CLIMATE NEWS ITEM#1: TO SAVE THE OCEAN, STOP EATING FISH. LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/09/seas-stop-eating-fish-fishing-industry-government

THE FEAR; The the most important news humanity has ever received is that life on Earth is collapsing. The living planet is in a death spiral. Human society is under urgent threat from loss of Earth’s natural life. The ocean is 70% of the planet and here life is collapsing because of fishing – large corporations operating a vast empire of fishing ships OMG! OMG! and then there’s fish farming that is devastating the ocean’s eco system. OMG! OMG! The solution is this: we must all stop eating fish. Better yet just stop eating and die. We can save the planet if we get rid of the humans.

THE REALITY: This scare is not new. It has been used repeatedly in the past and it has taken on a life of its own. This fear was preached in 1977 (“Sea’s riches running out”) and again in 1994  (“Oceans running out of fish”) and in 2010 where we are told to contemplate oceans devoid of fish. And then again in the 2018 eco scare that human activity is killing off the fish in the oceans. And here it is again in 2021 pretty much the same script meaning that there is still plenty of fish in the ocean left to catch where humans compete with sharks, pikes, walleye, barracudas, dolphins, bears, seals, sea lions, sperm whales, gray whales, killer whales, fin whales, and humpback whales for the fish.

And yet there is still fish. OMG! OMG! when oh when will it all end?

CLIMATE NEWS ITEM#2: MOSCOW BREAKS TEMPERATURE RECORD OMG! OMG!. LINK: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/from%3Ame/KtbxLthdlbQrXnQmRWPCgLrCHznzGPTknV

Moscow set an absolute temperature record on Tuesday, with 69.8 degrees Farenheit, which is the hottest April 13th for more than 140 years of meteorological observations, according to the Moscow Meteorological Bureau OMG! OMG! The climate change is going to kill us all with heat OMG! THIS IS NOT A GOOD TIME TO BRING UP THE INTERNAL CLIMATE VARIABILITY ISSUE BECAUSE OF THE DANGER WE FACE FROM GLOBAL HEATING OMG!

CLIMATE SCIENCE ISSUES

1. THIS TEMPERATURE EVENT WAS NOT FORECAST BUT CLAIMED AS A CLIMATE IMPACT POST HOC.

2. THE CITY OF MOSCOW IS NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF GLOBAL CLIMATE PHENOMENA AND ITS WEATHER EVENTS SHOULD BE UNDERSTOOD AS INTERNAL CLIMATE VARIABILITY.

BELOW ARE LINKS TO RELATED POSTS ON THE INTERNAL CLIMATE VARIABILITY ISSUE AND THE POST HOC EVENT ATTRIBUTION ISSUE IN CLIMATE SCIENCE.

THE POST HOC EVENT ATTRIBUTION ISSUE: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/06/29/diffenbaugh-2017-extreme-weather-of-climate-change/

THE INTERNAL CLIMATE VARIABILITY ISSUE: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/07/16/the-internal-variability-issue/

CLIMATE NEWS ITEM#3: Our brains make it hard to solve climate change OMG! OMG!. LINK: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2020/05/14/how-our-brains-make-it-hard-solve-climate-change/

WHAT THIS SCIENTIST SAYS: In general, people are able to rank appliances in terms of energy use, but they don’t have a clear understanding for what magnitude the energy differences might be. So they will know an air conditioner might be using more energy than a desktop or laptop computer, but they don’t know how much. And so I think that’s somewhat problematic. But the good news is, in 2050, both conservatives and liberals want a severely decarbonized energy system. That’s really hopeful. But the question is, how do you get from where we are today to this 2050 vision? Okay, so people don’t know how little the iPhone is drawing and how much the washer is drawing. What are the implications of that? Attari: Since the 1980s, when people have been asked what is the single most effective thing you can do to conserve energy in your life, people have said … turn off the lights. Turning off the lights is great, but it’s not the most effective thing we can do … It’s actually the HVAC system. So these misperceptions are really important because if I am a motivated individual and I wanted to decrease my carbon footprint or my energy footprint, I’m putting my effort into the wrong bucket.

TRANSLATION: THE REASON ITS SO HARD TO SELL THE CLIMATE GAME IS THAT PEOPLE ARE TOO DUMB TO UNDERSTAND THE SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS OF ENERGY THE WAY WE SCIENTISTS UNDERSTAND THEM.

