From TUFTS UNIVERSITY and the “kumbayah” department
Science can align common interests among the world’s leading superpowers
(MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE) November 3, 2017 – International scientific collaboration in the Arctic can help align common interests among countries experiencing geopolitical conflict, including the United States and Russia, according to a team of scientists and educators led by a professor at The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University.
Published in Science, the article’s strategic policy assessments build upon the Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation that was signed in May 2017 by the foreign ministers of the eight Arctic States, including U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, despite deteriorating relations between their two nations.
The Agreement, also known as the Arctic Science Agreement, minimizes the risks that short-term domestic policy shifts will impact relations within the Arctic by cementing a consensus among the countries that will last beyond political cycles, according to lead author Paul Arthur Berkman, who is a professor of practice in science diplomacy at The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts and the director of the Science Diplomacy Center at The Fletcher School.
He added that the Agreement enhances the stability of research platforms across nations to interpret and disseminate previously inaccessible data, and will generate continuous data to interpret marine, terrestrial, atmospheric, and human-centered changes. In effect, the Arctic Science Agreement enhances the capacity of all nations to integrate diverse data into evidence and options that contribute to informed decision-making for Arctic sustainability.
“Governments respond to security issues that involve the risks of political, economic, and cultural instabilities,” said Berkman. “In a global context, unlike any time in human history, there also is urgency to address issues, impacts, and resources involving present and future generations, recognizing that children born today will be living in the 22nd century.”
The authors examined the history of international Arctic collaboration that began in the 1950s and has grown ever since, illustrating how science diplomacy has already promoted cooperation and prevented conflict in the Arctic, most notably between the United States and Russia. However, the authors provided several concrete opportunities for improvements needed for the Agreement to be truly successful, such as:
- Establishing procedures to expedite the granting of visas and permits for international scientists accessing field sites;
- Digitizing historic and other data from hard-copy formats and creating shared platforms for data that can be accessed throughout the world;
- Increasing support for field and summer schools and related means for training the next generation of Arctic scientists;
- Promoting well-formulated comparative studies designed to examine common issues at multiple locations across the Arctic;
- Maximizing the use of icebreakers (ships designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters) and other forms of infrastructure for scientific purposes; and
- Creating innovative venues that integrate natural and social sciences along with indigenous knowledge to address common concerns.
In addition, the authors explicitly call for scientific partnerships with Russia, considering the country’s sovereign rights extend over nearly half of the Arctic. “Research partnerships with Russian scientists are critical for Arctic science and diplomatic progress,” according to the article.
Ultimately, the authors concluded that the Arctic Science Agreement should be used as a tool to facilitate research and build upon partnerships to conduct fieldwork, access data, and begin to answer previously unanswerable scientific questions, especially within pan-Arctic dimensions.
“Effective implementation of the Arctic Science Agreement will strengthen research and education across borders in the Arctic, highlighting the role of science diplomacy to help balance national interests and common interests for the lasting benefit of all on Earth with hope and inspiration across generations,” said Berkman.
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To read the full paper, click here.
eehhh…
I agree about the ability of Arctic science to unite countries about climate change. Just not in the direction that this article presumes.
Progressive science seeks to unite the world in the pursuit of perfected socialism.
You seem to be diverging from manmade gloom and doom recitals, Paul Arthur Berkman. It’s a risky move
?w=720
But welcome to join the club.
And pigs are fueling for flight as I read this.
Yeah, lots of oil under that ice.
[True. .mod]
All in all a good news story. All countries do need to work together to manage this resource fairly and carefully. Although I did find this interesting given that certain ‘people’ are now in office.
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It sounds like the EU, IPCC governmental framework, removing the constitutional power of individual governments and ultimately the rights of the voting public. I am not sure what to make of it.
[Fixed, .mod]
Sorry, messed up the block quote, the bottom paragraph was not in the quote [my words].
When are we going to get an ‘edit’ feature on here?
There are several available. Looks like 3 popular and 2 untried or unpopular.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/tags/edit-comments/
It was nice of them to explain what an “icebreaker” is.
Just how stupid do they think the average person is?
has something to do with a cocktail party, I believe…
You beat me to it.
They want to cement the Arctic Pseudoscience. Got it.
But it’s not for the average person. The lawyers and diplomats in COP meetings seem to be more familiar with something like this
http://davincisroom.com/image/data/Blog/printable-party-game/adult-party-game-ice-breaker-ask-me-about-1.jpg
That was a reply to the question from squiggy9000
So… phishing? Well in for one con in for them all, I guess.
US Arctic Scientist: “The Arctic is melting, and it’s an environmental as well as global disaster”.
