If everybody cycled like the Dutch, we could offset the UK or Australia’s entire carbon footprint.

If everybody cycled as much as the Dutch, global carbon emissions would drop by nearly 700 million tonnes per year.

A study from the University of Southern Denmark - published by the Communications Earth and Environment journal - has urged people to saddle up like they do in the Netherlands.

Dutch people cycle an average of 2.6 kilometres each per day. If this pattern was replicated worldwide, the study suggests, annual global carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes.

This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia.

“The significant untapped climate and health benefits of increasing bicycle use suggest an urgent need to promote sustainable bicycle use,” the authors conclude.

There are plenty of reasons to get on your bike.

On an individual level, it is a great way to stay fit and healthy, staving off the chronic diseases associated with a sedentary lifestyle.

People who cycle to work have a 45 per cent lower risk of developing cancer, and a 46 per cent lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

But it’s not just good for you - it’s great for the environment, too.

The transport sector accounts for a quarter of global fuel-related greenhouse gas emissions, with half coming from private vehicles, including passenger cars and trucks.

Cars also contribute to air pollution, clogging the air with toxic chemicals and gases.

According to UK climate organisation Hubbub, 50 per cent of the journeys we take each day are less than 3.2 kilometres long - meaning they could feasibly be swapped out for bike rides.

According to the new study, bike production has ballooned over the last 60 years. 123 million bikes were produced in 2015 - up from 20.7 million bikes in 1962.

But this doesn’t mean more people are cycling as a proportion of the global population. Bike journeys account for just five per cent of daily trips worldwide.

The study authors recognise that not everyone lives in a cycle-friendly place - but call for an “urgent” expansion of cycling infrastructure worldwide.

“Lessons learned from successful experiences in countries like Denmark and the Netherlands, particularly on the city level such as Copenhagen and Amsterdam, would be essential,” they write.

“These include but are not limited to, for example, proper bicycle lanes planning and construction, pro-bicycle education and culture, and policies to discourage car use through tax.”

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/06/03/on-your-bike-if-we-all-cycled-like-the-dutch-global-emissions-drop-nearly-700-million-tonn

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swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

If everybody cycled like the Dutch, we could offset the UK or
Australia’s entire carbon footprint.

That’s an unsubstantiated claim.

If everybody cycled as much as the Dutch, global carbon emissions would
drop by nearly 700 million tonnes per year.

If everybody died, it would save far more.

A study from the University of Southern Denmark - published by the Communications Earth and Environment journal - has urged people to saddle
up like they do in the Netherlands.

An ‘environmental’ journal urging people to ride a bike?

Gerraway!

Dutch people cycle an average of 2.6 kilometres each per day. If this
pattern was replicated worldwide, the study suggests, annual global
carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes.

Figures, please.

This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most
countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia.

But not the biggest producers, which are…?

“The significant untapped climate and health benefits of increasing
bicycle use suggest an urgent need to promote sustainable bicycle use,”
the authors conclude.

The Dutch die of the same killer diseases as the lardarse Brits, and in the same proportion, so what are these ‘health benefits’?

There are plenty of reasons to get on your bike.

There are plenty of reasons not to get on your bike, a major one being the threat from other cyclists.

On an individual level, it is a great way to stay fit and healthy,
staving off the chronic diseases associated with a sedentary lifestyle.

The Dutch die of the same killer diseases as the lardarse Brits, and in the same proportion, so what are these ‘health benefits’?

People who cycle to work have a 45 per cent lower risk of developing
cancer, and a 46 per cent lower risk of cardiovascular disease.

Data previously published on this group of a comparison of Dutch and
British mortality rates from the main killer diseases shows, no difference beteeen the two countries.

But it’s not just good for you - it’s great for the environment, too.

So it is claimed. Where is the data?

The transport sector accounts for a quarter of global fuel-related
greenhouse gas emissions, with half coming from private vehicles,
including passenger cars and trucks.

Cars also contribute to air pollution, clogging the air with toxic chemicals and gases.

‘Clogging’? Pure hyperbole.

According to UK climate organisation Hubbub, 50 per cent of the journeys
we take each day are less than 3.2 kilometres long - meaning they could feasibly be swapped out for bike rides.

A very doubtful claim at best.

According to the new study, bike production has ballooned over the last
60 years. 123 million bikes were produced in 2015 - up from 20.7 million bikes in 1962.

And people have ballooned over the last 60 years 🙄

But this doesn’t mean more people are cycling as a proportion of the
global population. Bike journeys account for just five per cent of daily trips worldwide.

For which there are a multitude of reasons for not using a bicycle.

The study authors recognise that not everyone lives in a cycle-friendly
place - but call for an “urgent” expansion of cycling infrastructure worldwide.

And how would that help?

Data previously published on this group show essentially no differences
between cycling-infra-rich Holland and the cycle slaughterhouse UK.

“Lessons learned from successful experiences in countries like Denmark
and the Netherlands, particularly on the city level such as Copenhagen
and Amsterdam, would be essential,” they write.

‘Level’ being the operative word.

“These include but are not limited to, for example, proper bicycle lanes planning and construction, pro-bicycle education and culture, and
policies to discourage car use through tax.”

One wondered when money-raising would come to the fore.

For all the taxing of London’s vehicles, no-one can point to a single child that has been saved from pollution-related asthma.

Note there’s no mention of Germany here, which due to the policies of their Green-coalition government, have closed low-emission nuclear power stations
and replaced them with lignite (filthier than coal) power stations. Only in
the bizarre world of the environmentalist would such lunacy make sense.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/06/03/on-your-bike-if-we-all-cycled-like-the-dutch-global-emissions-drop-nearly-700-million-tonn

--
Spike

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On 06/06/2023 02:13 pm, Spike wrote:

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

If everybody cycled like the Dutch, we could offset the UK or
Australia’s entire carbon footprint.

That’s an unsubstantiated claim.

...replayed by another janitorial worker (they're ALL experts on
Economics, Ecology, Biology and International Trade, you know!).

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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QUOTE: The transport sector accounts for a quarter of global fuel-related greenhouse gas emissions, with half coming from private vehicles, including passenger cars and trucks.

Cars also contribute to air pollution, clogging the air with toxic chemicals and gases. ENDS

They kill many vulnerable people as a result of their toxic fumes - ask Khan.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

QUOTE: The transport sector accounts for a quarter of global fuel-related greenhouse gas emissions, with half coming from private vehicles,
including passenger cars and trucks.

Cars also contribute to air pollution, clogging the air with toxic
chemicals and gases. ENDS

They kill many vulnerable people as a result of their toxic fumes - ask Khan.

Khan cannot point to a single person whose life has been saved by any
reduction in polluted air arising from his various vehicle-taxation
regimes.

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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QUOTE: Dutch people cycle an average of 2.6 kilometres each per day. If this pattern was replicated worldwide, the study suggests, annual global carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes.

This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia. ENDS

I am in Gelderland at the moment so can well believe those statements.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

QUOTE: Dutch people cycle an average of 2.6 kilometres each per day. If
this pattern was replicated worldwide, the study suggests, annual global carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes.

This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most
countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia. ENDS

I am in Gelderland at the moment so can well believe those statements.

Say ‘hello’ to the bridge at Arnhem, providing it isn’t too far.

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Tuesday, June 6, 2023 at 5:38:58 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:

QUOTE: Dutch people cycle an average of 2.6 kilometres each per day. If this pattern was replicated worldwide, the study suggests, annual global carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes.

This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia. ENDS

I am in Gelderland at the moment so can well believe those statements.

Nobody here gets knocked down either - fancy that!

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 06/06/2023 05:38 pm, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:

QUOTE: Dutch people fairy-cycle an average of 2.6 kilometres each per day. If this pattern was replicated worldwide, the study suggests, annual global carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes.

This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia. ENDS

I am in Gelderland at the moment [ ... ]

Did you go there to be gelded?

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Tuesday, June 6, 2023 at 5:38:58 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:

QUOTE: Dutch people cycle an average of 2.6 kilometres each per day. If this pattern was replicated worldwide, the study suggests, annual global carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes.

This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia. ENDS

I am in Gelderland at the moment so can well believe those statements.

Driving to Europoort soon to go back to the 1970's UK with silly passport stamps and biometric checks.
Can't wait to rejoin our EU friends.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, June 6, 2023 at 5:38:58 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:

QUOTE: Dutch people cycle an average of 2.6 kilometres each per day. If
this pattern was replicated worldwide, the study suggests, annual global
carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes.

This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most
countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia. ENDS

I am in Gelderland at the moment so can well believe those statements.

Nobody here gets knocked down either - fancy that!

QUOTE

According to figures published by Statistics Netherlands (CBS), 582 people
died as a result of a traffic accident in 2021 - the lowest number recorded
in the Netherlands since 2015. The number of road fatalities fell by 28
between 2020 and last year.

The provinces of Gelderland and South Holland saw the highest number of
deadly road accidents, while Zeeland recorded the fewest. 382 of the
victims in 2021 were cyclists, motorists or other car passengers.

ENDQUOTE

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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QUOTE: On an individual level, it is a great way to stay fit and healthy, staving off the chronic diseases associated with a sedentary lifestyle. ENDS

Do they mean this bonehead?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fx9A3KsXwAAWW6U?format=jpg&name=medium

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, June 6, 2023 at 5:38:58 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:

QUOTE: Dutch people cycle an average of 2.6 kilometres each per day. If
this pattern was replicated worldwide, the study suggests, annual global
carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes.

This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most
countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia. ENDS

I am in Gelderland at the moment so can well believe those statements.

Driving to Europoort soon to go back to the 1970's UK with silly passport stamps and biometric checks.

Can't wait to rejoin our EU friends.

Nothing is stopping you moving there permanently, such as to Amsterdam or Utrecht.


--
Spike

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swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

QUOTE: On an individual level, it is a great way to stay fit and healthy, staving off the chronic diseases associated with a sedentary lifestyle. ENDS

Dutch health stats v UK

We’ve heard so many claims for bicycling and health benefits, let’s check out the comparison between NL (a cycling paradise) and the hellhole of the unhealthy UK.

Here’s my main point: I am opposed to public health campaigns that focus on cycling, thereby implanting in people’s minds the claimed health benefits
of cycling. What are the facts?

The Dutch cycle more than the UK, 9bn miles to 3.5bn miles per annum, and
have done so for longer. Note that the population of Holland is only
one-fourth of that of the UK (or in the modern vernacular, ‘four times smaller’).

So you would think that all this health-benefit would show up in the statistics. Let’s see…

Keep in mind that the Dutch population at 17.2 million is almost exactly one-quarter of that of the UK at 68 million.

To compare cases per year on a per-head basis, the NL figures have been multiplied by 4.

CVD:
UK…324446
NL…347880
Result: UK healthier for CVD.

IHD:
UK…178985
NL…167020
Result: NL slightly healthier for IHD

Stroke:
UK…20326
NL…26072
Result: UK healthier for stroke.

Diabetes:
NL…5.4% of adults
UK…3.9% of adults
Result: UK healthier for diabetes

COPD:
NL and UK ~200 deaths per million
Result: indistinguishable

Comment: any health benefits from the amount of cycling by the Dutch over
the Brits seem to be based more on dogma, tropes, and wishful thinking
than fact.

Some data taken from the extensive tabulated data at ehnheart.org; COPD
from statistics.blf.org.uk

--
Spike

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QUOTE: According to the new study, bike production has ballooned over the last 60 years. 123 million bikes were produced in 2015 - up from 20.7 million bikes in 1962. ENDS

Great news - stuffs the Mr Toads.
PARP PARP.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

QUOTE: According to the new study, bike production has ballooned over the last 60 years. 123 million bikes were produced in 2015 - up from 20.7
million bikes in 1962. ENDS

Great news - stuffs the Mr Toads.
PARP PARP.

In other news: people have ballooned in the last 60 years:

1960: 3bn people 2023: >8bn people

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tuesday, June 6, 2023 at 5:38:58 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:

QUOTE: Dutch people cycle an average of 2.6 kilometres each per day. If
this pattern was replicated worldwide, the study suggests, annual global
carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes.

This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most
countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia. ENDS

I am in Gelderland at the moment so can well believe those statements.

Driving to Europoort soon to go back to the 1970's UK with silly passport stamps and biometric checks.

Rushing back to Blighty just as the Ukraine war hots up?

Can't wait to rejoin our EU friends.

We can’t wait for you to join your EU friends either.


--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On 07/06/2023 08:10 am, Spike wrote:

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com>...

...pretending not to answer other posters, said:

On Tuesday, June 6, 2023 at 5:38:58 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:

QUOTE: Dutch people cycle an average of 2.6 kilometres each per day. If
this pattern was replicated worldwide, the study suggests, annual global >>> carbon emissions would drop by 686 million tonnes.

This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most
countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia. ENDS

I am in Gelderland at the moment so can well believe those statements.

Nobody here gets knocked down either - fancy that!

QUOTE

According to figures published by Statistics Netherlands (CBS), 582 people died as a result of a traffic accident in 2021 - the lowest number recorded in the Netherlands since 2015. The number of road fatalities fell by 28 between 2020 and last year.

The height of the pandemic, with a great drop in traffic as people
stayed at home and (if they could) phoned it in).

The provinces of Gelderland and South Holland saw the highest number of deadly road accidents, while Zeeland recorded the fewest. 382 of the
victims in 2021 were cyclists, motorists or other car passengers.

ENDQUOTE

A Dutch friend of mine was killed in NL last year - in a head-on crash.
Things unfortunately seem to have been getting back to normal there.

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Spike <Aero.Spike@mail.invalid> wrote:

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

If everybody cycled like the Dutch, we could offset the UK or
Australia’s entire carbon footprint.

The population and industry of the two countries are widely different.

The suggestion their carbon footprints are remotely comparable is hardly credible.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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QUOTE: Cars also contribute to air pollution, clogging the air with toxic chemicals and gases. ENDS

Even electric cars shower the roads and environs with brake dust.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

QUOTE: Cars also contribute to air pollution, clogging the air with toxic chemicals and gases. ENDS

Even electric cars shower the roads and environs with brake dust.

And tyre particles. Even e-campers as well as cars.

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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QUOTE: This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia.ENDS

The polar bears can thank us later.

The Arctic Ocean's ice cap will disappear in summer as soon as the 2030s and a decade earlier than thought, no matter how aggressively humanity draws down the carbon pollution that drives global warming, scientists said Tuesday.

Even capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius in line with the Paris climate treaty will not prevent the north pole's vast expanse of floating ice from melting away in September, they reported in Nature Communications.

"It is too late to still protect the Arctic summer sea ice as a landscape and as a habitat," co-author Dirk Notz, a professor at the University of Hamburg's Institute of Oceanography, told AFP.

"This will be the first major component of our climate system that we lose because of our emission of greenhouse gases."

Decreased ice cover has serious impacts over time on weather, people and ecosystems—not just within the region, but globally.

"It can accelerate global warming by melting permafrost laden with greenhouse gases, and sea level rise by melting the Greenland ice sheet," lead author Seung-Ki Min, a researcher at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea, told AFP.

Greenland's kilometers-thick blanket of ice contains enough frozen water to lift oceans six meters.

By contrast, melting sea ice has no discernible impact on sea levels because the ice is already in ocean water, like ice cubes in a glass.

But it does feed into a vicious circle of warming.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

QUOTE: This mammoth figure exceeds the entire carbon footprint of most countries, including the UK, Canada, Saudi Arabia and Australia.ENDS

The polar bears can thank us later.

Did you hear of the polar-bear expert who was due to give a paper at the Copenhagen COP?

His funding was withdrawn when it was discovered that his report found that polar-bear groups were flourishing.

That was off-message, of course, so he had to go.

Interesting that 20 years later polar bears are still being used by the believers.

The Arctic Ocean's ice cap will disappear in summer as soon as the 2030s
and a decade earlier than thought, no matter how aggressively humanity
draws down the carbon pollution that drives global warming, scientists said Tuesday.

No sh1t!

You do know that the remains of ancient forests have been found under the
ice?

Wonder what industrial action could have caused that warming event.

Even capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius in line with the Paris climate treaty will not prevent the north pole's vast expanse of floating
ice from melting away in September, they reported in Nature Communications.

Of course not! Melting ice caps are a regular feature of interglacial warm periods.

"It is too late to still protect the Arctic summer sea ice as a landscape
and as a habitat," co-author Dirk Notz, a professor at the University of Hamburg's Institute of Oceanography, told AFP.

It was always too late to save the ice-caps. Nothing saved them in the
past.

"This will be the first major component of our climate system that we
lose because of our emission of greenhouse gases."

So what caused the previous losses of the ice-caps?

Decreased ice cover has serious impacts over time on weather, people and ecosystems—not just within the region, but globally.

It was always thus.

"It can accelerate global warming by melting permafrost laden with
greenhouse gases, and sea level rise by melting the Greenland ice sheet," lead author Seung-Ki Min, a researcher at Pohang University of Science
and Technology in South Korea, told AFP.

That’s happened so many times in the past, it’s just routine.

Greenland's kilometers-thick blanket of ice contains enough frozen water
to lift oceans six meters.

Buy a boat.

By contrast, melting sea ice has no discernible impact on sea levels
because the ice is already in ocean water, like ice cubes in a glass.

But it does feed into a vicious circle of warming.

Quite possibly; it’s happened so many times…


--
Spike

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The Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer by the 2030s, even if we do a good job of reducing emissions between now and then. That’s the worrying conclusion of a new study in Nature Communications.

