I work for NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center. Earth science is a huge part of what we do as a NASA center. For the past seven years or so, I have been working on ICESat-2, a mission to measure changes in the Earth's ice sheets and sea ice. We're a piece of the climate science puzzle. One of the cool things about working on these kinds of projects is getting to listen to the scientists talk about their work and sit in on their presentations. I get to know them as people and hear about what they've learned and what they still hope to learn. It's pretty awesome. I hadn't been on ICESat-2 for very long before I ran into what I have come to call "The Scary Chart."
A version of The Scary Chart is shown above. The graph shows, in crude terms, "amount of sea ice" on the vertical axis versus "year" on the bottom axis. The blue area shows how different models have been predicting the decline of sea ice over time. I think there are a little over a dozen models represented. The black line is the average of all those models. The red line shows the actual observations of how sea ice has been declining (some of that data provided from our predecessor mission, the first ICESat).
What makes this chart so scary? It's not just that sea ice is decreasing. No, it turns out all of the climate models we have are underestimating how fast the planet is losing sea ice. This climate change thing is real, and the more data we get, the worse things look.
Of course, there's always variations of the "hockey stick" graph, which probably get more airplay as scary charts:
But for some reason The Scary Chart about sea ice gets me more. I think it's the "we can't even be sure yet that it's only this bad" aspect of it. Also maybe because I first experienced it in a personal setting, presented to me by people that I knew personally and trusted, people who have integrity and are damn-smart scientists.
Now, this is by no means intended to be a post in which I use data and well-reasoned arguments to illustrate the reality of climate change. Smarter people do that much better elsewhere on the web, and besides, that's not what this blog is about. My real point is to relay a personal experience: the first time I saw The Scary Chart, I thought to myself, "holy crap." Climate change has been a much bigger concern of mine ever since.
Since being exposed to The Scary Chart, I have stopped driving my car to work. I take the train and bus instead. I have become a vegetarian, in no small part because it reduces my carbon footprint (look it up: www.pbjcampaign.org). I recycle more. I compost. I eat more organic/sustainably-grown foods.
And now I'm going to bike 300 miles in Climate Ride. This is why I ride.
One easy thing that you could do is help me ride. All donations to Climate Ride are tax-deductible and go toward organizations that promote sustainable solutions for the planet. You can donate toward my goal (http://climateride.donordrive.com/participant/jamiebritt) or Amy's (http://climateride.donordrive.com/participant/amybritt) or both.
Special shout-outs to Waleed Abdalati, Jay Zwally, Thorsten Markus, and Tom Neumann, the ICESat-2 scientists who have taught me most of what I know about cryospheric science (that's "science about the icy parts of the world", for those of us non-scientists).
Nice cherry picking.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet sea ice in the Antarctic is above normal and has been for a while. Not to mention that it was just summer in the South.
As for NASA's contributions to this, yeah, we all remember how Hansen forged his data to get his point across and how NASA sided with Mann and his hockey stick lie (the same hockey stick that completely ignore 2,000 years of history.)
The climate has always changed and will always change. There is NOTHING we can do about it. Our small amount of CO2 has no influence. We're talking 0.039% CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 starts having an influence at 60-70%.
As for the climate models, here's the killer: they're computer programs trying to foresee the development of a non-linear, chaotic system, which is impossible. But the UN, the IPCC and even NASA continue to push this nonsense.
Ice records in the Arctic seas, ice above normal in the Antarctic seas in summer. How strange. And yet, 2,000 and roughly 1,000 years ago it was significantly warmer than today. The Romans planted wine in England, the Chinese culture bloomed and they invented Chrome. Then the Danes planted wine as well and again, in Asia culture bloomed as well. Today the wine border is where? Somewhere in middle Germany.
When will you people finally stop lying? How often do you have to be disproven and uncovered to finally stop?
PS: ever heard of glaciers calving? Apparently not. But then again, NASA once put a man on the moon, today NASA is just a willing tool of our so called leaders who're hell bent on taking all our liberties from us.
Well, hello, anonymous internet ranter! Welcome! So today Jamie wrote an earnest blog entry about his personal experience, concerns about climate change, and attempt to make the world a better place, and you've responded with an angry rant about climate change denial, NASA's agenda, and wine borders (?) -- all bravely done anonymously, of course.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Jamie will respond later about the science, when he isn't busy working, but I have to ask -- why are you here? Are you someone we know, or do you just troll twitter looking for climate tweets so that you can rant? Why are you so angry? Who do you think "you people" are? And what are you doing to actually effect change? (No, ranting in blog comments *doesn't* count.)
ANYwhoozle, for everyone else's benefit, I've disabled anonymous comments. From now on, if you wanna rant here, you're gonna have to be willing to stand behind it. Cheers!