Russian Arctic Scientist: “We can get around a lot easier now, thanks mostly to our new, powerful icebreakers. If there is less ice, it’s good, because it will be easier to get the oil we know is there”.
US Arctic Scientist: “So we agree, there is less ice now”.
Yes there is less ice than during the COLDEST period of the last 10,000 years.
Late 1970’s was up there with the extent of the Little Ice Age.
But its still in the top 10% of Holocene ice extent.
There is still ONE HECK OF A LOT of Arctic sea ice. !
Almost nobody are living in the arctic:
http://old.grida.no/graphicslib/thumbs/1805c933-493c-4b85-be16-ad06eb342332/medium/population-distribution-in-the-circumpolar-arctic-by-country-including-indigenous-population_1282.jpg
Compared to the vast area, the human population is vanishingly small. This could change, however, if global warming continues as postulated by the AGW disciples. And there the interests of the nations are the same: No one wants huge areas of his country as cold uninhabitable hostile regions. Everything else is eye wiping.
Therefore: Warming is life, cold is death.
Eine Fussnote: Leider bezweifle ich, dass die Modelle richtig liegen. Die Erderwärmung wird nur mit gebremsten Schaum weitergehen, wie bisher auch. Zum Leidwesen der Anrainer des arktischen Zirkels.
One footnote: Unfortunately, I doubt that the models are correct. The global warming will continue only with braked foam, as before. To the chagrin of the neighbors of the Arctic Circle.
Iceland above the Arctic Circle?
649,000 people live in Alaska above the Arctic Circle?
I think that globe’s a little misleading.
Iceland – only Grimsey Island which has a population of 100
Arctic not arctic circle.
Come Together
This is an anti-Arctic fossil fuel production story and regional central governance putsch. They take the longer view that Trump will be out after one term – a neo-left daydream. They don’t see a political paradigm shift. If they did, they would have been scrambling furiously with introspective reviews and political autopsies to remake themselves. Instead they revoted in Jurassic Pelosi as Senate leader instead of new blood and continue to prosecute the peoples choice for Pres. This is a good dictionary definition of bankrupt in the field of ideas.
What do y’all make of an agreement to allow the ice breakers rubble up the ice wherever they want. They’d be steaming into the multi year ice to get that problem out Fram Strait and prepare for ice-free Arctic. Ideologue scientists Are the danger to the Arctic.
Hopefully Canadians will elect a Conservative government in next election – Trudeau walks around with a bundle of pens in his pocket at the ready to divest our sovereignty at any opportunity and also has invited a million refugees into the country a la Merkel. Fortunately he has walked back a policy to divest families of their parents’ businesses and to tax the heck out of money you pay family members. He did ram his marijuanaization of the country through to the chagrin of police and highway patrol.
Gary, your ignorance of things political is astounding!
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FYI Pelosi is not in the Senate.
“FYI Pelosi is not in the Senate.”
Rob, in the words of a former presidential candidate; “What difference does it make?”
“BIG” as in big difference. You can’t fill her buster.
The only thing most nations have in common about the Arctic is they will agree not to shoot at each other as they scramble to see how many holes each can punch in the seabed looking for fossil fuels.
LMAO.
No kidding.
I’m a cynic, so sue me. But this screams, ‘don’t shoot us and we won’t shoot you while we each plot the retreating ice to usher in the next Gold Rush’ more than, “Oh noes the ice is melting, lets all study it together and make smores around the campfire at night while singing, Its the end of the world and we know it”.
Clearly they need the agreement so they can go and save the drowning polar bears. You people are such cynics.
” …by cementing a consensus among the countries that will last beyond political cycles…”
I don’t particularly like the idea of the political elite and their academic cronies locking our countries into treaties, pacts, scams and other shady deals with any country, let alone hostile or adversarial ones.
JH–you are correct. In the USA, the whole idea of political cycles is that, if one administration makes poor decisions and bad laws, the next administration has powers to correct them. That is proving difficult in the case of some of Obama’s enormities (especially with the help of his holdovers in various departments); but even so, Trump and his department heads have made substantial progress in reversing or removing the errors and deliberate damage done by Obama and his minions. Like you, I heartily disapprove of having some extra-national body or group with the ability to make decisions on the USA’s behalf that our administration can’t counteract: as Trump would say, “Bad deal! Very bad deal! Extremely bad deal! Get rid of it.”
The process uses a complex series of equations and measurements of arctic sea ice albedo, open ocean water albedo at each solar elevation angle, atmosphere clarity measurements, and solar radiation data for TOA radiation levels, but it is very straightforward to calculate the difference between how much energy is absorbed into the exposed Arctic Ocean if sea ice is present, or if it has melted.
