# Arctic ice almost gone... What does this mean for humanity? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 13, 2012, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417 "2012-08-13T23:17:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Michael63129](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3da27b/32.png) [@Michael63129](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael63129)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/21 "2012-08-14T02:08:50Z")
Something else I forgot to mention - the fact that ice is declining mostly in the summer and not much in the winter doesn’t really help things much, since it is dark in the winter, thus the presence or absence of ice doesn’t do much for reflecting solar radiation (it’s a different story in the [summer](http://polar.ncep.noaa.gov/sst/ophi/color_anomaly_NPS_ophi0.png) though). ---
**Author:** ![Michael63129](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3da27b/32.png) [@Michael63129](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael63129)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/22 "2012-08-14T02:20:05Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > So my assumption is even if all ice on earth melted we’d be able to survive as a species, so if all the arctic summer sea ice was gone I assume it’d have minor to moderate impacts but a lot less drastic than what we saw during the Eocene, and even the impact of warming akin to what we saw in the Eocene wouldn’t be doomsday scenario type stuff (although I think it would be bad for extant human civilization.) Well, there’s [this](http://www.livescience.com/6428-earth-hot-humans.html), although melting ice alone won’t cause it to happen (it would melt long before this point, but the melting would speed things up a bit): > [@](#): > > A new study that looked at reasonable worst-case scenarios for global warming found that if greenhouse gases continue to be emitted at their current rate, temperatures could become deadly in coming centuries… > > …Exposure to wet-bulb temperatures above 95 degrees for six hours or more will create lethal stress levels in humans and other mammals, said study team member Matthew Huber of Purdue University’s earth and atmospheric sciences. Of course, that is mainly for the tropical regions, some areas of which are already near the limits for food crops (see following link), but [other effects](http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives.htm) will extend much further than that (e.g. you can’t just relocate farms further north and maintain the same crop productivity). No, not a doomsday scenario but it would massively disrupt civilization (although Hansen and others have said that if all fossil fuels are burned, a runaway greenhouse effect could occur; as I recall, the rationale from Hansen was that solar irradiance has gradually increased over the Sun’s lifetime, thus what was once a comfortable level of CO2 (maintaining similar or warmer temperatures with solar irradiance as much as 30% lower than today) then would be too high today). ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/23 "2012-08-14T02:53:14Z")
In this case I have to agree that there is very little to support the idea that all summer arctic ice will be gone within 5-8 years. > [@](#): > > However, the summer figures provide the real shock. In 2004 there was about 13,000 cubic kilometres of sea ice in the Arctic. In 2012, there is 7,000 cubic kilometres, almost half the figure eight years ago. If the current annual loss of around 900 cubic kilometres continues, summer ice coverage could disappear in about a decade in the Arctic. > > However, Laxon urged caution, saying: “First, this is based on preliminary studies of CryoSat figures, so we should take care before rushing to conclusions. In addition, the current rate of ice volume decline could change.” Nevertheless, experts say computer models indicate rates of ice volume decline are only likely to increase over the next decade. As I remember, there was also a huge drop episode around 2007, and yet the ice “recovered” if you consider that a recovery is between a huge drop and the low end of still dropping levels of ice… Having said that, gee, what happened to the Ice age many predicted a few years ago? (Actually, most experts never predicted that but many guys like The Daily Mail, FOX, Rush and many others said so.) [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/adAvYK1O-ic/hqdefault.jpg "21 - "Earth facing mini-ice age!!" say the media. Now for the science....") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adAvYK1O-ic) But one huge fridge logic moment these ice loss episode makes one ponder: Of course we will survive as a species, but taking into account that things like the Arab Spring were caused by heat waves made worse by the background warming, I do think it is a little bit misleading to concentrate just on how lovely Greenland would be, the biggest problem I see with Arctic ice gone in summers in the future (not just so soon as the OP says) is that most likely other regions of the world that have huge populations will not have such rosy outcomes, and as we are so interconnected nowadays, I do think it is really too simplistic to be optimistic by just looking at a nice northern passage that will open to serve in a very uncertain business environment. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/CY4Yecsx_-s/hqdefault.jpg "23 -- Medieval Warm Period -- fact vs. fiction") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY4Yecsx_-s) ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/24 "2012-08-14T03:16:52Z")
