Arctic sea ice

[Old Rocks]

While we are having cold weather, the Arctic is much warmer than normal. Very interesting pattern;

Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis

 

[alan1]

While we are having cold weather, the Arctic is much warmer than normal. Very interesting pattern;

Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis

How Global Warming Can Chill the Planet | LiveScience

 

[Old Rocks]

While interesting, the author made a considerable mistake. The Younger Dryas lasted 1300 years. And the most chilling thing about that period was that both entry into and emergence out of the cooling period was done in the space of a decade. While the Arctic Ocean is becoming less saline, it is doing so much more slowly than it did so at the beginning of the Younger Dryas. That being said, we have already seen a slowdown of the North Atlantic Thermohaline Current. Whether that is related to the current influx of fresh water, or something that is normal cycle, we really do not know at this time.

 

[Old Rocks]

Report from AGU meeting: One meter sea level rise by 2100 “very likely” even if warming stops?
Why so many geophysics-related posts this week? First, all of the major groups that track temperature and climate put out their news-making annual reports this week — and I don’t think the media is doing a terribly good job of focusing on the important issues.



Second, this week, the American Geophysical Union has its big fall conference where all the leading geophysicists go to report their latest research. ClimateProgress has glommed on to a roving reporter on site, Jeff Goodell, author of the terrific book, Big Coal.



Goodell reports that Dr. Eric Rignot, Principal Scientist for the Radar Science and Engineering Section at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “rocked the house tonight (tues) with his talk on polar ice melt”:

The room was packed, SRO, spilling out into the halls. I only caught the tail end of the talk, unfortunately, but he concluded that one meter sea level rise by 2100 is “very likely” if the rate of ice melt just stays the same, leaving unsaid the fact that it is likely to rise even higher if rate of melt accelerates. Said that the way we are studying ice in the poles today is “like climbing Mt. Everest in tennis shoes,” because our monitoring and measurement is so bad.

Rignot is one of the world’s top ice sheet and sea level rise experts (see “The Antarctic ice sheet hits the fan&#8220, so that’s why he packs them in.



If Rignot is right, then Hansen and Gore are right — our target must be 350 ppm or lower (see “Stabilize at 350 ppm or risk ice-free planet, warn NASA, Yale, Sheffield, Versailles, Boston et al&#8220. That’s because, thanks to lags in the climate system, we are going to warm more than another 0.6°C even if greenhouse gas emissions were zeroed out tomorrow — and that will surely speed up all ice loss processes.



One small critique of the AGU meeting: They should put far more of their talks online. This stuff is incredibly fascinating and important to a great many people.

digg_url = ' Climate Progress » Blog Archive digg_title = 'Report from AGU meeting: One meter sea level rise by 2100 “very likely” even if warming stops?'; digg_media = 'News'; digg_topic = 'Environment'; digg_skin = 'compact';

 

[Old Rocks]

The link in the last post doesn't work, so here is another;

Climate Progress » Blog Archive » The Antarctic ice sheet hits the fan

 

[Old Rocks]

And on the same subject;

Climate Progress » Blog Archive » Sea levels may rise 5 feet by 2100

 

[tigerbob]

Livestock farming creates 18% of all the man made greenhouse gases on earth - more than all the cars and other forms of transport put together.

 

[Old Rocks]

Livestock farming creates 18% of all the man made greenhouse gases on earth - more than all the cars and other forms of transport put together.

OK. And how does this differ from the millions of buffalo, wildebeast, and caribou that no longer exist? The CH4 level has increased 250% since 1850. Yet, in that period, these ruminants have ceased to exist in the huge herds of prior times. I fail to see that the present livestock numbers exceed the numbers of those herds. But, mostly due to rice farming, the CH4 has increased 250% up until the last decade. Then it leveled off,as dryland rice farming began to replace wetland rice farming. Until two years ago. And now it is rising fast again, not from direct human activity, but from a feedback effect of the Arctic rivers being now warm enough to start some of the shallower clathrate deposits to begin to outgas.

 

[tigerbob]

OK. And how does this differ from the millions of buffalo, wildebeast, and caribou that no longer exist? The CH4 level has increased 250% since 1850. Yet, in that period, these ruminants have ceased to exist in the huge herds of prior times. I fail to see that the present livestock numbers exceed the numbers of those herds. But, mostly due to rice farming, the CH4 has increased 250% up until the last decade. Then it leveled off,as dryland rice farming began to replace wetland rice farming. Until two years ago. And now it is rising fast again, not from direct human activity, but from a feedback effect of the Arctic rivers being now warm enough to start some of the shallower clathrate deposits to begin to outgas.

I just read it in a book and posted it for fun.

Sorry...

 

[alan1]

OK. And how does this differ from the millions of buffalo, wildebeast, and caribou that no longer exist? The CH4 level has increased 250% since 1850. Yet, in that period, these ruminants have ceased to exist in the huge herds of prior times. I fail to see that the present livestock numbers exceed the numbers of those herds. But, mostly due to rice farming, the CH4 has increased 250% up until the last decade. Then it leveled off,as dryland rice farming began to replace wetland rice farming. Until two years ago. And now it is rising fast again, not from direct human activity, but from a feedback effect of the Arctic rivers being now warm enough to start some of the shallower clathrate deposits to begin to outgas.

I remember back in the good old days of hunting and gathering,
before all this nonsense of farming, cultivation and animal husbandry,
why,
we never had global climate change back then.
Goddamn rice farmers fucked everything up.

 

[Old Rocks]

I just read it in a book and posted it for fun.

Sorry...

Don't be sorry, you were correct in that it presently contributes to warming. However, without the burning of fossil fuels, it was not a factor previously. The ruminants eat grass, carbon allready in the biological cycle, process it to CH4 and CO2. The plants take up the CO2, and the CH4, in an average of 15 years, is oxidized to CO2 and H2O. It is cylclic carbon, as as such, not a danger in itself, for it was already in equalibrium. It is our activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels, and extensive wet land rice farming that altered the atmosphere to the point that it is absorbing much of the suns heat that used to be reflected back to space.

The point here is that carbon neutral cycles are not what is the danger. It is the introduction of seqestered carbon into the atmosphere that presents the danger.

 

[alan1]

I just read it in a book and posted it for fun.

Sorry...

yer penis is showin'

 

[Old Rocks]

I remember back in the good old days of hunting and gathering,
before all this nonsense of farming, cultivation and animal husbandry,
why,
we never had global climate change back then.
Goddamn rice farmers fucked everything up.

Quite on the contrary, a natural climate change destroyed the dominent North American culture during the Younger Dryas. A climate change as a result of man's activity will have a major effect on the present population.

 

[alan1]

Quite on the contrary, a natural climate change destroyed the dominent North American culture during the Younger Dryas. A climate change as a result of man's activity will have a major effect on the present population.

Any type of significant climate change cause would.
Just as it has in the past.

 

[tigerbob]

yer penis is showin'

I noticed that as well. Gunny is gonna ban me now, I just know it!

 

[alan1]

I noticed that as well. Gunny is gonna ban me now, I just know it!

I heard that he is a biased mod.