Do the math for each hour of the day, add up the results, and you can get the Daily Radiation Energy Absorbed Difference between sea ice, and no sea ice in watt-hours.
Now, that Daily Energy Difference changes with every hour of the day, changes with every day of the year. And remember, the number calculated is the DIFFERENCE in the amount of energy absorbed into the Arctic Ocean if sea ice is present (and thus energy is reflected according to the long-held catastrophic Arctic feedback cycle), or if sea ice is absent (and more energy is absorbed into the Arctic Ocean by the “darker” ocean waters.)
Well, for calm Arctic ocean waters, it turns out that that daily direct absorbed energy difference is near-zero.
Date DOY TOA Avg Lat at Arctic Total Absorbed Rad. Area Edge Sea Ice Rad/m^2 Energy of Sea Albedo Hori. Difference W/M^2 MKm^2 Ice Watt-HrsWatt-Hrs 2-Jan 2 1408 12.317 72.1 0.830 0 0 12-Jan 12 1407 12.773 71.8 0.830 0 0 22-Jan 22 1405 13.171 71.5 0.830 0 0 2-Feb 33 1401 13.559 71.2 0.830 0 0 12-Feb 43 1396 13.861 71.0 0.830 15 3 22-Feb 53 1390 14.005 70.9 0.830 113 43 2-Mar 61 1385 14.108 70.9 0.830 292 144 12-Mar 71 1378 14.125 70.9 0.830 651 378 22-Mar 81 1371 13.968 70.9 0.830 1146 728 2-Apr 92 1362 13.822 71.1 0.830 1813 1223 12-Apr 102 1355 13.464 71.3 0.830 2493 1741 22-Apr 112 1347 13.071 71.6 0.823 3207 2272 2-May 122 1340 12.639 71.9 0.824 3919 2825 12-May 132 1334 12.111 72.3 0.818 4595 3310 22-May 142 1328 11.516 72.7 0.796 5201 3637 2-Jun 153 1323 10.890 73.2 0.749 5740 3742 12-Jun 163 1320 10.230 73.8 0.689 6053 3580 22-Jun 173 1317 9.436 74.4 0.620 6151 3212 2-Jul 183 1316 8.389 75.2 0.553 6012 2725 12-Jul 193 1317 7.378 76.2 0.498 5630 2218 22-Jul 203 1318 6.545 76.9 0.466 5028 1783 2-Aug 214 1321 5.836 77.7 0.464 4159 1415 12-Aug 224 1325 5.388 78.3 0.499 3261 1171 22-Aug 234 1330 5.094 78.7 0.566 2368 957 2-Sep 245 1337 4.807 78.9 0.666 1497 698 12-Sep 255 1344 4.740 78.9 0.761 864 441 22-Sep 265 1351 4.874 78.5 0.830 414 208 2-Oct 275 1359 5.388 78.0 0.830 146 57 12-Oct 285 1366 6.246 77.3 0.830 28 6 22-Oct 295 1374 7.235 76.5 0.830 1 0 2-Nov 306 1382 8.242 75.6 0.830 0 0 12-Nov 316 1389 8.975 74.8 0.830 0 0 22-Nov 326 1395 9.625 74.1 0.830 0 0 2-Dec 336 1400 10.316 73.4 0.830 0 0 12-Dec 346 1404 11.107 73.0 0.830 0 0 22-Dec 356 1406 11.737 72.6 0.830 0 0 70797 38517Now, the Arctic sea ice minimum occurs each year between 12 Sept and 22 Sept, but it varies each year by a little bit.
But notice: on 12 Sept, only 441 watt-hrs/sq meter more energy is absorbed into the Arctic Ocean if the sea ice is missing.
On 22 Sept, only 208 additional watt-hrs/sq meter are absorbed if the sea ice has melted.
And, each day thereafter, there is even less energy difference.
Now, through the early summer – Yes, absolutely more energy is absorbed into the Arctic Ocean.
But, on 12 August during her months of summer Arctic sea ice SHEBA expedition, Dr Curry observed the overnight heat losses from the open ocean water at latitude 78 north were sufficient to not only released all of the heat absorbed during the entire 24 hours of daylight exposure, but were enough to freeze the exposed surface water. And each day after 12 August, that re-frozen surface water was ever and ever thicker.
Now, the direct solar energy absorbed into the open arctic water at lat 78 on 12 August is 2800 watt-hours/m^2.
Thus, it is easy to prove that energy losses from every meter of open ocean at 78 N latitude were at least 2800 watt-hours (since that much was absorbed, and there must have been even more losses to freeze the top 1 mm of open water.
