Since people are wanting to talk about the latest events on the Antarctic Peninsula, this is a post for that discussion.
The imagery from ESA (animation here) tells the recent story quite clearly – the last sliver of ice between the main Wilkins ice shelf and Charcot Island is currently collapsing in a very interesting way (from a materials science point of view). For some of the history of the collapse, see our previous post. This is the tenth major ice shelf to collapse in recent times.
Maybe we can get some updates and discussion of potential implications from the people working on this in the comments….?
Er, most recent is April 5, my typo.
For anyone fond of accidental stereo photography, try using the last two images from that page (fiddle with the size til you can parallel view them, or print them and use a stereo viewer (make one with a pair of simple magnifying glasses, like
http://www.anchoroptics.com/documents/download.cfm?id=35
I don’t know if the apparent slight difference is the sun angle, the satellite angle, or what, but they do read as a stereo pair; to me, some of the cracks in the ice jump into stereo when I get fusion.
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/wilkinsarctic/pub/images/ASA_IMM_1PNPDE20090405_052222_000002522077_00477_37104_3010_100m_img.jpg
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/wilkinsarctic/pub/images/ASA_IMM_1PNPDE20090405_115601_000002422077_00481_37108_311_100m_img.jpg
135 Secular, I don’t have terribly much issue with anything you wrote, but you’re thinking in current terms and I’m thinking in holocaust terms. Mistakes will be made. People will die. Species will go extinct. But even if a billion people die, it’s a mere 14% of the population. Are you proposing that we just let the whole planet bake? If not, then what ARE you proposing? The CO2 genie is out of the bottle and the CH4 genie is coming soon. Given the multitudes of jurisdictions all wanting somebody ELSE to not emit CO2 (There’s no way to reconcile the developed world’s “We emitted it before so WE should be the ones allowed to emit it in the future” with the developing world’s “One human, one carbon allotment.”
Re: Gavin “Don’t be an idiot”,
So much for emptying the stones from our pockets. Certainly such rudeness only encourages rudeness in others.
Gavin, you owe that poster a redaction and an apology, and then you owe one to the group for representing the exact behavior that does the greatest disservice to any meaningful discussion of climate.
Bad boy. Bad, bad boy.
[Response: I would be much happier dealing with intelligent critiques rather than points that are logically incoherent. But sometimes you reach a limit. -gavin]
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.yqres.2008.11.005
Quaternary Research
Volume 71, Issue 2, March 2009, Pages 190-200
The sediment infill of subglacial meltwater channels on the West Antarctic continental shelf
“… Here we present new swath bathymetry from the western Amundsen Sea Embayment, West Antarctica, showing meltwater channels eroded into acoustic basement. Their morphological characteristics and size are consistent with incision by subglacial meltwater. To understand how and when these channels formed we have investigated the infill of three channels….”
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geomorph.2008.04.005
A meltwater origin for Antarctic shelf bedforms with special attention to megalineations
“… The geomorphology of troughs crossing the Antarctic shelf is described and interpreted in terms of ice-stream hydrology. The scale of tunnel channels on the inner shelf and the absence of sediment at their mouths are taken to infer catastrophic drainage. Drumlins on the inner and outer shelves with pronounced crescentic and hairpin scours are also interpreted as products of catastrophic flow. Gullies and channels on the continental slope and turbidites on the rise and abyssal plain point to abundant meltwater discharge across the shelf. Attempts to explain this morphology and sedimentology in terms of release or discharge of meltwater by pressure melting, strain heating, Darcian flow, or advection in deforming till are shown to be unrealistic. We suggest that meltwater flow across the middle and outer shelves might have been in broad, turbulent floods, which raises the possibility that megascale glacial lineations (MSGL) on the shelf might originate by erosion in turbulent flow. This possibility is explored by use of analogs for MSGL from flood and eolian landscapes and marine environments. An extended discussion reflects on objections that stand in the way of the flood hypothesis.”
