Guest humor by David Middleton
What would happen if science went stupid? “Science” articles like this would become the norm (H/T ozspeaksup):
Here’s What Would Happen if All The Ice on Earth Melted Overnight
ANDREA SCHMITZ & BOB HUNT, BUSINESS INSIDER
12 OCT 2019Ninety-nine per cent of all freshwater ice on Earth is sitting on top of Greenland and Antarctica, and each year, a little more of it melts into the ocean.
Normally, it would take hundreds to thousands of years for it all to melt away. But what if something happened that caused a massive global melt overnight?
[…]
As we slept, sea levels would rise by a whopping 66 meters. Coastal cities like…
[…]
And you’re right, this is probably never going to happen. After all, there’s enough ice right now to cover the entire continent of North America in a sheet a mile thick.
So the next time you hear about record-breaking heat or ultra-powerful hurricanes, at least you know that it could be worse. But scientists estimate that if we don’t take action and global temperatures increase by just 1 degree Celsius, the effects of climate change we already see today will be irreversible.
So yes, it could be worse, and it will be if we’re not careful.
Science Alert
There is so much stupid in this article, that I had to limit my quotation to the least stupid bits to avoid quoting the entire piece of horst schist. For starters, the potential sea level rise is more like 80 meters.
Basically, their contention is 66 meters of sea level rise would would cause seawater to infiltrate all of our groundwater reservoirs. This, coupled with the melting of the ice, which holds 99% of Earth’s freshwater, would deprive us of drinking water. While, at the same time, the influx of freshwater into the North Atlantic would shut down the Gulf Stream, triggering a The Day After Tomorrow-style mini ice age, while simultaneously melting all of the permafrost on Earth, causing mercury poisoning, doubling Earth’s greenhouse gases, leading to 3.5 °C of warming relative to current conditions…
That might not sound like much, but say goodbye to that mini European ice age, and even rivers and lakes around the world. They’d evaporate from the higher temperatures and cause mass droughts and desert-like climates. And all that extra water vapour in the atmosphere would fuel more frequent and stronger storms, floods, and hurricanes.
So all of that newly established coastline on the eastern US would be one of the last places you’d want to live. Instead, there would be mass migrations to Canada, Alaska, the Arctic, and even what’s left of the Antarctic.
Science Alert
This bit was followed up by, “And you’re right, this is probably never going to happen”… Probably? Try not even close to physically possible.
The Earth’s average surface temperature would have to rise by about 10 °C, in order to melt most of the perennial ice on Earth. It would have to rise by at least 4-5 °C just to melt most of the Greenland Ice Sheet. The bulk of Antarctic ice, the East Antarctic Ice sheet has been stable since at least the Mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum (MMCO), possibly since the Early Oligocene (34 Ma).
If we compare the Zachos reconstruction, using a temperature conversion suitable for the icier Quaternary Period, to the modern instrumental record, we can see that all of the warming of the past 150 years is barely noticeable.
Another 0.5 to 1.0 ºC between now and the end of the century doesn’t even put us into Eemian climate territory, much less the Miocene or even the Pliocene. We will still be in the Quaternary Period noise level. Bear in mind that the instrumental temperature data are of much higher resolution than the δ18O derived temperatures. As such, the δ18O data reflect the bare minimum of dynamic amplitude range. Actual paleo temperatures would have reflected a far greater range of variability (higher highs and lower lows).
Defusing the permafrost methane time bomb.
Regarding the massive release of methane from permafrost, you literally “can’t get there from here.“
News in Brief: Warming may not release Arctic carbon
Element could stay locked in soil, 20-year study suggests
By Erin Wayman
May 15, 2013
Researchers used greenhouses to artificially warm tundra (shown, in autumn) for 20 years. They found no net change in the amount of carbon stored in the soil.
