Bullet iv: Ice and Sea Levels

Bullet iv: "A clear warming trend is evidenced by ice sheet and sea level changes"
Hierarchy: Part II:1:A:iv

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Introduction
It would be logical to assume that a warming world should be losing ice cover. But the relationship between warming and polar ice sheets is not simple. Warming does not simply melt ice; it also changes weather patterns that affect the accumulation of ice. Warmer polar air can carry more moisture and thus increase the amount of precipitation over ice fields, effectively increasing the amount of ice. If precipitation outweighs melting and evaporation [positive "mass balance"], then warming could actually increase the ice in polar fields. Also, the equilibrium-line altitude [ELA]--the altitude above which there is net ice accumulation--increases with increased temperature but decreases with increased snowfall, so it is not necessarily clear from ELA trends whether warming has occurred.

But it is still true that polar ice presents a potentially powerful testament to climate trends. The expected contribution to the mass balance from increased precipitation is small compared to increased melting. And also the distribution of ice changes in predictable ways according to temperature. Below the ELA, the rate of melting should undeniably increase with increasing temperatures. A signature of warming would then be ice thickening in the interior and thinning or retreating around the periphery. The flow of ice into the ocean is also expected to accelerate with rising temperatures; scientists have recently shown that the melting of sea ice abutting the mouths of glaciers triggers a massive acceleration of the glacier. And further evidence has been found that surface meltwater can percolate to the bottoms of glaciers and lubricate the ice-rock boundary, catalyzing faster ice flow. If sea levels are rising then the net amount of water tied up in ice worldwide must be decreasing, which would be an undeniable sign that temperatures are increasing despite increases in snowfall.

Glaciers and polar ice fields are very different beasts. Glaciers represent a much higher diversity of the planet's climates and thus tell us more about global temperature trends. Glaciers also are more a part of their surrounding climate than ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, which are so large that they create their own regional climates. So glaciers can respond faster to climatic variations. An analysis of ice cover then wouldn't be complete without a discussion of the trends in the distribution of continental glaciers.

Changes in the distribution of polar ice, glacial ice and sea levels are all important in an analysis of what ice can tell us about temperature trends. Each topic contains enough data to evaluate independently, so we will follow the structure below. Click on the links to see an analysis of the research for each topic.

Bullet Structure:

A clear warming trend is evidenced by ice sheet and sea level changes

a. The Greenland ice sheets show warming

b. The Antarctic ice sheets show warming

c. Global continental glaciers show warming

d. Sea levels show warming

e. Permafrost and river and lake ice show warming

Conclusion
No conclusion at this time.

Bullet Value: INCOMPLETE

Chuckwalla and Bunnies

Chuckwalla and I were looking up animal pictures on images.google.com, and she asked me to find pictures of a bunny. So I typed "bunny" and clicked on the first picture I saw.

Click on the link.

The photographer is... Steven Pinker! Pinker--the greatest modern cognitive psychologist, one of the most influential living linguists, and the modern anti-Empiricist rock star--took a picture of a "bunny." Not a desert cottontail rabbit, not a cottontail rabbit, not even a rabbit, but a "bunny." And not only that, but it is one of the top ten hits on images.google.com for "bunny."

Bizarre!

His gallery is actually pretty good. He uses polarizing filters to good effect, and he takes some nice macros. His bird pictures are all properly identified. But still... didn't see that one coming!

Bullet v: Warming and Life

Bullet v: "A clear warming trend is witnessed by changes in wild plants and animals"
Hierarchy: Part II:1:A:v.

Back to Intro - Back to Outline - Back to Bullet vi

Introduction
Most plants and animals rely on climate to provide the necessary conditions to provide essential sustenance. Additionally, living organisms rely on climate to provide weather cues essential to a complete life-cycle. Therefore, widespread warming should have a measurable effect on the life-cycles of many plants and animals. With increased temperatures, birds migrate and lay eggs sooner, populations tend poleward, and the physical and genetic traits of many species tend toward configurations ideal for warmer climates. Almost certainly a majority of these effects are not known, but those that are known are easy to measure and stand as a completely independent and reliable complement to temperature data. Accumulating data from these sources avoids many of the issues endemic to outright temperature measurements, such as instrumentation unreliability, faulty or problematic calibration, and lack of continuity or comprehensiveness of records. However species' traits are poor measurers of the degree of the warming, meaning that their use is restricted to orthogonal verification of more standard climatic data.

Study 1:

Fingerprints of global warming on wild animals and plants
Terry L. Root et. al., Nature 421, 37-42 (2 January 2003)

Basic: A large meta-analysis of 143 independent papers which shows that the large majority [>80%] of nearly 1,500 plant and animal species studied had significant changes in behavior, habits, and physical traits consistent with rising temperatures but not consistent with level or decreasing temperatures. The trait shifts were statistically significant in the direction consistent with warming.

