Climate change is turning Antarctica green, say researchers

So all those coastal cities that started capitalism...LONDON, AMSTERDAM, LISBON, BARCELONA, VENICE, NAPLES - gone.

NYC, BOSTON, PHILADELPHIA, DC, LA, SAN FRANSCISCO, the state of Florida - gone.

I don't see how the warming of the planet can be construed as a good thing. No.

Not only will the warming of the planet release CO2, but that released CO2 will reinforce the warming of the atmosphere - leading to a very dangerous positive feedback loop which may induce a complete loss of the albedo effect of the planet in the winter.

This is a catastrophe, and only the scientifically illiterate fail to realize how desperately Human beings need to act to prevent all the CO2 trapped in the permafrost and deep ocean hydrates from being released - which btw is what is going to happen if large chunks of Antarctica keep melting.

a reply to: Astrocyte

What are you talking about?

The sea level has been rising for over a century, there has been no increase in that rate of rise.

How does this have anything to do with Man Made Climate Change?

link to peer reviewed paper

The important conclusion of our study is not that the data sets we analyze display small sea-level decelerations, but that accelerations, whether negative or positive (we reference studies that found small positive accelerations), are quite small. To reach the multimeter levels projected for 2100 by RV requires large positive accelerations that are one to two orders of magnitude greater than those yet observed in sea-level data

On the other hand, the exposure of land once covered by ice will eventually force us - since moss, plant life, etc, eats Co2, to heavily forest these areas to help extract Co2 from the atmosphere.

Many northern areas will be 'treated' this way, but it'll likely be too slow a process in relation to the continued release of Co2, increasing heat, and churning of the ocean waters that release yet more methane hydrates (which break down to co2).

Re-vegetating the planet is important, but new technologies will likely be developed to absorb C02, like algae blooms (that are controlled and reduced to a 'dry' carbon state).

a reply to: D8Tee

So you're playing the climate skeptic - despite some 97% of climate scientists feeling sufficiently convinced - by a systems analysis of greenhouse molecules - that man-made climate change will drastically effect sea levels?

The world is one big molecular system. The "controls" on sea-levels are largely carbon-dioxide based, and so the ebbs and flows of the planets oceans have always happened in tandem with 'natural events'.

About 100 + feet of sea water is trapped on land - on Antarctica (the majority) and in Greenland. Greenland is destined to melt according to climate scientists, and the western ice shield of Antarctica is also likely to melt.

So to answer your question: the carbon dioxide greenhouse gas system is intimately tied into the hydrological cycle (rain), and both of which are large-scale contributors to "global warming". Increase heat in the atmosphere means more melting. Once ice becomes water, its absorption of light from the sun increases - making it more energetic, hence, why it will also likely contribute to the up-turning of methane hydrates at the bottom of the oceans.

Ok? The larger correlation between Co2 levels in the atmosphere (originally measured at 280 ppm, now at over 400 ppm) and temperature in the atmosphere, will also be responsible for the future rise in sea-levels.

It's a system of relations.

a reply to: Astrocyte
If you want to talk about the Cook paper and the manufactured claims of 97 percent consensus, lets do that.
You'd have to read his whole paper to understand it.
Here's I'll help you along, lets have a look at some of his supporting data.


The Cook study gave papers a numeric rating. Rating #1 was "explicitly endorses and quantifies AGW as >50%". Out of 12,464 papers considered, only 65 papers were in this category (note: this was just based on study participants reading the abstracts, not the full paper).

Based on that statistic alone, one could defend the claim that one half of one percent of papers on AGW clearly claim humans are the chief cause of it. That headline finding would be "less than one percent of expert papers explicitly agree that global warming is anthropogenic."

But maybe it's not fair to include the "no position" papers. Let's exclude those. In that case, the headline finding is "1.5% (65/4215) of expert papers that took some position on global warming explicitly agree that global warming is anthropogenic."

The full list of endorsement categories were as follows:

Explicitly endorses and quantifies AGW as >50% (65 articles)
Explicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimize (934 articles)
Implicitly endorses AGW without minimizing it (2934 articles)
No position (8269 articles)
Implicitly minimizes or rejects AGW (53 articles)
Explicitly minimizes or rejects AGW but does not quantify (15 articles)
Explicitly minimizes or rejects AGW as less than 50% (10 articles)
If we sum the rejection categories 5-7 together, there were 78 articles rejecting AGW, versus only 65 explicitly supporting the consensus. So another defensible headline finding is: "More articles implicitly or explicitly reject AGW than claim more than half of AGW is anthropogenic."

Or we could look at JUST the papers that give an explicit numeric percentage estimate. Comparing category 1 with category 7, we get this defensible headline: "87% of scientific articles that give a percentage estimate claim more than half of warming is anthropogenic". (though it would be important to note the actual number of articles in that case isn't much of a sample: 65 for versus 10 against).

