To melt or not to melt: the Alarmist's Dilemma

I have said it before and I will keep on repeating it, as I believe transparency is one of the most important features that human society will need going forward: I am an alarmist. Although this term has been devised by pseudo-skeptics who wish to undermine the public's perception of Global Warming and thus delay any policy that might interfere with their ideology of unfettered capitalism based on the sociopathic economic concept of unlimited growth, I willingly embrace it as a 'geuzennaam' like it's called in the Netherlands. You see, I honestly believe there is a lot to be alarmed about, AGW just being one of many interconnected ingredients in what I like to call the crisis cocktail. By the way, pseudo-skeptics themselves are usually pretty alarmist themselves, but let's not go into that. And I won't go into explaining those ingredients either, as the subject matter is too complex for me and goes way beyond the scope of this blog.

You know, it's not easy being an alarmist, having to continually try to walk the fine line between living life in a normal, care-free way and worrying too much about the state of the world. If you worry too much you lose sleep and people find you either boring or too fanatical when you want to explain the current situation in the Arctic or want to discuss the implications of high oil prices for the economy. If you are sticking your head in the sand too much and get completely engulfed in day to day life, you've got that little voice in the back of your head, also known as 'conscience' or 'moral compass', that tells you your lifestyle is keeping you part of the problem, and not the solution.

In addition to this difficulty the alarmist faces a considerable dilemma and for me the Arctic sea ice is a great example of this. Like I've explained in the introduction to this blog, the increased melting of Arctic sea ice could be a first clearly emerging signal of Global Warming, and if the sea ice extent continues to decrease like it has, this will have a very big impact on the public's perception.

Thus it is only logical for an alarmist to hope that the sea ice extent keeps diminishing. In fact, an ice-free Arctic might be the perfect wake-up call for the whole world to seriously start discussing what to do about AGW. It might perhaps even point people toward the underlying root problem that threatens human society in more ways than just Global Warming. So, melt, baby, melt, yeah! Show those (pseudo-)skeptics who's been right all along!

But hold on a minute...

I also said in my introduction to this blog that "an ice-free Arctic ocean has consequences for regional weather and the global climate as a whole". These consequences cannot be quantified at the moment (darn those scientists!), but it's not so irrational or alarmist to think that all that extra energy due to the ice albedo effect could trigger a seasonally ice-free Arctic, potentially leading to increased methane releases in Siberia and northern Canada, further increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to more warming, in other words: positive feedbacks. Furthermore, an ice-free Arctic has geopolitical consequences in an increasingly energy-starved world, and the powers that be will greedily jump at the opportunity of drilling and mining the pristine Arctic regions. Although things aren't as black and white as oil and ice, this prospect worries me greatly.

So should the Arctic sea ice melt as fast as possible in the summer, crippling the PR effort of the pseudo-skeptics? Or should we hope for a gradual transition to an ice-free Arctic so there is enough time to act and mitigate/adapt? Do I want pseudo-skeptics like Steven Goddard to be right and successfully parade their Galileo-martyrdom? Aaarrrggghhh...

Sure, it's a cliché, but very appropriate:

To be or not to be– that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them.

Comments

[Kevin McKinney]

"And by opposing end them" sounds good. Of course, poor old Hamlet ended up dead trying, but maybe this isn't quite that kind of tragedy.

We can hope, at least--and keep on trying for that elusive balance that comprises being "a voice of sanity."

[M]

There are two things working here:

1) To the extent that in reality, climate sensitivity and the consequences of temperature rise are as bad or worse than our best estimates, we would prefer to see the impacts sooner than later to give us the right signals to mitigate: aerosol or natural variability "masking" of the problem may delay mitigation and cause things to be much worse in the future, even as it means that some impacts wouldn't be as bad in the near-term. Conversely, to the extent that less impact today indicates that there will be less impact in the future, we'd prefer to have less impact today.

2) To the extent that we're human and want to be proved right and the stupid naysayers to be proved wrong, a climate disaster that is bad but not catastrophic would (unfortunately) provide some schadenfreude... if schadenfreude covered pleasure from watching disaster hit oneself as well as others...

[Heraclitus]

I've been following this site since its inception (OK, not such a startling claim given that it's been all of, what, a week now?) and really like what you're doing. Not just a great place to catch up on all the sea-ice news, it's the tone of your comments that will keep me coming back. You've expressed exactly what I feel in this post - I find myself rooting for the ice to melt - a desperately needed wake up call - at the same time as dreading the consequences.

Great work - I look forward to much more of it.

[Lou Grinzo]

Two observations:

If someone isn't alarmed during genuinely alarming times, then clearly s/he isn't paying attention or is crazy.

The warming Up North is extremely troubling to me because [1] it's already happening, [2] the potential for lighting the fuse on the permafrost bomb and kicking the whole process into overdrive, and [3] while melting sea ice doesn't add to sea levels, there's one heck of a lot of ice sitting on top of Greenland that hasn't melted for thousands of years, and we're seeing it on the move and disappearing to the tune of roughly 300 billion metric tons (net loss) per year. That's 300 cubic kilometers of ice.

[David Gould]

It is indeed a dilemma. I have a bet with Willis re the collapse of ice extent. While I want to win, I also hope I lose. There are very mixed feelings there ...

[Patrick Lockerby]

This is a very well written article. Kudos! I echo what Heraclitus has said, especially: " I find myself rooting for the ice to melt - a desperately needed wake up call - at the same time as dreading the consequences."

A complete loss of winter ice by about April-May would have dramatic knock-on effects. Many of Greenland's glaciers have been slowed by shorefast ice even throughout summer. With no shorefast ice I am confident they will accelerate. By how much is anybody's guess until surveys are made.

[Neven]

Thanks for the supportive comments! I really had to get this off my chest and am glad that some people recognize the feeling. I'm sure we'll discuss it some more if the ice melt gets spectacular this season.

[John Thiessen]

To understand what 300 km^3 means for sea level rise:

The area of the oceans are 335258000 km^2 (from google or whatnot). For each km^3 that melts, the oceans rise 1/335258000 km. To convert to meters, multiply by 1000. That still leaves a very small number. To make that number more comparable, multiply by 1000 again: 0.00298. In other words, for every 1000 km^3 of land ice that melts, the sea level rises .00298 meters or about 3 millimeters. So the current rate of sea level increase due to Greenland melt (approx. 300 km^3) is about 1 mm per year.

Does this sound right?

[Neven]

Hi John, I've copied your comment to Open Thread 4.

[r w Langford]

Neven; One mans alarmist is another mans realist. The "Real" issue, that the Club of Rome confronted, is overpopulation resulting in the carrying capacity of Gia being exceeded. The book "The world in 2050" by L Smith points out that if all people had the consumption rate of north americans it would equate to 72 billion people. What do you think the actual carrying capacity of the globe is? My guess is less than one billion. Arctic sea ice is a canary in the mine but is anyone minding the canary? Am I an alarmist, a realist or a spoiler as I was recently called. I am all three depending a persons individual bias.