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Comment by jamesblonde | Hacker News Reader

The canary in the coalmine for global warming is Arctic sea ice. It is melting at an alarming rate, and we can expect an ice-free (>1m sq km of sea ice) Arctic in the summer within a decade or two (or 3-4 years if recent trends continue!). There's a small active community who follow this. We tend to hang out here - a HN level of polite discussion goes on: http://neven1.typepad.com/

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There's a spin-off forum neven moderates (well, sometimes): forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/board,3.0.html

It's a bit slow in the freezing season, even this completely out of control one, and can often degenerate into ridiculous arguments between a few posters.

But just in case... if there's any Sea Ice geeks in SF, I'd love to talk about it in person!

So what happens to the indigenous population of animals (polar bears are the first that come to my mind) when this happens? Do they just die out or are there groups trying to get them to safety?

Outside of captivity, where would it be safe for arctic animals?

Probably nowhere. But the alternative to captivity is that we will just see entire species of animals go extinct.

We have already seen many, many species go extinct. The exact figures are not well understood, but there's a lot more at stake than just the polar bear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

There's a 2009 paper "Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity" that may be of interest.

> The planetary boundary (PB) concept, introduced in 2009, aimed to define the environmental limits within which humanity can safely operate. This approach has proved influential in global sustainability policy development. Steffen et al. provide an updated and extended analysis of the PB framework. Of the original nine proposed boundaries, they identify three (including climate change) that might push the Earth system into a new state if crossed and that also have a pervasive influence on the remaining boundaries. They also develop the PB framework so that it can be applied usefully in a regional context.

[1] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/1259855 [2] http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

edit: and the indicator that is off the charts relative to its corresponding "safe operating space" boundary is biodiversity loss - measured in species extinction/(millions of species * year). Climate change looks practically controlled compared to that. (ha).

Northern Canadian/European/Russian land masses.

How about the Antarctic? Save the polar bears and fix Gary Larson's biggest "Far Side" error at the same time.

The antarctic maybe. Though interfering with native ecosystems has never ended well.

On the plus side, we get bi-polar bears.

well fortunately the Antarctic is gaining mass, so things happen. We are still only 12k years out an ice age and learning as we go. Natural variability is quite boring so it doesn't make headlines as much as it should.

the real reality is that the Paris agreement is a horrid piece of do nothing legislation that lets the major developing powers do what they want all the while getting the nod of acceptance from the UN because of the hundred billion dollar payout. Basically we have what is a one time voluntary agreement to pay out to certain groups so that developing countries can continue to pollute provided they plan to eventually slow it

On a geological timescale we are in a cooling trend, but what non-biased source grants credence to the idea that CO2 and Methane aren't warming things right now in greater amounts?

It seems entirely reasonable that anthropogenic climate change is a bigger deal than ice ages and we could prevent one.

Having a higher CO2 or methan level for 100 years is on a geological timescale a rounding error. There were times in earth history (vulcano eruptions, meteor impacts) where life had to face a rapid and drastic climate change. And we are still here.

Yeah, and those past times also had mass extinctions.

I think you are unaware of the scope of the problem. (also I did not and cannot downvote you)

The amount of life and species lost to human activities already makes the past few thousand years a major extinction event in line with the 5 other major ones. With this fact in mind taking the stance that this is OK because "life had to face a rapid and drastic climate change" is the moral equivalent of saying killing most of the life is OK because it happened before. That is morally repugnant. I do not think are morally repugnant so I must presume you are unaware of the facts I just presented.

CO2 stays in the atmosphere a long time. If we keep putting there permanently. If we kill ourselves (not with CO2 but with wars caused by the resource availability changes caused by climate change) then what happens during our "rounding error" many will still be dead.

The planet will probably be fine, the Bay of Texas will probably be fine and my newly made beachfront property in Omaha will be damn fine. If you live on a coast, get most of your goods by boat or live in one of the areas that will tear itself apart in useless resource wars then the eventual cooling trend doesn't help you and has no place in this discussion.

Moral is a human construct and as such it is subjective.

Anyhow, I said that the life on earth survived a couple of disastrous events and still flourishes. Life will flourish wether the coast is under water or not. There were times when there wasn't any coast at all, or it was somewhere else. And does it really make a difference?

You won't see anything of the war of resources except you live for 200 years. You may take care too much about things you will never see and can not have an impact on.

What do you mean by "flourish"?

Increasing biodiversity?

>>Life will flourish wether the coast is under water or not.

Life may flourish, but many lives won't.

>>And does it really make a difference?

It does make a huge difference to the 44 percent of humanity that lives on coastal areas.

I think the point is that after the extinction of humans and a large proportion of existing species on earth, life itself will continue and the next few million years will result in speciation to adapt to new niches on a planet with radically different climate.

I don’t understand how anyone finds this comforting, however.

> I don’t understand how anyone finds this comforting, however.

Why can't it be viewed as a source of comfort? At a longer time scale, even life on earth won't exist as the sun dies. At a sufficiently long time scale, none of this stuff on earth matters, the universe continues to move on. As these highlight the transitory nature of life on earth, there is no reason for why one can't "let go" after a point. I find that a tremondous source of comfort, as I often face the problem of when to "let go" in many contexts.

I won't get into a detailed discussion of the purpose of existence (a natural counter-question to the above), or why one should still strive in one's own way to tackle issues like climate change up to "one's capacity" (which depends on accepting the purpose of existence).

