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Arctic Ocean started getting warmer decades earlier than we thought

214 points by rgrieselhuber 5y ago

stuff4ben 5y ago
This is fascinating! We've always blamed climate change/warming on man-made activities, but this study is saying Arctic Atlantification predates the industrial revolution (or at least occurs at the same time). Not that I want to see continued use of fossil fuels in place of more sustainable options like nuclear and solar/wind. But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming?
- draw_down 5y ago
  > But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming? I’m not sure we can realistically go down that road, politically speaking. Look at everything that’s happened with covid- what we said wasn’t wrong, you just misheard us. If anything, climate change is even more entrenched politically.
- Klarios 5y ago
  It potentially explains more/better/more fine-grained how our future will look like.this will not suddenly revert our assumptions on CO2 being the fundamental factor of man made global warming. We are not that uncertain about climate change.
- 9oliYQjP 5y ago
  The article makes no mention of the warming predating the industrial revolution. Rather, the quote below indicates a marked change in temperature at the beginning of the 20th century. When we looked at the whole 800-year timescale, our temperature and salinity records look pretty constant,” said co-lead author Dr Tesi Tommaso from the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council in Bologna. “But all of a sudden at the start of the 20th century, you get this marked change in temperature and salinity – it really sticks out.
- time_to_smile 5y ago
  In William Ruddiman's Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum [0] he argues that even human agriculture has been enough to tip the CO2 scales in favor of not entering a new ice age. > But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming? This would require several, distinct and unrelated fields of science being wrong about the way CO2 and other GHG have in the past and currently regulate the Earth's temperature. There is no question that CO2 in the atmosphere has been rapidly rising. There is no question that humans have been the cause of this rise, it's just basic math given the wild amount of hydrocarbons we combust every year. So while it's possible that scientists are wrong in the big picture sense it would require a sea-change in our understanding of climate from every perspective as well as being a remarkable coincidence that we are seeing the impact we are in correlation to our own CO2 emissions. A far, far more likely explanation is that the Earth's climate is even more sensitive to small changes in CO2 on a small time scale than we have previously thought. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plows,_Plagues_and_Petroleum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plows,_Plagues_and_Petroleum
- mathieubordere 5y ago
  This article does not say global climate warming is not man-made, it just states that "Atlantification" is a process that warms the Arctic Ocean even more.
- goohle 5y ago
  OMG. Do you know meaning of "acceleration" word in "acceleration of warming"?
  - sjwalter 5y ago
    What if the rate of change commonly accepted by mainstream climate scientists is off by 10%? 50%? More? What if the alarmism and depression-inspiring shrill shrieking is doing more harm than good?
    - revolvingocelot 5y ago
      What if you're just asking questions, y'know?
      - time_to_smile 5y ago
        A bit terrifying that your other comment which was pointing out this "just asking questions" behavior[0] was immediately flagged and removed. It's wild to me that a group of people that tends to be educated, intellectual, and curious about complex systems instantly starts to lose it's collective mind when faced with an existential risk. It feels like living in a Lovecraft story where the only response to horror is madness. [0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
- tomtomistaken 5y ago
  > All of the world’s oceans are warming due to climate change, but the Arctic Ocean, the smallest and shallowest of the world’s oceans, is warming fastest of all. The article talks about the Arctic Ocean. It is not denying the warming of the world's ocean due to climate change.
- refurb 5y ago
  Exactly! The article mentions it’s been warming since 1900 which is a scant decade after industrialization began. It seems to suggest other factors are contributing to global warming!
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > The article mentions it’s been warming since 1900 which is a scant decade after industrialization began The industrial revolution is generally dated from 1760, which is...somewhat more than a decade before 1900.
    - refurb 5y ago
      See other reply that shows CO2 emissions were negligible until 1900? How are we driving mass warming in 1900 when CO2 emissions were barely 1% of what they are today?
      - option_greek 5y ago
        Just grasping at straws. Without taking into consideration, the magnitude of co2 getting emitted, we can even blame cavemen with their cook fires for global warming.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > See other reply that shows CO2 emissions were negligible until 1900? Literally, no, where? Even if I did see one claiming that, I’ve also seen the charts of net atmospheric CO2 from human activity that show a sharp rise already in progress by 1800.
        refurb 5y ago
        https://skepticalscience.com/EmmissionsAcceleration.html https://skepticalscience.com/EmmissionsAcceleration.html
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    for context, greenhouse effect was first described in 1824 and a good approximation of the warning effect of doubling of atmospheric CO2 was made in 1896 (+2.5~4 C) [0] From 1800 to 1900, CO2 ppm rose from 280 to 300 Of course, from 1900 til today it has risen to over 400ppm My point is, we were burning a significant amount of coal throughout 1800s - Acid rain was happening in the 1850s [1] [0] http://interactive.fusion.net/200-years-of-climate-science-and-policy/ http://interactive.fusion.net/200-years-of-climate-science-a... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > but this study is saying Arctic Atlantification predates the industrial revolution (or at least occurs at the same time). No, it isn't. It says it starts at the beginning of the 20th century, the industrial revolution usually dated as mid-18th to mid-19th century. The former is neither before nor at the same time as the latter. > Not that I want to see continued use of fossil fuels in place of more sustainable options like nuclear and solar/wind. But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming? There is no good reason to think that they have, and this study does not at all contravene, or even call into question, the consensus on the causes of warming.
  - yessirwhatever 5y ago
    > There is no good reason to think that they have, and this study does not at all contravene, or even call into question, the consensus on the causes of warming. From the article: > “Climate simulations generally do not reproduce this kind of warming in the Arctic Ocean, meaning there’s an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms driving Atlantification,” said Tommaso. “We rely on these simulations to project future climate change, but the lack of any signs of an early warming in the Arctic Ocean is a missing piece of the puzzle.” I'd generally encourage people to be skeptical of everything, but I'd call this a really good reason to be skeptical.
    - dtech 5y ago
      It can just as well be an explanation why climate models have been pretty consistently under-estimating warming of time though.
      - yessirwhatever 5y ago
        Could be. If you're willing to admit that it might go the other way as well then I'm fine with being skeptical on either side (In fact I encourage it).
  - hinkley 5y ago
    James Watt's first heat engine went online the same year as the American Revolutionary War. We might recall also that one of the uses of his machines was to keep coal mines from filling up with water (ie, increase coal production). This has been going on for a long time, and steel production was a major factor long before Watt.
