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from the did-they-expect-to-find-handwarmers? dept.
OSLO (Reuters) - Natural swings in the Arctic climate have caused up to half the precipitous losses of sea ice around the North Pole in recent decades, with the rest driven by man-made global warming, scientists said on Monday.
The study indicates that an ice-free Arctic Ocean, often feared to be just years away, in one of the starkest signs of man-made global warming, could be delayed if nature swings back to a cooler mode.
Natural variations in the Arctic climate "may be responsible for about 30–50 percent of the overall decline in September sea ice since 1979," the U.S.-based team of scientists wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Sea ice has shrunk steadily and hit a record low in September 2012 -- late summer in the Arctic -- in satellite records dating back to 1979.
(Score: 1, Troll) by bradley13 on Tuesday March 14 2017, @10:44PM (35 children)
As I said, a first step. Now, it's 30% to 50%. Next year, it will be raised.
Is the planet warming? Of course it is.
Is CO2 a greenhouse gas? Sure it is, if a rather minor one.
Is the climate dominated by positive feedback, so that a minor greenhouse gas has huge effects? Nope, that doesn't - and never has - passed the sniff test.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @10:48PM (4 children)
Wow, not sure what you are sniffing but you probably should stop.
(Score: 1, Troll) by gottabeme on Wednesday March 15 2017, @07:58PM (3 children)
Keep digging your hole. People are finally recognizing the childish hypocrisy of the leftist mobs. You're digging your own grave, and you aren't even smart enough to realize it. You probably still think Trump won because "racism."
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:27PM (2 children)
Because simple graphs of temperature increases matched to the timeframe of major industrialization are too difficult for you? Contradicting decades of research with gut feelings of "no it cannot be!" and tons of corporate sponsored shill science are all you need!! The hole is being dug by the AGW deniers and sadly we are all going to fall into it regardless of political viewpoints.
Now, you and your fellow deniers (or whatever you wanna be called) may have good points. AGW may be manipulated by corrupt people to line their own pockets, but that goes for pretty much any issue. If you fine folks would be good enough to acknowledge the science, THEN we could have a discussion about fiscal policies and good/bad regulations.
But, if you insist on saying the huge mass of scientific data is wrong and behave like children by just screaming "you're wrong its a liberal conspiracy with China to destroy the US!!" then expect only dismissive derision. In fact I'm surprised so many users take the time to rationally respond to each point. I am NOT surprised that rational points are ignored and the retort is usually pseudo science or simply bad science interpretation.
Wasn't the rapture supposed to have happened by now anyway?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @09:29PM (1 child)
To be fair this is a usual way to confuse people who only take a cursory look at things. Unless someone predicted the relationship between x and y should be similar to what the graph shows beforehand, there is not reason to take whatever explanation people come up with seriously.
This trick is actually so old it was used on me in gradeschool by a thousands-year old institution. Look at how you relieved you feel! Right after you confessed your sins for the first time, it must be God's love!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @09:49PM
Scientific data != catholicism
Yes graphs and statistics can be used to confuse and mislead people, that is what critical thinking is all about. If all you've got is "it could be some complicated trick!" then I'll just move along and ignore you :) You can tell this is not a trick because we have actual satellite photos showing the receding ice and weather stations recording the steadily increasing temperature. Just because someone made the effort to put the data into an easy graph does not make it propaganda. Please don't give bad arguments any legitimacy, it only causes them to double down like they just won the lotto. Scientific nuance is generally lost on deniers, except when it can be used to cast doubt and skepticism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @10:51PM
All aboard the clueless train!! CHOO CHOOOOOO
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 14 2017, @11:17PM (3 children)
Is CO2 a greenhouse gas? Sure it is, if a rather minor one.
BILLIONS of tons per year of something minor, is no longer minor.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday March 14 2017, @11:56PM (1 child)
And thanks to the dickheads who leverage "climate change" excessively to justify giving more money to unelected bureaucrats and authorizing unfettered immigration of savages (I didn't know riot fires were good for the environment), we have people who outright deny that dumping billions of tons of shit into our ecosystem is a bad thing.
On a more micro level, the California "drought." They say that there is a drought and that is why they justify water rates increasing 10% year after year, but if there was really a drought, then why do they keep allowing new sprawling development of McMansions and condo complexes? Hell, I remember in the fourth grade when there was a "drought" then, too, and Bill Clinton's cartoon propaganda (Widget and Captain Planet, along with the more reactionary liberal Bucky O' Hare which stepped up the violence a bit) instructed all viewers to save the gay whales by recycling fucking everything, even though the energy required for recycling negated its so-called benefits.
I suppose growth here will reach Tokyo population densities before our next "drought" hits, and by then the CIA will have total control over the water supply selling the only available potable water for 8 dollars a glass and 10 dollars a bottle like in that episode of Inspector Gadget.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:40PM
I live in CA, and there was a real drought. You could see it just driving on the highways... turn down your crazy meter, you're brain is starting to slosh around.
