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Dropline
Mountain climber
Somewhere Up There
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Really Wes, without meaning any personal offense, it seems like you have a wildly dystopian world view which leaves you swirling in a cauldron of hate and contempt from which you spew forth a bilious false omnipotence.
Lighten up. It's Friday. Try to enjoy being alive.
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Dropline
Mountain climber
Somewhere Up There
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Really, I meant both.
You're full of yourself.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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And yet the physics doesn't care at all about our political theories or talking points or what we don't want to pay. Doesn't care whether anyone believes in it or not.
This week in the Arctic, one place that I watch, sea ice reached its lowest extent for this time of year in the satellite record. A couple months to go before a September minimum is reached, which might or might not beat the 2007 record but will certainly be low. The big system is changing.
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Dropline
Mountain climber
Somewhere Up There
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Chiloe, personally I have no doubt the planet is warming. I have some doubt people are the principal driver but defer to conclusions drawn by learned scientists of good intention like you and Ed.
However the much thornier questions are, what will the consequences be and what should and can be done about it? It seems like we are faced with choosing the lesser of several evils.
Unfortunately the entire debate about AGW and what to do or not do about it, here on ST as well as across the country, has settled along partisan lines and as with all things partisan, ideologues drive the debate, and no lasting political consensus is ever reached.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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"Fear" itself, the very concept of fear, is a big part of any discussion.
With the Chief, he readily admitted he was afraid of some kind of carbon tax he might have to pay, and since he is on government income and government healthcare, this is a big deal to him, and likely a VERY big reason of his flat denial of the science of CC.
Fear makes people irrational, especially fear of change, fear of the unknown.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dropline,
has settled along partisan lines and as with all things partisan, ideologues drive the debate.
On that, I sadly agree. It seems unfortunate that partisanship on this issue so strongly shapes beliefs about physical reality, though. I could quote myself on this point,
Most people gather information about climate change not directly from scientists but indirectly, for example through news media, political activists, acquaintances, and other non-science sources. Their understanding reflects not simply scientific knowledge, but rather the adoption of views promoted by political or opinion leaders they follow. People increasingly choose news sources that match their own views. Moreover, they tend to selectively absorb information even from this biased flow, fitting it into their pre-existing beliefs. This “biased assimilation” has been demonstrated in experiments that find people reject information about the existence of a problem if they object to its possible solutions.... [many people are] basing their beliefs about science and physical reality on what they thought would be the political implications if human-caused climate change were true.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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To pretend global warming isn't a political and economic issue is ludicrous.
Call me ludicrous. I pretend that it actually has to do with warming & stuff.
Doing something or nothing about it has been turned into a wedge issue, however, especially in the US.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Doing something or nothing about it has been turned into a wedge issue, however, especially in the US.
Yeah especially in the US, because few people outside the US give a rat's ass (and the number of people in the US who do is declining--most now see a certain amount of CG as inevitable and not necessarily a bad thing.)
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jul 12, 2011 - 09:08am PT
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Local conditions at the North Pole are just that, local conditions at the North Pole. But today's view from the two NOAA webcams set out at the North Pole in April provides quite a visual to go with those Arctic-wide graphs.
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dirtbag
climber
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Jul 12, 2011 - 10:54am PT
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Unless you live on Planet Denial...
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jul 12, 2011 - 11:54am PT
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If Chief read either Navy records or science, instead of those blogs that feed him talking points that suit his politics, he'd learn more about what those cold war sub excursions found in the Arctic -- which was much icier in the 1950s, 60s, 70s or 80s than it is today.
The first such story comes from the first nuclear sub, the Nautilus, which made the first transit of the Arctic Ocean (submerged) in 1958. On the sub's first attempt (sailing from Pearl Harbor), she was turned back by deep-draft ice in the Chukchi Sea around June 19.
Believed to be the most direct course, the intended route (to take Nautilus north through the Bering Strait, west around the Siberian side of St. Lawrence Island, and then into the Chukchi Sea, a shallow, 400-mile expanse) would ultimately deliver the boat to the Arctic Basin. However, in early June the ice was far too hazardous for Nautilus to successfully navigate. At times, there were only 45 feet of water below and 25 feet above Nautilus. Nautilus passed under a huge floe that was 30 feet below the surface.
Capt. Anderson’s dilemma was a difficult one: if Nautilus encountered thicker ice, she wouldn’t make the passage. The captain arrived at the decision to keep his crew and boat safe for another journey by turning south and eastward, in the direction of the Alaskan side of St. Lawrence Island. Careful threading through the Strait, in waters so shallow that she could only go around rather than under ice, allowed Nautilus to safely enter the Chukchi Sea. Nautilus met a mile-long ice floe that projected more than 60 feet below the surface in the Chukchi Sea. Nautilus cleared it by a mere 5 feet while moving at a crawl. Anderson recalled in Nautilus 90 North, “I waited for, and honestly expected, the shudder and jar of steel against solid ice.” Capt. Anderson realized that this initial effort had failed and the only way home was south.
http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/usw/usw_summer_09/nautilus.html
After returning to Pearl Harbor to wait a month for some melting, the Nautilus sailed again on July 23, threading carefully through deep ice in shallow water, and reached the North Pole on August 3.