Predictions of an ice-free Arctic Ocean have a long and complicated history, and the 2030s is sooner than most scientists had thought possible (though it is later than some had wrongly forecast). What we know for sure is the disappearance of sea ice at
the top of the world would not only be an emblematic sign of climate breakdown, but it would have global, damaging and dangerous consequences.

The Arctic has been experiencing climate heating faster than any other part of the planet. As it is at the frontline of climate change, the eyes of many scientists and local indigenous people have been on the sea ice that covers much of the Arctic Ocean
in winter. This thin film of frozen seawater expands and contracts with the seasons, reaching a minimum area in September each year.

The ice which remains at the end of summer is called multiyear sea ice and is considerably thicker than its seasonal counterpart. It acts as barrier to the transfer of both moisture and heat between the ocean and atmosphere. Over the past 40 years this
multiyear sea ice has shrunk from around 7 million sq km to 4 million. That is a loss equivalent to roughly the size of India or 12 UKs. In other words, it’s a big signal, one of the most stark and dramatic signs of fundamental change to the climate
system anywhere in the world.

With your support, we collaborate with more experts and reach new audiences. You power our independent journalism
As a consequence, there has been considerable effort invested in determining when the Arctic Ocean might first become ice-free in summer, sometimes called a “blue ocean event” and defined as when the sea ice area drops below 1 million sq kms. This
threshold is used mainly because older, thicker ice along parts of Canada and northern Greenland is expected to remain long after the rest of the Arctic Ocean is ice-free. We can’t put an exact date on the last blue ocean event, but one in the near
future would likely mean open water at the North Pole for the first time in thousands of years.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Already debunked ,

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

The Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer by the 2030s, even if we do
a good job of reducing emissions between now and then. That’s the
worrying conclusion of a new study in Nature Communications.

Predictions of an ice-free Arctic Ocean have a long and complicated
history, and the 2030s is sooner than most scientists had thought
possible (though it is later than some had wrongly forecast). What we
know for sure is the disappearance of sea ice at the top of the world
would not only be an emblematic sign of climate breakdown, but it would
have global, damaging and dangerous consequences.

The Arctic has been experiencing climate heating faster than any other
part of the planet. As it is at the frontline of climate change, the eyes
of many scientists and local indigenous people have been on the sea ice
that covers much of the Arctic Ocean in winter. This thin film of frozen seawater expands and contracts with the seasons, reaching a minimum area
in September each year.

The ice which remains at the end of summer is called multiyear sea ice
and is considerably thicker than its seasonal counterpart. It acts as
barrier to the transfer of both moisture and heat between the ocean and atmosphere. Over the past 40 years this multiyear sea ice has shrunk from around 7 million sq km to 4 million. That is a loss equivalent to roughly
the size of India or 12 UKs. In other words, it’s a big signal, one of
the most stark and dramatic signs of fundamental change to the climate
system anywhere in the world.

With your support, we collaborate with more experts and reach new
audiences. You power our independent journalism
As a consequence, there has been considerable effort invested in
determining when the Arctic Ocean might first become ice-free in summer, sometimes called a “blue ocean event” and defined as when the sea ice area drops below 1 million sq kms. This threshold is used mainly because older, thicker ice along parts of Canada and northern Greenland is
expected to remain long after the rest of the Arctic Ocean is ice-free.
We can’t put an exact date on the last blue ocean event, but one in the near future would likely mean open water at the North Pole for the first
time in thousands of years.

Since the last interglacial period, in fact.


--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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It is now too late to save summer Arctic sea ice, research has shown, and scientists say preparations need to be made for the increased extreme weather across the northern hemisphere that is likely to occur as a result.

Analysis shows that even if greenhouse gas emissions are sharply reduced, the Arctic will be ice-free in September in coming decades. The study also shows that if emissions decline slowly or continue to rise, the first ice-free summer could be in the
2030s, a decade earlier than previous projections.

The research shows that 90% of the melting is the result of human-caused global heating, with natural factors accounting for the rest.

Since satellite records began in 1979, summer Arctic ice has shrunk by 13% a decade, in one of the clearest signs of the climate crisis. Arctic sea ice reaches its annual minimum at the end of summer, in September, and in 2021 it was at its second lowest
extent on record.

“Unfortunately it has become too late to save Arctic summer sea ice,” said Prof Dirk Notz, of the University of Hamburg, Germany, who was part of the study team. “As scientists, we’ve been warning about the loss of Arctic summer sea ice for
decades. This is now the first major component of the Earth system that we are going to lose because of global warming. People didn’t listen to our warnings.

“This brings another warning bell, that the kind of projections that we’ve made for other components of the Earth system will start unfolding in the decades to come.”

Other climate scientists said in 2022 that the world was on the brink of multiple disastrous tipping points.

Prof Seung-Ki Min, of Pohang University, South Korea, who led the new study, said: “The most important impact for human society will be the increase in weather extremes that we are experiencing now, such as heatwaves, wildfires and floods. We need to
reduce CO2 emissions more ambitiously and also prepare to adapt to this faster Arctic warming and its impacts on human society and ecosystems.”

In 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that the Arctic would not lose its summer ice if emissions were cut sharply and global temperature rises were limited to 2C. But the new research, published in the journal Nature
Communications, projects the loss of summer sea ice in the 2050s in the low emissions scenario.

The IPCC report concluded that the Arctic would lose its summer ice in the 2040s in intermediate and high emissions scenarios, but the new research advances that by a decade into the 2030s.

In the study, the scientists first established how much rising greenhouse gases have contributed to ice melting compared with natural factors such as variation in the sun’s intensity and emissions from volcanoes. “Humans really are to blame for
almost all the loss of Arctic sea ice we have been observing,” Notz said.

The scientists used this information to model future melting and found that the models underestimated the pace of melting compared with observations of ice in the Arctic from 1979 to 2019.

Calibrating the models to be consistent with the observations led to the projections of faster melting and an ice-free summer even in the low emissions scenario. In the intermediate and high emissions scenarios, August and October also become ice-free by
about 2080, the study found.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

What do you expect? The planet has been warming for 11,000 years, with
several thousand still to go.

There will be a few thousand years where forests flourish at the North
Pole, and probably the South Pole too.

It happens in regular cycles, there’s nothing new here.

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

It is now too late to save summer Arctic sea ice, research has shown, and scientists say preparations need to be made for the increased extreme
weather across the northern hemisphere that is likely to occur as a result.

Analysis shows that even if greenhouse gas emissions are sharply reduced,
the Arctic will be ice-free in September in coming decades. The study
also shows that if emissions decline slowly or continue to rise, the
first ice-free summer could be in the 2030s, a decade earlier than previous projections.

The research shows that 90% of the melting is the result of human-caused global heating, with natural factors accounting for the rest.

Since satellite records began in 1979, summer Arctic ice has shrunk by
13% a decade, in one of the clearest signs of the climate crisis. Arctic
sea ice reaches its annual minimum at the end of summer, in September,
and in 2021 it was at its second lowest extent on record.

“Unfortunately it has become too late to save Arctic summer sea ice,” said Prof Dirk Notz, of the University of Hamburg, Germany, who was part
of the study team. “As scientists, we’ve been warning about the loss of Arctic summer sea ice for decades. This is now the first major component
of the Earth system that we are going to lose because of global warming. People didn’t listen to our warnings.

“This brings another warning bell, that the kind of projections that we’ve made for other components of the Earth system will start unfolding
in the decades to come.”

Other climate scientists said in 2022 that the world was on the brink of multiple disastrous tipping points.

Prof Seung-Ki Min, of Pohang University, South Korea, who led the new
study, said: “The most important impact for human society will be the increase in weather extremes that we are experiencing now, such as
heatwaves, wildfires and floods. We need to reduce CO2 emissions more ambitiously and also prepare to adapt to this faster Arctic warming and
its impacts on human society and ecosystems.”

In 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded
that the Arctic would not lose its summer ice if emissions were cut
sharply and global temperature rises were limited to 2C. But the new research, published in the journal Nature Communications, projects the
loss of summer sea ice in the 2050s in the low emissions scenario.

The IPCC report concluded that the Arctic would lose its summer ice in
the 2040s in intermediate and high emissions scenarios, but the new
research advances that by a decade into the 2030s.

In the study, the scientists first established how much rising greenhouse gases have contributed to ice melting compared with natural factors such
as variation in the sun’s intensity and emissions from volcanoes. “Humans really are to blame for almost all the loss of Arctic sea ice we have
been observing,” Notz said.

The scientists used this information to model future melting and found
that the models underestimated the pace of melting compared with
observations of ice in the Arctic from 1979 to 2019.

Calibrating the models to be consistent with the observations led to the projections of faster melting and an ice-free summer even in the low emissions scenario. In the intermediate and high emissions scenarios,
August and October also become ice-free by about 2080, the study found.

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

The Arctic could see ice-free summers as early as the 2030s, scientists say. That’s as much as a decade earlier than previous studies have suggested.

The findings, published Tuesday in the scientific journal Nature Communications, warn that even aggressive global climate action may not be enough to stop it.

Previous studies have found that faster efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions could ward off the onset of ice-free summers. But the new research suggests that they’re now all but inevitable.

The research team, led by Yeon-Hee Kim of Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea, examined satellite observations of Arctic sea ice collected between 1979 and 2019. The Arctic is currently warming as much as four times faster than the
global average, and sea ice has been rapidly declining for decades.

The researchers then compared these observations with computer model simulations of Arctic sea ice declines over the same period. The use of simulations allowed the scientists to investigate the influences of individual factors including greenhouse gas
emissions, other forms of air pollution and natural climate cycles on Arctic melting.

They found that greenhouse gases are clearly driving the sea ice declines, not only during the summer months but all year round.

But they also found that climate models tend to underestimate the rate at which sea ice is vanishing from the Arctic. So the researchers corrected those trends in the simulations. Then they used the models to make projections for the future, looking at a
variety of hypothetical climate action scenarios.

The new projections suggest that ice-free summers likely would commence somewhere between the 2030s and the 2050s, depending on how quickly emissions decline in the coming years. That’s even with stringent and immediate efforts to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions.

That’s a departure from previous, uncorrected model projections, which found that ice-free summers could be averted with swifter climate action.

Faster action still makes a difference. The study found that slower climate action would produce longer ice-free periods, potentially lasting from June to October in the worst cases. On the other hand, the swiftest efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions
could limit the ice-free period to the month of September.

Still, scientists warn that the planet is likely to experience stronger climate consequences as Arctic sea ice dwindles. Bright, shiny sea ice helps reflect sunlight away from the planet. As it disappears, the Arctic warms even faster.

And studies suggest that rapid Arctic warming has ripple effects elsewhere around the planet. The warming alters the Earth’s atmosphere in ways that scientists believe can affect extreme weather events and other climate patterns in other parts of the
world, including Europe and North America.

Ice-free summers also will open up new shipping routes through the Arctic. This could create additional complications for the region, including an increase in ship-related pollution and potential new geopolitical tensions around access to shipping paths
and natural resources.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

During the Cretaceous, temperate forests thrived at polar latitudes,[2] as there was a notable difference from current conditions at high latitudes
during the Cretaceous polar seasons.[3] The duration of summer sunlight and winter darkness lasted for approximately 5 months each.[4] This variation
in light is thought to have played a critical role in the composition and evolution of polar forests. Fossilized flora evidence suggests the presence
of paleoforests up to latitudes of 85° in both Northern and Southern hemispheres. The dominant forms of vegetation at these high latitudes
during the previous 100 million years were rapidly evolving and ultimately being replaced during a time known as the Cretaceous Terrestrial
Revolution. During the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution, conifers, cycads
and ferns were selectively replaced by angiosperms and gymnosperms,
becoming the main species dominating the high paleolatitudes. In this Cretaceous greenhouse world, Arctic conifer forests were considered predominantly deciduous, while those that grew on Antarctica contained a significantly greater proportion of evergreens.[3]


swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

The Arctic could see ice-free summers as early as the 2030s, scientists
say. That’s as much as a decade earlier than previous studies have suggested.

The findings, published Tuesday in the scientific journal Nature Communications, warn that even aggressive global climate action may not
be enough to stop it.

Previous studies have found that faster efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions could ward off the onset of ice-free summers. But the new
research suggests that they’re now all but inevitable.

The research team, led by Yeon-Hee Kim of Pohang University of Science
and Technology in South Korea, examined satellite observations of Arctic
sea ice collected between 1979 and 2019. The Arctic is currently warming
as much as four times faster than the global average, and sea ice has
been rapidly declining for decades.

The researchers then compared these observations with computer model simulations of Arctic sea ice declines over the same period. The use of simulations allowed the scientists to investigate the influences of individual factors including greenhouse gas emissions, other forms of air pollution and natural climate cycles on Arctic melting.

They found that greenhouse gases are clearly driving the sea ice
declines, not only during the summer months but all year round.

But they also found that climate models tend to underestimate the rate at which sea ice is vanishing from the Arctic. So the researchers corrected those trends in the simulations. Then they used the models to make projections for the future, looking at a variety of hypothetical climate action scenarios.

The new projections suggest that ice-free summers likely would commence somewhere between the 2030s and the 2050s, depending on how quickly
emissions decline in the coming years. That’s even with stringent and immediate efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

That’s a departure from previous, uncorrected model projections, which found that ice-free summers could be averted with swifter climate action.

Faster action still makes a difference. The study found that slower
climate action would produce longer ice-free periods, potentially lasting from June to October in the worst cases. On the other hand, the swiftest efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions could limit the ice-free period
to the month of September.

Still, scientists warn that the planet is likely to experience stronger climate consequences as Arctic sea ice dwindles. Bright, shiny sea ice
helps reflect sunlight away from the planet. As it disappears, the Arctic warms even faster.

And studies suggest that rapid Arctic warming has ripple effects
elsewhere around the planet. The warming alters the Earth’s atmosphere in ways that scientists believe can affect extreme weather events and other climate patterns in other parts of the world, including Europe and North America.

Ice-free summers also will open up new shipping routes through the
Arctic. This could create additional complications for the region,
including an increase in ship-related pollution and potential new geopolitical tensions around access to shipping paths and natural resources.

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

The first summer on record that melts practically all of the Arctic’s floating sea ice could occur as early as the 2030s, according to a new scientific study — about a decade sooner than researchers previously predicted.

The peer-reviewed findings, published Tuesday, also show that this milestone of climate change could materialize even if nations manage to curb greenhouse gas emissions more decisively than they are currently doing. Earlier projections had found that
stronger action to slow global warming might be enough to preserve the summer ice. The latest research suggests that, where Arctic sea ice is concerned, only steep, sharp emissions cuts might be able to reverse the effects of the warming already underway.

“We are very quickly about to lose the Arctic summer sea-ice cover, basically independent of what we are doing,” said Dirk Notz, a climate scientist at the University of Hamburg in Germany and one of the new study’s five authors. “We’ve been
waiting too long now to do something about climate change to still protect the remaining ice.”

As sea ice has dwindled in recent decades, communities, ecosystems and economies across the roof of the world have been grappling with the consequences. But the effects extend far beyond the region.

Sea ice reflects solar radiation back into space, so the less ice there is, the faster the Arctic warms. This causes the Greenland ice sheet to melt more quickly, adding to sea-level rise globally.


Arctic summer. The first summer on record that melts practically all of the Arctic’s floating sea ice could occur as early as the 2030s, according to a new scientific study — about a decade sooner than researchers previously predicted.

Uninsurable areas. State Farm, the largest insurer in California, said it will no longer offer new coverage to homeowners in the state. Allstate has also stopped selling new home, condominium or commercial insurance policies in California. The moves are
part of a broader trend of insurance companies pulling back from areas hit by climate disasters.

Colorado River deal. California, Arizona and Nevada reached a short-term deal that would help stop the drought-strained Colorado River from running dry — for now. The breakthrough agreement keeps the river from falling so low that it would jeopardize
water supplies for major Western cities as well as for some of America’s most productive farmland.

Predicting record heat. Global temperatures are likely to soar to record highs over the next five years, driven by human-caused warming and a climate pattern known as El Niño, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Scientists say even small
increases in warming can exacerbate the dangers from heat waves, wildfires, drought and other calamities.

The temperature difference between the North Pole and the Equator also influences storm tracks and wind speed in the mid-latitudes, which means Arctic warming could be affecting weather events like extreme rainfall and heat waves in temperate parts of
North America, Europe and Asia.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Those Arctic forests are on the way!

Read all about it:

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

The first summer on record that melts practically all of the Arctic’s floating sea ice could occur as early as the 2030s, according to a new scientific study — about a decade sooner than researchers previously predicted.

The peer-reviewed findings, published Tuesday, also show that this
milestone of climate change could materialize even if nations manage to
curb greenhouse gas emissions more decisively than they are currently
doing. Earlier projections had found that stronger action to slow global warming might be enough to preserve the summer ice. The latest research suggests that, where Arctic sea ice is concerned, only steep, sharp
emissions cuts might be able to reverse the effects of the warming already underway.

“We are very quickly about to lose the Arctic summer sea-ice cover, basically independent of what we are doing,” said Dirk Notz, a climate scientist at the University of Hamburg in Germany and one of the new study’s five authors. “We’ve been waiting too long now to do something about climate change to still protect the remaining ice.”

As sea ice has dwindled in recent decades, communities, ecosystems and economies across the roof of the world have been grappling with the consequences. But the effects extend far beyond the region.

Sea ice reflects solar radiation back into space, so the less ice there
is, the faster the Arctic warms. This causes the Greenland ice sheet to
melt more quickly, adding to sea-level rise globally.