(Score: 2) by gottabeme on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:02PM
You don't really think an absolute value is meaningful, do you?
Question: What percentage of the atmosphere does CO2 comprise?
Question: What percentage of global CO2 emissions is anthropogenic?
Question: What percentage of global CO2 emissions is oceanic?
But "BILLIONS of tons" sounds so scary, doesn't it? Better stick with that than facts.
(Score: 1, Troll) by bob_super on Tuesday March 14 2017, @11:30PM (5 children)
> Is CO2 a greenhouse gas? Sure it is, if a rather minor one.
*citation needed*
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:35AM (2 children)
Methane is 20-30 times more potent in trapping infrared.
Has to do with the number of vibrational modes possible with the molecule (quantized, of course) and the half-life of the molecule in an excited state (the longer the half-life, the more - usually IR - energy is trapped in the molecule)
CO2 has double bonds between C and O, thus 2 (pretty stiff) oscillators, 1 degree of bending-like oscillator- 3 vibration modes in total [purdue.edu], 4 degrees of oscillatory freedom (2 stretching, 2 bending - one X the other Y plane with the same energy)
Methane has 4 simple C-H bonds - heaps of vibrational degrees of freedom, many with the same energy, 9 vibration modes [purdue.edu].
Di-chloro-ethilene - 12 modes of vibration [purdue.edu]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:15AM (1 child)
TIL something that's not easy to place in a random chat.
As DeathMonkey pointed out, the amount does matter. Cows and broken wells still don't make up for the CO2 we output...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:04AM
Amount you say... 2 words: tundra and Arctic.
By the CO2 we've release already, we may have squeezed [businessinsider.com] the trigger [wikipedia.org] hard [wikipedia.org] enough [wikipedia.org].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by gottabeme on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:04PM (1 child)
We need a "-1, Sea Lioning" moderation.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:50PM
That would be a +0, like disagree, if someone is naggingly pointing out a flaw in an argument.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:05AM (8 children)
(Idiotic post of the year so far).
Quasi-static scenario: one experience negative feedback around stable equilibrium points - this is why they are stable, any small enough perturbation and the system will dissipate the perturbation and bring back the balance.
Dynamic systems are more complicated, with attractors [wikipedia.org] in the configuration space.
Some consequences of the above:
1. Quasi-static scenario - at large enough perturbations, nobody guarantees you the system will end into an equilibrium state that's still suitable for your life (along with the superior-to-you level of life which we call humanity). See Venus [universetoday.com] - a nice state of equilibrium with a surface temperature of about 750K (460C) - go sniff-test it
2. dynamic system - even if there would be a single attractor present in the configuration space (which would be a damned simple dynamic system), nobody guarantees you that the "excursion" on the trajectory of the system is made from states suitable for life. Travel on such a trajectory and you are toast before the system "balances" again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by Arik on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:39PM (7 children)
Why look that far when we have an example much closer?
Earth has spent a lot more time in a hothouse state than our current iceball state.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday March 16 2017, @06:04AM (6 children)
But never in a hellball state as Venus. Not impossible, though.
For contrast, buddy.
Also an example of a equilibrium state that is unable to sustain life (at least not the human one) even if Venus is in the Goldilocks zone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by Arik on Thursday March 16 2017, @12:31PM (5 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday March 16 2017, @01:06PM (4 children)
I can't figure out what you object to. Is it Venus a bad example?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by Arik on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:38PM (3 children)
Almost as if you are unconsciously shying away from the fact that Earth has had tremendous climate changes many times in the past, without any Humans around to cause them.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:00PM (2 children)
Or not being aware of them, but incidentally knowing the condition in Venus.
Feel free to put whatever you think as motivation for my choice, free speech is allowed on SN. But don't be surprised if I'll drop the conversation and ignore you when you go to far.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by Arik on Thursday March 16 2017, @08:07PM (1 child)
"Or not being aware of them"
Perfectly good explanation as well, as far as that goes.
But either way, surely you can see how it seems interesting to me how often people who lack such basic knowledge on the subject think they are somehow qualified to tell me what to think?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday March 17 2017, @12:20AM
Heh, yeah... sure, mate.
It's usually called "Commenting on SoylentNews", not "Publishing in a peer-reviewed science journal" nor "Internet mediated hypno-trace mind washing".
Glad that you are immune to the latter, but I reckon assuming the worst hidden agenda every time is a bit of an overreaction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:06AM (5 children)
Sure, the negative feedbacks work...until they don't. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Your blithe assumption that the negative feedback systems have infinite capacity and can react instantaneously to perturbations of arbitrary size is the same kind of bullshit that makes economists think growth is infinite.
Have you ever played with a basic buffer solution? The pH of the solution as a whole changes very little as you add more and more acid to it, until suddenly you've used up all the buffer and--whoops! There it goes! And this is what's happening in the ocean, though IIRC there are two layers of equilibrium (carbonate/bicarbonate and bicarbonate/CO2).