- tzs 5y ago
  > But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming? That is extremely unlikely. We can measure the spectrum and intensity of incoming solar energy and of outgoing radiation from Earth, and see that we are gaining. We can see that much of that gain is due to incoming energy heating things which re-radiate that energy in infrared which we can see gets trapped by CO2. We can tell by looking at the isotope distribution of the C in the CO2 where it comes from. CO2 from still living or recently living (say dead for only a few hundred years) has a different isotope distribution than CO2 from long dead or never living sources. This lets us tell that most of the CO2 increase over the last couple hundred years is from burning fossil fuels or an increase in geological processes that release long trapped CO2 such as volcanic activity. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere that we can tell from that did not come from living or recently living things matches fairly well with what we know of volcanic activity and how much fossil fuels we burn, giving us enough data to conclude that most of the warming due to CO2 is due to human emitted CO2. For that to be wrong would require that we have massively overestimated how much fossil fuels we use and massively overlooked a large amount of volcanic activity.
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    Ok, but more heat means more water vapor which means more cloud cover which means less heat. More CO2 means more plant growth which means less CO2 as the carbon is tied up. It's not one factor you can examine cleanly in isolation. There are many many interacting factors.
marstall 5y ago
for reference, here's a look at what co2 emissions were 120 years ago ... https://skepticalscience.com/EmmissionsAcceleration.html https://skepticalscience.com/EmmissionsAcceleration.html
- HamburgerEmoji 5y ago
  For more context, CO2 ppm was ~1000 less than 50m years ago.
- q1w2 5y ago
  Two things I find unsatisfactory in these data... 1. It doesn't touch on the Earth's natural absorption of CO2 - so we cannot conclude here that the additional CO2 emitted remains in the atmosphere (I mean we know that from other research, but this link is silent on that mitigation). 2. The cumulative numbers are pointless and misleading. CO2 is known to have a half-life on the order of under a century, so posting cumulative numbers gives the reader the misconception that the only way back is to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and that the situation is much more irreversible than it is in the long term.
  - codingdave 5y ago
    CO2 has a half-life of 120 years, so it seems like a chart of data covering 120 years is appropriate.
    - q1w2 5y ago
      None of the charts seem to take into account any absorption at all, regardless of the duration. Having a chart 120 years long, and not including absorption, means all the numbers are significantly wrong. Also, 120 years is on the upper range of most estimates, and does not assume any increased absorption despite the fact that we've almost doubled the concentration of CO2.
  - moffkalast 5y ago
    It's true, there is some absorption: https://www.eea.europa.eu/ims/ocean-acidification https://www.eea.europa.eu/ims/ocean-acidification and it's gonna make the situation so much worse it's hard to even imagine right now.
truthwhisperer 5y ago
very nice article. Fear sells. The whole climate debate is about how we can distribute wealth. First step, spread fear amongst the youth because the older, mostly conservative public won't listen at first. Especially the young white females are sensitive because of their mother feelings and protective childhood.
time_to_smile 5y ago
As someone who does statistical modeling for a living (though not climate related), one thing I've found fascinating is that many climate skeptics, particularly on HN, will focus on the difficulty scientific models have in making accurate predictions about the near term impact of climate change. While this is true (modeling a complex system such as the Earth's climate and all of it's positive and negative feed back loops is incredibly challenging), the implied assumption from people that use this critique is that uncertainty will always fall on the side of "better than expected". People that have been closely following human ecology for the last decade or so have repeatedly found the opposite to be true. "Faster than expected" is somewhat of a joke in certain communities since it seems that the more we learn the more we realize how large the impact of rapid accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere really is, and how quickly this impact develops. That's not to say model uncertainty == doom, but assuming that model uncertainty == "this is fine" is a more dangerous and naive assumption.
- refurb 5y ago
  Nobody is saying “it will be better than expected” they are saying “the models could be wrong”. And that’s played out already? So not exactly a low probability scenario.
  - rp1 5y ago
    So if the models are wrong, and wrong in such a way that the impact of climate change is much worse than they predict, then what?
    - refurb 5y ago
      But that goes both ways? If I told you “my model predicts a 50% chance you be diagnosed with cancer and a 50% chance you wont” how do you make a decision. When both are equally probable?
      - notreallyserio 5y ago
        When the options are keep smoking or stop smoking, the obvious choice is to stop smoking to improve your odds. The positive side effects are worth it on their own.
revolvingocelot 5y ago
Should be interesting to see all the climate deniers of this orange website ignore the mountains of evidence for the phenomenon, and grasp tightly the scanty data that allows them to JAQ off [0] about how ooh maaaaybe we don't need to do aaaanything! What if we're wrooooong? The idea that we're "wrong about the causes" of global warming requires denial of basic chemistry and settled paleontological records in order to support itself. Does it matter that the linked article explicitly points out the better-understood causes-and-effects of warming trends on ocean statistics? Absolutely not. The supporting links are not to the paper itself, but to "skeptic" sites. Great stuff. Me, I wouldn't carry water for the people intentionally destroying our planet's ability to support life-as-we-know-it for less than six figures, but I suspect that these people do it for free. [0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
- NDizzle 5y ago
  How will increasing taxes in western society fix this? Hubris, almost Hillary levels of hubris.
  - revolvingocelot 5y ago
    > How will increasing taxes in western society fix this? Hubris, almost Hillary levels of hubris. I think you're replying to the wrong person, except there's no one else in the thread as of now mentioning taxes. So I guess you're participating in the proud internet tradition of putting words in people's mouths. What's really incredible is that it's not like I wrote a huge wall of text. It's not difficult to see that I didn't mention taxation or "Hillary" in my root level comment. What do you gain from this nonsense?
    - NDizzle 5y ago
      What other suggestions do you have for what "we" could do? China won't do anything, neither will India or Russia, by the way. So what are we doing? It'll boil down to effectively taxing companies and people. I skipped ahead a few steps in the discussion. Sorry for spoiling it.
b112 5y ago
Harvest trillions of fish, and you remove a massive cause of ocean water sub-currents. How do millions of salmon, halibet, swimming and moving water, huge schools of fish, change currents? Well they're mostly gone now, compared to 100+ years ago.
- dtech 5y ago
  It seems unlikely that fish are more influential than earth rotation, sun etc. The energy difference is very large.
- rlpb 5y ago
  What evidence is there that fish cause ocean currents?
- Cd00d 5y ago
  You're arguing that fish cause ocean currents? Are airplanes the source of wind?
  - b112 5y ago
