10/31 NEWS: See updated graphs here
UPDATED: 10/22/08 The new images below are even closer
Watching arctic sea ice rebound this year has been exciting, more so since a few predictions and expeditions predicated on a record low sea ice this past summer failed miserably. I’ve spent a lot of time this month looking at the graph of sea ice extent from the IARC-JAXA website, which plots satellite derived sea-ice extent. However, there is another website that also plots the same satellite derived data, the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center of Bergen Norway, and they have an added bonus: a standard deviation shaded area. For those that don’t know what standard deviation is, here is a brief explanation from Wiki
…standard deviation remains the most common measure of statistical dispersion, measuring how widely spread the values in a data set are. If many data points are close to the mean, then the standard deviation is small; if many data points are far from the mean, then the standard deviation is large. If all data values are equal, then the standard deviation is zero.
In a nutshell, you could say that any data point that falls within the standard deviation area would be considered “within normal variances” for the data set. That said, current sea ice extent and area data endpoints (red line) are both approaching the edge of the standard deviation (gray shading) for both data sets. Here is sea ice area:
Click for a larger image
And here is sea ice extent:
Click for a larger image
Extent has a bit further to go than area, and of course it is possible that the slope will flatten and it may not reach the SD gray area. It’s also possible it may continue on the current trend line. Only nature knows for certain. A complete presentation from Nansen is on this page which is well worth bookmarking.
What I find particularly interesting is the graph comparing the 2008, 2007, and 2006 sea ice extent. It appears 2008 extent has already bested 2006 extent:
with a hat tip to commenter Patrick Henry
I repeat.
My two solacing pleasures during this election cycle have been:
1. the growing ice
2. the quiet sun
Really. It’s a little pathetic.
But that’s what I’ve got.
Chilling, isn’t it?
(Thanks, Anthony (and Patrick):0)
At this current dT/dt, there is going to be a process excursion of positive value. Of course, as noted on other threads, once the ice fills in the Arctic Basin proper, the rate of increase will become lower.
Hope you don’t mind but I am sending the link to this item to the Daily Telegraph UK letters page. They won’t publish and they won’t print anything about this I am sure. Worse thing is that I buy this paper every day and have to get all steamed up when I see such articles as that that they published on Monday. But the Guardian and The Independent and The Times are even worse!
Interesting. From comparing this graph with the NSIDC.ORG graph, it appears that the NSIDC.ORG graph depiction of the 1979-2000 average curve is at the upper edge of the standard deviation band… (around 9km^2 on today’s date vs. just over 8km^2 for the mid-band average on the graph you have).
Watts up with that?
What most interests me is to see how far out into the Bering Sea the ice cover extends this winter. With the PDO being in its cool phase, ice extent should increase in this area over previous years, when the PDO was in its warm phase.
sent to the D T
It will not publish anything like this and it was not really written for publication. It was sent to try to make them think before they carry such “stories” (every sense of the word!) again.
CAn they be taken to the Press Complaints Commission about the item on Monday last? Anyone know if that is possible?
Dear Sir,
Last Monday you published the most alarming report from the WWF on loss of sea ice in the Arctic.
The factual inaccuracies and the totally false comments that were reported went uncorrected and no letters were published commenting on this, although I know you received many letters.
Now that the sea ice in the Arctic is back to be within the expected averages for the last 20 year period I hope to see an item about this dominating a half page of your paper, just like the WWF report did on Monday.
Here is a link to the story :
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/22/sea-ice-approaching-the-edge-of-normal-standard-deviation/#comment-50793
with other links to the IRAC-JAXX website.
I buy The Telegraph every day and have done so for twenty years. I value its impartial approach, but I am finding my patience sorely tried by your reporting inaccuracies. The thing I always liked about the Telegraph as opposed to other daily papers in the UK was that the comment appeared in the editorial and guest columns and the reporting was unbiased. On the topic of Climate Change you have lowered your standards to report political comment by pressure groups as scientific fact.
Denis Hopkins.
Anthony,
Thanks. With the cold weather the Arctic is experiencing, it could approach the normal line within a week or two. Temperatures off the Alaska coast (where ice is yet to form) are running below -5C now.
http://wxmaps.org/pix/temp2.html
Boy, talk about cognitive dissonance in the mainstream media. Can anyone direct me to a single article (aside from climate blogs) that discusses this surge in Arctic sea ice?
This isn’t newsworthy – 30% more ice? Gimme a break.
Speaking of the expanding cryosphere, what’s the latest on the world’s glaciers?
Since I don’t see anything in the media about them anymore I assume they’re growing. (I know the glaciers on California’s Mt. Shasta are growing).
Thank you, thank you , thank you. Thank you for finally having a graph that covers the period 1979-2007 instead of the 1979-2000 period. Thank you for finally having a graph that has the standard deviation rather than just a single line. Now if we could just get the data to go back and start at 1907 it would be even more meaningful.
Denis Hopkins
I take the opposite view .. the DT has responsibly published information that it would have been biased journalism to ignore.
It’s articles by Mr Booker that need to be taken to PressComplaints
A closeness to the normal amount of ice that is unprecedented. Since April 2008.
REPLY: Nobody said a thing (except you) about it being “unprecedented”. I’m simply pointing out what a great recovery arctic sea ice is having. It’s funny that some people who have commented here don’t seem to like what is happening. – Anthony
Hmmmm.
Yesterday I began saving the NSIDC image of ice cover to a file on my desktop that I named, “ICE”. (Previously I’ve revealed my guilty pleasure over watching the ice cap grow) I thought I’d collect my own little slide show for future viewing enjoyment.
Like I said – anything to take my mind off politics.
Anyway.
As I was saving today’s (Oct. 22) image, I noticed that the caption in the lower right hand corner explaining their pink boundary says:
‘median’ – 1979 to 2000
Yesterday’s Oct. 21 image said: ‘normal’ ice edge
If memory serves – I think it’s previously always said ‘normal’.
Could it be – that now that the ice is becoming more “normal” – they’d rather not have that word “normal’ applying to what’s going on up there in the recovering ice? “Median” is a bit more obscure than “normal”.
Just asking.
reply: can you send me those? info -at- surfacestations.org – Anthony
So sad that we must look at graphs from Norway because our own government is filled with alarmists…
Anthony, ( or somebody)
Please enlighten me:
What’s the difference betwen Ice Area and Ice Extent ?
I assumed they were synonymous.
Please, elucidate the matter if you would.
Thank You
Gardy
But the average you are using is from 1979-2007
– what does the graph look like if you use the more usual 1979-2000 period?
That’s it. I’m officially canceling my plans for opening up my Ron Jon’s® surf shop on Hudson’s Bay and going ahead with my snow ski resort idea for the otherwise useless gypsum stacks scattered about all over West-Central Florida. Get your vacation packages and lift tickets now and save a bundle!
When the ice reaches the mouth of New York harbor, can we tie Algore & Hansen onto a chunk of it and push it off into the Gulf Stream and send them off to Europe so that they may reap the deserved rewards of their
massive scamtireless efforts from the grateful,frozen & starvingadoring masses?I was fooling around with Google Earth and at some point I tried to look at the north of Greenland to see what was there. Then I saw this icon on greenland from UNEP. It is about the Helheim Glacier. This is another typical example of one glacier recessing as their argument that Anthropogenic greenhouse gases is responsible for global warming, etc, etc, etc…
I was looking their 1986 & 2006 pictures (and the scale they give) and using a reference point it seems that the glacier is back (or about) to its 1986 position. Now I don’t know when the picture on Google Earth was taken but surely it must not be 2006 but closer to now since it is fairly high res.
Can someone go confirm this and cache the pictures.
Latitude: 66°21’11.31″N
Longitude: 38° 3’8.21″W
The Telegraph is a paper that I have read for a long time.While it traditionally has had a right wing slant it has been relarively unbiased in reporting facts.
Its current pre occupation with Green issues seems to have occured at the same time that the opposition Conservatives also found the religion.
However it is to be regretted when disinformation is presented as factual. I believe that Mr.Paul Ecclestone their SCIENCE correspondent is doing a once great paper a severe injustice.It’s not even that he had to leave his office to check it out. Easier to stay safe and keep collecting the paycheck eh ?
Why they pay Charles Clover for his stuff on green issues is beyond me. The man has no qualifications at all as a scientist, google his bio and it’s not there, and no grasp of the facts beyond what he’s heard from the green lobby.
No wonder I occasionally weep for the old country.
The more usual average from 1979 to 2000? Why leave out seven years? We have precious few years to average as it is.
Why not include the years from 6,000 to 7,000 years ago?
Anthony, I noticed something interesting in your graph. Have you tried taking the 2008 data starting at its lowest point, and delaying it about two weeks to see how closely a delayed version of it matches the 2007 recovery. They look remarkable similar, just delayed about two weeks.
REPLY Its not my graph, it is from Nansen, so I don’t have the raw data specific to this. – Anthony
Pablo
Green issues won’t gpo away no matter how much you wish we’re not living on an overcrowded planet and are currently changing the composition of the atmosphere.
The DT has done a great service by raising awareness of important issues.
Good luck in your exile status – if you’re that upset about the old country .. try returning any paying local taxes …
PeteM,
If you are running out of space in the old country, come on out to Texas. We’ve got plenty of room and people out here are right friendly.
See Ya Soon,
Mike
Here’s a century old map with a European perspective. I suspect it’s not wholly accurate as far as the sea ice extent is concerned, but still, it’s telling in the amount of open seas that are shown.
http://explorenorth.com/library/maps/franzjosefland1906.htm
Jim Watson,
I read that Mt. Shasta’s glaciers are growing because of an increase in precipitation, not because of any regional cooling trend. Since Mt. Shasta is ~14,000 feet elevation, and almost all precipitiation is in winter (unlike the Cascades further north where proportionately more precipitation falls as rain) on the upper slopes of Shasta, it falls as snow. This ~17% increase in precipitation (which some attribute to increased regional tempertature over the Pacific to the west) is thought to over-ride the ~1.8 degree increase in regional temperature over the same time period. As far as I can tell through reading the information out there, this is the only glacier in California (and the Cascades) that’s growing. The Sierra Nevada and Cascade glaciers continue to shrink.
Anyone else out there have information on the rest of the west-coast glaciers?
John D.
REPLY: That’s right, glaciers are a proxy for precipitation mostly, not temperature. Sublimation is a bigger force than melting when precipitation does not occur frequently enough to sustain it. – Anthony
My two solacing pleasures during this election cycle
Me, too.
Hey, we have moose now in Wallowa County. Are polar bears far behind?
My bad. That map I reference:
http://explorenorth.com/library/maps/franzjosefland1906.htm
marks that white area as unerforschtes gebiet which, roughly translates into unknown territory. tsk tsk
RealClimate just posted up a study that says tropical temperatures are within the model’s predictions since they are still within 2 standard deviations.
Someone needs to post this at RealClimate because 2 standard deviations is ridiculous. Using this measure, no warming at all in the tropics (basically what the actual observations are) is still consistent with the models. LOL
If sea ice is within 1 standard deviation, they should be told to quit talking about a loss of sea ice since their own measure says there is no change.
Gardy LaRoche (15:42:04) :
Here’s the definition that the NSIDC uses:
PeteM : Chris Booker’s work is invariably well researched, but if you wish to challenge his journalism go to eureferendum.com where the background to his work is usualy published and open to discussion before he goes to press. I hope you will come up with something a bit more relevant than your bland posting on this otherwise erudite forum.
In a nutshell, you could say that any data point that falls within the standard deviation area would be considered “within normal variances” for the data set.
Yes, but usually anything within two standard deviations would be considered within the normal range.
From the Arctic ROOS website:
Ice Area is defined as the area covered by ice, excluding regions with 15% or lower ice concentration. Ice extent is defined as the area with a 15% or higher ice concentration.
See also their plot of extent and area from 1978 to 2007.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/total-icearea-from-1978-2007
Compare that to the more alarming graph in the recent Dr. Meier post (16-10-2008).
Cathy: “Median” is a bit more obscure than “normal”
“median” has a precise meaning, “normal” (in this context) doesn’t.
PeteM,
You say: Green issues won’t go away no matter how much you wish we’re not living on an overcrowded planet and are currently changing the composition of the atmosphere.
The DT has done a great service by raising awareness of important issues.
I do agree that the planet is overcrowded. Like you I don’t have children. Like you I find the evironment a very important issue. Like you I mostly use my bicycle for transport and I don’t have a car. Like you I wear a warm sweater when I’m cold instead of turning the thermostat higher. Like you I can’t be blamed for hypocrisy
But unlike you I am interested in science and want to know the truth with all its inevitable nuances, for only that will bring humankind further.
There may be questions as to the validity of the historical average. Melling and Riedel (GRL 2005) did a sonar survey of the ice in the Beaufort Sea from 1991 to 2003. They no signifigant trend in area or thickness. They also state that the Beaufort Sea is “ice free for four months except for low density intrusions”. Cryroshere Today anomaly graph shows a norm of 25 to 30 percent for August.
I should add that their explanation of area versus extent is a bit confusing…
… so I found a previous WUWT comment:
“extent is the area of ocean containing 15% ice, ‘area’ is the calculated area of the ice itself”
@Pet Rock
Technically, of course, ‘median’ is more precise than ‘normal’.
I may have used ‘obscure’ awkwardly, but I meant that in switching terms at this interesting time of ice recovery they seemed to be trying to obscure the fact of the ice cap’s return to ‘normalcy’ .
John D
Search this site for “Alaska glaciers”, there’s an article about the growing glaciers in Alaska.
There were a pile of articles about glaciers in the Cascades and the Mount Rainier retreating… a couple years ago. But somewhat lacking on followthrough.
Tom in ice free Florida (15:11:40) :
“Now if we could just get the data to go back and start at 1907 it would be even more meaningful.”
Here.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/SEAICE/timeseries.1870-2008
Look at this precipitation prediction for Baffin Bay, the Inlet and Hudson Bay area (west of Greenland): http://wxmaps.org/pix/prec2.html
(thanks to the poster who provided the link today)
It’s been colder than a well diggers rear in the Arctic, and “problem” areas such as the Beufort/Laptev Seas area, the Barents/Kara Seas area and the Baffin Bay area have all seen fast ice growth in the last few days. No conditions are foreseen that would slow this progress to date, rather the signs point to continued growth if not acceleration. In the next few days to a week we are likely to see extent rising close to or exceeding the average. Hang on to your hats, this could get interesting.
MartinGAtkins (19:05:51) :
Tom in ice free Florida (15:11:40) :
“Now if we could just get the data to go back and start at 1907 it would be even more meaningful.”
Here.”
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/SEAICE/timeseries.1870-2008
Wow. Sea ice to 5 decimal points all the way back to 1870. I wonder where they keep their Tardis.
The data for sea ice all the way back to 1870 is almost too ridiculous. Are we so stupid that we will allow this rewriting of history? Who is responsible for THIS fiction? At what point will ALL data be suspect? I think we may have already reached that point.
Is science too far gone to be saved?
Mark Bryant -“The data for sea ice all the way back to 1870 is almost too ridiculous. ”
Is anyone really pretending to use this rubbish? Surely not? This has got to be some ratbag making a joke! Isn’t it?
Seems to be some difference between the above “extent” and AMSR from JAXA:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
This shows “extent” a little under 8 million, which is different from both the Nansen “area” or “extent”, by roughly half a million either way. Nansen “area” is closer to AMSR “extent” than Nansen “extent”. Different algorithms perhaps.
Showing only plus and minus one standard deviation is not commonplace in error analysis. That range covers only about two-thirds of the outcomes in a Gaussian normal distribution. A better choice would have been the 95% confidence interval or about plus or minus 1.96 standard deviations. Had you done that the broader range might have included all of the 2008 figures and perhaps even some of the 2007 figures.
