Planetary Emergency

The fact that a thin layer of ice is not present for a few weeks this year in certain areas of the Arctic – means we are all doomed.

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‘Planetary emergency’ due to Arctic melt, experts warn
By Mariano Andrade (AFP) – 14 hours ago

NEW YORK — Experts warned of a “planetary emergency” due to the unforeseen global consequences of Arctic ice melt, including methane gas released from permafrost regions currently under ice.

Columbia University and the environmental activist group Greenpeace held separate events Wednesday to discuss US government data showing that the Arctic sea ice has shrunk to its smallest surface area since record-keeping began in 1979.
Satellite images show the Arctic ice cap melted to 1.32 million square miles (3.4 million square kilometers) as of September 16, the predicted lowest point for the year, according to data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

AFP: ‘Planetary emergency’ due to Arctic melt, experts warn

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25 Responses to Planetary Emergency

  1. NikFromNYC says:

    Ask twenty chemistry, physics or biology students slaving away on weekends in the labs on the real Columbia campus if they’ve ever heard of the Earth Institute!

    The liberal arts graduate students held a big rally to try to unionize, in the 90s. Our being paid to play around all night in lab with the world’s best spectrometers to guide us, a collective shrug was in order.

  2. Dave Johnson says:

    It also sounds quite ridiculous, when they say 2smallest surface area since record keeping began in 1979″ Can anyone remind me how long the North Pole has been there?

  3. Eric Simpson says:

    The warmists will continue to try to mislead the public by pointing to subsidiary points and saying that that proves man-made global warming.
    As here, they say that the sky is falling because Arctic ice was down this year. Well, in this case we can say that this regional phenomenon in the Arctic is offset by Antarctic sea ice being at record levels, and that land ice has not melted over the last decades in any appreciable way because we can see that the sea has not risen much or at all. But even if we couldn’t point to Antarctica, and it was indisputable that the Arctic was at a major low, that’s just a secondary point. It does nothing to prove man made global warming. There are other explanations for the Arctic ice lows. The main thing, the warmists need to show that temperatures are unusually high (by revalidating the debunked hockey stick), and they need to show that man is responsible for any warming (by disputing our point that we are simply recovering from the Little Ice Age, and by proving that CO2 is “a leader from behind” as far as temperatures [CO2 does not lead temperatures, it follows temperatures {it is an effect of temp change, not a cause}, but though warmists now accept this point, they maintain, despite a lack of evidence, that CO2 “amplifies” temperature changes that are not initiated by CO2]).
    Putting the spotlight on CO2 specifically: it has been amply demonstrated that CO2 rises and falls with an ~ 800 year lag as a result of temperature changes. But if CO2 did “lead from behind,” if it did in fact amplify any temperatures increases caused for other reasons (and note that the evidence is that at one point the earth had as high as 7100 ppm CO2), if CO2 was both an effect and a cause of temperature change, without a doubt we would have been subjected to a runaway greenhouse effect. The earth would have long ago become an permanent oven. Nothing of the sort happened. So the greenhouse effect as postulated is bull. Watch this video for a 3 minute refresher on how CO2 operates: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK_WyvfcJyg&info=GGWarmingSwindle_CO2Lag
    The main points: 1) there is nothing unusual about current temperatures [the hockey stick has been debunked, and so quite frankly there is nothing wrong with the climate], and 2) there is frankly no evidence at all that CO2 is a cause of temperatures change. (Sure, there is a theoretical model that purports that CO2 causes temp changes, but there’s also competing theoretical models that contend that CO2 doesn’t affect temps [for example, that after 200ppm CO2 has little effect]. I say that the evidence [or, the lack of evidence] suggests that the theoretical model that maintains that CO2 does not affect climate temperatures is the correct one.)

    • kirkmyers says:

      As you correctly point out, the impact of CO2 on temperature is logarithmic. From chemical engineer Pierre Latour:

      • Atmospheric radiation absorption and emission are dominated by the presence of all three phases of H2O. Like all molecules, CO2 only absorbs and emits specific spectral wavelengths (14.77 microns) that constitute a tiny fraction of solar radiation energy in Earth’s atmosphere. The first 50 ppm of CO2 absorbs about half of this tiny energy, each additional 50 ppm absorbs half of the remaining tiny fraction, so at the current 380 ppm there are almost no absorbable photons left. CO2 could triple to 1,000 ppm with no additional discernable absorption–emission. This is the Beer-Lambert Law: The intensity of radiation decreases exponentially as it passes through an absorbing medium.

      Here is link to entire article:

      http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Thermostat_CO2.pdf

      • Eric Simpson says:

        Good links, Kirk, thanks, and I’m going to kick back and read them later. Steven’s position I believe, and the position of a whole lot of credible skeptics, is that indeed CO2 has most of its effect at 50ppm and below, and little (essentially zero) effect after 200ppm. In other words, they say that CO2 has effectively no warming effect in the current atmosphere (> 200ppm). So why do so many skeptics, perhaps including the likes of Anthony Watts and Joanne Nova, insist that “all reasonable skeptics” agree that CO2 has some warming effect? Why, there’s no evidence for this. No, I think a lot of reasonable skeptics don’t agree that CO2 has any significant warming effect.

  4. Blade says:

    “The fact that a thin layer of ice is not present for a few weeks this year in certain areas of the Arctic – means we are all doomed.”

    The truth of the matter is that we are damned lucky that thanks to the current configuration of those drifting continents that there is relatively little dry land land near the North Pole.

    If it was like the South Pole where a continent moved dead center to 90° we would be completely screwed, in fact we most likely wouldn’t be here. If North America, Europe and Asia were connected by land over the top of the planet we would see never ending glaciation to farther southern latitudes than ever before.

    Land offers ice the ability to survive year round at almost unmeasurable cold temperatures unlike the relatively warm water. The re-melting and re-freezing sea-ice is a blessing, not a curse.

  5. What’s the emergency again?

  6. Michael says:

    No wonder all those Vikings died a thousand years ago. Methane gas released by the melting permafrost – sounds dangerous. If they ask, don’t dare volunteer to sail the north west passage, it’ll smell worse than a Nebraska feed lot in July! Um, oh ya, it’s still frozen, move on, nothing to see here …

    At least the team moved on from cow farts for a day … I can smell the Febreeze.

  7. Steve Tabor says:

    No place on the Google link to comment. I had my arguments all ready to go. It sure feels good to blast our partners in the free flow of ideas, whenever I get a chance.

  8. MFK_40milesSWofFortCollins says:

    Finally we hit the minimum extent 2012.

    When do you think you will settle your debts from the bets, Steven?

  9. les mackenzie says:

    blazingAtrail says: death, climate change and taxes – Talk to the people who were effected by Hurricane Sandy – more like climate change, death and MORE taxes-just driving a point home

  10. tinnitus says:

    What you said was very logical. But, think on this, suppose you typed a catchier post
    title? I ain’t suggesting your information isn’t good.
    , however what if you added something that grabbed people’s attention? I mean Planetary Emergency | Real Science is kinda boring. You could glance at Yahoo’s front page
    and note how they write news titles to get viewers
    to open the links. You might add a related video or a related pic or two to get
    people excited about everything’ve written. In my opinion, it might make your posts a little livelier. tinnitus

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