Here's An Interesting Graph, Courtesy Of Bjeknes Centre . . .

[hatrack]

But wait! There's more!

The big melt: lessons from the Arctic summer of 2007

The Arctic sea ice is disintegrating "100 years ahead of schedule", having dropped 22% this year below the previous minimum low, and it may completely disappear as early as the northern summer of 2013. This is far beyond the predictions of the International Panel on Climate Change and is an example of global warming impacts happening at lower temperature increases and more quickly than projected. What are the lessons from the Arctic summer of 2007?

Released 8 October 2007

Executive summary
• Climate change impacts are happening at lower temperature increases and more quickly than projected.
• The Arctic's floating sea ice is headed towards rapid summer disintegration as early as 2013, a century ahead of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections.
• The rapid loss of Arctic sea ice will speed up the disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet, and a rise in sea levels by even as much as 5 metres by the turn of this century is possible.
• The Antarctic ice shelf reacts far more sensitively to warming temperatures than previously believed.

EDIT

• The 2°C warming cap is a political compromise; with the speed of change now in the climate system and the positive feedbacks that 2°C will trigger, it looms for perhaps billions of people and millions of species as a death sentence.
• To allow the reestablishment and long-term security of the Arctic summer sea ice it is likely to be necessary to bring global warming back to a level at or below 0.5°C (a long-term precautionary warming cap) and for the level of atmospheric greenhouse gases at equilibrium to be brought down to or below a long-term precautionary cap of 320 ppm CO2e.
• The IPCC suffers from a scientific reticence and in many key areas the IPCC process has been so deficient as to be an unreliable and dangerously misleading basis for policy-making.

EDIT/END

Also has link to full report.

http://www.carbonequity.info/docs/arctic.html

[phantom power]

1. Nobody pays attention to schedules anymore. That's the problem with this planet.

[necso]

2. That graph makes it look like

ice-loss hit a turning point.

A problem with turning points is that it's easy to see them in hindsight -- but hard to see them in advance.

There may be many turning points in our not-too-distant future.

We live in interesting times.

[XemaSab]

4. A turning point like the Coyote in the cartoons going over a cliff.

:P

[XemaSab]

3. Wah-wah!

Like the Spanish Inquisition, NOBODY expected that! :o

[hatrack]

5. I'm just waiting for Cardinal Fang to show up . . .

:toast:

[XemaSab]

8. If we're proposing names for the graph, may I suggest "le grand moulin?"

:P

[hatrack]

9. Or with the requisite dye marker, why not "Moulin Rouge"?

Shit, I need to start drinking some absinthe, like, NOW.

[XemaSab]

10. Don't remind me...

You'd be appalled at how hard it is to find real wormwood. :(

Ah, Artemisia absinthium... I have a special place in the garden all picked out for you.... :*

[n2doc]

6. So the spin will be "Those dang models can't predict ice loss accurately, so ignore them"

Nothing will be said about the DIRECTION of the error....

[redqueen]

7. That's the thing, isn't it? They're all wrong, yes... they're all too conservative

with their estimates.

That should be a clue to people... but apparently there's an epidemic of cranial anal blockages.

[XemaSab]

11. Time for another look at this graph

:bounce: