Posted on 12/22/2002 7:36:29 AM PST by freeforall
Arctic ice cap to vanish in 80 years, study says Kyoto climate treaty came 'too late' to save polar ice from melting
Jonathan Leake The Times, London
Sunday, December 22, 2002
The ice cap covering the North Pole will vanish in less than 80 years as climate change melts it away, say British meteorological researchers.
The area covered by ice has shrunk by 20 per cent since the 1950s and its average winter thickness has reduced by 40 per cent since 1970. From detailed measurements of the rate of melting, the Met Office's Hadley Centre for monitoring climate change predicts the ice-cap will disappear around September 2079.
The Met Office research, to be published next year, assumes emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will continue to rise at their current rate. Many believe this will happen since the U.S. rejected the Kyoto climate treaty that would have cut emissions. Canada ratified the treaty Monday.
Geoff Jenkins, head of climate change prediction, said only a few icebergs would be left. "Our figures suggest that virtually all the ice will be gone," he said.
Even if the world reduced emissions by the maximum possible, it would only give a few years reprieve, says the Met Office.
"The greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere mean we will keep getting warmer for decades, whatever we do," said Mr. Jenkins. "Cutting emissions is important, but the effects will come too late to save the polar ice cap."
The loss of the ice cap will open up the Northwest Passage and enable ships to save thousands of kilometres on journeys between Europe and the Far East.
It could also change weather patterns. The larger expanse of open sea would increase evaporation and rainfall, possibly causing wetter summers in Europe. It might also allow more plankton to grow, thus boosting fish stocks.
For other wildlife, however, the change could be disastrous. Polar bears and seals would be hit hard because they rely on floating ice to hunt and breed.
"The north polar wildlife is unique, but it is going to have to adapt fast if it is to survive," said Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University.
The thinning of the ice has already hampered some expeditions to the pole. David Mill, a Briton, had to be rescued last May after finding his way blocked by thin ice.
The melting of the North Pole will not raise sea levels as all the ice is floating. There are, however, fears the temperature increases could melt Antarctica, the southern ice cap. This sits above sea level on a buried continent so melting would sharply raise sea levels.
© Copyright 2002 The Ottawa Citizen
Do you detect delusions of grandeur aligned with an agenda to reverse the great Industrial Revolution?
Yep, no improvements in technology in the next 75 years. And we expect all those 3rd world countries that produce 95% of the emissions to remain cesspools. And even though the US pollutes less, and produces a small fraction of the questionable harmfull gases, we should be held responsible.
< /sarcasm >
From detailed measurements of the rate of melting, the Met Office's Hadley Centre for monitoring climate change predicts the ice-cap will disappear around September 2079. Linear extrapolation can be so much fun! Will Women Soon Outrun Men? Will Women Soon Outrun Men? was the title of the letter published in the prestigious Scientific Correspondence section of the January 2, 1992 issue of the journal Nature. The letter was submitted by Drs. Brian Whipp and Susan Ward of the UCLA School of Medicine, who, based on observations of world record track times from early 1900s to 1992, boldly concluded that ...unless the progression rate of mens records increases relative to that of women, then [the mean velocity] for these events will be no different for men and women within the first half of the twenty-first century... Beyond that time, current progression rates imply superior performance by women. The projected intersection for the marathon is 1998. The following are some insights provided by Randall Woods, a physics instructor at the British Columbia Institute of Technology in Canada, regarding the daring claim by Whipp and Ward and their questionable statistical analysis. According to Woods, Whipp and Ward used the world record track times (the mean running velocity in meters/ minute) for men and women from beginning of the century to 1992 for the 200, 400, 800, 1500, 5000, and 10000 meter events, as well as the marathon. In short, they graphed the observed data and compared the slopes. They noted that the rate of increase for women runners was greater than that for men, most notably in the marathon. Next they extrapolated the results into the future and forecasted that women marathon runners would overtake men in 1998! To illustrate the absurdity resulting from such a naïve statistical analysis, Woods used the same technique and compared the data from the mens 100 meter race (taken from The Fastest Men on Earth by Duncanson) and the womens marathon (taken from Human Kinetics by Sandrock). Applying a simple linear regression, he calculated the slope and the x- and y-intercept values, the interpretation of which provided some fascinating results:
The complete article can be found on Woods home page at http://prisoner.soe.bcit.bc.ca/rjw/pers/womenrun.htm . |
Proof of global cooling, it's been too cold in Santaland to snow. Lack of snow is causing the ice to thin. We must drive more and bigger suvs, for the elves.
(I hate ice-fishing ;-)
Well accepted or not, is this supported by data or is it just someone's opinion? If it is supported by data, where is the data?
