Water On The North Pole

Auckerman writes: "I wonder how much of this can be attributed to man or to normal weather cycles. Per usual, free login is required at the nytimes." This is a sobering dispatch, no matter how skeptical you are of the ability of homo sapiens to model or understand his role in weather patterns. Seems that what used to be a comfortable icefield at 90 degrees north latitude is now swimming in seawater. [Note: Not "0 degrees" as I'd carelessly typed originally; thanks to YU Nicks NE Way for pointing out the boo-boo.] This sentence from the article especially grabbed me: "Scientists at the Goddard Space Science Institute, a NASA research center in Manhattan, compared data from submarines in the 1950's and 60's with 90's observations, demonstrating that the ice cover over the entire Arctic basin has thinned by 45 percent. Satellite images have revealed that the extent of ice coverage has significantly shrunk in recent years."

Re:Hold on there, Chicken Little

There is no reason to think that humanity has had any affect on the weather.

This is one of the most imbecellic statements I have heard on /. all week. We are pumping millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. THIS WARMS THE ATMOSPHERE UP by trapping heat from the sun. It's practically unchallenged in serious scientific circles.

Now you can argue about how much effect this actually has, and you can even make a case for it being a relatively minor effect compared to the Earth's natural cycles. But you can't say that we can significantly change the composition of the planet's atmosphere without affecting the weather and expect to be taken seriously.

Re:Hold on there, Chicken Little

Actually, there are three questions that haven't been settled, at least the last time I was reading the journals a couple of years ago.

(1) Are the computer models accurate? Remember, we're modeling a chaotic system here, and even the best computer models of a chaotic system can be so far off that they're worthless. (Remember the butterfly in Brazil causing thunderstorms in the United States notion from chaos theory? Well, it's impossible for a computer program modeling the weather to also model all the butterflies in Brazil. That's why weather reports are only good for at best 5 to 7 days.)

(2) Is there an actual net increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Granted, mankind has been burning crap for a hell of a long time (think campfires and man-made forest fires and stuff), but we also know that one good volcanic eruption can pump out more carbon dioxide in an afternoon than our modern civilization pumps out in a year. Further, carbon dioxide is not inert; it's the stuff plants breath--and it's unclear if there is more plant biomass now than there is a hundred years ago. (Ironically, due largely to tree planting initiatives and conservation plans in the United States, there are more trees and tree biomass now than there was 50 years ago.)

(3) Are there other gasses we are pumping out which counteracts carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses? That is, are we doing other things which affect absorption of energy into the atmosphere? We presume that the answer to this is true--after all, ancidotal evidence seems to suggest things are getting warmer now than they were 20 or 40 years ago. And even if things aren't warmer, we can at least point to how the weather seems more "energetic"--so that way, even if things are actually cooler this month, it's due to greenhouse warming.

But...is this part of greenhouse warming, and is this part of man's influence on the environment? And is this part of man's influence that is new this century that wasn't true a few hundred years ago when people would burn several logs to have light to cook and read by?

Keep in mind that scientists in the 70's believed that all the polution created by mankind due to our industrial modern age was causing global "cooling", not global warming. And also keep in mind that these same scientists believed that the overall CO2 polution output of a Europe who was practically deforesting entire landmasses just to have wood to build cooking fires and the like was doing less damage than a modern oil-burning electrical power plant.

I'm not saying we're not doing damage. And I'm certainly NOT advocating we continue our current practice of peeing in our drinking water and shitting on our food. I'm just saying that global warming is not as cut and dry as some people say it is.

And before anyone says "we need to do something now before it's too late!", just keep in mind that this is EXACTLY what conservatives have been saying about censoring the pornography on the Internet: that while all the scientific data may still be "out" regarding the effects of pornography on the development of children, we need to do something now before it's too late.

Global Warming Agenda

If anything, this is part of the earth's natural climate change. Everyone knows that the earth's climate changes over the centuries...this is just a normal phenomenon that will continue. One day you will all be complaining that we're making the earth too cold.

Out Of Cheese Error! Redo From Start!

You're forgetting the factors of density (ice has much lower density than water, and that maximum density occurs at 4'C) and composition (ice is a lot purer than sea water).

You're also neglecting that if the North Pole is melting, then the glaciers probably are, too, given that they're a lot closer to the equator. In addition, if the warming is symmetrical, there will be similar melting at the South Pole, which is almost entirely on land.

A third factor to consider is the weather system, which relies on sea-based and air-based currents. Losing the North Pole would screw up sea currents directly, and (because it's a source of reflection and emission of heat, rather than absorbtion) the air currents indirectly.