So, ice floes 60 feet deep around the Bering Strait on June 19. Here's the view from June 19 this year. The Bering Strait and entrance to the Chukchi Sea are at about 11 o'clock in this Cryosphere Today image, ice free. In the middle of that open-sea area you can make out St Lawrence Island, which was so hard to get around in 1958.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jul 12, 2011 - 12:04pm PT
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The Nautilus story is just one data point, of course. Here's an abstract from the study that brought together all the newly declassified data from Cold War submarine excursions (Kwok & Rothrock 2009, in Geophysical Research Letters [emphasis added]).
The decline of sea ice thickness in the Arctic Ocean from ICESat (2003–2008) is placed in the context of estimates from 42 years of submarine records (1958–2000) described by Rothrock et al. (1999, 2008). While the earlier 1999 work provides a longer historical record of the regional changes, the latter offers a more refined analysis, over a sizable portion of the Arctic Ocean supported by a much stronger and richer data set. Within the data release area (DRA) of declassified submarine sonar measurements (covering ~38% of the Arctic Ocean), the overall mean winter thickness of 3.64 m in 1980 can be compared to a 1.89 m mean during the last winter of the ICESat record—an astonishing decrease of 1.75 m in thickness. Between 1975 and 2000, the steepest rate of decrease is ~0.08 m/yr in 1990 compared to a slightly higher winter/summer rate of ~0.10/~0.20 m/yr in the five-year ICESat record (2003–2008). Prior to 1997, ice extent in the DRA was >90% during the summer minimum. This can be contrasted to the gradual decrease in the early 2000s followed by an abrupt drop to <55% during the record setting minimum in 2007. This combined analysis shows a long-term trend of sea ice thinning over submarine and ICESat records that span five decades.
http://rkwok.jpl.nasa.gov/publications/Kwok.2009.GRL.pdf
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jul 12, 2011 - 12:50pm PT
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Pics that I posted, speak for themselves indicating a North Pole free of ice during the dates indicated.
There's a lot of ice in your pictures. Do you know what a "lead" is?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jul 12, 2011 - 01:17pm PT
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I am very familiar what a "lead" is.
Apparently not.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jul 12, 2011 - 01:20pm PT
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Haven't posted a graph for awhile, but apropos of the topical topic, here is a graph of Arctic sea ice area for July 10 of each year from 1979 through this week. As I said earlier, this year will be interesting as the melt season progresses.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jul 12, 2011 - 01:23pm PT
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Meanwhile around the Antarctic ... although land ice in West Antarctica has seen strong warming effects, that's not been the case with respect to sea ice so far. Not much of a trend, but as up north, this year might be interesting.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jul 12, 2011 - 01:30pm PT
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Back to submarines briefly, from NSIDC:
while some submarines in the Arctic have features to help surface through the ice, they still cannot surface through ice that is greater than three meters (nine feet) thick. Submarines that are not ice-strengthened can only surface through ice that is less than one meter, (three feet) thick. Submarines must be able to quickly locate leads or thin ice to surface quickly during emergencies, to send messages, or to launch missiles.
The ice in Chief's last pic looks about half a meter thick; his other shots show subs surfaced in leads.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jul 12, 2011 - 01:42pm PT
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How about a line indicating the "mean" for the above chart please.
Go ya one better, the graph below shows all data points as deviations from their 1979-2011 mean (7.31). I also added the least-squares trend line.
It's pretty hard to hide the decline no matter how you graph it, although some folks have strenuously tried. The linear trend shown above actually seems too "optimistic," as I and others have written elsewhere -- real decline has become steeper than linear.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Jul 12, 2011 - 01:47pm PT
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Prove that your photo's are not leads.
I don't even think the water in "my" webcam shot is a lead, those just look like melt ponds to me! Read what I wrote when I posted those, they aren't proof of Arctic warming.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Jul 12, 2011 - 01:56pm PT
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On the other hand Chiloe, who I think publishes scientific findings in peer reviewed journals and spends a good deal of time trying to understand trends in polar sea ice, posted graphs that show clear tends over ~30 years and cover the entire Arctic and Antarctic.
Well in the 30 seconds I spent reading this, looks like there is NOT a clear trend for the Antarctic. Seems like there's always going to be some "trend" in warming or cooling over any given time frame--hard to say a "trend" in one polar region but not the other means much for the entire planet.
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