We’re witnessing the fastest decline in Arctic sea ice in at least 1,500 years | Hacker News Reader

We’re witnessing the fastest decline in Arctic sea ice in at least 1,500 years

vox.com

62 pointsjseliger26 comments

Stop using polar bears for climate change propaganda. Most data shows that polars bears have adapted to melting ice with some populations even increasing. Some polar bears whose populations are in decline are actually thought to be effected by overhunting. Overall, polar bear populations are stable to increasing. The starving polar is thought to have been old or suffering from cancer.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

If you use lies and mistruths to bolster your point then you scuttle your entire argument.

This is not propaganda, it's science. Anthropogenic climate change is a factual reality.

The polar bear is mentioned in the article as a simple example of species whose habitats are changing because of human actions. It's a bad faith argument to suggest that the article is invalidated by this reference.

They way I read it is that the changing habitat will hurt the polar bear (now click here to see polar bear starving because it can't find food due to ice melting).

The data does not YET bear(no pun intended) this out and alluding to a viral video is a sympathy play and not anything backed in reality but rather speculation and prognostication.

So by its very nature its propaganda since it's using misleading information to put forward a point of view as absolute truth.

Misleading tactics will always hurt your argument in the long run.

Climate change is real, but that it is anthropogenic? There is no clarity on that at all. I have seen various evidence that has been presented as being "clear evidence of anthropogenic causes" and if you look at it at through specially designed glasses, you might be able to say that.

Climate change covers a vast set of conditions and has a vast set of causes. To claim that anthropogenic causes are the major or only significant causes is "pulling the wool over everyone's eyes".

Since we have essentially no understanding of the causes or interactions in how or why climate changes, the "anthropogenic climate change" leads us to conclusions and solutions that will be ineffective and more than likely be more destructive than stopping and actually doing proper investigations.

All "catastrophic" scenarios so far given by "climate scientists" do not answer where the energy comes from for their scenarios. The energy requirements are so large that this planet would be long dead before their scenarios would play out.

Since even school children can study up on polar bears (and have done so) and see that the "polar bear" story is just propaganda, so can you.

Another thread here on hn was talking about "fake news" and what could/should be done. In that I commented that it is up to people to investigate for themselves the information in question. There are various researchers who are doing interesting research in related fields and showing results that do not fit in the "anthropogenic climate change" mindset.

There are questions being asked and are actively being ignored by climate scientists. Why?

Hi! Until quite recently most scientists I know agreed that we did not have conclusive evidence that climate change was directly harming polar bear populations. However, a recent study provided the first empirical evidence of that happening [0]. I hope you read and maybe change your mind about it!

[0] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6375/568

I don't have access to article but the keyword is "likely" in the abstract. And doesn't take away from the fact this article used a misleading video to bolster it's argument. Climate Change is real but understanding the impact is something that is still uncertain.

What's uncertain is how apocalyptically bad it's going to be on a scale of "society collapses" to "everyone dies", plus when that's going to happen on a time scale of "ten years" to "two hundred years".

Every year they adjust their estimates things get worse.

When proponents of climate change stray from facts to "appeal to emotion" falsehoods, it really does a tremendous disservice to the discussion. But what do we expect from something like vox?

In the "average monthly sea ice extent" the y-axis cutoff is at 13, making the loss look much more dramatic than it is.

Don't get me wrong: it IS dramatic, but I despise graph trickery to get across a point.

It's not really trickery then, if it's both dramatic and accurate. Where would you like the origin point to be? Starting at 0 would flatten the loss over the same time span and would be both misleading about the importance of the loss and might be used to temper the climate change argument.

The loss amount itself isn't even as important as what it means or how scientists are interpreting it. If the ecological impact of a loss of this magnitude needs to be represented, this chart does exactly that. If the impact were unimportant or negligible, the chart would be altogether unnecessary.

Since an average monthly sea ice extent of zero is actually the physical reality this process is approaching, the Y-axis should be at zero.