The end of the banana daiquiri as we know it! Also, life. ---
**Author:** ![Michael63129](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/3da27b/32.png) [@Michael63129](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael63129)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/25 "2012-08-14T03:31:27Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > In this case I have to agree that there is very little to support the idea that all summer arctic ice will be gone within 5-8 years. That comes from graphs like [this](http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&biw=1009&bih=623&tbm=isch&tbnid=vj0WYusu6QSrdM:&imgrefurl=http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2011/10/piomas-september-2011-volume-record-lower-still.html%3Fcid%3D6a0133f03a1e37970b015392155a10970b&docid=_o_DIwdIGU4iqM&itg=1&imgurl=http://neven1.typepad.com/.a/6a0133f03a1e37970b0153920dd89a970b-800wi&w=800&h=600&ei=CcUpUJn6E4jg2AXmsYGIDw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=571&vpy=147&dur=3564&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=159&ty=103&sig=108158042263569158783&page=2&tbnh=140&tbnw=187&start=13&ndsp=16&ved=1t:429,r:14,s:13,i:165), which show September ice volume dropping to zero in a few years (2015 in this case). Note also that the 2007 drop isn’t that anomalous in the context of the past 5 years; a similar drop occurred in 2010, if not from the 2007 minimum point. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/26 "2012-08-14T03:53:04Z")
Well folks, you see it here, I’m in reality more optimistic than many assume. 🙂 Well, I do think that there is still a good chance that we will still see some years of recovery as these things usually go because nature is still around, we only disagree on the timing, but even I mentioned that it is indeed going down and still sooner than several researchers expected. > **[RealClimate: Arctic Sea Ice Volume: PIOMAS, Prediction, and the Perils of...](https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/04/arctic-sea-ice-volume-piomas-prediction-and-the-perils-of-extrapolation/)** > > RealClimate: Guest Commentary by Axel Schweiger, Ron Lindsay, and Cecilia Bitz We have just passed the annual maximum in Arctic sea ice extent which always occurs sometime in March. Within a month we will reach the annual maximum in Arctic sea ice... > [@](#): > > Predictions of a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean > > The eventual demise of the summer sea ice is a common feature of nearly every climate model projection (the exceptions are models with very inappropriate initial conditions). But the question of when the Arctic will be ‘ice-free’ is imprecise and calls for a clear definition of what ice-free means. Does it mean completely ice-free, or is there a minimum threshold implied? Does it mean the first time the summer sea ice goes beneath this threshold or does it imply a probability of encountering low-ice conditions over a period of time? (e.g. high likelihood of Septembers with less than 106 km2 of ice in a 10-year period). Regardless of whether the concept is actually useful for any practical purpose (say for planning shipping across the Arctic), it is nevertheless a powerful image in communicating the dramatic changes that are under way in the Arctic. > > Once defined, predictions of when an ice-free Arctic will occur seem justified. In the published literature there are several papers specifically targeting such predictions (Zhang and Walsh, 2006, Wang and Overland, 2009, Boe et al. 2009, Zhang et. al. 2010) while others include discussion about the timing of ice-free summers (e.g. Holland et al. 2006). Some address the fact that the CMIP3/IPCC AR4 simulations show sea ice declines less rapid than the observations and attempt to correct for it. Published projections, though with varying definitions of what constitutes ice-free, all project an ice-free Arctic ocean somewhere between 2037 (Wang and Overland, 2009) and the end of the century. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/27 "2012-08-14T05:56:35Z")
1. Shipping time between Canada (Churchill) to Europe will be reduced, less bunker oil needed to ship Canadian wheat to Europe 2. The Arctic Ocean will become more productive-look for cod and haddock fisheries to expand and move north (fewer seals = more fish for us) 3. the Northern Forest Tree line will move north-more timber resources 4. Mining operations in the high Arctic will become easier (the world’s largest deposit of iron ore, on Baffin Island will operate year round) 5. the famed “Northwest Passage” will become open to navigation (it was last open in 1909, but only one guy used it) ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/28 "2012-08-14T06:12:35Z")
