Arctic Sea Ice Extent, Area, and Volume

[csnavywx]

12 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

Out of curiosity, I plotted the May average temperature for the Siberian region....and it definitely is more of a 1990s profile (and 1980s/1970s for that matter)...so the flukish reversion to a cold May explained the big snow cover anomaly there.

 

Wow, that's a big drop. Pretty surprising, even with the high variance.

[ORH_wxman]

1 minute ago, csnavywx said:

Wow, that's a big drop. Pretty surprising, even with the high variance.

Yeah it looks like the only time a drop that high occurred in the record was between 1957 and 1958.

[csnavywx]

Just out of curiosity, I went through the CCSM4 output on Climate Reanalyzer and looked at that region out through time. Something interesting popped up:

 

 

 

If I expand the timeframe to 2021-2040 vs 2001-2016, it's still there:

 

[csnavywx]

Looking at individual years, it doesn't show up every year, but it shows up quite a bit from here on out. Some years are just as cold, if not colder this year.

[ORH_wxman]

11 hours ago, csnavywx said:

Looking at individual years, it doesn't show up every year, but it shows up quite a bit from here on out. Some years are just as cold, if not colder this year.

That's kind of weird. I know the winters there have gotten quite a bit colder in the past decade or two vs the 1990s (we've seen the whole autumn snow cover feedback on the Siberian high)...but it was the opposite in the warm season. I wonder why it would start cooling.

[bluewave]

I don't think that reaching technically ice free in September is the important benchmark to focus on. The key number appears to have been dropping below 6 million sq km on a regular basis around 2005 in September. That's when Arctic amplification really took off.

 

[csnavywx]

Very solid area drops the past couple of days (per Wipneus's homebrew calcs). -192k for the 14th and -128k for the 15th.

Couple more days of decent drops are probably coming before cooler weather sets in. It will then depend on exactly where that advertised TPV sets up and how strong it is. A TPV positioned near the pole will of course result in much slower losses -- whereas a position over the Laptev or coast there will hasten Fram export and cause the Chukchi/ESS open water front to rapidly advance. Either way, it's probably still better than the dual ridge we had over the past week given the temperature drop.

[ORH_wxman]

The area losses look like they are mostly coming from Hudson Bay and perhaps the Kara. The Kara is more meaningful, but Hudson bay can deceive us sometimes in both directions...the main basin looks pretty high concentration to me right now.

 

Of course, we don't have SSMI/S area data right now...that's really the most important one for predictive purposes because unlike AMSR2 data, it is sensitive to melt ponding.

[csnavywx]

2 minutes ago, ORH_wxman said:

The area losses look like they are mostly coming from Hudson Bay and perhaps the Kara. The Kara is more meaningful, but Hudson bay can deceive us sometimes in both directions...the main basin looks pretty high concentration to me right now.

 

Of course, we don't have SSMI/S area data right now...that's really the most important one for predictive purposes because unlike AMSR2 data, it is sensitive to melt ponding.

Good point about the Hudson. It's been wrecked pretty hard this season and probably can only contribute for another 10 days before there isn't much left (it's almost all grey ice at this point). EOSDIS does suggest some ponding has developed in the ESS, Laptev and perhaps the Barents, but given the colder weather on the way, I doubt they'll contribute much over the next 10 days.

[bluewave]

The -425 m PV is one of the strongest that we have seen in June. So yet another June post 2012 without the strong 2007-2012 dipole making an appearance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[csnavywx]

Just now, bluewave said:

The -425 m PV is one of the strongest that we have seen in June. So yet another June post 2012 without the strong 2007-2012 dipole making an appearance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yeah, the EPS is now pretty adamant that just about the entire basin goes cold. I'm beginning to think the current +PDO/warm ENSO stretch is inhibiting any lengthy dipole development. There have been a couple of papers hinting at this outcome recently. You had one a couple years back relating to this issue as well, I believe?