Arctic summer. The first summer on record that melts practically all of
the Arctic’s floating sea ice could occur as early as the 2030s,
according to a new scientific study — about a decade sooner than researchers previously predicted.

Uninsurable areas. State Farm, the largest insurer in California, said it will no longer offer new coverage to homeowners in the state. Allstate
has also stopped selling new home, condominium or commercial insurance policies in California. The moves are part of a broader trend of
insurance companies pulling back from areas hit by climate disasters.

Colorado River deal. California, Arizona and Nevada reached a short-term
deal that would help stop the drought-strained Colorado River from
running dry — for now. The breakthrough agreement keeps the river from falling so low that it would jeopardize water supplies for major Western cities as well as for some of America’s most productive farmland.

Predicting record heat. Global temperatures are likely to soar to record highs over the next five years, driven by human-caused warming and a
climate pattern known as El Niño, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Scientists say even small increases in warming can
exacerbate the dangers from heat waves, wildfires, drought and other calamities.

The temperature difference between the North Pole and the Equator also influences storm tracks and wind speed in the mid-latitudes, which means Arctic warming could be affecting weather events like extreme rainfall
and heat waves in temperate parts of North America, Europe and Asia.

T

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

A much-feared moment — a summer in which the Arctic Ocean features almost entirely open water — could be coming even sooner than expected and has the possibility to become a regular event within most of our lifetimes, according to a new study.

Experts have long feared at least an occasional dwindling of floating Arctic ice down to minimal levels by 2050, with a greater risk as humans emit more greenhouse gases. The new research, though, suggests that even in a fairly low-emissions scenario
that holds the planet’s warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, regular years without summer Arctic sea ice could occur in the 2030s.

The trend gets worse as the emissions levels increase. In the worst-case scenario, the study said, there is a possibility that the Arctic could have Septembers with no ice as soon as the 2030s, a decade earlier than previous research indicated.

“We do seem to be destined to see ice-free summers in the Arctic. That seems to be baked in at this point,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., who was not associated with the study. “The question
has always been when.”

Arctic sea ice follows an annual cycle, peaking in the unbroken darkness of winter and then dwindling in the equally constant glare of summer. Even if ice does dip below 1 million square kilometers in area at the summer low in September — a threshold
deemed to represent a basically ice-free ocean — that does not mean it won’t rebound quickly in the winter or persist through summer the next year. Much depends on weather. But the warming of the Earth makes it easier for the ice to melt and harder
for it to rebound.

The impacts will be far-reaching, threatening communities, harming ecosystems and exacerbating global warming, scientists said.

“The impacts are already upon us, and they are growing. You could still have a fair bit of sea ice out there in summer and have very important or tremendous impacts on fish species, phytoplankton blooms on the people of the north,” Serreze said.

Without sea ice, the Arctic will also warm faster. Arctic ice sends solar radiation back to space, because bright ice reflects more than the dark ocean. If the ice melts, additional solar energy will be added to the region, increasing planetary warming.

“Disappearing sea ice will add an enormous amount of additional solar energy to the Arctic,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate scientist at the University of California at San Diego.

The authors of the study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications, compared years of satellite observations of Arctic ice to 10 existing climate models. The satellite imagery showed a starker loss in Arctic ice than climate models
projected, informing the authors’ predictions of an even faster decline, said Nathan Gillett, a climate scientist and one of the study’s authors.

The authors then ran the updated models under four potential scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions. Under the best-case scenario, the Arctic would be ice-free most Septembers by 2050. Under the worst-case scenario, the Arctic would experience Septembers
without ice by the 2030s. This could grow to be several months without ice later in the century.

Gillett said reducing emissions will reduce how quickly ice is lost.

“Reducing emissions will limit warming,” he said. “It does make a difference as to how much ice we have.”

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

When reading the report below, keep in mind that the planet has swung
between Ice Ages and being so warm that forests grew at the poles, for
millions of years. No human interference in these cycles took place. They occurred all on their own.

Only those who don’t understand this, ‘fear’ the process. It is going to happen anyway.



swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

A much-feared moment — a summer in which the Arctic Ocean features almost entirely open water — could be coming even sooner than expected and has
the possibility to become a regular event within most of our lifetimes, according to a new study.

Experts have long feared at least an occasional dwindling of floating
Arctic ice down to minimal levels by 2050, with a greater risk as humans
emit more greenhouse gases. The new research, though, suggests that even
in a fairly low-emissions scenario that holds the planet’s warming to
below 2 degrees Celsius, regular years without summer Arctic sea ice
could occur in the 2030s.

The trend gets worse as the emissions levels increase. In the worst-case scenario, the study said, there is a possibility that the Arctic could
have Septembers with no ice as soon as the 2030s, a decade earlier than previous research indicated.

“We do seem to be destined to see ice-free summers in the Arctic. That seems to be baked in at this point,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., who was not
associated with the study. “The question has always been when.”

Arctic sea ice follows an annual cycle, peaking in the unbroken darkness
of winter and then dwindling in the equally constant glare of summer.
Even if ice does dip below 1 million square kilometers in area at the
summer low in September — a threshold deemed to represent a basically ice-free ocean — that does not mean it won’t rebound quickly in the winter or persist through summer the next year. Much depends on weather.
But the warming of the Earth makes it easier for the ice to melt and
harder for it to rebound.

The impacts will be far-reaching, threatening communities, harming
ecosystems and exacerbating global warming, scientists said.

“The impacts are already upon us, and they are growing. You could still have a fair bit of sea ice out there in summer and have very important or tremendous impacts on fish species, phytoplankton blooms on the people of
the north,” Serreze said.

Without sea ice, the Arctic will also warm faster. Arctic ice sends solar radiation back to space, because bright ice reflects more than the dark ocean. If the ice melts, additional solar energy will be added to the
region, increasing planetary warming.

“Disappearing sea ice will add an enormous amount of additional solar energy to the Arctic,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate scientist
at the University of California at San Diego.

The authors of the study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications, compared years of satellite observations of Arctic ice to
10 existing climate models. The satellite imagery showed a starker loss
in Arctic ice than climate models projected, informing the authors’ predictions of an even faster decline, said Nathan Gillett, a climate scientist and one of the study’s authors.

The authors then ran the updated models under four potential scenarios
for greenhouse gas emissions. Under the best-case scenario, the Arctic
would be ice-free most Septembers by 2050. Under the worst-case scenario,
the Arctic would experience Septembers without ice by the 2030s. This
could grow to be several months without ice later in the century.

Gillett said reducing emissions will reduce how quickly ice is lost.

“Reducing emissions will limit warming,” he said. “It does make a difference as to how much ice we have.”

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

The ice that covers the Arctic reaches its low point each September, thanks to the warmth of the boreal summer. Since the end of the last century, the minimum is ever scarcer. According to NASA data, based on several of its satellites, the polar ice cap
has been decreasing at a rate of 12.6% every decade since 1980. But climate variability itself makes it difficult to know when the entire Arctic Ocean will be water. Now, a study supported by observations from NASA and ESA satellites and a sophisticated
climate model predicts that the first ice-free September will arrive between 2030 and 2050. And if greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are not reduced, by 2100 the Arctic region will be ice-free for almost half a year.

Until the beginning of the century, trying to navigate the Northwest Passage —which connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean through northern Canada)— was an adventure only possible in summertime and on board an icebreaker ship. The
situation was somewhat better in the Northeast Passage, through the far north of Russia, where ships could navigate a couple of months out of the year. Today, both routes are relatively safe in summer, so much so that there are now tourist cruises on old
icebreakers. But the Arctic Ocean resists circumnavigation. Even today, the Wandel Sea, the portion that connects to northern Greenland, remains frozen year-round. But according to a new study published today in the scientific journal Nature
Communications, ships could even reach this area and the very center of the North Pole in just a few years.

“We see that the Arctic Ocean will be free of ice in summer between 2030 and 2050 in all the emission scenarios that we consider,” says Seung-Ki Min, co-author of the study and researcher at the Climate Change Research Laboratory of the University of
Pohang, in South Korea, in an email. Future emission scenarios assume that the 2º of extra warming approved in the 2015 Paris Agreement will not be exceeded. This is the most optimistic scenario, so it seems that the thaw is inevitable. But it also
means that, as Min says, “we can avoid a summer ice-free Arctic if we can cut GHG emissions more aggressively, like the 1.5º warming alternative path.” The problem is that, according to various studies, this limit on the increase in global average
temperature has already been exceeded regionally. It could be exceeded globally in less than five years.

The study led by Min is based on the evolution of Arctic ice followed by various satellites, with data dating back to 1979 and up to 2019. One of the contributions of these 40 years of data is that, at least since the end of the 1990s, the polar cap
loses ice every month, not just in the summertime. Since the end of the last ice age, the annual cycle of the Arctic followed the same pattern: the extent of the Arctic sea ice reached its maximum extent between March and April, to decrease in the
following months, until its minimum between September and October, when it returned to start the cycle. But all the data indicates that the frozen portion of the ocean is getting smaller every March. It loses ice even in the coldest years.

“Previous work had looked at melting throughout the year, but our study confirms that the decline in Arctic sea ice in all months is mainly due to increases in human-induced greenhouse gases,” Min said. That is the study’s other major contribution:
the confirmation of human responsibility. The Sun’s rays and heat are what melt the Arctic sea ice. But there are agents that can mitigate or intensify the solar radiation. Volcanic emissions, a natural atmospheric, consists of particles that cool off
the atmosphere. Particles emitted from industry, cars and human heating also have their role. What the researchers have seen is that neither natural nor artificial particles are decisive: their cooling capacity cannot counteract the warming caused by
carbon dioxide (CO₂) and the rest of the GHG.

The deputy director of the Institute of Oceanography at the University of Hamburg, Dirk Notz, is one of the leading experts on Arctic ice dynamics. In fact, he was one of the main authors of the sixth and last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) and co-author of the section dedicated to the ocean, cryosphere and sea level. Notz is also a co-author of the new study on Arctic melting. He emphasizes humans’ responsibility: “We quantified the human impact on the massive
loss of sea ice observed in the Arctic by up to 90%. This means that almost all of the melting that we have observed in recent decades has been caused by us humans.”

The authors of the paper used the latest climate modeling system, known as CIMP6. It requires great computing power and is capable of running several climate models at the same time, with a huge amount of data. To validate their results about the future,
they compared those obtained by CIMP6 over the last 40 years and compared them with the real ones recorded by the satellites. “We saw that under all considered future scenarios, including the most optimistic scenario with substantial reductions in
greenhouse gas emissions, the Arctic will be ice-free in September before 2050. This means that it is already too late to continue to protect the Arctic summer sea ice as a landscape and as a habitat: it will be the first major component of our climate
system that we will lose due to our emissions.”

Although going beyond 2050 introduces more uncertainty, things will only get worse as the century progresses. The study predicts that, by 2100 and in the worst of the expected climate scenarios (in which GHGs are not reduced and the current rate of
emissions is maintained), the Arctic will be without ice between May and October. The consequences of half a year without an Arctic ice cap would be far-reaching.

Despite what it may seem, the melting ice will not lead to a rise in sea level: unlike the land ice accumulated in Greenland or Antarctica, the Arctic ice is already in the water. But so many months without ice will accelerate climate change: frozen
water has the largest albedo effect in nature after snow. That turns the North Pole into a giant mirror that reflects much of the solar radiation, cooling the region. But, thawed, a sea enriched by oxygen from fresh water darkens, absorbing more of the
sun’s energy. So the melting ice increases global warming.

The environmental consequences have already been observed since the beginning of the century. Many marine mammals, such as seals, need a minimum amount of ice to breed and rest; arctic foxes and bears require ice to hunt. In principle, an ice-free Arctic
Ocean for half the year could be good for the large marine mammals, the whales. But after the thaw, humans will arrive: shipping companies, mining companies, fishing boats, tourist cruises. The growing thaw is causing geopolitical reconfigurations that
could reshape a large part of the world order.

“An ice-free Arctic Ocean means that competition for resources (fishing, oil and gas exploration) and shipping along what China calls the Polar Silk Road could become a reality sooner than expected,” says Kristina Spohr, Professor of International
History at the London School of Economics. From Berlin, where she spoke on a panel on Russia, the war in Ukraine and the Arctic, Spohr says that “there will be more tension between what is considered international and national open waters.
International waters must be governed in a new way, but national waters and ports will pose security concerns and therefore we will see more militarization. It will also attract non-Arctic players such as investors in ports and other infrastructure and
mining resources (China, but also Japan, Singapore, South East Asia, India and European countries).”

For this geopolitics expert, “the melting of the Arctic and the thawing of the world order, due to climate change, the war in Ukraine and tectonic changes in the international balance of power, as China and Russia push for a multipolarity beyond the
rules imposed after the fall of the [Berlin] Wall, carries risks for the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, for the ecology, regional flora and fauna and the situation of the region in general.” The region, as Spohr recalls, “has been considered a
zone of exceptional peace since the late 1980s,” an area protected by ice.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

The report below carries no mention of what happens to the North and South poles when the ice, as it inevitably will, melts for the last time in this cycle.

It seems to be a little hysterical on the topic of the ice melting, perhaps
the doom and gloom helps keep the believers on the right path.


swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

The ice that covers the Arctic reaches its low point each September,
thanks to the warmth of the boreal summer. Since the end of the last
century, the minimum is ever scarcer. According to NASA data, based on several of its satellites, the polar ice cap has been decreasing at a
rate of 12.6% every decade since 1980. But climate variability itself
makes it difficult to know when the entire Arctic Ocean will be water.
Now, a study supported by observations from NASA and ESA satellites and a sophisticated climate model predicts that the first ice-free September
will arrive between 2030 and 2050. And if greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
are not reduced, by 2100 the Arctic region will be ice-free for almost half a year.

Until the beginning of the century, trying to navigate the Northwest
Passage —which connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean through northern Canada)— was an adventure only possible in summertime and on
board an icebreaker ship. The situation was somewhat better in the
Northeast Passage, through the far north of Russia, where ships could navigate a couple of months out of the year. Today, both routes are relatively safe in summer, so much so that there are now tourist cruises
on old icebreakers. But the Arctic Ocean resists circumnavigation. Even today, the Wandel Sea, the portion that connects to northern Greenland, remains frozen year-round. But according to a new study published today
in the scientific journal Nature Communications, ships could even reach
this area and the very center of the North Pole in just a few years.

“We see that the Arctic Ocean will be free of ice in summer between 2030 and 2050 in all the emission scenarios that we consider,” says Seung-Ki Min, co-author of the study and researcher at the Climate Change Research Laboratory of the University of Pohang, in South Korea, in an email.
Future emission scenarios assume that the 2º of extra warming approved in the 2015 Paris Agreement will not be exceeded. This is the most
optimistic scenario, so it seems that the thaw is inevitable. But it also means that, as Min says, “we can avoid a summer ice-free Arctic if we can cut GHG emissions more aggressively, like the 1.5º warming alternative path.” The problem is that, according to various studies, this limit on
the increase in global average temperature has already been exceeded regionally. It could be exceeded globally in less than five years.

The study led by Min is based on the evolution of Arctic ice followed by various satellites, with data dating back to 1979 and up to 2019. One of
the contributions of these 40 years of data is that, at least since the
end of the 1990s, the polar cap loses ice every month, not just in the summertime. Since the end of the last ice age, the annual cycle of the
Arctic followed the same pattern: the extent of the Arctic sea ice
reached its maximum extent between March and April, to decrease in the following months, until its minimum between September and October, when
it returned to start the cycle. But all the data indicates that the
frozen portion of the ocean is getting smaller every March. It loses ice
even in the coldest years.

“Previous work had looked at melting throughout the year, but our study confirms that the decline in Arctic sea ice in all months is mainly due
to increases in human-induced greenhouse gases,” Min said. That is the study’s other major contribution: the confirmation of human
responsibility. The Sun’s rays and heat are what melt the Arctic sea ice. But there are agents that can mitigate or intensify the solar radiation. Volcanic emissions, a natural atmospheric, consists of particles that
cool off the atmosphere. Particles emitted from industry, cars and human heating also have their role. What the researchers have seen is that
neither natural nor artificial particles are decisive: their cooling
capacity cannot counteract the warming caused by carbon dioxide (CO₂) and the rest of the GHG.

The deputy director of the Institute of Oceanography at the University of Hamburg, Dirk Notz, is one of the leading experts on Arctic ice dynamics.
In fact, he was one of the main authors of the sixth and last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and co-author of the
section dedicated to the ocean, cryosphere and sea level. Notz is also a co-author of the new study on Arctic melting. He emphasizes humans’ responsibility: “We quantified the human impact on the massive loss of
sea ice observed in the Arctic by up to 90%. This means that almost all
of the melting that we have observed in recent decades has been caused by us humans.”

The authors of the paper used the latest climate modeling system, known
as CIMP6. It requires great computing power and is capable of running
several climate models at the same time, with a huge amount of data. To validate their results about the future, they compared those obtained by CIMP6 over the last 40 years and compared them with the real ones
recorded by the satellites. “We saw that under all considered future scenarios, including the most optimistic scenario with substantial
reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the Arctic will be ice-free in September before 2050. This means that it is already too late to continue
to protect the Arctic summer sea ice as a landscape and as a habitat: it
will be the first major component of our climate system that we will lose
due to our emissions.”