Keywords: Drumlin; Tunnel channel; Megalineation; Meltwater; Ice stream; Analogy
#146 Mark, I’m not sure exactly what you think I said but my argument was that volcanism was a direct cause and effect of the mass extinction as opposed to releasing co2 which then caused the extinction. the others I mearly listed because you expressed doubt that there even were any other hypotheses out there.
So, let me get this straight. Most posts here are referring to the age of the Wilkins Ice Shelf as 10,000 years old.
Unlike almost all other ice shelves, the Wilkins is in-situ formed over what was once open ocean. It is ringed by one large island on two sides and 4 small islands on the other two sides. Almost all other ice shelves are glacier fed, continuously extending further and further out over the seas until the end “suddenly!!!” breaks off (like such events ever happen slowly).
If the Wilkins is 10,000 years old, then the Wilkins archipelago was open, unfrozen, sea 10,000 years ago. More likely, the Wilkins is less than 7,000 years old, following the Holocene Maximum (when temperature was greater than now) and then Wilkins archipelago seasonal sea ice failed to melt, thus allowing continual buildup from snowfall. Again, the Wilkins is not glacier fed.
Studies of the age of the Wilkins have not been done. Why??
oh, and the Deccan Traps are in India
On the day I read this latest news about the demise of the Wilkins ice shelf, I got the March 2009 issue of Forbes Asia. (I subscribe not because it’s good, but because it’s cheap and I like to get the view from the right!). In an editorial entitled “Human Deniers”, editor-in-chief and consistent climate change denialist Steve Forbes says:
“The fact that the Earth’s average temperature has risen less than one degree Celsius over the past century and that ice masses in various parts of the world are actually expanding seems to have escaped their [modern Malthusians’] notice”.
“With all thy getting get understanding” it says at the top of the Forbes Fact and Comment section. If only Steve would follow his own advice.
!38
hank, the reason creep maps are useful is that they define the limits of plastic flow , and afford insight into mechanisms of crack propagation as well.
The disparity between post glacial isostatic rebound at millimeters per year, and ice shelf tidal strain at tens of centimeters an hour is an obvious one, but creep maps differentiating processes like Herring-Nabarro flow from, for example, Coble creep in solids may help understand what’s _not_ likely to be causing ice fracture , and narrow the search for what is. I’d look to to Mike Ashby of Cambridge, or the U.S. Army cold climate lab for deeper bibliography on ice creep regimes.
It seems that humankind has really done it. Hard to imagine that this planet will have 9 billion humans within fifty years. I expect a population collapse to occur long before 9 billion is reached.
The climate catastrophe combined with the Sixth Great Extinction promises to drive our species to extinction … the final victims of humankind’s recklessness, the Homo sapiens.
Fortunately life does go on without us. Nature is four billion years old because it is quite capable of surviving catastrophes. It has suffered and recovered from worse catastrophes in the past and will do so again this time.
I doubt that the Earth will produce any more paleontologists in the future to marvel about our fossils and wonder about our fate as we do about the dinosaurs.
http://www.flickr.com/dmathew1
Dave, spare us the weepies. Our situation is serious, but your doom and gloom is certainly not helpful.
Despair is not adaptive.
Steve, as Mark says, just waving your hands and suggesting one of the great extinctions was caused directly by a “supervolcano” lacks something — citation, that’s what’s missing; evidence, found and published, for some physical process by which it could occur. Do you think a supervolcano could _directly_ heat the atmosphere, versus causing atmospheric change from emitting CO2 and sulfur? You’d expect some indication in the strata of a heat change in the absence of the chemical change, associated with volcanic dust, a layer in the strata worldwide identifiable by location. Well there are layers, as Peter Ward points out — he’s off on an island somewhere now picking at one of them. But they’re not volcanic. Evidence furthers discussion.