REPLY: The graphs are not mine, but are from Nansen Research Center. I have no control over the analysis, I was simply pointing them out. – Anthony
Around the southside
So cold that we cried
Were we ever colder on that day
A million miles away
It seemed from all of eternity
Graph from same site. Ice 1900-2007. The graph seems different after 1952; the International Geophysical Year wasn’t until 1957, so it’s not an IGY effect.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seasonal.extent.1900-2007.jpg
From: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/guide/Data/walsh.html
The above link appears to describe the sources of data for the sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere at http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/SEAICE/timeseries.1870-2008 linked to above. Some selected quotes:
“Please note that large portions of the pre-1953, and almost all of the pre-1900 data is either climatology (?) or interpolated data and the user is cautioned to use this data with care (see “Expert user guidance”…”
“Temporal extension of Kelly ice extent analyses…Sea ice extent data is provided by Kelly, et. al. 1988. The ice extent data is compiled for the months April-August for the majority of the period 1901-1956.”
“We add a marginal sea ice zone to the Kelly ice extent data by computing average ice concentration drop-off rates for the period during which there are satellite observations.”
“Regional sea ice anomalies have been shown to persist (LTP?) for many months and even seasons (Chapman and Walsh, 1991). We attempt to capitalize on this persistence by extending the ice anomaly data from (1) forward and backward in time to fill in the months September-March for each year in the 1901-1956 period. … We have attempted to stretch the useful information included in the Kelly ice extent data to extract as much information as possible from the data. …”
“1972-1998: Satellite period – hemispheric coverage, state-of-the-art data accuracy
1953-1971: Hemispheric observations – complete coverage from a variety of sources. The observational reliability varies with each source, but is generally accurate.
1870-1952: Climatology (???) with increasing amounts of observed data throughout the period.”
“Because most of the direct observations of sea ice (1870-1971 period) are from ships at sea, they are generally the most complete near the ice edge. The conditions north of the ice edge are often assumed to be 100% covered during this period. The satellite era has shown otherwise…”
Question marks and emphasis added.
In my opinion, the authors of this database should be commended for their frank description of this dataset, although it is fair to question whether this dataset should have been constructed at all. There needs to be some definition of when in climate science it is appropriate to say that there isn’t enough data.
From: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/SEAICE/arctic.historical.seaice.doc.txt
The description of data sources for sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere is very similar to that in my post above. However, here are some additional quotes from language NOT included in my post above:
“..ice areas derived from pre-1978 data may be significantly higher than those calculated from the satellite period.”
“We urge you to pay special attention to the data sources and their limitations when using this data.”
One has to wonder if the very important caveat in my last quote above in bold ever has been or would ever be pointed out to policy makers as a matter of course concerning the issue of arctic ice.
‘REPLY: Nobody said a thing (except you) about it being “unprecedented”. I’m simply pointing out what a great recovery arctic sea ice is having. It’s funny that some people who have commented here don’t seem to like what is happening. – Anthony’
Well if no one said it, that is good, because what value is there in saying something that someone else has already said.
Just to be clear, I was pointing out that the recovery the ice is having is to a value that is comparable to what we had a few months ago.
I don’t have children
Sorry to be harsh, but the only thing that you will likely accomplish by this is to die alone and forgotten, and have missed out on the primary purpose for human existence.
On average, Muslim families have six children. Maybe they will build a Mosque where your house used to be.
Leon Brozyna, I wouldn’t take that early map showing ice coverage as anything other than a representation. When they can miss out large islands off Russia I don’t think they can be too hot on where the ice actually was.
Regards
Andy
Julian In Wales
It’s funny how touchy some folks on this forum are about anything that doesn’t agree with their view on global warming . I didn’t notice you reacting to a comment recommending his book as ‘bland’.
I suggest that anyone can ‘well research a topic’ in order to find information supporting their view point . The question is whether starting from a viewpoint that the case about global warming needs to be demolished is the correct approach .
Fridtjof
Oh … as I’m not interested in science I had better cancel my subscriptions to all those science magazines , journals and papers I look at … and err let me return my science degree qualifications …
I think knowledge and truth are different concepts.
The truth is we don’t know enough about the effects of increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere to run a global experiment .
Even if we find there are other explanations for some of the variations in the natural world (like changing ice sheets) this doesn’t change the fact that we are changing the composition of the atmoshpere without real undersanding of the consequences.
I am expecting it will take another five to ten years worth of data before we can have a more confident assesment of whether the Artic is melting early or returning to normal .
A reversion to nearer ‘normal’ during the Arctic winter is not unexpected. The Arctic Ocean is bounded on most sides by land … (see here ) which during the winter means that for most of its area there is effectively an upper bound to how much sea can freeze over, hence in a warming phase we would expect to see the summer extent decline while the winter maximum extent will also decline but much more slowly as the same fixed body of water freezes up – with some variation around the edges that are open to the sea.
This animation of max winter extents makes the point well, see also that at the start of this year the ice was only just below the SD level.
But I bet the ‘ICE BACK TO NORMAL’ post is already written and waiting on the hard drive 😉
From the BBC today.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7682836.stm
“An international team of scientists is hoping to shed light on how clouds over the Pacific Ocean are affecting global climate and weather systems……..”
I am in shock, not a mention of CO2 in the srticle!!! They even admitt
“Hugh Coe, the lead scientist for the British consortium, said the project would help improve the accuracy of climate change models.
“These are some of the largest cloud systems in the world and we know that they must play a very significant role in climate change, yet we know that climate models do not represent them very well,” he explained. ”
I love they way they always say “improve climate models” rather than saying they are rubish so we must fix them.
The Barrow webcam shows ice from shore out to the horizon, I think. Lot of snow near the camera.
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/snowice/sea-lake-ice/barrow_webcam.html
Denis Hopkins (14:38:05) :
“Hope you don’t mind but I am sending the link to this item to the Daily Telegraph UK letters page. They won’t publish and they won’t print anything about this I am sure.”
I can see the headline now ” Arctic ice continues freeze in late October…NEARING NORMAL LEVELS!!”
This is the fourth post on a story that is not news and not ‘puzzling’. Surely one post was enough on this subject.
“Move along now….nothing to see here….”
Another point worth noting is that while the Arctic ice is approaching more “normal values”, the Antarctic ice simultaneously have rebounced from a below1979-2000 average to above average level.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/daily.html
The latter is less remarcable than the former, as the Antarctic oceans have been below average values at -40 – -60 lat. for quite a bit.
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.10.20.2008.gif
I have been puzzeled by the rapid recovery of the Arctic ice, as considerable amounts of stored heat has been visible in the Arctic SST the last year. (Op cit).
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
In today’s Daily Telegraph, page 15, an article by Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent, titled ” Arctic ice caps are spreading”, in which she states:
[quote]In recent days, satellite maps showing the extent of the thaw have been beamed around the world.[/quote]
I kid you not! I searched the website but could not find this article! I have the paper next to my computer as I type!!!
Anyway, just for laughs, do a search on “Arctic ice” for some really lurid headlines about the doom we are all facing.
This graph does give a better idea, but what is ‘normal ice cover’? We actually only jave 30 years of definitive data and this is too short a time to make any assumptions about ‘normality’ New data comes in every day that shoots assumptions out of the water so perhaps we should widen the standard deviation curve.
We know that the Medieval Warm Period had farmers on Greenland where there is now ice cover. We have just seen, through new research, that there were beaches 6000 years ago on the north Greenland coast, indicating that there was a lack of ice where now we seem to have permanant ice.
This report of ice increase faster than recently seen has been decried by the envoronmentalists by saying that this ice is only thin, as if it formed at its spring thickness. They refuse to comment, or ignore, the record ice down south in good old Antarctica, and insist that the world is still warming! They are being overtaken by events I am glad to say.
This graph does give a better idea, but what is ‘normal ice cover’? We actually only have 30 years of definitive data and this is too short a time to make any assumptions about ‘normality’ New data comes in every day that shoots assumptions out of the water so perhaps we should widen the standard deviation curve.
We know that the Medieval Warm Period had farmers on Greenland where there is now ice cover. We have just seen, through new research, that there were beaches 6000 years ago on the north Greenland coast, indicating that there was a lack of ice where now we seem to have permanant ice.
This report of ice increase faster than recently seen has been decried by the envoronmentalists by saying that this ice is only thin, as if it formed at its spring thickness. They refuse to comment, or ignore, the record ice down south in good old Antarctica, and insist that the world is still warming! They are being overtaken by events I am glad to say.
Pete M – Chris Booker’s and Richard North’s books are not bland, they are very well researched and shine light from a new angle on received wisdom, recomending them is therefore not bland, your comments are because they add nothing to the discussion other than you know best because you have read some (unspecified) science papers. That’s simply boring information.
@Denis Hopkins
Denis,
I’m a long-time Telegraph reader and, like you, I’m very disappointed by their one-sided coverage of climate change. Fortunately the Sunday Telegraph has far more balanced coverage (articles by Monckton, Gore and Bob Carter), and may even be slightly anti-AGW. Take a look at the item right here (a few items down) which is about the DT article. As I reported there, I emailed the deputy editor, raising the possibility of lodging a complaint with the Press Complaints Commission. I had been in contact with him a year ago (they printed a nonsensical report about a Pacific island about to be drowned by rising sea levels – the caption stated the island could vanish in a few decades but in fact the island is surrounded by cliffs and most of the terrain is 50 or more meters high).
He informed me that the images come from the Philips Atlas of the World, and implied that therefore it was nothing to do with them. However, I have found that the image, although crudely air-brushed to show the extra ice in 1979, is more or less accurate in terms of the painted-in ice. Of course, much of the rest of the image is identical to the other which means it shows the world as it was in 2007, and not 1979 as the heading claims.
Unfortunately, when making false statements about climate, they are always careful to in effect enclose everything in quotation marks. The general reader will probably miss this, and assume the Telegraph is stating direct facts – but of course, if it comes to a complaint at the PCC all they have to do is state that they are merely quoting a third party, and that probably makes them untouchable.
Anyway, I’ll keep the clipping. The headline says: “Arctic to melt in five years as warming speeds up’. If, as seems very likely, in five years there is an awful lot of Arctic ice and the world is significantly colder, I will take great pleasure in rubbing their noses in it!
There is hope. In today’s Telegraph there is a report about the rebounding Arctic ice. The heading is: “Arctic ice caps are spreading”.
Who knows, maybe the criticism of their ridiculous news report has had an effect…
By the way, unlike the previous heading I quoted, this one does not have quotation marks. This would suggest a rule of thumb about DT climate change headlines: If it’s enclosed by quotation marks it’s probably false. If it’s not enclosed by quotation marks then it’s probably true.
One final bit of irony. Just below the LH image it states: “the WWF claims that global change predictions are now out of date”. I would think most people here would agree with that. But possibly not for the reasons that the WWF would give.
Chris
Patrick Henry (22:28:30) :
Let’s see if I keep my kneejerk response at bay. It would be quite a bit harsher than your comments.
While the primary goal of a _species_ is to continue the species, I decided back in college that my primary goal in life would be, near the end of my life, to look back and be satisfied that I left the world a better place.
At the time I was deep into “digital narcosis” happily teaching computers to do things never before done, like sending Email within the computer science department and later through the ARPAnet and implementing protocols like telnet and FTP which are still in use today. Colleagues were doing things like writing sheet music editing programs, developing new computer languages and compilers, and extending the state-of-the-art in computer graphics.
We didn’t realize that we were in the heart of the Golden Era of computing, we were too busy creating stuff that never existed before. Today it’s just faster, smaller, cheaper, and evolutionary. More far-reaching, but our stone age wheels were more important than today’s wheel-on-a-chip.
Later I was a cofounder of a company that produced the first piano teaching program back in Apple ][ and Commodore 64 days, which did bring the product to market, but the market never developed.
Later I did marry and have two daughters who are now in college, we’ll see how they turn out. I confess I’m a bit disappointed they aren’t interested in genetic engineering, because I don’t have time to change to that career path.
A lot of people, some whose names you might recognize have been childless. Some probably by choice, some probably by infertility. Some have made great contribution to children around the world.
http://www.childfreebychoice.com/history.htm
http://www.childfreebychoice.com/history2.htm
Several studies in non-human animals have identified species-extending activities where childless individuals assist other family members in raising young. One involving bird families comes to mind where siblings help forage for others chicks, and of course ant and bee colonies take it to an extreme.
I like to say that having a baby is the most polluting act most individuals can do. That doesn’t mean I’m opposed to having children, just that a family of five can pollute about 2.5 times better over their lifetime than the parents alone.I guess these days I should say a baby’s carbon footprint is bigger than each of its parent’s.
Perhaps most people who are childless die without leaving their mark on the world, but there’s no guarantee that having children leads to a better fate.
Please excuse the rant….
This article just appeared in CNN.COM today : http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/10/20/wwf.climate.report/index.html
How do they come up with this stuff in the face of actual data?
Anthony,
DeWitt Payne over at CA has some interesting graphs about the way CT compares to other reporting agencies. There have been some huge recent discrepancies. Maybe he would do a guest post.
Delete this if you wish.
Mike Bryant
PH,
We also do not plan on having children – not in this ever increasing, messed up world we live in. The times, they are changing. Sorry to be even harsher, but most will die alone and most will be forgotten in this world. Do you have alot of memories of your great grandparents?
Anthony, there must be something wrong with those graphs? After a ‘whopping’ 40% increase in atmospheric CO2, the ‘delicate’ ice in the ‘fragile’ arctic should be nearly gone by now.
Unless of course, an increase of 0.01% CO2 is too small a forcing to create any substantial negative impact on the planet.
But no, according to Barack Hussein Obama, a trace amount of CO2 is a DANGEROUS pollutant.
“Nothing in the world is more DANGEROUS than sincere ignorance and consciencious stupidity.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
See PH, this is what I am talking about. How long before ‘population control’ goes into effect anyway? And what will the democrats push that will “appear” to be the wrong decision at first, according to Joe Biden?
We are being surrounded by blind sheep. There is nothing we can do. The times… they are changing. Welcome to the new millenium!
Julian in Wales
If I include a comma at the correct place in my comment , then this will correct any impression that I was using the word bland to describe the book .
As a companion book , I’d recommend reading ‘Fixing Climate’ (Robert Kunzig and Wallace Broecker) .
There is some interesting material on this forum most of which is offering replacement explanations for changing climate other than AGW.
I suggest that this is missing a bigger issue .
Pumping CO2 into the air in quantities that globally changes the atmosphere is an unwise thing to do unless we really really really know the consequences.
Thats all .
Pete M
Glad you like the Green slant in the Telegraph Earth Section. It’s a free world I suppose but it doesn’t change the situation that what is often passed off as a “planetary emergency fact” is nothing of the sort.
I like to read Christopher Booker because I find his pieces to be thought provoking. Isn’t that what journalism is supposed to be, thought provoking ? I don’t have to agree with an article to have a thought provoked. Or maybe I should stop thinking and believe everything, however biased, that’s being pushed at me ?
As for weeping for the the Old Country, who wouldn’t ? Just look at the actions of Milliband only last week. The tears really start to roll when I believe that the Conservatives under Cameron wouldn’t be a lot better.
And yes, besides reading the DT and other new sources I do visit the UK frequently so I do know what its like.
Truth be told I currently fear for my adopted country too, I left the increasingly EU dominated Socialist Paradise of the UK in search of a better life. Having found it I am grateful and appreciative of it and am sincerely hoping that it doesn’t go the same way as life in the UK. Fingers crossed.
I was sort of hoping for a new warm period for my autumn years!
I hope this doesn’t mean I’m not going to get it 🙁
Dave.
Regarding the data-set 1870-2008 found at:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/SEAICE/timeseries.1870-2008
When Amundsen navigated the Northwest Passage he was basically locked in the ice in 1904, but able to sail in 1905, however the data set shows more summer ice in 1905 than in 1904. This makes me curious about how they collected the data.
