The Climate has lareday changed. Most of the ice has already melted. In the 25 years that I have lived in Alaska, I have seen once large glaicers shink down to ice cubes. And I am glad for it! Now we Northern climbs can grow things we never could before like corn and cherries!

Big, Big Money, to be made on this issue, you see in all of our history, we all, always have to be scared of something, its the way of life!
The 'Nazis', Communists, Aliens, Ice age, The year 2000! when all computers would crash!!
Jump on the 'Band-Wagon' and make £ml's,
Welcome on Money making, 'scaremongering'
OH and for the sceptics!! Did the end of the World and 3rd World war start in the Millenium year 2000 as we were all told by our scare mongering scientist's?
OH 'Diddums-Sticks' it did NOT!
'Laughing-in-you-face' and now RICH at your needless fear!

Build a network of millions of pipes. Is that the best modern man can come up with? Please, don't all migrate to the arctic in panic. It's not much better up here.

I don't think I'm alone in getting tired of the constant scaremongering.
As #2 stated, man made GW is yet another in a long list of media scare stories that have not come to pass.

There is a mistake, or at least an ambiguity, in the above SoS article.

It is not true that "the level of carbon dioxide in [north Atlantic] waters reduced by about half" from mid-1990's to 2005.

What the paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research revealed was that the rate of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the Atlantic from the atmosphere has declined by a half in that time, which is different matter.

Similar findings for the Southern Ocean were reported in the journal Science in May of this year. (eg. see

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6665147.stm

When I was child in primary school, I was taught that the Earth goes through constant change, sometimes on an epochal level. Like the Triassic and Pliocene et al. The biosphere was not chemically the same back then. Probably close to what it is now, but there were subtle variations as it continued to evolve. And evolution is a process that has no end except in death. It is ongoing.

Yes, we've contributed at some level, but this is a planet with active vulcanism and a constantly changing face. It is not static like Mars, the Moon or maybe ex-planet Pluto.

Global Warming is a just a precursor to what's in store. Prepare yourselves for changes of an apocolypsian level!

Or as the Private Frazer might say ... "We're doomed ... doomed I tell ye!"

#3 Dr Coles, USA

A UK court did not say that "Gore is a fraud". If you have such a cavalier attitude to the truth it is little wonder that you are taken in by misleading sites such as Inteliorg.

#5. Chaplin - GW is not a "media scare story", though the media, as in this case, certainly report the issues, and have their own agenda and in some cases, as here, make mistakes. The media play an important role in bringing these matters to the attention of the public, but the content is simplified for obvious reasons.

If you want to read the original science, go to the science journals, or read the summaries prepared by the IPCC (just Google IPCC).

~7 BW, 'Aye' 'right-then, Quotes
'We're doomed ... doomed I tell ye!"
You sound like one of these 'Street-Preachers'!!
'THE-END-IS-NIE'
Don't worry to much, 'Dear Blunder', I will put my
'loose-change' in your 'HAT', next time I am in Princes Street!! :-D :-D

The Oceans CO2 has reduced by half, and humans are responsible. GET REAL. This is a huge amount of CO2, totally dwarfing human emissions. We are less than fleas on the back of a dog.

It's a positive feed-back cycle. CO2 released from oceans causes temp rises, causes more CO2 to be released, causes temp rises.....

Tell me, what human measures are being planned to cool the ocean water down - 'cos that's what needs to happen. Idiot politicians planting trees once, for a photo op at election time, won't work.

Thanks Slioch #6 for the clarification. What's known of the detail about how the figure was arrived at? What other information was recorded (eg. sea surface temperature, air pressure, atmospheric CO2 concentration) ? Does the data vary over time and does that 50% reduction refers to an average of a wide range of values? Where exactly was the data recorded?

Are there any reasons to suppose that the instruments might have degraded over time or can we be sure of their accuracy?

Sorry for all the questions but we can't progress beyond speculation until we have all the relevant information.

10. I'm no really here

"The Oceans CO2 has reduced by half, and humans are responsible. GET REAL. This is a huge amount of CO2..."

Yes, you are correct: as I stated in #6, it is not the case that the CO2 content of the Atlantic has "reduced by about half", nor did the original paper state that. That is simply a mistake by SoS. What has happened is that the rate of absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere appears to have decreased by about a half.

As you correctly imply, there is a huge amount of CO2 in the Atlantic - if half of it had really out-gassed into the atmosphere we would probably all be dead by now.

