Well it is that time of year again, the Arctic ice begins to melt, as it does every year, and all sorts of crazy talk starts coming out. This time from Greenpeace. I am encouraged though, as they have come around to the idea that maybe they are doing more harm than good by overselling the alarmism.
NSIDC also has taken a more moderate tone, announcing that there will “likely be no record low ice extent in 2009“. This is a sharp contrast to last year’s ridiculous press statement from NSIDC’s Dr. Mark Serreze about an “ice free north pole”. Now that Greenpeace has come clean on their statement, maybe Dr. Serreze will finally admit his statement was “a mistake”. – Anthony
From Not Evil Just Wrong:
The outgoing leader of Greenpeace has admitted his organization’s recent claim that the Arctic Ice will disappear by 2030 was “a mistake.”
Greenpeace made the claim in a July 15 press release entitled “Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts,” which said there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming.
Under close questioning by BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on the “Hardtalk” program, Gerd Leipold, the retiring leader of Greenpeace, said the claim was wrong.
“I don’t think it will be melting by 2030. … That may have been a mistake,” he said.
Sackur said the claim was inaccurate on two fronts, pointing out that the Arctic ice is a mass of 1.6 million square kilometers with a thickness of 3 km in the middle, and that it had survived much warmer periods in history than the present.
The BBC reporter accused Leipold and Greenpeace of releasing “misleading information” and using “exaggeration and alarmism.”
Leipold’s admission that Greenpeace issued misleading information is a major embarrassment to the organization, which often has been accused of alarmism but has always insisted that it applies full scientific rigor in its global-warming pronouncements.
Although he admitted Greenpeace had released inaccurate but alarming information, Leipold defended the organization’s practice of “emotionalizing issues” in order to bring the public around to its way of thinking and alter public opinion.
Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world. He said annual growth rates of 3 percent to 8 percent cannot continue without serious consequences for the climate.
“We will definitely have to move to a different concept of growth. … The lifestyle of the rich in the world is not a sustainable model,” Leipold said. “If you take the lifestyle, its cost on the environment, and you multiply it with the billions of people and an increasing world population, you come up with numbers which are truly scary.”
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(Watch the full BBC interview with Leipold here.)
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@DaveE (16:53:26) :
“[…] Hope that points to a ‘normal’ you like ;-)”
Thanks for the links, DaveE.
I’m thinking normal is glaciation extending down past Indianapolis. That’s the condition for 90+% of the time. These little 10k-year bursts of interglacial warmth are to be savored before things go back to ‘normal’.
People have a tendency to think that “right now” is the way things always have been and always should be. Where is their sense of history?
This situation is exactly why we made Not Evil Just Wrong. This kind of alarmist tendency is…well alarming. We need to get to make this information common knowledge. Please check out Not Evil Just Wrong and consider hosting a party.
http://www.noteviljustwrong.com/
Magnus thanks for the support. This situation is exactly why we made Not Evil Just Wrong. This kind of alarmist tendency is…well alarming. We need to get to make this information common knowledge. Please check out Not Evil Just Wrong and consider hosting a party.
http://www.noteviljustwrong.com/
Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world.[…] “We will definitely have to move to a different concept of growth. … The lifestyle of the rich in the world is not a sustainable model,” Leipold said. “If you take the lifestyle, its cost on the environment, and you multiply it with the billions of people and an increasing world population, you come up with numbers which are truly scary.”
What’s truly scary is this mindset. It is economic growth that lets us do MORE with LESS having LOWER impact on the planet.
My laptop uses a few 10s of watts, while my old computer used 100s and the equivalent machine in the early ’80s used a 750 kVA power feed (I know, I managed the site…). My present car gets 30 mpg. The one I drove in 1972 got 16 mpg, made a lot more smog, and lasted 1/3 the miles (meaning more cycles of iron refining…) for a roughly the same weight car. Oh, and tires then lasted about 15,000 miles; not the 60,000 miles I get now. My home is now insulated much better and my light bulbs are about 1/10th the power consumption. We can produce several times over the quantity of food per acre and need I mention that the number of trees that would need to be killed to support the library (for everyone with internet access) that you can get for free off the internet is more than on the whole planet.