THE RICH AND POOR ISSUE IN CLIMATE CHANGE

CLIMATE NEWS ITEM#4: WORLD’S WEALTHIEST AT HEART OF CLIMATE PROBLEM: LINK: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56723560

WHAT THE ARTICLE SAYS: The world’s wealthy must radically change their lifestyles to tackle climate change. It says the world’s wealthiest 1% produce double the combined carbon emissions of the poorest 50%. The wealthiest 5% contributed 37% of emissions growth between 1990 and 2015. SO THE CLIMATE PROBLEM BOILS DOWN TO THE OVERCONSUMPTION PROBLEM. We have got to cut over-consumption among the polluting elites who contribute by more than their share of carbon emissions. We must educe carbon budgets and share this load more equally.

CRITICAL COMMENTARY: THE CLIMATE SCIENCE ISSUE IS THAT THE CO2 RELEASED FROM THE COMBUSTION OF FOSSIL FUELS CAUSES ATMOSPHERIC CO2 TO GO UP AND THIS TREND IN ATMOSPHERIC CO2 IS DRIVING A DANGEROUS TREND IN GLOBAL MEAN SURFACE TEMPERATURE. . . . AND THAT THIS TREND CAN AND MUST BE BE STOPPED BY STOPPING THE BURNING OF FOSSIL FUELS. THIS IS IT. THAT’S ALL THERE IS TO IT. THERE IS NOTHING HERE ABOUT RICH OR POOR OR ABOUT WHAT YOUR SHARE IS IN EMISSIONS.

CLIMATE ACTION IS NOT SOME KIND OF A SOCIAL ISSUE THAT PITS RICH AGAINST POOR. WHETHER RICH OR POOR OR WHETHER LARGE EMITTER OR SMALL EMITTER WE MUST ALL SIMPLY STOP BURNING FOSSIL FUELS. THAT’S ALL THERE IS TO IT.

THE ANALYSIS OF THIS ISSUE IN TERMS OF A DIVIDE BETWEEN RICH AND POOR IS A CONFUSED AND IRRELEVANT VIEW OF THE CLIMATE CHANGE ISSUE.

CLIMATE NEWS ITEM#5: WHAT A GLACIAL RIVER REVEALS ABOUT THE GREENLAND ICE SHEET! OMG! OMG!. LINK: http://spaceref.com/arctic-2/what-a-glacial-river-reveals-about-the-greenland-ice-sheet.html