Russell, yes, ice bends and flows. Mauri has described that as well, as filling gaps under glaciers in the wintertime. You can predict certain things will occur due to creep.
But it doesn’t seem to fit the prediction quoted above, SciAm:
“We expect in the next few days and weeks, that the northern ice front will lose between 800 and 3700 square kilometres of ice,” says Angelika Humbert of Münster University, Germany, who has been using ESA’s Envisat probe to monitor the events.”
Gary P, you assert above that studies of the age of the Wilkins have not been done,
and then you ask “why??”
You’re wrong. Why?? Where did you look? Or are you relying on someone somewhere who misinformed and misled you? Who, and why, if so? And will you trust your source again, or find better information?
Think. How do you find the age of an ice sheet? You look at the mud under it.
Try this: pasting your question into the search box for Google Scholar:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=How+old+is+the+Wilkins+ice+sheet%3F
Finds, among other information, this:
Geology; September 2001; v. 29; no. 9; p. 787-790;
DOI: 10.1130/0091-7613(2001)0292.0.CO;2
First survey of Antarctic sub–ice shelf sediments reveals mid-Holocene ice shelf retreat
What can you tell from just the title? First survey; sediments. 2001. Not the last, the first.
What’s been learned since?
From the page there, click on one of several links to find citing articles:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=link:http%3A%2F%2Fgeology.geoscienceworld.org%2Fcgi%2Fcontent%2Fabstract%2F29%2F9%2F787
Who is this Connolley fellow — coauthor on the very first citing paper?
Look at the right hand sidebar.
Look up the other authors and their subsequent work as well.
Kids, this is how it’s done. Go to your library. Ask your reference librarian for help learning for yourself. Don’t rely on some guy on a blog to tell you things, no matter how much you trust your sources for whatever reason.
Several times before I’ve seen a theory of feedback due to post glacial rebound, i.e. the fact that when gravitational loading from a ice sheet is removed, the area begins to rebound. I think the time scales involved are too long. After a near instantaneous elsatic response (probablt pretty small), we have to wait for plastic flow of material in the upper mantle to replace the material pushed away during the time the ice sheet was there. That takes tens of thousands of years, significant rebound rates of areas covered by (or nearby areas) are still ocurring from the end of the ice age. Maximum uplift rates in the northern hemisphere are estimated at about 4mm/year. Note that that is very comparable to the current rate of sea level rise. On the time scale of human induced climate change, this is too slow to have more than a minor effect.
David Benson, found one field study on circulation under that ice shelf; this may be relevant to your suggestion; posted mostly for the point that there are field studies out there to find, just happened on this.
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1408944
Antarctic Science (2007), 19:497-506 Cambridge University Press
Copyright © Antarctic Science Ltd 2007
doi:10.1017/S0954102007000697
EARTH SCIENCES
Sedimentological signatures of the sub-Amery Ice Shelf circulation
“… Lithology, 14C surface ages, absolute diatom abundance, and the diatom assemblage are used as indicators of sediment transport pathways beneath the ice shelf. The transport pathways suggested from these indicators do not correspond to previous models of the basal melt/freeze pattern. This indicates that the overturning baroclinic circulation beneath the Amery Ice Shelf (near-bed inflow–surface outflow) is a more important influence on basal melt/freeze and sediment distributions than the barotropic circulation that produces inflow in the east and outflow in the west of the ice front. Localized topographic (ice draft and bed elevation) variations are likely to play a dominant role in the resulting sub-ice shelf melt and sediment distribution.”
(Online publication October 01 2007)
Xavier, not to worry, if we all thought you were a denialist, you wouldn’t get so many detailed responses. I am not an expert either, but happily post my best effort at responses here because I know there are good people here who correct errors, as a result of which we all learn.
Your post, asking for clarification on something strange posted elsewhere, is very different from what denialists do, posting deliberate falsehoods in the hope that they will stir up anger that they can use as an indication of how irrational their opposition is.