    Cows apparently cause a massive environmental impact. Goats, without predators, can turn plain and even forest into desert. Animals cause impact to the environment. we've removed trillions of tonnes of active biomass from the oceans. What impact has that?
    - bink 5y ago
      No one is saying fish don't have an impact on the environment. You're apparently arguing that they have an impact on ocean currents, which is a claim that is out there enough that people at least expect a source.
      - b112 5y ago
        No source, except in my mind. However, trees dramatically impact rainfall, wind severity (they act as a windbreak), soil retention, and more. By removing all that biomass in the ocean, all sorts of flora and fauna have vanished, and/or changed ratios. If organisms on land can literally change climate, and even the windstreams over time, why not in the ocean?
tdrdt 5y ago
Personally I am still not convinced climate change is completely caused by human activity. But I think we are accelerating a natural climate change. “Climate simulations generally do not reproduce this kind of warming in the Arctic Ocean, meaning there’s an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms driving Atlantification,” My takeaway: because we still know so little about the mechanisms we should be more careful about our environment. It's very naive to pump tons of CO2 into the atmosphere without knowing what will happen.
- w-j-w 5y ago
  https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
  - WithinReason 5y ago
    That XKCD concatenated data from different studies with different temporal resolution, so it's very misleading. Past data came from Marcott et. all, who said: “the paleotemperature records used in our study have a temporal resolution of about 120 years on average.” “no temperature variability is preserved in our reconstruction at cycles shorter than 300 years, 50% is preserved at 1,000-year time scales, and nearly all is preserved at 2,000-year periods and longer.” Recent data came from yearly measurements, so preserves variability on a yearly basis. In other words, the way past data was determined, sudden changes would be hidden, like the temperature spike that it shows in the 20th century.
  - xscott 5y ago
    Do you ever wonder why that comic only goes back 22,000 years? If it had gone back just a little more, say 25,000 years (a rounder number), it would be much more complicated to explain what happened. If it had gone back 400,000 years, which is basically nothing in geological scales, it would bring up some really interesting questions.
- Proven 5y ago
  > Personally I am still not convinced climate change is completely caused by human activity I'm not concerned at all. The real problem is that the silly efforts to "do something" are a collosal destruction of wealth while having no effect whatsoever on climate.
pezzana 5y ago
> The researchers used geochemical and ecological data from ocean sediments to reconstruct the change in water column properties over the past 800 years. They precisely dated sediments using a combination of methods and looked for diagnostic signs of Atlantification, like change in temperature and salinity. Then, from the original paper: > Here, we use lipid-based water temperature proxies (UK37 U 37 K and TEXL86 TEX 86 L ) and benthic foraminiferal data (distribution and δ18O) to reconstruct changes in water mass properties. Specifically, we examined anomalies in our proxy records to identify diagnostic signs of Atlantification. On the basis of a precise chronology, we combine our results with other local climate records to provide an integrated understanding of Atlantification and resolve its timing. Last, our reconstructions are compared with records of ocean and atmosphere circulation patterns to investigate the connections between the high Arctic and North Atlantic dynamics. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj2946 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj2946 Lipid-based water temperature proxies use the distribution of lipids deposited by organisms in sediment to deduce temperature. And... > Benthic foraminifera are single-celled organisms similar to amoeboid organisms in cell structure. https://pubs.usgs.gov/pdf/of/of99-45/foram.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/pdf/of/of99-45/foram.pdf So the technique appears to be based on isotopic and lipid analysis of sediments deposited by certain organisms. If you can date the sediments and are confident in the link between analyte concentration and temperature, and correct for various factors, you can reconstruct a time/temperature plot.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  Are they sure they have control over all the confounders? People are still fighting over 24-isopropylcholestane and oxygenation.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mertanj1 5y ago
Amazing input.
waterthrowaway 5y ago
Hello! I’m a physical oceanographer which means my job is to figure out how the water moves and delivers heat through things like math and models. Paleoclimate isn’t my expertise but I figured I’d chime in on some of the climate skepticism here. Oceanographers would be the first to admit that modeling-predicting changes in the ocean is very hard. Especially more regional features like an intensified warming in the Labrador Sea. That is because even state of the art models have coarse resolution and our initial conditions for far in the past are poor. However, anthropogenic climate change is not a regional effect. It’s like if first I asked you, what will happen if I hit this window with a hammer? It will break. Now what if I ask you where every piece will go? Also I’ve seen in this thread people saying that global climate change has been overhyped. From the science side this paper does a great job of evaluating our models from the past: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/288430943.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/288430943.pdf
- waterthrowaway 5y ago
  If you are interested in the irreducible imprecision of climate models this paper is fun too https://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709 https://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709
  - moffkalast 5y ago
    I'm not sure if you're the guy to ask, but I'm sure you're aware of the continuing acidification of the oceans via CO2 absorption. From what I've heard it's highly unpredictable as to how it will actually affect ecosystems, but supposedly some molluscs are already having reproductive issues as their shells tend to dissolve at some point in the growing cycle. The predictions I've read point to a likely oceanic food chain collapse in 15-25 years, not to mention the decrease in fertility that fish seem to be experiencing from higher temperatures. Is that roughly correct?
    - mistrial9 5y ago
      I heard whispers of "its too late" in the early 90s, with respect to the top meter of ocean and the biological life cycles there being broken.. yet we had the international CFC ban and that was a success at breaking the Ozone Hole, which made things better.. Let's be eyes-open on every detail, but be aware of the despair aspect too .. "collapse in X-X+10 years" is overwhelming to many ears, and we do not know the future.. hth
barathr 5y ago
This article, connecting a decline of sea ice to Western U.S. wildfires, has also been on my mind lately: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26232-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26232-9
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Dubai is in the desert and is more than thriving. On Average I was colder there than in Canada. Every indoor place has great Air Conditioning. Drinkable Water is converted from Ocean water. Its a model of what a future city could look like in the worst case climate change scenario, if human ingenuity is able to thrive. Though, I'm still not convinced climate change will be all that bad. Making cold uninhabitable places in North Canada, and Russia more habitable for humans and wild life would be great. They also found palm fossils outside Calgary. So its not like Earth is not in a climate change cycle naturally. And the people fear mongering about the collapse of civilization to advocate for certain politics, should be more worried about the immediate threat from bioterrorism, COVID lockdowns, or even the type of civilization breakdown that is happening in South Africa. I'm personally in support of a high energy future, and I think Nuclear Energy is the most realistic way we will get there.