THE way to “save the planet” is via economic advancement.
The whole idea of economic growth and technical advancement is to create more with less, a whole lot less.
Rather than chop down ancient trees for solid wood furniture, we now use “veneer” that puts a thin layer over “whatever”. Further, many times that veneer is now a synthetic plastic anyway. We make clothes from a variety of synthetic materials (needing much less land for cotton, leather and wool production). And technology now makes it cheaper to build desalinizing plants than to dam up a valley and pipe the water to the cities. (In other words, today we would not destroy Hetch Hetchy valley to give water to San Francisco because it would be more expensive than a technological alternative.)
The list goes on quite long…
So the bottom line is that a rich and prosperous people can afford to set aside forests, rivers, and chunks of the ocean for preservation. A stagnant and poor people must kill and damage the world, or die, and generally chooses not to die…
This isn’t just speculation. We had fewer people in the U.S.A. in 1930 than now. We have much more production now, and set aside more land each year for preservation (and have cleaner air and water too) than ever before.
Yes, we went though a peak of environmental degradation on our way to get here; but that is an argument for FASTER growth, not slower. The quicker you get through that phase, the better for the planet. (You can see this happening now in China. Rapid increase in consumption, leading to increased degradation but with higher prosperity, leading to greater focus on cleaning up the environment and preservation. Just as happened in Japan post WWII).
The example from the other side is Madegascar, where economic stagnation has lead to rapid environmental destruction. Poor uneducated people have very high birth rates. Rich and educated people drop below replacement rate (which is why the entire western world including Japan are now shrinking in population net of immigration). In Madegascar they cut the forest down for fuel and their soil is washing out to sea as a result. Haite is another example. The pattern is always the same: Rapid economic growth to modernity leads to environmental preservation; economic stagnation leads to destruction.
To save the planet, embrace economic growth. To kill it, embrace economic stagnation. It really is that simple.
Not Evil Just Wrong (20:19:17) :
Good work you guys! You’ve got my support. If I get the chance, I’ll hold a paty. I might be on an oil rig at the time,…
If I get the chance, as well as holding a paty, I’ll see if I can also hold a party!
Jeremy (11:15:47) : This is a religious belief or point of view.
I agree, but it is one based on faulty “facts” and broken beliefs about economics. To put that on others is sinful.
If these people have their way then they will deprive all rapidly industrializing developing countries of any future or escape from subsitence living and in many cases abject poverty.
YES! AND condemn the environment of those subsistence farmers and wood gatherers to destruction.
The fact that almost NONE of these Greens remotely practice what they preach (a la Al Gore) is the very height of hypocrisy.
It does “frost my shorts” that they talk a good game, but would throw rocks at me, and I grow my own vegetable rather than have a lawn out back, drive a car on renewable fuels, and have not “consumed” a new car in 20+ years (reduce, reuse, recycle – I’m going to drive my 1980 car until I can drive no more: “reuse”…).
To these folks, I say, “Go live like the old order Amish. Practice what you preach and reduce your own industrial footprint before you tell everyone else what to do! It can easily be done – what are you waiting for?”
Your suggestion and direction are sound, but …
As someone only 2 generations away from “Old Order Amish” roots (Grandad and Grandma on Dads side) One Small Problem… The ‘fuel efficiency’ of a draft horse is not very high. It takes rather one heck of a lot of acres to feed a set of draft animals. It is more efficient to use oil (or even to grow plant oils and use a Diesel) than to feed a horse. If you think the environmental footprint of a person is large, look at that of a horse team! Grampa was a working Smith and it takes a heck of a lot of wood to make a horse shoe, and fit it. And wood means land. Land that is no longer wild and preserved.