The muppets that are going on constantly about how the oceans are warming please look at this link to the NASA website which is as pro AGW as they come but still shows a cooling trend!!!!!!
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/Fig2b.gif
[Response: Ummm…that shows a warming trend…. – gavin]
#79
Thanks
You guys are wasting your time arguing with, uhem, “Dawn”.
The aim is not to find the truth, but to confuse, to obfuscate, and to delay. That’s why the contrarian arguments keep shifting; as one is disproven, they just move on to another, which is in turn disproved, and then another, and another; and then they start again at the first disproven argument as if it were as fresh as rain.
I fail to see the point in engaging interlocutors such as this.
The problem with the entire edifice of AGW is that someone who the media thinks is in the know who says something that seems confrontational or anti AGW gets media column inches.
http://orangepunch.freedomblogging.com/2009/04/07/another-global-warming-oops-moment-3/8269/
The other people who abound around here who are scientifically inclined to side with AGW can only post stories of future problems a long way off (2050 onwards as no one presently is prepared to commit any single weather act to AGW – that just not science now is it?) and todays weather is not AGW influenced.
Science has the abilty to really tie itself in knots in realtion to the media. Science is carried out by scientists, humans who are trained in a very conservative manner, making no claims and being totally objective in their nature. Science cannnot be anything else but what it is, a slow process and one not really set up to deal with global issues that might ruin the lives of a few billions come BAU for another 50 years.
Fortunately the IPCC goes further in its scientific assessment and is forced to plot the course of the future in a new light. For some reason though the media and the political right is exposing this side of the debate which will never end I am afraid.
RE Gary P 7 April 2009 at 9:14 PM
From what I can gather, the age of the Larsen B shelf was determined after its collapse, and was done by examining sediment under where the shelf was. I haven’t come across any real data on the age of the Wilkins shelf yet (still looking).
Gary P @ #156, can you present some evidence for your claim that “..the Wilkins is not glacier fed.”? Are there no glaciers entering from Alexander Island? I think there is pretty clear evidence from MODIS imagery that there are.
steve: “I’m not sure exactly what you think I said but my argument was that volcanism was a direct cause and effect of the mass extinction as opposed to releasing co2 which then caused the extinction”
Well, OK.
But sulphur compounds last how long in the atmosphere?
NOx?
Particulates?
Decades, tops. Most gone in a few short years.
Long enough to kill so much life?
How long does CO2 last?
Most of it hundreds of years.
Plenty of time to affect the climate.
And you still haven’t shown a shred of evidence how your idea of other exhausts fit the data better than CO2 from volcanoes being the cause.
Please do so, else your incredulity is all the proof you have, and we all know that is no argument.
PS I thought the Deccan Traps were in the south of the USSR. Not quite that far south.
“Studies of the age of the Wilkins have not been done. Why??”
Do you know that for a fact? If you know what you said and have proof of its validity, why is that not proof that people have studied the age of the Wilkins?
And on human terms, the difference between 10,000 and 7,000 years is naff all.
PS if you like, you can jump on the Gravy Train and get a grant to do the study. After all, it pays so well, there’s thousands of scientists all lying their arses off to get a chunk, AND enough to outspend the entire petrochemical industry.
LOADSAMONEY!!!!
So join in and fill your pockets!
“Nature is four billion years old because it is quite capable of surviving catastrophes. It has suffered and recovered from worse catastrophes in the past and will do so again this time.”
Uh, no, that’s like saying my granny survived a heart attack because her son is still alive.
Lawrence: “Secular Animist wrote in relation to coal mines- ” it is wrong to attribute the death of any one canary to the buildup of toxic fumes.”
Okay, maybe I should use another analogy.”
Secular Animist was being facetious. The canary did die, but if you approach that cause/effect like an AGW denialist, there is no proof the canary died from a buildup of toxic fumes: it could have died because a cosmic ray exploded its brain. It may just have died after a heart attack. And anyway, canaries have been dieing for thousands of years, there’s no proof that toxic gases will kill canaries.
