melting has since amounted to more than 500,000 square kilometers.
The record, which is based on a five-day average, is expected to be officially declared in the next few days by the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado. The NSIDC's data shows the sea ice extent is bumping along the bottom, with a new low of 3.421 million square kilometers on Tuesday, which rose very slightly to 3.429 million square kilometers on Wednesday and 3.45 million square kilometers on Thursday.
Scientists predicted on Friday that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer months within 20 years, leading to possibly major climate impacts. "I am surprised. This is an indication that the Arctic sea ice cover is fundamentally changing. The trends all show less ice and thinner ice," said Julienne Stroeve, a research scientist with the NSIDC
...when do the climate deniers get removed from the debate and left outside? They are the creationists at an evolution lecture using the same 'smoking hasn't been proven to cause cancer' type science arguments.
What will be interesting is tracking the immediacy of these changes and watching to see how the climate deniers attempt to spin it. The massive loss of sea ice may have a direct impact on this years European winter as the heat transfers in autumn...
Arctic sea ice melt 'may bring harsh winter to Europe'
The record loss of Arctic sea ice this summer may mean a cold winter for the UK and northern Europe. The region has been prone to bad winters after summers with very low sea ice, such as 2011 and 2007, said Jennifer Francis, a researcher at Rutgers University.
"We can't make predictions yet … [but] I wouldn't be surprised to see wild extremes this winter," Francis told the Guardian.
This year's ice melt has broken the 2007 record by an an area larger than the state of Texas.
Polar ice experts "thought that it would be many years until we again saw anything like we saw in 2007", said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.
The unprecedented expanse of ice-free Arctic Ocean has been absorbing the 24-hour sun over the short polar summer. The heat in the water must be released into the atmosphere if the ice is to re-form this autumn. "This is like a new energy source for the atmosphere," said Francis.
The rest of us have to prepare for the realities of a global warming future, climate deniers are holding onto a fantasy because the inconvenient truth of climate change affronts their cultural sensibilities. You honestly get the feeling that climate deniers would prefer to believe global warming is a Greenpeace hoax than agree with hippies.
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posted by Bomber @ 7:32 pm
4 comments
4 Comments:
While true, this post is disingenuous because it COMPLETELY ignores the FACT that Antarctic ice coverage hit a new HIGH for this time of year, and eighth highest daily reading EVER. i.e. while the Arctic is shrinking, Antarctic is growing. So... what? Neither prove anything. I still remain firmly in "sceptic" (and definitely NOT denier BTW) territory.
You can plot your own chart from the raw data (despite the url title it goes all the way to sept 2012):
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/timeseries.south.anom.1979-2008
Still doesn't affect the Northern winters though - Arctic sea ice shrinkage does.
Nitrium,
That does not explain the extreme temps on the Nth american continent. You say you are a skeptic and not a denier. What is the difference please? [not rhetorical]
What event would shift you to say "Shit! it is happening"?
@MCA
A sceptic is simply someone who is not entirely convinced with that "evidence" we are presented with is accurate and complete. Bomber's post is a case in point: it is clearly presented with a biased viewpoint because it has cherry picked data to support the viewpoint of the author - I could just as easily cherry pick what I wrote in my previous post to support the EXACT OPPOSITE viewpoint. Cherry picking data to "prove" a hypothesis is NOT science. Given the moneyed interests involved in "preventing" climate change, I take everything I see/read on this topic with a massive grain of salt. So far I have not yet seen what I consider CONCLUSIVE evidence of anthropomorphic climate change. Yes the climate is changing, but seriously that is absolutely NOTHING new - it has both been considerably hotter and colder than now, and CO2 levels have been considerably higher and lower than they are now, and their is COPIOUS evidence to support that!!!
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