- bena 5y ago
  > Every indoor place has great Air Conditioning. And all that heat has to go somewhere. And the hotter things get, the more those air conditioners will have to work: producing more heat. Implying air conditioning is the solution to climate change is kind of like suggesting we drop ice cubes in the ocean to cool it off. > Though, I'm still not convinced climate change will be all that bad. Making cold uninhabitable places in North Canada, and Russia more habitable for humans and wild life would be great. They also found palm fossils outside Calgary. So its not like Earth is not in a climate change cycle naturally. The problem is that we honestly don't know what the effects will be. How disrupting those ecosystems will impact other areas. We've already learned the devastating effects invasive species can have on areas, on how improperly planned damming and levee construction can fuck up our coastlines, suggesting that making Northern Canada a temperate zone is no big deal is just willfully ignoring all the knock-on effects that will bring. Also, North Canada wasn't always in the North. So the fact that palm fossils were found there isn't proof that the North was once tropical, it's just proof that palms once grew there. That area could have been in the tropics. I don't remember all of the continental shifts caused by plate tectonics, but things have moved quite a bit in the some 4 billion years the Earth has existed.
  - 5y ago
scollet 5y ago
How do you perform RCA on such a complex system?
- hinkley 5y ago
  If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
Why only 800 yrs? In terms of geological record that seems like a very small window.
- irthomasthomas 5y ago
  If they went back 900 years they would have met the Middle Age Warm Period.
- bink 5y ago
  It covers the industrialization era and several hundred years prior. I think it's a good window to use to determine human impact.
  - chiefalchemist 5y ago
    Maybe. But it also completely ignores the possibility it's a natural cycle, or at least hiccup. I'm not suggesting it's not human-made. But using only 800 yrs can't really say with authority one way or another either.
Rury 5y ago
I'm surprised this is news to people. The earth (and Arctic Ocean) has been warming ever since the last ice age. Places like the Great Lakes used to be frozen glaciers thousands of years ago.
- discardedrefuse 5y ago
  Your flippant comment unfairly trivializes the article; either on purpose or because you didn't read it. From the article: “When we looked at the whole 800-year timescale, our temperature and salinity records look pretty constant,” said co-lead author Dr Tesi Tommaso from the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council in Bologna. “But all of a sudden at the start of the 20th century, you get this marked change in temperature and salinity – it really sticks out.”
- SirSourdough 5y ago
  It’s news because it’s a more nuanced claim than your “general ocean warming has occurred over thousands of years” claim. The claim is that the marked increase in warming in the 20th century began decades earlier than was previously believed, not just that there was once an ice age and it’s warmer now.
johnohara 5y ago
There are enormous amounts of hydrocarbons beneath the Artic Ocean and the world has known that for many decades. If those resources could be extracted without extreme complication and expense the world would have done so before now. It makes me wonder whether the "normal state" of the Arctic is in fact lush and tropical and what we are witnessing is its return to that state, albeit accelerated by humankind's increasing presence and its invention of industrial processes that use those hydrocarbons. Given the exploration that has already taken place over the past decades, one would assume there are core samples, or core sample data, located somewhere that indicate the true nature of the changes the Arctic Ocean has experienced and continues to express.
avgcorrection 5y ago
Newspapers should just make section called It’s Worse Than We Thought.
bit_logic 5y ago
I agree that climate change is an issue, but I've become so disappointed in the environmentalists response to it. They simply resort to zealotry over their one "true" solution without any practical considerations. For example, the one "true" solution that they consider as only acceptable is replacing all cars with full EVs. Which is foolish considering the urgency (2050 according to IPCC is a tipping point). They ignore that the battery technology simply isn't there yet or the infrastructure. Instead of their plans, consider this much more quickly achievable alternative: - Government policy should require a regular hybrid as the base minimum in all new cars. It's 2021, there's no excuse now for a car to be pure ICE. - New policy to favor PHEVs. The battery in one full EV can build four PHEVs. A 50 mile PHEV gets most of the benefits of CO2 reduction of a full EV. Also no new infrastructure is required, overnight level 1 charging is good enough. The suburbs will buy PHEVs (since they have a garage), the urban areas will buy hybrids (which will now be the minimum). - All utility type vehicles (mail trucks, garbage trucks, delivery trucks), must be full EV. These vehicles are the perfect fit for the current battery technology (overnight centralized charging, frequent stops on short routes). - Slowly raise the gas tax. Slowly is important otherwise there will be riots. But the impact on low income population should be minimal with the increasing supply of used hybrid and PHEVs. The key feature of this plan is that it's a fast way to reduce CO2. Instead, look at what the infrastructure bill and the proposed BBB is doing. Billions on new charging stations, current version of BBB would reduce PHEV tax credit. Is this really the best way to get quick action on reducing CO2 from cars? Aren't those billions better spent getting hybrids and PHEVs (which have none of the charging or range issues of full EVs) to the public as quickly and widely as possible? Why is the goal suddenly to make all cars full EV, isn't the actual goal to reduce CO2 as fast as possible?
- barbazoo 5y ago
  > I've become so disappointed in the environmentalists response to it. They simply resort to zealotry over their one "true" solution without any practical considerations. For example, the one "true" solution that they consider as only acceptable is replacing all cars with full EVs I'm not sure where you get that from but it's not at all what I've been experiencing. Yes, the overarching goal is to reduce green house emissions but how to get there is quite diverse and usually laid out in details in for instance the green parties' platforms, e.g. https://europeangreens.eu/positions/climate-energy https://europeangreens.eu/positions/climate-energy, https://www.greenparty.ca/en/platform/green-future https://www.greenparty.ca/en/platform/green-future and contains more than just individual mobility. Similarly, Greenpeace: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/issues/climate-change-impacts/ https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/issues/climate-change-impacts...
throwawaybutwhy 5y ago
Funny. Ice extent has been growing for at least five years [0]. [0] https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/1999/11/Figure2a-2-375x300.png https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/1999/11/Figure2a-2-...
- moistly 5y ago
  Ah, the old “sea ice extent” bullshit promoted by deniers. Extent means sweet FA: *volume* is what counts. And in volume, the ice caps have a fraction of their old volume. Here is the trend line, and it shows that Arctic ice is absolutely FUBAR. http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.1.png http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger...
  - throwawaybutwhy 5y ago
    Thanks for the ref to PIOMAS. An amazing amalgamation of data [0]. [0] http://psc.apl.uw.edu/sea_ice_cdr/data_tables.html http://psc.apl.uw.edu/sea_ice_cdr/data_tables.html