[bluewave]

1 hour ago, csnavywx said:

Yeah, the EPS is now pretty adamant that just about the entire basin goes cold. I'm beginning to think the current +PDO/warm ENSO stretch is inhibiting any lengthy dipole development. There have been a couple of papers hinting at this outcome recently. You had one a couple years back relating to this issue as well, I believe?

Yeah, the flip occurred right around the record breaking March 2013 -3.185 AO. That's when the dominant blocking shifted from the Atlantic to Pacific sector. The +PDO recently set a record breaking 40 positive months in a row.Must be related to AGW, Arctic, tropics, Atlantic, Pacific ,and rossby wave linkages.

[csnavywx]

Gotta go back to Aug. 2012 to find a cyclone as powerful as is being progged next week at this point.

[bluewave]

Coolest first half of June at Utqiaġvik (Barrow) since 1974, 4.5°F (2.5°C) below the 1981-2010 normal. You know the weather patterns are really out of whack  when it's 36 on January 1st in Barrow and can only reach a high of 38 degrees during the first half of June.

https://mobile.twitter.com/AlaskaWx/status/875793934043291648/photo/1#

[The_Global_Warmer]

Boring.

We are past that point where we need to learn about how to follow this since now all of us know what's what unless there's a record being threatened this is boring will probably end up maybe 3rd or 4th at the end of the year unless the last end of June going through July is just dipole-dipole.

Maybe if things ended up just cold the rest of the summer it wouldn't be a top-5 bottom maybe probably not but maybe.

With the cold season in the Arctic now being so warm unless that changes there's going to be no recovery even from where we are the question I'm getting rid of the summarized it's going to be that cold season becoming even less friendly for ice development and the right set of summertime weather conditions.

Because if say around May 20th to early July.

We had the number one warmest. You know most dipole perfect wind pattern on record we would probably get really close to having an ice-free summer.

Because that would insure all the ice except for I mean three to four metres thick ice just north of Canada would go.

The issue at hand dare is getting a sustainable dipole pattern for a hundred plus days.

This is just a guess but by looking at some of the charts and mid July on during 2007 it looks to me like some of the high-pressure and higher heights were driven straight from the fact it the ice Albedo effect was so crushing over such a large part of the Arctic that summer.

Heating of the lower atmosphere was much easier during the line August over ice then than it has been many years since you can get I'll be those down to the .4 range.


But one thing that this summer has already done it has very thin ice and it has warm open large areas of water or limbs have constantly been pushing the water towards the main ice pack which we know is going to cause that water to go up underneath that ice and cripple it from the bottom.



I'd also guess that the longer-lasting snowpack this past year has helped.



Sent from my SM-G530T using Tapatalk

[Jonger]

On 6/17/2017 at 3:02 PM, bluewave said:

Coolest first half of June at Utqiaġvik (Barrow) since 1974, 4.5°F (2.5°C) below the 1981-2010 normal. You know the weather patterns are really out of whack  when it's 36 on January 1st in Barrow and can only reach a high of 38 degrees during the first half of June.

https://mobile.twitter.com/AlaskaWx/status/875793934043291648/photo/1#

I haven't paid much attention to the ice this year, but I do follow a Bloomsky weather station in the Barrow area and was surprised how cold it was this deep into met summer. Now this makes sense.

[tacoman25]

Mother Nature can be such a buzz kill.

[CaWx]

10 minutes ago, tacoman25 said:

Mother Nature can be such a buzz kill.

As in boring? I'm super glad its been boring, extreme melting is very bad news for the future of our climate. Once the ice fully melts out during the summer, weirder things will start happening. The longer the ice can hold on until humans wake up and start massively reducing CO2, the better. 

[DaculaWeather]

Weirder things huh? 

[CaWx]

3 hours ago, DaculaWeather said:

Weirder things huh? 