Although going beyond 2050 introduces more uncertainty, things will only
get worse as the century progresses. The study predicts that, by 2100 and
in the worst of the expected climate scenarios (in which GHGs are not
reduced and the current rate of emissions is maintained), the Arctic will
be without ice between May and October. The consequences of half a year without an Arctic ice cap would be far-reaching.

Despite what it may seem, the melting ice will not lead to a rise in sea level: unlike the land ice accumulated in Greenland or Antarctica, the
Arctic ice is already in the water. But so many months without ice will accelerate climate change: frozen water has the largest albedo effect in nature after snow. That turns the North Pole into a giant mirror that reflects much of the solar radiation, cooling the region. But, thawed, a
sea enriched by oxygen from fresh water darkens, absorbing more of the sun’s energy. So the melting ice increases global warming.

The environmental consequences have already been observed since the
beginning of the century. Many marine mammals, such as seals, need a
minimum amount of ice to breed and rest; arctic foxes and bears require
ice to hunt. In principle, an ice-free Arctic Ocean for half the year
could be good for the large marine mammals, the whales. But after the
thaw, humans will arrive: shipping companies, mining companies, fishing boats, tourist cruises. The growing thaw is causing geopolitical reconfigurations that could reshape a large part of the world order.

“An ice-free Arctic Ocean means that competition for resources (fishing, oil and gas exploration) and shipping along what China calls the Polar
Silk Road could become a reality sooner than expected,” says Kristina Spohr, Professor of International History at the London School of
Economics. From Berlin, where she spoke on a panel on Russia, the war in Ukraine and the Arctic, Spohr says that “there will be more tension
between what is considered international and national open waters. International waters must be governed in a new way, but national waters
and ports will pose security concerns and therefore we will see more militarization. It will also attract non-Arctic players such as investors
in ports and other infrastructure and mining resources (China, but also Japan, Singapore, South East Asia, India and European countries).”

For this geopolitics expert, “the melting of the Arctic and the thawing
of the world order, due to climate change, the war in Ukraine and
tectonic changes in the international balance of power, as China and
Russia push for a multipolarity beyond the rules imposed after the fall
of the [Berlin] Wall, carries risks for the indigenous peoples of the
Arctic, for the ecology, regional flora and fauna and the situation of
the region in general.” The region, as Spohr recalls, “has been considered a zone of exceptional peace since the late 1980s,” an area protected by ice.

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Dramatic changes to the polar ice caps caused by climate change are being reflected in a new edition map of Antarctica and the Arctic.

Produced by cartographers at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the flagship printed map needs updating regularly to keep track of the rapidly changing environments.

The new edition - with Antarctica on one side and the Arctic on the reverse - contains brand new sea ice extent data, updated towns and airports in the Arctic, and new ice shelf outlines in Antarctica after the recent calving of giant icebergs.

The Arctic map covers all land and ocean north of 60°N and has been refreshed, with every piece of information having been updated or checked.

The map now reflects the indigenous names of many towns in the Canadian Arctic including Sanirajak and Naujaat.

Physical changes include new ice fronts reflecting the retreat of many large glaciers flowing out from Greenland and Svalbard, and changes to lake extents as the landscapes around them adapt.

BAS cartographer Elena Field, who contributed to the map, said: "The Polar Regions are changing quickly, both from the effects of climate change and improved infrastructure and transport routes, so we need to frequently update these maps to keep up.

"In addition, better data on the geography from satellite imagery, gives us a bird's eye view of the continent, which has now been mapped better than ever before.")

The maps are complEmented by four inset maps showing permafrost and land cover which are important and fast-changing aspects of the Arctic landscape, and both sides have maps showing sea ice extent.

They show the 30-year average sea ice extent although these extents are changing year-on-year, especially in the Arctic.

A new recent 10-year average to compare against the 30-year average has been produced.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

In 1966, US Army scientists drilled down through nearly a mile of ice in northwestern Greenland -- and pulled up a fifteen-foot-long tube of dirt
from the bottom. Then this frozen sediment was lost in a freezer for
decades. It was accidentally rediscovered in 2017.

In 2019, University of Vermont scientist Andrew Christ looked at it through
his microscope -- and couldn't believe what he was seeing: twigs and leaves instead of just sand and rock. That suggested that the ice was gone in the recent geologic past -- and that a vegetated landscape, perhaps a boreal forest, stood where a mile-deep ice sheet as big as Alaska stands today.

Over the last year, Christ and an international team of scientists -- led
by Paul Bierman at UVM, Joerg Schaefer at Columbia University and Dorthe Dahl-Jensen at the University of Copenhagen -- have studied these
one-of-a-kind fossil plants and sediment from the bottom of Greenland.
Their results show that most, or all, of Greenland must have been ice-free within the last million years, perhaps even the last few hundred-thousand years.

"Ice sheets typically pulverize and destroy everything in their path," says Christ, "but what we discovered was delicate plant structures -- perfectly preserved. They're fossils, but they look like they died yesterday. It's a
time capsule of what used to live on Greenland that we wouldn't be able to
find anywhere else."

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

Dramatic changes to the polar ice caps caused by climate change are being reflected in a new edition map of Antarctica and the Arctic.

Produced by cartographers at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the
flagship printed map needs updating regularly to keep track of the
rapidly changing environments.

The new edition - with Antarctica on one side and the Arctic on the
reverse - contains brand new sea ice extent data, updated towns and
airports in the Arctic, and new ice shelf outlines in Antarctica after
the recent calving of giant icebergs.

The Arctic map covers all land and ocean north of 60°N and has been refreshed, with every piece of information having been updated or checked.

The map now reflects the indigenous names of many towns in the Canadian Arctic including Sanirajak and Naujaat.

Physical changes include new ice fronts reflecting the retreat of many
large glaciers flowing out from Greenland and Svalbard, and changes to
lake extents as the landscapes around them adapt.

BAS cartographer Elena Field, who contributed to the map, said: "The
Polar Regions are changing quickly, both from the effects of climate
change and improved infrastructure and transport routes, so we need to frequently update these maps to keep up.

"In addition, better data on the geography from satellite imagery, gives
us a bird's eye view of the continent, which has now been mapped better than ever before.")

The maps are complEmented by four inset maps showing permafrost and land cover which are important and fast-changing aspects of the Arctic
landscape, and both sides have maps showing sea ice extent.

They show the 30-year average sea ice extent although these extents are changing year-on-year, especially in the Arctic.

A new recent 10-year average to compare against the 30-year average has been produced.

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

— The Arctic could be free of sea ice roughly a decade earlier than projected, scientists warn – another clear sign the climate crisis is happening faster than expected as the world continues to pump out planet-heating pollution.

A new study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications found Arctic sea ice could disappear completely during the month of September as early as the 2030s. Even if the world makes significant cuts to planet-heating pollution today, the Arctic
could still see summers free of sea ice by the 2050s, scientists reported.

The researchers analyzed changes from 1979 to 2019, comparing different satellite data and climate models to assess how Arctic sea ice was changing.

They found that declining sea ice was largely the result of human-caused, planet-heating pollution, and previous models had underestimated Arctic sea ice melting trends.

“We were surprised to find that an ice-free Arctic will be there in summer irrespective of our effort at reducing emissions, which was not expected,” Seung-Ki Min, lead author of the study and professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology
in South Korea, told CNN.

Arctic ice builds up during the winter and then melts in the summer, typically reaching its lowest levels in September, before the cycle begins again.

Ice in Svalbard, Norway, April 6, 2023. This part of the Arctic is warming up to seven times faster than the global average. (Lisi Niesner/Reuters)

Once Arctic summers become ice-free, the buildup of sea ice in the colder seasons will be much slower, Min said. The warmer it gets, the more likely the Arctic is to stay free of sea ice further into the colder season.

Under a “higher emissions pathway” – in which the world continues to burn fossil fuels and levels of planet-warming pollution continue to rise – the study projects the Arctic will see a complete loss of sea ice from August until as late as
October before the 2080s, Min said.

The study’s findings contrast with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2021 state-of-the-science report, which found the Arctic would be “be practically ice-free near mid-century under intermediate and high greenhouse gas emissions
scenarios.”

This new study shows it could happen 10 years earlier, regardless of emission scenarios, Min said.

Over the past several decades, the Arctic has warmed four times faster than the rest of the world, a 2022 study showed. There has already been a rapid loss of sea ice in the region, with September sea ice shrinking at a rate of 12.6% per decade,
according to NASA.

An Arctic with no summer sea ice would send dire ripple effects around the world. The bright white ice reflects solar energy away from the Earth. When this ice melts, it exposes the darker ocean, which absorbs more heat causing additional warming – a
feedback process called “Arctic amplification.”

Arctic sea ice close the coast of Svalbard, Norway, April 5, 2023. (Lisi Niesner/Reuters)

The decline of sea ice can also have an effect on global weather stretching well beyond the Arctic.

“We need to prepare ourselves for a world with warmer Arctic very soon,” Min said. “Since Arctic warming is suggested to bring weather extremes like heatwaves, wildfires, and floods on Northern mid- and high latitudes, the earlier onset of an ice-
free Arctic also implies that we will be experiencing extreme events faster than predicted.”

A sea ice-free Arctic could also lead to an increase in commercial shipping as new routes open up, which would have a knock-on effect. According to last year’s annual Arctic report card by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a surge in
shipping traffic would lead to more emissions and pollution in the region.

Mika Rantanen, researcher with the Finnish Meteorological Institute and lead author of the 2022 study, told CNN the study published Tuesday benefited from “novel and state-of-the-art methodology” to predict when the Arctic will be ice-free.

“The methodology is very careful and brings a high degree of certainty in the attribution,” said Rantanen, who was not involved in the study. “The most striking result is not that the sea ice loss is attributed to greenhouse gas increases, which
was already largely known, but that they project ice-free Arctic earlier than previously thought by about decade.”

Min said the findings show that the Arctic is on the verge of becoming “seriously ill,” and that the region has reached a “tipping point.”

“We can regard the Arctic sea ice as the immune system of our body which protects our body from harmful things,” Min said. “Without the protector, the Arctic’s condition will go from bad to worse quickly.”

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

We’re half way through an interglacial (= warm period), during which
millions of years of history tells us that the Arctic will become
grasslands and forests, before the next Ice Age sets in and drives all
humans down towards the Tropics if not Equator. All the warming over that timescale done without human activity.

That scientists got the rate of melting wrong merely goes to show that they have little grasp of the complexity of the issue.

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

— The Arctic could be free of sea ice roughly a decade earlier than projected, scientists warn – another clear sign the climate crisis is happening faster than expected as the world continues to pump out planet-heating pollution.

A new study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications found Arctic sea ice could disappear completely during the month of September
as early as the 2030s. Even if the world makes significant cuts to planet-heating pollution today, the Arctic could still see summers free
of sea ice by the 2050s, scientists reported.

The researchers analyzed changes from 1979 to 2019, comparing different satellite data and climate models to assess how Arctic sea ice was changing.

They found that declining sea ice was largely the result of human-caused, planet-heating pollution, and previous models had underestimated Arctic
sea ice melting trends.

“We were surprised to find that an ice-free Arctic will be there in
summer irrespective of our effort at reducing emissions, which was not expected,” Seung-Ki Min, lead author of the study and professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea, told CNN.

Arctic ice builds up during the winter and then melts in the summer, typically reaching its lowest levels in September, before the cycle begins again.

Ice in Svalbard, Norway, April 6, 2023. This part of the Arctic is
warming up to seven times faster than the global average. (Lisi Niesner/Reuters)

Once Arctic summers become ice-free, the buildup of sea ice in the colder seasons will be much slower, Min said. The warmer it gets, the more
likely the Arctic is to stay free of sea ice further into the colder season.

Under a “higher emissions pathway” – in which the world continues to burn
fossil fuels and levels of planet-warming pollution continue to rise –
the study projects the Arctic will see a complete loss of sea ice from
August until as late as October before the 2080s, Min said.

The study’s findings contrast with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2021 state-of-the-science report, which found the Arctic would be “be practically ice-free near mid-century under intermediate and high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios.”

This new study shows it could happen 10 years earlier, regardless of
emission scenarios, Min said.

Over the past several decades, the Arctic has warmed four times faster
than the rest of the world, a 2022 study showed. There has already been a rapid loss of sea ice in the region, with September sea ice shrinking at
a rate of 12.6% per decade, according to NASA.

An Arctic with no summer sea ice would send dire ripple effects around
the world. The bright white ice reflects solar energy away from the
Earth. When this ice melts, it exposes the darker ocean, which absorbs
more heat causing additional warming – a feedback process called “Arctic amplification.”

Arctic sea ice close the coast of Svalbard, Norway, April 5, 2023. (Lisi Niesner/Reuters)

The decline of sea ice can also have an effect on global weather
stretching well beyond the Arctic.

“We need to prepare ourselves for a world with warmer Arctic very soon,” Min said. “Since Arctic warming is suggested to bring weather extremes
like heatwaves, wildfires, and floods on Northern mid- and high
latitudes, the earlier onset of an ice-free Arctic also implies that we
will be experiencing extreme events faster than predicted.”

A sea ice-free Arctic could also lead to an increase in commercial
shipping as new routes open up, which would have a knock-on effect.
According to last year’s annual Arctic report card by the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a surge in shipping traffic would lead to more emissions and pollution in the region.

Mika Rantanen, researcher with the Finnish Meteorological Institute and
lead author of the 2022 study, told CNN the study published Tuesday
benefited from “novel and state-of-the-art methodology” to predict when the Arctic will be ice-free.

“The methodology is very careful and brings a high degree of certainty in the attribution,” said Rantanen, who was not involved in the study. “The most striking result is not that the sea ice loss is attributed to
greenhouse gas increases, which was already largely known, but that they project ice-free Arctic earlier than previously thought by about decade.”

Min said the findings show that the Arctic is on the verge of becoming “seriously ill,” and that the region has reached a “tipping point.”

“We can regard the Arctic sea ice as the immune system of our body which protects our body from harmful things,” Min said. “Without the protector, the Arctic’s condition will go from bad to worse quickly.”

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean might be a thing of the past by the 2030s, no matter what we do to curb emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, an international study released Tuesday suggests.

In fact, an ice-free Arctic each September is likely already "baked" into Earth's climate system, according to study lead author Seung-Ki Min of the Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea.

"We found ice-free conditions will occur even in a low-emission scenario," Min told USA TODAY. Min and his co-authors used computer models to predict what will happen to the Arctic as the Earth's temperature rises over the next several decades.

The new study, published in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature Communications, adjusted the models, scaling them based on data collected year-round. The authors said their results show emissions are having "profound impacts" on the Arctic and that
previous computer modeling studies have "significantly" underestimated the trend in sea ice decline in the region.

Sea ice is frozen ocean water that melts each summer, then refreezes each winter. Sea ice in the Arctic has been declining for years, particularly during September, when it generally reaches its lowest coverage of the year. And previous international
research projected it would be virtually ice-free by late in the century if higher greenhouse gas emissions continued unabated.

Arctic sea ice has been declining rapidly throughout all seasons in recent decades, and there has been an increased decline since 2000, the study said.

Sea ice affects Arctic communities and wildlife such as polar bears and walruses, and it helps regulate the planet’s temperature by influencing the circulation of the atmosphere and ocean.
Human impact on sea ice decline

The human impact on declining sea ice in the Arctic can be seen throughout the year and can be largely attributed to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of oil, gas and coal. The contributions of aerosols and natural factors (such
as solar and volcanic activity) were found to be much lower, according to the study.

The authors project that the Arctic may be sea-ice-free in September by 2030–2050 under all emission scenarios. This contrasts with previous assessments discussed in the sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that did
not project a future sea-ice-free Arctic in summer under low emissions.

Fact check: Arctic sea ice declining overall, though level varies by year and season
Will the Arctic be 'completely' ice-free by the 2030s?

Not quite. Scientists in the study say there will still be some summer sea ice left in parts of the Arctic Ocean. What scientists refer to as the first "ice-free" Arctic summer year will occur when the Arctic has less than 386,000 square miles of sea ice.
(The thick ice sheets surrounding Canada’s Arctic islands are likely to remain for much longer, even in summer.)

Min told USA TODAY that an ice-free Arctic will "induce faster and stronger Arctic warming" and that "warming may increase extreme weather events."

"Based on recent studies, stronger Arctic warming ... is expected to induce changes in atmospheric circulations," he said. "For example, causing more fluctuations of jet streams in the Northern Hemisphere, potentially increasing chances of heat waves,
wildfires, cold snaps and heavy rainfall events over the northern midlatitude lands, including North America, Europe and Asia."

Current collapse: Study warns critical ocean current is nearing 'collapse.' That would be a global disaster.
What does this mean for the people and animals who live in the Arctic?

Arctic indigenous communities will be affected because their hunting and traveling depend upon ice-free conditions, according to Min. He said animals that depend on sea ice will also be strongly affected: "As Arctic warming is enhanced, permafrost will
also melt earlier and many species, including polar bears, walruses and reindeer, will have trouble surviving."

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

QUOTE

Summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean might be a thing of the past by the
2030s, no matter what we do to curb emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, an international study released Tuesday suggests.

"We found ice-free conditions will occur even in a low-emission scenario,"
Min told USA TODAY.

Min and his co-authors used computer models to predict what will happen to
the Arctic as the Earth's temperature rises over the next several decades.

ENDQUOTE

"We found ice-free conditions will occur even in a low-emission scenario”

…which is EXACTLY what has happened in the previous interglacials, when
there weren’t any humans…

Mswldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

Summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean might be a thing of the past by the
2030s, no matter what we do to curb emissions of the greenhouse gases
that cause global warming, an international study released Tuesday suggests.

