Guest post by Steven Goddard
Last week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon warned that “polar ice caps were melting far faster than expected just two years ago“
This was based on a number of widely publicized scientific studies released this year claiming that both the Arctic and Antarctic are melting faster than expected.
As recently as last week, scientists were sounding the alarm.
Tues., April 28, 2009OSLO – The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica have awakened and are melting faster than expected, a leading expert told peers ahead of a conference of ministers from nations with Arctic territory.Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, an expert with the Center for Ice and Climate at the University of Copenhagen, told the conference in the Arctic town of Tromsoe that the need for a wake-up call was genuine for the polar and glacial regions.
He apparently didn’t read this paper from last Autumn’s AGU Meeting
Ice loss in Greenland has had some climatologists speculating that global warming might have brought on a scary new regime of wildly heightened ice loss and an ever-faster rise in sea level. But glaciologists reported at the American Geophysical Union meeting that Greenland ice’s Armageddon has come to an end.
One has to wonder if some scientists are lacking access to the Internet, as the amount of polar sea ice on the planet is above the 30 year mean.
Yesterday, NSIDC announced that “Arctic sea ice extent at the end of April 2009 was within the expected range of natural variability.” and “The decline rate for the month of April was the third slowest on record“
The NSIDC graph below shows that April ice extent has actually increased by more than the size of Texas over past last two years. Clearly The UN Secretary General is mistaken when he claims “”polar ice caps were melting far faster than expected just two years ago.”
I took this graph a step further and compared 2009 vs. past years. Current April extent is the greatest in the last 8 years. It is greater than it was 20 years ago.
If you look at the last 20 years, there is no statistically significant trend in the data.
Arctic ice extent is essentially normal.
It is important to remember that ice area between mid-April and mid-August is what affects the earth’s climate, because that is when the sun is up highest in the sky. When the ice reaches it’s minimum in September, the sun is so low above the horizon that the presence or absence of ice has little impact on the earth’s SW radiation balance. A more complete explanation here .
Also, the claim of Polar Bear endangerment is based largely on the idea that the ice is supposedly breaking up earlier than it used to in the spring. The “third slowest melt on record” would hardly support that popular claim.
I continue to be astonished at the amount of misinformation being propagated by some scientists and governmental officials. The correct information is readily available to anyone who has access to Google and five minutes of time. What is the real agenda?
What is the real agenda?
A global command economy.
If you want incoherance in the news check out the science section in Google News for Canada. In the same gathering of news about the Artic ice, you find both melting and unexpected freezing articles. Maybe it is a sign that things are stating to chance in the MSM.
In my experience politicians don’t often bother to do their own reseach. They prefer meeting people, talking and exerting their influnece. They tend to rely on staff for research, who may sometimes prefer to tell them what they think they want to hear, or even have their own itineraries. “Yes Minister”, etc. And matters of climate change are probably more an annoyance to a lot of them, to be delegated to the minions (apart from those that are making money out of it)
The Alarmists have already been proved wrong. That was the easy part–the Earth has done it for us.
The next step is getting the Alarmists to ADMIT they were wrong and that, I’m afraid, will take heaven AND Earth.
Linear trends of cyclic data are as subject to Twain’s axiom as the remainder of Statistics in the wrong hands.
At some point this cadre of politicians will need to confront the notion that continued AGW alarmism in the face of enormous data to the contrary – is a losing proposition. There are enough political consultants and pollsters and spin doctors on the planet to make this abundantly clear to even the most hardened alarmist.
In the face of these facts – and having the benefit of hindsight – how do these politicians plan to extract themselves from the backlash that is inevitable. Do they think they will not be held responsible for perpetrating an inhumane hoax? At what point do these intelligent purveyors of human evolution look in a mirror and admit that fear-based social engineering has run out of… ahem, gas?
It’s difficult to know whether to laugh or cry…
We absolutely do not know how big the range of natural variation is for the Arctic and Antarctic ice packs. We’ve only been measuring for a few decades and that coincided with a warming period.
The default position should be the skeptical one. All changes observed in the last 30 years are presumed as natural until shown otherwise by the preponderance of the evidence.
BTW: Computer models do not produce evidence! Evidence is facts derived from direct observation. Computer models do not output facts, either.
This is an ethics problem, not a science issue.
And speaking of ethics, how long will it take Secretary of Energy Steve Chu to sound the klaxon of Armageddon over this latest “study”?
Well this is lucky for the Catlin group I suppose. There will likely be enough ice for the rescue planes to land on when it comes time to extricate them. Still, I have to wonder what their “reports” will yield. Anyone taking bets?