If you approached it like an AGW denialist.
Re #155
steve, there is increasing evidence that the major extinctions of the past several hundreds of millions of years are associated with long lived events following major tectonic disturbances that result in release of greenhouse gases, with associated global warming, ocean anoxia etc.
For example the early Jurassic extinction is associated with events (greenhouse gas induced warming) lasting 200,000 years:
Svensen H et al (2007) Hydrothermal venting of greenhouse gases triggering Early Jurassic global warming Earth Planetary Sci Lett 256 554-566
likewise comprehensive analyses shows a coincidence of major tectonic events, and resulting elevation of greenhouse gas levels, are associated with several of the major extinctions of the last 300 million years. Note that CO2 isn’t the only player. Methane is implicated in several of these events (see especially the PETM below) and sulphurous oxides and their effects on ocean acidity and oxygen content are also implicated:
Wignall P (2005) The link between large igneous province eruptions and mass extinctions Elements 1, 293-297
R. J. Twitchett (2006) The palaeoclimatology, palaeoecology and palaeoenvironmental analysis of mass extinction events
Palaeogeog., Palaeoclimatol., Palaeoecol. 232, 190-213
Notice that greenhouse environments are associated with the very delayed (millions of years) recovery of biota following these extinctions;
Fraiser ML et al. (2007) Elevated atmospheric CO2 and the delayed biotic recovery from the end-Permian mass extinction Palaeogeog. Palaeoclim. Paleoecol. 252, 164-175
The lesser extinction associated with the Paleo-Eocene-Thermal Maximum (PETM)55 MYA is probably the best characterised (not surprisingly since it’s the most recent!) example of massive tectonic processes (the opening up of the N. Atlantic as the plates seperated) associated with enhanced atmospheric greenhouse gases, ocean acidification etc.:
M. Storey et al. (2007)Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum and the Opening of the Northeast Atlantic Science 316, 587 – 589
And even the end-Cretaceous extinction (that did for the dinosaurs) seems to have had at least a significant component from massive flood basalt events (that resulted in the Deccan Traps in what is now India). In fact there is increasing evidence that the impact that resulted in the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan post-dates the onset of the extinction by several 100,000’s of years, and the extinction is associated with global warming (including a sudden contribution from the impact into limestone-rich deposits that vapourized massive amounts of carbonate (limestone) back into CO2):
Keller G (2005) Impacts, volcanism and mass extinction: random coincidence or cause and effect? Austral. J. Earth Sci 52 725-757.
Beerling DJ et al. (2002) An atmospheric pCO(2) reconstruction across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary from leaf megafossils Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 99 (12): 7836-7840
and so on…
pete best, #169. Worse, the media want two sides to talk about something, one for, one against. It’s easy to arrange, easy to control and simple for a media studies graduate to do and ***appear*** unbiased. They also want people who say definitive statements, not ones that acknowledge uncertainty. Makes for a punchier “debate”.
Science knows there’s vastly more than one side. It knows that all knowledge is dependent on reality and our measurement of it. There is no definitive statements unless you’re thinking as a media studies graduate rather than a science graduate.
And not having to have any theory beyond “they are wrong” it’s a lot easier for denialists to appear in the media as better debaters. They aren’t worried about lying, they’re starting off from a lie. So they are free. After the first lie, the rest are much easier. Genuine scientists (and this includes those who thing AGW has problems and want them fixed) are trying not to lie. That makes it hard to counter lies from “the other side”.
# 172
The Deccan Flats are in west-central India. It is estimated it released about 500,000*3 kilometers of material.
Yellowstone, the other super volcano you mentioned, is believed to have released 2,500 km*3
The Siberian Flats is estimated to have released 3,000,000 km*3 over a period of about a million years. The Siberian Flats are located in Russia.
