Arctic Updates

[Sounder]

Iamwhomiam » Mon Jul 29, 2013 11:05 pm wrote:

There are some people, and I have met some of them, due to stories like this one and that they never read completely through, who actually believe that the Greenland ice sheet disappeared in July 2012, and you can’t convince them otherwise.

I work daily on this issue and I have never heard anyone who believes this. In fact, this is the first mention I've read anywhere that suggests there are people who believe the Greenland ice sheet disappeared last year.

Luther Blisset wrote...
This is the first I've ever heard of it as well, and a number of my clients are involved in the climate crisis; I read about it everyday as well.

I was simply pointing out the overblown rhetoric that was posing as information.

“This is the most frightening picture you will ever see. The information expressed visually here can be summed up in three words: change or die. So let’s take a closer look.”

But, yeah, I do see why people do not want to dwell on the absurdity of the propaganda.


Vaclav Klaus

http://xrepublic.tv/node/882

Don't worry. In 10 years when this has obviously become a scam, the same people that believe in the scam right now will be calling it a scam, and the team will be together again, on this issue at least. The believers intentions are noble and admirable, no matter how far off the mark they may be. I have respect and admiration for believers though because they ardently fight for what they believe is right.

This is about carbon trading, and not about climate change. Climate change is a vehicle to usher in carbon trading. Pollution is a serious issue that should be addressed before we all drown in our own poison, but climate change is a Red Herring for carbon trading.

Climate change is watch the right hand as it hypnotizes you, while the left hand arranges carbon trading right under our noses. It is magic. Nothing more.

The roster of players that initially orchestrated this game, the same players and ilk of players that orchestrate all the biggest magic shows in history, clearly demonstrate that this should be considered another magic show, until proven otherwise.

PT Barnum himself couldn't top this one due to the fact that ultimately...the premise is unproveable. The perfect magic show, ultimately, never has a conclusion that can be proven. Time will be the judge of this magic show. After this audience dies and is buried the next audience will be just as enthralled by the ringmasters, even more so because they will have been born into it and it will seem like truth.

If people lived for 1000 years these magic acts would be much harder to pull off because the audience would become jaded.

It is very hard to jade an audience when the audience only lives 70 years, and the magicians write the history.



You make a valiant effort Ben D, but your tactic of pointing to the irony of the propaganda will not work because most folk here are fully entranced by Rockefeller consensus pretences. Awhile back when appeals to authority were sourced from the Church of the 94% and 190 million dollar denier slush fund, I had a good laugh and then did a bit of link chasing and oh man, what I found. Of course it could be confirmation bias, but I don't think so. They think that with enough money any narrative of their choosing can be manufactured.

Ben D wrote...

Msn News had headlines that read "U.K. Hit by Worst Cold in Decades". Southern USA has had below freezing temperatures the whole month of December and weather forecasters are saying it's the coldest December in decades. The Rockies were surprised with such an early blizzard this year and the list goes on.

Living in an area that harbours the ringleaders of the importance in eradicating global warming gives me confidence to repeat what I've said all along. It's another way of controlling people's affairs and supporting the agencies that do just this. We now pay emission control checks that cost on top of registration, our farmers are under stricter regulations, thus open to inspections at all times...and again, the list goes on.

Then we have the fact, since it's global, there are reasons for all countries to divulge certain amounts of information they might not otherwise do. The entire thing to me stinks of bringing us one step closer to NWO and many steps made for the reputations of those taking us there.

Only my opinion and you know everyone has one

Hmmm, sounds reasonable to me, so lets not talk about it. We wouldn't want such messy stuff to intrude on our precious conscious models.

http://humanistcafe.wordpress.com/2013/08/03/teapocalypse-the-map-of-denier-states-under-the-sea/

Teapocalypse: The *MAP* of Denier States Under the Sea

Posted on August 3, 2013 by HUMANISTCAFE

There is no amount of empirical data that will persuade the modern conservative that climate change is a reality.

Not the fact that the polar ice caps are melting . Not the fact that Arctic sea ice is disappearing. Not the fact that the global concentration of carbon dioxide has reached 400 parts per million. Not the fact that frankenstorms and wildfires wreak indiscriminate havoc with alarming regularity. Not even the fact that 2001-2010 was the warmest decade in recorded history.