> [@Michael63129](#): > > No, not a doomsday scenario but it would massively disrupt civilization (although Hansen and others have said that if all fossil fuels are burned, a runaway greenhouse effect could occur; as I recall, the rationale from Hansen was that solar irradiance has gradually increased over the Sun’s lifetime, thus what was once a comfortable level of CO2 (maintaining similar or warmer temperatures with solar irradiance as much as 30% lower than today) then would be too high today). Where are you getting those numbers? Everything I’ve read ballparks increase in the sun’s luminosity and energy output at around 10% per every **one billion** years. The difference in the solar irradiance we are receiving on the surface right now is basically not different from what was seen during the warm period of the Eocene, if you ballpark 10% increase every 1 billion years that means in the past 50 million years it has increased around 0.5%. Now that is of course roughly the average output over time we’re talking about, because of sunspots and various cycles within the sun there is a normal variance from 0.1-0.2% on smaller time scales. The way I’ve always heard it is basically starting about a billion years ago the sun had warmed up enough for life to really get more complex and thrive on land, and we’re at basically the halfway point during which such life can thrive on Earth. In another billion years the Sun will heat the Earth too much, and all water will be boiled off and no life will be able to exist here. But that process is slow enough that we aren’t talking about 30% increases from the Eocene, and in fact just the 10% increase over the next billion years is projected to end all life on Earth so it is very unlikely we’ve seen a 30% increase while life has existed on Earth. But essentially right now, if you were to look at the early Eocene warm period (I didn’t know before this thread if we had any such warm periods since then, and it appears the warm period of the Eocene was the warmest period on Earth in the entire Cenozoic) I think what the Earth was like then would be a fairly accurate comparison of the sort of Earth we’d have to try and live in if we had that happen. However we’d be talking about more significant warming than any reputable source I’ve seen is predicting to see that _anytime in our lifetimes_, instead I think it would take several hundred years at current rates to even think about getting that hot. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum which resulted in the very high temperatures in the early Eocene would definitely be something not beneficial to current human society, but given the large proliferation and growth in mammal species during this time I see no reason humans physically would have any individual problem surviving on such a world. However the large complex societies we have built up are dependent on very established and mostly reliable food production systems and such a large climate change would of course wreck havoc on our agricultural system. But such a doomsday scenario is realistically just not going to happen anytime soon, and if it ever happens during humanity’s existence it would happen very gradually and possibly we would adapt. We could possibly even try to stop it if such a thing were happening again, it is theorized what put an end to the warm period was massive algae blooms that sequestered huge amounts of carbon and caused the runaway cooling that more or less characterized Earth’s climate from then up until very recently (geologically speaking.) Not saying we’d be able to do such a thing now, but who knows what resources humans 500-1000 years from now might be able to employ. But that is again, the _farthest out there scenario_, our problems will be much smaller in scale because we’re just not simply not talking about climate change to that temperature anytime in the next few hundred years, nor is it likely we’ll even see atmospheric carbon that high at anytime in the next few hundred years (figures vary because of different types of tests have been done but it seems there was 800-900 ppm of carbon in the atmosphere then with some areas having as much as 2000 ppm.) ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/29 "2012-08-14T07:11:46Z")
So it is the old “we will adapt as the change will be slow..” Not necessarily: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/DiM1DSmCSUc/maxresdefault.jpg "How to talk to an OSTRICH: Abrupt Climate Change") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiM1DSmCSUc) > [@](#): > > “Earth’s Climate Changes Gradually… We Can Easily Adapt.” > Maybe, maybe not… because sometimes climate goes over the edge, and quickly. Richard Alley describes the 10 degrees C jump in temperature seen in the ice core record as like “bungee jumping off the climate roller coaster” Insurance on many fronts is recommended, the harder and faster we turn on the Co2 knob the risks increase. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 7:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/30 "2012-08-14T07:18:43Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > 1. Shipping time between Canada (Churchill) to Europe will be reduced, less bunker oil needed to ship Canadian wheat to Europe > 2. The Arctic Ocean will become more productive-look for cod and haddock fisheries to expand and move north (fewer seals = more fish for us) > 3. the Northern Forest Tree line will move north-more timber resources > 4. Mining operations in the high Arctic will become easier (the world’s largest deposit of iron ore, on Baffin Island will operate year round) > 5. the famed “Northwest Passage” will become open to navigation (it was last open in 1909, but only one guy used it) This is likely, but there is once again no account on what it is also likely to take place elsewhere. nor the issue that change is likely to be abrupt and very disrupting at times on the way to a new stable pattern. BTW IIRC it was Amundsen the one that managed the Northwest passage in 1906, but it took him 3 years to so, he had to pause to wait for the ice to melt enough to continue. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/31 "2012-08-14T07:47:56Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > 1. Shipping time between Canada (Churchill) to Europe will be reduced, less bunker oil needed to ship Canadian wheat to Europe > 2. The Arctic Ocean will become more productive-look for cod and haddock fisheries to expand and move north (fewer seals = more fish for us) > 3. the Northern Forest Tree line will move north-more timber resources > 4. Mining operations in the high Arctic will become easier (the world’s largest deposit of iron ore, on Baffin Island will operate year round) > 5. the famed “Northwest Passage” will become open to navigation (it was last open in 1909, but only one guy used it) Is Canadian wheat shipped to Europe? We have a large surplus already. 1. The Northwest Passage is great news. It is why China wants to sit in on the Artic Council. No more Somali pirates to muck about with. 2. Oil deposits around Greenland and northern Russia will become accessible. 3. Greenlanders will be able to grow their own crops. Something they’ve not been able to since the Middle Ages. 4. Greenlanders will have to construct new towns, since the current buildings are being undermined by melting ice. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/32 "2012-08-14T11:12:48Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > So it is the old “we will adapt as the change will be slow..” > > Not necessarily: > > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiM1DSmCSUc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiM1DSmCSUc) > Insurance on many fronts is recommended, the harder and faster we turn on the Co2 knob the risks increase. First I will say this, videos as citations are obnoxious, I watched that one but will not watch another in this thread. Secondly, if this is the way you will proceed I most likely will not engage with you heavily. I’ve observed you in many climate change threads, and to be frank I don’t believe you actually have studies and come to understand this issue for yourself. I believe instead you have collected a series of citations that you believe you fully understand and can make relevant to things that people say, but your lack of actual understanding of the issue means you use them improperly like you just did. What I actually said is that any change to a global temperature, such as seen in the eocene maximum temperature period, will not happen for hundreds of years. That is the most liberal, far out there projection. In truth no report including the IPCC report or any other I’ve ever read speculate it could ever happen in 10 years. During the eocene maximum, the poles reached an average annual temperature of 50 to 68 F, which would but massively warmer than today (as we know the record shows global warming has never been uniform, but instead tends to occur primarily in the polar and upper/lower latitude regions.) And that is a far larger warming increases than even that seen over the 10 years in which your video talks about there being a warming spike (and keep in mind that warming spike happened in the middle of an ice age, during the eocene maximum the earth was basically devoid of ice.) Also keep in mind your video is talking about variations over the past 400,000 years, the eocene maximum is well outside the bounds of the variations seen over the past 400,000 years…and really if you aren’t looking at the data in that scale you’re not really understanding the issue. At minimum you need to look back to at least 65 mya to the pleistocene. But keep in mind, I was positing an absolute worst case scenario, and that is an Earth as warm as during the eocene maximum temperature…not scientist is speculating we will be at that level anytime soon (by soon I mean hundreds and hundreds of years.) Further, I have not said “it’s just an old case of adjusting and all will be well” a move to that temperature would be incompatible with how our current societies are configured and if it happened too fast for adjustment would result in large decreases in the human population. However the reality is “fast” in climate terms typically means a lot more than ten years, and the spike that your geologist video shows took the Earth to a temperature far colder than we saw during the eocene maximum. I’m not aware of any ten