See, that's what negative feedbacks are like. They work and work and work, until suddenly...they don't. Catastrophic failure.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday March 15 2017, @10:20AM
Exactly. Underneath this "feedback loop" assertion there seems to be an underlying assumption that the world is under some kind of obligation to maintain a nice, comfortable, convenient environment for humans. That somehow the laws of physics are conspiring in our favour, which suggests belief in some kind of benevolent deity / gaia figure. Why should these feedback loops all conspire to keep everything at a nice equilibrium and keep Florida above the waterline? The Earth's environment has undergone some radical changes in the past, there's no reason to believe it can't do so again. Reminds me of that quote from Feynman regarding the shuttle disaster: "reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
(Score: 1) by Arik on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:36PM (3 children)
I don't assume that the negative feedbacks can't collapse as you say. I don't think I assume anything about them - I mean I know they exist as a class, I know how some of them work, roughly speaking. But no more than that.
What I've done is asked questions. What about these negative feedback loops? How can you be certain they won't hold? Just how much do we really know about both the positive and negative feedbacks involved? Who's quantified them, how have these quantifications been tested and verified and proved? What do we know about how one set interacts with the next?
Funny how I never get satisfactory answers to those sorts of questions. The positive mechanisms are sometimes studied intensely but the negatives are sometimes ignored or dismissed with a handwave. "OF COURSE we've corrected for all this you silly layman." Oh really? If you've corrected for them all then you must know exactly what all of them are, you must have an exhaustive list and you must have quantified them all. Where's the data? That would be absolutely HUGE. Somehow no one can ever seem to find it though.
Perhaps that's because no one really knows. People that have been studying this their whole lives are still only in a position to make educated guesses, perhaps. Otherwise surely these tremendous expansions of human knowledge would be, you know, published somewhere. Why not?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:37PM (2 children)
Not sure what to call your fallacy... skeptic science fallacy? Those are all good questions to ask, but I suspect this is simply your own research failures paired with a lack of understanding. Here is the quick and dirty result: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_feedback#Negative [wikipedia.org]
Since you are so concerned, and obviously making bold assumptions with no evidence, then why don't you be the person to put the list together? Put in some time after work, gather the data, email the researchers. Let us know if they all fail to provide what you're looking for, but come back empty handed and prepare to be dismissed. Your post is basically just a big conspiracy rant similar to the "no stars" in the moon pictures argument.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:16AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @04:16AM
Wow, just wow. Hopeless people are hopeless. Or shills, hard to say which is which nowadays eh comrade?
(Score: 2, Troll) by gottabeme on Wednesday March 15 2017, @07:54PM (3 children)
Parent is triple-modded as Troll. There is no doubt which side of the AGW issue attempts to censor its opponents--which is prima facie anti-science. Like rabid dogs, they mindlessly attack as a pack.
If Soylent is truly interested in being a place for intelligent discussion and furthering human knowledge, the mods should remove moderation privileges from everyone who modded bradley13's comments as Troll. Otherwise this place will turn into yet another one-sided echo chamber on the Internet, shouted down by the "open-minded" mobs.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:47PM
And another clueless snowflake. I've seen conservatives mob mod posts, but I think the real problem is that liberals outnumber conservatives. Maybe if bradley13 hadn't talked about taking a pound of flesh from other people, and if he didn't try and spin the article to suit his own viewpoint, THEN you might have a point. Clueless gottabeme is clueless, engages in tribal defense due to emotional reaction.
This weird persecution complex is getting pretty funny though, from "not afraid to tell it like it is" to "stop criticizing us its not niiiiice!" Maybe if SN mods actually caused real censorship that wasn't a mouseclick away from being undone then you MIGHT have more of a point. Melt you little snowflake melt.
(Score: 2) by http on Wednesday March 15 2017, @09:32PM
Soylent is working as intended.
Telling someone "you can't say 2+2=7" doesn't count as censorship - it counts as basic math education. But sure, its a conspiracy of accountants.
But if you insist on trying to convince others that 2+2 is in fact 7, damn well expect to be shouted down.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 1) by charon on Thursday March 16 2017, @12:22AM
First, down-mods from both sides of the political arena are usually corrected by other folks who come by later. As of now, the parent comment is at +1, which seems about right to me. I don't think the parent was trolling, nor do i think it was interesting.
Second, I tend to agree that people misuse the -1 Troll mod when they actually mean -0 Disagree. There seems to be a desire to hurt involved here, which I dislike, but I would dislike much more attempting to meta-moderate people. There is no way to assure objectivity in meta-moderation. Also, the staff only have some much time to spend watching.
Third, there are punishments for misusing mods repeatedly, but they come into play when one user is down-modding multiple comments made by another user. One-off bad mods are tolerable, and (see point one) usually corrected soon enough. The community nearly always does a good job of policing itself.