Yes, it will really begin to mess with the jetstream. You think long extended patterns are extreme now, imagine what a rainy pattern for weeks will do. More cutoff lows and stationary fronts, along with more prolonged drought situations. A prolonged meandering jetstream will really start causing problems. 

[Joe Vanni]

9 hours ago, CaWx said:

Yes, it will really begin to mess with the jetstream. You think long extended patterns are extreme now, imagine what a rainy pattern for weeks will do. More cutoff lows and stationary fronts, along with more prolonged drought situations. A prolonged meandering jetstream will really start causing problems. 

Really? I think the state of the sun has a much bigger effect on our jet stream compared to any other factor. It's not a coincidence that our jet stream had generally been becoming more meridional as we are declining with our solar cycles and other activities with the sun. As we approach the grand solar minimum, our winters will be longer and we will have much shorter growing seasons. Just think of the power of the sun. It's the reason for our seasons. And when it quiets down, trust me, earth will react and do fairly quickly as we head towards cycle 25. Plus if you look back at some of our prior colder periods on earth, there's more ice further south than right at the pole. The earth needs a mechanism to force the colder air away from the poles. But that's not to say they won't still be cold. But the earth has just had its last hurrah for the global warming cycle we are now leaving. Watch the weather over the next few years. 

[CaWx]

2 hours ago, Joe Vanni said:

Really? I think the state of the sun has a much bigger effect on our jet stream compared to any other factor. It's not a coincidence that our jet stream had generally been becoming more meridional as we are declining with our solar cycles and other activities with the sun. As we approach the grand solar minimum, our winters will be longer and we will have much shorter growing seasons. Just think of the power of the sun. It's the reason for our seasons. And when it quiets down, trust me, earth will react and do fairly quickly as we head towards cycle 25. Plus if you look back at some of our prior colder periods on earth, there's more ice further south than right at the pole. The earth needs a mechanism to force the colder air away from the poles. But that's not to say they won't still be cold. But the earth has just had its last hurrah for the global warming cycle we are now leaving. Watch the weather over the next few years. 

Technically the Earth's tilt is the reason for the seasons. Yes our sun has a large effect on our jet stream, afterall it provides the uneven heating on our planet which causes the jet stream, however I suggest you read some papers from Jennifer Francis about climate change influencing the temperature gradients that cause the jet stream to weaken (because global temperature gradients are lessening), and like a weakened stream, slows down and meanders causing wavier and stagnant weather patterns. I can't understand why people put such a huge belief in the sun causing the climate change we are experience now. It has been proven the TSI hasn't increased enough to explain most of the warming we have seen since the industrial revolution. The sun's energy has been monitored for years now and it can't explain the warming trend. What has increased is the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere, which helps in keeping our atmosphere warmer than it otherwise would be. Another thing people can't comprehend is AGW is all about rate of change, the current rate of change in warming in geologic time is incredibly rapid. Yes the Earth's climate has been warmer in the past in it's history, yes these were caused by natural processes i.e. Milankovitch cycles and other forcings, but all of these different forcings work on much much slower time scales. What we are experiencing today is NOT normal, and not natural. I can't understand why people just can't accept scientific reality. 

[Joe Vanni]

Of course it's the tilt of the earth, but what are we tilting toward/away from? What amazes me is that people actually think we can have a bigger impact than the actual source of our life on earth. The blazing star that has been heating our planet since the beginning of time. Can you imagine what would happen if there were palm trees on Greenland like there were millions of years ago? The folks believing that AGW is our sole cause of warming would eat it up. If you actually think TSI and sunspots have been proven to not have been one of the major causes, then your sources are clearly cooking something up. I'm  not worried about changing any beliefs here as that will be taken care of as we approach and move through the 2020s and 2030s. The problem is people are being shoved all this "data" that we are the cause and what we have experienced is so unexpected and dangerous. I used to just listen to the news and be on the same understanding of human caused global warming. But when actually researching it and then using common sense, I realized there's a higher likelihood that what I thought before is wrong. Then when I found fo rcasters who actually had incredible regional predictions years in advance come true, that was enough for me. 

