A New Climate State: Arctic Sea Ice 2012 (video)

[XemaSab]

Talking about cool, yet depressing vids: Peter Sinclair from the Climate Denial Crock of the Week blog has produced a new video for The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media (link) that covers this melting season and shows the reactions from several experts:

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2012/09/a-new-climate-state-arctic-sea-ice-2012-video.html

[CRH]

1. Highly recommended, k&r, n/t

[Speck Tater]

2. k&R Those video animations are interesting...

...watching the ice floes being pushed south by the currents and then melting as the squeeze past Greenland. Fascinating, but very frightening.

[CRH]

4. Those animations and simulations, ...

of the currents of the broken up ice and where it moves to, is what caught my eye. It gives anther dimension to think about after viewing the various other ice measurements, graphs and models. One tends to think of a large sheet of ice melting smaller and smaller, while disregarding the obvious. The constant movement and churning of what is left of the ice floe, and the floe's ultimate destination once it is released from the currents into open warmer ocean.

In my mind it helps explain the increased speed of the Arctic ice failure.

[Gregorian]

3. When the ice is gone, I fear the discussion will fade to less than it already is.

Not by professionals, but in terms of concrete ability to keep discussion alive. We won't be able to talk about ice being gone, as it will be gone.

I'm dismayed that even on a so-called liberal forum such as this one the responses are relatively ignorant. As if it's inevitable that we must travel and continue breeding. This is why I no longer have the optimism I used to have. However, it comes as a personal relief after decades of hope. Now I have a sense of the truth.

[hatrack]

5. This reminds me of a conversation I had with the late Ray Anderson, the Interface carpet guy

He was in town for a speaking event that I put together as part of my job at the time. My perk? I got to pick him up at his hotel and take him out to the convention center where he was going to speak.

Had a great talk in the car on the way out. He was an absolutely archetypical southern gentleman, soft-spoken and smart as a whip.

I asked him straight out, "So what's your take on where we are environmentally?" His response: "I'm far less optimistic than I was a few years ago. We're not moving nearly as quickly as we need to, and I don't think enough people really understand where we are."

Not that he was planning on giving up doing what he was doing, which was all about full-accounting product life cycles, maximizing energy and materials efficiency, minimizing waste streams and much more, but I remember it vividly, and that was five years ago.

[Gregorian]

8. I remember him. He just died days ago.

Just knowing that there are others who really do see the entire picture the way we do is very helpful. But they are so very few. Surprisingly so. It's no different than politics, and how some see it as a way to further society, and others a way for personal gain.

I really appreciate shared experiences like that which you just stated. I'll always remember what you said about your talk. Thanks.

[GliderGuider]

7. The conversation will turn back to the weather.

But perhaps in five years the tone of the conversation will have changed...

"Hot enough for ya?"
"Jaysus yes. Can't remember the last time it rained - must be goin' on two years now."
"I know! Couldn't even plant a garden this year. I wonder when Romney's gonna do something about the price of bread?"
"Yeah, it's an outrage what them speculators are doin' to wheat and corn prices. Somebody oughta do something!"
"Hey, my neighbors are takin' a Christmas cruise up to the North Pole this year - takin' the kids to see Santa's workshop in that ark they built up there!"
"How about that - I hope it's a little cooler up there than it is here! Say, did they ever get that North Pole oil slick cleaned up?"

Etc. etc. etc.

[Gregorian]

9. Isn't it odd how fast it all happened.

I watched the movie Reuters last night. Most people just don't have a realistic perspective. We were using homing pigeons for faster news only a century ago. We went from two guys in a bike shop to 747's in a matter of a few years. It's no different than talking about attemtping to suppress minority voter registration now versus lynching then less than a hundred years ago.

It's really quite simple. I was just looking at historical gas prices the other day. It follows the same curve as all of the rests of the things that are happening. 25 cents per gallon from inception all the way to 1970, and then whooop up exponentially to the $6.10 that it has been in my town for quite some time now. Well, not truly exponential, but close enough that one who wants to see what is really happening can see the relationship between demand and cost and devastation.

And what you said is true. And puzzling since even liberals will be having those conversations. Which means that even liberal have the same blindness that conservatives have in some areas. I'm perplexed by it.

[pscot]

6. The comment thread was interesting

Apart from a thread-jack about car mileage, the few deniers on hand were getting pounded pretty good. The fallback position for the deniers now seems to be the undisputed increase in the extent of Antarctic sea ice, an argument that ignores the shrinking Antarctic land ice.