Mount St. Helens only released 2.9 km*3 for a comparison.
I believe in my initial comment I covered all the points raised in support of co2 being the cause of the extinction and why they are not definitive. Perhaps you would like to point one out you disagree with? It is obvious from the million years of eruptions that time is not a serious issue.
Perhaps to understand my reasoning better you should read what happened at Laki in the late 1700s. This is a well documented event from a volcano of similar composition which discharged only 14 km*3. I read the results of this eruption and compare the size and duration to the Siberian Flats and conclude that one should first get past the obvious cause of the extinction before they go on to less obvious ones. Don’t forget volcanism is by far the older hypothesis and has yet to be disproved. Can you disprove it?
ref #176 yes Chris, thank you, I believe I have read at least two of those. Interesting papers.
Steve051 @ 168
“I fail to see the point in engaging interlocutors such as this.”
Note that the ‘tactics’ you attribute to Dawn have been employed by Creationists for decades. Understanding that, review the history of Kitzmiller v. Dover, or Edwards v. Aguillard, or the current and ongoing efforts in places like Texas and Louisiana where school boards and legislative bodies are under pressure to promote a non-scientific, pro-creationism agenda, and I think you’ll find an answer to your question.
What Dawn represents is a movement that is inherently anti-science and should be addressed, particularly in a country where science education is far from first class…
People here seem to like analogies. My analogy to global warming causing extinction events after tremendous volcanism events would be like finding a dead man in burnt house and deciding the house fell on him and killed him before determining the smoke or the flames did not. The Siberian Traps would almost certainly have been episodic, but the amount of discharge would be equivalent to turning Mount St Helens on and leaving it on for a million years.
Re #177 http://global-warming.accuweather.com/
Indeed watch this debate at the bottom of the page in two parts, its just the perfect republican way. For anyone studying the subject in the media as well as the science we all know the tactics which is what they are for the attempted discrediting the science, its baloney but the media trumps science when you need to do something about it in the short term anyway.
The recent (this week) sea ice data is becomming harder and harder to refute though, its surface area is ok although lower than the benchmark and its longevity is not good either now and hence it thickness demonstrates that its health is under question. 1 year ice now represents 70% of the ice and 1-2 year old stuff another fraction making 3-5 year old ice only around 10%.
Ok so natural cycles, PDO etc are influencing the problem more than GW but its a resonance that could accelerate the Arctic sea ice demise regardless of who is right to what is responsible for it.
chris,
very nice post.
The larger point with regard to Dawn (who, by the way, removed herself as a strawperson; why is she still being bashed?) and other “idiots” is that, for the foreseeable future, there will always be people all along the learning curve. Gavin’s tired of dealing with them? Then he’d better just quit this blog, because not only are they not going away, there will be more of them.
And calling them “idiots” is not the way to engage them and bring them along.
My hope is that Dawn went off to read “The Discovery Of Global Warming”, as I suggested. If she didn’t, then maybe somebody else read that suggestion, and did.
If we are right, do we really need *everybody* to agree with us? In other words, need we vent with much apoplexy every time somebody gets something wrong and is a wee bit too self-assured about it?
I have abhorred such rolling in the mud for a very long time.
As regards the news, here is what Yahoo (based on an AP report) said about the Arctic ice sheet:
“Arctic sea ice thinnest ever going into spring”
Really? Thinnest EVER? In the entire history of the planet?
Almost assuredly: False.
And we just keep loading the obfuscators’ guns for them…
Re #175: “Secular Animist was being facetious. The canary did die, but if you approach that cause/effect like an AGW denialist, there is no proof the canary died from a buildup of toxic fumes: it could have died because a cosmic ray exploded its brain. It may just have died after a heart attack.”
Okay Mark, I felt he was saying what he did with tongue in cheek, but I missed the comparison to the nit picking reasoning of many denialists.Should have picked that up. Thank you for pointing it out.
