Gains in Antarctic ice might offset losses | Hacker News Reader

Gains in Antarctic ice might offset losses

nature.com

The important takeaway from this is that we don't have to worry as much about melting in Antartica. Melting everywhere else in the world, however, is proceeding at a fast pace and is more immediately concerning. Unfortunately, I imagine this report is going to get jumped on by global warming deniers as solid evidence that climate change is not real and there's nothing to worry about.

The word 'denial' does not permit of much nuance, does it? Smacks of faith and a religion, really. I wonder if & why you disagree with Judith Curry.

"The definition of ‘dangerous’ climate change is ambiguous, and hypothesized catastrophic tipping points are regarded as very or extremely unlikely in the 21st century. Efforts to link dangerous impacts of extreme weather events to human-caused warming are misleading and unsupported by evidence. Climate change is a ‘wicked problem’ and ill-suited to a ‘command and control’ solution. It has been estimated that the U.S. national commitments to the UN to reduce emissions by 28% will prevent three hundredths of a degree centigrade in warming by 2100..."

Evidence to the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology

Judith Curry who wrote less than a year ago[0]:

Moreover, the estimates in these empirical studies are being borne out by the much-discussed “pause” or “hiatus” in global warming—the period since 1998 during which global average surface temperatures have not significantly increased.

Even though the actual data shows warming of ~0.18 deg C: http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/

0. http://www.wsj.com/articles/judith-curry-the-global-warming-...

Judith Curry had something to say about the NASA data as well. I find her analysis quite level-headed.

http://judithcurry.com/2015/01/16/warmest-year-pause-and-all...

I think I agree with at least some parts of that description. (I have no idea who Judith Curry is). However, it is important to note that the phrase 'wicked' problem refers policy problems rather than science problems. And it is useful to disambiguate between climate science and climate (change) policy. Sure, climate science is hard, but not much more so than say, geology or microbiology.

Climate change policy is on the other hand wickedly difficult (despite climate change itself being well-established), because there are so many practical uncertainties and so many different stakeholders, in which you could reasonably include unborn people and/or nonhuman ecosystems, which have a hard time lobbying for themselves. However, much like poverty (which is a hard policy problem, for much the same reasons), just acting like it doesn't exist, or denying the scientific evidence, is sure not to help.

Climate change "denial" is a bit like arguing vehemently that bacteria doesn't exist and you don't need to bother about hygiene. Actually I don't really care if people believe, I just want them to wash their hands after using the toilet. People need to be persuaded that it is the right thing to do from a moral, and a practical point of view.

The environment is complicated and we need to be mature in how we interact with it. That means cutting CO2 but it also means a lot of other things that are very important. The endless debate on the science wastes time that could be better spent.

What does that quote have to do with antarctic ice levels or the science in question? You seem to be the one picking a fight here with rhetoric instead of engaging on substance...

There seems to be a whole lot of other countries disagreeing with JC[1]. May be they realised doing nothing is not an option. Personally I disagree, because excluding economic net effects borders ignorance. The US are neither an isolated actor nor a minor player on this planet.

[1]http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/03/paris-2015-tracking-...

Thermal expansion of seawater has always been a more important aspect of rising sea levels than melting anyways.

Not much different than global warming believers that point to just trends that support their position.

Anthropogenic global warming is a scientific theory with a preponderance of evidence. Like all scientific theories it is open to being revised if/when contrary data emerges. At the moment, the vast majority of data supports it as a theory.

This is true, and if only global warming people would start phrasing it in that way instead of the rather less scientific "It's an undeniable fact! You can't deny it! Expressing skepticism makes you a bad person!" then I could quit arguing with them.

I don't know how we ever got into the situation where the big argument is between "this is undeniable fact!" and "this is probably true". The dumb part is that the actions you should take in response to a reasonable probability of deleterious consequences are not all that different to the actions you should take if the probability is one hundred point zero percent.

But that's not how most people understand probability. Or science.

Remember, many deniers literally believe that climate change research is a hoax created by scientists to gain funding. A smaller but non-trivial percentage literally believe that NASA has a moon base and/or a mars base and access to free energy technology.