Two separate yachts battled through the passage last summer, and I followed their adventures by linking to their postings on blogs. They ran into ice which wasn’t apparent, judging from satellite data, although the above data suggests there was roughly 40% less ice than when Amundsen made his passage. (6.20727 versus 10.54270 )
Lastly, ships were actually warned not to take the satellite data literally, last summer, as areas which only icebreakers could traverse appeared to be open water.
Therefore, although considerable work went into compiling the above data sets, I must take the data with a grain of salt.
“As I was saving today’s (Oct. 22) image, I noticed that the caption in the lower right hand corner explaining their pink boundary says:
‘median’ – 1979 to 2000.”
I assume that the noun ‘norm’ and the adjective ‘normal’ have a more precisely denotative use in the science of statistics than they do in ordinary language. The ‘norm’ over a certain time span, e.g. the satellite record, can be easily figured. In ordinary speech, however, the word ‘normal’ has a strongly positive connotation, i.e. as in normal body temperature, and ‘abnormal’ certainly carries a srong negative charge.
It is easy enough to slip from one off these senses to the other, through either inadvertance or design.
My understanding is that 1 standard deviation contains 67% of the data set and 2 standard deviations contains 95% of the data; and that anything within 2 SDs is considered within the range of normal variation. Those graphs are ±1 SD, if you double the shaded area, the ice has already recovered to normal levels.
Seems like the rate of ice growth for about the last month is the same for ’07 and ’08. What I’m interested in is what the final ice area will be for this year.
Those graphs also show that the last two years had a much higher rate of growth from the end of Sep. to around November compared to the average and the 1 stedv spread for the same time period.
“The truth is we don’t know enough about the effects of increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere to run a global experiment .’
But humans have been running many ‘global experiments’ for at least ten thousand years, e.g. changing the lithosphere by clearing forests for agriculture and building cities, and the biosphere by domesticating a breeding plants and animals.
There would seem to be a planted axiom in enviromentalist ideology that human action should have as little effect on the ‘natural’ world as possible. We are, presumably, to pass through the earth like undetectable neutrinos.
But humans are ‘by nature’ transformers, capable of understanding natural processes and applying that understanding to the shaping of a natural surround that is, as received, indifferent to human well-being, or indeed, to any purpose at all.
“There is some interesting material on this forum most of which is offering replacement explanations for changing climate other than AGW.”
Assuming that we could come to an adequate definition of climate, why would it be surprising that it changes? If you don’t like change, you’re on the wrong planet.
“I think knowledge and truth are different concepts.”
, as St Thomas Aquinas saith. “Truth is the conformation of thought to a state-of-affairs.
Whoops! The Latin was apparently wrtten in disappearing pixels.
Veritas est adequatio rei intellectus.
What is usually reported as the standard value for ice extent is the 79-2000 average where the ice extent decreased only quite slowly. Why take the 79-2007 average instead?
Oh, yes, I see! So you can include the 2000-2007 years which are way below the 79-2000 average to make it look like it’s “going to normal again”, while actually it’s going back to the 2000-2007 average.
As a side comment: the models predit a strong melt in the summer, NOT in autumn or winter.
John Philip (01:05:25) :
But I bet the ‘ICE BACK TO NORMAL’ post is already written and waiting on the hard drive 😉
Anthony, in his infinitely patient style, will use the NSIDC newly mandated, politically correct terminology in his title:
“ICE BACK TO MEDIAN VALUE”
Re; PeteM
I think you missed my point.
I have no objection to comment from anyone. It is the comment being in the main bulk of the paper that I object to.
When reporting from an organisation like the WWF the DT made a decision to report it as a major story. There were obvious fallacies in the article about the extent of ice cover; ice free North Pole areas; etc. Yet they were left presented as fact.
These were left as a factual report, when it was obviously not factual.
As for Christopher Booker: he writes as an opinion, not as a news story. He appears on a separate page to news items.
He writes in the Sunday Telegraph not the DT.
What we seem to be seeing is a “tipping point”, tilting toward a new cooling climate regime. The beginning of new multi-year ice, with a vengeance.
Anyone planning on making the Northwest Passage next summer needs to reserve their icebreaker now, before they are all gone.
Patrick Henry: Great find. Thanks.
Flanagan: Oh, yes, I see! So you can include the 2000-2007 years which are way below the 79-2000 average to make it look like it’s “going to normal again”, while actually it’s going back to the 2000-2007 average.
So, by your logic then, the ice is actually heading into way below average territory. Wonder if the MSM will report that? Oh, wait, if it doesn’t support AGW alarmism, it isn’t news. Nevermind.
As recommended, I’ve bookmarked the Nansen page. In reading their explanation of ice area/extent, I can understand why some people may be confused as to the meaning of the two terms:
Ice Area is defined as the area covered by ice, excluding regions with 15% or lower ice concentration. Ice extent is defined as the area with a 15% or higher ice concentration.
On a quick reading, it almost sounds like the two are the same. They might do better to be more explicit, such as this:
Ice Area is defined as the total actual area of ice, in regions with 15% or higher ice concentration. Ice extent is defined as the total area, including water and ice, with a 15% or higher ice concentration.
So, if I look at 1 sq km with 50% ice concentration, then that’s 1sq km ice extent and ½ sq km ice area.
Caleb , Re Amundsen spending two winters at Goja Haven (1904 + 1905) I believe that the reason was choice, not unnavigable ice. i.e. Amundsens’ choice. His crew of 5 were apparently not best pleased, but Amundsen wanted to stay in order to learn about survival in the arctic and in particular the art of dog sledging. These skills were a large part of the reason for his success re the South Pole a few years later.
Regarding sea ice extent in the early 1800s there is some circumstantial evidence from the early British Navy expeditions. In 1819 Parry was the first to enter Lancaster Sound. He sailed West and reached 112.8 deg.W on 17th September. In the face of increasing ice (onset of winter) he turned back to a suitable winter harbour that he had spied earlier on the S. shore of Melville Is. where a few days later he dropped anchor – for the first time since departing London (!!) Although he had sailed a long way west in 1819, he found that the following season was very different and only escaped back East with some difficulty.
Ross was sent out in 1829 and sailed down the East side of Somerset Island and Bothia Peninsular hoping to find that the latter was an Island. It is not. After overwintering he set off back North the following summer – and made 4 miles (!) To cut a long story short, after 4 years (3 winters) in the ice and by dint of abandoning the 2 ships (which were too unwieldy in the heavy ice) they used the ships boats to escape North to Lancaster Sound where the survivors were found by whalers on August 25th 1832.
As I understand it the whalers in the 19th century who frequented Arctic waters every year, found that the seasons varied considerably. Conditions one year giving little indication of what to expect the next.
I don’t believe in dangerous AGW. I don’t believe the IPCC. I’m running out of people I DO believe in, especially with respect to so-called AGW.
However I have just gone to the trouble to look up, as suggested at the beginning of this thread, the graphs of the NERSC.
Whichever way you look at them, for a decade the trend line of both ice area and extent in the Arctic is negative. It would be very interesting to know the cause, and whether or not the overall trends is itself within a standard deviation of a longer term mean. It would also be very interesting to look at a more instructional period of time than 10 or 12 years. Anybody know where such could be found?
Then why do you keep posting about it and generating more comments?
RE: Arthur Glass (07:14:37)
Jeff Alberts (08:48:36) :
“Then why do you keep posting about it and generating more comments?”
If its considered important enough to be posted then why not? It’s just my opinion on this matter.
At the risk of going into CLimate Audit territory, the standard deviation as shown implicitly assumes that the data is IID. That is there is no relationship between last year’s ice extent and this year’s ice extent for exmple.
The implication is that the grey SD area (a type of random error band if you like) is actually much wider than indicated in the diagram.
John Philip says,
The Arctic Ocean is bounded on most sides by land. In a warming phase we would expect to see the summer extent decline while the winter maximum extent will also decline but much more slowly as the same fixed body of water freezes up – with some variation around the edges that are open to the sea.
According to the Telegraph pics your comment is total rubbish, there appears to be an abundance of water surrounding the ice in Sept 1979.
Try this link, ( http://www.socc.ca/seaice/seaice_future_e.cfm ) there appears to be plenty of sea here to, they model the present decline continuing to 2100, wow.
I would have thought that a 31% + increase in winter max for 2008 and rising was something to shout about. If the warming is global and still rising as you AGWers suggest, you should have surely seen a continuing decrease of ice extent similar to the decrease of the past few years. Warming what warming.
pablo an expat said in part…. about the Greening UK Daily Tegrelaugh……
“Why they pay Charles Clover for his stuff on green issues is beyond me.”
Could it be that they are so AGW fixated they had to employ someone with an appropriate name?
More Chilean Merlot!
Denis Hopkins
You are correct – Christopher Booker writes in the Sunday Telegraph .
And I agree that opinion sections are a valid part of a paper (if clearly positioned as opinion) – perhaps the issue is that the Sunday Telegraph needs to introduce a regular companion opinion section with ‘another set of views’ .. but that is a discussion for another place
Arthur Glass
“But humans have been running many ‘global experiments’ for at least ten thousand years, e.g. changing the lithosphere by clearing forests for agriculture … ”
I’d suggest your references to global experiments were infact mainly local, and it was possible to move on from the consequences to another location or continent (although a few civilizations did manage to wipe themselves out through spectacular stupidity).
Since we don’t have much long term research in the area of ‘change-the-atmoshpere-by-doubling-CO2-levels’ then effectively we’re gambling that the outcome .
John D-
Actually, the Cascade glaciers are no longer shrinking.
John D: Although this is anecdotal, there were no rain-on-snow events at Snoqualmie Pass near Seattle (elv 3100′) last winter. We experienced heavy snowfall and below freezing temperatures. We had great skiing until the end of May. Consequently, the near record snowfall was highly compressed and did not melt until mid-summer in shaded areas.
It’s hilarious how the AGWers are now saying this is “not a big deal” and “there is nothing to see here”, when just a month ago they were doing their best to drum up the SECOND LOWEST ICE EXTENT ON RECORD!!!
So that was a big deal (even though it represented a recovery from last year, more so than many experts, including the NSIDC, predicted), but now that October 2008 has seen a GREATER RATE OF GROWTH THAN ANY YEAR ON RECORD!!!, that isn’t a big deal. 2008 hit its low point earlier, began recovering sooner, and has gained ice at a remarkable rate – all signs that the Arctic is cooling down. Yet this doesn’t matter to AGWers, because it doesn’t fit the agenda.
Open your minds, people.
Looking at the graphs I have a question. They only plot this year and last wrt the mean ice w/standard deviation. Does anyone know when was the last time Arctic ice levels were within the ‘normal’ range?
Flanagan,
“What is usually reported as the standard value for ice extent is the 79-2000 average where the ice extent decreased only quite slowly. Why take the 79-2007 average instead?
Oh, yes, I see! So you can include the 2000-2007 years which are way below the 79-2000 average to make it look like it’s “going to normal again”, while actually it’s going back to the 2000-2007 average.”
Uhhhhhh…. I don’t think Norway is playing any games with the numbers. If anyone is playing games it is whoever leaves OUT part of the numbers…
Mike Bryant
If someone have the impression that NERSC somehow is less biased than say NOAA with respect to AGW, I think you are indeed mistaken.
In Norway we have three scientific centers dedicated to climate issues. two: NERSC, http://www.nersc.no/main/index2.php and the Polar institute (Tromsoe) http://npweb.npolar.no/english, working mainly on the scientific issues, and CICERO being a public outreach organization http://www.cicero.uio.no/home/index_e.aspx.
All three institutions are strog supporters of the dominateing AGW paradigm as propagated by IPCC.
They are fairly well funded and have recently brushed up their graphics interface, enabling nice and frequently updated presentations.
Another short quibble: Amundsen stayed in *Gjoa* harbor. Gjoa was the name of his vessels. The o is BTW the scandinavian letter ø (o with a slash) which is pronounced something between the u in ‘further* and e in “certain”.
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
having a baby is the most polluting act most individuals can do
Proof that greens want to see (other humans) removed from the planet. My question is, why don’t jaded adults dispense with themselves and make room for a happy, innocent laughing child?
I am so tired of politically correct garbage being pushed in schools. Why can’t a fifth grader go to class without being taught that he/she is responsible for destroying the planet? And we wonder why there is so much anti-social behavior among youth…..
I would have thought that a 31% + increase in winter max for 2008 and rising was something to shout about.
It is! (the latest number is nearer 21% but let us not quibble) It is extraordinarily welcome good news, and if the winter extent heads into normal or median territory this is also a welcome development as it means the albedo reduction feedback effect is much less. I just urge caution before celebrating this as a long term ‘recovery’ or ‘return to normal’ for the reasons mentioned, firstly there is a lot less variability in the winter extent, and secondly it is a recovery from a record shattering low point. As Dr Meier pointed out the 2007 minimum was still below the previous long term trend of -10% / decade making the new trend -11.7% / decade.
So whether this single year-on-year increase marks the reversal of the long term negative trend or is just a dead cat bounce before the the ice reduction resumes it is far too early to say.
If the warming is global and still rising as you AGWers suggest, you should have surely seen a continuing decrease of ice extent similar to the decrease of the past few years.
Not necessarily, natural variability does not disappear in the presence of a warming trend; other factors such as wind patterns continue to influence the ice extent, meaning that nobody predicts an exactly linear reduction, and that one should be cautious in drawing conclusions from short term changes.
Oooops!
As Dr Meier pointed out the 2007 minimum should of course read 2008 minimum. Apologies.
What the hayall is a “normal standard deviation”?
John Philip,
” I just urge caution before celebrating this as a long term ‘recovery’ or ‘return to normal’ for the reasons mentioned, ”
I don’t think that this is a ‘return to normal’, but rather the entire record IS normal… including 2007.
Data from the IJIS web site at http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv indicates that 2008 ice extent has now moved up into 3rd place for Oct 22nd, behind 2002 and 2003. 2008 is just barely ahead of 2004, 2005, and 2006, and way ahead of 2007. It’s a bit hard to see on the graph, because the lines for 2004/2005/2006/2008 are so close.
Note that they give preliminary numbers for us number-freaks, so the current day, and possibly the previous day, mya be subject to slight revision. But that’s it. No GISS follies going back to the beginning of the record..
PeteM: “Pumping CO2 into the air in quantities that globally changes the atmosphere is an unwise thing to do unless we really really really know the consequences.”
Let’s get some perspective here. There’s now approximately one more molecule of CO2 for every 10,000 molecules of air than there was 100 years ago.
And nobody can say for sure how much, if any, of that gain was down to man’s activities or, indeed, how much, if any, effect it’s having.
And here’s the kicker – If, as we are told, atmospheric CO2 levels remained constant to within a few tens of ppm for over a thousand years, global CO2 sinks must have tracked global CO2 sources to within a few percent over that entire period, or a few thousandths of a percent annually on average. Do you have any sort of credible explanation for this?
Re Dennis Hopkins :-
I have taken the Daily telegraph for 50 years and it saddens me that a paper that once could be relied on to deliver the facts and eschew mindless theories and speculation has in the past few years plummeted to the depths of reporting employed in the penny dreadfuls.
Does anyone know when was the last time Arctic ice levels were within the ‘normal’ range?
Most of the time the earth is in an ice age, so normal would be Chicago buried under a mile of ice.
Great article, and a perfect illustration for my next installment on “How the Warmists Scheme”. It’s not quite “As The World Turns” but interesting nonetheless.
So did you think it was just a random thing when the Warmists started using the term “Climate Change” interchangeably with Global Warming? Climate by nature changes. The patterns change, the timing of marked events change. You see Climate Change IS happening, because it always does, in fact the word “change” is not needed as change is implied by use of the word Climate. And this is the trap.