Since the process started at something around 15.5 such a graphical representation would give the reader the chance to intuitively grasp that we lost somewhat about 15-20% of the ice extent.

So, I tried but failed to find how they came up with the first graph. It must be a model as I doubt the Vikings had sophisticated satellite coverage set up for measuring the arctic ice in the open sea?

What is the meaning of 1,500 years? Are there no earlier records or was the Arctic declining faster 1,500 years ago? If the later, do we know the effects?

No earlier records (or very spotty).

These sorts of records depended on explorers. I'm supposing someone had to read through endless ship logs to find data on ice patterns.

If there's one thing that sea captains were good at it was keeping excruciatingly detailed logs.

Indeed. The logs of sea captains sailing across the Arctic ice during the past 1,500 are endless. The entire 1492 hoopla was kind of overrated in light of the fact that endless amounts of ships were zipping across the Arctic Ocean to North America (taking excellent ice-sheet measurement as they went) for a thousand years before Columbus.

The article speaks of assumptions obtained from tree rings, ice cores, and permafrost.

It's very straightforward to analyze the trees in the forests that stretch across the North Pole to determine such things. And, as most trees in the Arctic live in excess of 1,500 years, we have a very good record. Likewise, it's trivial to examine the permafrost that covers the North Pole and calculate the temperatures from 1,500 years ago.

But, the simplest source of data are ice cores from the extensive and permanent sheets of ice that perpetually cover the North Pole.

I wonder if North Polar Route will become commerciably viable.

This seems possibly relevant.

http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/02/12/timelapse-video-...

aside: I've seen time lapse videos of the arctic sea ice melting and refreezing repeatedly. (on youtube or somewhere) Also not sure if relevant.

First sentences: "The Arctic Ocean once froze reliably every year. Those days are over.". Climate aside, there are still seasons - it's not surprising to see time-lapse videos of this happening.

You can see the seasonal chart later in the article, across several decades. The concern is the long-term trend. The strong El Nino effect of the last few years appears to go unmentioned, which would be my only concern.

I actually loath debating topics that are both extremely controversial and I have no influence over. And if there is a claim I have influence over it, and I demonstrate how damaging and ineffective it is to push the _very specific_ changes recommended, it just turns into a head butting match no one wins.

But, how do we _know_ beyond all shadow of doubt "those days are over"? * sigh * (not sure I should bother asking this, but I know I am not a predictor of the future)

Is "beyond a shadow of doubt" the standard of proof we need to take action? I would advocate for an actuarial standard. (i.e. estimate the probabilities and costs/benefits of various outcomes and take the path with the best expected outcome, while continually updating your probability estimates with new information.) The issue with climate change is not that it is 100% certain, but that the responses require globally coordinated action where every nation is incentive to cheat; and as with other types of economic transition, there are huge inefficiencies if we try to transition too fast (i.e. global recessions required to build the necessary infrastructure as in https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/10/the-energy-trap/). So the downside risk if we fail to act and climate change is real is tremendous.

>I would advocate for an actuarial standard.

Who would argue against this? (I am sure it's someone of course...)

>The issue with climate change is not that it is 100% certain, but that the responses require globally coordinated action where every nation is incentive to cheat;

Famine, war, poverty, etc... their are many things that we are 100% certain are happening right now. Compare what is more rational to solve with finite resources?

To attempt to solve absolutely certain problems that exist right now? Or divert those resources to a _mostly certain_ problem that _may_ exist in the future?

>So the downside risk if we fail to act and climate change is real is tremendous.

I grew up in a doomsday cult, and I see this statement as inflammatory. I've heard many similar statements meant to instil fear of a "possibility" of a doomed future. It manipulates the hearts of men to fear and to follow other men that champion an ideal, but not to address reality.

Maybe this is not your intentions. If so, please clarify.

Deceptive graphs, polar bear name drop, typical nonsense.

I don't think you realize that in the grand scheme of things here we're the polar bear.

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