Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/11/18/the-north-pole-is-36-degrees-w.html
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China is messing with the sensors, Mark.
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I like this map, from the University of Maine
it looks like they had problems finding enough reds to colour the map
(the other anomaly is the Siberian landmass, currently extremely cold. Putin is too cool for this world)
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Never mind me…
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Thank you, I am now substantially less near-term terrified. 20C warming in the Arctic could get into methane clathrate catastrophe territory after not such a long time, I think.
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Yeah. Too bad I was wrong… Sorry!
Go back to terrified.
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shudders
For those unfamiliar with methane clathrates, Clathrate gun hypothesis - Wikipedia. An alarming example quote from that page:
Shakhova et al. (2008) estimate that not less than 1,400 Gt of carbon is presently locked up as methane and methane hydrates under the Arctic submarine permafrost…They conclude that “release of up to 50 Gt of predicted amount of hydrate storage [is] highly possible for abrupt release at any time”. That would increase the methane content of the planet’s atmosphere by a factor of twelve, equivalent in greenhouse effect to a doubling in the current level of CO2.
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This is so disappointing. I voted Giant Meteor, and all the pundits said it was a shoe-in. And here we get Climate Disaster.
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We need to elect someone president who has the technical know-how to start some kind of nuclear winter.
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Its positive feedback at work. Liquid water has a a much lower albedo than solid water, so there was never going to be a small rise in temperature at the pole.
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Time to break out the black hair dye and give the remaining polar bears job reassignment training as pandas.
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Yes, true. Previous (non-research-paper, more press release-ish) articles
I’d seen a long while back talked about rises at the poles 3-6 times those
for the rest of the planet. Still scary.
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“NO! YOU EAT BAMBOO NOW!”
smacks away seal carcass
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Come on, just hold on a bit longer:
https://www.ornl.gov/news/nano-spike-catalysts-convert-carbon-dioxide-directly-ethanol
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It’s gremlins. Don’t feed them after dark, and whatever you do, don’t get them wet…waitaminute…melting glaciers and ice caps and icebergs? Ohhh, sheee-ooot…
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“First, there’s a language barrier. Apparently the pandas don’t react to commands given in Chinese. Then there’s food issues. Anything they eat or drink must be mixed with American biscuits.”
NPR: Pandas From Atlanta Zoo Have Trouble Adjusting to Chinese Ways
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You’re all making jokes, and I’m having panic attacks. How sad to envy the old and fear for the young.
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Let me assure you, being old is not to be envied. The idea that I’m thinking “Might not have very long left but never mind, planet’s going to hell in a handbasket and pretty soon everybody else will be dead too” - is not one I subscribe to. For one thing, I have grandchildren.
I have a strong suspicion that we are due, just as happened in the mesolithic, for a population crash due to climate stress. How big and how gradual it will be depends, not on scientists and engineers but on politicians. This is not an optimistic scenario.
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