Yes the Arctic has gotten warmer, and the Antarctic cooler, the midwest states have had warmer weather, while parts of the Soviet Union have had cooler ones. Weather changes. It warms in one place or time, and it cools, in another, and it is the net sum of what you get that ends up being the climate. BUT IT IS NOT FIXED. If January is warmer this year than last, that in and of itself means nothing. That is unless you REQUIRE that january be cold. However historically, no such requirement existed. That is until the Warmists decided that Global Warming was not selling, and came up with the Climate Change song and dance, which imposed this requirement. So now, if we have no hurricanes in October but many in November, then it’s Climate Change, because OCTOBER is supposed to be when we have the most hurricanes. Or, if in the case of Anthony’s graphs, Arctic Sea Ice begins melting quicker in August, then we are surely doomed to see “catastrophic” ice losses, given that September is when the greatest ice loss is “supposed” to happen.
That is exactly what happened this year. We lost ice rapidly in August, and the Warmists couldn’t hold their tongues, proclaiming this year a total tragedy, the year of the Northwest Passage, etc etc. And it was all based on the totally false logic of a fixed climate. The fact is when we have more hurricanes in November, all it means is that we have more hurricanes in November. Less ice in August means less ice in August, nothing more. The Warmists are constantly doing these extrapolations from some baseline that doesn’t exist. And they are totally baseless. This fact is made clear by Anthony’s illustration of the quick recovery of Arctic Ice late summer, which flies fully in the face of the propagandist doomsday predictions the Warmists were making as recently as 8 weeks ago.
Climate is not and never has been fixed, and thus Climate Change is a junk term. Around this meaningless term, the warmists build false assumptions and arguments based on faulty premise. Then they knowingly and deceptively bait and switch it with “Global Warming” in hopes of making you buy the bigger fish. Of course once you do, then you are an easy markfor them to tax your guilt away, along with your freedom and standards of living.
Some Aprils are colder than others. Some Decembers are snowier than others. We all know that, accept that, and view it as normal. That such normal events have been extrapolated out (with the help of models and statistics) to be some end of the world scenario that we all caused by driving cars is utterly ridiculous. I have to applaud the careful and clever manipulation, but only amidst the tears that come with believing that human beings could conceive or believe such a scam…
Flanagan,
“What is usually reported as the standard value for ice extent is the 79-2000 average where the ice extent decreased only quite slowly. Why take the 79-2007 average instead?
Oh, yes, I see! So you can include the 2000-2007 years which are way below the 79-2000 average to make it look like it’s “going to normal again”, while actually it’s going back to the 2000-2007 average.”
What deity declared the period 1979 – 2000 to be what is “normal”?
Whoever wrote,
“having a baby is the most polluting act most individuals can do”
…is one who dwells in the deepest, darkest crevices of some lunar body. In other words, a lunatic.
I think using needles to pierce a skull and kill the developing brain of an innocent unborn is far more polluting to that life, don’t you think?
Darn those environMENTAList wackos. They care more about trees than humans. Don’t believe me? I cannot CUT a tree in my own yard due to environmental regulations. Got that? However I can CUT the life of an innocent unborn… no problem.
Planet in peril. Climate catastrophy. Save the earth. You are all nut jobs.
God help us.
@ John Philip
“So whether this single year-on-year increase marks the reversal of the long term negative trend or is just a dead cat bounce before the the ice reduction resumes it is far too early to say”.
You mean …. the science is NOT settled !!!
Heresy ! You flat-earther you.
Arthur Glass (07:07:09) :
I don’t want to be a neutrino but I do want to be a butterfly. That way I can flap my wings and cause a Hurricane to form. I just need to learn how to focus so my hurricanes form exactly where I want them.
Rich,
You miss the point. If GHGs are really a crisis then reproducing is an unforgivable act of pollution and baby permits will be the inevitable consequence of carbon permits.
But most greens don’t make an issue of this because they know they would lose whatever public support they have despite the logical inconsistency.
John Phillip, you are exactly right about not paying too much attention to short term trends. Natural variability does skew the interpretation.
A perfect example of this is looking at the last millennium. You see an upward trend leading up to the climate optimum in the Medieval Warm Period, where temperatures were 3-5F higher. Accordingly you can easily observe an overall downward trend since. Significantly clearer than the conclusions Warmists try to draw from the multiple <1F up and down trends of the last decade. Looking at things from your viewpoint, Global Warming ceases to exist.
Funny. That’s what most of us have believed all along.
Hi Raven,
I was being slightly sarcastic. I didn’t miss the point. In fact, I mentioned population control in my previous post on this thread.
But I agree with you. Atlreast for now the public support won’t be there. But won’t it… eventually?
Alan B. and Anthony,
Thanks for the info.,
John D.
There appears to be a HUGE discrepancy (3 million KM2) between this:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
and this:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
both mesauring the same thing. Knowing the former’s bias.. now should we be doubting its measuring method.
Peter (14:31:25) :
” … If, as we are told, atmospheric CO2 levels remained constant to within a few tens of ppm for over a thousand years, global CO2 sinks must have tracked global CO2 sources to within a few percent over that entire period, or a few thousandths of a percent annually on average. Do you have any sort of credible explanation for this? ”
At a high level – the idea of a dynamic equilibrium . Chaotic systems can support stable zones (it even sometimes happens in the financial world :-))
When humans burn fossil fuels in industrial quantities they become a new source of CO2 . This changes the balance between source and sinks which would lead to an increase in the levels of CO2.
Conceptually this can be checked by running an experiment where we significantly reduce the burning of fossil fuels and see if the annual increase slows or reverses. Maybe with the current down turn we may be able to able to informally check this – assuming all other CO2 sinks/sources behave in a stable or predictable manner.
No deity ever declared some time period to be the absolute reference. But in a decreasing time series, comparing with the moving average is not a measure of the decrease rate but rather of the decrease acceleration. Which is obviously not the same.
Derek D (17:17:02)
“You see an upward trend leading up to the climate optimum in the Medieval Warm Period, where temperatures were 3-5F higher”
As discussed in previous threads the MWP was in all probability not a global event but regional anomolies occuring asynchronously around the globe. Increasing evidence shows there was a prolonged cold period in the southern hemisphere at the time the Vikings were starting colonization of a small coastal portion of Grennland. There was also a prolonged warm spell in the southern hemisphere during the northern hemispheres LIA.
Mary Hinge
“As discussed in previous threads the MWP was in all probability not a global event”
Well, it was apparently about as global as the current warming, i. e. the northern hemisphere and at least part of the southern tropics, but apparently not Antarctica.
“a small coastal portion of Grennland”
It was a small part of Greenland, but not really a small area. If you want an idea of the scale, think of Connecticut and the coastal plain of North Carolina, plus part of New Jersey (the so called “middle settlement” which is not mentioned in historical sources, but only known archaeologically)
Peter stated “When humans burn fossil fuels in industrial quantities they become a new source of CO2 . This changes the balance between source and sinks which would lead to an increase in the levels of CO2.
Conceptually this can be checked by running an experiment where we significantly reduce the burning of fossil fuels and see if the annual increase slows or reverses. Maybe with the current down turn we may be able to able to informally check this – assuming all other CO2 sinks/sources behave in a stable or predictable manner”
The last sentance is the key. With the oceans neither (last three years) rising or warming, and plant life increasing, then things are not staying the same. I hope the CAGW crowd does not try to claim the world economic crisis and reduced global consumtion as the cause of the recent cooling, when they eventually admit to that cooling.
PeterM: “At a high level – the idea of a dynamic equilibrium . Chaotic systems can support stable zones”
That much I can just about swallow.
But you have several chaotic and semi-chaotic systems, some independent, some semi-independent, some nett sources, some nett sinks.
The concept of all of those reaching dynamic equilibrium corresponding to the same level of CO2, over hundreds or thousands of years, stretches credulity past breaking point, I’m afraid.
Peter (04:52:12) :
I think you mean to say it stretches ‘your’ credulity .
If some sort of (temporary ) equilibrium was never possible despite all of those varying complex systems then it stretchs ‘my’ credulity as to how long term life (which requires some limits to system variability) could have survived the instabilities given we are taking hundreds of millions of years.
And this still misses the point that we know significant quantities of CO2 is being introduced into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels .
Since H2O is the most powerful ‘greenhouse’ gas, can we look forward to water’s being declared a pollutant?
Perhaps the whole biosphere is a pollutant. The planet would be way cool without it.
@Arthur Glass (06:39:24) :
Water already is a pollutant.
More at: http://www.dhmo.org
😉
Rich, I think that to call the suffering and grief that goes along with such a procedure as you mentioned above (they are rare and issues surrounding such a procedure are always serious if not critical), “polluting”, says more about you than the mother and her physician. In my humble opinion, to bring it up here was unmanly and callous. If it was meant to gather like souls around your sentiments about weather or climate, it falls way short of our focus on data and scientific discussions. There was a time when such topics were not shared in mixed audiences.
“…we know significant quantities of CO2 is being introduced into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels .”
We certainly know fairly well the volume of CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels, but what the significance might be of such a miniscule change, best measured by the molecule, is, pun intended, ‘up in the air’.
Of course, according to Chaos theory, even a miniscule change on a micro level of magnitude can produce significant changes up the scale. CO2 constitutes something on the order of .003% of the atmosphere by volume, but the planet would be lifeless without that minisculity.
Which leads me to wonder what the lower threshold of CO2 might be, beneath which life of any complexity on the surface of the earth would be impossible.
Dee Norris
I think that the most serious and reliable newspaaper out of New York would be interested in that site.
http://www.theonion.com/content/index
Arthur Glass (06:59:11) :
The Onion now has Global Distribution and hopefully they can spread the word about the dangers of DHMO vapor as an atmospheric pollutant. Hopefully, they will also cover the dangers of man-made solar cooling.
“I do agree that the planet is overcrowded.’
Especially with ants! Don’t ants constitute something like 20 % of the mass of the biosphere?
Actually it’s old CO2 being brought back into the system. Fossil fuels are all natural.
[…] the planet’s climate is warming, has recovered so quickly from its summer lows that it is just a hair below the “normal” […]
PeteM,
How then can you be sure that the current apparent increase in CO2 doesn’t mark, and is being caused by, the end of one of your ‘equilibrium periods’?
It’s said that fossil fuels contribute around 8% yearly to the total CO2 cycle, and around half of that, or 4%, is absorbed by natural sinks. This implies that, before fossil fuels, the natural sinks absorbed around 4% more than the natural sources produced. Hardly long-term stability there. And, if carbon sinks have grown by 4% over the last 150 years, why should they suddenly stop growing?
Yes, we do we know that quite large quantities of CO2 are being emitted into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, but I would suggest that the effect of that is insignificant within the system. For instance, geological records show that CO2 levels have been orders of magnitude higher than at present for long periods, and that life flourished during those periods, and there’s little evidence that temperatures were significantly higher.
Arthur Glass,
I understand that plant life would struggle severely at below 200ppm, and probably become extinct at levels at or below around half of present levels.
PeteM (various) :
Hypothesis;
The relatively smooth sinusoidal upward “trend” in the Mauna Loa CO2 product is a marker for the natural “breathing” of the oceans and biosphere as a response to seasonal variation in their temperatures, in the main. (As a monthly data set it may lack the granularity that could highlight the 2ppmv of “additional” CO2 that humanity currently adds to the output side of the total flux in recent years but nearly all published climate products suffer from this deficiency)
If mankind’s additional CO2 had a substantial influence it could appear in this record during the NH winter increase in fuel usage.
Attempts to show that we are creating a problem with our CO2 output would need to produce evidence that the burning of the total fossil fuel reserve, raising atmospheric CO2 to maybe 3 times its current level and the subsequent 300 times smaller decrease in the alkalinity of the oceans, can beat the historical records of both during periods when the planet has successfully supported oxygen breathing carbon-based lifeforms.
There will be no rush to fund such research.
Live long and prosper.
Arthur Glass: “Especially with ants! Don’t ants constitute something like 20 % of the mass of the biosphere?”
Well, humans are seriously outnumbered by other animals and, as I understand it, insects outweigh animals.
And as for the microbes…
Does you know if anybody is tracking the darkness (i.e., emmissivity) of the arctic ice, year to year, region to region, and how that correlates to melting? It seems this would be technologically easy through the satellite images, but I’ve not seen anything published.
I’ve read speculation, and some verifying calculations, that soot, particularly the vast amount coming from China, is darkening the ice, accelerating summer melting, delaying fall growth. This seems like a very plausible hypothesis. But is anyone you know of trying to quantify and correlate?
Walter Dnes (14:30:02) :
Data from the IJIS web site at http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/plot.csv indicates that 2008 ice extent has now moved up into 3rd place for Oct 22nd, behind 2002 and 2003. 2008 is just barely ahead of 2004, 2005, and 2006, and way ahead of 2007. It’s a bit hard to see on the graph, because the lines for 2004/2005/2006/2008 are so close.
I’m not sure where you got this from but if you download their datafile today you get:
2008 8.18
2007 6.94
2006 8.36
2005 8.23
2004 8.13
2003 8.57
2002 8.59
[…] October 2008 Possibly Set for Record Sea Ice Extent Increase Rate 24 10 2008 What is the reason behind the fact that “[Arctic] sea ice area [is] approaching the edge of normal standard deviation“? […]
Phil,
The Arctic ROOS site has 2008 extent way ahead of 2006. Is that because of the differing algorithms?
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
Phil
I find 8,114 for 2005 (23.10) and 8,243 for 2006 (24.10), so 2008 is really ahead of 2004, 2005 and 2007as of October 23.
Probably Walter Dnes did not compensate for leap-years, thing are so close now that this one-day difference would put 2008 ahead of 2006 as well.
” Mary Hinge
“As discussed in previous threads the MWP was in all probability not a global event” ”
Well Mary, that was what Michael Mann claimed when he first produced his infamous “hockey Stick” graph, showing that both the MWP, and the LIA were missing from his “reconstruction”.
I highly recommend Mary, that you dig out the very first publication of MM’s Hockey stick graph; which I think was in an early IPCC report. There emblazened across the top of that very well know drawing are two little words; “Northern Hemisphere.”
OOoops !! It seems tha t Michael Mann’s “hockey stick”, by his own admission, was a local phenomenon; and not at all a global event.
Of course once someone whispered in his ear, those offecnding words were expurgated out of the later publications. But every now and then, in places like the LA Times, one can find a newsprint copy of that damaging first graph. Try searching the LA times for 2006, and see if you can find the same copy I have.
Well I’ll make it easy for you: it’s on page A12, Friday, June 23 2006, right under the article on how Viagra helps high altitude athletes.
Check it out Mary. The LA times says that references to colors have been removed since it is a B&W paper, and the IPCC copy was in color, and it cites IPCC and National Academy of Sciences, as sources for the story.
Mike Bryant (10:43:05) :
Phil,
The Arctic ROOS site has 2008 extent way ahead of 2006. Is that because of the differing algorithms?
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
Probably a factor, also they are using a lower resolution data source, SSMI 15×13 km , versus AMSR-E 6×4 km & Cosimo’s algorithm. They are also both smoothed, again with different algorithms.
Flanagan: “No deity ever declared some time period to be the absolute reference. But in a decreasing time series, comparing with the moving average is not a measure of the decrease rate but rather of the decrease acceleration. Which is obviously not the same.”
Doesn’t answer the simple question of who declared that the period 1979-2000 is what we should use as the “standard”, “normal”, “average” or what ever label you want to put on it. It is simply an arbitrary period chosen to slant the results in favor of AGW. Why not use the period 1986 – 2007? On second thought, why use a miniscule 21 year period at all.
Paul (09:28:42) :
At the risk of going into CLimate Audit territory, the standard deviation as shown implicitly assumes that the data is IID. That is there is no relationship between last year’s ice extent and this year’s ice extent for exmple.
Which would seem to be what happens historically:
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/CVCHDCTEA/20081013000000_CVCHDCTEA_0004022599.gif
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/CVCHDCTWA/20081013000000_CVCHDCTWA_0004022600.gif
The implication is that the grey SD area (a type of random error band if you like) is actually much wider than indicated in the diagram.
Probably not based on history, although it’s possible that in recent years the arctic has moved to a new regime of thinner ice and there is now more dependence on the previous year?