Why is it that when a major scientific expedition has just reported the surprise discovery that newly formed arctic ice was often twice as thickas expected, only one newspaper in the world thinks it is newsworthy?
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/05/04/lawrence-solomon-deep-arctic-ice-surprises-scientific-expedition.aspx
“One has to wonder if some scientists are lacking access to the Internet, as the amount of polar sea ice on the planet is above the 30 year mean.”
What they are lacking is any notion of integrity.
There’s a news story coming that’s could bring down the AGW hoax like a house of cards. Compare this graph with the arctic graph above:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png
Notice that the slope of the antarctic sea ice for May is about 4 million sq. km. per month. That’s more than twice the slope for the arctic and that means that the total is going to rise a lot over the next month (or more). There is a good chance the all time HIGH record for sea ice worldwide will be broken. This is at such perfect variance with the idiotic pronouncements by the AGW fanatics that they won’t be able to dance away.
I’d like to see a headline that starts with the words, “Break Out the Tar and Feathers.”
I think part of the reason for all the furor about the Arctic Ice is that this is just as much an iconic image as the Polar Bears. Because of the lag in pumping heat from the tropics to the poles, the Arctic Ice continued melting even after the globe started cooling. Also, a picture of a globe with the Sea Ice extent is an easily understandable graphic. Temperature series with a small drop didn’t mean a lot, but wide swaths of ice disappearing before our eyes does. I think this present incoherence is just a manifestation of panic that the last great graphic in support of ‘global warming’ and the power derived from carbon taxing is going belly up.
The world’s politicians, and journalists, and corrupt scientists can’t keep up the charade much longer.
===============================================
OT – BBC update re Caitlin:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8033969.stm
‘The latest resupply was only made possible because the charter firm Kenn Borek Air fitted special fuel tanks to allow the aircraft extra range and so avoid the need for a refuelling stop.
This limited the amount of weight that could be carried, so while food, fuel and batteries were delivered, a scientific instrument known as SeaCat, designed to to be lowered into the sea beneath the ice, had to be left behind.
Chip Cunliffe, operations chief in London, said: “It has been a difficult 10 days trying to get the flight in, with the weather consistently frustrating us, and a technical problem with one plane causing us to turn back on one earlier attempt to reach them.
“Using additional fuel tanks has made this resupply easier in the end; and it’s a relief to get the team moving once again.”
The expedition, originally due to run into the end of May, is now being concluded a week early amid concern about the strength of the ice as the summer melt approaches.
The Catlin Arctic Survey team hopes its ice thickness data – coming primarily now from drilling following the failure of a mobile radar unit – will help scientists better understand the changes taking place at the highest latitudes.’
They got a resupply in but sounds like they are cannning the expedition due to the cold weather and the effort of drilling through such thick ice…
Anthony,
The articles you cite talk about land ice and not sea ice. The two may be correlated, but I don’t think that can be tacitly assumed.
Even if the ice area and extent keep growing for the next decade, politicians will keep on talking about the melting ice and the need to do something; need those tax dollars, don’t you know.
Looking at those first two graphs of April Ice Extent, perception is everything.
The first shows the trend down for 30 years and the hint of possible recovery is hidden in plain view.
The second, with a flat line drawn through this year’s April level makes a possible recovery of ice extent more visible.
So, if the ice extent this September is greater than last year, will the talk next year still be of the loss of Arctic ice as seen through 2007? Silly question — of course!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie
The Big Lie (German: Große Lüge) is a propaganda technique. It was defined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf as
=> a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”.
Some of the hysteria has been to keep the fraud going until Copenhagen happened and carbon taxing could penetrate the last great polity not embracing it, the United States. But Cap and Trade seems to be foundering on industrial state Democrats having their oxen gored. New Zealand, and now Australia seems to be seeing the light. Copenhagen, whatever happens there, will be ignored, and the globe will continue to cool, for how long, even kim doesn’t know.
But I think the high water mark of the hoax has been reached. We can start reminiscing about Michael Piltdown Mann, now. I remember being so amused as a child that the world’s intelligentsia could have been fooled so extensively by the Piltdown Mann, but I’m just stunned at how much bigger a manifestation of the essential foolishness of man this climate warming hogwash has been.
Though it won’t have quite the far reaching impact on the rightful placement of man in the cosmos as the Galileo affair did, the immediate social impact of this correction in our consciousness will be far greater than that scientific revolution. Interesting times we live in. I never expected to see this.
===========================================
The popular media routinely provides politically motivated disinformation (on every important topic). That’s all the information most working people with families have the time to peruse. The politicians know that.
