NASA Study: Arctic Sea Ice Loss due to "wind patterns"

Frankly, your subhead "global warming not implicated" is a bit disingenous, given that we have no access to the full text article or the conclusions it makes, and that the NASA press release makes no such exclusion.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TimBikes @ Oct 31 2007, 03:04 AM) [snapback]532800[/snapback]</div>

This sounds like another attempt to say global warming isn't happening or that it's a natural phenomena.

It's interesting that there is virtual unanimity in the scientific communtiy that humans are driving global warming (hundreds of peer reviewed studies saying humans are driving it, zero saying we're not). And yet, many people believe it's not happening. Why? This speaks to how easily people can be misled. The average citizen doesn't have time to study complex issues. So they take the opinion of those they trust without thinking. This is called blind faith. It's also what we did in the dark ages. Religion and superstition came before science. People who said the Earth revolved around the sun were put to death.

Sadly, it seems we're slipping back to this irrational behavior. You don't simply dismiss the scientific community as being liberal if they say something you disagree with. That's childish, irrational behavior.

We must move beyond blind faith to make our world a better place not worse. That means thinking for ourselves. Putting aside the science, common sense is enough to figure out the logical position on global warming. We know we're pulling literally millions of years of carbon out of the ground and putting it in the sky as a known heat trapping atmospheric gas in a short period of time. Taking the default position that this is probably OK is an insult to logic. Assuming that it's OK to massively alter the system that keeps us alive is crazy and hugely irresponsible to our children.

Saying global warming is a natural phenomena is an illogical red herring that only a non-thinking person could buy into. Global warming opponents (ie: those that have been duped into believing the self-serving arguments of Exxon and others) say that warming and cooling cycles have always occurred. Therefore, today's warming is natural. That's insane. It's two separate issues. Of course warming and cooling cycles are natural. The separate issue is, are humans accelerating this natural trend. If we pull millions of years of carbon out of the ground and put it in the sky as CO2 in a short period of time, it is logical to assume we are.

Beyond that, the smartest people in the world on this issue say we are driving global warming.

It's time to end the insane, childish, stupid debate about whether or not global warming is happening. Only someone who is not using their mind could say it isn't happening. We need to move into decisive action to protect our children and do what's right for all of human society.

 

I agree with the other posters, but let's not beat up the OP too much. It's an interesting study. My first thought was whether the shifting winds are a cause or an effect. As the other posters have said, the change in winds could be from warming, but there is no way to tell in the short term. That's what is so frustrating about global warming. We all know the earth is warming, but it's impossible to quantitatively list all of the contributions. What I wouldn't give to jump forward a few thousand years and look back, just for a bit.

Tom

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TimBikes @ Oct 31 2007, 11:16 AM) [snapback]532957[/snapback]</div>

You need to define "typical" and "many".

Just looking at this thread alone, how "many" of the responders used those words???

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(zenMachine @ Oct 31 2007, 11:56 AM) [snapback]532973[/snapback]</div>

Well, nyprius used childish and irrational, and Tim added denier. So one post Tim was responding to used two of the three words he found used by the typical and many. Or wait...does this post count now too? :blink:

 

I am the first person to defend the findings of the IPCC and others with respect to the existence of global warming and its anthropogenic origins in our globally significant carbon emissions.

Having said that, I think that this is a good example of possibly jumping to conclusions about local events being tied to global observations, essentially on a hunch. While I believe that we have well established the case for AGW, we still suck at predicting the future or understanding local phenomena. In this regard I agree completely with folk like Dyson and Christy.

As an example, I still get nervous when I hear over and over that the increase in hurricanes are due to global warming. It sounds plausible. More energy in the system means more hurricanes. But we don't really know. Hurricanes are weather, not climate. In fact, they are the extreme cases of weather. They are outlier events, on the tail of the distribution of weather events. That sort of thing is most difficult to predict or tie in any compelling way to global effects.

The Arctic ice loss is another example of a convenient, plausible consequence of global warming, but not proven. It could be weather. What if in a few years the weather changes and the Arctic ice starts building back up? Then those touting it to support taking action on global warming will make all of us AGW folk sound a little silly. Same thing for hurricanes. There might be some five year span in the future with far fewer hurricanes than the previous five years. Again using them as something to point to, which is very convenient due to the very tangible effects of Katrina, will again make those of us calling for action lose credibility.

We need to stick to the facts, however un-sensational they might be.

Now a preemptive response to the inevitable question: "Well, if we can't predict the future, why should we spend resources mitigating an unknown effect?" I say that that's a really, really lousy excuse.

Sure, let's wait until our observations and models do a really good job at explaining and predicting, and then we'll do something. (And by the way, let's not invest the requisite amount of money getting more and better observations from orbit, which is the state we're in today.) Our models will get better, but we will never have a truly satisfying predictive capability. We will wait forever, and that will be too late to take action. In fact, it's already a little late to take action today, but we can still have a big impact.

Lack of prediction has not in the past, and certainly should not in this case prevent us from taking action. Do we have detailed models that distinguish the effect of invading Iraq vs. not invading Iraq? Heck no. Yet we invade Iraq anyway, at tremendous expense. Or similarly decide to not invade Iran or North Korea. Even our information of the current state of those situations is flawed, let alone our complete inability to predict the outcomes of our decisions. Yet we must and we do make decisions. And despite my unfortunate choice of the Iraq analogy, we as humans tend to do pretty well making risk decisions on incomplete data.

Inaction is a decision on action. If someone says we don't know enough to do something about it, then it's obvious that we also don't know enough to not do anything about it either. This is where we as humans use our innate skills and nowadays a little calculation in order to manage risk. We need to decide how much we're willing to invest in insurance against an uncertain event. Considering the magnitude of the possible impacts of global warming, and even if you assume a low probability of occurrence, then a simple actuarial calculation would show that we should be spending orders of magnitude more resources on reducing carbon emissions than we are today.

I'm tired of the discussion in absolutes: "Global warming is anthropogenic." "No it isn't!" "Yes, it is." And: "We'll lose most of Manhattan in thirty years to sea rise." "No we won't." "Yes we will!". Etc., etc. We need to talk about risk (consequences times probability) and measured responses. The absolutes will never be resolved (until some of them occur), so waiting for the answers to those questions will force us to the action of no action. That's exactly what the antibodies against change, which are considerable and very powerful, want us to do. Let's not fall into their trap.

 

Well said, madler.

 

Thanks Madler. I've been thinking and stating it (GW/AGW) in terms of risk and risk management for a while, but you stated the case quite well... better than me for sure.

 

I am at the AGU this week, and I went to a very interesting talk yesterday by Mark Sereeze about the Arctic ice loss. While my comments above are still reasonable in general, this particular instance sure is starting to look like a real global warming tipping point. Indeed the next few years will be telling, but my bets are firmly on a continued, steep trend downwards in the September ice cover.

It turns out that this is not just a one-time event, but a result of simply how thin the Arctic ice cover has become over many years. It is now much easier for it to lose vast areas, which results in more heat absorbed by the dark ocean that would have otherwise been covered by the white ice, which results in more heat emitted when ice is supposed to be building back up, ..., and so on.

All of the models in the past have pointed to the Arctic as the canary in the coal mine for global warming. Well, I think the canary just started to keel over.