The Arctic’s stockpile of carbon may be more secure than scientists thought. In a 20-year experiment that warmed patches of chilly ground, tundra soil kept its stored carbon, researchers report.[…]
Science News
In the Alaska experiment, they warmed the permafrost by 2 °C over a 20-yr period (10 times the actual rate of warming since the 1800’s) and there wasn’t the slightest hint of an accelerated methane release.
Vaks et al., 2013 found no evidence of widespread permafrost thawing above 60°N since MIS-11, not even during MIS-5…
The absence of any observed speleothem growth since MIS 11 in the northerly Lenskaya Ledyanaya cave (despite dating outer edges of 7 speleothems), suggests the permanent presence of permafrost at this latitude since the end of MIS-11. Speleothem growth in this cave occurred in early MIS-11, ruling out the possibility that the unusual length of MIS-11 caused the permafrost thawing.
[…]
The degradation of permafrost at 60°N during MIS-11 allows an assessment of the warming required globally to cause such extensive change in the permafrost boundary.
[…]
Vaks et al., 2012
There is no evidence of widespread thawing of Arctic permafrost since Marine Isotope Stage 11 (MIS-11), approximately 450,000 years ago. None of the subsequent interglacial stages indicate widespread permafrost thawing, above 60°N, not even MIS-5 (Eemian/Sangamonian), which was about 2 °C warmer than present day, possibly as much as 5 °C warmer in the Arctic.
The last interglacial stage (MIS-5, Sangamonian/Eemian) was considerably warmer than the current interglacial and sea level was 3-6 meters higher than modern times. It was particularly warmer in the Arctic. Oxygen isotope ratios from the NGRIP ice core indicate that the Arctic was approximately 5 °C warmer at the peak of MIS-5 (~135,000 years ago).
It also appears that it was significantly warmer in the Arctic during the Holocene Climatic Optimum (~7,000 years ago) than modern times. The Arctic was routinely ice-free during summer for most of the Holocene up until about 1,000 years ago.
The best geological evidence for the Arctic methane time bomb being a dud can be found in the stratigraphy beneath Lake El’gygytgyn in northeastern Russia. The lake and its mini-basin occupy a 3.58 million year old meteor crater. Its sediments are ideally suited for a continuous high-resolution climate reconstruction from the Holocene all the way back to the mid-Pliocene. Unlike most other Arctic lakes, Lake El’gygytgyn, has never been buried by glacial stage continental ice sheets. Melles et al., 2012 utilized sediment cores from Lake El’gygytgyn to build a 2.8 million year climate reconstruction of northeastern Russia.
The data from Melles et al., 2012 are available from NOAA’s paleoclimatology library. And it is clearly obvious that Arctic summers were much warmer during MIS-11c (430-400 ka) than either the Eemian/Sangamonian (MIS-5e) or the Holocene (MIS-1)…
Even though there may have been widespread melting of Arctic permafrost during the early part of MIS-11c, there’s no evidence that it caused any sort of catastrophic rise in atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Of course, there’s always the possibility that MIS-11c did experience a sub-resolution spike in greenhouse gases. Dome C can’t “see” short-duration spikes in atmospheric gases. We’re left with three possibilities:
- Much warmer temperatures and partial melting of permafrost during MIS-11c didn’t cause a spike in greenhouse gases.
- Much warmer temperatures and partial melting of permafrost during MIS-11c did cause a spike in greenhouse gases; but the Antarctic ice cores can’t resolve it.
- The unresolved spike in MIS-11c spike in atmospheric greenhouse gases caused the MIS-11c warming… but didn’t prevent the subsequent glacial stage cooling.
In other words…
What is the source of this stupidity?
When I first glanced at this article, I thought it was referring to a recent scientific paper. But the byline should have been a hint.
ANDREA SCHMITZ & BOB HUNT, BUSINESS INSIDER
The authors:
Andrea Schmitz
Business Insider
Animation Producer
Andrea seems to specialize in “clickbait” articles.
