Greenpeace made the claim in a July 15 2009 press release entitled “Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts,” which said there will be an ice-free Arctic by 2030 because of global warming.

Under close questioning by BBC reporter Stephen Sackur on the “Hardtalk” program, Gerd Leipold, the retiring leader of Greenpeace, said the claim was wrong.

“I don’t think it will be melting by 2030. … That may have been a mistake,” he said.

Twenty years ago, when I was teaching natural science, and the ‘greenhouse effect” was the newest catastrophic scenario in the news, lots of folks dismissed it as left-wing/enviro fear-mongering. At that time (1986-91), we had only been collecting data since 1979, and most climate change models were rough extrapolations from the modest data. So, critics of Climate Change and global warming (or its long-term chance of severe negative feedback, i.e., a new glaciation epoch) had some traction.

But I remember saying to myself, “Well, if twenty years from now, if/when we have more data, and stronger evidence of human-augmented climate change, critics are making the SAME arguments as before, or still denying the crisis…then, it would be safe to say that they have their heads in the sand, or, are ideologically opposed/biased against eco/enviro issues, a priori.”

Sure enough, critics (reactionary ones, not sincere, scientific ones) and CC opponents are making the same arguments (with a few updated facts) and engaging in the SAME collective denial.

I suggest that you and other climate change opponents, step back, and look (or try to) at the whole picture, the global view….consider all the information that we have now (just peruse the topics on this blog alone!)…and ask your selves honestly, if there is really nothing to worry about, nothing to try and stop or mitigate over the long term…no contribution from human activity to deforestation, eco-system destruction, animal extinctions, polar ice melting, tundra thawing, disease proliferation (from unsafe, ecologically risky practices)…etc. If you can honestly say ‘No’ to all or most of these things (and all the facts/factors I forgot to mention)…then by all means, continue with your skepticism….I was a skeptic for many years (about global warming), but that was in the 1980′s. Today, there is simply too much information pointing to anthropogenic (or accelerated) climate change to comfortably stick my head back into the proverbial sand. Good luck.

http://bit.ly/3IAahQ

Here is what Climate Code Red says:

–Human emissions have so far produced a global average temperature increase of 0.8 degree C.

–There is another 0.6 degree C. to come due to “thermal inertia”, or lags in the system, taking the total long-term global warming induced by human emissions so far to 1.4 degree C.

–If human total emissions continue as they are to 2030 (and don’t increase 60% as projected) this would likely add more than 0.4 degrees C. to the system in the next two decades, taking the long-term effect by 2030 to at least 1.7 degrees C. (A 0.3 degree C. increase is predicted for the period 2004-2014 alone by Smith, Cusack et al, 2007).

–Then add the 0.3 degree C. albedo flip effect from the now imminent loss of the Arctic sea ice, and the rise in the system by 2030 is at least 2 degree. C, assum ing very optimistically that emissions don’t increase at all above their present annual rate! When we consider the potential permafrost releases and the effect of carbon sinks losing capacity, we are on the road to a hellish future, not for what we will do, but WHAT WE HAVE ALREADY DONE.

“Leemans and Eickhout (2004) found that adaptive capacity decreases rapidly with an increasing rate of climate change. Their study finds that five percent of all ecosystems cannot adapt more quickly than 0.1 C per decade over time. Forests will be among the ecosystems to experience problems first because their ability to migrate to stay within the climate zone they are adapted to is limited. If the rate is 0.3 C per decade, 15 percent of ecosystems will not be able to adapt. If the rate should exceed 0.4 C per decade, all ecosystems will be quickly destroyed, opportunistic species will dominate, and the breakdown of biological material will lead to even greater emissions of CO2. This will in turn increase the rate of warming” –Leemans and Eickhout (2004), “Another reason for concern: regional and global impacts on ecosystems for different levels of climate change,” Global Environmental Change 14, 219–228

Combining these two (“what Climate Code Red says” and “Leemans and Eickhout (2004)”): “A 0.3 degree C. increase is predicted for the period 2004-2014 alone by Smith, Cusack et al, 2007″ and “…five percent of all ecosystems cannot adapt more quickly than 0.1 C per decade over time. Forests will be among the ecosystems to experience problems first because their ability to migrate to stay within the climate zone they are adapted to is limited.”

Sorry, but the Amazon rainforest is toast much earlier than the middle of the next century.