These fundamental questions are extremely hard to address. It took me a long time and a lot of thought to have a reasonably satisfactory answer to these questions - though of course what answer one is satisfied by will vary from person to person. For me, the bulk of the answer came from a study of the Indian Vedantic tradition (chiefly Adwaita Vedanta) through the "Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda" among other such books, and the works of Leo Tolstoy. Mileage may vary of course.

I found my way in stoicism. Stopping taking care about inevitable things gives me the power to take care about things I can change. I do not expect the HN folks to understand and accept my point of view. The resulting misunderstanding seems to be also inevitable. And I am OK with that.

I just realised that this is inevitable.

Funny fact: the coast are moving. Slowly, but still moving. 44 percent of humanity sooner or later will have a problem because of it. If this happens 100 or 10M years after our death does really make that much difference to us?

Your statements are equivalent to you not caring about humanity because you implicitly disregard human suffering.

Since the reason people care about climate change, both for and against, is human suffering then we can disregard anything you have to say about it.

That you and you are clearly just choosing the most antagonistic thing to get a reaction from people. This is the last I will be responding. If I could down vote you I would.

I do care about the effects of climate change on humanity as much as I do care about bad weather. When it rains I take my umbrella. Both are things I can not hinder more than as I do now.

I do not own a car, never did, do not plan to own one, I am not caught by the consume madness and I also try to avoid wasting ressources. I wonder how many of the downvoters can say the same.

That's like getting stabbed and saying "Losing a liter of blood in a matter of seconds is a rounding error on the scale of my life."

No, it's not a rounding error. It means things are changing at a speed never seen before, and it's a big fucking deal.

Disclaimer: Of course I'm not suggesting the Earth will bleed to death. I'm just highlighting the logical fallacy.

We could indeed prevent the next ice age.

We would be idiots to do it, but we could. (An ice age would push a temperate climate onto the fucking Sahara. That's a lot of new farmland...)

>> Natural variability is quite boring

After protecting the earth from the giant meteors (at least at the end not a single one hit the earth) we need some new disaster porn.

Even if the Paris Agreement has its problems, do you really think it's worse than no climate agreement?

> well fortunately the Antarctic is gaining mass, so things happen.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-o...

> But it might only take a few decades for Antarctica’s growth to reverse, according to Zwally. “If the losses of the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica continue to increase at the same rate they’ve been increasing for the last two decades, the losses will catch up with the long-term gain in East Antarctica in 20 or 30 years -- I don’t think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses.”

> “The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away,” Zwally said. “But this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for.”

It was gaining mass for a long, long time and that trend is reversing and it ultimately doesn't change the fact the sea level rise is still occurring despite the mass gain.

That isn't a 'so things happen' situation. It is a "Well, traditionally Antarctica gains X each year. The rate of this gain is offsetting the Y in losses for now but the rate of loss is accelerating and overall we are still losing ground regardless'.

"We are still only 12k years out an ice age and learning as we go"

Some of us are learning more than others. Some of us have noticed that the Milankovich cycles, in particular the precession of the earth's perihelion versus the solstices, is right now COOLING the earth because it is favoring the southern hemisphere which has less mass.

I believe that your premise is a mis-statement. My understanding is that the surface area is increasing due to the protective effect of melt-water, but that increase in melt-water is the result of increasing mass loss.

Furthermore, neither surface area nor mass are a complete enough picture from which to draw conclusions due to the complex physics of calving and cliff collapse.

http://www.nature.com/news/antarctic-model-raises-prospect-o...

No, there is an Antarctic ice sheet that is gaining mass. As a whole, Antarctica is losing ice mass. As is the case for global ice mass balance. Chart of satellite gravity measurements for Antarctica: http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Antarctica_Ice_Mass.g...

so that chart is from 2003 - 2009 ... and that is evidence of what exactly?

6 samples of a multi century phenomenon and you are ringing an alarm bell !

the chart smacks more of searching around for a chart that shows a decline to prop up the "ice is in trouble narrative".

ice extent ( recovered from 2008/12 ) , ice age ( recovered again from 2012 ), ice thickness ( recovered ), ice refreeze date ( recovered ), polar bear population ( highest its ever been )

now its ice mass that is the panic chart of the day. but 6 samples, its just not enough

https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/longterm

What is it going to take to convince you?

Let's just wait a few more decades to be sure though. It would be a waste spending resources trying to prevent the demise of life on Earth when we didn't need to.

Is there a name for this sort of chart?:

https://sites.google.com/site/pettitclimategraphs/sea-ice-vo...

Spider chart or spiderweb chart

Thanks.

more than 40 samples. 200 samples at minimum.

"Long term" is misleading and relevant only to a space age start point where we launched satellites.

2000 year ice core samples:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/15/western_antarctic_me...

Longer records exist in ships logs showing that ships sailed through an ice-free arctic.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/goddard_polar_ice?pa...

According to official US Weather Bureau records (pdf) from 1922, there was open sailing very close to the North Pole that year. Anthony Watts unearthed this quote from the Weather Bureau:

"In fact, so little ice has never before been noted. The expedition all but established a record, sailing as far north as 81 degrees in ice-free water."

So much lower extent than today.

Can you provide a citations that Antarctica as a whole is gaining ice mass?

Here's one from NASA:

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of...

More detailed discussion on Antarctic here:

http://joannenova.com.au/2016/07/backflip-antarctic-peninsul...

Nature study finding Antarctic has cooled is in the "References" section of that second link.

Anything more recent? That article showed a dramatic slowdown in the growth and only covered up until 2008.

NASA disagrees: "A new NASA study says that Antarctica is overall accumulating ice."

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of...

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