In short, countries such as England (which rely on the Gulf Stream to be habitable at all!) will become uninhabitable waste-lands within a relatively short space of time.

But is this even man-made? Well, the Earth is a gigantic dynamic system, which will ALWAYS move towards stable points. It's irrelevent, for the purposes of this, as to whether the stable points are termed "strange attractors" (Chaos) or "points of preferred condition" (Gaia). What matters is why the shift is even taking place.

It's indisputable that humans have had an impact on the atmosphere. A =SUSTAINED= impact. Natural phenomina may have an immediate impact that is far greater, but few natural phenomina of that magnitude last for more than a few days, maybe a few weeks. Humans have been sustaining the level of activity which could -potentially- be destabilising for over a century.

What to do? I'm not sure there is anything anyone =can= do, now. If you think in terms of Newton's Laws, F=m(dv/dt), and integrate from the start of the Industrial Revolution to now, and then work out what kind of opposing force you'd need to counter that, you'd probably get something far greater than humans could achieve before the brunt of the effects had already been and gone.

Throw in the fact that we're not dealing with the nice linear system above, but a horribly complex non-linear system with constantly varying inputs from other non-linear systems, and the best guess you could possibly make will be way way out from whatever the reality will be.

IMHO, humanity has seriously blown it, and the best anyone can really do now is create gene banks of all existing species, with sufficient variation to create viable populations. Humanity's greed and obsession with dominion over everything (including other humans) =may= have brought about the end of humanity itself. From the perspective of those who can't realistically make any difference, no matter what the reality turns out to be, the best bet is to act as if. Preserve the preservable, in case the worst happens. If the worst doesn't happen, then you've still prevented the extinction of any species you've got in the gene bank, which may save other species from the worst that can happen to them.

See "Iceball Earth" in recent Scientific American

There's actually a lot of evidence that the entire oceans were frozen (to a fairly deep depth!) in Earth's geological record. It was the cover story of _Scientific American_ a few months ago.

It hardly seems coincidental that the Cambrian explosion (where you suddenly saw a *lot* of *very* strange critters in the fossil record) occured just after the ice pack melted.

As an aside, anyone who thinks that "40 years is too short to show geological change" should MEMORIZE this article. As I recall, they believe that the global icepack which survived for millions of years melted in 100 years! I've seen other articles suggesting that ice ages have also ended (and begun?) in surprisingly short times - decades, not centuries.

This is very scary because it implies that large climatic changes are closer to transitions between meta-stable phases than a nice smooth transition. (Which makes sense, mathematically, since nonlinear dynamics show "attractors" and abrupt transitions between them (or chaotic periods) instead of the mush you get with linearized dynamics.) This suggests there may be hystersis(sp?), and *that* means that our current global warming may force the climate into a new stable state which can't be easily undone.

(For the record, I'm in the camp that thinks that human factors are significant, but the relative lack of volcanic activity for the last century is probably more important.)

Re: Enough Data

Hell, they can't even predict TOMORROW'S weather, how accurate can they be about stuff that happened 100 years ago?

Actually, it's quite a bit easier to predict long term trends than short-term fluctuations. Just like the stock market: up or down almost randomly on any given day, but a safe 10% growth over long stretches.

The thing I wonder about is why anyone would want to ignore this type of data. All we're being asked to do is to not take everything for granted. The effort required on the individual's part is minimal. Now, if the theories of appocalypse are correct, then we've saved ourselves. If not, than we've still saved small pockets of the natural world, which may not be important to human survival but sure are important to our sense of beauty and responsibility.

Re:USA propaganda

Where are you getting this absurd "desert wasteland" idea? You do understand that Earth has a very solid self-regulating atmospheric system, don't you?
Why do you think global warming would turn the planet into a desert? If anything it'll make many areas wetter-- warmer air leads to more ocean evaporation, and more clouds + rain. Plus, the increased cloud cover would reflect more sunlight back into space, thus cooling the atmosphere. Remarkable machine, this earth is. Hell it seemed to be unfazed by global catastrophies in the past (compare 1 degree of global warming with, say, a meteor impact that wipes out 98% of all life, which has happened on a few occasions).

This is nothing. It's not worth reverting back to the stone age to prevent any pollution, whether or not it's our fault.

Look at it this way-- it's just as likely that mankind caused the bizarre weather over the past few years, as it is likely that the Mt Pinatubo eruption caused it. A hiccup in the balance of nature. Familiar with chaos theory? The eruption could've upset the cycles a bit, causing the propogation of the disturbance to increase down the road (like a feedback loop) long after the eruption.
But we will probably never know. Whatever happens, we'll be OK. And Earth certainly will be, because it's already been through much worse.
All I know is these activist groups keep wanting money.