In fact, an ice-free Arctic each September is likely already "baked" into Earth's climate system, according to study lead author Seung-Ki Min of
the Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea.

"We found ice-free conditions will occur even in a low-emission
scenario," Min told USA TODAY. Min and his co-authors used computer
models to predict what will happen to the Arctic as the Earth's
temperature rises over the next several decades.

The new study, published in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature Communications, adjusted the models, scaling them based on data collected year-round. The authors said their results show emissions are having "profound impacts" on the Arctic and that previous computer modeling
studies have "significantly" underestimated the trend in sea ice decline in the region.

Sea ice is frozen ocean water that melts each summer, then refreezes each winter. Sea ice in the Arctic has been declining for years, particularly during September, when it generally reaches its lowest coverage of the
year. And previous international research projected it would be virtually ice-free by late in the century if higher greenhouse gas emissions continued unabated.

Arctic sea ice has been declining rapidly throughout all seasons in
recent decades, and there has been an increased decline since 2000, the study said.

Sea ice affects Arctic communities and wildlife such as polar bears and walruses, and it helps regulate the planet’s temperature by influencing
the circulation of the atmosphere and ocean.
Human impact on sea ice decline

The human impact on declining sea ice in the Arctic can be seen
throughout the year and can be largely attributed to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of oil, gas and coal. The contributions of aerosols and natural factors (such as solar and volcanic activity) were found to be much lower, according to the study.

The authors project that the Arctic may be sea-ice-free in September by 2030–2050 under all emission scenarios. This contrasts with previous assessments discussed in the sixth assessment report of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that did not project a future sea-ice-free Arctic in summer under low emissions.

Fact check: Arctic sea ice declining overall, though level varies by year and season
Will the Arctic be 'completely' ice-free by the 2030s?

Not quite. Scientists in the study say there will still be some summer
sea ice left in parts of the Arctic Ocean. What scientists refer to as
the first "ice-free" Arctic summer year will occur when the Arctic has
less than 386,000 square miles of sea ice. (The thick ice sheets
surrounding Canada’s Arctic islands are likely to remain for much longer, even in summer.)

Min told USA TODAY that an ice-free Arctic will "induce faster and
stronger Arctic warming" and that "warming may increase extreme weather events."

"Based on recent studies, stronger Arctic warming ... is expected to
induce changes in atmospheric circulations," he said. "For example,
causing more fluctuations of jet streams in the Northern Hemisphere, potentially increasing chances of heat waves, wildfires, cold snaps and
heavy rainfall events over the northern midlatitude lands, including
North America, Europe and Asia."

Current collapse: Study warns critical ocean current is nearing
'collapse.' That would be a global disaster.
What does this mean for the people and animals who live in the Arctic?

Arctic indigenous communities will be affected because their hunting and traveling depend upon ice-free conditions, according to Min. He said
animals that depend on sea ice will also be strongly affected: "As Arctic warming is enhanced, permafrost will also melt earlier and many species, including polar bears, walruses and reindeer, will have trouble surviving."

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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QUOTE: The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost an average of 279 billion tons of ice per year between 1993 and 2019, while Antarctica lost about 148
billion tons of ice per year. ENDS

Gammon army : "NASA faked the Moon landings so fake news".

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

QUOTE: The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass.
Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland
lost an average of 279 billion tons of ice per year between 1993 and
2019, while Antarctica lost about 148 billion tons of ice per year. ENDS

Gammon army : "NASA faked the Moon landings so fake news".

Nothing fake about it. Loss of ice from the polar regions during
interglacial periods is a very well known phenomenon. Grasslands and trees
will replace the ice, until the next ice age begins, starting the cycle
once again. Why do you think Greenland is so called?

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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An alarming new study warns that the Arctic is rapidly heading towards ice-free summers, a scenario previously thought to be avoidable. Even with significant efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, scientists predict that the polar region will
experience its first summer without sea ice as early as 2030.

This research, just published in the journal Nature Communications, paints a grim picture of the future of Arctic Sea ice, which has been witnessing an accelerated shrinkage over the last two decades.

“The Arctic summer sea ice is past the point of no return,” said Professor Dirk Notz of the University of Hamburg, Germany, a member of the research team.
Arctic ice has been declining for decades

Arctic ice, which follows a cycle of accumulation during the winter and melting in the summer, reaching its lowest levels in September, has been gradually decreasing for decades. But the rate of this decrease has dramatically sped up in the past 20 years.

Notably, the new findings contradict the latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC report had previously estimated that the Arctic would be practically ice-free in September around mid-century if we failed
to curb emissions. But the new study suggests the ice loss is happening at a much faster pace.

The research team, comprising scientists from South Korea, Canada, and Germany, relied on satellite observations of Arctic Sea ice over the last 40 years and the best climate models to analyze the rate of ice loss. They primarily attribute the loss to
greenhouse gas emissions.

Study lead author Professor Seung-Ki Min of Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea expressed surprise at the inevitable loss of Arctic summer sea ice, irrespective of our emission reduction efforts.
Number of Ice-free Arctic months will continue to increase

Once the Arctic summers become ice-free, the winter buildup of sea ice will slow down significantly, warns Min. As temperatures rise, the Arctic will likely stay free of sea ice further into the colder season.

Under the scenario of continued fossil fuel usage and increasing planet-warming pollution, also known as the “higher emissions pathway,” the study predicts the Arctic could lose all sea ice from August until as late as October before the 2080s.

Professor Notz noted that scientists have been cautioning about the loss of Arctic summer sea ice for decades. This loss represents the first significant casualty of the Earth system due to global warming. “People didn’t listen to our warnings,”
said Notz.

The situation in the Arctic is especially ugent, given that it has warmed four times faster than the rest of the world over the past several decades, according to a 2022 study. NASA data reveals that annual September sea ice is shrinking at a rate of 12.
6 percent per decade.
Impact will be felt around the world

The repercussions of an ice-free Arctic will be felt globally. The bright white ice currently reflects solar energy away from the Earth, but once it melts, the darker ocean surface will absorb more heat, leading to further warming – a feedback loop
known as “Arctic amplification.” Additionally, the diminishing sea ice could disrupt global weather patterns far beyond the Arctic region.

“We need to brace for a warmer Arctic very soon,” said Min. He suggests that Arctic warming could trigger weather extremes such as heatwaves, wildfires, and floods in Northern mid- and high latitudes. The earlier onset of an ice-free Arctic also
means that these extreme events will occur sooner than anticipated.

An ice-free Arctic could also catalyze an increase in commercial shipping, leading to more emissions and pollution in the region. Min compared the Arctic sea ice to the body’s immune system, emphasizing that, without this protector, the Arctic’s
condition could rapidly deteriorate. The study suggests that the Arctic has reached a worrying “tipping point,” and the region is on the verge of becoming “seriously ill.”

Mika Rantanen, a researcher with the Finnish Meteorological Institute and lead author of the 2022 study, praises the methodology of the newly published research. Rantanen, not involved in this particular study, said it benefited from “novel and state-
of-the-art methodology” to predict when the Arctic will be ice-free.

Rantanen said the research brings a high degree of certainty in attributing the sea ice loss to increased greenhouse gases. The striking result isn’t just the link between sea ice loss and greenhouse gas increases, which has already been largely
established, but the prediction of an ice-free Arctic a decade earlier than previously expected, explained Rantanen.
The Arctic has officially reached a tipping point

In light of these findings, it’s clear that the situation in the Arctic is dire, and the region has reached a tipping point. The Arctic Sea ice, much like an immune system that protects against harmful influences, is in jeopardy. “Without the
protector, the Arctic’s condition will go from bad to worse quickly,” said Min.

This new research is a sobering reminder that our planet’s northernmost region is undergoing rapid change, which will undoubtedly have far-reaching consequences. The predictions suggest not just an environmental catastrophe but also the potential for
geopolitical and economic shifts as new shipping routes open up.

As scientists continue to monitor these changes and their implications, one message is clear: the world needs to act decisively to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. The fate of the Arctic sea ice may be sealed, but there are still many
climate battles to be fought, and won. The key is to listen to the warnings of scientists and turn them into policies and practices that protect our planet’s fragile ecosystems.
More about the Arctic Sea ice melt

Arctic sea ice is a critical part of our planet’s ecosystem, and its rapid decline due to climate change can have far-reaching implications.

Firstly, it’s essential to understand that the Arctic sea ice behaves like a gigantic mirror. It reflects about 80% of the sunlight that reaches it back into space, helping to keep the planet cool. This phenomenon is known as the albedo effect.

However, as the ice melts, it reveals the darker ocean surface, which absorbs around 90% of the sunlight, turning it into heat and contributing to global warming. This is a feedback loop known as “Arctic amplification.” The more the ice melts, the
more sunlight gets absorbed, leading to more warming and further melting of the ice – a vicious cycle that accelerates climate change.
Rising sea levels

The melting of Arctic sea ice also contributes to rising sea levels. While the melting of sea ice itself doesn’t contribute directly to sea level rise—since it is already floating on the ocean and displaces an equivalent volume of water—melting ice
on land, such as the Greenland ice sheet, does.

As Arctic temperatures rise, the rate of melt from these ice sheets increases, which can significantly contribute to global sea level rise and pose a threat to coastal communities.
Disruption of weather patterns

Changes in Arctic sea ice can disrupt weather patterns far beyond the Arctic region. Some researchers suggest that the warming Arctic is causing shifts in the jet stream, a band of high-altitude wind that influences weather patterns. These shifts could
potentially lead to more frequent and severe weather events, such as heatwaves, droughts, and storms, in parts of North America, Europe, and Asia.
Geopolitical implications

An ice-free Arctic could also have significant geopolitical implications. New shipping routes would open up as ice recedes, potentially leading to disputes over rights to these passages and access to untapped natural resources beneath the Arctic Ocean.
While this might be seen as a commercial opportunity, increased shipping and exploration could lead to more emissions and pollution in an already fragile environment.
Significant disruption to ecosystems

Furthermore, Arctic ecosystems will be significantly affected. Polar bears, seals, and several species of birds rely on sea ice for their habitat and hunting grounds. As ice recedes, these species face the threat of extinction. Indigenous people who rely
on these animals for their sustenance and whose culture is intimately tied to the ice will also be profoundly affected.

The rapid decline of Arctic sea ice is a bellwether for global warming. It’s a tangible, visible indicator of climate change that underscores the urgent need for climate action. The impacts of its loss will be felt worldwide, affecting everything from
global weather patterns to ecosystems to human communities.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

The Arctic is turning increasingly foggy, driven by climate change. A recent study looked at Arctic weather records from 1979 to 2018 and found the seas have been growing foggier, especially near newly open areas of water.

The disappearance of ice changes the moisture content in the very lowest part of the atmosphere and this leaves a narrow layer of moist air at the sea surface: with so much extra water vapour at the surface, this leaves vast tracts of iceless ocean that
become extremely prone to fog.

The fog is a particular problem for new shipping routes opening up in the Arctic over the summer between Europe and Asia. As ice cover shrinks by about 14% each decade, sea traffic has increased over the past 20 years with more commercial fishing
trawlers, bulk carriers, tourist cruise ships and other vessels. And in foggy conditions, ships have to slow down to avoid hidden chunks of submerged ice, which remain a major hazard.

Shipping itself also risks serious pollution, threatening the delicate polar environment. Heavy oil fuel spills can persist for weeks or longer in cold seas, and ships release high concentrations of hazardous air pollution such as black carbon soot, and
marine wildlife is threatened, especially marine mammals that are vulnerable to underwater noise and collisions with vessels.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

“An alarming new study warns that the Arctic is rapidly heading towards ice-free summers, a scenario previously thought to be avoidable”

So the ‘thinking’ was wrong. Critics have been saying that for decades.

No surprises there, then.

Do you remember the forecast that the Maldives would be under water by
2015?

How did that work out?


swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

An alarming new study warns that the Arctic is rapidly heading towards ice-free summers, a scenario previously thought to be avoidable. Even
with significant efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, scientists
predict that the polar region will experience its first summer without
sea ice as early as 2030.

This research, just published in the journal Nature Communications,
paints a grim picture of the future of Arctic Sea ice, which has been witnessing an accelerated shrinkage over the last two decades.

“The Arctic summer sea ice is past the point of no return,” said Professor Dirk Notz of the University of Hamburg, Germany, a member of the research team.
Arctic ice has been declining for decades

Arctic ice, which follows a cycle of accumulation during the winter and melting in the summer, reaching its lowest levels in September, has been gradually decreasing for decades. But the rate of this decrease has dramatically sped up in the past 20 years.

Notably, the new findings contradict the latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC report had previously estimated that the Arctic would be practically ice-free in September around mid-century if we failed to curb emissions. But the new study suggests the ice loss is happening at a much faster pace.

The research team, comprising scientists from South Korea, Canada, and Germany, relied on satellite observations of Arctic Sea ice over the last
40 years and the best climate models to analyze the rate of ice loss.
They primarily attribute the loss to greenhouse gas emissions.

Study lead author Professor Seung-Ki Min of Pohang University of Science
and Technology in South Korea expressed surprise at the inevitable loss
of Arctic summer sea ice, irrespective of our emission reduction efforts. Number of Ice-free Arctic months will continue to increase

Once the Arctic summers become ice-free, the winter buildup of sea ice
will slow down significantly, warns Min. As temperatures rise, the Arctic will likely stay free of sea ice further into the colder season.

Under the scenario of continued fossil fuel usage and increasing planet-warming pollution, also known as the “higher emissions pathway,” the study predicts the Arctic could lose all sea ice from August until as late as October before the 2080s.

Professor Notz noted that scientists have been cautioning about the loss
of Arctic summer sea ice for decades. This loss represents the first significant casualty of the Earth system due to global warming. “People didn’t listen to our warnings,” said Notz.

The situation in the Arctic is especially ugent, given that it has warmed four times faster than the rest of the world over the past several
decades, according to a 2022 study. NASA data reveals that annual
September sea ice is shrinking at a rate of 12.6 percent per decade.
Impact will be felt around the world

The repercussions of an ice-free Arctic will be felt globally. The bright white ice currently reflects solar energy away from the Earth, but once
it melts, the darker ocean surface will absorb more heat, leading to
further warming – a feedback loop known as “Arctic amplification.” Additionally, the diminishing sea ice could disrupt global weather
patterns far beyond the Arctic region.

“We need to brace for a warmer Arctic very soon,” said Min. He suggests that Arctic warming could trigger weather extremes such as heatwaves, wildfires, and floods in Northern mid- and high latitudes. The earlier
onset of an ice-free Arctic also means that these extreme events will
occur sooner than anticipated.

An ice-free Arctic could also catalyze an increase in commercial
shipping, leading to more emissions and pollution in the region. Min
compared the Arctic sea ice to the body’s immune system, emphasizing
that, without this protector, the Arctic’s condition could rapidly deteriorate. The study suggests that the Arctic has reached a worrying “tipping point,” and the region is on the verge of becoming “seriously ill.”

Mika Rantanen, a researcher with the Finnish Meteorological Institute and lead author of the 2022 study, praises the methodology of the newly
published research. Rantanen, not involved in this particular study, said
it benefited from “novel and state-of-the-art methodology” to predict when the Arctic will be ice-free.

Rantanen said the research brings a high degree of certainty in
attributing the sea ice loss to increased greenhouse gases. The striking result isn’t just the link between sea ice loss and greenhouse gas increases, which has already been largely established, but the prediction
of an ice-free Arctic a decade earlier than previously expected, explained Rantanen.
The Arctic has officially reached a tipping point

In light of these findings, it’s clear that the situation in the Arctic
is dire, and the region has reached a tipping point. The Arctic Sea ice,
much like an immune system that protects against harmful influences, is
in jeopardy. “Without the protector, the Arctic’s condition will go from bad to worse quickly,” said Min.

This new research is a sobering reminder that our planet’s northernmost region is undergoing rapid change, which will undoubtedly have
far-reaching consequences. The predictions suggest not just an
environmental catastrophe but also the potential for geopolitical and economic shifts as new shipping routes open up.

As scientists continue to monitor these changes and their implications,
one message is clear: the world needs to act decisively to mitigate the
worst effects of climate change. The fate of the Arctic sea ice may be sealed, but there are still many climate battles to be fought, and won.
The key is to listen to the warnings of scientists and turn them into policies and practices that protect our planet’s fragile ecosystems.
More about the Arctic Sea ice melt

Arctic sea ice is a critical part of our planet’s ecosystem, and its
rapid decline due to climate change can have far-reaching implications.

Firstly, it’s essential to understand that the Arctic sea ice behaves
like a gigantic mirror. It reflects about 80% of the sunlight that
reaches it back into space, helping to keep the planet cool. This
phenomenon is known as the albedo effect.

However, as the ice melts, it reveals the darker ocean surface, which
absorbs around 90% of the sunlight, turning it into heat and contributing
to global warming. This is a feedback loop known as “Arctic amplification.” The more the ice melts, the more sunlight gets absorbed, leading to more warming and further melting of the ice – a vicious cycle that accelerates climate change.
Rising sea levels

The melting of Arctic sea ice also contributes to rising sea levels.
While the melting of sea ice itself doesn’t contribute directly to sea level rise—since it is already floating on the ocean and displaces an equivalent volume of water—melting ice on land, such as the Greenland ice sheet, does.

