Climate Chaos Watch
News from the Arctic this week is frightening:
- Arctic's Personal Greenhouse Turns up the Heat - New Scientist
- Melt-Pools 'Accelerating Arctic Ice Loss' - The Guardian
"Russia will likely see more forest fires, droughts and floods in the coming century due to global warming" Associated Press
Posts
2 comments:
Arctic ice is actually growing, not shrinking, according to the latest research. Earlier reports of shrinking Arctic ice were off because of faulty hardware. Detail here: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/19/0420255
Thanks for the comment Kevin,
You will notice, in the slashdot paragraph you linked, that the sea ice data glitch occurred during a one month period in the winter which has nothing to do with the data collected over the summer melts. Nor does it disprove the data collected over a long time span by other organizations which all show a clear ice loss trend.
Even if the one month glitch was actually an argument against years of copious and reviewed data by the NSIDC (which it isn't by a long stretch), the NSIDC's work is not the only way that ice melt and loss is tracked. There are a dizzying number of researchers on the ground, expert organizations, different tracking devices and thousands of reports available for all of us to access and learn from.
Lets not forget to mention the experiences of people living in Arctic regions who know all too well the consequences of the melting on their habitat and lives.
It does help to actually go back to the work of these multitudes of scientists, scientific organisations and even to the easier to read books written by people who have reported on them extensively.
The ice is in fact melting and climate, as opposed to weather events, is a change over a large period of time which shows clear, scientifically proven and now quite obvious receding ice.
Please note that we have been experiencing La Nina conditions which traditionally COOL the planet AND YET we still have record melts and warming.
I refer you to the following:
1- "Nov. 12, 2008 -- Record summer sea ice losses in the Arctic Ocean are now leading to bursts of ocean life in the newly open waters"
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/11/12/arctic-ocean-plankton.html
This was not a prediction of the future, it was reported after the summer ice melt that year.
2- CBC has an excellent show about the way climate change denial is funded by unscientific interest groups who want to make the overwhelming data, overwhelming science and overwhelming proof of global warming sound flimsy.
http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/andthewinneris_20090218_11938.mp3
3- Reported in Oct 2008:
" the rate of ice melt this August was 33,000 square miles per day, the fastest that anyone has ever recorded for the month."
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4285413.html
4- Here is a blog that refers to the NSIDC's report and points out that the very source used by deniers (the report, about the glitch, itself) actually disproves 'the ice is growing' myth.
So linking to the NSIDC in an argument against ice melt actually weakens the argument.
http://getenergysmartnow.com/2009/02/09/1381/
5- "Between 1.5 trillion and 2 trillion tons of ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted at an accelerating rate since 2003, according to NASA scientists"
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/12/16/melting.ice/index.html
Those of course were less than 1% of the news reports out there.
For more scientific reference see:
NASA
The Hadley Center
Pew Center on Global Climate Change
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The World Health Organisation
The IPCC
Woods Hole Research Center
The Royal Society
UN World World Meteorological Organisation
The EPA
The European Space Agency
Arctic Council
International Arctic Science Committee
European Academy of Sciences and Arts
International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences
American Geophysical Union
European Federation of Geologists
American Meteorological Society
Royal Meteorological Society
American Institute of Physics
US National Academy of Science
Just to name a tiny few.
They have copious amounts of research, explanations and resources for anyone who would like to learn about climate change.
--
And Grist has a list of responses to many denier/skeptic myths that are out there confusing people
http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics
Good luck with everything, and it's time we got down to solutions to an obvious climate problem.
Post a Comment