Details: The species' traits studied included population density change and poleward migration; phenology: the timing of egg-laying, flowering, migration, etc.; morphology: body size, behavior, etc.; and genetic frequency shifts. The meta-study identified potential temperature-dependent shifts for each species and counted the number of observed shifts of these types. Over 80% of the species showed shifts consistent with warming, with a 90% confidence interval of roughly 70%-89%. The shifts in phenology [timing of life-cycle events] across species shows statistically significant trends towards earlier dates.

In sum: "...the balance of evidence suggests that a significant impact of recent climatic warming is discernible in the form of long-term, large-scale alterations of animal and plant polulations. For example, the average shift in spring phenology (timing) of events, such as breeding or blooming, for temperate-zone species is 5.1 +/- 0.1 days earlier in a decade."

Discussion: It is important to note that this study does two important things: [1] confirm a wide-spread and broad-based response consistent with a global warming trend, and [2] act as an independent, statistically verified, though imprecise, verification of the IPCC warming data. Though the IPCC data were cited in the study, it is crucial to understand that the trait shift data exist independent of any warming data and no statistical results were contingent on IPCC data.

Conclusion: This meta-analysis is very strong evidence of a widespread warming trend.

Study 2:
Biological fingerprint of climate change impacts
Camille Parmesan & Gary Yohe, Nature 421, 57-60 (2 January 2003)

Basic: A large meta-analysis of over 1,700 species focusing on range and phenology shifts as well as relative abundance shifts. The shifts are compared to predictions based on IPCC climate warming data and agree with a confidence of >95%. This means that there is a less than 5% chance that the living systems' shifts that have been observed are correlated with the IPCC warming data purely by chance.

Details: Northern range limits for species moved an average of 6.1 km per decade northward with 95% confidence interval of 1.3-10.9. Mean spring timing advanced an average of 2.3 days per decade, with 95% confidence interval of 1.7-3.2. The entire set of analyses points to a >95% [the IPCC's definition of "very high"] confidence that climate change is driving species poleward and pulling spring dates earlier.

In sum: "The meta-analyses of 334 species and the global analyses of 1,570 species... show highly significant, nonrandom patterns of change in accord with observed climate warming in the twentieth century, indicating a very high confidence (>95%) in a global climate change fingerprint."

Discussion: This is perhaps the most statistically rigorous paper on the topic. Conforming to very high levels of objectivity and statistics, the evidence overwhelmingly proves that global plant and animal life is changing in ways consistent only with global warming. We endeavor in this section only to show that plants and animals are changing in ways that signal global warming, but it is interesting to note that this paper also ties the degree of living organism response to the amount of warming and thus acts as a kind of verification of the actual IPCC warming data.

Conclusion: This meta-analysis is very strong evidence of a global warming trend.

Study 3:
[Various phenology studies]
Mark D. Schwartz
[as suggested by reader "Smoker"]

Basic: Schwartz has made a career out of creating an integrated study of phenology. He utilizes ground stations, citizen scientists, networks of researchers and satellites to track the onset of spring and to measure trends in the timing of leafing and blooming. There is no simple way to synthesize all of his findings here, but there is a very useful collection of figures on his website relating to a single study he conducted which is indicative of the type of data he is collecting. The figures for growing season length, last spring freeze date, first bloom date, and first leaf date trends are particularly instructive. Data from stations across the Northern Hemisphere were used for the study.

One pertinent quote: "Results are consistent with prior smaller area studies, confirming a nearly universal quicker onset of early spring warmth (spring indices (SI) first leaf date, -1.2 days per decade), late spring warmth (SI first bloom date, -1.0 days per decade; last spring day below 5 1C, -1.4 days per decade), and last spring freeze date (-1.5 days per decade) across most temperate NH land regions over the 1955–2002 period."
[Quoted from: Onset of spring starting earlier across the Northern Hemisphere, Mark D Schwartz et. al., Global Change Biology (2006) 12, 343]

Conclusion: This body of data is very strong evidence of a widespread warming trend.

Further studies on the topic:

Patterns of phenological changes in migratory birds
Thorup K et. al., Oecologia. 2007 Apr;151(4)

Rapid advance of spring arrival dates in long-distance migratory birds [with response]
Jonzen N, et. al., Science. 2006 Jun 30;312(5782)

Climate correlates of 20 years of trophic changes in a high-elevation riparian system
Martin TE, Ecology. 2007 Feb;88(2):367-80

Conclusion
These studies together constitute conclusive evidence of a global warming trend. Little information about the rate and scale of the warming is discernible from this data, however. No papers I have found to date can attribute these trait shifts to any other cause than increasing temperatures, so this bullet is uncharacteristically clean and simple.