When faced with kookiness of that order, nuances of phrasing are politically irrelevant.

For deniers, argument by evidence is pointless, because many of them don't understand the scientific method anyway.

That's why they're deniers. If they were looking at the evidence objectively instead of cherry-picking it, or blanking it, or saying ill-informed things like "Another record cold winter - must be that global warming I keep hearing about, heh heh heh" they'd be as terrified of where we're going to be half a century from now as many climate scientists are.

All policy makers have left is argument by rhetoric - which isn't very scientific, but is more politically expedient.

I used to agree with your characterization. Most global warming deniers do not understand the nature of climate change. I do like to get all sides of a debate, unless of course the debate includes your average Trump voter.

There are a minority of climate researchers who are not certain our level of CO2 emissions warrant any action. I understand that this is not the climate-scientist-majority position; however, I've seen so many red flags from the majority over the past few years that I've re-evaluated my position that deniers are all either morons or evil.

Perhaps Judith Curry is a soulless leach paid off by powerful polluting interests, I do not know. In the absence of evidence for her corruption, applied with a neutral judging eye (i.e. applying the same standard to both sides) I'm going to assume she has something valid to say.

And she's a climate modeler, not a statistician, or a reporter, or Breitbart.

So you lie to people because you think they can't understand the subtleties of the truth, then you complain that they detect they're being lied to, which obliges you to lie even harder.

I don't say otherwise in my statement.

I am simply pointing out that both sides of the argument can cherry pick, and often do. Much like any other debate, especially on the internet.

You're creating a false equivalence between a theory that has the weight of evidence on its side and critics of that theory who tend to lie about the evidence.

So no.

Well, when I see people cherry pick their data and cherry pick events that only support their side, I'm sorry to say I have to disagree with you. I have seen such things on both sides of this debate. Just because you haven't seen it, refuse to see it, or incapable of seeing it doesn't make my observations on the matter incorrect.

I can pull out a fancy term as well, I think you may have a case of confirmation bias. But since I don't know you, don't know your full opinion on the matter, nor don't know what you've read, I don't think I'll label you with negativity as you have done me.

This has been an interesting thread. Especially the comments by people who seem to think they know my feeling about climate change. It's the usual, assume and attack. Well, not all of them I would agree. Anyway, as most of the comments to me seem to suggest, I'm not a denier. I just have problems with some of the "science" involved, on both sides.

So the entirety of climate science is a "trend". I guess we can just take the whole of astronomy as a trend that the Earth is round too.

Actually it would help if there was more focus on evidence and less on "consensus". I don't get why this consensus thing is pushed so much, in my eyes it just cheapens and weakens the argument.

You can check any of the climate science journals, the IPCC reports which summarize the loads of different, independent lines of evidence, the explanations of the physical models that describe the process of warming and how that maps out to different geographic areas of the world, along with all the predictions that leads to in timeframes that span over a century for now.

But no, I guess complaining to people who actually bother to at least get the fundamental explanations is a much more productive use of denialists' time rather than becoming informed.

Does this include the science journals that have a history of squashing papers they disagree with on a political or emotional level?

By all means, why don't you cite said journals and papers and then we can see if they really stack up to the level of quality research demanded by peer review?

Why bother? I'm sure any journal I cite won't meet your expectations of peer review. No true Scotsman and all. But I'm sure if you search for the topic, science journal review bias, you'll find plenty of examples. I'm not even talking about just on papers concerning climate change. It's been in the news off and on over the past few years, it's not like I'm making this up.

I'm not sure what you mean. Evidence, by its very nature, can only be gathered for events that have occurred. There is plenty of discussions about evidence.

The real consequences, however, are in the future, and for those there can be nothing more than predictions. In that context, "consensus" means "within a very wide range of models and predictions, this is what will happen". It doesn't mean that it will happen, but it does mean that a bunch of people, using different methods and different data, agree on the conclusions. How does that weaken the argument?

Hmmm, I reread what I wrote. I don't see where I made that claim.