The planet is cooking and all Johnny Wingnut can say is, “pass me the Hawaiian Tropic.”

And, it doesn’t matter where the information comes from, either. NOAA and NASA are part of a One World Order conspiracy or, at the very least, a socialist plot to eradicate guns, god, liberty and Ted Nugent.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23538771

Rise in violence 'linked to climate change'

By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC World Service
Shifts in climate are strongly linked to increases in violence around the world, a study suggests.

US scientists found that even small changes in temperature or rainfall correlated with a rise in assaults, rapes and murders, as well as group conflicts and war.

The team says with the current projected levels of climate change, the world is likely to become a more violent place.

The study is published in Science.

[wintler2]

Yedoma Region of Russia Showing Significant Methane Pulse
http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/20 ... ane-pulse/

August 4-7 saw a large and growing pulse of methane emerging from the Yedoma region of Russia and the Siberian Arctic over the past week. By Wednesday, about 30 percent of the Yedoma region was covered in methane readings exceeding 1950 parts per billion, according to measurements published through the online resource — Methane Tracker.

This pulse emerged in conjuction with late summer fires and heatwaves scorching this massive region of permafrost above or near the Arctic Circle. Yedoma includes a broad expanse of permafrost ranging from Siberia to a shallow sea known as the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. In total, this region is estimated to hold 500 gigatons of carbon locked in, now thawing, tundra.

The region has come under increased scrutiny and study during recent years as temperatures throughout the Arctic and especially in this area have rapidly risen due to human warming. While global temperatures have increased by an average of around .2 degrees Celsius per decade, temperatures in Yedoma have increased by more than twice that rate at a whopping .5 degrees Celsius per decade. As a result, most of the tundra, both land and shallow sea, is subjected to increasing heat forcing and is at greater risk of releasing large volumes of carbon into the atmosphere.
...

[Ben D]

Wow, the planetary bipolarity is really showing...

[Elihu]

PT Barnum himself couldn't top this one due to the fact that ultimately...the premise is unproveable. The perfect magic show, ultimately, never has a conclusion that can be proven. Time will be the judge of this magic show. After this audience dies and is buried the next audience will be just as enthralled by the ringmasters, even more so because they will have been born into it and it will seem like truth.

NEO
How much time?

TANK
Depends on the mind. But
eventually, it will crack and his
alpha pattern will change from
this to this.

The monitor waves change from a chaotic pattern to an
orderly symmetrical one.


When it does, Morpheus will tell
them anything they want to know.

Hmmm, sounds reasonable to me, so lets not talk about it. We wouldn't want such messy stuff to intrude on our precious conscious models.

can we please get that redskins label changed so we can forget about the red man?

You make a valiant effort Ben D, but your tactic of pointing to the irony of the propaganda will not work

rational thought is the foil of propaganda. propaganda is negative emotion (fear) that drives herds. herds can be powerful forces. but we're not talking about animals here (no pun intended). unlike animals, individual people can (statistically speaking) perceive themselves to be in a state of error ...

[Iamwhomiam]

Sorry to go off-topic, but this needs to be addressed,

can we please get that redskins label changed so we can forget about the red man?

We must discontinue practicing and being accepting of the racism that's brought us our history, which we can never forget and will forever be shamed by.

Let it go.

[Elihu]

Sorry to go off-topic, but this needs to be addressed,

can we please get that redskins label changed so we can forget about the red man?

carbon trading-----------arctic

that better?

[Iamwhomiam]

Yeah, but you still got it wrong. It's a carbon tax.

Feelin' better already.

Thanks.

[Cosmic Cowbell]

The heat is on, at least in the Arctic.

Average summer temperatures in the Eastern Canadian Arctic during the last 100 years are higher now than during any century in the past 44,000 years and perhaps as long ago as 120,000 years, says a new University of Colorado Boulder study.

The study is the first direct evidence the present warmth in the Eastern Canadian Arctic exceeds the peak warmth there in the Early Holocene, when the amount of the sun’s energy reaching the Northern Hemisphere in summer was roughly 9 percent greater than today, said CU-Boulder geological sciences Professor Gifford Miller, study leader. The Holocene is a geological epoch that began after Earth’s last glacial period ended roughly 11,700 years ago and which continues today.