Or if we want to rescue the original Cook number, that can be accomplished by adding a few caveats. Like so: "97% of articles on global warming that take a position on the matter either implicitly or explicitly endorse that human activity is causing some global warming"

Since the vast majority (98.5%) of these papers don't quantify how much warming, that's about as far as we can go.

Appears fairly cyclical to me.

Minuscule snapshots in time regarding geology and climatology are too small of a picture.

800,000 year ice-core record




mg

originally posted by: missed_gear
Appears fairly cyclical to me.

Minuscule snapshots in time regarding geology and climatology are too small of a picture.

800,000 year ice-core record

mg

Maybe we have had many industrial revolutions over time?

Maybe we should address these claims.

However, “Although previous reports suggest slight recent continental warming,” they declare that "our spatial analysis of Antarctic meteorological data" demonstrated “a net cooling over the entire Antarctic continent between 1966 and 2000, particularly during summer and autumn,” when ice melt would be most likely to occur. A study of temperatures and ecosystem response in the McMurdo Dry Valleys indicated a cooling of 0.7°C per decade between 1986 and 2000

icecap.us...

“There’s a lot of year-to-year variability in both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, but overall, until last year, the trends in the Antarctic for every single month were toward more sea ice,” said Claire Parkinson, a senior sea ice researcher at Goddard. “Last year was stunningly different, with prominent sea ice decreases in the Antarctic. To think that now the Antarctic sea ice extent is actually reaching a record minimum, that’s definitely of interest.”

Meier said it is too early to tell if this year marks a shift in the behavior of Antarctic sea ice.

“It is tempting to say that the record low we are seeing this year is global warming finally catching up with Antarctica,” Meier said. “However, this might just be an extreme case of pushing the envelope of year-to-year variability. We’ll need to have several more years of data to be able to say there has been a significant change in the trend.”

www.nasa.gov...

This site may be useful to the OP: nsidc.org...

The series begins in 1979. The maximum depth of the hole that year was 194 Dobson Units (DU)—not far below the historical low. For several years, the minimum concentrations stayed in the 190s, but beginning in 1983, the minimums got deeper rapidly: 173 DU in 1982, 154 in 1983, 124 in 1985. In 1991, a new threshold was passed; ozone concentration fell below 100 DU for the first time. Since then, concentrations below 100 have been common. The deepest ozone hole occurred in 1994, when concentrations fell to just 73 DU on September 30.

earthobservatory.nasa.gov...

In summary, physiological and developmental processes of plants are affected by UV-B radiation, even by the amount of UV-B in present-day sunlight. Despite mechanisms to reduce or repair these effects and a limited ability to adapt to increased levels of UV-B, plant growth can be directly affected by UV-B radiation.

www.ozone-hole.org.uk...

In fact, phytoplankton off the California coast sometimes turn out to be more susceptible to UV-B radiation than phytoplankton in Antarctica, to the surprise of biologists.

earthobservatory.nasa.gov...

There is an additional factor that indirectly links ozone depletion to climate change; namely, many of the same gases that are causing ozone depletion are also contributing to climate change. These gases, such as the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), are greenhouse gases, absorbing some of the infrared radiation emitted by the Earth's surface, thereby effectively heating the Earth's surface.

www.esrl.noaa.gov...

We can go on forever, understanding the climate, and to what extent man impacts the climate, is far too complex to be making any accurate long-term predictions.

Then again, we can always take into account.

The current Holocene interglacial began at the end of the Pleistocene, about 11,700 years ago.

en.wikipedia.org...

Paleoclimatologists have long suspected that the "middle Holocene," a period roughly from 7,000 to 5,000 years ago, was warmer than the present day.

www.ncdc.noaa.gov...

I would like the OP to establish what the exact percentage man is contributing to climate change, especially in relation to co2 levels. 5%, 10%, 99%? Could we have some raw data on this? Faith-based science is not going to convert any non-believers.

a reply to: GodEmperor

We can go on forever, understanding the climate, and to what extent man impacts the climate, is far too complex to be making any accurate long-term predictions.

What does the IPCC have to say about the ability to predict the future?
IPCC TAR Working Group 1, The Scientific Basis:

In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.

Link

a reply to: D8Tee

That's really all the evidence necessary to refute these global warming claims.

It's impossible to determine whether average global temperatures will be warmer, cooler, or about the same 10, 20, 30, or 100 years from now.

Environmental destruction should be the focus, there are far more immediate issues that need to be addressed instead of carbon, the building block of all life.

a reply to: D8Tee

Could we avoid all this, and just address the basic, more fundamental point: all things are molecular - all things are a function of the relations between chemicals? This is an incontrovertible claim. It is the backbone of modern science.

