What does this mean for Global Warming?

[Darth Yan]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... E-now.html

Honestly what should we make of this?

[Channel72]

Isn't the dailymail like mostly conservative tabloid trash? I'd take anything they say with a huge grain silo of salt unless you can find another source confirming this.

[Broomstick]

Climate change does not mean the world gets hot and never ever experience cold again. All this means is that this summer was cooler than some other recent summers. That's normal and expected no matter what the climate is doing, that some years will be warmer or cooler than others.

[Hillary]

Isn't the dailymail like mostly conservative tabloid trash? I'd take anything they say with a huge grain silo of salt unless you can find another source confirming this.

Yes.

[madd0ct0r]

Better Source (make sure you switch to the Antarctic): http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charc ... ice-graph/

In other news, Artic ice is well below average, but unlikely to set a new low. These are both 'extent' measures, so a few mm of ice on top of the sea counts.

Good blog explaining the trend for sea ice VOLUME, and why it's still trending downwards: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Has-Arc ... overed.htm

[Simon_Jester]

The Daily Mail is claiming Gore said the ice cap would be gone in seven years and quoting him as saying it could be gone in as little as.

It's not providing absolute measurements of ice thickness, only relative ones on a color-chart that may or may not measure the same thickness as the same color each year.

And, like basically every climate change denialist in the past five years or so, the article talks about Al Gore as though he is somehow a world-renowned expert on climate change, as opposed to being the guy who made a documentary on it and interviewed the world-renowned experts.

As though Al Gore somehow made up this whole global warming thing for himself in An Inconvenient Truth, even though I was hearing freaking children's cartoons warning us about the problem fifteen years earlier.

Remember, folks, it's a lot easier to pitch your climate change denial as "Al Gore LIED!" than as "98% of the world's scientists are WRONG!"

[Borgholio]

The only thing the deniers have left is to point at seasonal fluctuations and use them as "evidence" that there is no climate change. They simply refuse to look at the long term trend where, if you average out the abnormally warm and cold spots, you find that overall the world IS warmer and there IS less ice than there was decades ago. They think that because the ice pack grew more than it did last year, that it means the entire trend simply does not exist.

A similar example would be to look at California. Right now, we're in the worst drought in recorded history (literally). Nobody is denying that. But we are actually forecast to have a nasty El-Nino this winter...meaning Noah-sized deluges. We are expected to have a huge snowpack, brimming reservoirs, and more rain than we know what to do with. The actions of the climate change deniers would be to say, "Well we're drowning in water right now, we must not have ever had a drought to begin with and anybody who says we had a drought is a lying liberal who is misleading the public to make money off this. Somehow.

[jwl]

I don't think many climate scientists would deny that al gore exaggerated the threat of global warming. That doesn't mean it isn't happening.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I don't think many climate scientists would deny that al gore exaggerated the threat of global warming. That doesn't mean it isn't happening.

Actually, you will find that most climate scientists think the projections Gore used in his documentary are too conservative given new data.

[jwl]

I don't think many climate scientists would deny that al gore exaggerated the threat of global warming. That doesn't mean it isn't happening.

Actually, you will find that most climate scientists think the projections Gore used in his documentary are too conservative given new data.

Including the ice melting one detailed here? I can't really remember much about al gore's documentary, but from what I can remember it seems he exaggerated the effects somewhat, by impication if nothing else. I mean for one thing, I'm fairly sure the sea ice melting isn't the main cause of sea levels rising for a very long while yet, the main cause being heat expansion of the water in the meantime.

[Iroscato]

The only thing the deniers have left is to point at seasonal fluctuations and use them as "evidence" that there is no climate change. They simply refuse to look at the long term trend where, if you average out the abnormally warm and cold spots, you find that overall the world IS warmer and there IS less ice than there was decades ago. They think that because the ice pack grew more than it did last year, that it means the entire trend simply does not exist.