I find that the disinformation regarding AGW is effective. Most minds I meet are closed and in the pro-AGW mode — yet, most minds do not have the background to understand the subject. People simply believe propaganda often repeated. Its nothing new in human society. That bothers me, but I don’t have a solution.
I think that we all know what the real agenda is — financial oppertunism (Gore), grants etc. and the dreaded “la la la I cant hear you” syndrome.
“What is the real agenda?”
That is the real question.
To be fair, she (Dorthe Dahl-Jensen is a she, not he) was commenting on the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, not sea ice, as Steven Goddard is commenting on.
Jørgen
The real agenda? It’s simple: Follow the Money. There are too many political and professional careers based upon AGW. For example, watch this recent BNN interview with former World Bank economist Nicholas Stern:
http://watch.bnn.ca/squeezeplay/may-2009/squeezeplay-may-4-2009/#clip168429
No surprise he is flogging his new book claiming that things are getting even “worse” than they thought just a couple of years ago, all the skeptics are stupid, CO2 is all to blame, blah, blah, blah.
(I wonder if economist Stern had the foresight to predict the recent world-wide economic collapse, or was he too busy chasing the AGW phantom menace?)
Laurence Kirk (09:21:38)
Good points on your OT Catlin update. As I commented on the fuel cache post:
“BBC is reporting that the team has been resupplied.
And now the real spin begins.
Remember, at mission start they were to travel 1,000 km in 100 days. So, after 65 days they’ve done all of just under 400 km. And now they won’t even do 100 days ( the ice is melting, don’t you know). With a start date of 28 Feb, 100 days would have meant they’d be on the ice till 8 Jun. Now it’s being spun that the mission was going to end at the end of May but will be cut short a week. Which gives them about another 20 days or so before being plucked off the ice.
Or, to use the Catlin technique –
550 km in 85 days (okay, maybe 600 km in 85 days).
Not quite as thrilling sounding as 1,000 km in 100 days.”
Let me reemphasize the point – while the spin is that it’s being cut short a week, in reality it’s being cut short by two weeks. So much for five years of meticulous planning.
Indiana Bones @ 09:06:49
…how do these politicians plan to extract themselves from the backlash that is inevitable,
They will point out they were honest and sincere victims of advice that was was thought to be accurate at the time, but turned out to be erroneous.
Neil,
Please read the linked articles more carefully.
These reported statements make it clear that there is a political agenda at work and misleading or false claims are part of that agenda.
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.”
– Club of Rome,
The First Global Revolution
and…
“…we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination….So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts….Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest.”
– Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
lead author of many IPCC reports
and…
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world.”
– Christine Stewart,
fmr Canadian Minister of the Environment
AGW causes floods.
AGW causes droughts.
AGW causes floods and droughts in the same place at the same time.
What’s incoherent?
_she_ might not have read the paper. In Danish “Dorthe” is the name of a woman.
Great site BTW
This matches my result pretty well. The extent is reading slightly lower than area anomaly relative to mean.
Why do they always put a linear trend-line on the ice extent and temperature graphs?
These date clearly do not appear to be the result of linear functions.
If you fit a third or fourth order polynomial trend-line to the Arctic Sea Ice Extent graph, you’d have a much better fit…And you’d clearly see that the sea ice extent began to expand right about when the PDO shifted.
Too bad the satellite data don’t go back to the early 1900’s…This whole AGW fraud might have been avoided.
Frederick Michael (09:19:32) :
………….
“I’d like to see a headline that starts with the words, “Break Out the Tar and Feathers.”
And the guillotines.
@ LOL in Oreogn (09:30:22) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie
You are absolutely right! And the Wikepdia quote from Mein Kampf that you point to says it all. People only actually expect and comprehend in others what they habitually they do themselves. So that the vast majority of honest people never expect to be lied to, and can hardly believe it when it happens. And even professional embellishers of the common or garden variety ( politicians? journalists? ambitious academics? stock promoters?) never expect THE BIG LIE. Nobody expects it, apart from the big liars themselves, and the occasional uniformed psychopath.
And if anthropogenic global warming were a stock, it would be a dotcom dream that has just run from 2c to $35, or a little Canadian gold company with a name like Bre-Ex. It’s what happens. The big lie is told and everyone belives it. And then one day suddenly we all go “Oops..”
Very important people talking about very important things, with no facts to justify their importance or their views. Sounds normal for our government or the UN. Maybe Austrian is spoken and they need a translator. Or maybe a link to WUWT to get the ice extent and a look at the sun.