Re:we have no clue

Meteorological stations (the weather guages) in the 19th century were boxes stuck out on poles in the middle of a field. Meteorological stations in the 21st century are boxes stuck out on poles in the middle of an airport tarmac.

This is standard canard. The main component (70%) is measurements over the sea surface. Further, most warming has occurred since 1980 [noaa.gov]-- long after the effect you cite should have appeared. Be careful; the petrochemical industry spends a lot of money spreading such "commonsense" nonsense.

Or what about the ozone hole? [...] And we have no theory today to explain why it subsequently shrunk.

Our lack of understanding is my point, but... this from the 1998 WMO/UNEP Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: "The large ozone losses in the Southern Hemisphere polar region during spring continued unabated with approximately the same magnitude and areal extent as in the early 1990s. [...] These ozone changes are consistent overall with our understanding of chemistry and dynamics."

All I know for sure is that the Mount Pinatubo eruption last decade released more CO2 into the atmosphere in one week then the entire history of human industry.

Pure invention. Here are global CO2 levels [ucsb.edu] as measured at the Muana Loa observatory. No discontinuity due to Pinatubo's 1992 eruption. (You're probably thinking of SO2, but you're still overstating.)

Human-caused CO2 increases are certain. Global warming is certain. The first should cause the second. But conceivably we're missing something, the CO2 increases are not causing global warming, and coincidentally some unknown, natural force is the real cause. It's possible. But odds of even, say, 1 in 10 that we're hosing the planet should perhaps give one pause.

Re:Hold on there, Chicken Little

Yes, we've made the air in Oklahoma more humid, too, I'm told. I was speaking very loosely in that original post. It's well-known that cities have temperatures slightly above the surrounding countryside. This has been true, I gather, as long as we have been able to measure temperatures. That, and Egypt and Oklahoma are examples of changes to smaller or larger microclimates.
By the way, most of North Africa was farmland two thousand years ago, when it was the bread-basket of the Roman empire. I've heard several stories about what happened. One holds that plowing ruined the soil and allowed desertification, another holds that the rainfall patterns changed. I suspect that there is something to both those ideas. I'm not sure how much of this recent change is due to Aswan and other irrigation projects, and how much is due to shifting rainfall patterns. I've never looked into it.

Back to what I set out to say, there are many temperature series out there. Some of them go back over one hundred years. Reliable global temperature series don't seem possible in the pre-satelite era. Yes, many European cities have temperature series going back way further than that, and we have cores from the Greenland icecap which give us hints about the local-to-Greenland weather for hundreds of thousands of years. There is still some controversy about the conclusions to be drawn from them.

Here are a couple of links:
National Ice Coring Lab [usgs.gov] This has some ice core data sets, and some perspective on them.

Global Climate Perspectives System [noaa.gov] These guys have some models and some data up on the web.

Global Temperature Anomolies" [nasa.gov] This is a NASA site...

This [about.com] is a fellow who seems to take it as given that the temperatures have increased (I'm still not convinced), but isn't sure about why.

Here [co2science.org] is a site put up by some folks who aren't convinced by the popular press coverage of global warming.

I know I've found some much more usefull links in the past, but I can't stumble over them right now. One thing that you want to keep in mind is that ( according to researchers I've talked to) being trendy is vital to getting grant money. If the politicians and the bureaucrats they fund are convinced that global warming is politically significant, you base your grant proposals on the idea that global warming is real, even if the really interesting questions start from another premise. Or, you don't get funded. So while I won't say that anyone is whoring for grants, I will say that the scientific debate might be on rather different terms if it weren't for politics.

Not a cause of rising sea level

Before people start posting in panic, even if all the ice at the north pole melted it wouldn't cause sea level to rise... now if the glaciers of Greenland and the south pole all melted, then you can worry.

The reason, of course, is that north pole ice is floating on water so that it's weight is already seen in sea level.

Re:Hold on there, Chicken Little

Here are some things we do know:
the earth used to be a lot warmer, a thousand years ago. That's when the Norse were farming in Greenland, where there is permafrost and desolation today.
The earth has been a lot colder than it is now. Think about the Ice Ages.
The earth was a lot colder than it is now just 500 years ago. Today they call that the mini ice age, and it's what killed off the Norse colonies in Greenland and North America. As recently as 200 years ago, the canals in Holland were freezing over every winter. That hasn't happened for a long time, now. We seem to be coming out of that mini ice age, but slowly and with steps backwards.


