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ciroccojYou know, one thing that really irritates me about stories like the article below is that the media can - and has to - write about them with such breathless disbelief. Like OMG can you believe it?! The Earth is getting HOTTER!! Just like scientists around the planet have been saying for decades!!! And... and that means that cold things melt!!! And... and... and hot things get hotter!!!! EGAD!!! HOW CAN THIS BE??!! JUST BECAUSE IT'S HAPPENING ALL OVER THE PLANET AND HAS BEEN FOR YEARS - YOU MEAN IT'S ALL PART OF A PATTERN???!!!!! OMGWTFBBQ1!11!!
And the reason they have to keep saying it that way is that people in North America really, honestly, and truly believe world-wide climatology is all part of some kind of elaborate hoax. I'm quite convinced that in my grandchildren's time, when most of Africa has been scorched to bare sand, the vast majority of Pacific nations can be found only in history books, and the Rideau Skateway hosts winter skinny-dipping parties in place of Winterlude, the vast majority of North Americans will continue to blithely cling to their mantra of "You can't prove it's all part of a pattern and it has nothing to do with our lifestyle and it's probably just from a volcano and we've just had a couple of unusually warm years that's all and it'll all go back to normal soon and then won't those doomsayers feel silly - here, let's crank up the air conditioning."
Scientists note stunning loss of ice, snow
From elders watching the movement of sea ice in Nunavut to climatologists studying satellite weather maps, people are amazed and alarmed by how quickly spring is coming to the Arctic this year.
Record-warm temperatures have taken their toll on ice cover in Canada's Arctic waters and snow cover on land.
"I've never seen it so wide open this time of year," said Environment Canada's David Phillips, talking about the body of water between Baffin Island and mainland Quebec. "It's just blue, blue as the bluest sky."
It's not just sea ice. Phillips said snow cover is fast disappearing across Nunavut. In Cape Dorset, there is typically 50 centimetres of snow on the ground in May. Now there are just two centimetres. And in Iqaluit, bare ground is exposed everywhere, when typically there is still 20 centimetres of snow cover.
Phillips, a senior climatologist with the federal weather agency, says winter temperatures were four to five degrees warmer than usual. Combined with the dramatic losses recorded in sea ice last summer, Phillips says the natural cycle hasn't had a chance to recover.
"There has been no rebounding back," he said. "The ice just hasn't had a chance to bounce back, to grow during the winter, during the cold season of the year.
"Essentially what's happening is there's been so much warm weather, week after week, month after month, season after season, the environment is just not behaving the way it should."
Ice cover has now dropped to a record low for the winter period.
That worries Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Col.
Serreze said April is generally the month with the maximum ice cover over the Arctic Ocean, and the loss this year is shocking.
"If we compare this April with all previous Aprils, there's hundreds of thousands of square kilometres less ice," he said.
Climatologists, biologists and people living in the area fear the shifting ice patterns are a sign of even deeper changes that will disrupt age-old cycles of plant and animal life, and even global weather patterns.
Serreze says researchers will be watching ice cover data carefully this summer, and many are already predicting the shrinkage in September will largely surpass last year's all-time high.
Serreze says sea ice loss has been the greatest along the coasts of Siberia and Alaska.
He says this winter a ship could have travelled east from London along Russia's Arctic Ocean coast, through the Bering Strait down to Tokyo.
Meanwhile, Phillips says people in Nunavut and the N.W.T. can expect the balmy weather to continue through the summer.
And the reason they have to keep saying it that way is that people in North America really, honestly, and truly believe world-wide climatology is all part of some kind of elaborate hoax. I'm quite convinced that in my grandchildren's time, when most of Africa has been scorched to bare sand, the vast majority of Pacific nations can be found only in history books, and the Rideau Skateway hosts winter skinny-dipping parties in place of Winterlude, the vast majority of North Americans will continue to blithely cling to their mantra of "You can't prove it's all part of a pattern and it has nothing to do with our lifestyle and it's probably just from a volcano and we've just had a couple of unusually warm years that's all and it'll all go back to normal soon and then won't those doomsayers feel silly - here, let's crank up the air conditioning."
Scientists note stunning loss of ice, snow
From elders watching the movement of sea ice in Nunavut to climatologists studying satellite weather maps, people are amazed and alarmed by how quickly spring is coming to the Arctic this year.
Record-warm temperatures have taken their toll on ice cover in Canada's Arctic waters and snow cover on land.
"I've never seen it so wide open this time of year," said Environment Canada's David Phillips, talking about the body of water between Baffin Island and mainland Quebec. "It's just blue, blue as the bluest sky."
It's not just sea ice. Phillips said snow cover is fast disappearing across Nunavut. In Cape Dorset, there is typically 50 centimetres of snow on the ground in May. Now there are just two centimetres. And in Iqaluit, bare ground is exposed everywhere, when typically there is still 20 centimetres of snow cover.
Phillips, a senior climatologist with the federal weather agency, says winter temperatures were four to five degrees warmer than usual. Combined with the dramatic losses recorded in sea ice last summer, Phillips says the natural cycle hasn't had a chance to recover.
"There has been no rebounding back," he said. "The ice just hasn't had a chance to bounce back, to grow during the winter, during the cold season of the year.
"Essentially what's happening is there's been so much warm weather, week after week, month after month, season after season, the environment is just not behaving the way it should."
Ice cover has now dropped to a record low for the winter period.
That worries Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Col.
Serreze said April is generally the month with the maximum ice cover over the Arctic Ocean, and the loss this year is shocking.