Tom in Florida (13:11:47) :
Doesn’t answer the simple question of who declared that the period 1979-2000 is what we should use as the “standard”, “normal”, “average” or what ever label you want to put on it. It is simply an arbitrary period chosen to slant the results in favor of AGW. Why not use the period 1986 – 2007? On second thought, why use a miniscule 21 year period at all.
No one did, it’s just an arbitrary reference point, like choosing the melting point of ice to be 0ºC! It doesn’t slant the data in any way, it is convenient that it was a period when the behavior didn’t change much from year to year.
By the way why is it that no-one here can spell the word ‘minuscule’?
Phil: “it’s just an arbitrary reference point, like choosing the melting point of ice to be 0ºC! ”
However the designation of the melting point of ice as 0 C doesn’t change depending on the time period you choose.
Phil: “It doesn’t slant the data in any way, it is convenient that it was a period when the behavior didn’t change much from year to year.”
I would see that differently. Just because it was a period “that didn’t change much” by no means does it make it normal or a standard to measure against, unless you clearly state that what you are measuring is simply different and that the difference doesn’t prove a thing. But this is not the case in comparing sea ice graphs. The period is used not to show a change but to show change from normal. Clearly a difference to me.
Caleb (06:39:54)
Regarding the data-set 1870-2008 found at:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/SEAICE/timeseries.1870-2008
When Amundsen navigated the Northwest Passage he was basically locked in the ice in 1904, but able to sail in 1905, however the data set shows more summer ice in 1905 than in 1904. This makes me curious about how they collected the data.
RTFD
Track back here.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/SEAICE/
I’ll save you the trouble. :-]
Go here.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/guide/Data/walsh.html
This drives me crazy. I know for fact that the polar ice is returning with a vengeance. I have seen the satellite pictures and need no further convincing. Yet somehow the MSM is still running stories about the poor polar bears that are dying off because they can’t find enough ice. I know this isn’t true but today I see another story about it. I have come to feel that the media really is far left. My extreme left co-workers keep trying to tell me it’s all in my head and just seems left because I am so right (personally I consider myself a moderate). Seeing stories like this really bothers me. Why can’t someone just take a look at what is going on before printing this clap trap?
Polar bears dying out in Russian region: expert
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081024/sc_afp/russiaenvironmentclimatewarminganimal
Looks like the polar bears may not have to swim to Iceland today. This ice “bridge” from Greenland to Iceland, showing in the map below, could have been partly as a result of the recent “Icelandic low” pressure. It will be interesting to see if this is an early sign of a quick recovery on that side of the ice.
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/maps_daily_ncepice.html
Color code showing at least 50% concentration. Curious no other site is depicting this.
Glenn (17:26:35) :
Looks like the polar bears may not have to swim to Iceland today. This ice “bridge” from Greenland to Iceland, showing in the map below, could have been partly as a result of the recent “Icelandic low” pressure. It will be interesting to see if this is an early sign of a quick recovery on that side of the ice.
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/maps_daily_ncepice.html
Color code showing at least 50% concentration. Curious no other site is depicting this.
Not so much a bridge as part of an incomplete stepping stone.
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/GreenlandSea_visual.png
Lector (16:31:11) :
This drives me crazy. I know for fact that the polar ice is returning with a vengeance. I have seen the satellite pictures and need no further convincing. Yet somehow the MSM is still running stories about the poor polar bears that are dying off because they can’t find enough ice. I know this isn’t true but today I see another story about it.
Female polar bears den up about now and hibernate until about April so extra ice between now and then won’t exactly help them.
Pamela Gray,
“In my humble opinion, to bring it up here was unmanly and callous.”
Unmanly? Callous? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms to most feminists? I thought to be a man was to be callous? Anyway, I see that patronizing is a strategy used by hypocrites. Do you feel better now?
“If it was meant to gather like souls around your sentiments about weather or climate, it falls way short of our focus on data and scientific discussions.”
Well, not exactly. Buy does it really mattter Pamela? Besides I was just stating facts. If you don’t want the truth to skew the focus on your messed up reality, than just ignore it.
“There was a time when such topics were not shared in mixed audiences.”
Since when was population control not relevant to the CO2 debate? Also, a ‘mixed’ audience would ‘naturally’ produce a ‘difference’ in shared opinion. If you don’t like it, perhaps you should find a web site that allows only ‘like souls’. This way you could all complain while being in agreement with one another.
Tom in Florida (15:16:38) :
Phil: “it’s just an arbitrary reference point, like choosing the melting point of ice to be 0ºC! ”
However the designation of the melting point of ice as 0 C doesn’t change depending on the time period you choose.
No but if I use absolute zero as my reference it’s 273, if I use the triple point of mercury as the standard it’s 38.8…. It’s the standard that’s changed, that’s the point!
I would see that differently. Just because it was a period “that didn’t change much” by no means does it make it normal or a standard to measure against, unless you clearly state that what you are measuring is simply different and that the difference doesn’t prove a thing. But this is not the case in comparing sea ice graphs. The period is used not to show a change but to show change from normal. Clearly a difference to me.
That’s just your paranoia, it’s just a change, not a statement of normalcy.
Phil.:
‘Miniscule,’ according to my dictionary, is “a nonstandard spelling of minuscule.” Sort of like using two L’s instead of one in many words. [Nonstandard =/= improper.]
This is getting to be fun, so…
It is improper grammar to use “no-one” in place of “no one.”
Neener.
Smokey (19:17:21) :
Phil.:
By the way why is it that no-one here can spell the word ‘minuscule’?
‘Miniscule,’ according to my dictionary, is “a nonstandard spelling of minuscule.” Sort of like using two L’s instead of one in many words. [Nonstandard =/= improper.]
In English ‘minuscule’ is the correct form and ‘miniscule’ isn’t a correct form. Just like the ‘double Ls’, such as in ‘modeller’, standard English spelling.
This is getting to be fun, so…
It is improper grammar to use “no-one” in place of “no one.”
Actually it’s not, in English ‘no-one’ is the correct spelling (‘no one’ is an alternative)!
Neener.
Not in my dictionary?
Is there an ice bridge to Iceland from Greenland, already?
H/t V. Guerrini.
=============================
Because it requires a totalitarian state. Are you willing to give up all your freedom?
Phil. (18:39:51) :
Glenn (17:26:35) :
Looks like the polar bears may not have to swim to Iceland today. This ice “bridge” from Greenland to Iceland, showing in the map below, could have been partly as a result of the recent “Icelandic low” pressure. It will be interesting to see if this is an early sign of a quick recovery on that side of the ice.
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/maps_daily_ncepice.html
Color code showing at least 50% concentration. Curious no other site is depicting this.
Not so much a bridge as part of an incomplete stepping stone.
http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/GreenlandSea_visual.png
***************************
Some of that “stone” shows 75% concentration. Watch how I can make that all go away completely with another map:
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=10&fd=24&fy=2008&sm=10&sd=24&sy=2008
Guess I was wrong about no one else showing the ice bridge:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.some.000.png
What is the is the NSIDC doing with the Antarctic data?
Oct 19, there’s a big dip
Oct 22, the dip diappears
http://klimakatastrophe.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/nsidc-changes1.gif
Regarding the baseline period, for the purposes of measuring anomalies to determine trends, changing the baseline period has no effect.
However, in this example, we are not estimating trends from anomalies, we are estimating standard deviation of a series. In this case, to get the best estimate of standard deviation, you need to use the maximum length of the best quality data you have available. In this case, using 1979-2007 is “correct” whereas 1979-2000 would be wrong – arbitrarily throwing away data results in a less accurate estimate of s.d. – so in this specific example it is far from an issue of simply a changing baseline.
Nonstationarity is a separate issue, but without a clear quantification of nonstationarity (if it even exists) the longest baseline is still the correct one.
George E. Smith (11:37:16) :
I refer the gentleman to my earlier answer. Look in previous posts for evidence that it was not a global event. rather than retrace my steps heres a link to good ol’ wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period
You can do the rest yourself, look at high resolution proxy papers etc.
The French word is “minuscule”, and it is derived from the Latin “minusculus”.
Therefore, in English the correct term is “minuscule”, not miniscule.
Mary Hinge (04:22:14) You should get out of the habit of referring people to Wikipedia on climate related matters. The peculiar manner in which William Connolley has moderated the section ridicules the idea of distributed intelligence. Climate on Wiki is perverted.
Sorry, ‘struth.
===========
REPLY: Yes, having witnessed Connolley’s heavy hand myself, I’ll have to agree. He bullies page authors into submission by continually deleted references or concepts he doesn’t like. – Anthony
Phil: That’s just your paranoia, it’s just a change, not a statement of normalcy.”
The original post by Flanagan is:
“So you can include the 2000-2007 years which are way below the 79-2000 average to make it look like it’s “going to normal again”, while actually it’s going back to the 2000-2007 average.”
Seems to me that Flanagan is either using or accusing someone else of using the 79-2000 average as “normal”. It has always been my objection to refer to any arbitrary time period as “normal”. That period of arctic ice coverage is almost always used in a way to either describe or insinuate what should be normal.
( I hope my spelling is right this time, certinly wouldnet want to iritate any one agin.)
Jeff Alberts (in regards to population control)
US tax dollars and the passed legislation increases funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) .
http://thesop.org/index.php?article=12773
Democrats are setting up a public care health plan that provides all essential services, including abortion.
http://americanpowerblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/will-obama-health-care-plan-cover-late.html
What about permits to have a baby under the arm of carbon offsets?
Open your eyes man, population control is already here.
kim (07:18:25) :
It was not a reference as such but just a pointer to look at the subject through more recent enlightened eyes rather than the older cataract ridden ones that still think that the MWP was a long lasting global event. AsI mentioned I have given references in previous posts.
Since when was population control not relevant to the CO2 debate?
The problem, Rich, is that you are deliberately conflating two completely separate issues, that of population control, as practiced in China and which is mandatory, and that of reproductive choice here in the U.S. Regardless of what you think about the issue of birth control, it is disingenuous of you to conflate those two issues.
The issue of birth control in fact has no bearing whatsoever on climate issues, and I would argue that if you you want to debate that issue it is you, not Pamela, who should go elsewhere.
“Attempts to show that we are creating a problem with our CO2 output would need to produce evidence that the burning of the total fossil fuel reserve, raising atmospheric CO2 to maybe 3 times its current level and the subsequent 300 times smaller decrease in the alkalinity of the oceans…”
A few days ago I attended a speaking event in Johannsburg where work from a doctoral thesis was presented. The 400 page work quantifies and trends in energy use. It then examines peak oil, peak natural gas, peak coal, peak biomass, renewables and peak uranium, in short, peak energy, which occurs in roughly 2050. After that there is an inexorable reduction in energy production.
He sums the CO2 emissions produced including counting an estimation of the doubling of all discoveries made so far of every form of carbon and nuclear energy.
Peak Coal is the last to occur in about 2070.
By his calculation, even with the present increasing rates of carbon use, at no time does the atmospheric CO2 level reach 450 ppm. There is simply not enough carbon available to ever double the CO2 level as is so often (and casually) mentioned.
His CO2 absorption model does not include the fact that we are entering a time of cooling that may significantly increase the amount taken up by the oceans. Fairbridge’s and Langscheidt’s works are still poorly reported so I can’t fault him for that but time will take care of that.
It was incorrectly claimed in a post above that the oceans are still warming. Not so. During solar cycle 24 we should get a repeat of the 1992 cold snap which saw a brief reduction of CO2 in the northern hemisphere at high latitudes.
Thus even his forecast CO2 max of +/- 440 ppm may never be reached by 2050. After that, there isn’t enough Carbon left at current rate-of-increase-in-use to drive it up further.
His concern is that unless the existing energy reserves are used to build the renewable energy and efficient infrastructures we will run into a long period of energy poverty.
I have a couple of quibbles with the presentation. He does not note that the population is set to peak at about the same times as peak energy which means the energy available per person will stay roughly the same thereafter, not decrease. Another is that the shale oil was not included because of the energy and monetary investment required may not be worth it until the other sources are depleted and the CO2 level already in decline. Maybe, maybe not.
The audience felt that renewables were underestimated in potential. There already are several RE technologies that give a positive return on energy invested in creating them. Black silicon for PV is an interesting one.
An interesting Arctic ice map for today, from the IUP UNIVERSITY OF BREMEN:
http://www.iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/
Quite a discrepancy from this and AMSR in the Kara Sea.
http://www.iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/
“Click this button”
Bruce Cobb,
“Regardless of what you think about the issue of birth control, it is disingenuous of you to conflate those two issues.”
You are right. It doesn’t really matter what I think. But to say that I am deliberately conflating the issue is nonsense.
Abortion is abortion guy. You can label it ‘forced’ or ‘choice’ but either way, it doesn’t matter because the end result is the same. It is authorization which is used in part to slow the growing size of the population. Simple enough?
“The issue of birth control in fact has no bearing whatsoever on climate issues”
Why is this so difficult for you to comprehend? In part, what this means to ‘greenies’ is fewer people to use the earths resources, fewer people to create emission, fewer people to pollute and fewer people to destroy the planet. There is your climate correlation.
If you remove authorized abortion, how much larger would our population be by 2070? How much faster would our resources dwindle without this mechanism?
Again, Bruce, it doesn’t matter where you stand morally on the issue. I am just stating facts. Perhaps I should take your advice and go elsewhere for something profound, unless you feel like trying again?
“The truth is we don’t know enough about the effects of increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere to run a global experiment .”
If CO2 drives global temperature, why does CO2 lag global temperature at all measured scales?
Long term cycle lags of ~800 years are reported for the Vostok ice cores.
For shorter term cycles, CO2 lags temperature by ~9 months.
Details at
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
“Which leads me to wonder what the lower threshold of CO2 might be, beneath which life of any complexity on the surface of the earth would be impossible.”
“Actually it’s old CO2 being brought back into the system. Fossil fuels are all natural.”
“I understand that plant life would struggle severely at below 200ppm, and probably become extinct at levels at or below around half of present levels.”
In addition to fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and widespread beds of coal and peat) there are hundreds of metres of carbonate rock deposits covering vast areas of our planet – presumably all derived from naturally sequestered CO2. This natural sequestration continues in coral reefs today. Ultimately, is it correct to say that complex life on Earth will end when atmospheric CO2 falls below a certain level, due to natural CO2 sequestration? If yes, then is it not possible that the nasty, evil combustion of fossil fuels, as practiced by nasty evil industry, is the only significant factor that might help counteract this slow steady trend toward human oblivion?
Arctic Sea Ice melting in winter (getting thinner – so melting fom the bottom up due to water temperatures)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5014744.ece
UK media still reporting Artic ice shrinking!
This whole article is reporting the state of Artic ice in 2007 and doesn’t mention the 2008 situation.
Times – London 26 Oct 2008 !
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5014744.ece
– Arctic is melting even in winter –
– The polar icecap is retreating and thinning at a record rate –
The Arctic icecap is now shrinking at record rates in the winter as well as summer, adding to evidence of disastrous melting near the North Pole, according to research by British scientists.
They have found that the widely reported summer shrinkage, which this year resulted in the opening of the Northwest Passage, is continuing in the winter months with the thickness of sea ice decreasing by a record 19% last winter.
Usually the Arctic icecap recedes in summer and then grows back in winter. These findings suggest the period in which the ice renews itself has become much shorter.
Dr Katharine Giles, who led the study and is based at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at University College London (UCL), said the thickness of Arctic sea ice had shown a slow downward trend during the previous five winters but then accelerated.
She said: “After the summer 2007 record melting, the thickness of the winter ice also nose-dived. What is concerning is that sea ice is not just receding but it is also thinning.”
The cause of the thinning is, however, potentially even more alarming. Giles found that the winter air temperatures in 2007 were cold enough that they could not have been the cause.
This suggests some other, longer-term change, such as a rise in water temperature or a change in ocean circulation that has brought warmer water under the ice.
