Don’t Worry, Winds Are Not a Part of Climate
Regarding climate change, if all the ice melts and northern albedo (heat reflectivity) is decreased, leading to significantly reinforced additional warming, it may not count, because it will all be due to “winds.”
But winds are not separate from climate, they constitute a key part of it.
On the popular NYTimes DotEarth blog, here are the first four, of five, comments today in response to a column examing the idea of winds pushing ice southward where it has tended to melt faster, and perhaps serving as a more direct cause of half of the floating ice melt than direct overall ambient warmth itself. (The first two are in full, the next two in part):
Mark Serreze at NSIDC coined the term “death spiral” in 2008 – the same year he incorrectly bet on an ice free pole for that summer.
Arctic ice area is currently normal, which is quite different from a “death spiral.”
http://arctic-roos.org…
Recommend Recommended by 9 Readers
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The well-informed amongst us knew all along, of course, that any 2007 ice “crisis” was a result of the winds having pushed a lot of ice out to sea.
Somehow, however, I don’t think the information we knew and you so well lay out made it to the headlines and to the desperate calls to “save the Polar Bears.”
In fact the Department of the Interior rather adroitly used the 2007 ice “crisis” to list the Polar Bear as an endangered species in May 2008… at at time when there were 5 times more Polar Bears that 60 years ago. One might even think the DOI wasn’t using science, but politics!
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Since no one mentioned it, I thought I should bring up well documented earlier Arctic ice summer melts.
The big 1922 Arctic ice summer melt. The Washington Post headline on Nov 2, 1922, was
“Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt.”
(discovered by John Lockwood)
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New light shed, or existing ignored light?
To begin, shall we all adjust our Arctic warming clock down approximately 45% accounted for, according to NASA, aerosols or soot:
“The researchers found that the mid and high latitudes are especially responsive to changes in the level of aerosols. Indeed, the model suggests aerosols likely account for 45 percent or more of the warming that has occurred in the Arctic during the last three decades. The results were published in the April issue of Nature Geoscience.”
The soot comes primarily from burning wood,coal and dung, and is partially combusted carbon residue. But don’t worry, it “doesn’t count.”
The other aerosols here are mainly man made pollutants as well. They don’t count as well.
Also don’t worry, whatever the state of the earth’s climate 50 years from now, it won’t be because of “climate change;” but instead, anything we can think to label as something other than “climate change.”
Including perhaps, one the most critical components and products of climate — wind itself.
But even the Dot Earth post itself tends to potentially somewhat underplay the role that wind plays in climate, as if understanding some short term mechanisms for specific changes somehow conflicts with the broader understanding of the direction of change that the globe’s increased heat trapping potential is likely to lead to. It is almost as if one expects to hear the following one day when and if climate really ratchets up: “Climate change is not real, increased heat in oceans driving climate, not climate change!” when of course climate change is increased heat retention in oceans (as noted below).
That basic, underlying effect — increasing heat leading to increased heat retention by oceans which ultimately drives climate – we tend to understand at least to a minimum degree, even if it has been largely overlooked in coverage of the climate change topic. But just because we don’t understand all of the other mechanisms does not mean that when we do find a particularly apparent direct sub climate component cause and effect that “appears” to be coincidental to the actual changes that we would expect to see as a result of “climate change,” does not mean that it doesn’t count. What the climate does on its own or not is a part of the inherent variability that we are dealing with. The conditions we create + that inherent variability will combine to form the end results of what we observe; in other words, it all counts. Climate change acts upon the system as is, with all its attendant variability, not the system ‘norm,’ as their is no ‘norm.’
If warmer temps lead to thinner ice, which combined with strong winds pushed ice to warmer waters where it melts even faster, whether those winds were a part of the change we are wreaking, coincidental, or a little bit of both, ultimately does not matter. Things will act in tandem regardless.
I wrote to Andy Revkin, the estimable former NY Times environmental reporter who runs the Dot Earth blog, half suggesting, half asking the following, hoping that Revkin would have something to add that I was missing:
Why the leap to thoroughly disassociate wind patterns from climate? In the long run, things will happen climate wise: what largely makes climate change the issue that it is, is the changing systems’ response to those components that make up the forces of weather and climate over time. As bases change, susceptibility to more change increases. Even if the specific pattern can not be directly tied to climate change itself (this is always a questionable concept as ultimately climate encompasses everything, but it is understandable given our desire to isolate out and explain various observations), such variability, in part attributable to us or not (again see parenthetical) still produces a different effect than it would upon a more stable base. It is how climate tends to ultimately lurch –and it has geologically, and no reason it might not at some point now.
