Global Warming Update
With a hat tip to NewsBusters, a report on polar ice from this past June:
It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.
The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.
"From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water," said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.
That was then. This is now.
Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.
Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards.
(That rapid recovery in the last quarter is what we in the northern hemisphere call "winter".)
So all the experts and nifty computer models were absolutely wrong. We’re not sailing ships through Santa’s workshop; instead we’re seeing ice levels we haven’t seen for 30 years. Why were predictions so wrong? The article explains:
Researchers had expected the newer sea ice, which is thinner, to be less resilient and melt easier. Instead, the thinner ice had less snow cover to insulate it from the bitterly cold air, and therefore grew much faster than expected, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Maybe, just maybe, the earth has cycles and this icing is just one of them. Cycles like this are one of the reasons that the Huffington Post — no member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy they — are now preemptively accepting Al Gore’s apology for the lies he’s been telling us.
Mr. Gore has stated, regarding climate change, that "the science is in." Well, he is absolutely right about that, except for one tiny thing. It is the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of humankind.
What is wrong with the statement? A brief list:
Harold Ambler tics off the top 4 reasons to not believe "the science is in". He mentions the vast changes in climate we’ve seen over the centuries, the data showing that rises in temperature precede rises in CO2 levels, the changing stories we get from the Gore camp, and that the alleged mechanism by which CO2 warms the earth has never been shown to exist. He covers this last point in greater detail, including talk of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the issue of sunspots, which have more to do with global temperatures than any trace atmospheric gas (like, say, CO2). Oh, and he also bring up sea ice in a postscript.
And for doing his research, other HuffPo writers retaliated with a simple link-fest and an ad hominem attack. Speaking truth to power? Heh, more like speaking names to data.
In the personal attack, Kevin Grandia appeals to data from NASA, but it appears that some people there have their own agendas and don’t look at the data with a critical eye. Wes Pruden explains:
This is similar to the science practiced by Dr. James Hansen at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the source of much of the voodoo that Al Gore has been peddling since the doctor showed up at a Senate hearing in 1988 and told ghost stories that Al swallowed whole. Only last month Dr. Hansen’s institute announced that October was the hottest on record, and then said "uh, never mind." The London Daily Telegraph calls this "a surreal blunder [that] raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming."
In this account, the institute had to make the humiliating climb-down after two leading skeptics of the global-warming scam, Anthony Watts, an American meteorologist, and Steve McIntyre, a Canadian computer analyst, discovered that temperature readings from September had been carried over and repeated for October.
We should sigh, shrug and give the scientists at NASA the benefit of the doubt that this was a mistake and not a deliberate howl at the moon. A spokesman for the institute explains that readings borrowed from Russia, which had been described as 10 degrees higher than normal for October, distorted the figures but, after all, the data had been obtained from others. So we should blame someone else.
This is the science we’re expected to take on faith. The false figures – we must be generous and not say "faked" – were supplied by the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change. These are the most widely quoted readings, and consistently show higher temperatures than other "data sets." Would the United Nations lie? (No giggling, please.)
Wes notes that Hansen has done this more than once. Fool me twice, and all that.
The globe is currently cooler than when George W. Bush took office. No, really. But frankly I don’t credit him with it, because the planet’s climate is such a vast and complex system that, as has been shown, we simply don’t understand it all. Climate models have been overestimating the affect of particulate carbon in the atmosphere. We’re having some of the coldest temperatures in decades all over the world.
And lost in all this is the sense of deja vu we should be having. Read this report:
The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from US Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.
Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.
United Nations from July, 2008? No, US Weather Service from 1922.
The idea that man is destroying the global climate is not something that should be driving governmental policy. The science is not in by a long shot.
Filed under: Doug • Environment • Global Warming • Science
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
I hate liars. Truly.
FACT: The ice level in the Arctic now is NOT equal to 1979. (See current NSIDC news.)
FACT: the SPEED of ice growth in Sept./Oct. was fast BECAUSE OF the heat in the water. It’s simple physics. (See NSIDC update in November, I believe.)
Don’t lie. It means you are a BAD PERSON.
Then where did the University of Illinois’s Arctic Climate Research Center get its data, that it’s so wrong? (Are they in the pocket of Big Oil, too?)
So global warming is to blame for when there’s less ice at the pole and when there’s more ice? Fascinating.
“Then where did the University of Illinois’s Arctic Climate Research Center get its data, that it’s so wrong?”
You linked to a BLOG that is LYING about and/or intentionally mis-characterizing the data. You got data from UofI? Link it.Not a blog. Any nutjob, like yourself, can link to a blog. Link to SCIENCE, if you’re man enough.