Co2 is at highest levels, won't dispute that. Since the Industrial Revolution, we have disrupted the nice relation between the two. But the temperatures have absolutely not followed that during the 20th century. And if you think we have warmed to the levels of the Co2 rise then that is wrong. There's been a nice general trend between the two, but it's Co2 that follows temperature on earth, not the other way around. What I do feel is that humans impact environmental conditions, like habitats and ecosystems. Pollution is a real problem, but to say we are impacting the global weather and causing the extremes is false. 

Some of the major reasons for our recent warming which will be ending shortly; especially in the mid-latitudes where everyone lives are: We are in an interglacial period coming out of the little ice age. And that literally ended right before records began. We are coming out of a general major spike in solar activity. 

I suggest looking into the state of our sea ice in the past. What we have been experiencing is natural, maybe it's crazy for us to witness but there's no way that 400 ppm of Co2 (0.0004%) is going to cause that, or massive floods and droughts. I'd also look at the behavior of the weather during the beginning of our last little ice ages and compare that to what we have been experiencing. It's no joke, a colder climate is way worse than a warmer one where we can enjoy farming at higher latitudes and cheaper food prices. I think it's hard to believe a lot of what I'm saying when coming off of a very warm 2015 and 2016. But for example, there's an astrometeorologist I've been reading since 2007, and his predictions have been incredible. Everything from the Texas drought that became the multi-year California drought, to the surprise winter of 2013-2014 (made 5 years in advance), then the double summer of 2015 that extended into Christmas. Really I just say to watch the next few years. The jet stream will continue to amplify and the air produced in the troughs will get colder. The grand minimum states of our sun historically produce major floods and cold storms, and then droughts for people stuck under the ridges. But I'm telling you that our crop failures are just beginning on a global level.

Lastly it really sucks this has become such a political issue. You have folks who don't understand a thing about weather (not talking about you CaWx) but they will preach their party's general stance on the issue but have no reasons for why. I'm talking both conservatives and liberals. I feel like when one side just tries to shut down the other, there's a major problem. To be labeled as a "climate denier" is nuts. Maybe they should change it to human-caused climate denier. 

Scientific reality? You mean of scientists with your belief? Because there aremany scientists who will state it's the sun, not humans that are driving our climate. 

[CaWx]

2 hours ago, Joe Vanni said:

Of course it's the tilt of the earth, but what are we tilting toward/away from? What amazes me is that people actually think we can have a bigger impact than the actual source of our life on earth. The blazing star that has been heating our planet since the beginning of time. Can you imagine what would happen if there were palm trees on Greenland like there were millions of years ago? The folks believing that AGW is our sole cause of warming would eat it up. If you actually think TSI and sunspots have been proven to not have been one of the major causes, then your sources are clearly cooking something up. I'm  not worried about changing any beliefs here as that will be taken care of as we approach and move through the 2020s and 2030s. The problem is people are being shoved all this "data" that we are the cause and what we have experienced is so unexpected and dangerous. I used to just listen to the news and be on the same understanding of human caused global warming. But when actually researching it and then using common sense, I realized there's a higher likelihood that what I thought before is wrong. Then when I found fo rcasters who actually had incredible regional predictions years in advance come true, that was enough for me. 

Co2 is at highest levels, won't dispute that. Since the Industrial Revolution, we have disrupted the nice relation between the two. But the temperatures have absolutely not followed that during the 20th century. And if you think we have warmed to the levels of the Co2 rise then that is wrong. There's been a nice general trend between the two, but it's Co2 that follows temperature on earth, not the other way around. What I do feel is that humans impact environmental conditions, like habitats and ecosystems. Pollution is a real problem, but to say we are impacting the global weather and causing the extremes is false. 

