Ice-free summers in Arctic possible within next decade, scientists say
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Ice coverage sits in another positive feedback loop, as more (dark/heat absorbing) water is exposed compared with white ice, things become hotter, locally and globally. And the Arctic is one of the regions where the average of temperatures increased more.
Last winter was already very meh and extremely subpar re snowpack. Not even going into the increasing speed of glaciers melting, its up to 10m per year.
Winters as we know are disappearing, summers are getting brutal heatwaves never seen even few years ago, not within 1 person lifetime but within one darn decade. To any climate change denier... I'd love to smash that idiocy out of your head if that would help, but unfortunately we all know it won't.
Well, one must balance the downsides with the positives. Cheap energy from fossil fuels allowed humanity to flourish like never before, raising standards of living globally. And in the 50-year span from 1970 to 2019, deaths from climate-related reasons decreased to one-third[0], even as the global population more than doubled. That's one-third the absolute number, not per capita! All this mostly due to the increasing ability of the developing world to deal with extreme weather events, again thanks to cheap energy.
I posit it's entirely reasonable to disagree on what we should do about climate change.
[0]: https://library.wmo.int/records/item/57564-wmo-atlas-of-mort...
> I posit it's entirely reasonable to disagree on what we should do about climate change.
I think maybe you could have argued that in the past, but not so much anymore. We know now that it is possible to fully decarbonize the vast majority of our energy sources without a significant decrease in living standards - we just need to ensure the infrastructure exists that incentivizes the transition as quickly as possible, and ensure that organizations/people with large vested interests in fossil fuel extraction aren't allowed to control the direction we, collectively, take.
Instead of saying "It's not happening." the GP is saying "It's happening but it's no big deal. good stuff came from it."
Which to be frank, is a complete waste of time not worth responding to. What they've said has been a meme for 30 years at this point.
https://condenaststore.com/featured/the-planet-got-destroyed...
The other problem is the future: it’s mostly the same places which saw those gains which are also critically at risk from flooding, drought/famine, dangerous heat levels, etc. so there’s very much a “the future is longer than the past” aspect to this conversation where, say, 3-6 good decades shouldn’t be accepted as an excuse for the much larger number of worse decades which have already started.
Please explain those cool positives you see to them. You won't have to, they will mostly not lay around and wait for collapse and death, instead they will stand up, turn towards also your home and march to a good and safe location (TM). I would do exactly the same in their place. Bear in mind that those folks will be absolutely desperate with nothing to lose.
This will be a catastrophe for all developed nations, and I don't see any way to avoid it now.
The solution is, again, more energy abundance so that most of the world can have AC. To paraphrase another HNer, I wish for the average Bangladeshi or Nigerian to have the living standards of the average Texan or Swiss; not the other way around, which would be what I foresee as the result of "degrowth" in the name of saving the climate.
There's virtually no point in the hand-wringing that the developed world engages in with electric cars and rooftop solar, when the developing world, where the majority of people are, are emitting more per capita CO2 emissions year after year. China alone netted over 40GW of coal power plants last year.
> Same could easily go for whole Sahel
The Sahel isn't home to all that many people, because it's not very friendly to civilization to begin with. Countries with territories in the Sahel have quite a lot of people, but that's entirely different.
> I don't see any way to avoid it now
More energy, preferably emission-free, but with emissions if we must. More nuclear power plants. More research into fusion.
Thanks for taking Ontario's Canadian winter this year
It was likely removed because it used harsh words to criticize the quality of The Guardian. Someone inquired why they are calling Guardian [redacted]. Since the top comment disappearing also hid my response, here it is, because I agree that the Guardian is [redacted]:
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Especially on climate, it's known for alarmist articles. Search their site for other headlines on an ice-free arctic and I bet you'll find similar doom predictions going back a long time with dates that are now in the past.
A random example I found: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/mar/12/global-w...
The headline suggests half of the world will become uninhabitable. The text then reveals that it will happen "if the average global temperature rises by 7C on pre-industrial levels" and claims that the IPCC says "average temperatures could rise by 6C this century". Which isn't technically lying because they say "could", but it's the upper end of the error bars of the worst-case scenario, and as such, it doesn't support the "will" in the headline.
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Edit: and since I don't want this to be just my opinion, https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/ rates their "Factual Reporting" as "MIXED", same as Fox News or the German "BILD".
I believe the Guardian likes reporting what its readers want to hear, with facts often taking a backseat to that.
> A random example I found: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/mar/12/global-w...
Now if anyone gets a wrong impression here: I checked the linked article. It does not talk about an ice-free arctic. It doesn't even mention the word "arctic". It also does not make any predictions for a date that is now in the past.