Sorry, but we have at least SOME long-range data, that are very preoccupying.

Two British scientists say the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere is higher than for 20 million years. [bbc.co.uk]

Re:we have no clue

Some of us have *tiny* clues. Like the meteorologist that explained why the 20st century was warmer than the 19th, particulularly after 1950. Think about how you got a temperature reading in 1880 and one in 2000. Meteorological stations (the weather guages) in the 19th century were boxes stuck out on poles in the middle of a field. Meteorological stations in the 21st century are boxes stuck out on poles in the middle of an airport tarmac.

Cities are always warmer than the rural country side. Airport tarmacs are warmer than cow pastures. Comparing todays temperature data with that of the 19th century is scientifically invalid. Climatologists have to use that error-prone data because they have no other. And one of them who are honest will admit that their results are inaccurate.

And then you have that little statistic about "Each year of this decade has been one of the top 15 warmest of the century." The pessimist will see this as a sure sign that SUV's and hairspray are destroying the world. The realist will understand that this is predicted by the oldest and widest-held climatalogical model: the climate has cycles. Only 500 to 1000 years ago there was a mini iceage. 10,000 years ago there was a major iceage, and scandinavia is still rising a couple of centimeters each years because it is no longer weighed down by greenland-like ice sheet.

Or what about the ozone hole? Only in the past few decades have we been able to even detect an ozone hole over the antarctic. We had no theory to explain it in 1985. And we have no theory today to explain why it subsequently shrunk. Perhaps the polar ozone holes also follow a climatic cycle? Perhaps there's was an ozone hole every fifty years and we just don't know it?

Excuse me for not taking this news of doom and gloom with religious certainty. Yes, I am a skeptic of scientific reporting. All I know for sure is that the Mount Pinatubo eruption last decade released more CO2 into the atmosphere in one week then the entire history of human industry. Maybe, just maybe, if there really is some global warming, it is due to that volcano rather than the fact that I don't carpool.

Re:Global warming

An interesting question, but --

Think of a glass of water filled with ice. Good -- now think of what happens when the ice melts. Does the cup overflow?

Global warming isn't so much an issue of melting the ice caps and overflowing the oceans onto the cities (I suppose if enough ice melted that was significantly above sea level, that *could* start to happen), as it is a problem of -- when climates rapildly change, what happens to the life that used to live in those specific climates? There are a lot of plants and animals that are particuarly sensitive to climate. When it changes over the course of a few hundred years, the plants can naturally migrate. But plants can't move that fast when climate changes rapidly. (over a period of a few years, let's say.)

Enough data

I agree with the fringe element here.

In sixth grade we were taught that to be "scientific" meant to have an hypothesis, and then remain completely unbiased while you collect data. Thus proving or disproving your theory. Then other scientists were supposed to pour over your findings for a few years, in order to ensure whether there were any flaws in your data.

Now, there are TONS of instances where this didn't work (so don't waste our time replying with examples please), and it's TIME CONSUMING. But, for the most part it works well.

The problem I have with the global warming theory, is that it's data is restricted to the last hundred years or so. Meteorology is a NEW SCIENCE. Hell, they can't even predict TOMORROW'S weather, how accurate can they be about stuff that happened 100 years ago?

So, granted that there's alot of evidence that could conceivably point to human's destruction of our global weather patterns.... however, THERE IS NO CONTROL GROUP TO COMPARE THIS TO! How do we know what the earth's normal weather cycles are in THE LONG TERM?!

We only just got to the North Pole in the 1950s. How do we know it was even there in the 1850s?

Re:Global Warming Agenda

That's what pisses me off about this Global Warming crap. The Earth has been going through hot and cold cycles since it's beginning, and I'd find it odd if this wasn't part of that cycle. How many ice ages have we had thusfar? Do we expect that just because we're here now, they're all done?

we have no clue

Global warming is a certainty. Here is an excerpt from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 1999 climate review:

The Global mean temperature for 1999 was the 5th warmest on record since 1880. The warmest and second warmest years were 1998 and 1997. The top 6 warmest years have been in the 1990's. Each year of this decade has been one of the top 15 warmest of the century.

Certainly, some climate changes happen naturally. However, it would be quite a coincidence if this rapid change had a natural cause at just the time that an obvious man-made cause appears: elevated atmospheric CO2 levels.