The logic - or what underlies the majority opinion - is this: a simple recognition that there is a dynamical relationship between Human activity (industrialization) and climate change. Agree, or disagree? I don't need a specific figure about what climate scientists think (this is more for people who don't read much, and so don't understand the meaning of climate change) to form my view. My view is a function of being a general-systems theorist who studies the evolution of life and mind - which of course is understood to be a function of the evolution - or co-evolution - of the ecosystem and organic systems which contribute to an ecosystems emergence.

It is just not plausible - scientifically or intellectually defensible - to imagine (or fantasize, more appropriately) that our massive transformation of the lithosphere (earth) and biosphere (trees, oceans, etc) hasn't had any determinative effects on the self-organization of the atmosphere i.e. its heat-content. That is a profoundly anti-scientific and downright ignorant belief; or more basically, an incoherent claim dressed up in "cherry picking" figures that dissociates (ignores, turns attention away) from the basic fact that large-scale industrial activity has changed the planets normal energy-metabolism (i.e. the movement of molecules from sources to sinks across the 4 geospheres).

a reply to: D8Tee

I'm guessing you do n't know what a non-linear dynamical system is.

This language is everywhere throughout the sciences. Probability is the lingua-franca of science. Not facts.

That is not at all to be interpreted, however, as a call-to-ignore or imagine that a high-probability statement about the heating of our atmosphere isn't a very serious claim.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Plant foods good for the planet.

Warming beats cooling.

a reply to: D8Tee

So you don't understand science, then?

You don't think sea-water rises when Co2 concentration increases in the atmosphere? You don't think co2 concentration will increases heat? Or that more heat means more humidity i.e. more water (also a greenhouse gas) and also greater loss of the albedo effect?

You clearly have never read a book into this subject matter, as challenging this point is about as coherent as (although I'm sure you would do this) debating whether childhood abuse increases the use of dissociation as an unconscious defense against dysregulating outside experiences.

a reply to: Astrocyte

My view is a function of being a general-systems theorist who studies the evolution of life and mind

Do you consider humans a product of nature? Wouldn't any changes associated with humans be considered natural?

The main question to climate change, is whether to focus on prevention or adaptation. The climate will change, regardless, the human impact on that change is undefined. I am curious to your proposals on maintaining a climate stasis.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
Climate change is turning Antarctica green, say researchers

That's a picture of Antarctica.

Specifically that's a picture of GREEN ISLAND Antarctic Peninsula.

Did you ever wonder why they gave it that name?

Does anyone here even know the soon-to-be leading cause of greenhouse global warming? Cattle farming.

So for today's lesson in physics, we learn that Methane gas (CH4) is a much more potent product and 15 times more potent at trapping the heat radiated from the sun than Carbon dioxide (CO2). Methane gas, however not as predominate as carbon dioxide is in our atmosphere, is by unit, more destructive. Cattle farms equate for 30% of methane gas emissions. Each cow, on average, releases 40 gallons of methane a day.

That's one aspect. Now lets look at the amount of deforestation to create grazing lands for cattle. On average, a matured tree can absorb up to 45 pounds of CO2 a year. In the Amazon alone, 80% of the deforestation that took place was for cattle grazing. (continue)

For argument sake, the Amazon rain forest is 2 million Sq. miles. 20% of the Amazon has been deforested. Of that 20%, 80% of it is for cattle grazing. That means 320,000 Sq. miles of trees have been cut for cattle farming. It's a vicious circle. Cut the trees that absorb CO2 emissions, and replace them with cattle that emit methane which is more harmful than the CO2 the trees were originally absorbing.

But lets continue.

The average cow adult cow weighs approximately 1,500 pounds. During it's entire lifespan, it will consume 441 gallons of water per pound. So that is a whopping 661,500 gallons of water per life cycle. Even though the large majority of the Earth is blue, clean and safe drinking water is a scarcity, something we in the west take for granted every single day. We forget that wars are fought over water rights. We forget that people have to lug urns and pots for miles to supply their family with daily water.

But my point is, fixing that leaky faucet, or stopping that drip from your hose bib outside wont do much to solve the issue. No more than you choosing a Prius (which emits 100+g/km of CO2) over a Ferrari (which emits 400+g/km of CO2).

Our love for hamburgers will literally drive us to extinction. I hope you're all proud of yourselves!

If it's still green a month or 2 from now I'll be more concerned.

Antarctica is currently entering the dark winter phase with temps below -40C, katabatic winds rolling down from the high snow/ice fields etc so it'll be a miserable place until October or so.

a reply to: Influential358

Guess we'll all just have to start eating mealworms...

Mealworms might seem unpalatable to many, but a new study indicates that they might be the climate-friendly protein alternative of the future