Further, on 22 April, 2800 watt-hours are also absorbed into any exposed Arctic ocean water at the edge of the Arctic sea ice.
So, between 12 August (DOY = 224) and 22 April (DOY = 112 the next spring), any open Arctic ocean waters caused by sea ice melt can be shown to lose more heat than is gained by absorption of the sun’s energy. For 253 days of the year, less sea ice = more energy losses from the exposed ocean waters.
For complete accuracy, you need to account for wind speed (which reduces the open ocean calm water albedo, but which also increases heat losses from the open water by increased evaporation and convection), and for diffuse radiation (which, unlike direct radiation, is not dependent on the Solar Elevation Angle of the sun each hour.. However, cloud cover reflects energy from the top of the clouds, so less is present to be absorbed into the wind-swept ocean. Net effect of both items is measurable, but much less compared to direct radiation by itself
Climate is so much more than the impact of a trace gas like CO2, it’s about the spinning of the earth, the tilt of the axes, wobbling, sun phases, cosmic radiation, clouds, winds, ocean currents and much, much more. No one can calculate or foresee the future temperatures or climate impacts on us and the global population. We just don’t have enough knowledge at this point…
How does Precession affect this complex formulae over the 26,000 year (Milankovitch) cycle? Solar insolation must change significantly in the respective hemispheres over 13,000 years, with varying distance from the Sun to Earth and different angles of incidence at different times of the year at a specific location. Not only the polar regions, but to the entire planet, such as explaining why the Sahara was a wetter grassland savanna just 7,000 years ago. Doesn’t this partially explain ongoing natural climate change, since the planet regresses 50.3 seconds of arc per year, or 1 degree every 71.6 years?
Arctic Science Agreement ‘agreement: US climate scientists say Arctic summer ice will soon disappear, so US does not repair arctic icebreaker Polar Sea, leaving only Polar Star near end of life and having to also service McMurdo resupply in Antarctica. Russian climate scientists produce INM4,the only CMIP5 model tracking observation, with an ECS of 1.4. Russia has recently built 6 nuclear powered Arktika class polar icebreakers—thinking they will be needed.
So we will come together in agreement, kumbaya.
Hmm
Was the decision about the Polar Sea made before the election of POTUS XLV??
Or, by hold-over officers . . . …
Auto
Auto, Polar Sea has been out of service since 2010 in limbo. Obama admin decided to scrap her rather than replace her blown engine about three years ago. Congress objected to scrapping her, but did not fund a rebuild. So she sits unscrapped and unusable but still incurring maintenance costs as a designated ‘parts donor’ to sister ship Polar Star—herself now 41 years in service! Worst of all possible outcomes. Your tax dollars at work. US has effectively ceded the Arctic to Canada and Russia. MAGA.
Ohh dear, do we have to live with all this nonsense about climate…?
Obviously…!
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up
with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming,
water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.”
Excerpt from a book by the Rockefeller funded Club of Rome…
I doubt the Russians will go for “equality”, when they have spent a fortune developing a fleet of huge ice-breakers and we (the US) have spent next to nothing. Our reaping the benefits of their work would be tantamount to Ducky-Lucky telling the Little-Red-Hen, “Yes, I’ll help you eat your bread.”
In terms of pure science, as conducted by true scientists, there has always been a willingness, and even an eagerness, to exchange ideas. Such exchanges happened, sometimes surreptitiously, even during the Cold War, when the Iron Curtain made knowledge gained by either side “top secret”. Telling the other side how sea-ice was behaving might “give the bad-guys an advantage”.
Unfortunately science is now corrupted by politics in a different way, and to make a certain point pseudo-scientists will, if not completely fabricate data, promote some data while repressing other data, so the data has a politically effective “spin”. For this reason I would be uncomfortable with any so-called “unification” of scientists. We need many views and Skeptics to point out obvious cases of “spin.”
Speaking of which, has anyone noticed the arctic sea-ice cameras are not being funded any more? I wonder if they were too liable to let people see certain “spun data” was fabrication. (Spinning does create fabric, in the end.)
Caleb, yup and yup.
So, if the “death spiral” theory of Arctic sea ice melting is true, we should see some results supporting that commonly-held theory if we test it.
Now, loss of a single “Manhatten-size” iceberg from the tip of a single glacier create instant alarms and scare-filled press releases, right? What would happen if we “lost” (or gained) a sea ice area somewhat larger than Manhattan?
Something the size of, perhaps, Greenland, for example.
If that much Arctic sea ice were “lost” suddenly, or were gained suddenly, surely there would be some noticeable effect, right?
Turns out that nothing happens.
http://i65.tinypic.com/103g2t0.jpg