If there is one fact to know about the global environment, it is this: we have no clue. Water at the pole is not the first surprise. For decades, we poured out chemicals that appeared safe; they were non-flammable, non-corrosive, non-toxic, non-reactive-- what could be better? Well, in 1974 Molina and Rowland pointed out that these chemicals, CFCs, destroy stratospheric ozone, potentially allowing UV to devastate crops worldwide (not to mention causing skin cancer). Imagine the surprise: sometime totally inocuous like spray deoderant could devastate all life on earth. What a thought. It was like discovering that salsa causes tectonic instability. We had no clue. Since CFCs are stable enough to survive in the atmosphere for decades, estimates are that ozone levels will not return to normal until about 2050. That is, I will probably never live one day on this earth with a normal ozone layer.

But then everyone spent 10 years collecting data and running sophisticated computer models, and we got on top of the problem. Cool, right? Except that in 1985 the massive ozone hole over Antarctica was discovered. Totally unexpected. Didn't show in any computer model. No one had any idea why a hole should appear there instead of, say, over the continental US. After all that study, still we had no clue.

There is no reason to expect the global warming phenomena to be any more predictable than ozone depletion has been. In all likelihood, our CO2 emissions amount to a rampaging charge to fundamentally alter our entire planet. The eventual outcome? We have no clue.

Alright, we were going to keep this a secret...

... but it looks like the cat is out of the bag.

Global Warming is in fact a secret Canadian undertaking - designed to make our vast expenses of frozen wasteland habitable again.

I can't wait to buy my cottage up on the cozy northern shore of Ellesmere Island.

=)

--

Hold on there, Chicken Little

Before we get our knickers all twisted, let's recall that we're comparing data from the 50' and 60's to the present. That's a (roughly) 40-year sample! That's nothing; the earth has been here for 4(10^9) years, the Arctic ocean has had its present form for something on the order of 100(10^6) years, and we have 40 years of data, starting about 40 years ago. We know nothing about what might reasonably be called normal up there.

Here are some things we do know:
the earth used to be a lot warmer, a thousand years ago. That's when the Norse were farming in Greenland, where there is permafrost and desolation today.
The earth has been a lot colder than it is now. Think about the Ice Ages.
The earth was a lot colder than it is now just 500 years ago. Today they call that the mini ice age, and it's what killed off the Norse colonies in Greenland and North America. As recently as 200 years ago, the canals in Holland were freezing over every winter. That hasn't happened for a long time, now. We seem to be coming out of that mini ice age, but slowly and with steps backwards.

There is no reason to think that humanity has had any affect on the weather. If there is a warming trend today, it is most likely a return to the between-ice age conditions of 1000 years ago.

Re:we have no clue

It just kills me to see the way people assume that 'global warming' (that is, warming on a global scale) translates into universal warming at every point on the globe. Um, no. Not even close. "Global Warming" can, in fact, lead to much harsher winters. And not every spot on the earth has to expeirence absolute warmer temperatures over the previous year, each and every day. Yeesh.

- Spryguy

Re:Global Warming Agenda

What sort of scientific proof do you have of this? I'd like to quote the parts realted to global warming and seas from the "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity," a document which 1,575 of the world's scientists, including more than half of all living Nobel prize winers:

"Introduction
Human being and the natural world are on a colision course. Human activities influct harsh and often irreversible damage on the environment and on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practicesput at serious risk the future that we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision out present course will bring about.

The Environment
The environment is suffering critical stress:

The Atmopshere
Stratopheric ozone depletion threatens us with enhanced ultraviolet radiation at the earth's sruface, which can be damaging or lethal to many life forms. Air pollution near ground level and acid precipitation, are already causing widespread injury to humans, forests, and crops.

Water Resources
Heedless exploitation of depetable groundwater supplies endangers food production and other essential human systems. Heavy demands on the world's surface waters have resulted in serious shortages in some 80 countries, containing 40 percept of the world's population. Polution of rivers, lakes, and groundwater further limits the supply.

Oceans
Destructive pressure on the oceans is severe, particularly in the costal recions, which produce most of the world's food fish. The total marine catch is now at or above the estimated maximum sustainable yield. Some fisheries have already shown signs of collapse. Rivers carrying heavy burdens of eroded soil into the seas also carry industrial, municipal, agricultural, and livestock waste- some of it toxic."

I'm sorry, but you're opinion of the condition is shortsighted and is too dependnent on the "oh, if there's a problem, technology will fix it someday" mentality. Unless we change our ways and reverse that mentality, we're going to end up going the way of the dodo, and taking quite a few other species of plants and animals down with us.

Perhaps that is just natural selection at work- wiping outselves out with the power of our own ignorance. But as intelligent beings, we have the ability to keep ourselves in check, sustaining our own lives.