- See more at: http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2 ... vu6Ie.dpuf

[brainpanhandler]

Can we please get that utopia already so we can forget about this hell hole we're in?

[Ben D]

..from an org you can trust...it's worse than you thought...

[Iamwhomiam]

http://storyofstuff.org/movies/the-story-of-solutions/

You might prefer to refresh your understanding of the issues involved by starting at the beginning of this story.



http://storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff/

Where there is a will, there is a way.

[Iamwhomiam]

Climate Progress / By Joe Romm

Bombshell Study Finds Methane Emissions From Natural Gas Production Far Higher Than EPA Estimates
With methane having both a higher leakage rate and higher global warming potential than previously thought, the notion of methane as a bridge fuel is falling apart.

Photo Credit: Tara Lohan

November 27, 2013 |

A major new study blows up the whole notion of natural gas as a short-term bridge fuel to a carbon-free economy.

Natural gas is mostly methane (CH4), a potent heat-trapping gas. If, as now seems likely, natural gas production systems leak 2.7% (or more), then gas-fired power loses its near-term advantage over coal and becomes more of a gangplank than a bridge. Worse, without a carbon price, some gas displaces renewable energy, further undercutting any benefit it might have had.

Fifteen scientists from some of the leading institutions in the world — including Harvard, NOAA and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab — have published a seminal study, “Anthropogenic emissions of methane in the United States.” Crucially, it is based on “comprehensive atmospheric methane observations, extensive spatial datasets, and a high-resolution atmospheric transport model,” rather than the industry-provided numbers EPA uses.

Indeed, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study by Scot Miller et al takes the unusual step of explicitly criticizing the EPA:

The US EPA recently decreased its CH4 emission factors for fossil fuel extraction and processing by 25–30% (for 1990–2011), but we find that CH4 data from across North America instead indicate the need for a larger adjustment of the opposite sign.

D’oh!

How much larger? The study found greenhouse gas emissions from “fossil fuel extraction and processing (i.e., oil and/or natural gas) are likely a factor of two or greater than cited in existing studies.” In particular, they concluded, “regional methane emissions due to fossil fuel extraction and processing could be 4.9 ± 2.6 times larger than in EDGAR, the most comprehensive global methane inventory.”

This suggests the methane leakage rate from natural gas production, which EPA recently decreased to about 1.5%, is in fact 3% or higher.

This broad-based look at methane emissions confirms the findings of 3 recent leakage studies covering very different regions of the country:

* NOAA researchers found in 2012 that natural-gas producers in the Denver area “are losing about 4% of their gas to the atmosphere — not including additional losses in the pipeline and distribution system.”
* A 2013 study by NOAA found leaks from oil and gas exploration and extraction in the L.A. basin representing “about 17% of the natural gas produced in the region, similar to the leak rate estimated by the California Air Resources Board using other methods.” Almost all the gas produced in the basin is “associated” with oil production (rather than, say, fracked). Associated gas is still about a fifth of total U.S. gas production.
* Another 2013 study from [url]19 researchers led by NOAA[/url] concluded “measurements show that on one February day in the Uinta Basin, the natural gas field leaked 6 to 12 percent of the methane produced, on average, on February days.” The Uinta Basin is of special interest because it “produces about 1 percent of total U.S. natural gas” and fracking has increased there over the past decade.

Indeed, all of these findings taken together vindicate the concerns of high leakage rates raised by Cornell professors Howarth, Santoro and Ingraffea, which I reported on back in 2011. I asked Ingraffea to comment on the new study. He wrote:

The results presented by Miller and his team are another serious challenge to an “all of the above” energy policy that relies on negotiated estimates of methane emissions, rather than actual and representative emission measurements, while at the same time claiming serious concern about climate change. A growing series of regional, top-down measurements by this team and others, now on a national scale, is proving to be a more rational approach to accounting for the highly skewed distribution of methane emission sources.

He added, “That methane bridge is starting to crack.”

