The graph above from Marika Holland at NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) compares the most well known projections of arctic sea ice melt from the IPCC, with what the sea ice is actually doing. (red)
It’s now clearer than ever that, at least for his very important metric, climate science has not been able to keep up with the accelerating pace of change in the real, natural world.
Climate change is here. We’re doing it. The consequences are dire. We need to stop.
This is serious.
The models are clearly too conservative as real observations show a clearly greater decrease in sea ice extent.
Even if we were to stop emitting CO2 right now, thermal equalibrium would not be reached for decades. The Artic will soon be ice free, opening up oil and gas exploration, which will just accellerate the problem.
Exxon predict a massive increase in fossil fuel consumption right up to 2030. This is quite probable and will lead to absolute disaster.
It’s too late to stop climate change from making our lives increasingly tougher.
It’s too late to stop climate change from making our lives increasingly tougher, yes, but as with everything, it is a matter of degrees.
Climate change is not a matter of “on or off”. Estimates point to a period of about a thousand years before the effects of what is CURRENTLY in the pipeline to wear off. That being said, we can mitigate the SEVERITY of those effects, and we can also mitigate the permanence.
If we get off fossil fuels, and find a better way to power our society (or USE a better way, since we have what we need already), then we can survive the coming changes, and more importantly, we can help ensure the survival of our species.
If that’s not enough, if we DON’T, we risk a variety of scenarios that could result in the extinction of all the species that some claim would be “better off without us”. They probably would be, but in our death throes we are more than likely to take them with us. Between triggering an event like the Permian/Triassic extinction, and the possibility of a runaway warming scenario that turns Earth into something more like Venus, we stand a real risk of wiping out ALL life on this planet.
THAT is what is now at stake. We are already going to get hit hard by climate change. Millions will die, billions will suffer, and thousands of species will go extinct. We could have prevented that, but we botched it, and caused it instead. What we can do NOW is make it easier on ourselves by moving to more reliable, safer forms of energy, and ensure that not only human life, but life on earth in general will continue after we’re gone.
That’s what I’m fighting for at this point.
Your comment is a bit terse. Are you saying that, were Arctic sea ice to recover, then that would invalidate the Anthropogenic aspect of climate change, or of climate change altogether?
Besides, if climate change is here, then we need to adapt first, and then see what if anything to do to stop it: because it is important to avoid the wound getting infected, and only thereafter it makes sense to explore ways to avoid further wounding.
The trend is clear: Ice loss.
If there was an ongoing long-term trend of increasing ice extent, this would conflict with the mass of evidence of warming, but the ice is shrinking.
As for your wound analogy, sorry, but this is simply wrong. Tackling the cause of the injury takes priority over dealing with the wound.
I’m glad you’re not my doctor!
bluecloud9 – under more or less all circumstances, when there’s a wound its cleaning takes precedence.
Or to use a similar analogy…there is little point in convincing a drunk driver to mend his way and stay away from alcohol from tomorrow, if tonight he’s dying at the scene of the accident he caused.
Any way I look at it, without adaptation there’s no future, even if we were to mitigate 100% from this very moment.
Scary. And then we have the T Party etc. blocking the kind of action required to mitigate.
Wow, just using a ruler to extrapolate the current rate of change puts zero September ice by late 2030’s or early 2040’s. Any acceleration in the trend could put that ice-free year somewhere in the early 2030’s or late 2020’s!
Granted, that’s hardly a rigorous analysis, but just looking at the trend seems to lend credence to Rear Adm. Titley’s words that we may see an ice free Arctic Ocean for a whole month by the mid 2030’s.
Simply outrageous. I’ve seen the Arctic Ocean sea ice extent before, but not up against the model predictions. Great post.