Anonymous wrote: "The climate has always changed and will always change. There is NOTHING we can do about it. Our small amount of CO2 has no influence. We're talking 0.039% CO2 in the atmosphere. CO2 starts having an influence at 60-70%."
ReplyDeleteI think you are either confusing your percents or confusing what they mean. I believe that 0.039% is the percent of our atmosphere that is CO2. I am not sure what the 60-70% means or where that range came from (can you toss me a source?). However, *if* you are comparing apples to apples (and if you aren't then these numbers have no meaningful comparison) then it seems like you are saying we are fine until the levels of CO2 increase by over 3 orders of magnitude. I am not scientist, but I think we would be long dead before we hit 60%.
"As for the climate models, here's the killer: they're computer programs trying to foresee the development of a non-linear, chaotic system, which is impossible. But the UN, the IPCC and even NASA continue to push this nonsense."
Ok, I am not a scientist, but I *do* have a PhD in complex dynamics/chaos theory. Weather is chaotic, climate is not. As a simple analogy, think of dropping a ball into a turbulent river (drop it upstream from the turbulence). We all know turbulence is a manifestation of chaos. Due to sensitive dependence on initial conditions/chaos it is nearly impossible to predict where the ball will be at any given time t in the future. However, it *is* possible to predict the long-term behavior; the ball will go down-stream.
Predicting the weather is trying to determine the precise values for a slew of variables at a specific time; predicting climate is trying to determine the long-term trend/overall average. Weather prediction is impeded by chaos; climate prediction is not.
Yay! Our first comment by someone we (maybe) don't know. And, Yay?, our first comment by a climate change denier. That means we must be getting some kind of exposure, right?
ReplyDeleteSo, where to begin?
Why is the Antarctic sea ice extent not decreasing the way we see in the Arctic? Because climate is complex, and the Antarctic is different from the Arctic. Details here: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/antarctic_melting.html (Bonus - Thorsten Markus is mentioned, our ICESat-2 Project Scientists.)
Despite the stable sea ice in the Antarctic, even Mr Anonymous (Mr A for short) says the Antarctic is warming. And that does mean bad news for the Antarctic glaciers: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/unstable-antarctica.html And lets not forget the sudden loss of the Larson B ice shelf: http://nsidc.org/news/press/larsen_B/index.html
Hansen forged documents? Honestly, I'm not going to look up a rebuttal to this, because the data from one many isn't what makes the science community convinced about what is happening to the climate. As for the hockey stick, here's a somewhat outdated "Myth vs Fact" about it: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stick/ And next up a fairly technical discussion of one source of controversy surrounding it. Don't let the title "Dummies guide" fool you: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/02/dummies-guide-to-the-latest-hockey-stick-controversy/ And maybe something more recent: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=still-hotter-than-ever
On climate modeling: Dan made a good point. But also, there seems to be the contradictory language coming from the deniers. Climate is too complex to predict, but we know climate is not warming. So we don't know because it's too complex? Or we can know? Of course, part of my whole point in this post was: crap, the models aren't right--and because they're not right, it's even worse than we thought. But, actually, all those models were predicting the direction of the trend correctly. Sea ice is going away. So it's not like the models aren't making reasonable predictions. It's just that the things we don't know make the reality worse than the models can simulate without that knowledge. (pssst... that's why we're spending money on satellite observations, to get the data we need to make the models work better).
Ah-ha! Climate has changed over time! So what is happening now MUST just be normal. Except that it's not. Just about all the reputable scientists agree that what we're seeing now is historically anomalous. Because of, you know, data.
I'm not sure what glacier calving has to do with anything. As for lying... YAY! Our first ad hominem attack! However, this does remind me that I need to beef up my accomplishments in the areas of "being a willing tool of our so called leaders" and "taking people's liberties away" before I go in for my next performance appraisal.
I leave with this:
http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/395940_842169154111_1010664_37712606_1688554057_n1.jpg
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Delete1. http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/climategate/
ReplyDelete2. Mr. A is a coward.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI don't see how you can tell from such a small amount of data (1900 to now) that we have a unique man made global warming issue. Our planet is over 4.5 billion years old. This may be a normal warming/cooling cycle that the planet experiences but that hasn't occured since Humans were able to record weather information and, therefore, has never been observed by humans before. How can these "scientists" be so sure it is purely man made? There just isn't enough data. It doesnt mean, however, that we can't act responsibly to make our environment better but I just can't accept the findings about "Global Warming" being human caused based upon the amount of data being presented in such a short time frame. Sorry, dude. You do have the right idea about our envirnment and our responsibility to clean it up, however. Good luck.