Some of the major reasons for our recent warming which will be ending shortly; especially in the mid-latitudes where everyone lives are: We are in an interglacial period coming out of the little ice age. And that literally ended right before records began. We are coming out of a general major spike in solar activity. 

I suggest looking into the state of our sea ice in the past. What we have been experiencing is natural, maybe it's crazy for us to witness but there's no way that 400 ppm of Co2 (0.0004%) is going to cause that, or massive floods and droughts. I'd also look at the behavior of the weather during the beginning of our last little ice ages and compare that to what we have been experiencing. It's no joke, a colder climate is way worse than a warmer one where we can enjoy farming at higher latitudes and cheaper food prices. I think it's hard to believe a lot of what I'm saying when coming off of a very warm 2015 and 2016. But for example, there's an astrometeorologist I've been reading since 2007, and his predictions have been incredible. Everything from the Texas drought that became the multi-year California drought, to the surprise winter of 2013-2014 (made 5 years in advance), then the double summer of 2015 that extended into Christmas. Really I just say to watch the next few years. The jet stream will continue to amplify and the air produced in the troughs will get colder. The grand minimum states of our sun historically produce major floods and cold storms, and then droughts for people stuck under the ridges. But I'm telling you that our crop failures are just beginning on a global level.

Lastly it really sucks this has become such a political issue. You have folks who don't understand a thing about weather (not talking about you CaWx) but they will preach their party's general stance on the issue but have no reasons for why. I'm talking both conservatives and liberals. I feel like when one side just tries to shut down the other, there's a major problem. To be labeled as a "climate denier" is nuts. Maybe they should change it to human-caused climate denier. 

Scientific reality? You mean of scientists with your belief? Because there aremany scientists who will state it's the sun, not humans that are driving our climate. 

Today I don't have time to respond in full so I will keep it short. The TSI difference between the Maunder Minimum and today's TSI is Mathematically NOT enough to explain most of the warming our climate has experienced since the industrial revolution, that is fact. Of course the sun matters in our climates temperatures, in not denying that, however the suns TSI output alone isn't enough to explain the warming. I recommend reading more about the physics of climate, radiative physics and black body constant. It doesn't matter how insignificant people think CO2 is by percentage wise, you have to look through the spectrum with OLR. Also please understand rate of change, say it with me rate of change. Do you understand how small 100 years on a geologic timescale is, and the current rate of warming relationship to past geologic warm periods?? I stick with math and physics, I don't care if people politicize it. 

 

http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~david/Donohoe_etal_pnas_2014.pdf

[Joe Vanni]

16 minutes ago, CaWx said:

Today I don't have time to respond in full so I will keep it short. The TSI difference between the Maunder Minimum and today's TSI is Mathematically NOT enough to explain most of the warming our climate has experienced since the industrial revolution, that is fact. Of course the sun matters in our climates temperatures, in not denying that, however the suns TSI output alone isn't enough to explain the warming. I recommend reading more about the physics of climate, radiative physics and black body constant. It doesn't matter how insignificant people think CO2 is by percentage wise, you have to look through the spectrum with OLR. Also please understand rate of change, say it with me rate of change. Do you understand how small 100 years on a geologic timescale is, and the current rate of warming relationship to past geologic warm periods?? I stick with math and physics, I don't care if people politicize it. 

 

http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~david/Donohoe_etal_pnas_2014.pdf

I don't think we are going to get anywhere debating this when we are at the end of the global warming period, so you get the see the warm results of the past 36 years. I'm not debating that we have had great warmth, but I question the validity of saying the warmth is fastest on record. We are going to have to wait a few years when people actually see the cooling begin and that it has lasting power. We've been spoiled with this warmth but that's coming to an end. 