Would you also say that gravity, evolution, and germ theory believers also point to just trends that support their position? Of course the thing these all have in common with climate change is scientific consensus..they just lack all the political "opposition". Actually it just hit me that people still debate evolution too.. lol.

Climate science is complicated by the fact that there are gazillions of variables and we hardly understand them and their interaction. Gravity is predictable enough for us to fly some apparatus millions of kilometres and land it on the comet. We are far far away from this kind of precision in regard of climate.

Umm, we do understand them. We've been making effective climate predictions since the 80s. Just because our understand is not complete and that you don't even bother to read the corresponding literature doesn't mean anything about the science itself.

Are you claiming there isn't scientific consensus on climate change?

Edit: and by "climate change" I mean the notion of "humans are causing the planet to warm up with CO2"

The term consensus seems... polluted.

The scientific consensus refers to the number of scientists that believe in anthro-climate change, but not the number of scientists who actually study climate change detection and its relation to greenhouse gases.

In other words, the opinion of a natural scientist, who relies on models developed by scientists who study climate change detection and attribution, does not matter at all. In the same way my opinion on relativity, as an engineer, means nothing about the consensus of people who can say relativity is an accurate theory.

I believe there is definitely a majority. But the oft-mentioned studies mentioning 97% consensus are highly misleading.

Here is the oft-mentioned study's abstract and a link to the full study.

Abstract

We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors’ self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/0240...

I read this study earlier.

Searching the Consensus Project from Skeptical Science shows papers such as:

"Gruber, E., & Brand, M. (1991). Promoting energy conservation in small and medium-sized companies. Energy Policy, 19(3), 279–287."

"Boykoff, M. T. (2008). Lost in translation? United States television news coverage of anthropogenic climate change, 1995–2004. Climatic Change, 86(1-2), 1–11."

I am concerned that this paper qualifies social scientists, psychologists, and other soft scientists as hard science climate researchers capable of deducing the possibility and cause of global climate change. What the fuck do they know?

I'm all for believing that there are a majority of hard-science climate researchers who agree that there is human-caused global warming. This study; however, gives nothing close to a true number.

The ISI search generated 12 465 papers. Eliminating papers that were not peer-reviewed (186), not climate-related (288) or without an abstract (47) reduced the analysis to 11 944 papers written by 29 083 authors and published in 1980 journals

That seems like a pretty large sample size to me. I guess you could claim that they cherry picked 11, 944 papers out of some much larger number, but that seems like a stretch. Of course meta-studies like this are always problematic, but considering the overwhelming result I think its at least safe to say that scientists producing papers that run contrary to human caused global warming are in the minority.... and to me that is the best answer we can get as far as what the consensus is. Like you, Im willing to change my view on this (or anything really), but im always going to go with wherever the scientific consensus seems to be.

Forgive me, I'm doing my best to stay above board. This is not an attack...

You misunderstand me.

I think that 11944 was too many papers, and should be narrowed down to papers by hard scientists. I'm saying out of those 11944, a potentially huge number were social studies, news studies, and other fields that have nothing to do with climate modeling. When you remove those from the 11944, what do you have? 10000? 5000? 1000?

It's completely negligent, at the least.

So, how big is that majority, really? And how many of them agree with the IPCCs more conservative estimates vs the scary, less likely ones?

It's really hard to say with noise like this. And no, this doesn't mean I get my science opinions from Rush Limbaugh. That's noise, too.

No offense taken, and I can tell you are not just parroting political blogs which is refreshing. I do see your point, but as I will explain later, for a meta-study I think they did the best that they possibly could have. It says that only .07% of the abstracts reject AGW. That is a huge signal. This study shows that climate change isn't controversial within science journals as it is made out to be in the news media, which is the only reason people think it is controversial. If its not controversial among scientists then it must fit within the scientific consensus. Also, There is a problem with fixing the study in the way you mention. If they categorize scientists as "hard" or "soft" then the study becomes prone to be rejected during peer-review because at that point its results would hinge on their ability to make that distinction without bias.

Really I think its main weakness is that it is a meta-study.. which always tend to have issues like you mention. I find it compelling enough though.

>> Would you also say that gravity, evolution, and germ theory believers also point to just trends that support their position?