WHAT THE ARTICLE SAYS: With data from a 2016 expedition, scientists supported by NASA are shedding more light into the complex processes under the Greenland Ice Sheet that control how fast its glaciers slide toward the ocean and contribute to sea level rise. On the surface of the ice sheet, bottomless sinkholes called moulins can funnel meltwater into the base of the ice. As that water reaches the ice sheet’s underlying bed, it can make the ice detach slightly and flow more rapidly. Glaciers that slide faster can eventually lead to the ice sheet melting a bit faster than expected, also increasing the amount of ice calved into the ocean. With a vast surface area roughly the size of Mexico, Greenland’s melting ice is the largest contributor to global sea level rise. In a new study, published April 5 in Geophysical Research Letters, the authors concluded that the one important factor influencing the speed of a sliding glacier in southwest Greenland was how quickly water pressure changed within cavities at the base of the ice where meltwater met bedrock. “Even if the cavities are small, as long as the pressure is ramping up very fast, they will make the ice slide faster,” said Dr. Laurence C. Smith, a professor of environmental studies and Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. It’s the first time observations directly from field research show how changes in the volume of water under the Greenland Ice Sheet drive the flow velocities of a glacier. The findings contradict a long-held view about ice sliding velocities and water stored under a glacier known as steady-state basal sliding law, which has helped scientists predict how fast ice sheets will slide based on the total volume of water underneath the ice. Dr. Lauren Andrews, a glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, likes to explain the interactions between surface meltwater, basal ice, and the bedrock, as tires that slide very rapidly on a wet road because of hydroplaning. “If you have a rapid perturbation of water going into the subglacial system, you overwhelm the system, and so you create essentially a layer of water at the interface that’s not contained in channels or cavities anymore,” Andrews said. It’s not the actual volume in water that drives ice velocity, she explained, but the speed with which it builds up at a bedrock ice interface. For slow increases in water the subglacial system has time to evolve to accommodate the same amount of water. Until recently, the lack of data directly from the ground had made it difficult for scientists to probe the interactions that speed up glaciers in Greenland. One of the trickiest aspects preventing scientists from fully understanding ice sliding dynamics is the need to pair measurements of the flow of meltwater into a glacier with observations of the motion of the ice at the surface. The research team set camp on Russell Glacier near Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, and studied a glacial river named to honor the late NASA researcher Alberto Behar. By comparing GPS measurements of the motion of ice at the surface with the amount of meltwater discharging into a vertical shaft in the glacier, known as a moulin, as well as meltwater exiting the glacier’s edge, the team identified changes in water stored under the ice that corresponded with small accelerations in the ice at the surface. Past research on small alpine glaciers guided the design of the study. “There’s not a direct one-to-one relationship between the melting on the top and the meltwater exiting the ice sheet because the water is going through goodness knows what down below,” Smith said. The new findings will be valuable for satellites such as the upcoming NISAR satellite mission, a joint Earth-observing mission between NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), which will measure changes in ice surface velocity with unprecedented resolution for the entire Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, said Thorsten Markus, Cryospheric Science program manager at NASA. Projected to launch no earlier than 2022, NISAR may also enable further studies of ice surface velocities at much larger scales. Eventually, combining satellite observations with data acquired from the ground can help scientists as they consider adjusting their models to represent the hydrology at the base of ice sheets more accurately. Integrating new data in models is a gradual process, but Smith hopes the new findings can improve how climate models predict the pace of future sea level rise from Greenland’s ice in the face of climate change. “The only tools that we have to predict the future are models,” Smith said. “We have remote sensing, and we have field campaigns, so if we can use both to improve our modeling capability, we’ll be better able to adapt and mitigate sea level rise and climate change.” The fieldwork is one of many projects NASA has supported over the last two decades to interpret satellite observations and study the Greenland Ice Sheet using local field data.

CRITICAL COMMENTARY: THE ESSENTIAL ALARM HERE IS THAT { sinkholes called moulins can funnel meltwater into the base of the ice. As that water reaches the ice sheet’s underlying bed, it can make the ice detach slightly and flow more rapidly. Glaciers that slide faster can eventually lead to the ice sheet melting a bit faster than expected OMG! OMG!} The other issue with “the sheet’s underlying bed” is that the Arctic is geologically active with significant heat sources under the ice in terms of the Greenland Iceland mantle plume and other geological features of the Arctic. These features of the Arctic make it impossible to understand ice melt phenomena there as atmospheric phenomana. The relevant geological features of the Arctic are described in the related posts linked below:

RELATED POST#1: THE ARCTIC WARMS FROM BELOW: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/12/08/the-arctic-ocean-warms-from-below/

RELATED POST#2: GEOLOGICAL FEATURES OF THE ARCTIC: LINK https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/02/27/geological-features-of-the-arctic/

RELATED POST#3: THE GREENLAND ICELAND MANTLE PLUME: LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/10/30/the-greenland-iceland-mantle-plume/