- What would happen if you never got out of bed
- You’re more likely to be killed by a dog or cow in the US, than a shark or crocodile. Here’s where the 11 deadliest animals live.
- If Earth spun sideways, extreme winters and summers would doom life as we know it
- What happens if you stop washing your hair for a year
The last one is easy, you become Thor from Avengers Endgame.
Bob Hunt
Business Insider
I studied and researched as a marine biologist for 8 years, with specific interests in marine mammals. Before moving into science writing and filmmaking as a way of connecting the public and science in a more harmonious and encouraging way. I love to write about anything from Animal biology to space exploration to the science of sport.
Bob topped Belushi by a full year.
For that matter, what is Business Insider?
Welcome! Business Insider is a fast-growing business site with deep financial, media, tech, and other industry verticals. Launched in 2007 by former top-ranked Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget and DoubleClick executives Dwight Merriman and Kevin Ryan, the site is now the largest business news site on the web. Business Insider was acquired by German media company Axel Springer SE in September, 2015.
Business Insider
It’s a “clickbait” shop. Here’s today’s “front page“:
How could “Science Alert” publish such stupidity?
About Us
ScienceAlert is an independently run news website that covers the most important developments in the world of science and scientific research, while sharing fun, interesting information.Our goal is to inspire, entertain, and educate knowledge-lovers worldwide, regardless of background or education level.
In a world of bad news, we think you’ll find something fascinating here every time you visit, and hopefully leave feeling a little smarter than when you arrived.
Editorial values
We write in a style that makes science accessible to anyone, but we never lose our strong grounding in evidence-based knowledge – so you know you can trust the cool stories you find here.Our team of experienced journalists are no strangers to delving deep into the method section of the study they are covering, and they readily quiz experts when a claim looks too good to be true.
We are also proud of having a pre-publication fact-checking system; our dedicated staff systematically scrutinise every original article before it goes up.
[…]
Science Alert
A “clickbait” shop with the word “science” in the title.
References
If you really want any of the references, just ask for specific ones in the comments. If I think you seriously want to review them, I’ll provide them when I get…
Featured Image
Science Made Stupid: How to Discomprehend the World Around Us is a 1985 book written and illustrated by Tom Weller. The winner of the 1986 Hugo Award for Best Non-Fiction Book, it is a parody of a junior high or high school-level science textbook. Though now out of print, high-resolution scans are available online, as well as an abridged transcription, both of which have been endorsed by Weller [1]. Highlights of the book include a satirical account of the creationism vs. evolution debate and Weller’s drawings of fictional prehistoric animals (e.g., the duck-billed mastodon.)
Wikipedia
To melt ice we need to heat it, that is, we need to add heat energy to it.
If we are to heat it with warmer air the air needs to be at a higher temperature than the ice at the shared surface.
This is elementary high school physics – heat energy can only flow from a hot body to a cooler body.
Thus the ice at the surface must be raised by the air to zero degrees C for melting to even begin.
Over the Antarctic ice sheet, the air temperatures range from
–11C to –40C in summer and –28C to –57C in winter.
The air temperatures here are always below the freezing point of ice. (Check the data for yourself)
With those air temperatures being always so much lower than zero and lower than the ice temperature
(The Antarctic ice is typically –5C), no heat transfer to the ice can occur to raise its temperature to zero, therefore no melting can occur. For this reason, air temperatures would need to increase, not by half a degree or even two degrees as the IPCC predicts, but by tens of degrees for any melting to even begin. Since the Antarctic ice cap contains 90% of the world’s ice, any risk of warmer air causing ice cap melting or hazardous sea level rise is nonsense.
The Antarctic Plate’s movement is 12-14 mm per year towards the Atlantic Ocean. It will take millions of years before Antarctica leaves its present splendid position and sheds its ice. On shorter timescales some loss of marginal ice is possible.