Jim Watson (09:00:53) :
The next step is getting the Alarmists to ADMIT they were wrong and that, I’m afraid, will take heaven AND Earth.
with perhaps some help from that third [and much hotter] place…
Frederick Michael (09:19:32) :
Notice that the slope of the antarctic sea ice for May is about 4 million sq. km. per month. That’s more than twice the slope for the arctic and that means that the total is going to rise a lot over the next month (or more).
================
Unfortunately, this trend will be explained away by “a cooling offset” created by the ozone “hole” (another ridiculous farce propagated by bad science and federal research dollars).
Indiana Bones:
“In the face of these facts – and having the benefit of hindsight – how do these politicians plan to extract themselves from the backlash that is inevitable. Do they think they will not be held responsible for perpetrating an inhumane hoax?”
The left has painted themselves into a corner with AGW and will fight bitterly to maintain the hoax. This is very important to them for deep rooted ideological reasons, however; I’m not so certain exposing AGW as the hoax that it is will end up being that devastating to more people than an Al Gore or two. Why?
The political left will simply bury “Climate Change” and/or morph the hoax into two forms: 1. “Alarmism in support of a better environment for our children is no vice”. (Many of us have already heard that). 2. “We’ve never said what flat-earth wingnuts claimed we have said.”
The press will run interference and the vast middle of the electorate, (“moderates” & “independants”), who are politically incurious, will not know the difference.
The real agenda, as Dr. Lockwood puts it in the previous post, is “pre-emptive denial.” They know the earth is cooling, and they are pre-emptively denying the cold hard facts!
Anthony,
Let’s hope we get some unbiased facts from this expedition (NASA JPL?)…um probably asking for too much…
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/arctic-20090429.html
G
Frederick Michael (09:19:32) :
There’s a news story coming that’s could bring down the AGW hoax like a house of cards. Compare this graph with the arctic graph above:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png
Notice that the slope of the antarctic sea ice for May is about 4 million sq. km. per month. That’s more than twice the slope for the arctic and that means that the total is going to rise a lot over the next month (or more). There is a good chance the all time HIGH record for sea ice worldwide will be broken. This is at such perfect variance with the idiotic pronouncements by the AGW fanatics that they won’t be able to dance away.
I’d like to see a headline that starts with the words, “Break Out the Tar and Feathers.”
Thanks for that link; but don’t hold your breath waiting for that headline anytime soon. The only thing propping this up now is the media, and they’ve become so politically vested in AGW being true that they’ll never let go of it no matter what.
Think “Baghdad Bob” here talking to the press with a 1,000-foot glacier floating behind him. “There is no global cooling here! No global cooling!”
I feel like I wake up in a parallel universe some mornings. Every time I think, in light of current observation, that this can’t go on much longer, it just keeps on going like the Energizer Bunny.
‘melting faster *than expected* ‘ can mean anything, just find someone who didn’t expect it to melt at all.
To their credit, the AGW media are careful to put these little disclaimers in, which, when it comes to bollocking time, will excuse many of wrong doing.
They will “misrepresent” the data until it puts them into a position to simply be marginalized due to their “exaggeration of reality”, we just have to keep the course and let them swerve back and forth and wait for the crash.
The Titanic comes to mind… Big Massive Ship thought Unsinkable…chunk of ice…and you know..
Strange, not a whiff of climate alarmism on the BBC news so far. How could they have missed this golden opportunity?
Steven Goddard please note that Dorthe Dahl-Jensen is actually a female. She is apparently on the AGW side of the argument and do not forget that we have the Copenhagen conference coming up in December and the Danish politicians would not like to see that conference finishing without a result – the “right” result.
meemoe_uk (10:33:29) :
‘melting faster *than expected* ‘ can mean anything, just find someone who didn’t expect it to melt at all.
Indeed, just like the recent expedition to the Arctic that initially said that they had measured ‘thicker than expected sea ice’ but reported results within the usual range for the areas they measured.
santitafarella ,
Thanks for pointing us to realclimate.
None of us had ever heard of that before and it will be very exciting to read what “real climate scientists” have to say about this important issue.
Interpreting simple X-Y graphs is well beyond the capabilities of most of us with only advanced degrees in science in engineering.
santitafarella, you reccomend “Real Climate” as the sole scientific source? No others? Climate Audit per chance? Or must the site “comply” with the “correct” viewpoint?
The media are no longer concerned about fairness and objectivity. The post-modern journalist is an activist first and foremost. Facts don’t matter. Facts often confuse the narrative. All that matters is public opinion and public policy are steered towards the greater good.