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Fahnestock, Mark, et al. “High geothermal heat flow, basal melt, and the origin of rapid ice flow in central Greenland.” Science 294.5550 (2001): 2338-2342. Age-depth relations from internal layering reveal a large region of rapid basal melting in Greenland. Melt is localized at the onset of rapid ice flow in the large ice stream that drains north off the summit dome and other areas in the northeast quadrant of the ice sheet. Locally, high melt rates indicate geothermal fluxes 15 to 30 times continental background. The southern limit of melt coincides with magnetic anomalies and topography that suggest a volcanic origin.
2. Rezvanbehbahani, Soroush, et al. “Predicting the geothermal heat flux in Greenland: A machine learning approach.” Geophysical Research Letters 44.24 (2017): 12-271. Geothermal heat flux (GHF) is a crucial boundary condition for making accurate predictions of ice sheet mass loss, yet it is poorly known in Greenland due to inaccessibility of the bedrock. Here we use a machine learning algorithm on a large collection of relevant geologic features and global GHF measurements and produce a GHF map of Greenland that we argue is within ∼15% accuracy. The main features of our predicted GHF map include a large region with high GHF in central‐north Greenland surrounding the NorthGRIP ice core site, and hot spots in the Jakobshavn Isbræ catchment, upstream of Petermann Gletscher, and near the terminus of Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden glacier. Our model also captures the trajectory of Greenland movement over the Icelandic plume by predicting a stripe of elevated GHF in central‐east Greenland. Finally, we show that our model can produce substantially more accurate predictions if additional measurements of GHF in Greenland are provided. FULL TEXT: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017GL075661
3. van der Veen, Cornelis J., et al. “Subglacial topography and geothermal heat flux: Potential interactions with drainage of the Greenland ice sheet.” Geophysical research letters 34.12 (2007). Many of the outlet glaciers in Greenland overlie deep and narrow trenches cut into the bedrock. It is well known that pronounced topography intensifies the geothermal heat flux in deep valleys and attenuates this flux on mountains. Here we investigate the magnitude of this effect for two subglacial trenches in Greenland. Heat flux variations are estimated for idealized geometries using solutions for plane slopes derived by Lachenbruch (1968). It is found that for channels such as the one under Jakobshavn Isbræ, topographic effects may increase the local geothermal heat flux by as much as 100%.
4. Greve, Ralf. “Relation of measured basal temperatures and the spatial distribution of the geothermal heat flux for the Greenland ice sheet.” Annals of Glaciology 42 (2005): 424-432. The thermomechanical, three-dimensional ice-sheet model SICOPOLIS is applied to the Greenland ice sheet. Simulations over two glacial–interglacial cycles are carried out, driven by a climatic forcing interpolated between present conditions and Last Glacial Maximum anomalies. Based on the global heat-flow representation by Pollack and others (1993), we attempt to constrain the spatial pattern of the geothermal heat flux by comparing simulation results to direct measurements of basal temperatures at the GRIP, NorthGRIP, Camp Century and Dye 3 ice-core locations. The heat-flux map shows an increasing trend from west to east, a high-heat-flux anomaly around NorthGRIP with values up to 135 mWm–2 and a low-heat-flux anomaly around Dye 3 with values down to 20 mW m–2. Validation is provided by the generally good fit between observed and measured ice thicknesses. Residual discrepancies are most likely due to deficiencies of the input precipitation rate and further variability of the geothermal heat flux not captured here.
5. Smith‐Johnsen, Silje, et al. “Sensitivity of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream to geothermal heat.” Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface 125.1 (2020): e2019JF005252. Recent observations of ice flow surface velocities have helped improve our understanding of basal processes on Greenland and Antarctica, though these processes still constitute some of the largest uncertainties driving ice flow change today. The Northeast Greenland Ice Stream is driven largely by basal sliding, believed to be related to subglacial hydrology and the availability of heat. Characterization of the uncertainties associated with Northeast Greenland Ice Stream is crucial for constraining Greenland’s potential contribution to sea level rise in the upcoming centuries. Here, we expand upon past work using the Ice Sheet System Model to quantify the uncertainties in models of the ice flow in the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream by perturbing the geothermal heat flux. Utilizing a subglacial hydrology model simulating sliding beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet, we investigate the sensitivity of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream ice flow to various estimates of geothermal heat flux, and implications of basal heat flux uncertainties on modeling the hydrological processes beneath Greenland’s major ice stream. We find that the uncertainty due to sliding at the bed is 10 times greater than the uncertainty associated with internal ice viscosity. Geothermal heat flux dictates the size of the area of the subglacial drainage system and its efficiency. The uncertainty of ice discharge from the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream to the ocean due to uncertainties in the geothermal heat flux is estimated at 2.10 Gt/yr. This highlights the urgency in obtaining better constraints on the highly uncertain subglacial hydrology parameters.