We have seen a number of cracks this year in the methane bridge — bringing it to the point of collapse. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported recently that methane is a far more potent a greenhouse gas than we had previously realized, some 34 times stronger a heat-trapping gas than CO2 over a 100-year time scale — and 86 times more potent over a 20-year time frame.

With methane having both a higher leakage rate and higher global warming potential than previously thought, the notion of methane as a bridge fuel is falling apart.

Yes, it’s true a recent study finds the best-fracked wells have low methane leak rates — but that study ignored the super-emitters that are responsible for the bulk of the fugitive emissions.

And remember, for natural gas to be a bridge fuel to a carbon-free future (rather than a detour around it), gas must replace coal only, rather than replacing some combination of coal, renewables, nuclear power, and energy efficiency — which is obviously what will happen in the real world absent a price on carbon pollution. The most comprehensive modeling to date, by fourteen teams from different organizations, found that abundant and cheap natural gas has little net impact on U.S. CO2 growth (especially post-2020) compared to the case of low shale gas penetration precisely because it displaces carbon-free energy. Globally, the International Energy Agency finds a dash to gas would destroy a livable climate.

Finally, natural gas makes little sense as a short-term sustainability play, since we know that each fracked well consumes staggering amounts of water, much of which is rendered permanently unfit for human use and reinjected into the ground where it can taint even more ground water in the coming decades. That’s particularly worrisome considering that fossil fuels destroy the climate and accelerate drought and water shortages.

With this most recent study, our understanding of the limitations of natural gas is now fairly complete. Natural gas is not a bridge to a carbon-free or climate-safe future. In fact, absent both a serious price for carbon and very strong, enforceable national regulations on leakage, natural gas is a gangplank.

The comprehensive nature of this new study strongly suggests
these earlier findings were not anomalies, as some have suggested.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/methane-emissions-natural-gas-production-far-higher-epa-estimates

[Ben D]

New mark set for the coldest temperature ever recorded

3 HOURS AGO DECEMBER 10, 2013 1:58PM

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

That's the noise an Australian makes when the temperature reaches single digits. If it drops below zero, expletives fill the crisp morning air.

So you have to wonder how we'd react to a temperature 93.2 degrees Celsius below zero. That's the coldest temperature ever recorded, and it happened in August of 2010. If hell is real, we're willing to bet it finally froze over in that moment.

The new record, which was set in East Antarctica and detected using NASA satellite data, is a full 10 degrees "colder than anything that has ever been seen in Alaska or Siberia", according to ice scientist Ted Scambos.

[MinM]

smh.com.au ‏@smh: Professor claims scientists investigating melting Arctic ice may have been assassinated. http://ow.ly/Q5hgy

Professor Seymour Laxon

Dr Katherine Giles

Dr Tim Boyd

Arctic ocean losing 50% more summer ice than predicted

By Robin McKie, The Observer
Saturday, August 11, 2012 18:55 EDT
 
Sea ice in the Arctic is disappearing at a far greater rate than previously expected, according to data from the first purpose-built satellite launched to study the thickness of the Earth’s polar caps.

Preliminary results from the European Space Agency’s CryoSat-2 probe indicate that 900 cubic kilometers of summer sea ice has disappeared from the Arctic ocean over the past year.

This rate of loss is 50% higher than most scenarios outlined by polar scientists and suggests that global warming, triggered by rising greenhouse gas emissions, is beginning to have a major impact on the region. In a few years the Arctic ocean could be free of ice in summer, triggering a rush to exploit its fish stocks, oil, minerals and sea routes.


Using instruments on earlier satellites, scientists could see that the area covered by summer sea ice in the Arctic has been dwindling rapidly. But the new measurements indicate that this ice has been thinning dramatically at the same time. For example, in regions north of Canada and Greenland, where ice thickness regularly stayed at around five to six meters in summer a decade ago, levels have dropped to one to three meters.

“Preliminary analysis of our data indicates that the rate of loss of sea ice volume in summer in the Arctic may be far larger than we had previously suspected,” said Dr Seymour Laxon, of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at University College London (UCL), where CryoSat-2 data is being analyzed. “Very soon we may experience the iconic moment when, one day in the summer, we look at satellite images and see no sea ice coverage in the Arctic, just open water.”