Similarly, a wood stove takes a lot of wood (be it to cook or to heat the home). It is kinder to the earth to use natural gas or at least to ferment cow poo and use that gas and chop down a lot fewer trees. These things are generally not allowed by Amish traditions.
An electric light bulb takes far less kerosene to power than an equivalent light output kerosene lamp. Making wool pants consumes more land (via sheep grazing) than a polyester suit. Etc. And these things are very much not allowed traditionally. (If it’s not in the Bible, it is not allowed. If it is “prideful” it is not allowed. Buttons are prideful. Colored paint and bright clothes are prideful. A washing machine means sloth and potentially pridefulness too, even though it uses less water and soap than hand washing; and a lot less labor. )
So, it is an unfortunate truth that to “live like an Old Order Amish” is not to be kinder to the earth. It looks more quaint, but the impact on the earth is greater. (If you doubt that, spend a summer shoveling horse manure, pig poo, and growing hay for feed… then washing your clothes by hand with wood heated water.)
And that shines a light on the basic fallacy of the “greens” desire to avoid technological advance “to save the planet”. It doesn’t.
It’s a self indulgence that consumes more resources, not less. (Yes I appreciate the irony of that… the Amish, to be frugal and avoid self indulgence and pridefulness being self indulgent and having excess consumption … life has it’s ironies.)
Sidebar: Amish Traditions are changing a bit in some places. If there is no alternative, an Amish can work with modern machinery to make a living. (i.e. if you can’t own your own farm, you can make cheese in a factory for wages and use electric equipment at work.) Some Amish now use some motorized vehicles or equipment, especially if there is no “reasonable” alternative (i.e. you don’t have pasture for a horse in your apartment).
Buttons were “prideful” due to their cost 100 years ago. They were a status symbol then. Now the removal of buttons and replacement with hand made “frogs” could be seen as prideful, since buttons are now dirt cheap. You see where this is going… So there are Old Order Amish and “not so much” Amish… (I’ve seen a horse drawn wagon with a gasoline driven motor running equipment on the wagon! IIRC it was a hay bailer of some kind); and folks like me. Raised with a tradition of frugal non-pridefulness, of being “simple”, but willing to use equipment as appropriate as long as I’m not dependent upon it nor prideful about it. I still have kerosene lamps, but for day to day use, it’s the electric bulb that’s the non-prideful, and a frugal alternative. Though I’ve lost touch with most of the religious traditions and much of the language, some of the value structure persists.
And oddly, it’s that value structure that causes me to dislike waste and to dislike the self indulgence of the present “green” movement, and their wasteful push for policy that would lead to more environmental damage (and their pridefulness in their actions, especially when so wrong headed); it’s those old Amish roots that causes the rejection of the present “green” advocacy groups. Did I mention that the world is an Ironic place some times 😉
Mike Strong (12:11:47) :
Geez! Who pays for these studies?
You do.
As do the rest of us.
No smiley.
Skeptic (20:27:02) :
It’s not just Greenpeace making outrageous, patently false claims.
NASA on their website for educating the public on climate change tells us that the Arctic Sea Ice has decreased 38% per decade since 1979.
89 .38
99 .38
09 .38
So we have lost 114% of Arctic Sea Ice? Wow! How much is left to lose!?
%100 – %38 = %62
%62 – %38 = %38.4
%38.4 – %38 = %23.8 remaining over original 100% figure
Bryan — even that result of 23.8% remaining is wrong.
The reduction in Sea Ice Extent varies greatly depending upon which month one is tracking. For some months it is 2 to 3% per decade. The highest decline rate is for the Sea Ice Minimum in September. That is -11.7%.
See http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/archives/image_select.html for a very easy to use tool that lets one look at past records. In particular, you can get the trend in Sea Ice Extent for each month.
Jun -3.3% per decade
For July it is -6.1% per decade.