year spike in the records which actually show temperatures getting close to what they were at the eocene maximum temperature (in fact in actual history the PETM which warmed the earth to that state took thousands of years–I’m being basically liberal in my estimates of warming speed by speculating on a nightmare scenario in which we warm that fast in a few hundred years. Note that this warming involved vastly higher CO2 PPM concentrations than we have now, at least 2.5-3.0 times as high and potentially even higher, we can’t say for sure because the evidence we have showed variations for 800-2000 PPM so we don’t know what the global average definitively was.) So to get back to what the OP was talking about, even if we have the most dramatic warming anyone could imagine, but which no one currently predicts, it would not be an “apocalypse” (I use that term to mean cessation of all human life on Earth) scenario. The much milder situation, the end of arctic sea ice, will cause some extinctions to some species, some disruptions to human life, but also some short term benefits to human life as it will open up shipping lanes and oil exploration areas. As a very side note, let’s keep in mind there is no CO2 knob, but instead 7 billion people spread among some 200+ countries where everyone is making individual decisions. Unfortunately since there is not a CO2 knob it means our hopes for just being able to dial it back are minimal. Greenhouse emissions per capita have generally been trending downward in the U.S. and the EU as population growth in the U.S. has been faster than emissions growth and as genuine cut backs in output have happened in the EU. Both the EU and the US had moderately large absolute jumps in emissions during the beginning of the economic recovery, and it looks like US emissions continued to rise slightly in 2011 (the last charts I see from the EPA cover 2010 but you can find 2011 data as well.) I would project that from now until 2050, the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions will generally come to be slightly declining below where they are now, with larger drop offs later on. Being optimistic I believe the U.S. will follow a generally similar path from now until 2050 but at a bit slower decline than the EU. [Right now the U.S. emissions from 1990-2011 have increased by 10% but in the tail end of that 21 year period we were trending slowly downward with a spike back up near the tail end as the economic recovery resulted in greater emissions.] So that is where we are with the United States and the EU, I’m predicting mild decreases by 2050, maybe even significant decreases if we get optimistic about following various policy recommendations and just given the more stagnant population growth levels. However Russia, India, China, and Brazil will increase and peak probably in 2050, only then will they really be starting their long decline. I’m making that prediction just based on global population, which is actually expected to spike and then decline during the 21st century based on current population levels and population growth rate trends. I think you’ll have to make projections essentially based on how the EU and the US ramped up emissions during the period of population and economic growth of the latter 50 years of the 20th century, and extrapolate where the BRIC countries will end up emissions wise. From there our best bet is to research into ways to adjust to the projected temperature changes as a result of our emissions globally peaking around that time and then hopefully steadily being reduced. I think a mix of basically every method of mitigation you’ve ever read about being employed is really what we can hope for, and hold out hope for a “hail mary” moment in which the entire global community comes to consensus we need sudden and drastic reduction in emissions. However based on my knowledge of history and global politics and my general pessimism about humanity I just simply don’t see it, but that certainly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Ideally the United States would become a leader in this drive, and in conjunction with Europe would present a stronger front to the rest of the world and the BRIC nations, but I’m doubtful even of the ability of the United States to take on such a role as many prominent American politicians have basically decided science is an issue of politics that can just be opinioned away with deceptive presentations and graphs. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/33 "2012-08-14T14:03:40Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > As a very side note, let’s keep in mind there is no CO2 knob, but instead 7 billion people spread among some 200+ countries where everyone is making individual decisions. Unfortunately since there is not a CO2 knob it means our hopes for just being able to dial it back are minimal. Indeed. If anyone realistically wishes to fight CO2, he would almost certainly be better to invest in the standing of some form of massive air scrubber than in buying a Prius. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/34 "2012-08-14T14:15:15Z")
