The Arctic will never be frozen again
grist.org
grist.org
I've been thinking about starting a retirement plan but between environmental collapse, crop failure, antibiotic resistance, it almost feels foolhardy to think we _won't_ destroy ourselves.
I don't know if I'm wrong, and it's an unreasonable, all-encompassing and constant dread, or I'm right, and our entire world has managed to collectively decide we're just going to ignore all of this and pretend everything's hunky dory.
Hope that helps.
- Climate change requires sweeping regulations.
- Regulation change needs politicians that care about the issue.
- Politicians care when their voters base cares.
- In order to the population in general to really care, not just by mouth, their value system needs to change, so they no longer accept doing nothing.
The best way for one to have impact in all that chain is to leverage it, instead of only addressing "we need sweeping regulation". To make that, one can make visible changes in his/her behaviour, and make others reevaluate how they act and value things.
If we don't have a "sustainable" frame of mind on a daily basis, when confronted to what is good or bad regulation, it takes intellectual effort to recognize that we need to think long-term. If we start using sustainable mindframes, even when thinking about e.g. server resources, it will be more automatic. However, if we daily use "another will care for that, let us think about the right now" mindframes, it will be more difficult. And our modern society pushes a lot towards the "right now" way of thinking... because, on the short term, it yields more gains.
Maybe watch Saving Private Ryan? How do you know your random database issue isn't the lynchpin that you need to fix to help keep us from the verge of collapse?
If all the little cogs in the machine fail, we got issues.
On the other hand, if you prefer the doom and gloom you might want to add a possible asteroid impact to your list. The dinosaurs had one and it really was the end of the world for most of them.
Life rarely just gives you a large amount of agency and responsibility. I've personally just accepted that life might just be watching a train wreck in slow motion and will steer my personal ship as I need to do what I can.
Changes in any combination of the following could trigger a new ice age: solar radiation levels, volcanic activity, circulation, orbital forces often associated with earthquakes, changes in the global climate, and war resulting in a decrease in the human population. Please read the evidence below and comment if you agree or disagree.
The Little Ice Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
We (due to climate change) may be coming out of a 2.58 million year ice age (an ice age is a period during which at least one permanent large ice sheet exists; in the case of the current one, it is the Antarctic.)
The last glacial period with the within the current ice age ended 10,000 years ago, so even if you were using “ice age” to refer to a glacial period, we’re not coming out of one of those, either. (The “Little Ice Age”, which you link to the Wikipedia page for, was neither an ice age nor a glacial period, but—as the article you link to notes—a set of regional cool periods at different but close times after the end of the Medieval Warm Period.)
> With continual reduction of greenhouse gases by our growing efforts we could be open to a building of the arctic in the next 500-1000.
Because of the different albedo (ice reflects 50+% percent of solar radiation, sea water around 6%) melting Arctic sea ice will accelerate warming; it's a positive feedback loop; plus, we haven't even started reduction of greenhouse gases, nor have we even achieved reduction in the rate of increase—I think we've managed to decrease the rate of increase of the rate of increase, but that's a far cry from reducing greenhouse gases.)
Greenland is just one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_core_project
It's projected that Greenland's ice, all of it, will melt. That hasn't happened for at least a hundred thousand years, possibly longer.
On the other hand, since we are lucky to live in an interglacial, we should be more concerned about the return of ice age phenomena such as 1-2 km thick ice sheets that covered e.g. Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Seattle up to 10,000 years ago. [2] [3]
[1] http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_glacial_period#Weichselia...
Your suggestion turns out to be contradicted by observational evidence with very high confidence, or more briefly, wrong. The chart you link is probably OK, but it only covers a few years. To see the trend, you need a longer time base.
I got this from the just-released (U.S.) national climate assessment, chapter 11 (pertaining to the Arctic -- https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/11/). See "Key Finding 3", which I'll quote in its entirety:
"Arctic land and sea ice loss observed in the last three decades continues, in some cases accelerating (very high confidence). It is virtually certain that Alaska glaciers have lost mass over the last 50 years, with each year since 1984 showing an annual average ice mass less than the previous year. Based on gravitational data from satellites, average ice mass loss from Greenland was −269 Gt per year between April 2002 and April 2016, accelerating in recent years (high confidence). Since the early 1980s, annual average arctic sea ice has decreased in extent between 3.5% and 4.1% per decade, become thinner by between 4.3 and 7.5 feet, and began melting at least 15 more days each year. September sea ice extent has decreased between 10.7% and 15.9% per decade (very high confidence). Arctic-wide ice loss is expected to continue through the 21st century, very likely resulting in nearly sea ice-free late summers by the 2040s (very high confidence)."
The report links to what it means by "very high confidence". I believe the chart that goes with it is: https://www.globalchange.gov/browse/indicators/indicator-arc... - although really the conclusion is what matters, because it's based on much more than just one chart.
This kind of report is a good place to start, because it's easy to look at small points of evidence and get the wrong conclusion, especially if you are not a climate scientist, e.g., have no publications in the area. Reports like these were made for people like us.
"Arctic-wide ice loss is expected to continue through the 21st century, very likely resulting in nearly sea ice-free late summers by the 2040s (very high confidence)."
This is a huge change from the Arctic ecosystem of decades past.
No.
It's based on a body of peer-reviewed papers reviewed by a committee of people who have studied this problem for years and decades. Unless you've sifted through these papers, gone to the conferences, and published your own work for critique, you're not qualified to reach the opposite conclusion.
Science is not a body of papers selected by committee -- it is a systematized, hierarchically integrated body of facts and theories. If you ignore, reject, or distort facts in order to promote your ideas, you are not a scientist but a fraud. If your notions do not account for known facts, it's not science. If your formulas and models do not integrate with known facts and do not evince some theories, it's not science.
Gaining knowledge of facts and understanding scientific theories is not controlled by the gates you throw up (peer reviews, conferences, critiques). Qualification to use one's faculty of reason and to draw conclusions is not determined by social approval, nor does it require participation in the rituals erected by your beloved committees.
Nature, facts, and truth are the real currency of science.
Your three statements are anti-scientific.
1. It's not merely "local" to the NW of N America, since a similar fact is known of Scandinavia where the rebound is still ongoing and significantly changing relative sea levels. (Your "local" sleight of hand is an attempt to minimize the significance of the scientific fact, and pretend that only man-made climate change is "global".)
2. The ice sheet covering North America was larger than the current ice sheet in Antarctica, and it melted in the course of climate changes. (Your "removed" sleight of hand is an attempt to hide non-man-made causes.)
3. It's a fact that sea level is a changing relationship between oceans and lands, influenced by tectonic activity, by climate, and even by the moon. On the one hand when large amounts of water are captured in massive ice sheets, the general water level is lower; on the other hand ice sheets push the land so far down, that the relative ocean level is higher as seen from the land. Whether climate changes are appreciably due to this or that cause, relative sea level has been changing for eons, a lot. (The "nothing to do with man made climate change" is an anti-scientific attempt to dis-integrate facts and theories of past and future climate change.)