214 points by rgrieselhuber 5y ago

This is fascinating! We've always blamed climate change/warming on man-made activities, but this study is saying Arctic Atlantification predates the industrial revolution (or at least occurs at the same time). Not that I want to see continued use of fossil fuels in place of more sustainable options like nuclear and solar/wind. But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming?

draw_down 5y ago
> But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming? I’m not sure we can realistically go down that road, politically speaking. Look at everything that’s happened with covid- what we said wasn’t wrong, you just misheard us. If anything, climate change is even more entrenched politically.
Klarios 5y ago
It potentially explains more/better/more fine-grained how our future will look like.this will not suddenly revert our assumptions on CO2 being the fundamental factor of man made global warming. We are not that uncertain about climate change.
9oliYQjP 5y ago
The article makes no mention of the warming predating the industrial revolution. Rather, the quote below indicates a marked change in temperature at the beginning of the 20th century. When we looked at the whole 800-year timescale, our temperature and salinity records look pretty constant,” said co-lead author Dr Tesi Tommaso from the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council in Bologna. “But all of a sudden at the start of the 20th century, you get this marked change in temperature and salinity – it really sticks out.
time_to_smile 5y ago
In William Ruddiman's Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum [0] he argues that even human agriculture has been enough to tip the CO2 scales in favor of not entering a new ice age. > But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming? This would require several, distinct and unrelated fields of science being wrong about the way CO2 and other GHG have in the past and currently regulate the Earth's temperature. There is no question that CO2 in the atmosphere has been rapidly rising. There is no question that humans have been the cause of this rise, it's just basic math given the wild amount of hydrocarbons we combust every year. So while it's possible that scientists are wrong in the big picture sense it would require a sea-change in our understanding of climate from every perspective as well as being a remarkable coincidence that we are seeing the impact we are in correlation to our own CO2 emissions. A far, far more likely explanation is that the Earth's climate is even more sensitive to small changes in CO2 on a small time scale than we have previously thought. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plows,_Plagues_and_Petroleum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plows,_Plagues_and_Petroleum
mathieubordere 5y ago
This article does not say global climate warming is not man-made, it just states that "Atlantification" is a process that warms the Arctic Ocean even more.
goohle 5y ago
OMG. Do you know meaning of "acceleration" word in "acceleration of warming"?
- sjwalter 5y ago
  What if the rate of change commonly accepted by mainstream climate scientists is off by 10%? 50%? More? What if the alarmism and depression-inspiring shrill shrieking is doing more harm than good?
  - revolvingocelot 5y ago
    What if you're just asking questions, y'know?
    - time_to_smile 5y ago
      A bit terrifying that your other comment which was pointing out this "just asking questions" behavior[0] was immediately flagged and removed. It's wild to me that a group of people that tends to be educated, intellectual, and curious about complex systems instantly starts to lose it's collective mind when faced with an existential risk. It feels like living in a Lovecraft story where the only response to horror is madness. [0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions
tomtomistaken 5y ago
> All of the world’s oceans are warming due to climate change, but the Arctic Ocean, the smallest and shallowest of the world’s oceans, is warming fastest of all. The article talks about the Arctic Ocean. It is not denying the warming of the world's ocean due to climate change.
refurb 5y ago
Exactly! The article mentions it’s been warming since 1900 which is a scant decade after industrialization began. It seems to suggest other factors are contributing to global warming!
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > The article mentions it’s been warming since 1900 which is a scant decade after industrialization began The industrial revolution is generally dated from 1760, which is...somewhat more than a decade before 1900.
  - refurb 5y ago
    See other reply that shows CO2 emissions were negligible until 1900? How are we driving mass warming in 1900 when CO2 emissions were barely 1% of what they are today?
    - option_greek 5y ago
      Just grasping at straws. Without taking into consideration, the magnitude of co2 getting emitted, we can even blame cavemen with their cook fires for global warming.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > See other reply that shows CO2 emissions were negligible until 1900? Literally, no, where? Even if I did see one claiming that, I’ve also seen the charts of net atmospheric CO2 from human activity that show a sharp rise already in progress by 1800.
      - refurb 5y ago
        https://skepticalscience.com/EmmissionsAcceleration.html https://skepticalscience.com/EmmissionsAcceleration.html
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  for context, greenhouse effect was first described in 1824 and a good approximation of the warning effect of doubling of atmospheric CO2 was made in 1896 (+2.5~4 C) [0] From 1800 to 1900, CO2 ppm rose from 280 to 300 Of course, from 1900 til today it has risen to over 400ppm My point is, we were burning a significant amount of coal throughout 1800s - Acid rain was happening in the 1850s [1] [0] http://interactive.fusion.net/200-years-of-climate-science-and-policy/ http://interactive.fusion.net/200-years-of-climate-science-a... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain
dragonwriter 5y ago
> but this study is saying Arctic Atlantification predates the industrial revolution (or at least occurs at the same time). No, it isn't. It says it starts at the beginning of the 20th century, the industrial revolution usually dated as mid-18th to mid-19th century. The former is neither before nor at the same time as the latter. > Not that I want to see continued use of fossil fuels in place of more sustainable options like nuclear and solar/wind. But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming? There is no good reason to think that they have, and this study does not at all contravene, or even call into question, the consensus on the causes of warming.
- yessirwhatever 5y ago
  > There is no good reason to think that they have, and this study does not at all contravene, or even call into question, the consensus on the causes of warming. From the article: > “Climate simulations generally do not reproduce this kind of warming in the Arctic Ocean, meaning there’s an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms driving Atlantification,” said Tommaso. “We rely on these simulations to project future climate change, but the lack of any signs of an early warming in the Arctic Ocean is a missing piece of the puzzle.” I'd generally encourage people to be skeptical of everything, but I'd call this a really good reason to be skeptical.
  - dtech 5y ago
    It can just as well be an explanation why climate models have been pretty consistently under-estimating warming of time though.
    - yessirwhatever 5y ago
      Could be. If you're willing to admit that it might go the other way as well then I'm fine with being skeptical on either side (In fact I encourage it).
- hinkley 5y ago
  James Watt's first heat engine went online the same year as the American Revolutionary War. We might recall also that one of the uses of his machines was to keep coal mines from filling up with water (ie, increase coal production). This has been going on for a long time, and steel production was a major factor long before Watt.
tzs 5y ago
> But what if scientists have been wrong about the causes of global warming? That is extremely unlikely. We can measure the spectrum and intensity of incoming solar energy and of outgoing radiation from Earth, and see that we are gaining. We can see that much of that gain is due to incoming energy heating things which re-radiate that energy in infrared which we can see gets trapped by CO2. We can tell by looking at the isotope distribution of the C in the CO2 where it comes from. CO2 from still living or recently living (say dead for only a few hundred years) has a different isotope distribution than CO2 from long dead or never living sources. This lets us tell that most of the CO2 increase over the last couple hundred years is from burning fossil fuels or an increase in geological processes that release long trapped CO2 such as volcanic activity. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere that we can tell from that did not come from living or recently living things matches fairly well with what we know of volcanic activity and how much fossil fuels we burn, giving us enough data to conclude that most of the warming due to CO2 is due to human emitted CO2. For that to be wrong would require that we have massively overestimated how much fossil fuels we use and massively overlooked a large amount of volcanic activity.
- mythrwy 5y ago
  Ok, but more heat means more water vapor which means more cloud cover which means less heat. More CO2 means more plant growth which means less CO2 as the carbon is tied up. It's not one factor you can examine cleanly in isolation. There are many many interacting factors.