"If we compare this April with all previous Aprils, there's hundreds of thousands of square kilometres less ice," he said.
Climatologists, biologists and people living in the area fear the shifting ice patterns are a sign of even deeper changes that will disrupt age-old cycles of plant and animal life, and even global weather patterns.
Serreze says researchers will be watching ice cover data carefully this summer, and many are already predicting the shrinkage in September will largely surpass last year's all-time high.
Serreze says sea ice loss has been the greatest along the coasts of Siberia and Alaska.
He says this winter a ship could have travelled east from London along Russia's Arctic Ocean coast, through the Bering Strait down to Tokyo.
Meanwhile, Phillips says people in Nunavut and the N.W.T. can expect the balmy weather to continue through the summer.
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-20 03:48 am (UTC)I love you.
It's so frustrating when people love how mild the winter was and when I tell people at work that "oh, they're predicting that this summer is going to be hotter, dryer and longer than it ever has been" and the typical response is "Good."
NO IT'S NOT GOOD IT'S NOT NORMAL.
I just... people don't get it and it's so damn frustrating that it doesn't seem like they'll ever get it because it's all about them. Oh, it'll be warmer this winter so I won't have to wear a hat and mess up my hair.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-22 04:42 am (UTC)::fume::
Oh, it'll be warmer this winter so I won't have to wear a hat and mess up my hair.
Yeah, great, terrific. Way to keep our eye on number one.
I spent a lot of this winter driving past the Skateway thinking man, this sucks. Great, terrific, we're all walking around hatless... and touristless, because the Longest Skating Rink in the World according to Guinness is now the Longest Roped-Off Slushpile in the World according to Guinness. And boy it would sure be nice if that was the biggest downside to global warming.
Yaarg, stupid people.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-20 04:39 am (UTC)This is the problem
Date: 2006-05-20 11:52 am (UTC)2. a)What global warming means is death. Whether it is due to heat or cold, even a 2-3 C change (4-5 F) causes most animals to become infertile. We, due to clothing and houses, will continue to breed like bunnies, though...
b)Wherever you read/heard this, it flies in the face of every reputable scientific study, although it may be a gross misinterpretation of some good studies, read by highly educated morons. The null hypothesis is that whatever you read is a good study, but when the average schmoe reads it/it gets to the media, it will be misinterpreted to encourage us to go on fucking our planet...
3. We will "solve" this problem the same way we have "solved" every other man-made problem we've ever encountered. By killing each other (think about the decline of the Greeks after fucking their farmland, or the Mongols), exterminating other species (think Easter Island, or Madagascar), etc. etc. etc.
The Christians believe God gave cast us out of Eden. I agree, but I think it is allegorical for how we have, and will again, destroy the world around us. As a species, we'll survive, but at what cost?
And it's exactly the arguments you've put forward that get spouted by illiterates like G. Bush et al, sucked up by the average SUV-driving shit-for-brains, and spewed out in the form of apathy, belligerence, and an unwillingness to change (or fund more research).
Prima non nocere. Regardless of what the consequences may or may not be, shitting where you eat is stupid. shitting where your children eat is evil.
I could go on, but I must take Daniel & Roger to a convention.
Re: This is the problem
Date: 2006-05-20 03:31 pm (UTC)Re: This is the problem
Date: 2006-05-20 07:15 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's very true, and it's a very good point. Unfortunately, for most people "being careful about what we do" usually translates into is "keep doing exactly what we're currently doing." Or rather, "keep doing exactly what we most want to do" - whether that's buying huge gas-guzzling cars, levelling marshes to make golf courses, or making sure every building has year-round air conditioning. It's far too easy to turn uncertainty into an excuse for apathy, IMHO.
It's like pointing at studies that show there's uncertainty as to the direct relationship between smoking and lung cancer, and at studies that show that some people can do themselves harm by trying to quit, and using them as an excuse to keep smoking. No, we're not absolutely 100% sure that smoking causes cancer, because science doesn't work that way. And yes, it is possible that in trying to quit you might gain weight and thus get a heart attack. But decades of studies have shown an almost overwhelming connection between smoking and cancer, and it's almost certain that the health risks associated with smoking outweight those associated with quitting. Pretending otherwise is grasping at straws because you just plain want to keep smoking. IMHO.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-20 12:05 pm (UTC)One, absolutely. What we should be looking at are the studies themselves, not what the media makes of them. And the studies themselves are, overwhelmingly, almost as gloomy and scary as the media makes them out to be.
Two, this is true. Not only Ottawa, but most of Europe would be adversely affected by a change in the Gulf Stream. We don't know enough to know exactly what effect our actions will have on the environment.
This, to me, should not translate into "since we don't know for sure, why don't we just do what feels good even if almost every study and piece of observation shows that, whatever the effects, they'll be very very bad." And more than being presented with a delicate piece of complex equipment with lots of mysterious-looking buttons should prompt us to start punching at random buttons heedless of whether we're going to push the one that will make said piece of equipment blow up.
I've also read/heard that because of changes in the atmosphere the amount of sunlight reaching earth has dropped and that 'fighting' global warming at this point might actually hasten global cooling.
Some studies also said that smoking might decrease a person's probability of getting stomach cancer. Not a good enough reason, IMHO, to continue to smoke when every other study says it's bad for you. It's grasping at straws, IMHO, and pretty flimsy ones at that.
Three, see
no subject
Date: 2006-05-20 01:02 pm (UTC)... except for the shit-for-brains part of it ;)