A similar example would be to look at California. Right now, we're in the worst drought in recorded history (literally). Nobody is denying that. But we are actually forecast to have a nasty El-Nino this winter...meaning Noah-sized deluges. We are expected to have a huge snowpack, brimming reservoirs, and more rain than we know what to do with. The actions of the climate change deniers would be to say, "Well we're drowning in water right now, we must not have ever had a drought to begin with and anybody who says we had a drought is a lying liberal who is misleading the public to make money off this. Somehow.

We have always been at war with Eastasia.
I think I need a new rule for my internet browsing - never look at the comments on Youtube or the Daily Mail. The ones in that article go beyond your common or garden stupidity, they make me angry in their blind refusal to listen to logic and evidence.

[Alyrium Denryle]

I don't think many climate scientists would deny that al gore exaggerated the threat of global warming. That doesn't mean it isn't happening.

Actually, you will find that most climate scientists think the projections Gore used in his documentary are too conservative given new data.

Including the ice melting one detailed here? I can't really remember much about al gore's documentary, but from what I can remember it seems he exaggerated the effects somewhat, by impication if nothing else. I mean for one thing, I'm fairly sure the sea ice melting isn't the main cause of sea levels rising for a very long while yet, the main cause being heat expansion of the water in the meantime.

Loss of sea ice is an effect of global warming, and a cause. Ocean warms, sea ice melts, sea ice that would otherwise reflect sunlight away is gone, so the ocean absorbs more heat, thus melting more sea ice. Positive feedback loop commences. That said, sea ice loss does not cause sea level rise, because it is ocean water. Whether it is frozen or liquid, there is not much of a volume flux. Loss of glacial ice, as well as the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are worse, because those are freshwater, when they melt (and they are currently melting) they add water volume to the oceans, and the is a Lot of water locked up in those ice sheets.

As for this years sea ice, I can Cherry Pick arbitrary diads of years to get whatever result I want, which is what they did here. 2 years, 5 years. Es ist egal. What matters is the longer term trend, not the fluctuations year to year. Just like how someone who is in declining health can have great days where they feel awesome and want to go for a run. They are still slowly dying. It would be stupid to claim that because they are feeling better today than they did yesterday that their cancer must be in remission or never existed at all.

[Irbis]

Good take on the subject:

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2014/09/ ... o-85n.html

In short - current year is exceptional because we have normal ice zone rebound. Not even big rebound, normal one. What used to be average is big outlier these days.

[Adam Reynolds]

In short - current year is exceptional because we have normal ice zone rebound. Not even big rebound, normal one. What used to be average is big outlier these days.

XKCD had a great one on this. The last panel rather accurately sums up the extreme case of the problem, what was once normal is now an outlier.

[jwl]

Loss of sea ice is an effect of global warming, and a cause. Ocean warms, sea ice melts, sea ice that would otherwise reflect sunlight away is gone, so the ocean absorbs more heat, thus melting more sea ice. Positive feedback loop commences. That said, sea ice loss does not cause sea level rise, because it is ocean water. Whether it is frozen or liquid, there is not much of a volume flux. Loss of glacial ice, as well as the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are worse, because those are freshwater, when they melt (and they are currently melting) they add water volume to the oceans, and the is a Lot of water locked up in those ice sheets.

As for this years sea ice, I can Cherry Pick arbitrary diads of years to get whatever result I want, which is what they did here. 2 years, 5 years. Es ist egal. What matters is the longer term trend, not the fluctuations year to year. Just like how someone who is in declining health can have great days where they feel awesome and want to go for a run. They are still slowly dying. It would be stupid to claim that because they are feeling better today than they did yesterday that their cancer must be in remission or never existed at all.

Yeah, I know that stuff. Point is, it was never going to happen that fast. My understanding is that ice is melting, but it is melting slowly enough that heat expansion of the oceans contributes more than that to sea levels in the immediate future: i.e. all of the poles melting in 7 years is absurd, no matter how pessimistic you get about emissions.