As Arctic temperatures rise, the rate of melt from these ice sheets increases, which can significantly contribute to global sea level rise
and pose a threat to coastal communities.
Disruption of weather patterns

Changes in Arctic sea ice can disrupt weather patterns far beyond the
Arctic region. Some researchers suggest that the warming Arctic is
causing shifts in the jet stream, a band of high-altitude wind that influences weather patterns. These shifts could potentially lead to more frequent and severe weather events, such as heatwaves, droughts, and
storms, in parts of North America, Europe, and Asia.
Geopolitical implications

An ice-free Arctic could also have significant geopolitical implications.
New shipping routes would open up as ice recedes, potentially leading to disputes over rights to these passages and access to untapped natural resources beneath the Arctic Ocean. While this might be seen as a
commercial opportunity, increased shipping and exploration could lead to
more emissions and pollution in an already fragile environment.
Significant disruption to ecosystems

Furthermore, Arctic ecosystems will be significantly affected. Polar
bears, seals, and several species of birds rely on sea ice for their
habitat and hunting grounds. As ice recedes, these species face the
threat of extinction. Indigenous people who rely on these animals for
their sustenance and whose culture is intimately tied to the ice will
also be profoundly affected.

The rapid decline of Arctic sea ice is a bellwether for global warming. It’s a tangible, visible indicator of climate change that underscores the urgent need for climate action. The impacts of its loss will be felt worldwide, affecting everything from global weather patterns to
ecosystems to human communities.

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Summer sea ice in the Arctic could melt almost completely by the 2030s—roughly a decade earlier than projected—even if humans cut back drastically on greenhouse gas emissions, new research suggests.

“We are very quickly about to lose the Arctic summer sea-ice cover, basically independent of what we are doing,” Dirk Notz, a climate scientist at the University of Hamburg in Germany tells the New York Times’ Raymond Zhong. “We’ve been waiting
too long now to do something about climate change to still protect the remaining ice.”

An ice-free summer, also called a “blue ocean event,” will happen when the sea ice drops below one million square kilometers (386,102 square miles), writes Jonathan Bamber, a professor of physical geography at the University of Bristol, in the
Conversation. This equates to just 15 percent of the Arctic’s seasonal minimum ice cover of the late 1970s, per the Times.

Previous assessments using models have estimated an ice-free summer under high and intermediate emissions scenarios by 2050. But researchers noticed differences between what climate models predicted about what would happen to sea ice and what they've
actually seen through observations, according to Bob Weber of the Canadian Press. "The models, on average, underestimate sea ice decline compared with observations," says Nathan Gillett, an environment and climate change Canada scientist, to Weber.

Now, in a new study published in Nature Communications, Notz, Gillett and their colleagues tweaked these models to more closely fit satellite data collected over the past 40 years. Using these modified models, the researchers projected ice changes under
different possible levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Their paper suggests that regardless of emissions scenario, “we may experience an unprecedented ice-free Arctic climate in the next decade or two.” Under a high emissions scenario, the Arctic
could see a sustained loss of sea ice from August until as late as October before the 2080s, lead author Seung-Ki Min, a climate scientist at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea, tells CNN’s Rachel Ramirez.

While sea ice naturally shrinks in the summer and refreezes during the winter, summer ice coverage has steadily been declining over the past few decades because of climate change. And Arctic ice melting accelerates itself—as ice disappears, it exposes
more of the dark blue ocean, which absorbs more heat and leads to more melting. This process, known as Arctic amplification, has led to the region warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the globe since 1979.

Sea ice decline could have catastrophic consequences that extend to the rest of the planet, including sea level rise and disruption to weather patterns and ecosystems. Animals like polar bears and seals that rely on Arctic ice to survive could be placed
at risk.

“It’s already happening,” Mark C. Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder who was not involved with the new research, tells the Times. “And as the Arctic continues to lose its ice,
those impacts will grow and grow and grow.”

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

“The Arctic is turning increasingly foggy, driven by climate change”

Interesting, then that the RMS Titanic ran into an iceberg…in fog…in 1912…at a time when CO2 wasn’t an issue.



swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

The Arctic is turning increasingly foggy, driven by climate change. A
recent study looked at Arctic weather records from 1979 to 2018 and found
the seas have been growing foggier, especially near newly open areas of water.

The disappearance of ice changes the moisture content in the very lowest
part of the atmosphere and this leaves a narrow layer of moist air at the
sea surface: with so much extra water vapour at the surface, this leaves
vast tracts of iceless ocean that become extremely prone to fog.

The fog is a particular problem for new shipping routes opening up in the Arctic over the summer between Europe and Asia. As ice cover shrinks by
about 14% each decade, sea traffic has increased over the past 20 years
with more commercial fishing trawlers, bulk carriers, tourist cruise
ships and other vessels. And in foggy conditions, ships have to slow down
to avoid hidden chunks of submerged ice, which remain a major hazard.

Shipping itself also risks serious pollution, threatening the delicate
polar environment. Heavy oil fuel spills can persist for weeks or longer
in cold seas, and ships release high concentrations of hazardous air pollution such as black carbon soot, and marine wildlife is threatened, especially marine mammals that are vulnerable to underwater noise and collisions with vessels.

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

Summer sea ice in the Arctic could melt almost completely by the 2030s—roughly a decade earlier than projected—even if humans cut back drastically on greenhouse gas emissions, new research suggests.

So the ‘thinking’ was wrong. Critics have been saying that for decades.

No surprises there, then.

Do you remember the forecast that the Maldives would be under water by
2015?

How did that work out?

<https://www.familyvacationcritic.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2017/07/6d0843c31c1cfa00c9b5b3ed28b041c9.jpg>

“We are very quickly about to lose the Arctic summer sea-ice cover, basically independent of what we are doing,” Dirk Notz, a climate
scientist at the University of Hamburg in Germany tells the New York
Times’ Raymond Zhong. “We’ve been waiting too long now to do something about climate change to still protect the remaining ice.”

An ice-free summer, also called a “blue ocean event,” will happen when the sea ice drops below one million square kilometers (386,102 square
miles), writes Jonathan Bamber, a professor of physical geography at the University of Bristol, in the Conversation. This equates to just 15
percent of the Arctic’s seasonal minimum ice cover of the late 1970s, per the Times.

Previous assessments using models have estimated an ice-free summer under high and intermediate emissions scenarios by 2050. But researchers
noticed differences between what climate models predicted about what
would happen to sea ice and what they've actually seen through
observations, according to Bob Weber of the Canadian Press. "The models,
on average, underestimate sea ice decline compared with observations,"
says Nathan Gillett, an environment and climate change Canada scientist, to Weber.

Now, in a new study published in Nature Communications, Notz, Gillett and their colleagues tweaked these models to more closely fit satellite data collected over the past 40 years. Using these modified models, the researchers projected ice changes under different possible levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Their paper suggests that regardless of
emissions scenario, “we may experience an unprecedented ice-free Arctic climate in the next decade or two.” Under a high emissions scenario, the Arctic could see a sustained loss of sea ice from August until as late as October before the 2080s, lead author Seung-Ki Min, a climate scientist
at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea, tells CNN’s Rachel Ramirez.

While sea ice naturally shrinks in the summer and refreezes during the winter, summer ice coverage has steadily been declining over the past few decades because of climate change. And Arctic ice melting accelerates itself—as ice disappears, it exposes more of the dark blue ocean, which absorbs more heat and leads to more melting. This process, known as
Arctic amplification, has led to the region warming nearly four times
faster than the rest of the globe since 1979.

Sea ice decline could have catastrophic consequences that extend to the
rest of the planet, including sea level rise and disruption to weather patterns and ecosystems. Animals like polar bears and seals that rely on Arctic ice to survive could be placed at risk.

“It’s already happening,” Mark C. Serreze, the director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder who was
not involved with the new research, tells the Times. “And as the Arctic continues to lose its ice, those impacts will grow and grow and grow.”

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

WOW - THIS IS FROM 1912!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FySJY1uXgAIZD6M?format=jpg&name=medium

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Saturday, 10 June 2023 at 20:05:13 UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:

WOW - THIS IS FROM 1912!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FySJY1uXgAIZD6M?format=jpg&name=medium

Prediction came true in <100 years and not "several centuries".

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

WOW - THIS IS FROM 1912!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FySJY1uXgAIZD6M?format=jpg&name=medium

So the Titanic sunk itself!

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Polar ice caps are melting as global warming causes climate change. We lose Arctic sea ice at a rate of almost 13% per decade, and over the past 30 years, the oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic has declined by a stunning 95%.

If emissions continue to rise unchecked, the Arctic could be ice-free in the summer by 2040. But what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. Sea ice loss has far-reaching effects around the world.

The Arctic and Antarctic are the world’s refrigerator. Since they are covered in white snow and ice that reflect heat back into space, they balance out other parts of the world that absorb heat. Less ice means less reflected heat, meaning more intense
heatwaves worldwide. But it also means more extreme winters: as the polar jet stream—a high-pressure wind that circles the Arctic region—is destabilized by warmer air, it can dip south, bringing bitter cold with it.
2. Coastal communities

Global average sea level has risen by about 7–8 inches since 1900 and it’s getting worse. Rising seas endanger coastal cities and small island nations by exacerbating coastal flooding and storm surge, making dangerous weather events even more so.
Glacial melt of the Greenland ice sheet is a major predictor of future sea level rise; if it melts entirely, global sea levels could rise 20 feet.
We need your help

Stand up, raise your voice, and demand urgent, meaningful, and concrete climate action to keep global temperature rise to 1.5C and help communities and wildlife adapt. There’s still time to avoid many of the worst impacts of sea ice loss and climate
change if we act now and we act together.
3. Food

Polar vortexes, increased heat waves, and unpredictability of weather caused by ice loss are already causing significant damage to crops on which global food systems depend. This instability will continue to mean higher prices for you and growing crises
for the world’s most vulnerable.
4. Shipping

As ice melts, new shipping routes open up in the Arctic. These routes will be tempting time-savers, but incredibly dangerous. Imagine more shipwrecks or oil spills like the Exxon-Valdez in areas that are inaccessible to rescue or clean-up crews.
5. Wildlife

When there’s less sea ice, animals that depend on it for survival must adapt or perish. Loss of ice and melting permafrost spells trouble for polar bears, walruses, arctic foxes, snowy owls, reindeer, and many other species. As they are affected, so
too are the other species that depend on them, in addition to people. Wildlife and people are coming into more frequent contact – and often conflict – as wildlife encroach on Arctic communities, looking for refuge as their sea ice habitat disappears.

6. Permafrost

Arctic ice and permafrost—ground that is permanently frozen—store large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. When it thaws, that methane is released, increasing the rate of warming. This, in turn, causes more ice
and permafrost to thaw or melt, releasing more methane, causing more melting. As we lose more ice more quickly and see more rapid permafrost melt, we will start seeing the worst climate change predictions come true.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Simon Mason <swldxer2022@gmail.com> wrote:

On Saturday, 10 June 2023 at 20:05:13 UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:

WOW - THIS IS FROM 1912!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FySJY1uXgAIZD6M?format=jpg&name=medium

Prediction came true in <100 years and not "several centuries".

Either way, the ’thinking’ was wrong, as your recent post noted. They should have fessed up early doors.

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

“As we lose more ice more quickly and see more rapid permafrost melt, we
will start seeing the worst climate change predictions come true.”

Strictly speaking, they aren’t predictions. We now know so much more about ice ages and interglacials, we know what’s going to happen. Forecasting
what you already know to be the case isn’t science, it’s the sort of technique used by carpet salesmen.



Simon Mason <swldxer2022@gmail.com> wrote:

Polar ice caps are melting as global warming causes climate change. We
lose Arctic sea ice at a rate of almost 13% per decade, and over the past
30 years, the oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic has declined by a stunning 95%.

If emissions continue to rise unchecked, the Arctic could be ice-free in
the summer by 2040. But what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. Sea ice loss has far-reaching effects around the world.

The Arctic and Antarctic are the world’s refrigerator. Since they are covered in white snow and ice that reflect heat back into space, they
balance out other parts of the world that absorb heat. Less ice means
less reflected heat, meaning more intense heatwaves worldwide. But it
also means more extreme winters: as the polar jet stream—a high-pressure wind that circles the Arctic region—is destabilized by warmer air, it can dip south, bringing bitter cold with it.
2. Coastal communities

Global average sea level has risen by about 7–8 inches since 1900 and it’s getting worse. Rising seas endanger coastal cities and small island nations by exacerbating coastal flooding and storm surge, making
dangerous weather events even more so. Glacial melt of the Greenland ice sheet is a major predictor of future sea level rise; if it melts
entirely, global sea levels could rise 20 feet.
We need your help

Stand up, raise your voice, and demand urgent, meaningful, and concrete climate action to keep global temperature rise to 1.5C and help
communities and wildlife adapt. There’s still time to avoid many of the worst impacts of sea ice loss and climate change if we act now and we act together.
3. Food

Polar vortexes, increased heat waves, and unpredictability of weather
caused by ice loss are already causing significant damage to crops on
which global food systems depend. This instability will continue to mean higher prices for you and growing crises for the world’s most vulnerable. 4. Shipping

As ice melts, new shipping routes open up in the Arctic. These routes
will be tempting time-savers, but incredibly dangerous. Imagine more shipwrecks or oil spills like the Exxon-Valdez in areas that are
inaccessible to rescue or clean-up crews.
5. Wildlife

When there’s less sea ice, animals that depend on it for survival must adapt or perish. Loss of ice and melting permafrost spells trouble for
polar bears, walruses, arctic foxes, snowy owls, reindeer, and many other species. As they are affected, so too are the other species that depend
on them, in addition to people. Wildlife and people are coming into more frequent contact – and often conflict – as wildlife encroach on Arctic communities, looking for refuge as their sea ice habitat disappears.
6. Permafrost

Arctic ice and permafrost—ground that is permanently frozen—store large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.
When it thaws, that methane is released, increasing the rate of warming. This, in turn, causes more ice and permafrost to thaw or melt, releasing
more methane, causing more melting. As we lose more ice more quickly and
see more rapid permafrost melt, we will start seeing the worst climate
change predictions come true.

--
Spike

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

It is “too late” to save summer ice in the Arctic despite scientists warning about its loss “for decades”, a new study suggests.

It is feared Arctic summer sea ice could be wiped out in as little as 10 years - a decade earlier than previously predicted - due to human-induced climate change..

Scientists have warned that even if greenhouse gas emissions are sharply reduced it still won’t be enough and the Arctic will be ice-free in the coming decades.

The bleak new study, led by Professor Seung-Ki Min of Pohang University, South Korea, found that 90% of the melting is the result of human-caused global heating.

Professor Min told the Guardian: “Unfortunately it has become too late to save Arctic summer sea ice. This is now the first major component of the Earth system that we are going to lose because of global warming. People didn’t listen to our warnings�
�.

He warned that extreme weather could be on cards as a result, and countries in North America, Europe and Asia should prepare for the worst of this.

In 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that the Arctic would not lose its summer ice if greenhouse gas emissions were cut and global temperature rises were limited to 2C. It also said that in high emission scenarios the
Arctic would lose its summer ice in the 2040s.

But the new research states that summer sea ice in the Arctic will be wiped out by 2050 even in the low emissions scenario, and under high emissions it will be gone by 2030.

Scientists did not say an exact year for the first ice-free summer as the Arctic is subject to several natural environment occurrences including heatwaves that can accelerate ice melt and volcanic eruptions which can slow it down - as the ash blocks the
sunlight from reaching the ice.

The scientists said that the results of the new study “emphasise the profound impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the Arctic” and “demonstrate the importance of planning for and adapting to a seasonally ice-free Arctic in the near future”.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

It is “too late” to save summer ice in the Arctic despite scientists warning about its loss “for decades”, a new study suggests.

It was ‘too late’ to save the Arctic as soon as the glaciers started their retreat from the south of France
Some 11000 years ago. This is well known and understood, from millions of
years of this happening.

“As we lose more ice more quickly and see more rapid permafrost melt, we
will start seeing the worst climate change predictions come true.”

Strictly speaking, they aren’t predictions. We now know so much more about ice ages and interglacials, we know what’s going to happen. Forecasting
what you already know to be the case isn’t science, it’s the sort of technique used by carpet salesmen.

It is feared Arctic summer sea ice could be wiped out in as little as 10 years - a decade earlier than previously predicted - due to human-induced climate change..

Scientists have warned that even if greenhouse gas emissions are sharply reduced it still won’t be enough and the Arctic will be ice-free in the coming decades.

The bleak new study, led by Professor Seung-Ki Min of Pohang University, South Korea, found that 90% of the melting is the result of human-caused global heating.

Professor Min told the Guardian: “Unfortunately it has become too late to save Arctic summer sea ice. This is now the first major component of the Earth system that we are going to lose because of global warming. People didn’t listen to our warnings”.

He warned that extreme weather could be on cards as a result, and
countries in North America, Europe and Asia should prepare for the worst of this.

In 2021, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded
that the Arctic would not lose its summer ice if greenhouse gas emissions were cut and global temperature rises were limited to 2C. It also said
that in high emission scenarios the Arctic would lose its summer ice in the 2040s.

But the new research states that summer sea ice in the Arctic will be
wiped out by 2050 even in the low emissions scenario, and under high emissions it will be gone by 2030.

Scientists did not say an exact year for the first ice-free summer as the Arctic is subject to several natural environment occurrences including heatwaves that can accelerate ice melt and volcanic eruptions which can
slow it down - as the ash blocks the sunlight from reaching the ice.

The scientists said that the results of the new study “emphasise the profound impacts of greenhouse gas emissions on the Arctic” and “demonstrate the importance of planning for and adapting to a seasonally ice-free Arctic in the near future”.