marstall 5y ago

for reference, here's a look at what co2 emissions were 120 years ago ... https://skepticalscience.com/EmmissionsAcceleration.html https://skepticalscience.com/EmmissionsAcceleration.html

HamburgerEmoji 5y ago
For more context, CO2 ppm was ~1000 less than 50m years ago.
q1w2 5y ago
Two things I find unsatisfactory in these data... 1. It doesn't touch on the Earth's natural absorption of CO2 - so we cannot conclude here that the additional CO2 emitted remains in the atmosphere (I mean we know that from other research, but this link is silent on that mitigation). 2. The cumulative numbers are pointless and misleading. CO2 is known to have a half-life on the order of under a century, so posting cumulative numbers gives the reader the misconception that the only way back is to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and that the situation is much more irreversible than it is in the long term.
- codingdave 5y ago
  CO2 has a half-life of 120 years, so it seems like a chart of data covering 120 years is appropriate.
  - q1w2 5y ago
    None of the charts seem to take into account any absorption at all, regardless of the duration. Having a chart 120 years long, and not including absorption, means all the numbers are significantly wrong. Also, 120 years is on the upper range of most estimates, and does not assume any increased absorption despite the fact that we've almost doubled the concentration of CO2.
- moffkalast 5y ago
  It's true, there is some absorption: https://www.eea.europa.eu/ims/ocean-acidification https://www.eea.europa.eu/ims/ocean-acidification and it's gonna make the situation so much worse it's hard to even imagine right now.

truthwhisperer 5y ago

very nice article. Fear sells. The whole climate debate is about how we can distribute wealth. First step, spread fear amongst the youth because the older, mostly conservative public won't listen at first. Especially the young white females are sensitive because of their mother feelings and protective childhood.

time_to_smile 5y ago

As someone who does statistical modeling for a living (though not climate related), one thing I've found fascinating is that many climate skeptics, particularly on HN, will focus on the difficulty scientific models have in making accurate predictions about the near term impact of climate change. While this is true (modeling a complex system such as the Earth's climate and all of it's positive and negative feed back loops is incredibly challenging), the implied assumption from people that use this critique is that uncertainty will always fall on the side of "better than expected". People that have been closely following human ecology for the last decade or so have repeatedly found the opposite to be true. "Faster than expected" is somewhat of a joke in certain communities since it seems that the more we learn the more we realize how large the impact of rapid accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere really is, and how quickly this impact develops. That's not to say model uncertainty == doom, but assuming that model uncertainty == "this is fine" is a more dangerous and naive assumption.

refurb 5y ago
Nobody is saying “it will be better than expected” they are saying “the models could be wrong”. And that’s played out already? So not exactly a low probability scenario.
- rp1 5y ago
  So if the models are wrong, and wrong in such a way that the impact of climate change is much worse than they predict, then what?
  - refurb 5y ago
    But that goes both ways? If I told you “my model predicts a 50% chance you be diagnosed with cancer and a 50% chance you wont” how do you make a decision. When both are equally probable?
    - notreallyserio 5y ago
      When the options are keep smoking or stop smoking, the obvious choice is to stop smoking to improve your odds. The positive side effects are worth it on their own.

revolvingocelot 5y ago

Should be interesting to see all the climate deniers of this orange website ignore the mountains of evidence for the phenomenon, and grasp tightly the scanty data that allows them to JAQ off [0] about how ooh maaaaybe we don't need to do aaaanything! What if we're wrooooong? The idea that we're "wrong about the causes" of global warming requires denial of basic chemistry and settled paleontological records in order to support itself. Does it matter that the linked article explicitly points out the better-understood causes-and-effects of warming trends on ocean statistics? Absolutely not. The supporting links are not to the paper itself, but to "skeptic" sites. Great stuff. Me, I wouldn't carry water for the people intentionally destroying our planet's ability to support life-as-we-know-it for less than six figures, but I suspect that these people do it for free. [0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions

NDizzle 5y ago
How will increasing taxes in western society fix this? Hubris, almost Hillary levels of hubris.
- revolvingocelot 5y ago
  > How will increasing taxes in western society fix this? Hubris, almost Hillary levels of hubris. I think you're replying to the wrong person, except there's no one else in the thread as of now mentioning taxes. So I guess you're participating in the proud internet tradition of putting words in people's mouths. What's really incredible is that it's not like I wrote a huge wall of text. It's not difficult to see that I didn't mention taxation or "Hillary" in my root level comment. What do you gain from this nonsense?
  - NDizzle 5y ago
    What other suggestions do you have for what "we" could do? China won't do anything, neither will India or Russia, by the way. So what are we doing? It'll boil down to effectively taxing companies and people. I skipped ahead a few steps in the discussion. Sorry for spoiling it.

b112 5y ago

Harvest trillions of fish, and you remove a massive cause of ocean water sub-currents. How do millions of salmon, halibet, swimming and moving water, huge schools of fish, change currents? Well they're mostly gone now, compared to 100+ years ago.

