Swarmwise – The Tactical Manual To Changing The World. Chapter Four. People’s friends are better marketers toward those people than you, for the simple reason that they are those people’s friends, and you are not. In the last chapter, we talked a lot about formal structures of the swarm. We talked about keeping the working groups to seven people in size, and about splitting the informal groups that approach 150 people in size into two groups.
This kind of advice will have come as a surprise to some, who would believe and maybe even insist that a swarm must be leaderless and fully organic. I do not believe in leaderless organizations. We can observe around us that change happens whenever people are allowed to inspire each other to greatness. This is leadership. This is even leadership by its very definition. In contrast, if you have a large assembly of people who are forced to agree on every movement before doing anything, including the mechanism for what constitutes such agreement, then you rarely achieve anything at all. Our language is a social marker. Penguins. Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within four years | Environment. Prof Peter Wadhams calls for “urgent” consideration of new ideas to reduce global temperatures.
Photograph: John Mcconnico/AP One of the world's leading ice experts has predicted the final collapse of Arctic sea ice in summer months within four years. In what he calls a "global disaster" now unfolding in northern latitudes as the sea area that freezes and melts each year shrinks to its lowest extent ever recorded, Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University calls for "urgent" consideration of new ideas to reduce global temperatures. In an email to the Guardian he says: "Climate change is no longer something we can aim to do something about in a few decades' time, and that we must not only urgently reduce CO2 emissions but must urgently examine other ways of slowing global warming, such as the various geoengineering ideas that have been put forward. " These include reflecting the sun's rays back into space, making clouds whiter and seeding the ocean with minerals to absorb more CO2.
Study Sheds New Light on Arctic Sea Ice Volume Losses. As Arctic Sea Ice Melts Thanks to Climate Change, Drilling for Oil. The state of the Arctic, which is bad, may have just made the dreaded jump to worse. This summer, the sea ice that caps the Arctic Ocean melted to the lowest level since at least 1979, when satellites first began keeping track of ice over the North Pole. By the end of August, the National Snow Ice and Data Center (NSIDC) reported that Arctic ice had fallen to 1.54 million sq. miles (4 million sq. km). That’s nearly six times the size of Texas, but it’s still 45% less than the average for August throughout the 1980s and 90s — and as of now the ice is still shrinking.
Nor is 2012 an anomaly — the ice cap has been shrinking over the years as temperatures have increased, and now some scientists believe the total volume of Arctic ice is only a quarter of what it was 30 years ago. “By itself it’s just a number, and occasionally records are going to get set,” NSIDC scientist Walt Meier said at the end of August in a statement. (MORE: The Future of Oil) According to the U.S. Why The Arctic Sea Ice Death Spiral Matters. By Neven Acropolis with Kevin McKinney In the past week the Arctic sea ice cover reached an all-time low, several weeks before previous records, several weeks before the end of the melting season.
The long-term decline of Arctic sea ice has been incredibly fast, and at this point a sudden reversal of events doesn’t seem likely. The question no longer seems to be “will we see an ice-free Arctic?” But “how soon will we see it?”. By running the Arctic Sea Ice blog for the past three years I’ve learned much about the importance of Arctic sea ice.
With the help of Kevin McKinney I’ve written the piece below, which is a summary of all the potential consequences of disappearing Arctic sea ice. Arctic sea ice became a recurrent feature on planet Earth around 47 million years ago. Since the dawn of human civilization, 5000 to 8000 years ago, this annual ebb and flow of melting and freezing Arctic sea ice has been more or less consistent. . – Neven Acropolis with Kevin McKinney Images used: Agulhas Current is said to attenuate the effect of melting ice. Some good news in the world of climate research: the Agulhas Current off the coast of South Africa, is said to stimulate North-South ocean circulation in the Atlantic. This "conveyor belt", which redistributes and controls heat around the globe, is threatening to slow down due to melting ice.
