For example, your data on ice conditions go back only into the 1970’s. I’m one of the very few people who is still around who spent some time up there over 60 years ago as a young adult in the military. And I say that I observed climate conditions similar to those now prevailing. I expressed no opinions, I simply made an empirical observation. By the way, many of the postings on this article are, indeed, opinions; How come you don’t remove them?

I’m sorry if you misunderstood my posting. Perhaps I did not do a good job of expressing myself. But I believe people deserve to hear from someone with my perspective. Many thanks,

Walt Robbins

Walt Robbins

[JR: You posted a bunch of opinions and called them facts. If there were not an extensive body of published data and peer-reviewed analyses, your stories might be interesting, but we actually know that massive volumes of ice have been lost in the last several years, thanks in part to Navy data.]

The Y2K problem was real. It came about by the fact that before the 1980’s computer storage and memory were very expensive and it saved space and money to express the year as 2 digits and assume the 19. That style of programming continued to some extent into the early 1990’s, probably out of habit. If thousands of computer professionals (including me) hadn’t corrected the problem before 2000 a large number of important computing systems could have been seriously disrupted. Things like stock exchanges, banks, the IRS (maybe that wouldn’t have been so bad;) and many other computer else that are date dependent in some way.

That said there was also lots of hyperbole about possible disasters arising from Y2K, mostly from people taking small concerns to ridiculous conclusions. And news organizations like to sensationalize things to help sell their product which added to the anxiety of people who weren’t knowledgeable on the subject. There definitely would have been at least some financial disasters if it had been allowed to happen but it was almost completely averted so no big deal.

Back to the subject of this blog, an irony of climate change is if we are successful in averting the worst of it (like we did with Y2K) then people like you will claim you were right and a big deal was made out of nothing.

1) we are like lobsters boiling in a pot. The tipping point in terms of major problematic events came long ago and we didn’t notice. It’s only the accumulation of said worrying events / evidence that is persuading anybody that may be it’s time to move. that TTM signal hass been flashing just a little bit too urgently for a little bit too long now.

Secondly, this evidence is to me a no brainer for active non-faffing around action on some no brainer, easy to impliment measures which could at least help, and very importantly, make people worldwide feel that they’re at least doing *something*. Hashem Akbari’s paper ( http://is.gd/mRIZ) (”Increasing worldwide urban albedos” ie: paint all your roofs white) doesn’t support changes in behaviour or the desperately needed reductions in CO2 obviously, but if it helps to mitigate the effect of losing Arctic / Antarctic ice, shouldn’t we all be pressuring our local govts to do this, NOW? As a matter of urgency? I mean this is tangible, action oriented stuff we can really achieve quickly.

‘Visit this web site to get additional information. http://icecap.us/index.php

This reminds me of the 5-10 year scare and build up to the Y2K “bug or meltdown” that was going to occur.
I did nothing to prepare except inform and educate myself and nothing “bad” happened. For the people who bought computer software for everything, generators and fuel, and tons of food and water thanks for creating a false economic surge.

People feel sad for the polar bears but it’s all very far away and disconnected from them. I don’t think most people see the Arctic melt either as a canary or wholesale change to their home.

And in some ways it’s already in the popular consciousness. Tom Clancy has already had the Russians boating over the pole to commandeer the tar sands.

“Tropical cyclone (TC) activity worldwide has completely and utterly collapsed during the past 2 to 3 years with TC energy levels sinking to levels not seen since the late 1970s. This should not be a surprise to scientists since the natural variability in climate dominates any detectable or perceived global warming impact when it comes to measuring yearly integrated tropical cyclone activity….”

And a 30 year graph:
http://coaps.fsu.edu/ ~maue/ tropical/ global_trace.jpg

[JR: That's La Nina for you.]