Yep. From my college meteorology textbook…
To get the sort of warming required to exit the current ice age conditions, Antarctica has to move and end its thermal isolation. The sharp cooling at the onset of the Oligocene was primarily due to the opening of the Tasmania-Antarctica and Drake Passages and the tectonically driven thermal isolation of Antarctica.
Teer,
So is some gain. Geoff S
abc.com.au/news ran an utterly stupid item yesterday about a sudden finding of lots of warm water under antarctica causing rapid melting and causing the ice shelves to get weak n snap off
ie implying the recent berg snapping off that shelf to be CC caused not a normal function of nature oceans n waves etc
very careful ignoring of the live Erebus and all the thermal vents
this sort of crap is NOT by any means “accidentally dishonest or misleading”
its damned well done with serious intent to mislead and scare idiots!
Rev 8:12 The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light might be darkened, and a third of the day might be kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night.
The ice age cometh then
Rev 16:8 The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire.
Rev 16:9 They were scorched by the fierce heat, and they cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues. They did not repent and give him glory.
Proper global warming. The eco nuts will get their wish.
Thanks for posting this.
I am so scared.
I just sent the “Earth Spinning Sideways one to ScienceAlert’s facebook page. They featured “all the ice melting thing” a few days ago. I thought they had better feature this one too.
https://www.facebook.com/ScienceAlert/?epa=SEARCH_BOX
A few folks had some fun raising the indignation of the true believers. But all the commotion died down after a day or two. They can’t be too worried.
“El’gygytgyn”
You should see a doctor about that!
Regarding the shutdown of the Gulf Stream due to the influx of fresh water. That supposition shows a profound ignorance of how the Gulf stream works. Nothing short of stopping the Earth’s rotation would do it.
Even if the Earth stopped rotating, the momentum of the ocean gyres would keep the currents flowing for a long time.
Of course, if the Earth stopped spinning, we would have bigger problems than the gulf stream.
The equatorial bulge, for one thing, would no longer have support, and my guess is that the ensuing adjustment would cause worldwide catastrophic earthquakes and tsunamis.
Considering how many world ending disasters are not pure fantasy, the whatiffism in this article is truly stupid.
Totally agree Nicholas.
don’t worry. if the earth stopped spinning, we’d all continue to move along at anything up to 1,000 mph and wouldn’t have much time to worry about anything else.
Yeah, that might be the most immediate issue.
Anyone standing right on one of the poles would be fine I think.
There would be the longer term issue of half the world roasting and the other half freezing solid, though
“What Would Happen if Science Went Stupid?””
Wait…what?
If?
So…you put more water vapor into the atmosphere, and it is still transporting the same amount of heat upwards (unless you argue the Sun’s output is changed by 1 C warming on the Earth), and somehow this turns everything into deserts instead of increases the amount of rain?
How stupid are these people?
“Normally, it would take hundreds to thousands of years for it all to melt away. But what if something happened that caused a massive global melt overnight?”
Nope. Only took around 8000-9000 years from 15000 years ago for the sea level off Hallett Cove in South Australia to rise 130M according to the geology and the aboriginals survived. Still I guess you could call that overnight in geological terms. 7 metres and I’ll be seafront and make a killing but at 1.6-1.7 mm/year I suspect it will be the undertakers that clean up instead but I do like optimism.
““Normally, it would take hundreds to thousands of years for it all to melt away. But what if something happened that caused a massive global melt overnight?”
Well we wouldn’t have to worry about that. The massive amount of energy required to melt all the ice on the planet overnight would also burn off the atmosphere, boil the oceans, and kill all life on the planet.