Bullet value: TRUE

Back to the Outline

Please Spend This Here $10,000,000,000

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has just offered you one-quarter of its endowment--10 billion dollars--to spend on charitable endeavors of your choice. They also stipulate that you must spend it or lose it; no investments possible. What would your plan be? Be specific and thoughtful, I'm very interested in your answers. My guess is that the answers will vary drastically. I'll include all of the responses in a main post when enough people have responded, unless you request otherwise.

Have fun!

Again, what should I write about?

This time, pick 3 and rank them. I'll do every one that gets a vote before I ask this again! And this time, there is no reason for the order.

Book reviews:
1. The World Without Us by Alan Weisman [5 stars]
2. Resistance by Barry Lopez [4.5 stars]
3. 1491 by Charles C. Mann [2.5 stars]
4. Nature via Nurture by Matt Ridley [4.5 stars]
[4.5. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis [4 stars] -- it's difficult for me to review novels but I'll try really hard if you REALLY want it]

Philosophizationings:
5. The demise of the clovis megafaunal extinction theory
6. Thoughts on asceticism
7. The Project for the New American Century
8. The chimp video game study fraud
9. The first Global Warming data
10. Why I might never have a real job [aka "The 2008 DOE Science Budget"]
11. Why the election system is broken
12. Cranks, kooks, crackpots, and their relationship to science... and birding

[There are 12 delegates up for grabs. Delegates will be assigned in a proportionate distribution based on voters' number 1 picks, except when a particular candidate topic receives less than 15% of the possible vote, in which case its delegates will be transferred to the second choices of the voters casting the unpopular first pick. If your second choice also receives less than 15% of the vote, all of your votes will contribute delegates to your third choice. If the third choice is under 15% then your votes will be discounted. Additionally, I posses 6 superdelegates which I will assign based on whimsy after the vote which will guarantee that I will first write whatever topic I really want first. But don't let that dissuade you, vote away!]

Why I used to think I was a socialist but was wrong

[by "popular" demand]

I used to think I was a socialist. I didn't know much about socialist economic, social or political theory. I hadn't read Marx. I couldn't articulate the differences between socialism and communism. I had never heard of the Second International or Frederick Engels. So... why?

To be completely honest, a lot had to do with my aesthetics. For me--and this is still true--there was literally nothing in the world more offensive to the senses than a large crowd. Times Square, Pier 39, sporting events, zoos, concerts, Yellowstone, and the Rose Festival all left me with acute sensory rage. The merciless ugliness of these places arose from individuality taken too far, I thought. Each person was so focused on making themselves stand out in a crowd that the effect of the crowd was complete and intense visual confusion. Add to that intense blasts of noxious deodorants, bodily insecticides, hair spray, perfume, and other industrial synthesized personal care products, and I experienced my own personal hell.

So I decided that I was not a huge fan of freewheeling individuality and that a certain amount of uniformity across society is a good thing. While jealously defending my need to be different from everybody else, I wanted the rest of humanity to stop being so frazzin' different from each other. Somehow I thought that socialism would deliver this. The key here is that a large portion of my motivation was aesthetic. Not moral, not philosophical, not logical, but aesthetic.

I thought of other ways to defend what I considered socialism, which I thought of as simply the mandated practice of equality and unity. Scripture, the fantastic gulf between the well-offs and the have-nots, an ideallistic streak and a taste for being different [ironically enough] all seemed to solidify my position on socialism.

Then, I learned what socialism is all about. Nothing doing!

At this point in my life I see the aesthetic purgatory that is Disneyland as an unavoidable consequence of the inalienable rights of human expression. I still feel strongly that every tax-paying citizen has the right to health care, that unfettered consumerism is immoral and destructive, that capitalism is in essence sinful, and that masses of people are profoundly nauseating.

But I am not a socialist!

What to write about?

I have a backlog of blogs I've been wanting to write. My 2 or 3 readers can vote on which one comes next [in order of how likely I am to do it before we leave for Montana on the 24th]:

1. The chimp video game study fraud
2. Review of The World Without Us by Alan Weisman [5 stars]
3. The demise of the clovis megafaunal extinction theory and discussion of the carolina bays
4. Review of 1491 by Charles C. Mann [2.5 stars]
5. Review of Resistance by Barry Lopez [4.5 stars]
6. The first Global Warming data
7. Explaination of why I used to think I was a socialist but was wrong
8. A review of the Pinker/Bloom language evolution paper

Anybody out there have an itching to hear any one of these? I've been dying to jump into any one of these, so just let me know...