Maybe I'm not alarmist after all. Maybe this future is nearer than everyone thinks:
I was called "over-alarmist" by one of the people who took my bet that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2020. But one of the country's top ice experts, non-alarmist Professor Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School, told an American Geophysical Union audience this week:
My claim is that the global climate models underestimate the amount of heat delivered to the sea ice.
Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007. So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.
No, I haven't spent the $1000 yet, but I might take some more bets ...
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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Comments
View as Flat
GreyFlcn Posted 12:13 pm
16 Dec 2007
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071213152600 ...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006 ...
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KELLIB Posted 2:36 pm
16 Dec 2007
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amazingdrx Posted 2:51 pm
16 Dec 2007
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 2:56 pm
16 Dec 2007
But I propose a new pool, when will the arctic conveyor stop and the new ice age start? How long until glaciers form in Maine and the UK?
I got 2023.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 3:09 pm
16 Dec 2007
This history of Lake Superior ice might just foretell the future of the Arctic and Antarctic ice. Last complete ice coverage was in 1979 and 1962. 90% froze over in 2003.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Pangolin Posted 4:55 pm
16 Dec 2007
Further heating of ocean temperatures will result in the dissolution of Clathrates and even more methane released. All of this dwarves all planned or possible coal burning emissions and if released will send the planet into a completely unknown climate regime.
A failure of thermohaline circulation and a little ice age would be a blessing in comparison to the methane release scenario.
Put the Carbon Back
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314159265 Posted 5:12 pm
16 Dec 2007
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Steve Bloom Posted 6:39 pm
16 Dec 2007
This 1.6 meters/century rate was paced by Milankovitch cycles, so potentially we could do even better.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:28 am
17 Dec 2007
Would the additional greenhouse warming prevent a little ice age, or would it just delay it? Would they cancel each other out in North America and Europe?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Steve Bloom Posted 4:39 am
17 Dec 2007
The possibility of a significant hydrate release from around the Arctic Ocean margins has yet to be ruled out, but there's no reason to expect it to be huge. Methane release from permafrost melt may be more important. The big open question with both of these is how fast they could happen.
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amazingdrx Posted 9:27 pm
17 Dec 2007
Which conveyor research showed this result? I did see some information claiming that the stppoage would only shift Europe's climate to that of Canada.
I'm wondering if denier propaganda is starting to affect this and other scenarios? It seems a shift from denying human caused GHG climate change to merely denying the severity of the effect is underway.
First we saw an article here that claimed that the cure for GHG climate change was much more expensive that the effects were likely to be. the latest one says that simply buying "insurance" in the form of "more study" of GHG free energy sources was a proportional investment to the risk posed by GHG, than actually going ahead with mass production of renewable energy devices.
It's an un-interesting new direction, but with similar rsults to the old denier talking points. Continue the energy policy status quo, with huge subsidies to fossil and nuclear corporations, let them adapt at their own "free" market speed. Trust monopoly corporations to care for the climate, government can't be part of any solution anyway, it is too inept and corrupt.
This new improved sophistry takes advantage of IPCC silence on many of the possible effects, like ice melting, and their speed. methane hydrate and tundra entrapped methane hardly gets a notice. The same with the typical melt rate of ice, it generally proceeds to accelerate at an exponential rate.
We can't just cede these points to the corpor-right. They will take them and run for the goal, as we have seen them do in articles here recently. Relying on the usual rhetorical shock and awe, and the traditional appeal to authority informal fallacy so dear to the hearts of corporate jetset wannabees everywhere.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 9:53 pm
17 Dec 2007
It seems a minor point, but is it really? Bernanke met with hedge fund operators, according to the NYT, so they could try to explain the complex arrangement of lending (they have arranged) that has the world economy tottering on the brink of disaster.
As with the Cheney administration secret energy meeting early on after the first bush appointment (never call it an election), where Cheney met with the robber barons of fossil and nuclear energy to chart the demise of renewable energy policy.
So this meeting with the perpetual robber barons of the investment world, the completely unregulated insider trading thieves, that brought on this global credit emergency; was also designed to serve their own interests.
"Hedge" funds, the incremental financial "insurance" crowd, that justified their non-regulated status as part of some kind of "free" market response to risk. Now the climate change deniers are using the very popular buzzword too. Let's "hedge' the risk of climate change.
How? Well just let hedge funds do it, through carbon trading and weather furtures options. Of course the free market, left to operate efficiently (unregulated) knows the best of all possible ways to proceed. It is the only accurate predictor of the future. The market knows all. The omniscient god of the corpor-right, it justifies anything they want it to.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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