Aug -8.7%
Sept is the highest at -11.1% per decade
Oct -5.4% per decade
Nov -4.5% per decade
December through April it is in the -2 to -4 % per decade range.
The latest sea ice extent measurement, July 2009 was 11.5 million sq km.
The July 1979 number was 10.5 million sq km. Not a big difference, but it has increased in the last 30 years, not decreased.
One can find a big decrease in the Sept Arctic Sea Ice Extent.
Sept 1979 = 7.2 million sq km.
Sept 2008 = 4.7 million sq km —- a record low. This year doesn’t look to be on track to break it.
That biggest decrease is a 35% decrease over 29 years. Still no way to get a 38% decrease per decade out of it.
Bogus bogus data at climate.nasa.gov. Click on the various other key indicators and you will see many more errors. They have started to clean up their act and changed the Sea Level graph today.
Look at the Arctic Sea Ice extent numbers on http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/index.cfm
NASA says 5.85 million sq Km Arctic Sea Ice Extent for March 2009. The National Snow and Ice Data Center that NASA lists as the source says March 2009 extent was 15.2 million sq km.
This is the material our educators use to discuss global warming with their students.
In fact ,the summer arctic ice will,probably, disappear until 2030
Take the September arctic ice extent(1979-2008)
Do a 2nd degree interpolation
The zero ice is on year 2027
The relevance of the second degree term is confirmed by the fact that the MINIMUM SQUARE SUM is divided by 3!!! when we shift from 1st to 2nd degree of interpolation
Of course I’m aware that the reality is much more complex , but…let stop killing the messenger who brings the bad news.
@ur momisugly E.M. Smith.
In 1960, per capita rate of energy consumption in U.S. was 8400 watts, population was 179,000,000 for a total primary energy “consumption” of 45.09 “quads” (quadrillion b.t.u.). In 2006, a population of 298,000,000 consumed energy at a rate of 11,250 watts per capita for a total primary energy consumption of 100 quads. So please explain again how advancing technology reduces impact?
Re “the summer arctic ice will probably disappear until 2030”
I made the assumption that behind the arctic ice extent(1979-2008)there is a second degree polynomial.
The data are the classic NSIDC September arctic sea ice extent
I test this with Student distribution;the test parameter is:
X=sqrt((1-s2/s1)(n-2))>1.7(for Student significance 95%)
Where: s1= less square sum ,interpolation 1st degree=6.50e4(Km^4)
s2=similar ,interpolation 2nd degree=4.46e4(Km^4)
n=30year
I obtained x=3.0.corresponding with a significance of 99.998%
The best polynomial is:
S(t)=-0.3894*t^2+ 4.272*t+728.9 (t=year-1978))
S(t)=0 gives t=49=year2027.
for this year the formula gives
S=487 e4 Km2 which is a pretty good prognostic
So:
1.the thawing of the arctic ice is accelerating(because there is a significant negative second degree term).
2.the most probable complete thawing year is 2027.
“”” alexandriu doru (08:06:52) :
Re “the summer arctic ice will probably disappear until 2030″
I made the assumption that behind the arctic ice extent(1979-2008)there is a second degree polynomial. “””
So just what is the Physics behind your second degree polynomial; the one you “ass-umed”.
Fitting polynomials to data can be a dangerous proposition when there is no physical basis for the relationship; and making predictions from such polynimials can be quite fatal.
A good example would be the two dimensional Lissajous figures that are the solutions to the parametric equations;- x = Acos (a) , y = Bcos(n.a)
Such functions are bound between the limits of +/-A, +/-B
Yet within those limits, they can be exactly represented by the Tchebychev Polynomials y = Tn(x) which are completely unbounded functions, so if you used the polynomial to compute a value outside the data range, the result would be totally fictitious.
In the case of most climate models; their predictive prowess drops to zero following the entry of the most recently obtained real data value.
So once again; what is the physics of your second degree polynomial ?