Even given this caveat about the original article, the comments were still out of sync with what it was conveying, leading the 5th commenter to note:
[I] Suggest you all read the article and ignore the effort to reinterpret the information in the first two comments, and doubtless many to come.
Leading to this question: Why such an exacerbated attempt on the part of commenters on this popular NY Times future climate and ecology blog, to spin everything in a direction away from the basic science of climate change?
Since this winds up repeatedly undermining its purpose, and causing it to become a source of as much if not more disinformation as information, one might ask why the Dotearth blog itself puts up with it or doesn’t at least try and correct it?
Lest one think the above comments are not that bad — and they are not in comparison with the usual — here is a typical example from an earlier post, by someone who in other, often far more misleading, comments, claims to be a mathematical physicist. From this page here:
As the story points out, people always worry – as they should – about changes in climate, freezing and warming alike.
The idea that the cause of these changes, which have always been around, is us is new.
This idea does not appear to be rooted, or search confirmation, in the cold reality of measured data. It seems motivated by a general, vague feeling of guilt.
Actually, the idea is rooted in the fact that due to specific, easily identifiable anthropomorphic activities, we are in the process of taking CO2 that was sequestered deep undeground over hundreds of millions of years, and releasing it back into the atmosphere in what is almost a geologic instant.
And it is rooted in the fact that because of this, as well as an increase in nitrous oxides, a tremendous increase in methane, the development and release of fluorocarbons, and significant net deforestation, we are now at a level of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations in total global warming potential equivalent (GWPe) likely not seen in millions of years; and are rapidly adding to that level, at geologically breakneck speed. And the fact that the greenhouse effect, due to these greenhouse gases, is the reason the earth is warm and teeming with life as we know it, rather than largely a frozen ball hurtling almost lifelessly through space.
And because there is no reason, based in physics, biology, ecology, or climate science, to presume or believe that the greenhouse effect reaches a certain level and “magically” shuts off when greenhouse gases reach a certain point in their range — say, by wild coincidence, that point where they stood just before we started ferociously adding to them beginning in earnest about 150 years ago, and even more so the past several decades. And there is every reason to believe that the greenhouse effect doesn’t magically “shut off.”
And, perhaps most importantly of all, it is rooted in the fact that climate is not instantaneous, or linear in response to changes in climate stressors or some type of external forcing. (That is, it takes time for increased trapped atmospheric heat to slowly effect climate sub systems, most notably oceans,which then being to change appreciably many decades after the actual causation; and climate does not respond in an even, symmetrical, fashion.) Climate is a complex, highly variable phenomenon, with trapped heat but a fleeting precipitator of gradual, increasing system changes which then in turn change climate; including, yes, prevailing winds, and ultimately the oceans themselves, the main driver of climate here on earth.
And, over time, the oceans are, in fact retaining more and more heat.
The main basis for concern over any potential effect on the climate is not rooted in anything we have seen, but in fact of the underlying physics of and biological science of the matter. The problem, or “challenge,” could have been realized, theoretically, in advance even of any anthropomorphic activities. In fact the beginnings of our increasing atmospheric trapped heat climate awareness actually had their origins decades ago when the earth was in the process of a short cooling process. (A cooling process that itself was still part of a longer term statistically significant warming trend, which has now at this point seen the eleven warmest years in modern record, all in the last thirteen years of our history.)
But to this commenter, its just a new angle to dismiss all of this, which is just one step short of dismissing the fact that the sun rises in the East — now it’s based in “guilt.” The day before on the desire of the UN or Al Gore to “control the world.” The day before that on Neanderthal Democrats’ (and some Republicans’) misanthropic desires to return us to the stone age, the day before that it is to get ‘funding money’ (unlike all science the planet over, one presumes), the day before that because — unlike far heavier investments in non “green” technology — vested interests in “green” technology, who invested after it was seen that maybe older energy sources were a long term problem, were nevertheless just self interested, the day before that it was…. But this comment was about average on that blog, and not even nearly among the worst.
How repeated comments on the estimable NY Times DotEarth blog, to the constant effect that there is no evidence or support for the consensus of most scientists, continue to get posted and not sufficiently undermined by other commenters and in particular the blog itself, is hard to fathom. Unless, of course, as I have suggested on it back when I rather inefficiently ventured forth some comments myself — this leading science blog is supposed to serve more as a reflection of the ignorance and disinformation of our national debate, rather than a check and attempt to improve upon it.
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Tags: Andy Revkin, Arctic, Australia, climate change, CO2, Department of Interior, DotEarth, endangered species, ice, polar bears, snowfall, summer ice melt, warmest years on record, warming, winds
