Tag: Melt

Arctic Meltdown : A Very Big Deal

Post author By Jo
Post date September 17, 2010
No Comments on Arctic Meltdown : A Very Big Deal

It continues to astonish me that environmental reporters cannot pick up the Arctic meltdown ball and run with it.

The trend in meltdown in the northernmost latitudes is a very big deal – and it’s ongoing, it hasn’t stopped, gone into remission or gone away.

The nature of the ice is changing – so much so that scientific monitoring equipment was confused.

It is now clear that Arctic summer sea ice is in a “death spiral”, a phrase first used very recently, in an attempt to properly describe what is happening :-

https://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/death-spiral/

Tags Arctic, arctic sea ice, Arctic Summer Sea Ice, Cairn Energy, Deepwater, deepwater drilling, deepwater oil, defrost, frozen wastes, Greenpeace, Melt, Meltdown, Permafrost, tundra

Be Prepared Big Picture Climate Change Disturbing Trends Emissions Impossible Global Warming Hide the Incline Meltdown Realistic Models Science Rules Screaming Panic The Data

The Rate of Change

I well remember the huffing and puffing over the release of James Hansen’s paper “Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?” :-

https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf

“…Decreasing CO2 was the main cause of a cooling trend that began 50 million years ago, large scale glaciation occurring when CO2 fell to 425 +/- 75 ppm…”

The sceptic-deniers laughed and scoffed and said things to the effect that clearly there’s nothing to worry about that the current concentration of Carbon Dioxide in the air is over 390 parts per million – it won’t melt the polar ice caps.

What the sceptic-deniers haven’t understood, or pretend not to have understood, is that it is a combination of factors that caused major lasting glaciation on Earth. Yes, the level of Carbon Dioxide in the air is important. But the rate of change of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is a significant component.

If the levels of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere change rapidly, the heating or cooling effect is amplified, in effect. You have to take account of the relative change in levels of Carbon Dioxide, not just its level at any particular point in time.