Thanks, A-Team for posting that paper. I have such a sketchy understanding of all this, but intuitively (or maybe it's my visual mind) the ideas that the arctic is the end of the line for energy movements and that the swirl of a cyclone sort of hooks itself to the polar vortex make sense to me. It seems like the discussions here about the recent arctic cyclones have been musings about whether they're unusual. At a glance having scanned this over-my-head paper and read the intro and conclusion the concern seems to be that although it's normal for arctic cyclones to persist, the environment in with the 'Atlantification' of the Arctic and Eurasian rivers dumping warm water in, etc. they're persisting in a whole new arctic, which means the effects on the ASI are unpredictable to say the least.

Neven, that video is just my speed! Thanks so much for taking the trouble. I love how you guide us through with your mouse. And it's nice to put a voice to the name and hear that cute accent in combination with your exquisitely idiomatic English.

I'm surrounded by well-informed people relatively newly-arrived in a rural community. They all agree that climate change is messing hugely with the weather, but most will also rail against any rise in fossil fuel prices, so they're not ware how dire things are or that a serious global carbon tax is in order. I suspect Lars Von Trier was feeling like us when he conceived his film Melancholia. The idea is that a stray planet is heading straight for earth and people go on squabbling about the usual little stuff. One character has been watching with his telescope the way we watch the Arctic sea ice, but nobody pays him any attention. I won't give away the ending, but I can see one thing that might feed this filmmaker's chronic depression.

Thanks, SATire. "To try to answer your question despite that: Maybe the paper explains, why a weaker jet stream does not help against blocking events anymore." My (mis?)understanding has been that a weaker jet stream – not spinning fast around the cold polar cap, powered by the difference between temperature/pressure in high and mid latitudes, but wobbling and wowing slowly between areas of lower contrast – is like a rubber band that's lost its elasticity and goes all floppy. So sometimes it gets stuck, not strong enough to push a system around the globe.

Alex, or anyone else who can explain, I think I've been understanding Jennifer Francis on the warming arctic causing the slowing of the jet stream and the staying still of trapped areas of high or low pressure, causing weather extremes to persist longer than they used to. This PNAS paper on quasiresonant amplification – how should that change the way I think about this phenomenon? I cannot do the math.

I'm only a pessimistic Canadian, but this report Joe Romm has just blogged about is from a body whose mandate is pretty lukewarm: "The NCA will help evaluate the effectiveness of our mitigation and adaptation activities and identify economic opportunities that arise as the climate changes. It will also serve to integrate scientific information from multiple sources and highlight key findings and significant gaps in our knowledge. The NCA aims to help the federal government prioritize climate science investments, and in doing so will help to provide the science that can be used by communities around the country to plan more sustainably for our future." I find this phrase particularly ominous:"identify economic opportunities that arise as the climate changes". http://globalchange.gov/what-we-do/assessment/nca-overview

Thanks, Steve, for pointing out the article on CARVE. My concerns are confirmed where the author notes that any results on methane release from permafrost won't make it into the 2013 IPCC projections, so things will look significantly less dire than they in fact are to policy makers. I should say policy foot-draggers.

Thanks, Andrei for the link to Kevin Anderson's revelations. The troubling aspect of discussing adaptation and mitigation is that what's happening is worse than BAU, it's disaster capitalism as laid out by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine. All these extreme weather events aren't problems for business – they're 'opportunities'. Kevin Anderson settles on a controlled economic contraction, putting the onus on individuals in the West to stop consuming energy-intensive crap. Sorry, but that's not going to happen. We've just spent the price of a good used car to retrofit our 900 sq ft house so we can cleanly burn small sticks of local sugar bush thinnings and stop using the oil furnace. A/C? That would be the space blanket blinds we use in summer when the sun hits the windows. Most people think we're hair-shirt hippies. What to do, what to do...

I'm not as versed in ASI as most of you, but I have been watching for news from Semiletov & Shakova for years. Natasha looks so worried in this video. The 200 sites they talk about are the 200 sites they managed to visit this summer in millions of sq km. My concern is that there's no way to make this methane coming up from the oceans part of the models that predict global temperature increase. They're only this year getting the solid sense of how much methane is being released. Am I wrong?

Thanks, Neven for being on top of this so fast, in fact as fast as I could click on the link left here by idunno! I came back to ASI to search Judith Curry and here was this smart post.

I wish there were more news stories out there quoting Jennifer Francis. '“It's exactly the kind of thing I was talking about,” Francis said. “I can't say for sure this particular pattern was influenced by the ice loss, but it is certainly the kind of thing we were expecting to see more of.' Very nice graphic on page 1 explaining the blocking of Sandy's track to ordinary folks like me. http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20121026/ARTICLE/121029673?p=3&tc=pg

Colorado Bob, I can't find any details on the research mentioned in that Australian article. Nick Gales is a veterinarian who studies antarctic life. Not sure he's the horse's mouth regarding the ice sheet and its effect on climate change, even though these quotes mesh with my fears.

Jim Williams: thanks for the link to Nasa's LENR lab. I'll share it with someone who could only see space elevators as the solution.

I don't know if anyone here knows enough about the feasibility of fusion energy to tell whether this story is good news. This scientist complains that the perpetually quoted fifty-year period before it's practical is caused by perpetual funding cuts. I wonder what industry could be behind them? http://www.wm.edu/research/ideation/science-and-technology/closer-to-a-solution269.php

I don't want to believe a zero maximum either, but think of the methane plumes coming up from the Laptev Sea and how much worse that will get as the Arctic Ocean is black longer and longer. It's going to be a pressure-cooker up there, relatively speaking.

...before everyone realizes that something needed to be done.

@Wayne Kernochan: As a fellow lurker (in awe of all the knowledge you regulars have) I'm in agreement with you. It's too late for anything that takes decades, stable sea levels or cooling water. So solar is the only way. You should see all the arrays on farms and bush lots up here.

(I'm a longtime follower of Climate Change Psychology and often jump to this excellent blog – thanks for all your work, Neven.) Paul, I actually wrote to James Hansen after reading Storms of My Grandchildren. I was concerned that focusing on the immediate health effects of mountaintop removal coal mining distracts the reader from the pressing general global concern of too much CO2. Where are you writing about your policy ideas?