--
Spike

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Temperatures in parts of the Arctic were six degrees or more above average in February. Researchers are observing that the ice is thinning rapidly - and models predict that ice-free Arctic summers are on the horizon. In this special edition Climate Now
reports from a -24C freezer in Tromsø, Norway.

Temperatures in parts of the Arctic were six degrees or more above average in February.

It's difficult to forecast with certainty the speed at which climate change will transform our planet's northern polar region, however researchers are observing that the ice is thinning rapidly, and models predict that ice-free Arctic summers are on the
horizon.

In this special episode of Climate Now, we travelled to Tromsø in northern Norway to hear more from sea ice experts at the Norwegian Polar Institute.

Data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service shows that globally, February 2023 was the fifth-warmest on record, with temperatures 0.3° Celsius above the 1991-2020 average.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/03/20/ice-free-arctic-summers-are-on-the-way-researchers-say

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swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

Temperatures in parts of the Arctic were six degrees or more above
average in February. Researchers are observing that the ice is thinning rapidly - and models predict that ice-free Arctic summers are on the
horizon. In this special edition Climate Now reports from a -24C freezer in Tromsø, Norway.

Models don’t have a good history, in the climate change industry. The Maldives were supposed to be under water by 2015, for example.

But an ice-free Arctic doesn’t need a model, it is well-known from
ice-cores and the like, it occurs at every interglacial period. It isn’t news.

Temperatures in parts of the Arctic were six degrees or more above average in February.

It's difficult to forecast with certainty the speed at which climate
change will transform our planet's northern polar region, however
researchers are observing that the ice is thinning rapidly, and models predict that ice-free Arctic summers are on the horizon.

In this special episode of Climate Now, we travelled to Tromsø in
northern Norway to hear more from sea ice experts at the Norwegian Polar Institute.

Data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service shows that globally,
February 2023 was the fifth-warmest on record, with temperatures 0.3° Celsius above the 1991-2020 average.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/03/20/ice-free-arctic-summers-are-on-the-way-researchers-say

--
Spike

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Projections created internally by ExxonMobil starting in the late 1970s on the impact of fossil fuels on climate change were very accurate, even surpassing those of some academic and governmental scientists, according to an analysis published Thursday in
Science by a team of Harvard-led researchers. Despite those forecasts, team leaders say, the multinational energy giant continued to sow doubt about the gathering crisis.

In “Assessing ExxonMobil’s Global Warming Projections,” researchers from Harvard and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research show for the first time the accuracy of previously unreported forecasts created by company scientists from 1977
through 2003. The Harvard team discovered that Exxon researchers created a series of remarkably reliable models and analyses projecting global warming from carbon dioxide emissions over the coming decades. Specifically, Exxon projected that fossil fuel
emissions would lead to 0.20 degrees Celsius of global warming per decade, with a margin of error of 0.04 degrees — a trend that has been proven largely accurate.

“This paper is the first ever systematic assessment of a fossil fuel company’s climate projections, the first time we’ve been able to put a number on what they knew,” said Geoffrey Supran, lead author and former research fellow in the History of
Science at Harvard. “What we found is that between 1977 and 2003, excellent scientists within Exxon modeled and predicted global warming with, frankly, shocking skill and accuracy only for the company to then spend the next couple of decades denying
that very climate science.”
Geoffrey Supran,

“This paper is the first ever systematic assessment of a fossil fuel company’s climate projections, the first time we’ve been able to put a number on what they knew,” said Geoffrey Supran, lead author.

“We thought this was a unique opportunity to understand what Exxon knew about this issue and what level of scientific understanding they had at the time,” added co-author Naomi Oreskes, Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science whose work
looks at the causes and effects of climate change denial. “We found that not only were their forecasts extremely skillful, but they were also often more skillful than forecasts made by independent academic and government scientists at the exact same
time.”

Allegations that oil company executives sought to mislead the public about the industry’s role in climate change have drawn increasing scrutiny in recent years, including lawsuits by several states and cities and a recent high profile U.S. House
committee investigation.

Harvard’s scientists used established Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) statistical techniques to test the performance of Exxon’s models. They found that, depending on the metric used, 63-83 percent of the global warming projections
reported by Exxon scientists were consistent with actual temperatures over time. Moreover, the corporation’s own projections had an average “skill score” of 72 percent, plus or minus 6 percent, with the highest scoring 99 percent. A skill score
relates to how well a forecast compares to what happens in real life. For comparison, NASA scientist James Hansen’s global warming predictions presented to the U.S. Congress in 1988 had scores from 38 to 66 percent.

The researchers report that Exxon scientists correctly dismissed the possibility of a coming ice age, accurately predicted that human-caused global warming would first be detectable in the year 2000, plus or minus five years, and reasonably estimated how
much CO2 would lead to dangerous warming.

The current debate about when Exxon knew about the impact on climate change carbon emissions began in 2015 following news reports of internal company documents describing the multinational’s early knowledge of climate science. Exxon disagreed with the
reports, even providing a link to internal studies and memos from their own scientists and suggesting that interested parties should read them and make up their own minds.

“That’s exactly what we did,” said Supran, who is now at the University of Miami. Together, he and Oreskes spent a year researching those documents and in 2017 published a series of three papers analyzing Exxon’s 40-year history of climate
communications. They were able to show there was a systematic discrepancy between what Exxon was saying internally and in academic circles versus what they were telling the public. “That led us to conclude that they had quantifiably misled the public,
by essentially contributing quietly to climate science and yet loudly promoting doubt about that science,” said Supran.
Naomi Oreskes

“I think this new study is the smoking gun, the proof, because it shows the degree of understanding ... this really deep, really sophisticated, really skillful understanding that was obscured by what came next,” said Harvard Professor Naomi Oreskes.

Harvard file photo

In 2021, the team published a new study in One Earth using algorithmic techniques to identify ways in which ExxonMobil used increasingly subtle but systematic language to shape the way the public talks and thinks about climate change — often in
misleading ways.

These findings were hardly a surprise to Oreskes, given her long history of studying climate communications from fossil fuel companies, work that drew national attention with her 2010 bestseller, “Merchants of Doubt.” In it she and co-author, Caltech
researcher Erik Conway, argued that Exxon was aware of the threat of carbon emissions on climate change yet waged a disinformation campaign about the problem. Despite the book’s popularity and the peer-reviewed papers with Supran, however, some
continued to wonder whether she could prove the effect these campaigns had, if they indeed made a difference.

“I think this new study is the smoking gun, the proof, because it shows the degree of understanding … this really deep, really sophisticated, really skillful understanding that was obscured by what came next,” Oreskes said. “It proves a point I’
ve argued for years that ExxonMobil scientists knew about this problem to a shockingly fine degree as far back as the 1980s, but company spokesmen denied, challenged, and obscured this science, starting in the late 1980s/early 1990s.”

Added Supran: “Our analysis here I think seals the deal on that matter. We now have totally unimpeachable evidence that Exxon accurately predicted global warming years before it turned around and publicly attacked climate science and scientists.”

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Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit
(CRU) of the University of East Anglia, in 2000:

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is"

Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the
stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global
climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from
1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from
1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London's last substantial snowfall
was in February 1991.

Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international
community. Average temperatures in Britain were nearly 0.6°C higher in the Nineties than in 1960-90, and it is estimated that they will increase by
0.2C every decade over the coming century. Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a
senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the
University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said. Britain's
winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the
stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global
climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from
1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from
1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London's last substantial snowfall
was in February 1991.

Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international
community. Average temperatures in Britain were nearly 0.6°C higher in the Nineties than in 1960-90, and it is estimated that they will increase by
0.2C every decade over the coming century. Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a
senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the
University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

[NOTE: the original item has been pulled from the internet, but fortunately
has been archived]

--
Spike

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The oil giant Exxon privately “predicted global warming correctly and skilfully” only to then spend decades publicly rubbishing such science in order to protect its core business, new research has found.

A trove of internal documents and research papers has previously established that Exxon knew of the dangers of global heating from at least the 1970s, with other oil industry bodies knowing of the risk even earlier, from around the 1950s. They forcefully
and successfully mobilized against the science to stymie any action to reduce fossil fuel use.

A new study, however, has made clear that Exxon’s scientists were uncannily accurate in their projections from the 1970s onwards, predicting an upward curve of global temperatures and carbon dioxide emissions that is close to matching what actually
occurred as the world heated up at a pace not seen in millions of years.

Exxon scientists predicted there would be global heating of about 0.2C a decade due to the emissions of planet-heating gases from the burning of oil, coal and other fossil fuels. The new analysis, published in Science, finds that Exxon’s science was
highly adept and the “projections were also consistent with, and at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models”.

Geoffrey Supran, whose previous research of historical industry documents helped shed light on what Exxon and other oil firms knew, said it was “breathtaking” to see Exxon’s projections line up so closely with what subsequently happened.

“This really does sum up what Exxon knew, years before many of us were born,” said Supran, who led the analysis conducted by researchers from Harvard University and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “We now have the smoking gun
showing that they accurately predicted warming years before they started attacking the science. These graphs confirm the complicity of what Exxon knew and how they misled.”

The research analyzed more than 100 internal documents and peer-reviewed scientific publications either produced in-house by Exxon scientists and managers, or co-authored by Exxon scientists in independent publications between 1977 and 2014.

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/df570102c60aa745583ac90d6dbc246b58b77755/0_6_1282_1602/master/1282.jpg?width=620&quality=45&dpr=2&s=none

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The diminishing influence of increasing Carbon Dioxide on temperature
9 years ago Anthony Watts
Guest essay by Ed Hoskins

Using data published by the IPCC on the diminishing effect of increasing
CO2 concentrations and the latest proportional information on global
Man-made CO2 emissions, these notes examine the potential for further
warming by CO2 emissions up to 1000ppmv and the probable consequences of decarbonisation policies being pursued by Western governments.

The temperature increasing capacity of atmospheric CO2 is real enough, but
its influence is known and widely accepted to diminish as its concentration increases. It has a logarithmic in its relationship to concentration.
Global Warming advocates and Climate Change sceptics both agree on this.
IPCC Published reports, (TAR3), acknowledge that the effective temperature increase caused by growing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere
radically diminishes with increasing concentrations. This information has
been presented in the IPCC reports. It is well disguised for any lay
reader, (Chapter 6. Radiative Forcing of Climate Change: section 6.3.4
Total Well-Mixed Greenhouse Gas Forcing Estimate) [1]. It is a crucial
fact, but not acknowledged in the IPCC summary for Policy Makers[2].

The rapid logarithmic diminution effect is an inconvenient fact for Global Warming advocates and alarmists, nonetheless it is well understood within
the climate science community. It is certainly not much discussed. This diminution effect is probably the reason there was no runaway greenhouse warming caused by CO2 in earlier eons when CO2 levels were known to be at levels of several thousands ppmv. The following simplifying diagram shows
the logarithmic diminution effect using tranches of 100ppmv up to 1000ppmv
and the significance of differing CO2 concentrations on the biosphere:

§ Up to ~200 ppmv, the equivalent to about ~77% of the temperature
increasing effectiveness of CO2. This is essential to sustain
photosynthesis in plants and thus the viability of all life on earth.

§ A further ~100 ppmv was the level prior to any industrialisation, this atmospheric CO2 made the survival of the biosphere possible, giving a
further 5.9% of the CO2 Greenhouse effect.

§ Following that a further 100ppmv, (certainly man-made in part), adding
~4.1% of the CO2 effectiveness brings the current level ~400 ppmv.

§ CO2 at 400pmmv is already committed and immutable. So CO2 has already reached about ~87+% of its potential warming effect in the atmosphere.

--
Spike

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QUOTE: The oil giant Exxon privately “predicted global warming correctly and skilfully” only to then spend decades publicly rubbishing such science in order to protect its core business, new research has found. ENDS

A handy diagram of their scam.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FyWnH_xX0AEyDhp?format=jpg&name=900x900

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Remember: 97% of scientists don’t work in the climate change industry.

Spike <Aero.Spike@mail.invalid> wrote:

The diminishing influence of increasing Carbon Dioxide on temperature
9 years ago Anthony Watts
Guest essay by Ed Hoskins

Using data published by the IPCC on the diminishing effect of increasing
CO2 concentrations and the latest proportional information on global
Man-made CO2 emissions, these notes examine the potential for further
warming by CO2 emissions up to 1000ppmv and the probable consequences of decarbonisation policies being pursued by Western governments.

The temperature increasing capacity of atmospheric CO2 is real enough, but its influence is known and widely accepted to diminish as its concentration increases. It has a logarithmic in its relationship to concentration.
Global Warming advocates and Climate Change sceptics both agree on this.
IPCC Published reports, (TAR3), acknowledge that the effective temperature increase caused by growing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere
radically diminishes with increasing concentrations. This information has been presented in the IPCC reports. It is well disguised for any lay
reader, (Chapter 6. Radiative Forcing of Climate Change: section 6.3.4
Total Well-Mixed Greenhouse Gas Forcing Estimate) [1]. It is a crucial
fact, but not acknowledged in the IPCC summary for Policy Makers[2].

The rapid logarithmic diminution effect is an inconvenient fact for Global Warming advocates and alarmists, nonetheless it is well understood within
the climate science community. It is certainly not much discussed. This diminution effect is probably the reason there was no runaway greenhouse warming caused by CO2 in earlier eons when CO2 levels were known to be at levels of several thousands ppmv. The following simplifying diagram shows
the logarithmic diminution effect using tranches of 100ppmv up to 1000ppmv and the significance of differing CO2 concentrations on the biosphere:

§ Up to ~200 ppmv, the equivalent to about ~77% of the temperature increasing effectiveness of CO2. This is essential to sustain
photosynthesis in plants and thus the viability of all life on earth.

§ A further ~100 ppmv was the level prior to any industrialisation, this atmospheric CO2 made the survival of the biosphere possible, giving a
further 5.9% of the CO2 Greenhouse effect.

§ Following that a further 100ppmv, (certainly man-made in part), adding ~4.1% of the CO2 effectiveness brings the current level ~400 ppmv.

§ CO2 at 400pmmv is already committed and immutable. So CO2 has already reached about ~87+% of its potential warming effect in the atmosphere.

--
Spike

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QUOTE: The Harvard team discovered that Exxon researchers created a series of remarkably reliable models and analyses projecting global warming from carbon dioxide emissions over the coming decades. Specifically, Exxon projected that fossil fuel
emissions would lead to 0.20 degrees Celsius of global warming per decade, with a margin of error of 0.04 degrees — a trend that has been proven largely accurate. ENDS

Better than the idiot denier swivels and their clueless drivel.

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This information has been presented in the IPCC reports. It is well
disguised for any lay reader, (Chapter 6. Radiative Forcing of Climate
Change: section 6.3.4 Total Well-Mixed Greenhouse Gas Forcing Estimate)
[1]. It is a crucial fact, but not acknowledged in the IPCC summary for
Policy Makers[2].

The rapid logarithmic diminution effect is an inconvenient fact for Global Warming advocates and alarmists, nonetheless it is well understood within
the climate science community. It is certainly not much discussed.

This diminution effect is probably the reason there was no runaway
greenhouse warming caused by CO2 in earlier eons when CO2 levels were known
to be at levels of several thousands ppmv. The following simplifying
diagram shows the logarithmic diminution effect using tranches of 100ppmv
up to 1000ppmv and the significance of differing CO2 concentrations on the biosphere:

§ Up to ~200 ppmv, the equivalent to about ~77% of the temperature
increasing effectiveness of CO2. This is essential to sustain
photosynthesis in plants and thus the viability of all life on earth.

§ A further ~100 ppmv was the level prior to any industrialisation, this atmospheric CO2 made the survival of the biosphere possible, giving a
further 5.9% of the CO2 Greenhouse effect.

§ Following that a further 100ppmv, (certainly man-made in part), adding
~4.1% of the CO2 effectiveness brings the current level ~400 ppmv.

§ CO2 at 400pmmv is already committed and immutable. So CO2 has already reached about ~87+% of its potential warming effect in the atmosphere.

--
Spike

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QUOTE: “This paper is the first ever systematic assessment of a fossil fuel company’s climate projections, the first time we’ve been able to put a number on what they knew,” said Geoffrey Supran, lead author and former research fellow in the
History of Science at Harvard. “What we found is that between 1977 and 2003, excellent scientists within Exxon modeled and predicted global warming with, frankly, shocking skill and accuracy only for the company to then spend the next couple of decades
denying that very climate science.” ENDS

They got a bung for denying the science - they give proper scientists a bad name.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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The temperature increasing capacity of atmospheric CO2 is real enough, but
its influence is known and widely accepted to diminish as its concentration increases.

It has a logarithmic in its relationship to concentration.

Global Warming advocates and Climate Change sceptics both agree on this.

IPCC Published reports, (TAR3), acknowledge that the effective temperature increase caused by growing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere
radically diminishes with increasing concentrations.

This information has been presented in the IPCC reports.

It is well disguised for any lay reader, (Chapter 6. Radiative Forcing of Climate Change: section 6.3.4 Total Well-Mixed Greenhouse Gas Forcing
Estimate) [1]. It is a crucial fact, but not acknowledged in the IPCC
summary for Policy Makers[2].

From: The diminishing influence of increasing Carbon Dioxide on temperature Anthony Watts
Guest essay by Ed Hoskins


swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

QUOTE: “This paper is the first ever systematic assessment of a fossil
fuel company’s climate projections, the first time we’ve been able to put a number on what they knew,” said Geoffrey Supran, lead author and former research fellow in the History of Science at Harvard. “What we found is that between 1977 and 2003, excellent scientists within Exxon modeled and predicted global warming with, frankly, shocking skill and accuracy only
for the company to then spend the next couple of decades denying that
very climate science.” ENDS

They got a bung for denying the science - they give proper scientists a bad name.