I do not know what the net impact of H2O vs. CO2 is. (How many degrees increase in surface temprature for a given increase in a particular greenhouse gas?)
Climate Catastrophe, A spectroscopic Artifact?
Conclusions
It is hardly to be expected that for CO2 doubling an increment of IR absorption at the 15 µm edges by 0.17% can cause any significant global warming or even a climate catastrophe.
The radiative forcing for doubling can be calculated by using this figure. If we allocate an absorption of 32 W/m2 [14] over 180º steradiant to the total integral (area) of the n3 band as observed from satellite measurements (Hanel et al., 1971) and applied to a standard atmosphere, and take an increment of 0.17%, the absorption is 0.054 W/m2 - and not 4.3 W/m2.
This is roughly 80 times less than IPCC's radiative forcing.
If we allocate 7.2 degC as greenhouse effect for the present CO2 (as asserted by Kondratjew and Moskalenko in J.T. Houghton's book The Global Climate [14]), the doubling effect should be 0.17% which is 0.012 degC only. If we take 1/80 of the 1.2 degC that result from Stefan-Boltzmann's law with a radiative forcing of 4.3 W/m2, we get a similar value of 0.015 degC.
Consider, for example, the study of Fischer et al. (1999), who examined trends of atmospheric CO2 and air temperature derived from Antarctic ice core data that extended back in time a quarter of a million years. Over this extended period, the three most dramatic warming events experienced on earth were those associated with the terminations of the last three ice ages; and for each of these climatic transitions, earth's air temperature rose well in advance of any increase in atmospheric CO2. In fact, the air's CO2 content did not begin to rise until 400 to 1,000 years after the planet began to warm. Such findings have been corroborated by Mudelsee (2001), who examined the leads/lags of atmospheric CO2 concentration and air temperature over an even longer time period, finding that variations in atmospheric CO2 concentration lagged behind variations in air temperature by 1,300 to 5,000 years over the past 420,000 years.
The major role of water vapor in the "global warming" debate is that the hydrostatic equilibrium can be shifted by increasing CO2, not that we could ever dump enough H2O into the atmosphere to make a difference.
We don't dump enough CO2 into the atmosphere to make a difference either. Contribution of mankind to the total greenhouse gas balance is 0.26%.
It starts when the Arctic is ICE FREE.
Adding up all anthropogenic greenhouse sources, the total human contribution to the greenhouse effect is around 0.28% (factoring in water vapor).
Kyoto, even if imposed equally on all countries around the world, would reduce total human greenhouse contributions from CO2 by about 0.035%.--Which is less than the natural variability of Earth's climate system.
"There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050."--Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service; in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal.
1/20th of a degree C folks!
And there it is, ladies and gentlemen! What it all boils down to is that it's all our fault! If Bush would have just signed that Kyoto treaty it would have saved the world (never ming that Klintoon rejected it too, it's all Bush's fault). I'm so damn sick and tired of ignorant Euro-weenies bad-mouthing the U.S., then running to us crying "mommy" when someone threatens to kick their apathetic asses!
The counterpoint to the above article:
POLYAKOV: "We found a 60- to 70-year cycle with many Arctic parameters, such as surface temperature, air pressure, and ice thickness variability. And we believe this signal comes from the North Atlantic and is induced by very slow anomalies in the circulation in the North Atlantic. We believe that this cycle is very important for the Arctic environment, because all major parameters show this slow variability."
That seems to fit with records from about 1930 to 1960 that show sea ice in the high Arctic was thick and widespread. It also seems to mesh with data from 1960 to 1990, which shows that sea ice became 40 percent thinner overall, according to Rothrock's research.
ROTHROCK: "We've published results from submarine cruises, where they have upward-looking sonar and they are able to determine ice thickness. We took data taken from cruises in the 1990s that we had been party to and compared it to older data from the '50s, '60s and '70s and found quite a large difference."
Not to worry, however. Polyakov and others say the cycle shows signs of shifting back toward a colder Arctic climate.
POLYAKOV: "I would be very careful with forecasts. But available data suggests that we are very close to the situation when everything will go to a cold climate regime, with thicker ice, colder air temperature, higher atmospheric pressures and colder water in the ocean."
For the moment, many scientists believe that natural cycles are exerting a more powerful influence on the Arctic's ice cover than are the impacts of global warming. But, says Johnson, scientists shouldn't let their guard down.
JOHNSON: "The question of what happens should there be more open water is an incredibly complex one to answer. The question that needs to be asked is how much of these changes are "global warming" or "global change" versus the natural variability that's been going on for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years? And that's an enormously difficult question because our records are, of course, incomplete over the long haul."
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