If confirmed, this could mean that the Arctic is likely to melt much faster than had been thought. Some researchers say that the summer icecap could vanish within a decade.
The research, reported in Geophysical Research Letters, showed that last winter the average thickness of sea ice over the whole Arctic was 26cm (10%) less than the average thickness of the previous five winters.
However, sea ice in the western Arctic lost about 49cm of thickness. This region saw the Northwest Passage become ice-free and open to shipping for the first time in 30 years during the summer of 2007.
The UCL researchers used satellites to measure sea-ice thickness from 2002 to 2008. Winter sea ice in the Arctic is about 8ft thick on average.
The team is the first to measure ice thickness throughout the winter, from October to March, over more than half of the Arctic, using the European Space Agency’s Envisat satellite.
Giles’s findings confirm the more detailed work of Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, who has undertaken six voyages under the icecap in Royal Navy nuclear submarines since 1976 and has gathered data from six more voyages.
The vessels use an upward-looking echo-sounder to measure the thickness of sea ice above the vessel. The data gathered can then be compared with previous years to find changes in thickness.
Wadhams published his first paper in 1990, showing that the Arctic ice had grown 15% thinner between 1976 and 1987.
In March 2007 he went under the Arctic again in HMS Tireless and found that the winter ice had been thinning even more quickly; it was now 50% of the 1976 thickness.
“This enormous ice retreat in the last two summers is the culmination of a thinning process that has been going on for decades, and now the ice is just collapsing,” Wadhams said.
The scale of the ice loss has also been shown by other satellite-based observations that are used to measure the area of the Arctic icecap as it grows and shrinks with the seasons.
In winter it normally reaches about 5.8m square miles before receding to about 2.7m square miles in summer.
In 2007, however, the sun shone for many more days than normal, raising water temperatures to 4.3C above the average. By September the Arctic icecap had lost an extra 1.1m square miles, equivalent to more than 12 times the area of Britain.
That reduced the area of summer ice to 1.6m square miles, 43% smaller than it was in 1979, when satellite observations began.
At the heart of the melting in the Arctic is a simple piece of science. Ice is white, so most of the sunlight hitting it is reflected back into space. When it melts, however, it leaves open ocean, which, being darker, absorbs light and so gets warmer. This helps to melt more ice. It also makes it harder for ice to form again in winter. The process accelerates until there is no more ice to melt.
Wadhams said: “This is one of the most serious problems the world has ever faced.”
If you thought that article was bad, the times also reports on more WWF hysterical gloom today……..
– Humans ‘drive biggest mass extinction since dinosaurs’ –
….Tony Juniper, environmental campaigner and former director of Friends of the Earth, said: “We are entering a mass extinction that is without precedent for a million years. ….
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5014714.ece
To be fair, the article doesn’t blame AGW.
Must be an oversight on their part.
Abortion is abortion guy. You can label it ‘forced’ or ‘choice’ but either way, it doesn’t matter because the end result is the same. It is authorization which is used in part to slow the growing size of the population. Simple enough?
Nice try, Rich. Saying that legal abortion, a right conferred by Roe V Wade is used to “slow the growing size of the population” here in the U.S. is absurd, and smacks of extremist right-wing paranoia.
If you remove authorized abortion, how much larger would our population be by 2070? How much faster would our resources dwindle without this mechanism?
First of all, making something which is now legal illegal would have disasterous consequences, most especially for poor and even middle class women (those who could afford to would simply go to Canada). It would be forced underground, and in situations where the health and life of the woman would be jeopardized. You, with your anti-abortion agenda obviously don’t care about that, though. The idea that our population would be larger without legalized abortion is a red herring, since it would still take place. Simple enough?
Warning: We are getting seriously off topic here. Let it go, please. – Dee Norris
Mary Hinge: “It was not a reference as such but just a pointer to look at the subject through more recent enlightened eyes rather than the older cataract ridden ones that still think that the MWP was a long lasting global event.”
You were there, then?
Mary Hinge (13:52:06) The problem isn’t in how you characterize your reference to Wikipedia, the problem is William Connolley, who makes a mockery of ‘distributed intelligence’ by his substitution of the ‘party line’ for the actual state of climate science. And your ‘more recent enlightened eyes’ provoked gales of ironic laughter and tears from my suddenly short-sighted eyes.
=======================================
Hmmm.
Dropped in at NSIDC for my Ice Extent fix.
Today is Oct. 26.
They’ve still got the Oct. 23 graph up.
Hey! What’s Up With That?
;0)
Peter (06:12:05) :
“You were there, then?”
You should forget about a career in sarcasm, you’ve got a long way to go before reaching the standard of adequacy!
Mary (08:03:12) So please reveal to our marvelling eyes the new enlightenment ‘getting rid of the MWP’. Surely you don’t mean Mann ’08, do you? If you do, see climateaudit.org for ritual auditing and ridicule of the paper.
=================================
Agh! I choked on my toast!
From The Sunday TimesOctober 26, 2008
“Arctic is melting even in winter
The polar icecap is retreating and thinning at a record rate”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5014744.ece
Mary
Still on about deconstructing the MWP I see.
Marks for persistence at least.
kim (11:54:04) :
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2001GL014580.shtml
This is a study of New Zealand tree rings. I would urge you to download the whole article as the abstract shows pro MWP bias. The graph shows clearly two warm periods interrupted by a particularly cold period (the coldest period in the study) and other periods of near average temperatures. They also don’t mention the prolonged warm spell during the so called LIA. They also mention that that glaciers on Mount Cook underwant major expansion at the same time the vikings we colonising a small coastal strip of Greenland.
http://www-bprc.mps.ohio-state.edu/Icecore/Abstracts/Thompsonetal-climatic-change-2003.pdf
This is also very strong evidence and interestingly the data uses the same South American graphs that skepticsuse to ‘prove’ that the MWP was global. The 6 graphs (3 from south america, 3 from the Himalayas), when combined how a very similar profile o the Hockey Stick.
This strongly suggests that the MWP, rather than being a significant global event was much more likely to be an asynchronous series of anomolies.
Violently pulling this errant thread back on topic 🙂
Any further updates to the graph?
Cryosphere shows a visually remarkable gain in ice extent.
Mary Hinge (10:13:07) It seems apparent from discussion at Climateaudit.org that the science of paleoclimatology as interpreted through tree rings is inadequate. Those involved don’t know how to separate out the effects of temperature, moisture, injury, and nutrients. For instance, search through climateaudit.org for reports about Linah Ababneh’s thesis which contradicts Mann’s work desperately, and has been suppressed.
Please don’t refer us to Thompson’s work. He does not archive his data such that his work can be checked. Furthermore, when confronted with the fact that Gore misused his data in An Inconvenient Truth, he and his wife stated that they weren’t responsible for correcting it, when he is listed as an adviser on the film.
These people you trust, Mary, have lost credibility in the real world. It is only the echo-chambered insular climate science community that still believes that stuff.
===========================================
There’s another example, Mary, on the latest thread where you try to talk about the volume of ice in the Arctic and that the ice was surrounded by water. Look, this year represented an amazing turnaround and may represent the beginning of a freezing trend.
You should consider re-examining assumptions when you have to stretch to make points. If the globe is cooling long-term, as I believe, then your dissonance is only going to slowly increase. Recognize what is going on before you are too committed. Artificially encumbering carbon if the earth is entering a long and deep cooling phase will be a holocaust on the poor, and you should learn that before we get there.
============================================
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7692963.stm
/// The thickness of Arctic sea ice “plummeted” last winter, thinning by as much as 49 centimetres (1.6ft) in some regions, satellite data has revealed.
A study by UK researchers showed that the ice thickness had been fairly constant for the previous five winters.
The team from University College London added that the results provided the first definitive proof that the overall volume of Arctic ice was decreasing.
The findings have been published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
“The ice thickness was fairly constant for the five winters before this, but it plummeted in the winter after the 2007 minimum,” lead author Katherine Giles told BBC News. ///
back on topic, lol
we need an up date or better still add a new chart
dee or anthony
thank you for your efforts
kim (15:30:09) :
The writers of the article I cited were actually trying to show the MWP and LIA were global, they tried to word their abstract and conclusion to show this. If you read the paper you will see what I mean.
kim (17:37:29) :
“There’s another example, Mary, on the latest thread where you try to talk about the volume of ice in the Arctic and that the ice was surrounded by water. Look, this year represented an amazing turnaround and may represent the beginning of a freezing trend.”
Global warming models predict increased salinity in equatorial waters and decreased salinity in waters of higher latitudes. The decreases salinity means that water freezes at higher temperatures, this, coupled with the large melt means that a rapid initial refreeze was inevitable. You will notice now that the freeze is within ‘normal’ levels.
I wouldn’t take to much notice of Climateaudit. Steve McIntyre has more chips on his shoulder than a casino balance artist and his jeolosy of Mr Mann just oozes through his every pore!
REPLY: Mary I’m going to assume that you haven’t met Steve McIntyre in person. I have. Thus I’m going to tell you that your assessment is so far off base, the playing field you frequent is in another town. If McIntyre’s work was as you describe, it would be a simple matter for Mann to prove him wrong. Yet Mann has not been able to, taking the elitist tact of dismissing McIntyre’s work with a wave of the hand. If you’ve ever watched Mann speak, or read some of his writings, and then listen to McIntyre make a lecture or talk to him in person, you’d realize your mistake in categorization of personality. – Anthony
I previously commented on the vague/misleading definitions for ice extent/area on 23 Oct, Leon Brozyna (08:27:36) . It seems that those definitions at Nansen have now been expanded to avoid confusion:
Ice extent is the cumulative area of all polar grid cells of the Northern Hemisphere that have at least 15% sea ice concentration, using the NORSEX algorithm. Ice area is the sum of the grid cell areas multiplied by the ice concentration for all cells with ice concentrations of at least 15%. Ice extent and ice area are calculated for a grid resolution of 25 km. The difference between area and extent for our data is always positive. This difference represent the area of the open water in the pixels partly covered by ice (i.e. ice concentration less than 100%). In other words, ice area takes into account that there is a fraction of open water in pixels with ice concentration above 15 % and below 100 %”. Ice extent does not include this effect and gives therefore a higher number of square km than ice area.
Have to applaud their effort at clarification. The only nit I have to pick is in the last two sentences. It would be even clearer to say, instead:
In other words, ice area takes into account that there is a fraction of open water in pixels with ice concentration above 15 % and below 100 %”, and eliminates it. Ice extent does not include this elimination effect and gives therefore a higher number of square km than ice area.
See:
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
Mary Hinge (03:26:25) Why ignore my contention that the science of tree-ring paleoclimatology is inadequate for the task assumed? The failure of peer review in the field, and the paucity of effective statistics renders it so easily manipulable as to dismiss it out of hand as an unreliable path to the truth. I might add something about the integrity of some of the researchers but in the interest of civility, I’ll let this insinuation suffice.
========================================
Hmmmm, I wonder why the “daily” graph ain’t???
I see that, as far as ice is concerned, the BBC is still in last winter!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/default.stm
And they are still referencing last year’s record melt from their current article.
Well, that’s the BBC’s impartial and balanced reporting, I guess.
According to the BBC the Arctic ice is to thin?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7692963.stm
Mike T (08:25:48) :
I see that, as far as ice is concerned, the BBC is still in last winter!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/default.stm
And they are still referencing last year’s record melt from their current article.
Well, that’s the BBC’s impartial and balanced reporting, I guess.
Indeed, for them to comment on forthcoming publications they have to wait for them to be published or at least have the embargo lifted! The paper was written and submitted to Geophysical Research Letters and was accepted for publication this month. It’s customary to write papers on events after they happen and the publication process, review & proof-reading takes a while (~6months in GRL)!
KA Giles, SW Laxon and AL Ridout, ‘Circumpolar thinning of Arctic sea ice following the 2007 record ice extent minimum’, Geophysical Research Letters, doi: 10.1029/2008GL035710, in press (accepted 10 October 2008).
So Anthony, Howcum the red line shuts off as of the 22nd of October. Did their satellite crash and burn or has something serious happened.
We want to know the rest of the story.
dennis ward (22:09:36) :
Sea ice area approaching the edge of normal standard deviation Oct 2008,
Do you actually believe this BBC garbage, of cause you don`t.
” Mary Hinge (04:22:14) :
George E. Smith (11:37:16) :
I refer the gentleman to my earlier answer. Look in previous posts for evidence that it was not a global event. rather than retrace my steps heres a link to good ol’ wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period
You can do the rest yourself, look at high resolution proxy papers etc. ”
Well Mary, good old wiki isn’t quite as good as some people believe.
I choose to study the very extensive review of many and numerous other studies, By willie Soon, and Sallie Baliunas, in which they clearly establish the case that the preponderance of those studies clearly indicate that the MWP and the LIA were global events.
You might also have noticed that the Northern hemisphere seems to change climatically much more than the southern hemisphere does; might have something to to with the southern hemisphere being mostly ocean and the northern hemisphere being mostly land.
That pesky water seems it can’t make up its mind whether to be an atmospheric vapor GHG causing positive feedback and stopping us from being an ice block; or to become liquid or solid and create clouds that produce a strong negative feedback to stop us all from broiling.
Water is about the most efficient heating transfer medium we know of, and it does a good job of making the southern hemisphere do not much of anything, while the northern land masses cause all kinds of wild climate gyrations. Yet the south is not devoid of evidence of MWP and LIA by any means.
I recommend Soon/Baliunas over good old wiki anyday.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=10&fd=27&fy=1997&sm=10&sd=27&sy=2008
Looks pretty normal to me….
When you compare the pictures above with this:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg
I think you must conclude that the anomaly graph looks rather fishy.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=02&fd=28&fy=1997&sm=02&sd=28&sy=2008
This is a very interesting comparison. I guess if you increase the area of Greenland, you automatically decrease the Arctic Sea Ice Area… and vice versa.
George E. Smith (18:47:28) :
“I recommend Soon/Baliunas over good old wiki anyday.”
Hhmmm, so you recommend 2 astrophysicists over a wide range of scentists from a wide field of earth and physical sciences. OK, lets look at the paper:
“Also, while we have given specific dates for the beginnings and ends
of these periods, the transition between them was diffuse. Finally, there were regions that showed different trends from the global average. For example, during the 1770s,one of the coldest periods of the Little Ice Age in Europe, it was relatively warm in the Antarctic, and Captain Cook was able to sail further south than ships have usually been able to reach in this century.”
This illustrates one point I was trying to make that the anomolies happen at different times around the globe. We also know that the reverse happens when the southern hemisphere has been cool the northern hemisphere has been warm.
“A survey of the scientific literature shows that 79 of the 102 proxy temperature studies identified a 50-year period during the past millennium that was warmer than any 50 years in the 20th century.”
Surely if the temperatures of he last 50 years weren’t unusually warm then we would expect a lot less than 23% of the proxy studies to show the last 50 years were the warmest in the last 1000 years.
Mary Hinge (03:54:03) I’ve warned you before, wikipedia on climate is unreliable; it is not distributed intelligence on this matter, but rather the biased point of view of William Connolley and his assistant. Those two have bought the false CO2=AGW paradigm such that they can no longer evaluate the truth. I do not understand why Wikipedia allows this perversion.
And your famous 2500 IPCC scientists come down to a coterie of 50 doing the final report and a fraction of that writing the Summary for Policymakers. This whole climate catastrophe is going to be the subject of doctoral theses in the sociology and history of science for many years to come, and Naomi Oreskes will earn permanent scorn as a famous fool.
====================================
Phil. (12:55:10) It is characteristic of your willfully blind spot that you elide around the fact that this already outdated report is ballyhooed by the press as the latest thing. Hey, try being objective and unbiased for a change.
==========================================
kim (05:15:58) :
Phil. (12:55:10) It is characteristic of your willfully blind spot that you elide around the fact that this already outdated report is ballyhooed by the press as the latest thing. Hey, try being objective and unbiased for a change.