First we lost [Coors Artic [_sic_] Ice](http://i50.tinypic.com/s12jjo.jpg), and now this! ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/35 "2012-08-14T15:23:07Z")
As others point out, loss of Arctic ice is an interesting _symptom_ of climate change, but presents no great danger except the loss of albedo. Gross long-term change is more important: > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > The way I’ve always heard it is basically starting about a billion years ago the sun had warmed up enough for life to really get more complex and thrive on land, and we’re at basically the halfway point during which such life can thrive on Earth. In another billion years the Sun will heat the Earth too much, and all water will be boiled off and no life will be able to exist here. But that process is slow … > > The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum which resulted in the very high temperatures in the early Eocene would definitely be something not beneficial to current human society … There have been dramatic changes almost within historic memory. A Great Flood that created the Black Sea from a much smaller freshwater lake happened about 5500 BC, right? Changes much smaller than that will have a profound effect on complex society. The hot dry North American summer of 2012 was noteworthy, and such incidents will increase in number and cost. One needn’t predict conditions like those of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction to be concerned. :smack: [Wikipedia’s page on the Thermal Maximum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum) states that “Global temperatures rose by about 6 °C (11 °F) over a period of approximately 20,000 years,” demonstrating that rapid adverse feedbacks can occur. James Lovelock is an important thinker on the subject. In his view it is not a coincidence that the Earth is much cooler now than in the past, despite that the Sun is warming. The warming Sun represents a danger, should cooling mechanisms break down. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/36 "2012-08-14T15:32:57Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > First I will say this, videos as citations are obnoxious, I watched that one but will not watch another in this thread. Secondly, if this is the way you will proceed I most likely will not engage with you heavily. I’ve observed you in many climate change threads, and to be frank I don’t believe you actually have studies and come to understand this issue for yourself. I believe instead you have collected a series of citations that you believe you fully understand and can make relevant to things that people say, but your lack of actual understanding of the issue means you use them improperly like you just did. > > What I actually said is that any change to a global temperature, such as seen in the eocene maximum temperature period, will not happen for hundreds of years. That is the most liberal, far out there projection. In truth no report including the IPCC report or any other I’ve ever read speculate it could ever happen in 10 years. Once again, the IPCC is very conservative, and as they say, science marches on, this is being reported since 2011. > **[EarthSky | Abrupt climate change possible in coming years](https://earthsky.org/earth/richard-alley-on-abrupt-climate-change/)** > [@](#): > > EarthSky spoke with Richard Alley, a Penn State geologist and winner of a 2011 Heinz Award for his work on abrupt climate change. For the past several decades, he’s been studying ice cores – samples from the accumulation of snow and ice laid down over thousands of years in Greenland and Antarctica. > > Alley did ground-breaking work in science when he helped extract a two-mile-long ice core from Greenland in the early 1990s, which shows that Earth’s climate changed abruptly in the past. With more of the greenhouse gas CO2 added each year to Earth’s atmosphere, Dr. Alley is worried that abrupt climate change could happen again. He said: > > > [@](#): > > > > What we expect is that the world will behave itself. As we turn up CO2, the world will get warmer – but we’ll sort of know what’s coming. And we’ll be able to make wise decisions in time to slow down the rise of CO2 and stop it, or whether to adapt to the changes to come. What we’re a little worried about is that we do know from ice cores and other records that occasionally the climate is not well-behaved. > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > But keep in mind, I was positing an absolute worst case scenario, Not really, I mean that is mostly going for what would happen to the earth and the earth would just shrug it off indeed, but that is going got the George Carling definition that the earth is going to be fine. We [humans]are \*\*\*\*\*\*\*. > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > So to get back to what the OP was talking about, even if we have the most dramatic warming anyone could imagine, but which no one currently predicts, And you claim that I do not understand the issue? That video is not just made by a hack as you implied, I’m not and expert, but I do pay attention, I do check the sources that appear in a video when this discussion crop up. > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > it would not be an “apocalypse” (I