dtech 5y ago
It seems unlikely that fish are more influential than earth rotation, sun etc. The energy difference is very large.
rlpb 5y ago
What evidence is there that fish cause ocean currents?
Cd00d 5y ago
You're arguing that fish cause ocean currents? Are airplanes the source of wind?
- b112 5y ago
  Cows apparently cause a massive environmental impact. Goats, without predators, can turn plain and even forest into desert. Animals cause impact to the environment. we've removed trillions of tonnes of active biomass from the oceans. What impact has that?
  - bink 5y ago
    No one is saying fish don't have an impact on the environment. You're apparently arguing that they have an impact on ocean currents, which is a claim that is out there enough that people at least expect a source.
    - b112 5y ago
      No source, except in my mind. However, trees dramatically impact rainfall, wind severity (they act as a windbreak), soil retention, and more. By removing all that biomass in the ocean, all sorts of flora and fauna have vanished, and/or changed ratios. If organisms on land can literally change climate, and even the windstreams over time, why not in the ocean?

tdrdt 5y ago

Personally I am still not convinced climate change is completely caused by human activity. But I think we are accelerating a natural climate change. “Climate simulations generally do not reproduce this kind of warming in the Arctic Ocean, meaning there’s an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms driving Atlantification,” My takeaway: because we still know so little about the mechanisms we should be more careful about our environment. It's very naive to pump tons of CO2 into the atmosphere without knowing what will happen.

w-j-w 5y ago
https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
- WithinReason 5y ago
  That XKCD concatenated data from different studies with different temporal resolution, so it's very misleading. Past data came from Marcott et. all, who said: “the paleotemperature records used in our study have a temporal resolution of about 120 years on average.” “no temperature variability is preserved in our reconstruction at cycles shorter than 300 years, 50% is preserved at 1,000-year time scales, and nearly all is preserved at 2,000-year periods and longer.” Recent data came from yearly measurements, so preserves variability on a yearly basis. In other words, the way past data was determined, sudden changes would be hidden, like the temperature spike that it shows in the 20th century.
- xscott 5y ago
  Do you ever wonder why that comic only goes back 22,000 years? If it had gone back just a little more, say 25,000 years (a rounder number), it would be much more complicated to explain what happened. If it had gone back 400,000 years, which is basically nothing in geological scales, it would bring up some really interesting questions.
Proven 5y ago
> Personally I am still not convinced climate change is completely caused by human activity I'm not concerned at all. The real problem is that the silly efforts to "do something" are a collosal destruction of wealth while having no effect whatsoever on climate.

pezzana 5y ago

> The researchers used geochemical and ecological data from ocean sediments to reconstruct the change in water column properties over the past 800 years. They precisely dated sediments using a combination of methods and looked for diagnostic signs of Atlantification, like change in temperature and salinity. Then, from the original paper: > Here, we use lipid-based water temperature proxies (UK37 U 37 K and TEXL86 TEX 86 L ) and benthic foraminiferal data (distribution and δ18O) to reconstruct changes in water mass properties. Specifically, we examined anomalies in our proxy records to identify diagnostic signs of Atlantification. On the basis of a precise chronology, we combine our results with other local climate records to provide an integrated understanding of Atlantification and resolve its timing. Last, our reconstructions are compared with records of ocean and atmosphere circulation patterns to investigate the connections between the high Arctic and North Atlantic dynamics. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj2946 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj2946 Lipid-based water temperature proxies use the distribution of lipids deposited by organisms in sediment to deduce temperature. And... > Benthic foraminifera are single-celled organisms similar to amoeboid organisms in cell structure. https://pubs.usgs.gov/pdf/of/of99-45/foram.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/pdf/of/of99-45/foram.pdf So the technique appears to be based on isotopic and lipid analysis of sediments deposited by certain organisms. If you can date the sediments and are confident in the link between analyte concentration and temperature, and correct for various factors, you can reconstruct a time/temperature plot.

selimthegrim 5y ago
Are they sure they have control over all the confounders? People are still fighting over 24-isopropylcholestane and oxygenation.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mertanj1 5y ago

Amazing input.

waterthrowaway 5y ago

Hello! I’m a physical oceanographer which means my job is to figure out how the water moves and delivers heat through things like math and models. Paleoclimate isn’t my expertise but I figured I’d chime in on some of the climate skepticism here. Oceanographers would be the first to admit that modeling-predicting changes in the ocean is very hard. Especially more regional features like an intensified warming in the Labrador Sea. That is because even state of the art models have coarse resolution and our initial conditions for far in the past are poor. However, anthropogenic climate change is not a regional effect. It’s like if first I asked you, what will happen if I hit this window with a hammer? It will break. Now what if I ask you where every piece will go? Also I’ve seen in this thread people saying that global climate change has been overhyped. From the science side this paper does a great job of evaluating our models from the past: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/288430943.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/288430943.pdf

waterthrowaway 5y ago
If you are interested in the irreducible imprecision of climate models this paper is fun too https://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709 https://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709
- moffkalast 5y ago
  I'm not sure if you're the guy to ask, but I'm sure you're aware of the continuing acidification of the oceans via CO2 absorption. From what I've heard it's highly unpredictable as to how it will actually affect ecosystems, but supposedly some molluscs are already having reproductive issues as their shells tend to dissolve at some point in the growing cycle. The predictions I've read point to a likely oceanic food chain collapse in 15-25 years, not to mention the decrease in fertility that fish seem to be experiencing from higher temperatures. Is that roughly correct?
  - mistrial9 5y ago
    I heard whispers of "its too late" in the early 90s, with respect to the top meter of ocean and the biological life cycles there being broken.. yet we had the international CFC ban and that was a success at breaking the Ozone Hole, which made things better.. Let's be eyes-open on every detail, but be aware of the despair aspect too .. "collapse in X-X+10 years" is overwhelming to many ears, and we do not know the future.. hth

barathr 5y ago

This article, connecting a decline of sea ice to Western U.S. wildfires, has also been on my mind lately: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26232-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26232-9

dukeofdoom 5y ago

Dubai is in the desert and is more than thriving. On Average I was colder there than in Canada. Every indoor place has great Air Conditioning. Drinkable Water is converted from Ocean water. Its a model of what a future city could look like in the worst case climate change scenario, if human ingenuity is able to thrive. Though, I'm still not convinced climate change will be all that bad. Making cold uninhabitable places in North Canada, and Russia more habitable for humans and wild life would be great. They also found palm fossils outside Calgary. So its not like Earth is not in a climate change cycle naturally. And the people fear mongering about the collapse of civilization to advocate for certain politics, should be more worried about the immediate threat from bioterrorism, COVID lockdowns, or even the type of civilization breakdown that is happening in South Africa. I'm personally in support of a high energy future, and I think Nuclear Energy is the most realistic way we will get there.