Look at this lie from that crappy blog: “Instead, the Arctic ice saw a substantial recovery. ”
WRONG. First, the word “recovery” is misused. You cannot call variation recovery. It’s a lie. And the variation IS significant, but not in the way that liar says. Here’s what’s important: Despite having perfect conditions for ice retention over the summer, we had ice loss that was just barely shy of ’07, and VERY MUCH LESS than the baseline average. Yet, in ’07 there were the worst conditions possible for the ice: many storms, unusual wind patterns, massive amounts of ice flowing out of the Arctic Ocean… You name it, it happened in ’07. So, why were the ice totals so similar? The water was a lot warmer from ’07s melt, that’s why. Along with the methane emissions found this past summer in two or three new studies.
Why did the blog lie? Why are you? I don’t know. Money? Ideology? Crazy? You tell me.
“Instead, the thinner ice had less snow cover to insulate it from the bitterly cold air, and therefore grew much faster than expected, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.”
Another lie. I’ve read all the NSIDC press releases, and none of them have said that that I can recall. The truth? ICe doesn’t grow where the ice ALREADY IS, but where there is open water. Your blogger lied.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/111008.html
“Near-record October growth rates
As mentioned above, unusually high air temperatures go hand-in-hand with the rapid increase in ice extent seen through most of the month of October.
At its fastest point on October 15, the 2008 ice growth exceeded the 2007 growth rate on the same date by 92,000 square kilometers (36,000 square miles) per day. The near-record daily growth rate slowed toward the end of the month and has now fallen below the 2007 growth rate. It is important to reiterate this fast rate of growth is not unexpected under current conditions.”
Got it?
Don’t read blogs in place of science. Bloggers lie.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
TRUTH
The article links to a graph that indeed shows that the sea ice area is back to 1979 levels. You link to a graph that shows it’s below the 1979-2000 average. Both graphs could be right, especially if the area in 1979 was a recent high-point. That’s not lying, regardless of how loudly and IN ALL CAPS you say/type it.
Indeed the web site for U of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research has other charts and graphs that tend to support the fact that the globe is warming. Or do you wish to point the “money, ideology, crazy” charge at them, too?
Here’s the bottom line: Global warming alarmists said we’d be sailing ships at the North Pole by the end of the year. Yet there’s more ice area than before. And the article you link to calls it “an expected paradox”. Fine, but while it may have been expected by them, the global warming alarmists aren’t giving us data, they’re just trying to scare people. Were they lying when they made the ice-melting claim, when this paradox was “expected”?
In fact, the very first sentence of the article says:
Emphasis mine. The higher air temperatures were the result of the increased ice, not the cause. But Al Gore and his minions will no doubt completely ignore this because it doesn’t fit his narrative. They’ll just play the part of “psychic” Jean Dixon, who hope you forget her wild predictions from last year.
And we still haven’t touched the idea of whether or not this is a natural cycle or fully man-made. But I’ve had enough of being told I’m lying. I mean “LYING”.
Uh-huh.We already went over this. ARCTIC sea ice is the important aspect. Pretty much ALL models expect the Antarctic to be colder for a period of time and not melt much.
Do you not understand this? It’s like me saying there’s no problem with water in the US Southwest because in the US as a whole, there’s as much as ten years ago! Idiotic. And untruthful.
And, the provenance of the STORY, which is full of lies and bullshit, is Asher. Christ on a stick. As dishonest a “skeptic” you will ever find. I have already pointed out the many lies in that very short article.
No, they aren’t lying, you and Asher are. You are using their data to make a claim that is utterly false. By pretending TOTAL global ice is the important metric (because the Arctic is melting out from under you and making you “skeptics” look like idiots), you are obfuscating. Further, I doubt the graph even supports your or Asher’s claims. The anomaly line sure doesn’t. And the resolution is too small to know what the underlying numbers are.
Who? Name them. Quote them. Tell us who said without doubt that would be the case or was the most likely case. THERE AREN’T ANY. Certainly not scientists. And you are building a straw man: Who cares if some dipwad somewhere said that. Was it the consensus opinion? No. Was it said to be the most probable outcome? No. What did the scientists say? Not that it would be the Arctic would be ice free enough in ’08 to sail a ship through the middle of it, and certainly not that it was a certainty. What people DID say, and was CORRECT, was that the Northwest passage would likely be open. It was. As was the Eastern. First time in recorded history both have been open.
You are arguing NOTHING here.
What alarmists don’t use data? Show me one. And who are these alarmists? NAME THEM. I can claim anything is true if I refuse to name anyone. Who can check it? Who can sue me? You are lying. NOBODY of any consequence is refusing to or not using data.
I GAVE you data, and you ignored it. I explained why it is more germane than your data, and you ignored it.
No, it is you “skeptics” who have no data and make crap up.
WHO MADE THIS CLAIM? Who? This is what you are LYING about:
He is talking about ice specifically AT the pole, not the entire Arctic Ocean. FYI, the pole sometimes has been ice free because the ice is always moving; it is not a continent, for chrissakes. And his point was well-founded. Had the ice shifted west instead of east, it would have been.
No. It’s called the latent heat of fusion.
The high air temperatures were due to the heat in the WATER and the process of ice FORMATION, NOT PRE-EXISTING ICE. I already gave you THAT INFO.
You are embarrassing yourself.
Stop lying.