use that term to mean cessation of all human life on Earth) scenario. The much milder situation, the end of arctic sea ice, will cause some extinctions to some species, some disruptions to human life, but also some short term benefits to human life as it will open up shipping lanes and oil exploration areas. > > As a very side note, let’s keep in mind there is no CO2 knob, but instead 7 billion people spread among some 200+ countries where everyone is making individual decisions. Unfortunately since there is not a CO2 knob it means our hopes for just being able to dial it back are minimal. And indeed I’m also on the record of putting down also the ones that claim an apocalypse will come, we will manage… if we get leaders that acknowledge that at least we should be prepared for adaptation as currently many are not willing to control emissions and even declare that there is no problem whatsoever. > [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Ideally the United States would become a leader in this drive, and in conjunction with Europe would present a stronger front to the rest of the world and the BRIC nations, but I’m doubtful even of the ability of the United States to take on such a role as many prominent American politicians have basically decided science is an issue of politics that can just be opinioned away with deceptive presentations and graphs. Indeed. > **[Who Needs Scientists When You’ve Got James Inhofe?](https://www.desmog.com/2011/02/09/who-needs-scientists-when-youve-got-james-inhofe/)** > > The big news so far from the current hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Power—concerning the so-called “Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011”—is that Senator James Inhofe, the leading climate change... > [@](#): > > Inhofe had crossed chambers to testify in favor of the new legislation, which he co-authored with Energy and Commerce chair Fred Upton and subcommittee chair Ed Whitfield, and which would block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. And in response to a question from Upton, Inhofe took the opportunity to mention his book, telling the committee that he just finished it and that it will be entitled “The Hoax.” > > The title, presumably, refers to Inhofe’s most (in)famous statement: His 2003 claim that climate change is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” I suppose it’s kind of like Carl Sagan entitling one of his last books Billions and Billions. Sagan didn’t like being remembered by that phrase, which he’d never actually uttered—but it’s much better than the one Inhofe is going to be remembered by, and did use to dismiss climate change. > > But book or not, what’s most striking about the hearing underway right now is the central role Inhofe was given—not just to lead it off, but to pronounce definitively on the technical issues at stake, both economic and scientific. > > The purpose of the legislation in question is to block the EPA from moving to regulate greenhouse gases, which it is on the path to doing based on the agency’s scientific determination that they endanger public health and welfare. In order to question EPA’s expert science, then, you’d think you would at least need dissenting scientists. And there are plenty of those around, including those “skeptics” who just signed a letter to Congress making their standard arguments. > > But in a departure from standard Republican strategy, the hearing today doesn’t even have skeptical scientists on the docket. Instead, it offered Inhofe as a kind de facto expert on environmental science, policy, and economics. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2012, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/37 "2012-08-14T23:35:58Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I totally agree, but I also don’t think when I point out the OP is stating things that aren’t in the article it’s a good counterargument for **LHoD** to say “well look what I found on google!” as if that somehow undoes the fact that the OP misrepresented what was in the article. You’re right; I did jump on you too quickly. My apologies. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/38 "2012-08-17T11:33:16Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Indeed. If anyone realistically wishes to fight CO2, he would almost certainly be better to invest in the standing of some form of massive air scrubber than in buying a Prius. Hybrids like the Prius are marginal as environmental statements but they do make an important impact. They basically show that some people are willing to show people will pay a premium for a vehicle that is environmentally friendly. But part of the demand for the Prius was of course driven by people who were allured by its very high mpg numbers. Plus, the “price premium” on the Prius isn’t really extant anymore compared to other cars, but it does at least show there is some level of societal willingness to pay more to be clean…and that’s really the attitude shift that has to happen. There has to be a societal willingness to pay more for things, and most likely you will have to introduce regulations and externality-reflection taxes on dirty energy sources to artificially make them more expensive than clean energy sources (so you have to both appeal to people’s desire to pay more in general, and then also take away the cheaper option.) ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 11:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/39 "2012-08-17T11:39:41Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > There have been dramatic changes almost within historic memory. A Great Flood that created the Black Sea from a much smaller freshwater lake happened about 5500 BC, right? Changes much smaller than that will have a profound effect on complex society. The hot dry North American summer of 2012 was noteworthy, and such incidents will increase in number and cost. One needn’t predict conditions like those of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction to be concerned. :smack: Um yes, we’re talking about “doomsday scenarios”, I just noted the eocene thermal maximum as an example of what we could expect as an extreme, extreme case of globalized warming. Obviously changes can happen even quicker. A supervolcano explosion for example would result in massive starvation as the immediate effects would be very large scale crop failure in a world ill equipped to handle such a thing, and then there would be notable long term effects. The last really big volcanic eruption we had was 1816, “The Year Without Summer.” A freak combination of very low solar activity and Mount Tambora exploding basically resulted in a year without a true summer, and the “last great subsistence crisis” in the Western world. Tambora was a big eruption, but there are bigger…at VEI 7 Tambora was not a true supervolcanic event, in the existence of humans some have noted that when VEI 8 eruption from Toba happened some 74,000 years ago it caused a drastic contraction in human population levels to the point many scientists say we nearly went extinct. In a modern world so dependent on vast agricultural activity to feed our large population another such eruption would obviously be more destructive than we might imagine, and would (to get to the point) cause far faster changes in the climate than we’re seeing right now. > [@](#): > > James Lovelock is an important thinker on the subject. In his view it is not a coincidence that the Earth is much cooler now than in the past, despite that the Sun is warming. The warming Sun represents a danger, should cooling mechanisms break down. Yes, the warming Sun is actually what will end all life on Earth some day. This is scientific fact. So it’s not even accurate to call it “a danger” but “our eventual doom.” Of course given the timespan involved humanity is unlikely to exist when that happens, just given the natural rate of evolution our descendant species might exist but it is unlikely in the form we exist today. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2012, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417/40 "2012-08-17T11:43:48Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Once again, the IPCC is very conservative, and as they say, science marches on, this is being reported since 2011. > > [EarthSky | Abrupt climate change possible in coming years](http://earthsky.org/earth/richard-alley-on-abrupt-climate-change) So let me reiterate, **do you believe there is any danger in us reaching conditions akin to the eocene thermal maximum in the next 10 years?** Or even the next 50 years? Because I am quite certain you have no scientists willing to support that, we’re talking about average temperatures in the arctic of over 65 F in some years. > [@](#): > > Not really, I mean that is mostly going for what would happen to the earth and the earth would just shrug it off indeed, but that is going got the George Carling definition that the earth is going to be fine. We [humans]are \*\*\*\*\*\*\*. The earth is a ball of rock and iron and will obviously shrug **everything** off until the day the red giant Sun engulfs it and incinerates it. I never said “humans are going to be fine” if we had a return to the eocene thermal maximum. What I explicitly said is large scale disruptions would occur. We live in great plenty right now, but one of the key pillars of that is mass availability of food. A return to the eocene maximum, if it happened extremely rapidly, would mostly mean we’d be unable to feed anything greater than a small portion of today’s population. So we’d have a mass die off, disproportionately in poor countries. The mass die off would lead to mass instability and probably large scale wars, which would contribute to greater disruptions and more die offs. > [@](#): > > And you claim that I do not understand the issue? That video is not just made by a hack as you implied, I’m not and expert, but I do pay attention, I do check the sources that appear in a video when this discussion crop up. I never said it was, his criteria are actually mentioned in the video itself, and I’m sure he’s a good scientist. But the fact remains video is an obnoxious form of citation, instead of being able to read facts you have to watch a 2-3 minute cartoon. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arctic-ice-almost-gone-what-does-this-mean-for-humanity/631417.md?page=3)