bena 5y ago
> Every indoor place has great Air Conditioning. And all that heat has to go somewhere. And the hotter things get, the more those air conditioners will have to work: producing more heat. Implying air conditioning is the solution to climate change is kind of like suggesting we drop ice cubes in the ocean to cool it off. > Though, I'm still not convinced climate change will be all that bad. Making cold uninhabitable places in North Canada, and Russia more habitable for humans and wild life would be great. They also found palm fossils outside Calgary. So its not like Earth is not in a climate change cycle naturally. The problem is that we honestly don't know what the effects will be. How disrupting those ecosystems will impact other areas. We've already learned the devastating effects invasive species can have on areas, on how improperly planned damming and levee construction can fuck up our coastlines, suggesting that making Northern Canada a temperate zone is no big deal is just willfully ignoring all the knock-on effects that will bring. Also, North Canada wasn't always in the North. So the fact that palm fossils were found there isn't proof that the North was once tropical, it's just proof that palms once grew there. That area could have been in the tropics. I don't remember all of the continental shifts caused by plate tectonics, but things have moved quite a bit in the some 4 billion years the Earth has existed.
- 5y ago

scollet 5y ago

How do you perform RCA on such a complex system?

hinkley 5y ago
If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

Why only 800 yrs? In terms of geological record that seems like a very small window.

irthomasthomas 5y ago
If they went back 900 years they would have met the Middle Age Warm Period.
bink 5y ago
It covers the industrialization era and several hundred years prior. I think it's a good window to use to determine human impact.
- chiefalchemist 5y ago
  Maybe. But it also completely ignores the possibility it's a natural cycle, or at least hiccup. I'm not suggesting it's not human-made. But using only 800 yrs can't really say with authority one way or another either.

Rury 5y ago

I'm surprised this is news to people. The earth (and Arctic Ocean) has been warming ever since the last ice age. Places like the Great Lakes used to be frozen glaciers thousands of years ago.

discardedrefuse 5y ago
Your flippant comment unfairly trivializes the article; either on purpose or because you didn't read it. From the article: “When we looked at the whole 800-year timescale, our temperature and salinity records look pretty constant,” said co-lead author Dr Tesi Tommaso from the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council in Bologna. “But all of a sudden at the start of the 20th century, you get this marked change in temperature and salinity – it really sticks out.”
SirSourdough 5y ago
It’s news because it’s a more nuanced claim than your “general ocean warming has occurred over thousands of years” claim. The claim is that the marked increase in warming in the 20th century began decades earlier than was previously believed, not just that there was once an ice age and it’s warmer now.

johnohara 5y ago

There are enormous amounts of hydrocarbons beneath the Artic Ocean and the world has known that for many decades. If those resources could be extracted without extreme complication and expense the world would have done so before now. It makes me wonder whether the "normal state" of the Arctic is in fact lush and tropical and what we are witnessing is its return to that state, albeit accelerated by humankind's increasing presence and its invention of industrial processes that use those hydrocarbons. Given the exploration that has already taken place over the past decades, one would assume there are core samples, or core sample data, located somewhere that indicate the true nature of the changes the Arctic Ocean has experienced and continues to express.

avgcorrection 5y ago

Newspapers should just make section called It’s Worse Than We Thought.

bit_logic 5y ago

I agree that climate change is an issue, but I've become so disappointed in the environmentalists response to it. They simply resort to zealotry over their one "true" solution without any practical considerations. For example, the one "true" solution that they consider as only acceptable is replacing all cars with full EVs. Which is foolish considering the urgency (2050 according to IPCC is a tipping point). They ignore that the battery technology simply isn't there yet or the infrastructure. Instead of their plans, consider this much more quickly achievable alternative: - Government policy should require a regular hybrid as the base minimum in all new cars. It's 2021, there's no excuse now for a car to be pure ICE. - New policy to favor PHEVs. The battery in one full EV can build four PHEVs. A 50 mile PHEV gets most of the benefits of CO2 reduction of a full EV. Also no new infrastructure is required, overnight level 1 charging is good enough. The suburbs will buy PHEVs (since they have a garage), the urban areas will buy hybrids (which will now be the minimum). - All utility type vehicles (mail trucks, garbage trucks, delivery trucks), must be full EV. These vehicles are the perfect fit for the current battery technology (overnight centralized charging, frequent stops on short routes). - Slowly raise the gas tax. Slowly is important otherwise there will be riots. But the impact on low income population should be minimal with the increasing supply of used hybrid and PHEVs. The key feature of this plan is that it's a fast way to reduce CO2. Instead, look at what the infrastructure bill and the proposed BBB is doing. Billions on new charging stations, current version of BBB would reduce PHEV tax credit. Is this really the best way to get quick action on reducing CO2 from cars? Aren't those billions better spent getting hybrids and PHEVs (which have none of the charging or range issues of full EVs) to the public as quickly and widely as possible? Why is the goal suddenly to make all cars full EV, isn't the actual goal to reduce CO2 as fast as possible?

barbazoo 5y ago
> I've become so disappointed in the environmentalists response to it. They simply resort to zealotry over their one "true" solution without any practical considerations. For example, the one "true" solution that they consider as only acceptable is replacing all cars with full EVs I'm not sure where you get that from but it's not at all what I've been experiencing. Yes, the overarching goal is to reduce green house emissions but how to get there is quite diverse and usually laid out in details in for instance the green parties' platforms, e.g. https://europeangreens.eu/positions/climate-energy https://europeangreens.eu/positions/climate-energy, https://www.greenparty.ca/en/platform/green-future https://www.greenparty.ca/en/platform/green-future and contains more than just individual mobility. Similarly, Greenpeace: https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/issues/climate-change-impacts/ https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/issues/climate-change-impacts...

throwawaybutwhy 5y ago

Funny. Ice extent has been growing for at least five years [0]. [0] https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/1999/11/Figure2a-2-375x300.png https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/files/1999/11/Figure2a-2-...

moistly 5y ago
Ah, the old “sea ice extent” bullshit promoted by deniers. Extent means sweet FA: *volume* is what counts. And in volume, the ice caps have a fraction of their old volume. Here is the trend line, and it shows that Arctic ice is absolutely FUBAR. http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.1.png http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger...
- throwawaybutwhy 5y ago
  Thanks for the ref to PIOMAS. An amazing amalgamation of data [0]. [0] http://psc.apl.uw.edu/sea_ice_cdr/data_tables.html http://psc.apl.uw.edu/sea_ice_cdr/data_tables.html