--
Spike

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On Sunday, June 11, 2023 at 8:03:04 PM UTC+1, swldx...@gmail.com wrote:

QUOTE: “This paper is the first ever systematic assessment of a fossil fuel company’s climate projections, the first time we’ve been able to put a number on what they knew,” said Geoffrey Supran, lead author and former research fellow in the

History of Science at Harvard. “What we found is that between 1977 and 2003, excellent scientists within Exxon modeled and predicted global warming with, frankly, shocking skill and accuracy only for the company to then spend the next couple of decades
denying that very climate science.” ENDS

They got a bung for denying the science - they give proper scientists a bad name.

Follow the money as always.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FyZtAA7WcAAkybj?format=jpg&name=900x900

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The key equation for the change in radiative forcing of increasing concentrations of CO2 is given by

ΔF = α ln (C/Co)

(Using the usual notation)

So for a doubling of concentration (C/Co =2) from 100 to 200ppm, or 200 to 400ppm, or 400 to 800ppm, the increased radiative forcing is given by

ΔF = α* ln (2) or α* 0.693

Α popular but not unique figure for α is 5.38, as it is not agreed among climate scientists, who think it lies between 2 and 6.

Note that the relationship between ΔF and (C/Co) is logarithmic: one
doubling of concentration gives x W/m^2, but to get another x W/m^2 the concentration needs to double again, for example from 100 to 200ppm, then
200 to 400ppm, 400 to 800ppm, etc.

It is *not* a linear relationship between C and ΔF.

QUOTE
IPCC Published reports, (TAR3), acknowledge that the effective temperature increase caused by growing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere
*radically diminishes* with increasing concentrations. [emphasis added]

This information has been presented in the IPCC reports.

It is well disguised for any lay reader, (Chapter 6. Radiative Forcing of Climate Change: section 6.3.4 Total Well-Mixed Greenhouse Gas Forcing
Estimate) [1]. It is a crucial fact, but not acknowledged in the IPCC
summary for Policy Makers[2].
ENDQUOTE

[Largely based on The diminishing influence of increasing Carbon Dioxide on temperature
Anthony Watts
Guest essay by Ed Hoskins]

--
Spike

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The U.S. House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee earlier this month widened its inquiry into the oil industry’s role in fostering doubt about the role of fossil fuels in causing climate change. A letter from the panel to Darren Woods,
ExxonMobil chief executive, said lawmakers were “concerned that to protect … profits, the industry has reportedly led a coordinated effort to spread disinformation to mislead the public and prevent crucial action to address climate change.” The
Gazette spoke with Geoffrey Supran, a research fellow in the History of Science, who, together with Naomi Oreskes, the Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science, published a series of studies in recent years, the most recent one in May, on
the climate communications of ExxonMobil, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies.

In 2017, our research was the first peer-reviewed analysis of ExxonMobil’s 40-year history of climate-change communications. And what we discovered was that there were systematic discrepancies between, on the one hand, what Exxon and ExxonMobil
scientists said about climate-science privately and in academic circles, versus what Exxon, Mobil, and ExxonMobil said to the general public in The New York Times and elsewhere. That analysis showed that ExxonMobil misled the public about basic climate
science and its implications. They did so by contributing quietly to climate science, and loudly to promoting doubt about that science.

Our work and others’ in that area provides evidence for the committee, demonstrating ExxonMobil’s long history of attacking science and scientists in order to undermine and delay climate action. Our more recent work, this May, is an evolution of that
study in that it focuses on how, beyond outright disinformation, ExxonMobil has used language to subtly but systematically shape the way the public thinks about climate change, often in misleading ways. That study demonstrates how the company has
selectively emphasized some terms and topics in public while consistently avoiding others.

The takeaway message across all of our work is that over and over, ExxonMobil has misled the public about climate change by telling the public one thing and then saying and doing the opposite behind closed doors. Our latest work shows that while their
tactics have evolved from outright, blatant climate denial to more subtle forms of lobbying and propaganda, their end goal remains the same. And that’s to stop action on climate change.

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You may be astonished to discover, probably at some future date, that even within climate science, the public pronouncements are not necessarily
aligned with private discussions.

Some years ago, in a conversation at a conference of climate scientists, someone let slip regarding the various groups that produced climate models,
on the forecasts of which so much public money was squandered, that “we
make sure all our models give the same results”. In other words, they were faking it.

As far as satellite temperature data us concerned, try this:

QUOTE
An all new reanalysis of the STAR satellite data finds markedly lower temperature trends for the last 40 years. The big deal about this is that
this third dataset suddenly supports the original UAH satellite data, not
the other RSS system, and not the “surface thermometers” sitting near hot tarmacs and absolutely not the climate models.

The warming trend in the troposphere was only half of what the expert
models predicted. From the paper:

Santer et al. (2021) reported that the multi-model averages for the TTT
trends from CMIP5 and CMIP6 were 0.28–0.29 K/decade during 1979–2019. The total TTT trend found in this study was only one-half of the climate model simulations during the same period.
UNQUOTE

Satellite temperature rise = 0.5x model-predicted rise.

Data from thousands of balloon flights agrees with the satellite data.

Quote taken from <https://joannenova.com.au/2023/04/40-years-of-expert-failure-new-noaa-star-satellite-temperatures-only-show-half-the-warming-that-climate-models-do/>

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

The U.S. House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee earlier this month widened its inquiry into the oil industry’s role in fostering doubt about the role of fossil fuels in causing climate change. A letter from the
panel to Darren Woods, ExxonMobil chief executive, said lawmakers were “concerned that to protect … profits, the industry has reportedly led a coordinated effort to spread disinformation to mislead the public and
prevent crucial action to address climate change.” The Gazette spoke with Geoffrey Supran, a research fellow in the History of Science, who,
together with Naomi Oreskes, the Henry Charles Lea Professor of the
History of Science, published a series of studies in recent years, the
most recent one in May, on the climate communications of ExxonMobil, one
of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies.

In 2017, our research was the first peer-reviewed analysis of
ExxonMobil’s 40-year history of climate-change communications. And what
we discovered was that there were systematic discrepancies between, on
the one hand, what Exxon and ExxonMobil scientists said about
climate-science privately and in academic circles, versus what Exxon,
Mobil, and ExxonMobil said to the general public in The New York Times
and elsewhere. That analysis showed that ExxonMobil misled the public
about basic climate science and its implications. They did so by
contributing quietly to climate science, and loudly to promoting doubt about that science.

Our work and others’ in that area provides evidence for the committee, demonstrating ExxonMobil’s long history of attacking science and
scientists in order to undermine and delay climate action. Our more
recent work, this May, is an evolution of that study in that it focuses
on how, beyond outright disinformation, ExxonMobil has used language to subtly but systematically shape the way the public thinks about climate change, often in misleading ways. That study demonstrates how the company
has selectively emphasized some terms and topics in public while
consistently avoiding others.

The takeaway message across all of our work is that over and over,
ExxonMobil has misled the public about climate change by telling the
public one thing and then saying and doing the opposite behind closed
doors. Our latest work shows that while their tactics have evolved from outright, blatant climate denial to more subtle forms of lobbying and propaganda, their end goal remains the same. And that’s to stop action on climate change.

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Spike

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Fighting the facts

Almost all the lawsuits draw on the oil industry’s own records as the foundation for claims that it covered up the growing threat to life caused by its products.

Shell, like other oil companies, had decades to prepare for those consequences after it was forewarned by its own research. In 1958, one of its executives, Charles Jones, presented a paper to the industry’s trade group, the American Petroleum Institute
(API), warning about increased carbon emissions from car exhaust. Other research followed through the 1960s, leading a White House advisory committee to express concern at “measurable and perhaps marked changes in climate” by 2000.

API’s own reports flagged up “significant temperature changes” by the end of the twentieth century.

The largest oil company in the US, Exxon, was hearing the same from its researchers.

Year after year, Exxon scientists recorded the evidence about the dangers of burning fossil fuels. In 1978, its science adviser, James Black, warned that there was a “window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in
energy strategy might become critical”.

Exxon set up equipment on a supertanker, the Esso Atlantic, to monitor carbon dioxide in seawater and the air. In 1982, the company’s scientists drew up a graph accurately plotting an increase in the globe’s temperature to date.

“The 1980s revealed an established consensus among scientists,” the Minnesota lawsuit against Exxon says. “A 1982 internal Exxon document … explicitly declares that the science was ‘unanimous’ and that climate change would ‘bring about
significant changes in the earth’s climate’.”

Then the monitoring on the Esso Atlantic was suddenly called off and other research downgraded.

What followed was what Naomi Oreskes, co-author of the report America Misled, called a “systematic, organised campaign by Exxon and other oil companies to sow doubt about the science and prevent meaningful action”.

The report accused the energy companies of not only polluting the air but also “the information landscape” by replicating the cigarette makers’ playbook of cherry-picking data, using fake experts and promoting conspiracy theories to attack a
growing scientific consensus.

Many of the lawsuits draw on a raft of Exxon documents held at the University of Texas, and uncovered by the Columbia Journalism School and the Los Angeles Times in 2015.

Among them is a 1988 Exxon memo laying out a strategy to push for a “balanced scientific approach”, which meant giving equal weight to hard evidence and climate change denialism. That move bore fruit in parts of the media into the 2000s as the oil
industry repositioned global heating as theory, not fact, contributing to the most deep-rooted climate denialism in any developed country.

The company placed advertisements in major American newspapers to sow doubt. One in the New York Times in 2000, under the headline “Unsettled Science”, compared climate data to changing weather forecasts. It claimed scientists were divided, when an
overwhelming consensus already backed the evidence of a growing climate crisis, and said that the supposed doubts meant it was too soon to act.

Exxon’s chairman and chief executive, Lee Raymond, told industry executives in 1996 that “scientific evidence remains inconclusive as to whether human activities affect global climate”.

“It’s a long and dangerous leap to conclude that we should, therefore, cut fossil fuel use,” he said.

Documents show that his company’s scientists were telling Exxon’s management that the real danger lay in the failure to do exactly that.

In 2019, Martin Hoffert, a professor of physics at New York University, told a congressional hearing that as a consultant to Exxon on climate modelling in the 1980s, he worked on eight scientific papers for the company that showed fossil fuel burning was
“increasingly having a perceptible influence on Earth’s climate”.

Hoffert said he “hoped that the work would help to persuade Exxon to invest in developing energy solutions the world needed”. That was not the result.

“Exxon was publicly promoting views that its own scientists knew were wrong, and we knew that because we were the major group working on this. This was immoral and has greatly set back efforts to address climate change,” said Hoffert.

“They deliberately created doubt when internal research confirmed how serious a threat it was. As a result, in my opinion, homes and livelihoods will likely be destroyed and lives lost.”

Exxon worked alongside Chevron, Shell, BP and smaller oil firms to shift attention away from the growing climate crisis. They funded the industry’s trade body, API, as it drew up a multimillion-dollar plan to ensure that “climate change becomes a non-
issue” through disinformation. The plan said “victory will be achieved” when “recognition of uncertainties become part of the ‘conventional wisdom’”.

The fossil fuel industry also used its considerable resources to pour billions of dollars into political lobbying to block unfavourable laws and to fund front organisations with neutral and scientific-sounding names, such as the Global Climate Coalition (
GCC). In 2001, the US state department told the GCC that President George W Bush rejected the Kyoto protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions “in part, based on input from you”.

Exxon alone has funded more than 40 groups to deny climate science, including the George C Marshall Institute, which one lawsuit claims orchestrated a “sham petition” denying manmade global climate change. It was later denounced by the National
Academy of Science as “a deliberate attempt to mislead scientists”.

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Climategate tells you all you need to know.

swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

Fighting the facts

Almost all the lawsuits draw on the oil industry’s own records as the foundation for claims that it covered up the growing threat to life caused by its products.

Shell, like other oil companies, had decades to prepare for those consequences after it was forewarned by its own research. In 1958, one of
its executives, Charles Jones, presented a paper to the industry’s trade group, the American Petroleum Institute (API), warning about increased
carbon emissions from car exhaust. Other research followed through the
1960s, leading a White House advisory committee to express concern at “measurable and perhaps marked changes in climate” by 2000.

API’s own reports flagged up “significant temperature changes” by the end
of the twentieth century.

The largest oil company in the US, Exxon, was hearing the same from its researchers.

Year after year, Exxon scientists recorded the evidence about the dangers
of burning fossil fuels. In 1978, its science adviser, James Black,
warned that there was a “window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategy might become critical”.

Exxon set up equipment on a supertanker, the Esso Atlantic, to monitor
carbon dioxide in seawater and the air. In 1982, the company’s scientists drew up a graph accurately plotting an increase in the globe’s temperature to date.

“The 1980s revealed an established consensus among scientists,” the Minnesota lawsuit against Exxon says. “A 1982 internal Exxon document … explicitly declares that the science was ‘unanimous’ and that climate change would ‘bring about significant changes in the earth’s climate’.”

Then the monitoring on the Esso Atlantic was suddenly called off and
other research downgraded.

What followed was what Naomi Oreskes, co-author of the report America
Misled, called a “systematic, organised campaign by Exxon and other oil companies to sow doubt about the science and prevent meaningful action”.

The report accused the energy companies of not only polluting the air but also “the information landscape” by replicating the cigarette makers’ playbook of cherry-picking data, using fake experts and promoting
conspiracy theories to attack a growing scientific consensus.

Many of the lawsuits draw on a raft of Exxon documents held at the
University of Texas, and uncovered by the Columbia Journalism School and
the Los Angeles Times in 2015.

Among them is a 1988 Exxon memo laying out a strategy to push for a “balanced scientific approach”, which meant giving equal weight to hard evidence and climate change denialism. That move bore fruit in parts of
the media into the 2000s as the oil industry repositioned global heating
as theory, not fact, contributing to the most deep-rooted climate
denialism in any developed country.

The company placed advertisements in major American newspapers to sow
doubt. One in the New York Times in 2000, under the headline “Unsettled Science”, compared climate data to changing weather forecasts. It claimed scientists were divided, when an overwhelming consensus already backed
the evidence of a growing climate crisis, and said that the supposed
doubts meant it was too soon to act.

Exxon’s chairman and chief executive, Lee Raymond, told industry
executives in 1996 that “scientific evidence remains inconclusive as to whether human activities affect global climate”.

“It’s a long and dangerous leap to conclude that we should, therefore, cut fossil fuel use,” he said.

Documents show that his company’s scientists were telling Exxon’s management that the real danger lay in the failure to do exactly that.

In 2019, Martin Hoffert, a professor of physics at New York University,
told a congressional hearing that as a consultant to Exxon on climate modelling in the 1980s, he worked on eight scientific papers for the
company that showed fossil fuel burning was “increasingly having a perceptible influence on Earth’s climate”.

Hoffert said he “hoped that the work would help to persuade Exxon to
invest in developing energy solutions the world needed”. That was not the result.

“Exxon was publicly promoting views that its own scientists knew were wrong, and we knew that because we were the major group working on this.
This was immoral and has greatly set back efforts to address climate change,” said Hoffert.

“They deliberately created doubt when internal research confirmed how serious a threat it was. As a result, in my opinion, homes and
livelihoods will likely be destroyed and lives lost.”

Exxon worked alongside Chevron, Shell, BP and smaller oil firms to shift attention away from the growing climate crisis. They funded the
industry’s trade body, API, as it drew up a multimillion-dollar plan to ensure that “climate change becomes a non- issue” through disinformation. The plan said “victory will be achieved” when “recognition of uncertainties become part of the ‘conventional wisdom’”.

The fossil fuel industry also used its considerable resources to pour billions of dollars into political lobbying to block unfavourable laws
and to fund front organisations with neutral and scientific-sounding
names, such as the Global Climate Coalition (GCC). In 2001, the US state department told the GCC that President George W Bush rejected the Kyoto protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions “in part, based on input from you”.

Exxon alone has funded more than 40 groups to deny climate science,
including the George C Marshall Institute, which one lawsuit claims orchestrated a “sham petition” denying manmade global climate change. It was later denounced by the National Academy of Science as “a deliberate attempt to mislead scientists”.

--
Spike

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QUOTE: Exxon worked alongside Chevron, Shell, BP and smaller oil firms to shift attention away from the growing climate crisis. ENDS

When working at BP, I rode to work every day for 15 years and lobbied to remove anti-cycling rules with much success.

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swldx...@gmail.com <swldxer1958@gmail.com> wrote:

QUOTE: Exxon worked alongside Chevron, Shell, BP and smaller oil firms to shift attention away from the growing climate crisis. ENDS

When working at BP, I rode to work every day for 15 years and lobbied to remove anti-cycling rules with much success.

So you supported an organisation, which among others ‘shifted attention
away from the growing climate crisis’?

You seemed happy enough to take their money.

Ever heard of the term ‘hypocrite’?

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Spike

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It’s not our fault, it’s yours

From 2004 to 2006, a $100m-plus a year BP marketing campaign “introduced the idea of a ‘carbon footprint’ before it was a common buzzword”, according to the PR agent in charge of the campaign. The targets of this campaign were the “routine
human activities” and “lifestyle choices” of “individuals” and the “average American household”. In 2019, BP ran a new “Know your carbon footprint” campaign on social media.

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