Most of them don't, but as for the few that do? I denounce them the same as any other scientist, climate or otherwise, that cherry picks their data and trends that only support their side of the debate. That was not the kind of science I learned in school.

Dumb question: if all the ice melts, especially in Arctics shouldn't the see level fall down as volume of water is smaller than volume of ice? And with increased temperature there is also increased vaporization and world's average humidity - another reason for sea levels to fall down.

There are no dumb questions :-), but no, this is not what will happen. For one thing, the ice that floats around in sea displaces exactly as much water as ice (uses the same 'water volume') as it will as water. (Almost, because the water volume per mass will actually increase with increasing temperatures, which is quite a significant effect). However, a large amount of ice is on land, where it doesn't contribute to ocean volume. If it were to melt that would be a major contributor to sea level rise.

Also, the average humidity is quite stable on earth, and any excess water that evaporates into the atmosphere quickly rains out again. Furthermore, the amount of water in the atmosphere is very small in comparison to the amount of water in the oceans. (See e.g. here: http://water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycleatmosphere.html). So it is very difficult to imagine that an increased humidity would have a significant effect on the sea level.

The fear of ice melt is not from the arctic but from land. There is a significant amount of water trapped on the tops of mountains and in glaciers not in the water. Those melt and the sea will rise.

http://linkingweatherandclimate.com/ocean/figs/density2.png

Look at this graph. By having the ice melt you'll have more salty water. Even if it is all fresh, the density maximum is close to 5 degrees Celsius. Ocean water is warmer in most of the oceans.

Water vapor is a greenhouse gas - more water vapor will mean even higher temperatures, which would lead to more melting.

The other people have already answered this, but I just wanted to clarify that this is why people talk about the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets in this context, because those rest on land.

The Arctic ice is important for albedo reasons, it reflects a lot of sunlight that would otherwise go into warming the water, but as you correctly point out, the melting of that particular ice won't contribute to sea level rise directly.

Watch Fox new much? Climate deniers love this argument. Jon Stewart answers your question here:

https://youtu.be/lPgZfhnCAdI?t=459

While looking for the clip I found this gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuGCJJUGsg

Hooray, the polar bears are saved!

Well, not really. Polar bears live in the Northern Hemisphere. (Here's a riddle: why won't a polar bear eat a penguin even if the bear is starving? Answer: they live in different hemispheres.)

Except penguins lived in the Northern Hemisphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_auk. Great Auks are the original "penguin". What we call penguins today are not actually in the genus Pinguinus.

Oh, you climate alarmists and your "scientific facts." Why do you hate freedom?

Could this be related to a shifting in the tilt/orientation of the planet? Or perhaps in an upcoming polarity flip?

Ahhh, the earth's tilt/orientation changes very slowly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt Earth's obliquity oscillates between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees on a 41,000-year cycle. It is currently 23.44 degrees and decreasing.

Magnetic pole changes take 1,000 to 10,000 years to happen. So again, unlikely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal And also, what do magnets have to do with ice melting?

I'd recommend that you unfollow Spirit Science on facebook.

I have no idea what spirit science is. My question I felt was a legitimate science question for someone not familiar with geo-physics of the planet. not sure why i got downvoted.

Hey, I didn't downvote you, but your questions were just... very off. I imagine that the typical HN user was just downvoting because the questions aren't even relevant.

(And sorry for he spirit science comment, it was an unfair dig. They're a pseudo-science page on facebook that often tries to connect disparate phenomena.)

Goddammit. I had never heard of Spirit Science and now I've wasted nearly an hour checking out those clowns.

If true, it's unlikely to persist for long. We know from paleoclimate data that both Greenland and Antarctica will significantly melt out w/ CO2 as high as it already is, much less any realistic peak level we could achieve.

Or if CO2 had never risen at all, right? End of ice age and all that?

Yeah, there's actually a reasonable case that our initial historical fossil fuel burning (say, up to 1950, 1980?) saved us from a new ice age that was about to dawn.

We unfortunately since then have pushed the dial way, way further, likely now past a tipping point towards a mostly ice-free hothouse planet.

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