Polar ice sheets melting at record pace

[uebermann]

[Professor]

Ice sheets support very little life. Water supports ALL life (as we know it). More water = good.

[WizardfromOz]

The first we have to do is make sure we dont connect weather events with climate change. Sandy was a big storm but not an unusual event. What is interesting is conjecture that normal storm tracks swing back out into the northern Atlantic due to low pressure systems over Greenland. With the unusually warm conditions now in the area the storm pressed on an history records the results. We do have to be concerned about global warming because we could see conditions and climate change moving too fast for us to cope.

Overall you are right climate is always changing, always has. The main concern is the potential erratic weather conditions which could also be far more intense than we are used to dealing with. We can deal with changes measured in hundreds of years, but we could be potentially dealing with major climate adjustments in a generation.

[The Comrade]

this is just humans creating value, and does not harm us in the least.

what do you all have against progress?

[Spider]

I guess it depends on what "very little" means. And the planet isn't set to handle mass changes without a reaction. Ya, its not like the planet is going to fall into a black hole, but the ecology will have to change to cope with new factors.

The real problem with climate change isn't that the change itself is large, but that even a small change is magnified by several orders of magnitude by the planet's natural carbon sequestration sinks. The amazing amount of carbon stored in arctic bogs is enough to blow away the relatively minor impact we've been having...and it should also be noted that ocean acidity has increased by 30%. Something like 40% of atmospheric carbon gets stored in the oceans as carbonic acid, but as the seawater has become more acidic (potentially having disastrous consequences for organisms at the bottom of the marine food chain which depend on Ca carbonate to survive) that water loses its potential to absorb CO2 as carbonic acid. So, the CO2 has nowhere to go but remain in the air. Which obviously causes a spike in temperatures, which in turn release more carbon from arctic sinks, and so on and so forth in countless other ways.

Trouble with a balance is that it takes very little to upset it. Then you end up with feedback loops and ecological problems.

I don't think the world is bent out of shape, because the world has done basically nothing about these issues. Millions of people think its all a conspiracy or something.

Its possible that all these things having started happening now (as in, since humanity started getting really clever), as we release that carbon and change ocean chemistry and cause epic scale desertification, is a coincidence. Pretty convenient timing, nature, that you chose now to start a big swing in a way that so directly correlates with something else at just the right time.

[Spider]

[WizardfromOz]

[Spider]

...Didn't mean to lecture.

I just think the pH changes in the ocean are far more dangerous than anything else related to carbon release.

[The Comrade]

well it's far more dangerous because the ocean will effect everything. i don't think people really take into account how bad a changing of the ocean currents will be for us among other things.

[Spider]

The vast bulk of all life is in the oceans. Mess that up, and it drags everything walking around on the dirt down with it.

Messing up the Gulf Stream would at least be amusing for a little while. But then I'd start feeling bad for those snowed-in Danish women.