Talk about blind spot, there’s a biblical injunction about ‘first removing the beam from your own eye’! Please explain why the paper about the observed decrease in ice thickness is outdated, some science please rather than your usual nonsense. Have you even read the GRL paper?
Kim
“…see climateaudit.org for ritual auditing and ridicule of the paper.”
“…..Climate on Wiki is perverted.”
“…..the science of paleoclimatology as interpreted through tree rings is inadequate…”
“…..search through climateaudit.org for reports about Linah Ababneh’s thesis which contradicts Mann’s work desperately, and has been suppressed.”
“….These people you trust, Mary, have lost credibility in the real world…”
“….Look, this year represented an amazing turnaround and may represent the beginning of a freezing trend.”
“The failure of peer review in the field, and the paucity of effective statistics….”
“…I might add something about the integrity of some of the researchers….”
“…I do not understand why Wikipedia allows this perversion. ”
“Naomi Oreskes will earn permanent scorn as a famous fool.”
Kim, you have real problems. You are not contributing anything to this thread but seem intent on showing you have no faith in any scientific methodology that contradicts your, increasingly dated view. Try and steer yourself away fom Climateadit for a while, its obviously corrupting your rational mind.
Your last comment re. Phil is scandalous:
“It is characteristic of your willfully blind spot that you elide around the fact that this already outdated report is ballyhooed by the press as the latest thing. Hey, try being objective and unbiased for a change”
The way Phil described the process is exactly as it should be, only those who are intent on destroying the scientific method because they do not believe/support the conclusion would hold your rather strange views. How can you call it ‘outdated’ when it has only just been published?
I can only conclude you yourself do not have a scientific background as you would not be expressing these strange sentiments in this blog
Mary Hinge (05:53:21) So, nature puts a lie to your ‘latest scientific evidence’ and that is OK? I’m criticizing Phil. for defending outdated science portrayed in the popular press as the latest thing.
Now, about the scientific mindset. A scientist would re-examine assumptions in the face of evidence that contradicts his hypothesis. You demonstrate no clue that evidence is putting a lie to the projections of your inadequately parameterized models. Look, the models got the water vapor feedback to initial CO2 forcing wrong, and have built a fairy castle of disinformation on the back of that incorrect assumption and the inadequate parameterization of clouds and convection.
You can insinuate all you like, and I’ll just point to falling temperatures worldwide, dropping sea levels, a cooling phase PDO, and Arctic freezing back up, and a quiescent sun. Then your insinuations rebound on you.
===========================================
Phil. (05:44:41) Look, it should be obvious, especially to you, that thinner ice following a dramatic melt is expected. Sure, this article has appeared in the usual course of events, but what it portrays is hardly news, and the import of it has been neutered by subsequent events. Please stop ‘bitterly clinging’ to your belief that the Arctic is melting, anymore. The globe is cooling and freeze-up back to levels of thirty years ago is likely.
The ‘news’ is that Arctic ice is steadily thickening, and each year that fails to get below the previous year’s minimum ice extent will lead to thicker ice.
===================================
Mary Hinge (05:53:21) May I point out that rhetoric such as ‘corrupting your rational mind’ and ‘scandalous’ with reference to my criticism of Phil. is ad hominous and not a logically sound scientific argument? Why don’t you try refuting each point rather than painting with a wide and illogically tarred brush? That list of my quotes that you’ve prepared represents a pretty accurate portrayal of climate science today. I’ll happily discuss any one of them that you think you can refute. On your mark.
=========================================
Mary Hing:
You mean pretty much like right now, where GW isn’t global by any stretch of the imagination. Just because you take a mean temperature over many places doesn’t mean that’s a “global temperature”. Some places drop in temp while others rise, simple as that. Comparing the different places has no relevance regarding a “global temperature”.
Jeff Alberts (07:42:53) :
“You mean pretty much like right now, where GW isn’t global by any stretch of the imagination. Just because you take a mean temperature over many places doesn’t mean that’s a “global temperature”. ”
Your almost right but the ice core proxies in the post above show that the recent global warming is the first time in recent millenia to be occuring in both hemispheres though at different rates. Global warming has never been modelled to show a uniform increase across all parts of the globe at the same time. Last year was a good example of the ‘see-saw’ effect where a very warm Arctic happened at the same time as a particularly cold Antarctic.
kim (07:38:47) :
“I’ll happily discuss any one of them that you think you can refute. On your mark.”
I think you should start first, show me links/references that support your claims of lower sea levels, new Ice Age, cooling globe and how PDO cools the globe.
Thank you
@Mary Hinge (09:56:00):
Show me your links/references to empirical evidence that support further increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration will have any meaningful impact on global temperature. Please use primary material, not secondary consolidations.
Thank you.
Kim:
Roy W. Spencer, said:
>>>> A Simple Model of Natural Global Warming
As Joe D’Aleo and others have pointed out for years, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has experienced phase shifts that coincided with the major periods of warming and cooling in the 20th Century. As can be seen in the following figure, the pre-1940 warming coincided with the positive phase of the PDO; then, a slight cooling until the late 1970s coincided with a negative phase of the PDO; and finally, the warming since the 1970s has once again coincided with the positive phase of the PDO >>>>>
http://www.weatherquestions.com/Global-warming-natural-PDO.htm
FM
Mary Hinge (09:56:00) Now you are putting words into my mouth; I’ve not suggested we are headed into a ‘new Ice Age’. I’ve said that we’ll have 20-30 years of cooling from the PDO in its cooling phase and as much as a hundred years of cooling if the sun is going into a minimum, both conjectures widely supported in the literature. The UAH and RSS satellite tropospheric temperatures are dropping, the Argos buoys show oceans cooling, the Colorado University graph of TOPEX/Jason has dropping sea levels, and the PDO in its cooling phase has worldwide effect. I’ve not invented this, but you’ll have to find this stuff on your own; I’ve given you plenty of clues. Also, you maligned several of my statements in your 05:53:21 post. I have made them, now which do you want to start in to try to refute. It is sophistical to try to work around my challenge.
Thanks, Dee, there is no definitive account of how CO2 causes the temperature rise predicted by the IPCC, just the erroneous output of inadequately parameterized climate models, but you know that. Mary will find it out if she tries to satisfy your request.
==============================================
Fernando (10:44:53) Thanks, if indeed Mary Hinge has an open mind, she may learn a lot. The skeptical position is powerfully supported in the literature and each passing day of a cooling globe reinforces the message. It is the true believers in CO2=AGW who are finding the evidence for their position lacking and real empiric data damning.
=====================================
kim (07:20:59) :
Phil. (05:44:41) Look, it should be obvious, especially to you, that thinner ice following a dramatic melt is expected. Sure, this article has appeared in the usual course of events, but what it portrays is hardly news, and the import of it has been neutered by subsequent events.
What ‘subsequent events’? Winter?
Please stop ‘bitterly clinging’ to your belief that the Arctic is melting, anymore.
It’s not a ‘belief’ it’s a statement of fact based on the scientific evidence!
The ‘bitterly clinging’ in the face of evidence to the contrary is one of your traits.
The globe is cooling and freeze-up back to levels of thirty years ago is likely.
Now that’s a ‘belief’, totally unsupported by any scientific evidence
The ‘news’ is that Arctic ice is steadily thickening, and each year that fails to get below the previous year’s minimum ice extent will lead to thicker ice.
Another assertion unsupported by the facts, in fact if you’d read Giles et al. you’d find that it’s refuted there.
Phil. (10:55:07) The subsequent event was last summer’s failure to melt as much as the year before.
-The scientific evidence shows that the Arctic is freezing back up after reaching a maximum melt in the summer of 2007. Atmospheric and oceanic temperatures are falling around the world and will effect the Arctic too.
-The PDO flipped to a cooling phase suggests 30 years of cooling, which will freeze the Arctic back up, after the thirty years of warming which melted it, which was preceded by a thirty year cooling spell which froze it back up from the time earlier in the century when it was relatively melted. The action of the PDO is compelling, but not definitive, scientific evidence. It is not mere, unsupported ‘belief’.
=============================
Mary Hinge, say`s
Your almost right but the ice core proxies in the post above show that the recent global warming is the first time in recent millenia to be occuring in both hemispheres though at different rates,
You then say, Last year was a good example of the ’see-saw’ effect where a very warm Arctic happened at the same time as a particularly cold Antarctic. I would say that would leave global temps in equilibrium, take away UHI and there is no increase.
By the way you are doing a good here, anyone unsure of AGW viewing this site will be convinced it is totally flawed by your ridiculous statements that are continuously shot down by solid science and real world observations. Keep up the good work.
kim (11:57:13) :
Phil. (10:55:07) The subsequent event was last summer’s failure to melt as much as the year before.
In fact it melted more!
-The scientific evidence shows that the Arctic is freezing back up after reaching a maximum melt in the summer of 2007.
No it doesn’t where did you get that from?
Atmospheric and oceanic temperatures are falling around the world and will effect the Arctic too.
Not true, look at RSS particularly northwards of 60ºN.
-The PDO flipped to a cooling phase suggests 30 years of cooling, which will freeze the Arctic back up, after the thirty years of warming which melted it, which was preceded by a thirty year cooling spell which froze it back up from the time earlier in the century when it was relatively melted. The action of the PDO is compelling, but not definitive, scientific evidence. It is not mere, unsupported ‘belief’.
The PDO doesn’t cause cooling everywhere, in fact the N Pacific is warmer in winter during the cooling phase: http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
Since the late 80’s there have been several short periods when the PDO index has gone negative (op. cit), it’s wish fulfillment on your part to assume that the fact that it’s gone negative now presages a long period such as that from the late 40s to the late 70s.
Phil. (13:11:07) By ice extent, last summer did not melt as much as the year before. This is the most commonly used metric. I know you are accomplished at finagling figures to make it seem as if this year’s melt was more extensive than last year, but it is sophistry, and beggars the truth.
-Last winter’s Arctic ice maximum is greater than the year before, last summer’s minimum ice extent was greater than the year before, and the freeze up this fall is ahead of the year before. That is scientific evidence.
-There does seem to be a lag before global temperatures reach the Arctic. You have not refuted that falling global temperatures will effect the Arctic.
-Oh, yes, the phase, whether cooling or warming, of the PDO seems to be strongest determinant of global temperature. Your objection about the ‘N Pacific’ does not refute my contention. It is sophistry.
========================================
kim (10:49:36) :
“…. the Colorado University graph of TOPEX/Jason has dropping sea levels…”
I’m not going round in circles with you, you are just repeating blurb from inferior sites than this to get your ‘information’. I am aware of the graph. It only goes up to February/March of 2008 when the strong La Nina was still in effect. the link I mentioned (the one you couldn’t comprehend and thought was suspicious because you couldn’t join the dots) carries on until August.
I have backed up all my claims with references, you have not given a single reference and are not arguing a point but just gainsaying for the sake of it.
Look at the SST anomoly charts and find out for yourself why a PDO does not cause global cooling/warming directly (To help you here is a link to the current map.)http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.10.27.2008.gif , but by its actions on the ENSO. A -ive PDo increases the probability of stronger La Nina’s,+ive increase the probability of stronger La Nina.
As regards the current -ive PDO, many of us who have studied this think that it will be a short-lived event and a return to +ive is possible by the end of 2009. Now that would be interesting!
” Mary Hinge (03:54:43) :
George E. Smith (18:47:28) :
“I recommend Soon/Baliunas over good old wiki anyday.”
Hhmmm, so you recommend 2 astrophysicists over a wide range of scentists from a wide field of earth and physical sciences. OK, lets look at the paper: ”
Absolutely; they reviewed dozens of studies by those wide ranging scientists you mention; so they gave their readers the benefit of all of those studies; not just one or two that might have been used to make a point. So just what is Al Gore’s Scientific expertise, that would lead anyone to prefer any of his utterances over some other “scientist”. I’m not picking on Al, Just making the point that the history of science shows that original authors are often not the best teachers of their own discoveries; which is why review by others knowledgeable in the field (of science) is often beneficial.
I’ve never written a peer reviewed scientific paper on climate science in my life; in fact, for some time no, I have been prohibited from publishing ANY peer reveiwed technical papers, by my employer; whose represenmtative simply stated that”we should not be teaching at this level.” So they prefer trade secrecy over disclosure.
The arrogance of your assumption that qualified scientists whose own specialty may be different from the topic they happen to be writing on; are by inference incompetent to so speak, is simply amazing. It is well known in physics, that the same processes keep showing up in different firelds of science.
I could easily get a PhD degree in Ice cream making, and put a Dr in front of my name. Who is going to complain if I write papers on string theory under that title.
If your intent is to bolster the claim by Dr Michael Mann, that the Mediaeval Warm Period never ever happened; you have an uphill battle. I noticed, you have not commented on Mann’s own admission that his Hockey stick theory is itself not a global phenomenon, but just a local anomaly.
This is pure sophistry.
So it is not something healthy.
….anomnight.10.27.2008
yellow is artificially yellow.
blue is artificially blue.
A clear analysis of the MJO. (please)
FM
[…] extent for all years between 1979 and 2007. Polar bear lovers can breathe a big sigh of relief. See Sea ice area approaching the edge of normal standard deviation for […]
Mary Hinge (16:21:57) You still haven’t explained why your graph doesn’t have the intervening points that mine has, nor why your graph doesn’t connect the dots. Why not? For fear of showing the intervening lower ones? Your graph looks manipulated to engender a certain belief, mine doesn’t. Explain that, please. Until that is explained, I’ll not trust yours, even if it purports to show later, higher, data.
I don’t think you understand the persistent approximately sixty year cycle of the PDO with about half in a cooling phase and half in a warming phase. This pattern can be seen back to the beginning of the Twentieth. The PDO is not likely to return to a warming phase for another twenty years or so.
I referred you to the graph of the NOAA CFS ensemble runs which predict La Nina conditions to mid 2009. Have you looked at it yet?
And again you use logical fallacies, like ‘inferior sites’. My information is good; to attempt to characterize it deficient according to your subjective ratings is not good rhetoric. It is sophistry. Go join Phil. and John Philips in the corner and cogitate over your errors.
==============================================
kim (13:37:59) :
Phil. (13:11:07) By ice extent, last summer did not melt as much as the year before. This is the most commonly used metric. I know you are accomplished at finagling figures to make it seem as if this year’s melt was more extensive than last year, but it is sophistry, and beggars the truth.
Learned a new word? Summer 08 the extent dropped by 9.8090 Mm^2, summer 07 the extent dropped by 9.5233 Mm^2, by your chosen metric you’re wrong!
-Last winter’s Arctic ice maximum is greater than the year before, last summer’s minimum ice extent was greater than the year before, and the freeze up this fall is ahead of the year before. That is scientific evidence.
Of noise!
-There does seem to be a lag before global temperatures reach the Arctic. You have not refuted that falling global temperatures will effect the Arctic.
‘Seems to be’, you’ll have to do better than that.
-Oh, yes, the phase, whether cooling or warming, of the PDO seems to be strongest determinant of global temperature. Your objection about the ‘N Pacific’ does not refute my contention. It is sophistry.
What counts for melting the arctic ice is the arctic temperature, as shown on the site I referenced arctic SST increases in response to -ve PDO. You appear to be the one engaging in sophistry!
Yes, there was slightly more melt (in absolute terms) this year than last. But there are other factors in play.
1.) There was more ice at the start of the 2008 melt season than the 2007 melt season. So even though there was more melt, minimum ice extent was 9% greater this year than last year.
2.) Much of the 2008 ice was “baby ice”, which is more prone to melt. But with a 9% greater extent than last year, there is now more “mature” ice now than there was a year ago.
3.) And as rapid and drastic as ice recovery was last year (it set a 30-year record), this year’s recovery is blowing away last year’s previous record!
That is the bottom line: A considerable increase in ice over the last two years.
To point out (correctly) that more square miles melted this year than last while ignoring the fact that more ice also froze last year is factually correct, but misses the point entirely.
