2.0 +/-0.7 Based on eyeballing fuzzy curves plus remembering the crack scare. More math won't help, methinks. Eyballing the NSIDC graph I would expect 2.7. But 1) there's the nosedive of >2m thick ice (cf. Dosbat). 2) The fracturing earlier this year with cracks extending into MYI suggests that ice dynamics is now dominated by FYI, so I guess MYI will crumble like never before, ripped apart by cracks entering from thinner ice. 3) Wipneus' exponential trend of PIOMAS thickness gives 0 for 2015. Quadratic trend gives 2017, which methinks is a more plausible curve than exp. Looks like my 2.1 guesstimate is around the way down to there. (I'm oscillation between sensing 2.0 as too radical and too conservative. So I hit the Post button now.)

On economic growth Michael Tobis just said it on planet3.org: The steady state economy would be achievable except for the deep-seated integration of “growth” into how we manage our “finances”. The problem is compound interest. It seems to be inherent to financial management that the phenomenon of interest arises. But I can't say I understand that. There's an interesting 1200p. German book by Karl-Heinz Brodbeck that claims to have solved the enigma of interest: It arises because "nobody" knows where the additional money is made (e.g. in the darkness of Congo c19/20th, e.g. by taxing the future with negative externalities, ...)

Seconding JFL - except I don't know how to donate (and refuse Paypal). I know Neven in real life has to work very hard to earn some money, and has a family to feed. He is a serious c21st hero. This blog is not the luxury of some rich guy with lots of spare time.

Greening the Taklamakan! I just had the same obvious, not weird thought. There's the usual caveat: It might be easier said than done. (Hmm, it might be easier done than Sahara or Australian outback: The Kunlun Shan mountains might be a good source of irrigation water.) Anyhow, afforestation is one of the few serious geoengineering options. This one even with beneficial social side effects (cf. Wangari Maathai).

Mike, biochar prodcution releases energy - energy that photosynthesis had stored when the plant was growing. The resulting char does not rot, thus fixates some carbon - at least for a few centuries. (Proof: Look at pre-Columbian Amazonian Terra Preta soil.) Otherwise the plant would rot and release essentially all its carbon back into the great carbon cycle (as CO2 if not methane). In North America there's a huge resource for biochar production: Forests killed by bark beetle and/or drought. Not making biochar from this amounts to a continuation of grotesque stupidity (hence to be expected...). I've done a little experiment and math: Here in Germany, in winter 2011, the "fossil fools cost" of one metric ton of perfect gardening biochar made from wood pellets was -343€/t (incl. VAT). In U.S.$ (VAT substracted, 1.36€/$) -378$/t. Yes: minus. That is, if compared with the cost of home heating oil and 25% energy left unburned in the char. Meanwhile biochar (Terra Preta) got quite fashionable amoungst German nonstupid farmers. Problem is, where to get the char from. There is one large producer, Carbon Terra who charges +700€/t -- which according to my maths is grotesque. Plus, they don't actually use the energy (in theory it could be used). It's mostly from processing Romanian forestry "waste". At least their system produces clean biochar: no dioxins, no PAH. It seems easy to switch wood pellet home heating systems to produce some biochar. (I'm actually trying to get such a machine constructed. Alas, engineers aren't much interested in this stuff.) One essential caveat: Don't put fresh char into soil. That would suck up soil nutrients in the first years. The char needs to be preloaded with nutrients, e.g. soaked in CAFO cesspools (or e.g. human urine, as I do it). And don't mix more than 20% vol. into soil - good biochar has an immense water holding capacity, too much of it risks root rot. And of course with too much char the soil could be used for burning. (The suicidal Greenland Norse did that even with pure soil).

If this ultra-negative AO is a taste of what happened in 2010... I don't even want to think about that. Why not? Whammies like in 2010 are alas necessary to wake up folks. The sooner and harder they come, the better. Lets hope that this turn more of the less innocent get hit: Please, not another baking and flushing of Pakistan this time, but what about another Sandy, with a nice flushing of Wall Street? And certainly the environmental and scientific North Korea, i.e. Canada, desperately needs a little blow on the head. I suggest, dear Mother Earth, to turn the vast swaths of bark beetle killed forests into the fires of 2013 (that would sequester a little carbon in form of char - human technologists are to stupid for that). Also me cynic thinks it necessary to hit the Middle East with more drought plus global grain supply shortages: It is time for folks to learn to cope with such things in peaceful collaboration (plus, dear Gaza maternity clinic chef, by Allah, you don't need millions more babies). Peace or perish. And lots of perishing of overshot population is already in the pipeline, this century. I want to keep a tiny spark of optimism regarding our dismal species. Perhaps Late Homo S Sapiens can indeed learn, and not end up as a monstrous accident of evolution. But for that we need more and harder 2010s, and soon.

A-Team, thanks for looking into diatoms and all. Arctic phytoplankton gave me a little "positive" perspective on sea ice melt. Perhaps one day The Blog will feature beautiful images of Acrtic phytoplankton blooms? The nutrients would come from melting permafrost (according to my humble theory). I'm no biologist, but general Gaian/entropic reasoning would suggest something to come and use these nutrients. I guess there would also be free-floating singular diatoms, unlike the current Melosira colonies. So you think the carbon sequestration would be tiny, if any? The echinoderms produce calcium carbonate in their mesoderm, so is "safe" to some extent against ocean acidification (being covered by skin). The question is, what happens further down the road: How quick will the calcium carbonate be buried in sediment? (BTW, Diatoms are extremely beautiful stuff: Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur has a plate. Another German, J.D. Möller, made stunning microscopic artwork of them.)

