Watching the climate change canary

I'm going to start off with this link:

Arctic Could Lose Most Ice In 30 Years (may I add: in the SUMMER, d*mmit!)

but anyway, here's a couple of quotes from this article, describing a new modeling study:

First of all, the lead paragraph does get it right, even if the headline doesn't:
"A nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean in the summer may happen three times sooner than scientists had previously estimated. A new analysis of computer models coupled with the most recent summer ice measurements indicates that the Arctic might lose most of its ice cover in summer in 30 years."

now for some more happy news:

"The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 assessed what might happen in the Arctic in the future by running 23 global climate models.

But Wang, a climate scientist, and Overland, an oceanographer with NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, reasoned that dramatic declines in the extent of ice at the end of summer in 2007 and 2008 called for a more refined approach.

The new projections are based on those six of the 23 models that are most suited for assessing sea ice, according to Wang, the lead author of the study. She and Overland sought models that best matched what has actually happened in recent years."

SOOO, what happened?

"Among the six models fitting the researchers' criteria, three have sophisticated sea-ice physics and dynamics capabilities.

Once the extent of ice at the end of summer drops to 4.6 million square kilometers - it was actually 4.3 million square kilometers in 2007 and 4.7 million in 2008 - all six models show rapid sea-ice declines.

Averaged together, the models point to a nearly ice-free Arctic in 32 years, with some of the models putting the event as early as 11 years from now."

For more detail: Ice-free Arctic Ocean Possible In 30 Years, Not 90 As Previously Estimated

and if you're really interested: A sea ice free summer Arctic within 30 years?

Now here's what I've been thinking:

The Arctic sea ice extent is clearly worrying the arch-skeptics. By this I mean the guys who actually examine the science and critique it -- usually unfairly, usually in a very biased fashion, but they are forced by some semblance of honesty to actually consider new scientific data as it comes in. That's one of the main reasons Watts and McIntyre (proprietors of a couple of blogs I keep tabs on) kept checking back frequently in 2008 to see if the sea ice extent was going to be less than in 2007 -- and when it barely didn't break the record, they (and many other skeptical channels) trumpeted this as sea ice "recovery". Mack even had a running pool about whether or not it would break the record. And then they watched the Arctic Ocean refreeze during a slightly-colder-than-the-mean-over-the-last-decade winter, get back up to "normal", and the skeptics launched many missives declaring that sea ice was not a problem -- in the winter, no less. George Will has been lambasted nicely for misusing this data, even if The Ignorant One can't ever admit he's in error -- and an idiot on issues of science, anyway, I might as well add. (These are the same skeptics who criticize legitimate scientists for releasing new journal papers about climate change during particularly warm, even record-setting, summer days in the Northern Hemisphere).

OK, so now we have this paper. I think of it as the classic "canary in the coal mine" scenario. Why did miners have canaries in coal mines before the days of portable gas monitors? Because canaries were reputedly very sensitive to unsafe concentrations of methane and carbon monoxide. These are both bad for miners because the former can blow up in sufficient concentrations and the latter can suffocate you without you being aware of it. So canaries in coal mines reputedly indicated a dangerous condition by succumbing to it, and the absence of an audio signal from the canary would alert the coal miners to before a) they blew up or b) they lost consciousness. [Note: there were also Davy's Lamps that would indicate increased methane levels, but they couldn't do much about detecting CO.] I must point out that neither (a) or (b) would be considered an optimum outcome.

Arctic sea ice has now become our climate change canary in the coal mine. The problem is: do we really have to wait until the canary is dead, or can we just start noticing when it's being metabolically challenged, i.e. dying? Climate change skeptics watching the Arctic sea ice make me think of coal miners checking on the canary, seeing it lying on the bottom of the cage with labored breathing, but every now and then emitting a feeble "chirp" ... "chirp" ... "chirp" -- which because the canary isn't dead yet, they interpret as an ALL CLEAR signal and declare that everything's FINE -- time for another day in the mine!

Arctic sea ice is something people notice. It effects the most charismatic megafauna of the North -- the polar bear -- and this report is bound to keep pushing regulation of greenhouse gases on the basis of the Endangered Species Act. (Gee, I can't wait until Roberts, Scalia, Alito, and Thomas get a hold of that one: the Bush legacy should make that pretty interesting. If any of the current liberals passes on, Obama will just appoint another liberal, so there won't be any change in the balance of the court. Kennedy is the key.) More loss of sea ice will also make more children worry about the fate of Santa and Rudolph. The thing about Arctic sea ice disappearing every summer, and setting new records, is that it becomes one of the hardest things for the skeptics to deny or explain away with their typical handwaving tissue-thin justifications. Declining Arctic sea ice will make the pseudoscience of the climate change skeptics start to look nearly as foolish as the pseudoscience of the Young Earth Creationists or the Intelligent Design fringists.

Declining Arctic sea ice (in the summer, of course) might actually end up being to climate change skepticism what the Grand Canyon was to Scientific Creationism: something so undeniably real that it will require such a great amount of cognitive dissonance that a great deal of the gullible herd that is currently following the lead of the snake oil salesmen will start shaking their heads and say "No, no, no... despite everything I've read and said on all these climate change blogs, and despite my constant worries about controls on carbon emissions actually being the method of choice to usher in global socialism, and despite the fact that I shrugged off "An Inconvenient Truth" as political propaganda because Senator Inhofe asked Al Gore how much energy his house in Tennessee used -- I've really got to admit that I'm worried about the Arctic sea ice, and despite all the conservative indoctrination I've been force-feeding my kids, I'm having a lot of trouble explaining to them why we should keep burning oil and coal when they keep asking me what's going to happen to the polar bears".

Much as I hate to say it -- I hope there's a new minimum sea ice extent record in September 2009 -- while the Sun keeps looking as pristine as a teenage on Accutane. Because that's going to be really, really hard to deny or explain away. If that does happen, I think there's going to be a whole lot of bloggers; journalists (the few that remain by then, of course); Senators; Congressmen; guys and gals on the street; and particularly a cadre of cognoscenti who will definitely, and should, in big loud words that everybody can hear, start saying "I TOLD YOU SO" over and over again.

I'll try not to be the first to do it. But there will be more than few people who have doubted me numerous times in the past who will hear about it.