It seems a bit presumptuous to go against the USGS, but that report about potential sea level rise is completely unrealistic with respect to West Antarctica. It does not take into account that much of that ice is below sea-level and that the meltwater would to a large extent fill out the space formerly occupied by that ice. A realistic figure is about 5 meters sea-level rise for a complete meltdown. A more realistic figure, where there would still be ice-caps on the mountains in West Antarctica is about 3 meters:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24428838_Reassessment_of_the_Potential_Sea-Level_Rise_from_a_Collapse_of_the_West_Antarctic_Ice_Sheet
And there is very strong evidence that highlands in West Antarctica have not been ice-free for a very long time:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4742792/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379111001223
And there is really zero concrete evidence for a collapse of the WAIS during MIS 5 (or 11 for that matter). The ANDRILL 1B shows eight major glacial cycles during the Middle and Late Pleistocene when ice cover in the Ross Sea was never appreciably less than now. So, no cycle is missing. The last time the McMurdo area was open water (necessary for, but not sufficient to prove, a WAIS collapse) was during the MIS 31/33 “superinterglacial” about 1.05 million years ago.
I admit that it isn’t easy to find that out, because while the Pliocene and Miocene parts of the core, which do show several ice-free interglacial intervals, have been copiously described and published (in Nature of course), the Pleistocene part has been discreetly buried. It is however described and figured, though rather briefly, in the original publication of the core:
https://www.nap.edu/read/12168/chapter/8#77
I have little doubt that the “fragile” WAIS sailed right through MIS-5 and MIS-11.
“That might not sound like much, but say goodbye to that mini European ice age, and even rivers and lakes around the world. They’d evaporate from the higher temperatures and cause mass droughts and desert-like climates.”
Much of this and all the other horrible things should have happened during the last interglacial which was much warmer than this one, but they didn’t. On the other hand Sahara almost did disappear. A bit odd that.
And there were monkeys in Germany, hippopotami in England, lions in Alaska, tapirs in Pennsylvania and capybaras in Florida. And larch forests on the New Siberian Islands. And most of the permafrost melted. But methane in the atmosphere didn’t increase, and the Gulf Stream didn’t stop, and the Greenland ice didn’t all melt (well, maybe a third did melt, in 10,000 years with 5-8 degrees warmer than now)
Another factor when it comes to melting ice, or anything else, is thermal conductivity.
There is more than enough heat in a hot kitchen oven to melt a cube of ice.
But that does not mean a cube of ice will melt instantly when it is placed in an oven.
A round ball will melt slower than a cube or slab.
It will melt faster in a convection oven (one with a small fan inside the oven).
Faster if it is on a metal cookie sheet rather than an initially cold ceramic plate.
The thing about things is, just being able to imagine them does not make them real.
As every kid learns from being told scary stories before bed.
Maybe adults and teens believe this nonsense because their parents did not read to them.
My mom used to read us HP Lovecraft
I reposted this, adding two notes at the end.
(1) About that “melting all the ice in the world.”
“Greenhouse gases are warming the world, but chilling Antarctica. Here’s why” by Sid Perkins in Science, 19 July 2018. This describes a new study: “Unmasking the negative greenhouse effect over the Antarctic Plateau” by Sergio A. Sejas et al. in Climate and Atmospheric Science, 17 July 2018. Don’t expect the Antarctic ice cap to melt in any visible future.
(2) Fake news drives out real news – because it is more useful.
These two articles were widely reposted. For example, at MSN News, Democratic Underground, Earth News Report, and Science Daily Press. From MSN it was syndicated to local papers. My wife read it in our local Iowa newspaper. Control of the news media is a powerful lever with which to control a nation. A thousand times more people will see these two stories than will see their debunkings. Propaganda works.
Yep… “A lie travels around the globe while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
This is one of the absolutely weirdest thing about “climate science”, how they can take something that has been well known for decades and blow it up as a big new discovery. This “negative greenhouse effect” has been known since the first IR spectra from the NIMBUS satellites in the 60’s:
http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/spectra.gif
It is easy to sea that the antarctic spectrum has higher radiation temperatures within the absorption bands, i e cooling.
And of course it isn’t negative greenhouse effect at all, it is quite ordinary greenhouse effect, but because of the semi-permanent thermal inversion in Antarctica it cools rather than heats.
“For starters, the potential sea level rise is more like 80 meters.”