As for "what human measures are being planned to cool the ocean water down" - I can't think of any measures that have been proposed. The proposals to reduce the amount of anthropogenic CO2 being emitted will, at best, slow down the rate of warming of the atmosphere and oceans. Meanwhile the loss of Arctic sea-ice will increase the rate of warming since open water absorbs far more solar radiation than ice, which reflects most of it back into space.

Actually this finding tends to confirm the hypothesis that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is a natural phenomenon and is driven by sun cycles. Amazing its being spun as another climate scare!

The latest NASA data shows the earth has been cooling since 1998 in line with the sun cycle.

Expect;

a. Atmospheric CO2 levels will start falling as the sea gradually begins to cool again in line with the sun cycle and starts absorbing more CO2 again.

b. Green political lobbyists will claim partial sucess and ask for more political powers/grants to support their bogus schemes

#14 c. .....and more taxes!!!!

#13 Thanks for correction.

#12. John M

I think this is the in press version of the JGS paper. I've skimmed through it and I think it gives info. on most of your questions. There is spatial and temporal variation (in sea-surface pCO2) and therefore the c.50% figure is an average.

http://lgmacweb.env.uea.ac.uk/ajw/Reprints/Schuster_Watso...

14. New Town Resident

What this finding tends to confirm is that an increase in global warming (ie increasing the amount of heat in the ocean/atmosphere system) reduces the efficacy of the oceans at absorbing CO2. That is, oceans that are being warmed, by whatever cause, are less able to absorb CO2, not only because of the obvious factor of warm water not being able to dissolve so much gas, but also, less obviously, because of consequent changes in oceanic currents and the decreased mixing of deep and shallow waters.

The NASA data does not show that "the earth has been cooling [ie loosing more heat than it is gaining] since 1998 in line with the sun cycle."

The atmospheric temperatures in 1998 were large because the El Nino effect that year released a large amount of heat from the Pacific ocean to the atmosphere. In the years following 1998 that abnormal heat release has not occurred, hence atmospheric temperatures have not been abnormally increased. That does not negate the increase in heat content of the ocean/atmosphere system with time.
Such solar changes that have occurred in recent decades have tended to be negative and cannot account for the observed changes.

#9. Yes Charles ... sounding like a street preacher was exactly my intention. Except it was more "The End Of The World Is Nigh!!" I dunno wot NIE is. :)

Compare and contrast

The Title
Scientists fear climate change speed-up as oceans fail to hold greenhouse gases

and this segment
But he acknowledged that the processes driving the change were not yet known with certainty.

"To be perfectly honest, we don't know," he said.

Is there more to say?

But judging by the amount of dodgy stuff coming out of the University of East Anglia recently I think they are trying to make a name for themselves
- looking for funding perhaps?

#20 Mart on Skye

The University of East Anglia has no need to make a name for itself - it already has a world-wide reputation.

Is there more to say about the quotations you give? Apparently, since you do not appear to understand them:

Firstly, the processes driving the changes in the CO2 absorption capacity of the northern Atlantic are not known for certainty.

Secondly, it is suspected that the ultimate cause of the change in those processes (whatever they are) is global warming (ie. increasing heat in the ocean/atmosphere system with time.)

Thirdly, if so then those processes represent a positive feedback mechanism that would mean that global warming would become more intense than it would otherwise.

Fourthly, it is wise to fear that something may be true if it appears so to be and if it is something deleterious.

Slioch

Read that paper on Antarctic ice cores yet ?

Congratulations to Slioch on doing a good job here.

#14: the trend, starting from and including 1998, is increasing.

The best way to manage this increase in CO2 levels is abvious. Either release more iron into the oceans or create more soda pop and beer.

22. MS

Yes I have! Sorry for the delay in replying - I was out last evening.

Interesting that the D and 18O records on the AP often don't pick up on 20th century warming. Maybe this comment suggests a reason? "They conclude, and we agree, that cores from the higher
altitude sites along the ice-covered spine of the AP are
more likely to record the regional temperature variations
than the lower elevation sites that are more strongly
influenced by changes in the local sea ice distribution
and persistent surface inversions."

I have some papers somewhere about Dome C and Arctic/Antarctic coupling - I'll put a reference to them later today if I can find them.

Do you have any observations on the Ohio paper?

Slioch, you have been mentioned by Stoat:
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/10/scientists_fear_cli...

#26

Oo! Mentioned in dispatches! Thanks Guthrie.