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Gains in Antarctic ice might offset losses

nature.com

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Re: Gains in Antarctic ice might offset losses

#11

Post by noiv »

vixen99 wrote: post #5
sageabilly wrote: post #3

The important takeaway from this is that we don't have to worry as much about melting in Antartica. Melting everywhere else in the world, however, is proceeding at a fast pace and is more immediately concerning. Unfortunately, I imagine this report is going to get jumped on by global warming deniers as solid evidence that climate change is not real and there's nothing to worry about.

The word 'denial' does not permit of much nuance, does it? Smacks of faith and a religion, really. I wonder if & why you disagree with Judith Curry. "The definition of ‘dangerous’ climate change is ambiguous, and hypothesized catastrophic tipping points are regarded as very or extremely unlikely in the 21st century. Efforts to link dangerous impacts of extreme weather events to human-caused warming are misleading and…

There seems to be a whole lot of other countries disagreeing with JC[1]. May be they realised doing nothing is not an option. Personally I disagree, because excluding economic net effects borders ignorance. The US are neither an isolated actor nor a minor player on this planet.

[1]http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2015/03/paris-2015-tracking-...

Re: Gains in Antarctic ice might offset losses

#12

Post by Symmetry »

sageabilly wrote: post #3

The important takeaway from this is that we don't have to worry as much about melting in Antartica. Melting everywhere else in the world, however, is proceeding at a fast pace and is more immediately concerning. Unfortunately, I imagine this report is going to get jumped on by global warming deniers as solid evidence that climate change is not real and there's nothing to worry about.

Thermal expansion of seawater has always been a more important aspect of rising sea levels than melting anyways.

Re: Gains in Antarctic ice might offset losses

#13

Post by [deleted] »

vixen99 wrote: post #5
sageabilly wrote: post #3

The important takeaway from this is that we don't have to worry as much about melting in Antartica. Melting everywhere else in the world, however, is proceeding at a fast pace and is more immediately concerning. Unfortunately, I imagine this report is going to get jumped on by global warming deniers as solid evidence that climate change is not real and there's nothing to worry about.

The word 'denial' does not permit of much nuance, does it? Smacks of faith and a religion, really. I wonder if & why you disagree with Judith Curry. "The definition of ‘dangerous’ climate change is ambiguous, and hypothesized catastrophic tipping points are regarded as very or extremely unlikely in the 21st century. Efforts to link dangerous impacts of extreme weather events to human-caused warming are misleading and…

[deleted]

Re: Gains in Antarctic ice might offset losses

#14

Post by themgt »

hugh4 wrote: post #9
themgt wrote: post #7

If true, it's unlikely to persist for long. We know from paleoclimate data that both Greenland and Antarctica will significantly melt out w/ CO2 as high as it already is, much less any realistic peak level we could achieve.

Or if CO2 had never risen at all, right? End of ice age and all that?

Yeah, there's actually a reasonable case that our initial historical fossil fuel burning (say, up to 1950, 1980?) saved us from a new ice age that was about to dawn.

We unfortunately since then have pushed the dial way, way further, likely now past a tipping point towards a mostly ice-free hothouse planet.

Re: Gains in Antarctic ice might offset losses

#15

Post by civilian »

brianbreslin wrote: post #2

Could this be related to a shifting in the tilt/orientation of the planet? Or perhaps in an upcoming polarity flip?

Ahhh, the earth's tilt/orientation changes very slowly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt Earth's obliquity oscillates between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees on a 41,000-year cycle. It is currently 23.44 degrees and decreasing.

Magnetic pole changes take 1,000 to 10,000 years to happen. So again, unlikely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal And also, what do magnets have to do with ice melting?

I'd recommend that you unfollow Spirit Science on facebook.

Re: Gains in Antarctic ice might offset losses

#16

Post by llamataboot »

talmand wrote: post #6
sageabilly wrote: post #3

The important takeaway from this is that we don't have to worry as much about melting in Antartica. Melting everywhere else in the world, however, is proceeding at a fast pace and is more immediately concerning. Unfortunately, I imagine this report is going to get jumped on by global warming deniers as solid evidence that climate change is not real and there's nothing to worry about.

Not much different than global warming believers that point to just trends that support their position.

Anthropogenic global warming is a scientific theory with a preponderance of evidence. Like all scientific theories it is open to being revised if/when contrary data emerges. At the moment, the vast majority of data supports it as a theory.

Re: Gains in Antarctic ice might offset losses

#18

Post by Daishiman »

talmand wrote: post #6
sageabilly wrote: post #3

The important takeaway from this is that we don't have to worry as much about melting in Antartica. Melting everywhere else in the world, however, is proceeding at a fast pace and is more immediately concerning. Unfortunately, I imagine this report is going to get jumped on by global warming deniers as solid evidence that climate change is not real and there's nothing to worry about.

Not much different than global warming believers that point to just trends that support their position.

So the entirety of climate science is a "trend". I guess we can just take the whole of astronomy as a trend that the Earth is round too.

Re: Gains in Antarctic ice might offset losses

#20

Post by julienchastang »

todd8 wrote: post #19
Pinatubo wrote: post #17

Hooray, the polar bears are saved!

Well, not really. Polar bears live in the Northern Hemisphere. (Here's a riddle: why won't a polar bear eat a penguin even if the bear is starving? Answer: they live in different hemispheres.)

Except penguins lived in the Northern Hemisphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_auk. Great Auks are the original "penguin". What we call penguins today are not actually in the genus Pinguinus.
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