OK, I see what you’re saying regarding global vs. Arctic ice levels. That’s fair and I’ll admit I didn’t catch it. But there were folks who said that the North Pole could be ice-free. Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado is quoted in The Independent article as saying the North Pole could be “open water”. Now, what he means by “North Pole” — one single dot on the map or some region — would matter. If he meant the single dot that is physical North Pole, well that doesn’t seem a little small to be concerned about. But a typical reader would easily interpret that to mean some quite larger area, and it’s left to that reader’s imagination.
Ron Lindsay, from the University of Washington in Seattle also said something similar, “There’s a good chance that it will all melt away at the North Pole…” Again, sounds like he’s talking about a huge area, not a dot on a map. “All melt away” doesn’t sound like he’s talking about a small area. Others are quoted, all talking about “the North Pole”. Again, little definition.
These guys are not “dipwads”. While the sailing allusion was my own, these fellas did indeed raise the specter of such a thing.
Yes, I do know that the Arctic Ocean is not a continent. But I’ll quote again from the DailyTech article:
Again, perhaps this is just an oversimplification, like scientists referring to “the North Pole” (and this does talk about Arctic ice), but here’s my larger point.
The Independent reported the melting ice predictions, but haven’t reported the recovery (here’s their Climate Change section). They are reporting on Arctic amplification, but no mention of the Arctic ice recovery. As you note, perhaps it all was quite predictable. But that doesn’t make it into the papers, which is where many global warming alarmists are.
There is no doubt the globe has been getting warmer overall (though the last 10 years have seen a consistent drop in global temperatures which, again, doesn’t get reported). The alarmism is when it’s reported in a one-sided fashion, using vague quotes from scientists who refer to “the North Pole” as either some area of unspecified size or as a dot on a map, with the intent that we should, or even can, do something about it.
OK, it’s really unusual for me to become *more* patient with a “sceptic” because most are liars or idiots. Literally. (The research supports this. Well, the liars part, anyway.) But you seem to be trying to work through this, so I’ll back off a little.
HOWEVER, you are ignoring things I’ve already explained/posted for you, so it’s a bit frustrating. This indicates that *your* knowledge of sea ice is limited and you are essentially repeating what other sceptics say. Think for yourself.
On to your points: The ice free thing is not science, so is irrelevant. But, it WAS possible. Because of what happened for summer ’07 I watched the ice images literally every day this year starting in about June. Most people think of sea ice as a massive sheet of solid ice, but it is anything but. It is built of chunks of ice that bunch together and drift apart. The ice is very vulnerable to certain conditions. So, given the huge melt from ’07 and the rapid melt in the spring, an ice-free Pole WAS a very real possibility. It was not hyperbole, it was not lies. If the same conditions occurred in ’08 as ’07, you almost certainly would have had nearly all the ice gone. I already pointed this out.
What is amazing is that despite pretty much nearly perfect conditions, we still had a new 2nd place record, and, importantly, the record was very close to the new record from ’07 and far from the baseline. The ice melt this year pulled the mean/avg. DOWN. The trend is alive, well, and kicking Arctic Sea Ice arse.
That’s because there has been no recovery. What you ar claimingis jsut false. I told you: don’t get your news from a reporter!! Go to the NSIDC website links I gave you. Look at the graphs. They are unambiguous and startling.
1. The ice growth pattern is a sawtooth one. There is ALWAYS “recovery.” EVERY winter. And the variation in winter coverage is very small compared to the summer variations. The reason should be obvious. You are mis-using the term “recovery.” Recovery implies the healing of some broken thing. There is no healing here! Go look at the charts! The Arctic extent right now is at the same level as last year at this time, and well below the 79-00 reference. How does that equal recovery? The reporter is a liar. Literally. Sneaky as hell, but a lliar nonetheless. To wit:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
3. Winter ice levels mean virtually nothing. All that new ice? It’s first year ice. Even under great conditions, most or all of it will melt this summer.
4. I told you: the total volume of ice is down 80%. How does that mean nothing to you?
5. The wind patterns have shifted in the Arctic and the scientists think it might be a sign of a permanent shift in weather patterns due to shifting climate. Result? More warm air into the Arctic.
6. Have you not read any of the reports on new methane emissions?
It’s not one-sided, it’s reality. Are you aware the IPCC had to change it’s description from CERTAIN to 90 – 95% certainty not because of science, but because of political pressure?
Quit kidding yourself: there is no debate. There is no credible science. I will give you the same challenge I give every sceptic who claims honesty (none have ever passed): Show me the science. Show me the peer-reviewed, published science that has withstood critique after publishing. Not one sceptic has been able to do this.
Do yourself a bigger favor: stop listening to idiots and investigate yourself. Even more important LOOK around you. Ask the denialist idiots to account for all the glaciers melting, to account for the melting in Greenland, in Antarctica (new papers out in December… start googling…), in the Arctic. Ask them why habitats are moving, mating times are changing, etc., etc., etc.
It’s not just models and ice.