This is astonishing.
…Scientists and conservationists are expressing alarm at the appearance of thousands of walrus on Alaska’s northwest coast, a dramatic demonstration of the effects of diminished Arctic sea ice brought on by global warming….
Tag Archives: Climate Change
Arctic Sea Ice Shrinks to Alarmingly Small Range
Scientists have been measuring sea ice very carefully since 1979. Prior to that, there are estimates that are of varying degrees of usefulness. I know for a fact that many New England lighthouses were attached to land by winter-long ice in places that have not had sea ice in any living person’s memory, and there are similar bits and pieces of historical data suggesting that sea ice was once much more extensive in the Northern Hemisphere than at present.
Since 1979 there have been three years in which Arctic sea ice reached a rather alarming minimum size prior to reforming. We are in one of those years now.
Daily Arctic sea ice extent on September 10, 2010 was 4.76 million square kilometers (1.84 million square miles). The orange line shows the 1979 to 2000 median extent for that day. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. (From the NCIDC)
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Anthropogenic Climate Change: It’s for real.
I’ve noticed that a lot of smart people who nonetheless “did not accept” AGW, or at least, denied the “A” part of it, have stoped talking about it lately. I’m speaking here of people I know personally. You know who you are, and you know you were wrong, and I just wanted to say that I forgive you. Mostly.
In the mean time, have a look at this:
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Rob Dunbar: Discovering ancient climates in oceans and ice
This Rob Dunbar is NOT Robin Dunbar the Archaeologist.
Rob Dunbar hunts for data on our climate from 12,000 years ago, finding clues inside ancient seabeds and corals and inside ice sheets. His work is vital in setting baselines for fixing our current climate — and in tracking the rise of deadly ocean acidification.
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Science as a Contact Sport by Stephen Schneider
In the 1960s, the whole idea of a “greenhouse effect” was well understood, and assumed to be an important potential factor in climate change. So was glaciation, and the short and medium term future of the Earth’s climate was less clear than compared to now. But the basics were there … C02 was being released into the atmosphere, this could cause a greenhouse effect, and that would warm the earth. Certainly by the early 1980s, it was possible to make some thumb-suck estimates of how much the earth would warm given various assumptions about CO2, and it was not that difficult to see that a lot of fossil carbon was being put into the atmosphere.
Continue reading Science as a Contact Sport by Stephen Schneider
Why the Wind Blows: A History of Weather
Why does the wind blow, and why does it blow the way it does?
Continue reading Why the Wind Blows: A History of Weather
What was that splash? Oh. Greenland melting.
See the missing bit? That is a 1.5 kilometer retreat of the so-called “calving front” of the glacier.
In truth, this particular sort of even is not that unusual, but what is interesting is that new satellite monitoring capabilities allow researchers to notice these events more or less when they happen, as opposed to during less frequent inspections of satellite imagery.
And, there are some climate-change related features of this event.
Continue reading What was that splash? Oh. Greenland melting.
Climate Denialists Smear, Taunt Liberal Blogger
Steve Andrew dared to tickle the dragon’s tail and now he is paying for it. The dragon in this case, is Climate Denialists in the Right Wing Media.
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1969 Global Warming White House Memo
Anthropogenic global warming has been suspected for decades, and a simple one paragraph long characterization of the problem 40 years ago was substantially identical to any accurate characterization we might make today. One has to wonder why after 40 years of time we still see headlines telling us that it might, after all, turn out to be true that anthropogenic global warming is real. Indeed, it is a bit disconcerting when the inestimable climate blog RealClimate notes that this is the 35th “Anniversary of Global Warming” as a term in the peer reviewed scientific literature (though I suspect it is older). (See RealClimate’s post on the anniversary for very important details!)
The phenomenon of anthropogenic global warming as a point of policy discussion is older than 35 years. Below is a memo from one White House staffer to another both to eventually become quite famous in their own ways, regarding the “carbon dioxide problem.” You will find a link to a copy of the original, and some context notes for you youn’uns who may not remember the mid 20trh century. Below the fold.
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Triassic Life on Land: I love this book
The Triassic is old. This book is new. That is a hard to beat combination.
Continue reading Triassic Life on Land: I love this book
Outbreaks of H5N1 Bird Virus Infection in Wild Birds in time and space: Temperature matters (with cool video)
It has long been thought that there are linkages between certain viruses and the weather. The flu season is winter (in whichever hemisphere it happens to be winter in) for reasons having to do with the seasons. One early theory posited that the practices of East Asian farmers, as they tended their animals, caused waterfowl and swine and humans to share space closely enough that nasty new influenzas would emerge and spread around the world. Although that explanation for the annual seasonal flu has been dropped (if it ever really had wings… or hooves, or whatever) it is still possible that such a pattern could occur. One of the more likely places to look for this sort of thing is with bird flu, because there are large numbers of migratory birds that host the flu, and the interaction of wild and domestic birds is not an incredibly unlikely event.
Continue reading Outbreaks of H5N1 Bird Virus Infection in Wild Birds in time and space: Temperature matters (with cool video)
Out of place oak is 13 thousand years old
One of the world’s oldest plants turns out to be a 13,000 year-old scrub oak (Quercus palmeri, or Palmer’s Oak) in Southern California. Apparently this tree has survived for so long, despite the fact that it was born in the ice age and there have been numerous climate changes since then, by cloning itself, hiding in a crevice, being small, and growing slowly. Luck was involved as well, almost certainly.
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How Young is the Grand Canyon?
To answer that question briefly, it is really really old if you mean “how old are the oldest rocks that are exposed by the Grand Canyon,” and it is probably just a few million years old (5 or 6 by some estimates) if you mean “how long did the canyon itself take to form.”
We need these climate change ads in the US.
Global warming and the Minnesota Moose. Part IIa
This is a continuation of a discussion on the role of Global Warming in the decline of moose populations in Minnesota. It is also a discussion of Global Warming denialism.
Continue reading Global warming and the Minnesota Moose. Part IIa