It essentially explains that extreme temperature increases would make parts of the world uninhabitable due to the wet bulb temperature. Which is, well, not particularly controversial, as it is a fact that can be derived from very basic physics, and was as true in 2009 as it is today.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/21/arctic-w...
Ice-free Arctic in two years heralds methane catastrophe – scientist (2013)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/j...
Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within four years (2012)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/17/arctic-c...
On the topic of possible inaccurate climate models used in IPCC reports https://youtu.be/4S9sDyooxf4?si=qEIMzCg-oI4y8pbo
Where I live now (Netherlands), people tell me that just 20 years ago, there was ice-skating on the lakes/canals right now. Now, it is sunny and almost sweater weather instead of coat weather.
https://weatherspark.com/h/s/68697/2002/3/Historical-Weather...
https://weatherspark.com/h/s/68697/1999/3/Historical-Weather...
The weather is (hotter|colder) than my perceived normal for this time, therefore climate change is (real|a hoax)!
A random example I found: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/mar/12/global-w...
The headline suggests half of the world will become uninhabitable. The text then reveals that it will happen "if the average global temperature rises by 7C on pre-industrial levels" and claims that the IPCC says "average temperatures could rise by 6C this century". Which isn't technically lying because they say "could", but it's the upper end of the error bars of the worst-case scenario, and as such, it doesn't support the "will" in the headline.
Here’s an article from 2019 https://david-collier.com/guardian-israel-bias-obsessive/
Here's a book from 2004 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disenchantment:_The_Guardian_a...
here’s their own attempt to say that it’s not bias https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/22/accusa...
A quote (judge by yourself if you agree with the editor):
> One example is a complaint from Yiftah Curiel, the press attache at London’s Israeli embassy. He believes that all too often the “headlines of news pieces on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will turn events on their head, portraying perpetrator as victim”.
> He complained about a headline on a story from the Associated Press. It was about one of four attacks on Israelis that left five Palestinians dead in one day.
> Curiel said: “We would like to request a correction of the headline ‘Three Palestinian teenagers shot dead on West Bank’. The headline obscures the relevant and pressing fact that the youths themselves had opened fire at Israeli soldiers, while the headline basically insinuates that they were executed by the soldiers.”
> (The headline to the original AP article stated: “Israel: 5 Palestinians killed while attacking Israelis”.)
> In a later email Curiel said: “In fact, the sub headline in this case makes it even worse, almost insinuating that the soldiers were lying about being attacked (“Israeli security forces allege they were under attack before the killings – though no soldiers were hurt”), as if the fact that they weren’t hurt somehow undermines the veracity of the attack”.
> I rejected the complaint because the headline is not inaccurate, nor in my view does it suggest that the three Palestinians were innocent victims. Three Palestinians are dead. But is it the whole story, no. Should headlines encapsulate the whole story? Traditionally they were required to capture the readers’ attention with the most significant part of the story: in this case the deaths. It was accepted that headlines were read in conjunction with the subheading and the article, which gave context.
I’ve been a loyal reader for years and since their reporting is so corrupt on one subject, now I feel like my worldview was partially shaped by their emotional coverage of many other subjects, which I now simply don’t trust.
I don't know what the definition would think of a situation where we usually had ice caps, but sometimes didn't. I tend to assume that would still count as an ice age, but presumably right on the threshold.
/s, and I dearly hope that doesn’t happen, but these days it feels like it’s just a matter of time.
For one, there’s a significant lag which means that we’re only seeing a fraction of the effect from the drop in emissions. To attribute the majority of this year’s warming would suggest an enormous effect size that’s not supported by our best models.
The majority of models suggest between 0.03 and 0.06 degrees of warming over the next 30 years, due to the drop in SO2 from marine shipping. At the very top end, models which anticipate a large amount of radiative forcing at the end of the confidence ranges still only anticipate around +0.18C by 2030.
Carbon Brief suggests other factors being more influential:
> [drop in marine shipping SO2] is unlikely to be sufficient to explain the spike in global sea surface temperature in recent weeks, which is around 0.2C above the prior record for this time of year.
> Rather, there are a number of other factors likely contributing to current record-warm ocean temperatures. These include the end of a moderate La Niña event at the start of the year and a developing El Niño, a shift which tends to result in higher global temperatures.
> Stratospheric water vapour from the 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano and an unusual absence of dust from the Sahara Desert over the tropical North Atlantic may also be helping drive the ocean heatwave.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shippin...
https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Sulphur-2...
A million square kilometers of ice is not “ice-free.” Stop misusing words.
They think the lie is justifiable to get people scared. I disagree. Scientists lying will only make people distrust the science.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
1 million square km is pretty far from zero.