In 2008 there were several small earthquakes associated with
weakening of the wilkins ice sheet. If these were harmonic in
nature, then magma may ber moving to the surface under the ice
sheet. what is the current state of seimic activity in this area
now and in the recent past?
jim steven
Walt Bennett @153, Where is it written that we must suffer fools gladly? Pray, what purpose does it serve to be nice to the willfully ignorant? On your blog, you ask what if we have 30 years, rather than 15. First, if we are wrong, it’s much more likely that if we are wrong, it’s much more likely that we have 10 years, rather than 30. Second, whether we have 10 years or 15 or 30 is irrelevant, because we have just wasted 20 years, and we still have yet to address the problem in any substantive way. Your contention that we are focusing too much on countering denialist arguments is also misguided. First, until the denialists have been disarmed to the point where they cannot influence policy, they constitute a significant threat not just to the climate, but to science itself. Second, if you look at the peer-reviewed journals, climate science is continuing to advance by leaps and bounds. Nobody in the mainstream climate community is emphasizing policy at the expense of the science. You need to get out of the blogs and look a bit at the peer-reviewed literature.
I posted a longer response last night but don’t see it, though it may pop into the sequence above later on. Briefly in case it doesn’t, re age of Wilkins, Deech is right (8 April 2009 at 4:51 AM), it’s done by studying the sediment underneath; it was easy to find the first (2001) study in Google Scholar. Can anyone find the source for this misinformation that it hasn’t been studied?? Someone’s wrong on the Internets!
RichardC wrote: “Are you proposing that we just let the whole planet bake? If not, then what ARE you proposing? The CO2 genie is out of the bottle and the CH4 genie is coming soon. Given the multitudes of jurisdictions all wanting somebody ELSE to not emit CO2 …”
I am proposing that we reduce CO2 emissions to near zero as quickly as possible and rely on reforestation and organic agriculture to re-sequester the accumulated excess atmospheric CO2 that is already causing dangerous levels of warming.
As I understand it, you think it is implausible that the various “jurisdictions” of the world will agree and cooperate on an effective plan to quickly phase out CO2 emissions — something that we know very well how to do, and can do relatively easily using today’s technology, if we so choose.
And yet you seem to suggest that the same jurisdictions will be able to agree and cooperate on some kind of gigantic, global geo-engineering scheme by which to manage, forever, the chemical makeup of the atmosphere, using technologies that have not really even been identified yet, let alone being well-understood, let alone being tested and proven effective and without catastrophic “side effects”.
Seems to me that pinning our hopes on geo-engineering is far less realistic than pinning them on emissions reductions.
To add to Pete Best in #182
This from the CC with Walt Meier NISDC and Ron Kwok NASA/JPL last Monday:
Current multiyear ice is 9.8%
That is a record low since 1981
That is 66% lower that the 1981-2000 average
—
It is quite clear that the multiyear ice is in serious decline.
The Arctic loses multiyear ice at about 10% per year. In my opinion the stability of multiyear ice in the past year is likely associated with natural variation leaning in negative phase.
It is reasonable to see based on forcing, and expected changes in natural variation, that the 2008/09 stability of multiyear ice is short term.
Loss of the Arctic ice in the summer melt is reasonable to expect in the near future though no one is going to pick the year. My guess is that we will see it within 10 years but 5-6 years seems to be an approximate target barring a tropic high ejecta mass volcanic event.
#182 pete best
I would agree that current conditions can accelerate the demise of Artic ice. I would not characterize that PDO is more the GW (AGW) rather say that it is natural variation on a different path.
http://www.ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/natural-variability
In this case a path of warming.
I didn’t go anywhere, I have tried to reply without success.
Apparently the host is selective on what gets posted.
I am very informed and have been civil so I can’t imagine what the problem is.
I’ll have to imagine that the more germane and well said arguements a skeptics posts the least likely they will show up.