On the German SPIEGEL Online article. http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/stillstand-der-temperatur-erklaerungen-fuer-pause-der-klimaerwaermung-a-877941.html First I thought it's not too bad for a journalist without any idea of statistiks and science (e.g. 14 years of "no warming" OK, but after 15 years we need to revisit the models). And who of them journalists cares about technical details? Who would have noted the escalator graph http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=47 What goddam professional journalist would have noted the graph of Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 http://www.skepticalscience.com/16_more_years_of_global_warming.html ?! At least no quote of Lindzen, Monckton, etc. Oops. And then I checked the author's credentials. He's not yet demented (b1971) and actually has a degree in geology... Anyhow, what to expect of the SPIEGEL? I had cancelled my subscription some years back out of disgust over yet another botched climate article (a few were actually good). Or was it yet another Lomborg interview. Anyhow, German journalism can be worse: http://florifulgurator.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/liars/

Massive Arctic phytoplankton blooms as stabilizing feedback? For many years I've been wondering what might keep a scorched Earth from runaway greenhouse warming. There's an old simple model by Lovelock and Kump which smells a bit fishy to me (but who am I). The results are described in their famous 1994 Nature article, Failure of climate regulation in a geophysiological model. Ocean algae are only coupled to albedo (seeding clouds by producing dimethyl sulphide) and don't do CO2 sequestration. Result: [I]f global mean temperatures rise above about 20 °C, both terrestrial and marine ecosystems are in positive feedback, amplifying any further increase of temperature. Conclusion: As the latter conditions have existed in the past, we propose that other climate-regulating mechanisms must operate in this warm regime. What are these mechanisms? I haven't yet heard of any. Perhaps it is indeed ocean phytoplankton which might save the day (not ours, but at least Gaia's)? Not coccolithophores (their calcium shells won't survive ocean acidification) but diatoms (with silica cell walls). Melting permafrost might perhaps help with nutrients (silly idea I guess). In Lovelock and Kump's model the algae get shut down by a growing thermocline (warm surface stratification shutting out nutrients). But I gess the Arctic ocean will get stirred for a long time (ice cubes from Greenland, polar night temperature gradient, ...?). What do you think? Some references: * Massive Phytoplankton Blooms Under Arctic Sea Ice Science 2012 Vol. 336 no. 6087 p. 1408 http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6087/1408.abstract * Ocean Acidification and Diatoms: http://oceanacidification.wordpress.com/?s=diatom * Efficiency of the CO2-concentrating mechanism of diatoms http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/02/09/1018062108.full.pdf

It's quite amazing how fast the "conventional" view on sea level rise has changed. 3 years ago, there was a nice discussion at realclimate.org. Back then, 1m SLR was seen the upper bound. But assuming exponential decay of Greenland ice I found a SLR of 4 meter by 2100 would be unsurprising. (It didn't even need a pencil to do that math.) Gavin Schmidt's response: [Response: I would be very surprised. 1 meter would already be a disaster, (...) - gavin] http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/sea-will-rise-to-levels-of-last-ice-age/comment-page-1/#comment-110846

Jim, thanks for the link to Lovelock's excellent reply to Monbiot's rejection (*) of biochar. Lovelock explains it in just a few paragraphs. And he explains the homework for real engineers: Construct a simple wood gas based combined heating and power generator for use at organic farms. (Some farmers are eager to make the leap into 21st century agriculture: Not carbon negative, not organic.) (*) Monbiot got that from Biofuelwatch, who managed to derail discussion of biochar at the Copenhagen Climate Summit. An excellent book is: Albert K. Bates, The Biochar Solution: Carbon Farming and Climate Change (2010)

Neven, thanks for the link to that "great article" by Kerry Emanuel. But it contains a toxic line, "we have yet to establish a link to hybrid storms like Sandy" Oh dear scientist, si tacuisses. Sandy has footprints of climate change all over. Weirdness - 'nuff said.

I've almost given up on advocating biochar... Meanwhile a growing number of freak gardeners and extreme organic farmers are getting interested - but the common engineer remains insulted. (What, you want wood gas cars (and trucks and locomotives) like in WWII? What, you want us to look into 19th century city gas? And ugh yuck, you want us to marinate char coal in liquid manure? No! We want artificial photosynthesis and glitzy space age geoengineering, perhaps Dyson's diamond trees etc. - but don't bother us with your outdated technology...). Consider the following simple math: What about turning around current agriculture from a CO2 releasing soil destroying classic economic suicide business? Agri"culture" today is contributing significantly to the rise of CO2. Stop that and reverse the flow. E.g., dear 'Merricans and Canadians, use the masses of dead trees killed by bark beetle and drought to produce energy and char coal - instead of just letting them rot or burn. Char coal fixes their photosynthetic carbon takeup (it does not rot) PLUS you get energy by producing the char (pyrolysis). That's a win-win deal, dear economist. Actually it's a triple-win deal, as char coal can enhance soil (if treated the right way) and can make it more resilient against drought and nutrient leaching. Such terra preta soils had been produced by pre-Columbian civilizations in the Amazon and are still extremely fertile. Are triple-win deals impossible? Alas the Late Homo S "Sapiens" prefers win-win deals (tertium non datur) which according to Murphy's law can easily deteriorate into mutual suicidality (plus (if progressing exponentially) ecocide). We can't afford that anymore.

I still have hope that he and Watts own up and acknowledge the seriousness of the disappearance of Arctic sea ice. Vain hope. Neven, I thought you've learned a bit in the last years. These guys are psycho, plain and simple. And they will just get more psycho over time. A death spiral of psychosis. I bet they will instead just declare the Arctic unimportant or nonexistent.

Austrian Paypal no Englisch? Pitiable. (But, well, what to expect from today's programmers...) Austrians once were envied by us Barvarians for their english skills. Note the decimal trennzeichen in German is the COMMA, not DOT.