As has been shown in a recent study however, published in Nature Climate Change (1), based on satellite altimeter measurements, this famous current is accelerating. Located at the interface between the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, this current multiplies injections of warm and, above all, highly salt water into the Atlantic from the Indian Ocean. The phenomenon, also caused by global warming, could in return be offsetting the effects of glacial melting on thermohaline circulation(2) and the global climate. More locally, it will considerably change the climate in southern Africa. Agulhas rings The current is accelerating Ocean circulation maintained What consequences for fishing? Notes: Climate events drive High-Arctic vertebrate community into synchrony: Extreme weather potent force for Arctic overwintering populations. Climate change is known to affect the population dynamics of single species, such as reindeer or caribou, but the effect of climate at the community level has been much more difficult to document.
Now, a group of Norwegian scientists has found that extreme climate events cause synchronized population fluctuations among all vertebrate species in a relatively simple high arctic community. These findings may be a bellwether of the radical changes in ecosystem stability that could result from anticipated future increases in extreme events. The findings are published in the 18 January issue of Science. The Norwegian scientists, with lead authors from the Centre for Conservation Biology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), wanted to know how climate and weather events influenced an overwintering vertebrate community on the high arctic island of Spitsbergen, Svalbard, at 78 degrees N latitude.
Deep ice cores show past Greenland warm period may be ‘road map’ for continued warming of planet. A new study by an international team of scientists analyzing ice cores from the Greenland ice sheet going back in time more than 100,000 years indicates the last interglacial period may be a good analog for where the planet is headed in terms of increasing greenhouse gases and rising temperatures. The new results from the NEEM deep ice core drilling project led by the University of Copenhagen and involving the University of Colorado Boulder show that between 130,000 and 115,000 years ago during the Eemian interglacial period, the climate in north Greenland rose to about 14 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than today. Despite the strong warming signal during the Eemian -- a period when the seas were roughly 15 to 25 feet higher than today -- the surface of the north Greenland ice sheet near the NEEM facility was only a few hundred yards lower than it is today, an indication to scientists it contributed less than half of the total sea rise at the time.
Shell suspends Arctic oil drilling for the year. Royal Dutch Shell announced today that it was setting "pause" on its exploratory drilling activities in the Arctic for 2013. Shell's operations are currently under review by the federal government after the oil company suffered numerous setbacks during last year's opening attempt to drill exploratory wells in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, including running its drilling rig aground on Sitkalidak Island in southern Alaska in late December.
"We've made progress in Alaska, but this is a long-term program that we are pursuing in a safe and measured way," said the director of Shell's Upstream Americas, Marvin Odum. "Our decision to pause in 2013 will give us time to ensure the readiness of all our equipment and people following the drilling season in 2012. " In all, Shell has spent $4.5 billion on drilling in the Arctic. "This is the first thing Shell's done right in Alaska—calling it quits," Phil Radford, Greenpeace USA Executive Director, said. Related articles Arctic oil rig runs aground. 8 Reasons Why Shell Can’t be Trusted in the Arctic.
Chasing down the world's vanishing glaciers. Birthday Canyon, Greenland Ice Sheet, Greenland, June 2009. Courtesy of James Balog EIS time lapse cameras at Columbia Glacier, Alaska, Aug 2009. "I never really expected to see this magnitude of change. Every time we open the backs of these cameras it's like 'wow, is that what's just happened,'" Balog said.
Courtesy of James Balog Aerial view of meltwater on Greenland Ice Sheet, June 2010. Aerial view of pancake ice, Ilulissat Isfjord, Greenland, March 2008. "Ice diamond," Jökulsárlón, Iceland, Feb 2008. Greenland Ice Sheet, Greenland, July 2008, Silt and soot blown from afar turn into black "cryoconite," absorb solar heat and melt down into ice. Close up of an iceberg, Mendenhall Glacier, Alaska, Sept 2010. "In the past one million years, the peak of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere has been 280-290 parts per million (ppm). James Balog, director of the Extreme Ice Survey, at minus 30 degrees F, Disko Bay, Greenland, March 2008. James Balog's 'Chasing Ice' For U.S.