[Response: Actually it’s the complete opposite. Try posting without the attitude and without tiresome links to long debunked nonsense. – gavin]
Re #190, I wonder if the two are resonating (hence enforcing I might suggest) although that is a hunch and does not relate to anything measured or real. Resonances in nature are quite common, especially in chaos theory as I understand it.
Dawn wrote: “I’ll have to imagine that the more germane and well said arguements a skeptics posts the least likely they will show up.”
You are not a skeptic. It’s very clear that you are ready to unskeptically accept any fake, phony, ExxonMobil-scripted, pseudo-scientific denialist bunk that is branded as “conservative”.
When you start to demonstrate some actual skepticism of that rubbish, instead of unquestioningly and uncritically accepting it, and dogmatically refusing to even look at any information that might contradict it, then you will be on your way to earning the right to call yourself a “skeptic”.
Ray,
I’m quite comfortable with my knowledge of the relevant literature.
None of what you write justifies a science blog author referring to a commenter as “an idiot.”
Why must we suffer rude know-it-alls gladly?
The latest picture is up showing significant movement over the last couple of days.
http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/wilkinsarctic/pub/images/ASA_IMM_1PNPDE20090408_052759_000002622078_00019_37147_6171_100m_img.jpg
“My analogy to global warming causing extinction events after tremendous volcanism events would be like finding a dead man in burnt house and deciding the house fell on him and killed him before determining the smoke or the flames did not.”
Then please tell us where the burnt house is.
You have said NOTHING about what you think exists in explanation of the PETM that works better than climate change from CO2 emissions from those volcanoes.
To use an analogy, you’re saying that the house may have fallen down because it had been burned down and so the man died from something else (but you don’t know what), but haven’t said why it looks like it burned down, and haven’t even asked if the man was inside the house rather than next to it when it fell.
#192 pete best
I would say that resonances certainly can reinforce or defeat each other depending on the scope of influence of the particular resonance. But there are so many resonances and getting them understood/well modeled with clear signal above noise is certainly challenging. That is why I was very interested in a systems/chaos type view as suggested by the idea presented in the Swanson/Tsonis paper (recently discussed).
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/03/with-all-due-respect/
#191 Dawn
I take it you are using the bludgeoning with irrelevance technique of copying and posting irrelevant tired old arguments.
If you want to be relevant, try this.
Take a point you want to make, research it on climate related government, institutional and real climate for responses; in other words, check to see if the argument has already been reasonably argued. Look at the references links to the science and the basis of the arguments.
If it has already been reasonably explained/debunked. Then don’t post it.
Translation: Don’t waste your time with arguments that will waste everyone else’s time in this blog. Do your homework using reason. Just parroting the silly garbage that you find on sites that are ‘guessing’ about climate based on limited scope ‘opinion’, facts out of ‘context’, or simply belief, is a supreme disservice to intelligence and reason.
in 178:
“I believe in my initial comment I covered all the points raised in support of co2 being the cause of the extinction and why they are not definitive”
in #122:
“ref #52 “The End-Permian was caused by CO2 from a super-volcano”
I am a bit perplexed how this hypothesis has gained so much traction that people speak of it as fact instead of one of several hypothesis.”
Now is there ANYTHING in between those two posts by you that explain why CO2 being right is not definitive?
I can’t see any.
You’ve said there were other volcanoes.
You’ve said that they put out stuff other than CO2.
You haven’t said why this other stuff is what could have caused the extinctions and you’ve not said what data supports them being enough to do so.
Not
a
piggin’
thing.
Do you want to try again?
Re #186:
Jim Stevens – You have made a completely unsupported assertion that there were earthquakes in 2008 associated with the Wilkins Ice Sheet. Please provide your source for that factoid.
And then you build upon that claim to where you are hypothesizing that there may be magma moving beneath the ice sheet. That’s a big load for one unsupported claim to carry.
I’m afraid that without some serious supporting evidence your post falls into the ‘not even wrong’ category.