Does that account for thermal contraction resulting from dumping that much cold water in the oceans?
My understanding is that water is densest just a few degrees above the freezing point.
Not salt water. That is a misconception that has been corrected countless times on WUWT. Salt water just gets denser and denser until it freezes.
And I certainly hope that they do correct for the difference in density between glacier ice and cold sea-water, the latter is about 12-13% denser.
I hadn’t seen that. That makes it a bigger issue. It’s not just about the density of glacier ice vs liquid sea-water at/just above the freezing/melting point. That much cold water would cause a significant drop in the average temperature of the entire ocean. The whole body of the ocean would undergo a thermal contraction.
The actual relationship between freezing point and density of various levels of salinity is rather more complex than simply getting denser and denser until it freezes.
It is actually very complicated, when one considers the variations in salinity, density, freezing point, and how all of this effects sea ice formation, and then what happens to the salt in water as it freezes.
It is amazing that sea ice can form at all at the surface.
Here are some charts as a reference:
https://twitter.com/NickMcGinley1/status/1184239819477733377?s=20
https://twitter.com/NickMcGinley1/status/1184236814229495810?s=20
And here is one starter article on how complex sea ice formation and evolution is, as a process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_ice_growth_processes
And here is an older article and comment thread with tones of great info and back and forth on a range of topics relating to sea ice and other stuff:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/15/things-in-general/#comment-1518877
It’s probably just the water-equivalent of the ice.
Actually, I am pretty sure that all of snow and ice on earth will melt in about 5 billion years, when the sun will become a red giant. However, sea levels will fall, because they will boil off at the same time.
Ozonebust
“If I remember correctly the current rate of sea level rise annually is 1.28mm per year – is that figure correct ?”
No it isn’t, but your error actually is not so dramatic. (That might change in the future, however.)
The rate depends on the measurement period.
The reason is that the increase is not quite linear.
For the period 1880-2018, you have about 1.5 mm/yr as measured by tide gauges; for 1993-2018, you have about 3 mm/yr as measured by tide gauges AND satellite altimetry:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rzU5uoo-JFQoFOvKFQfDQliS5P0-VeCC/view
Some think of course that this stronger increase is due to tide gauge evaluation having been ‘mal’adapted to satellite data. This is nonsense.
The best way to discover this is to compute, out of the tide gauge data, the trends for consecutive, 5-year distant periods, starting with 1883-2018 and ending with 1998-2018 (all in mm/yr):
1883(-2018): 1.40 ± 0.02
1888: 1.45 ± 0.02
1893: 1.49 ± 0.02
1898: 1.54 ± 0.02
1903: 1.59 ± 0.02
1908: 1.60 ± 0.02
1913: 1.68 ± 0.02
1918: 1.75 ± 0.02
1923: 1.78 ± 0.02
1928: 1.79 ± 0.02
1933: 1.78 ± 0.02
1938: 1.74 ± 0.02
1943: 1.69 ± 0.03
1948: 1.67 ± 0.03
1953: 1.76 ± 0.03
1958: 1.88 ± 0.03
1963: 2.05 ± 0.04
1968: 2.15 ± 0.04
1973: 2.33 ± 0.05
1978: 2.55 ± 0.05
1983: 2.78 ± 0.06
1988: 3.03 ± 0.07
1993: 3.07 ± 0.09
1998: 2.96 ± 0.12
Here you clearly see that the faster increase did not start by magic as the satellite altimetry stuff was introduced.
*
Sources:
– sat:
https://podaac-tools.jpl.nasa.gov/drive/files/allData/merged_alt/L2/TP_J1_OSTM/global_mean_sea_level/GMSL_TPJAOS_4.2_199209_201908.txt – (link unfortunately changes all the time)
– surf:
https://www.psmsl.org/data/obtaining/rlr.monthly.data/rlr_monthly.zip – (fixed link)
Rgds
J.-P. D.