The consequences of losing the Arctic’s ice coverage, even for only part of the year, could be profound. Without the cap’s white brilliance to reflect sunlight back into space, the region will heat up even more than at present. As a result, ocean temperatures will rise and methane deposits on the ocean floor could melt, evaporate and bubble into the atmosphere. Scientists have recently reported evidence that methane plumes are now appearing in many areas. Methane is a particularly powerful greenhouse gas and rising levels of it in the atmosphere are only likely to accelerate global warming. And with the disappearance of sea ice around the shores of Greenland, its glaciers could melt faster and raise sea levels even more rapidly than at present.

Professor Chris Rapley of UCL said: “With the temperature gradient between the Arctic and equator dropping, as is happening now, it is also possible that the jet stream in the upper atmosphere could become more unstable. That could mean increasing volatility in weather in lower latitudes, similar to that experienced this year.”

CryoSat-2 is the world’s first satellite to be built specifically to study sea-ice thickness and was launched on a Dniepr rocket from Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, on 8 April, 2010. Previous Earth monitoring satellites had mapped the extent of sea-ice coverage in the Arctic. However, the thickness of that ice proved more difficult to measure.

The US probe ICESat made some important measurements of ice thickness but operated intermittently in only a few regions before it stopped working completely in 2009. CryoSat was designed specifically to tackle the issue of ice thickness, both in the Arctic and the Antarctic. It was fitted with radar that can see through clouds. (ICESat’s lasers could not penetrate clouds.) CryoSat’s orbit was also designed to give better coverage of the Arctic sea.

“Before CryoSat, we could see summer ice coverage was dropping markedly in the Arctic,” said Rapley. “But we only had glimpses of what was happening to ice thickness. Obviously if it was dropping as well, the loss of summer ice was even more significant. We needed to know what was happening – and now CryoSat has given us the answer. It has shown that the Arctic sea cap is not only shrinking in area but is also thinning dramatically.”

Sea-ice cover in the Arctic varies considerably throughout the year, reaching a maximum in March. By combining earlier results from ICESat and data from other studies, including measurements made by submarines traveling under the polar ice cap, Laxon said preliminary analysis now gave a clear indication of Arctic sea-ice loss over the past eight years, both in winter and in summer.

In winter 2004, the volume of sea ice in the central Arctic was approximately 17,000 cubic kilometers. This winter it was 14,000, according to CryoSat.

However, the summer figures provide the real shock. In 2004 there was about 13,000 cubic kilometers of sea ice in the Arctic. In 2012, there is 7,000 cubic kilometers, almost half the figure eight years ago. If the current annual loss of around 900 cubic kilometers continues, summer ice coverage could disappear in about a decade in the Arctic.

However, Laxon urged caution, saying: “First, this is based on preliminary studies of CryoSat figures, so we should take care before rushing to conclusions. In addition, the current rate of ice volume decline could change.” Nevertheless, experts say computer models indicate rates of ice volume decline are only likely to increase over the next decade.

As to the accuracy of the measurements made by CryoSat, these have been calibrated by comparing them to measurements made on the ice surface by scientists including Laxon; by planes flying beneath the satellite’s orbit; and by data supplied by underwater sonar stations that have analyzed ice thickness at selected places in the Arctic. “We can now say with confidence that CryoSat’s maps of ice thickness are correct to within 10cm,” Laxon added.

Laxon also pointed out that the rate of ice loss in winter was much slower than that in summer. “That suggests that, as winter starts, ice is growing more rapidly than it did in the past and that this effect is compensating, partially, for the loss of summer ice.” Overall, the trend for ice coverage in Arctic is definitely downwards, particularly in summer, however – a point recently backed by Professor Peter Wadham, who this year used aircraft and submarine surveys of ice sheets to make estimates of ice volume loss. These also suggest major reductions in the volume of summer sea ice, around 70% over the past 30 years.

“The Arctic is particularly vulnerable to the impact of global warming,” said Rapley. “Temperatures there are rising far faster than they are at the equator. Hence the shrinking of sea-ice coverage we have observed. It is telling us that something highly significant is happening to Earth. The weather systems of the planet are interconnected so what happens in the high latitudes affects us all.”