Overall, there is more ice. That’s what counts!
evanjones (20:49:08) :
Yes, there was slightly more melt (in absolute terms) this year than last. But there are other factors in play.
1.) There was more ice at the start of the 2008 melt season than the 2007 melt season. So even though there was more melt, minimum ice extent was 9% greater this year than last year.
And the minimum area was ~3% greater, be more precise when you use the term ‘more ice’, Kim’s just as bad.
2.) Much of the 2008 ice was “baby ice”, which is more prone to melt. But with a 9% greater extent than last year, there is now more “mature” ice now than there was a year ago.
The proper metric for that sort of argument would be area not extent. A considerable part of what melted last year was old ice which had fragmented and dispersed in the Beaufort.
3.) And as rapid and drastic as ice recovery was last year (it set a 30-year record), this year’s recovery is blowing away last year’s previous record!
Really by what measure?
That is the bottom line: A considerable increase in ice over the last two years.
Considerable? I make it a difference of ~0.052 Mm^2 in extent, less than a day’s worth. Of course it’s also thinner.
To point out (correctly) that more square miles melted this year than last while ignoring the fact that more ice also froze last year is factually correct, but misses the point entirely.
I was refuting Kim’s inaccurate statement: “By ice extent, last summer did not melt as much as the year before”, it’s false as noted, it’s not my fault that Kim chose to make that statement.
Overall, there is more ice. That’s what counts!
-The earlier report on this site puts it at 9%, not 3%, at the late September minimum.
-The current level is around 31% higher than last year. (There’s a nice graph on the right side of the site with the graph. Click and see.)
-Last year’s recovery slope was a record since satellite observation began. This year’s is blowing that record all to hell.
If the trend continues we will be well over 2006 levels. We shall see.
evanjones (22:34:19) :
-The earlier report on this site puts it at 9%, not 3%, at the late September minimum.
Area!
-The current level is around 31% higher than last year. (There’s a nice graph on the right side of the site with the graph. Click and see.)
~10% actually, I suggest you click that graph.
-Last year’s recovery slope was a record since satellite observation began. This year’s is blowing that record all to hell.
Really, it looks about the same to me?
If the trend continues we will be well over 2006 levels. We shall see.
Yes, don’t hold your breath.
The 31% ref. was reported on on this site a few days ago. You are right, though; it has narrowed somewhat since.
And from the looks of it, we are back to 2006 levels, already.
And yes, area. That is by far the most important measure. Because it is area, not volume, that affects albedo.
I would still like to know why CT has made greenland bigger. Does anyone have a clue? Thanks, Mike.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=10&fd=29&fy=1997&sm=10&sd=29&sy=2008
Phil. (19:54:27) I warned people that you were adept at sophistry as well as at science. This last year, the extent of melt was greater than the year before, but the extent at minimum was greater than the year before, which is the metric so much was made of that year. This last summer had a greater extent melt because the winter before had such a dramatic freeze that ice extent at maximum was much greater than the year before. There was a lot more ice to melt, so more did in 2008, but still extent at minimum was greater than in 2007.
All your sophistry cannot demonstrate that the Arctic Ice action of the last twelve months suggests a further melting rather than a further freeze-up as we progress into the next few years. Those paying attention see how you mix the use of area and extent to confuse the ignorant, and then throw volume and thickness into the mix. The Arctic, to objective observers, has reversed its 30 trend of progressive melting and is now, apparently, freezing back up.
You should really consider using your impressive sophistical tools to pursue the truth rather than obfuscation in defense of AGW.
=======================================
Phil., you are following the party line, though. In 2007 when extent was such a minimum, that was ballyhooed. In 2008, as soon as it became apparent that the minimum of the year before would not be reached, we were treated with lots of stories about ice area, and ice volume, and polar bears, for God’s sake. You should be ashamed of yourself for participating in this sham.
==============================================
On ice volume too, I suspect there was less volume loss this year than the previous year, because a lot more of what melted this year was thin first year ice rather than the older thicker ice of the previous year. You’ve doubted me on this point, and I’m not sure of it because I don’t have the figures for ice volume at the beginning and end of both melt seasons, but I remember you didn’t have the numbers, either, Phil. I’d be pleased if you knew where to find those numbers, so we could put this conjecture to rest.
==========================================
Phil. (19:54:27) One last point about this post. It is true that I should have used ‘ice extent at minimum’ for my metric rather than ‘ice extent’, but my imprecision there is not sophistry. On your last three points:
-‘of noise!’ Yes, it may be noise; it may also be the changing point of trends.
-‘seems to be’ I cannot do better than that. No one thoroughly understands the apparent lag, but I’ll bet it somehow represents the time needed for heat to move in the ocean from the tropics to the poles. For instance, and this is conjecture, the melt of the summer of 2007 might represent the giant temperature spike of 1998.
-‘what counts for melting’. I see your point, but mine still stands. A cooler globe will ultimately cool the Arctic.
========================================
kim (02:19:13) :
“….Those paying attention see how you mix the use of area and extent to confuse the ignorant…”
Kim, sorry you’re so confused.
RE: Mike Bryant’s post:
It might be my imagination, but while there’s a little loss of sea ice extent from 1997 to 2008, the ice volume appears much greater (much more dark purples). It’s the same if you compare to 1979:
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=10&fd=29&fy=1979&sm=10&sd=29&sy=2008
“I do agree that the planet is overcrowded.”
Ah, maybe war is the answer after all?
Mary Hinge (05:10:54)
Heh, Mary, no answer for my 19:41:10 comment on 10/29, then?
===================================
The BBC does it again:
Another BS story about the Arctic.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7700387.stm
Spring yet to arrive in the Antarctic?
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png
kim (14:06:35) :
I posted a reply yesterday but it must have been eaten up by the Spam mail blocker, probably too many Urls. So hre is a condensed version
The graph you referred to is this one http://sealevel.colorado.edu/, The graph I referred to is on this site http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/index.cfm.
Notice the source of my graph is from the Uni. Col., the same as your graph. See also from the Uni. Col web page about the interruptions and delays in processing. The time scale they gave for the problems to be resolved would explain the gap in the data, presumably they are having delays in updating their website. See, no conspiracy, just the trials and tribulations of science in action!
You will notice anyway from the Uni Col graph that there was a steady rise in SL up to the strong la Nina development in 2007. Another excellent site on this subject is here http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_last_15.html
So now you have the facts maybe you will concede that sea levels are rising?
I had already told you I looked at the ENSO prediction, I still believe (backed up by 5 other forecasts that the ENSO will remain neutral with a small chance of either a weak La Nina or a smaller chance of a weak El Nino. There will certainly not be a strong La Nina such as the recent event a few months ago.
You haven’t given much in the way of references for many of your claims so, as this is election time ” Where’s the beef!”
Mary (05:19:03) You’ve not explained very well the difference between those two graphs, but thanks for the links. If NASA’s source for your graph is CU, why don’t they have the intervening data points that are on my graph? If those last two data points on your graph do have validity, then you may have a point about the sea level, but they look a little orphaned, out there.
Also, if a La Nina can halt the rise in sea level, that surely argues against a lot of stored ‘extra heat’ being found in the oceans.
You still don’t want to look at the NOAA CFS ensemble graph? Please look at it, a reference which I did give you like a hamburger you can eat now and pay for on Tuesday, before you rumble on about weak Los Ninos or Las Ninas.
=======================================
Not many of those model runs in the CFS ensemble show a weak La Nina and even fewer a weak El Nino. Van Loon thinks we’ll have a La Nina this winter, deepening next year.
Your graph at the last link look more like my graph demonstrating at the least a pause in the steady rise of sea level. I’ll agree, we need more data before either of us can claim the direction that sea level is going.
==============================================
kim (09:25:40) :
“If NASA’s source for your graph is CU, why don’t they have the intervening data points that are on my graph?”
That’s explained above, the Uni Col were having issues with processing the data. The La Nina can reduce global sea level due to the cooling of the surface of a very large area of sea water. If you look at a globe you will see the Pacific Ocean covers half the earths surface, the increased trade winds result in more evaporation that cools the surface very effectively (think of a breeze on sweaty skin). This cooling will result in a temporary drop in SL but the actual SL during the dip is higher than it was in the beginning of 2006.
The stored heat in sub surface currents are becoming a little more understood, though still very sketchy. This paper http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n10/full/ngeo316.html
shows the effects of the relatively warm subsurface water on Greenland fjordic glaciers. Look at fig. 4, it shows how quickly the warmer sub surface water entred the system. This warmer sub-surface water has to be a contender for the dramatic melting of the Arctic ice sheet. Evidence is only circumstantial butit was worth looking at the ice extent anomoly graphs to see the pattern of much reduced ice coverage since 2001 coinciding with the flat temperature trend over the same period. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
I had looked at your link but I still prefer in some cases to trust other dynamic models and to look at what the SST and SL tell me. The Australian sources have proven to be the most accurate, mainly because they are the ones who directly feel the effects!
Mary Hinge (10:53:40) Surface cooling will not thermally contract enough water to lower sea level, at least not within our capacity to measure it. You’ve not convinced me that the La Nina cooling penetrated deeply enough to lower sea level. I think the lowering of sea level is from thermal contraction and my rationale is the four years of slight oceanic cooling to two miles deep as measured by the Argos buoys. I agree, though, that if your two orphaned data points have validity, then maybe sea level isn’t dropping.
===============================================
Furthermore, the four years of oceanic cooling to two miles deep corresponds to the approximately four years of cooling seen in the atmospheric temperature trends. I don’t think individual Las Ninas or Los Ninos have much effect on sea level. Now, the PDO, that is another thing. Too bad we don’t have TOPEX/Jason back to the last time that the PDO was in a cooling phase.
========================================
Nitpicking here, but your link is to ice area anomoly, not ice extent. Don’t be confused.
=============================================
Note, too, the ice area anomoly rising dramatically again back toward the mean of the last thirty years, with little chance of it turning back around again, soon, unless your Los Ninos come out of nowhere. This is, of course, a very short term trend, so far. The Antarctic surprised me this last SH winter.
======================================
/// Rob (16:40:49) :
Sea ice area approaching the edge of normal standard deviation Oct 2008,
Do you actually believe this BBC garbage, of cause you don`t. //
I don’t always believe the BBC and I certainly don’t believe much of the garbage posted on here but I do give some credence to current data rather than the cherry-picked data that some people on this site worship. They denigrate ANY data that counters their belief, calling it unreliable, but then have the brazen cheek to use the data from the same sources as definitive proof if the data agrees with their beliefs over a selected period. I like to keep an open mind so maybe this board is not for me.
kim (13:01:36) :
” Surface cooling will not thermally contract enough water to lower sea level, at least not within our capacity to measure it. ”
An efficient cooling mechanism such as evaporation will if over a sufficiently large area, don’t forget how large an area the Pacific covers!
“I don’t think individual Las Ninas or Los Ninos have much effect on sea level”
As further evidence look at the 1997-1998 levels where the sea levels rose during that strong El Nino.
“Now, the PDO, that is another thing.”
As has been discussed before the PDO phases are in effect neutral, it is their effect on ENSO that determines temerature changes.
Mary Hinge (05:42:07) There would be less evaporation during a La Nina than during an El Nino. You have something backward here.
And if Jason’s data is not available, whence the two orphaned dots on your sea level graph? Also, see the latest thread for more doubt about 3.4mm/yr rise.
You are simply not persuasive, sorry. I’m sure you’ve convinced yourself.
===========================================
Dennis Ward,
If you really have an open mind, you should stay since you can see and hear both sides here. If, however, you prefer an echo chamber with the same old ideas bouncing around forever, there are many, many sites you can go to. I would recommend Real Climate. Of course if you make a comment there like the one you just did here, it will be promptly deleted. So make sure you hold up the party line there.
Thanks for visiting,
Mike Bryant
kim (07:15:51) :
Try not to think in one dimension for a change. At first glance it would seem logical to assume that a warm water event results in more evaporation than a cool event. Bear in mind that the air above the initial upwelled cold sub-surface water is cooler and drier than during a neutral or El Nino episode. There is also an increase in the trade wind speed, put the two together and this results in greater evaporation (using the body sweat anology again, if you work out in cool, dry air the sweat evaporates very quickly, in humid conditions the sweat doesn’t evaporate as fast). But don’t take my word on it, this is the important part of this paper :
Gautier C. Peterson P. and Jones C. Global Estimation of Freshwater Fluxes and Freshwater Oceanic Transport from Satellite Data, World Water Resources Vol 8, No. 4 pg 505-514.1996
“Evaporation exceeds precipitation by about 200 cm year-1 during the La Niña conditions of 1988-89, whereas precipitation exceeds evaporation by about 200 cm year-1 during the El Niño of 1991-92.”
“And if Jason’s data is not available……”
If you don’t believe the data, fine. Whatever data anyone, or any organisation presents that goes against your preset ideas you’re going to ignore anyway.
“You are simply not persuasive”
With your answers revealing your thought processes, I really couldn’t care less
Mike Bryant (07:39:45) :
“Dennis Ward,
If you really have an open mind, you should stay since you can see and hear both sides here. ”
I am in total agreement with Mike here Dennis (put that in a diary as a red letter day!). There is nothing like healthy debate to help you learn about what is a very complex subject. A lot of posters do produce good sources of information and it all helps stimulate the intellectual juices!
Mary Hinge (08:41:08) Look, they tell us that the data from Jason is problematic, then put out two data points off in isolation that are not in line with the other data, and you expect me to be persuaded?
Also, if the Los Ninos and Las Ninas do effect the volume of the ocean, and hence the sea level, it looks to me like the volume and sea level change precede the atmospheric manifestation. So you have your causality backward. I wish I could remember who said ‘The climate is the continuation of the ocean by other means’.
I’ve been studying this stuff for several years, now, and my understanding and beliefs have undergone a number of sea changes. Can you say the same about yourself? When are you going to question your underlying assumption that climate is exquisitely sensitive to CO2. How cold does it have to get?
I’m just a little amused that a true believer like yourself criticizes a skeptic like myself in the manner you have. You’ve got that part backwards, too.
===========================================
Mary, when you consider that the heat content of the oceans is very much greater than the heat content of the atmosphere, it seems that you ought to know better than to argue that the atmosphere heats and cools the oceans rather than the other way around. So, what about it?
=============================================
kim (11:53:53) :
Mary Hinge’s thought processes may be revealing about her apparent lack of blog etiquette.
edcon (13:03:38) Someday she’ll learn that insults are a hallmark, but not a pathognomonic sign, of a failing argument. I’ve run into so much bluster and bluff from true believers on other boards that I take it as a sign of weakness. It may not be in this case(what is sea level doing, anyway) but it is certainly suggestive.
===========================================
kim (12:05:00) :
“….it seems that you ought to know better than to argue that the atmosphere heats and cools the oceans….”
I assumed you had at least a basic idea of heat transfer in dynamic systems. No where did I say the atmosphere heats the ocean, I did say that the atmospheric conditions will affect the rate of ocean cooling, surely you agree with that!
“Furthermore, the four years of oceanic cooling to two miles deep …….”
Do not confuse metric and imperial measurements, a common source of errors in junior school classes, use km and not miles . Argo/Argos meaurements are what you must be referring to, homepage here http://www-argo.ucsd.edu/
These measure the upper 2km depth of the oceans and, because of the sea ice, there are fewer Argo bouys in the Arctic and Antarctic waters. Another factor to remember is that the average ocean depth is 3.5km.
edcon (13:03:38) :
“Mary Hinge’s thought processes may be revealing about her apparent lack of blog etiquette.”
I have not insulted Kim at all, read the posts! It is up to the reader to determine the thought processes, I can see what she is doing, I am sure others will to. Why are you so sensitive?
Sometimes I think I am in a scientific debate instead of a blog. It is only when your debatee constantly fails to provide any evidence for their argument, uses false quotations and mixes up imperial and metric measurements then you realise this is just a blog.