6. Martos, Yasmina M., et al. “Geothermal heat flux reveals the Iceland hotspot track underneath Greenland.” Geophysical research letters 45.16 (2018): 8214-8222. Curie depths beneath Greenland are revealed by spectral analysis of data from the World Digital Magnetic Anomaly Map 2. A thermal model of the lithosphere then provides a corresponding geothermal heat flux map. This new map exhibits significantly higher frequency but lower amplitude variation than earlier heat flux maps and provides an important boundary condition for numerical ice‐sheet models and interpretation of borehole temperature profiles. In addition, it reveals new geologically significant features. Notably, we identify a prominent quasi‐linear elevated geothermal heat flux anomaly running northwest–southeast across Greenland. We interpret this feature to be the relic of the passage of the Iceland hotspot from 80 to 50 Ma. The expected partial melting of the lithosphere and magmatic underplating or intrusion into the lower crust is compatible with models of observed satellite gravity data and recent seismic observations. Our geological interpretation has implications for the geodynamic evolution of Greenland https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018GL078289
7. Artemieva, Irina M. “Lithosphere thermal thickness and geothermal heat flux in Greenland from a new thermal isostasy method.” Earth-Science Reviews 188 (2019): 469-481. Lithosphere thermal structure in Greenland is poorly known and models based on seismic and magnetic data are inconsistent, while growing awareness in the fate of the ice sheet in Greenland requires reliable constraints on geothermal heat flux (GHF) from the Earth’s interior in the region where conventional heat flux measurements are nearly absent. The lithosphere structure of Greenland remains controversial, while its geological evolution is constrained by direct observations in the narrow ice-free zone along the coasts. The effect of the Iceland hotspot on the lithosphere structure is also debated. Here I describe a new thermal isostasy method which I use to calculate upper mantle temperature anomalies, lithosphere thickness, and GHF in Greenland from seismic data on the Moho depth, topography and ice thickness. To verify the model results, the predicted GHF values are compared to available measurements and show a good agreement. Thick (200–270 km) cratonic lithosphere of SW Greenland with GHF of ca. 40 mW/m² thins to 180–190 km towards central Greenland without a clear boundary between the Archean and Proterozoic blocks, and the deepest lithosphere keel is observed beneath the largest kimberlite province in West Greenland. The NW-SE belt with an anomalously thin (100–120 km) lithosphere and GHF of 60–70 mW/m² crosses north-central Greenland from coast to coast and it may mark the Iceland hotspot track. In East Greenland this anomalous belt merges with a strong GHF anomaly of >100 mW/m² in the Fjordland region. The anomaly is associated with a strong lithosphere thinning, possibly to the Moho, that requires advective heat transfer such as above active magma chambers, which would accelerate ice basal melting. The anomaly may extend 500 km inland with possibly a significant contribution of ice melt to the ice-drainage system of Greenland.
8. Greve, Ralf, and Kolumban Hutter. “Polythermal three-dimensional modelling of the Greenland ice sheet with varied geothermal heat flux.” Annals of Glaciology 21 (1995): 8-12. Computations over 50 000 years into steady state with Greve’s polythermal ice-sheet model and its numerical code are performed for the Greenland ice sheet with today’s climatological input (surface temperature and accumulation function) and three values of the geothermal heat flux: (42, 54.6, 29.4) mW m−2. It is shown that through the thermomechanical coupling the geometry as well as the thermal regime, in particular that close to the bed, respond surprisingly strongly to the basal thermal heat input. The most sensitive variable is the basal temperature field, but the maximum height of the summit also varies by more than ±100m. Furthermore, some intercomparison of the model outputs with the real ice sheet is carried out, showing that the model provides reasonable results for the ice-sheet geometry as well as for the englacial temperatures.

CONCLUSION: The attribution of observed polar ice melt events to anthropogenic global warming along with the proposal that such melt events can be attenuated by taking climate action and moving the global energy infrastructure away from fossil fuels to renewables, is not possible in light of the complex episodic and localized nature of these ice melt events and their locations restricted to known geologically active areas. The attribution to anthropogenic global warming requires an explanation of these anomalies. If polar ice melt were driven by global warming it would be more uniform and more of a trend and not isolated, episodic, and not restricted to known geologically active locations. Glacial and ice shelf melt events that are episodic and restricted to geologically active locations cannot be understood as the impacts of fossil fuel emissions that can be moderated or prevented by taking climate action. For that, significant additional evidence must be provided that relates the melt events to atmospheric temperature data. No such evidence has been provided in this study where, as in all such studies, an atmosphere bias in the research methodology assumes that ice melt can only be explained in terms of anthropogenic global warming. Such findings are more likely to be the product of confirmation bias than unbiased and objective scientific inquiry. 

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/08/03/confirmationbias/

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