[WidreMann]

To add to this, people are failing to grasp that AGW is about how humans are applying a small modulation to an existing system, and there are small changes, but they are very significant for life on earth. With CO2 at all, the planet would be some 50 degrees cooler, I believe. Raising it by 3 or 4 degrees, therefore, is not a big deal in terms of the numbers. But it is a big deal when it causes sea levels to rise and some land to be inundated. Again, it's not a lot of land. Most land will be fine. But we have a lot of cities on the coasts. That's a big deal for humans. When rising CO2 increases acidity levels in the ocean, it still may not be by much. But it's a lot for the life that lives there, that starts to die off when it can't handle the change in water chemistry.

What we are talking about is life's sensitivity to change, not about gigantic changes to the atmosphere (which we really aren't making). Life can handle change, but over larger time periods. When there are significant changes in a short time period, a lot of life dies off. Of course, in time, it will recover, as it did 65 million years ago, or during other extinction events. It's bad news for humans, though, because we depend on the ecosystem as it is. We can mitigate with technology or general inventiveness, but it will be a very big blow to our current civilization. That's why people should care. Not because the planet will explode (it won't). Not because one weird species of frog in outer Mongolia will go extinct (why should anyone care about that anyway?). Not because temperatures will go up by a billion degrees (they won't). It's because the small changes made to a climate that has been fairly stable for civilized human history have big effects for life and human life, which is sensitive to small changes. What good is oil and profit if we can't eat, can't live where we used to? That's the trade-off.

[WidreMann]

4 minutes ago, Joe Vanni said:

I don't think we are going to get anywhere debating this when we are at the end of the global warming period, so you get the see the warm results of the past 36 years. I'm not debating that we have had great warmth, but I question the validity of saying the warmth is fastest on record. We are going to have to wait a few years when people actually see the cooling begin and that it has lasting power. We've been spoiled with this warmth but that's coming to an end. 

It's funny you say that right as we've had an extreme acceleration of warming unlike anything in our period of direct record. There's really no data that says otherwise. Maybe there were rapid warmings in the pre-weather record days that have been washed out of our tree ring and ice core analyses (though unlikely). In any event, it's not happened during the period of our modern industrial civilization. We've seen how smaller-scale climate changes have had a big impact on historical civilizations. What will this do to ours?

[Joe Vanni]

12 minutes ago, WidreMann said:

It's funny you say that right as we've had an extreme acceleration of warming unlike anything in our period of direct record. There's really no data that says otherwise. Maybe there were rapid warmings in the pre-weather record days that have been washed out of our tree ring and ice core analyses (though unlikely). In any event, it's not happened during the period of our modern industrial civilization. We've seen how smaller-scale climate changes have had a big impact on historical civilizations. What will this do to ours?

It probably seems funny because the only side that gets play is AGW, and it's hard for anyone to fathom anything else but a never-ending warming world. We only have so many years with satellite data and official records. I think it's foolish for us to only look at Co2, and think that becuase that's going up, well our temperatures will continue to rise. Because not preparing for a colder world, will hurt our infrastructure and food supply. To me, a lot of it is common sense. I will say this, if we continue to warm with no turning back over the next decade, well I'll definitely have to shake up my view on things and go back to my older thoughts. But what I envision is this. We'll continue to become cloudier and wetter over the coming years. The jet stream will continue to amplify more and more as we approach solar cycle 25, with greater intrusions of colder air from tropospheric PVs. Our springs will continue to be delayed and winters will generally be 4 - 6 months long for many of us in the states.

[Joe Vanni]

24 minutes ago, WidreMann said:

To add to this, people are failing to grasp that AGW is about how humans are applying a small modulation to an existing system, and there are small changes, but they are very significant for life on earth. With CO2 at all, the planet would be some 50 degrees cooler, I believe. Raising it by 3 or 4 degrees, therefore, is not a big deal in terms of the numbers. But it is a big deal when it causes sea levels to rise and some land to be inundated. Again, it's not a lot of land. Most land will be fine. But we have a lot of cities on the coasts. That's a big deal for humans. When rising CO2 increases acidity levels in the ocean, it still may not be by much. But it's a lot for the life that lives there, that starts to die off when it can't handle the change in water chemistry.

What we are talking about is life's sensitivity to change, not about gigantic changes to the atmosphere (which we really aren't making). Life can handle change, but over larger time periods. When there are significant changes in a short time period, a lot of life dies off. Of course, in time, it will recover, as it did 65 million years ago, or during other extinction events. It's bad news for humans, though, because we depend on the ecosystem as it is. We can mitigate with technology or general inventiveness, but it will be a very big blow to our current civilization. That's why people should care. Not because the planet will explode (it won't). Not because one weird species of frog in outer Mongolia will go extinct (why should anyone care about that anyway?). Not because temperatures will go up by a billion degrees (they won't). It's because the small changes made to a climate that has been fairly stable for civilized human history have big effects for life and human life, which is sensitive to small changes. What good is oil and profit if we can't eat, can't live where we used to? That's the trade-off.

See I'm not trying to say that we should continue pumping out Co2. My main worry is that our focus for the warming is on the wrong thing, and that because we're looking the wrong way, we'll miss when the other regime comes on (global cooling). I do agree that if we continued to warm and sea levels rose at a fast pace, it would be bad for many and change civilization. But I think that civilization will be affected negatively and many of that same outcomes you stated could happen, but not because of warmth; but cold. So that's why I can only say so much to people who disagree with me because we need to see the weather in the next few years and into cycle 25 first.

[Silver Meteor]

Good morning. Long time lurker here, one who prefers listening over talking but do of course appreciate the talkers without whom there would be no thread to begin with.

Science has always been "in my blood." It started with my grade school years (1950s) in Maryland with a fascination in the shape of continents which suggested they surely must have moved over time. This idea was proved to be true years later when I was in high school. Also in high school we were taught the "Big Bang Theory" and the "Theory of Global Warming" neither of which were controversial at the time (I'd never heard of such a thing as "creationism", and it would be many years before AGW became politicized.)

Over the ensuing decades I continued learning about and keeping up with science at my own pace, first from books then from the internet as it developed. Watching in real time the continuous fine tuning in a variety of subjects as these many years have passed has helped keep my interest alive and healthy. So, what about climate? Oh dear, where does one begin...

To avoid dragging this out I'll just say I remain comfortable with my paradigms, none of which are "catastrophic." The best empirical evidence I see for AGW is clearly that which is occurring in the Arctic. Meanwhile, down here in the Mid-Atlantic U.S. the only change of note over the last 60+ years has been our tremendous population growth with its accompanying water pollution and its greatly expanded road networks and heat islands. Overall, I accept AGW but to suggest this is our greatest problem for the future, is, in my opinion, utter nonsense; this reeks of political expedience for the financial gain of a few without regard to the many serious non-climate problems lying in wait, problems our media is loathe to discuss. Moreover it implies technology will not progress, a ludicrous proposition.

The good, the bad, and the ugly...

The good will be technological improvements with power generation; I see little reason to doubt fusion power plants will be up and running before mid-century. The bad is an historical analysis of currencies that suggests our fiat dollar will not survive to mid-Century (perhaps or even probably not even to 2040.) And the ugly is multicultural demographics which will lead to a Balkanization of the U.S., also before mid-Century (likely to coincide with the economic earthquake of currency collapse.) All of this I'm sure appears fanciful to those who don't study such subjects and believe "tomorrow will always be like yesterday and today", but for them history always provides the rudest of awakenings.

However much climate change we see before the widespread use of fusion power will pale in comparison to the socio-political changes that will have staggering effects in the coming decades. I won't be around to see it but eventually the dust will settle and mankind will march forward, wiser and safer into a bright 22nd Century (where technology will be fantastically more advanced than it is today.) What I will do is all I can do, and that is to continue watching, learning, and enjoying science as I always have. To the rest of you, good luck and keep up the good work!