The same goes for science. Facts and objectivity are also o longer important. Advocacy is the new science. Another problem: Many (if not most) scientists depend upon government funding. No crisis, no funding. Since scientists who don’t work can’t promote the greater good, they may have to exaggerate or fudge a little here and there.
As the oceans lose heat (falsifying the AGW theory, by the way) global sea ice is likely to prosper.
http://climatesci.org/2009/05/05/have-changes-in-ocean-heat-falsified-the-global-warming-hypothesis-a-guest-weblog-by-william-dipuccio/
santitafarella
Gee guy. Thanks for the tip. I’m sure that very few around here have ever heard of Real Climate. After all, a site that’s still trying to defend the MBH Hockey Stick must be doing objective science and not involved in the spin doctor game.
The other possibility of course is that Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann et. al. need a platform from which to defend GCMs that can’t predict anything accurately and paleoclimate reconstructions that make the latest Harry Potter novel sound reasonable.
Reply: I deleted his comment, someone else approved it. It was pure abuse and contributed nothing ~ charles the moderator
OT with all the discussion on the UHI on this site here is an article on the reverse “Farmers’ crops keeping US cool ”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17079-farmers-crops-keeping-us-cool.html
Apparently “santitafarella” stepped over the line and is gone. Which brings up something that’s been bothering me: why promote RealClimate on the sidebar? Game theory says that quid pro quo is the successful strategy in situations like this.
RC should be promoted only when there is mutual cooperation. Until RC posts a link to WUWT, they shouldn’t get free publicity.
Besides, they lack credibility.
Steve Goddard (10:48:08) :
From Tommy Boy…
“I’m picking up your sarcasm…Well, I should hope so, because I’m laying it on pretty thick.”
Clearly the unavoidable theme of the NSIDC release is the dramatic arctic ice rebuild over the last 2 years.
Yet the final two paragraphs are devoted to a Rutgers study (forgive me if I’ve misconstrued this) that posits that lesser summer arctic ice somehow foreshadows warming of some sort, and less precipitation in North America. This appears to be along the lines of the positive-feedback-dominates, climate-spinning-out-of-control argument.
Now if this is so, then shouldn’t the 2005 ice minimum in the Arctic have promoted further warming and not cooling, the jist of the release? It seems non-sensical.
Was this tacked on at the end just to contradict the point in an inconvenient press release?
I think it might be worth pointing out this webite and CA both link to “Real Climate” while the reverse cannot be said.
Pardon OT Anthony…
Granted it’s lame to be html tag inhibited – but might you consider a plug-in WYSIWYG comment editor, e.g. ?
http://www.techmixer.com/add-wysiwyg-comment-rich-text-editor-on-wordpress-comment-using-tinymcecomment/
chagrined.
Excluding media that is already skeptical of AGW (“The Australian,” talk radio, blog sites such as this, etc.), which of the media currently supporting AGW will be the first to break their ranks? -scientific journals? -newspapers? -popular magazines/periodicals? -TV? -some blockbuster Hollywood movie? What organization will first admit they were wrong? -NOAA? -NASA? -IPCC? -Congress? -Academia? How will this occur? – gradually? – precipitously? When will this occur? Where will this first occur? -in the U.S.? -Europe? -Russia? … Or will we simply continue forever in denial by swapping the definitions for “hot” and “cold?”
Harry wrote: “The political left will simply bury “Climate Change” and/or morph the hoax into two forms: … 2. “We’ve never said what flat-earth wingnuts claimed we have said.” The press will run interference and the vast middle … will not know the difference.”
That’s why our side should eventually seek an NSF grant to create a “They Said It” website for historical-research + cautionary purposes. What a hoot it’ll be!
Don B 10:57:08
Wow, Don, that post on Pielke Senior’s blog is wonderful. It deserves a post of its own. Watch for it soon on both icecap.us and climatedepot.com
Kevin Trenberth knows where the ‘extra heat’ has gone. Remember, last year in an interview with NPR he let it slip that maybe the extra heat had been radiated back out into space? Heh, heh, heh.
==========================================
AEGeneral (10:29:32) :
“Break Out the Tar and Feathers.”
Thanks for that link; but don’t hold your breath waiting for that headline anytime soon. The only thing propping this up now is the media, and they’ve become so politically vested in AGW being true that they’ll never let go of it no matter what.
Actually, I may write that headline (and the article) for the local paper. I believe that the simplicity of the sea ice being a new high will trump any complex counter-arguments. Remember, when someone is being asked to sacrifice, they get very angry very quick when clear evidence of fraud crops up.
By the way, one amusing trick is to go the other way, and not hint at the direction of the facts in the beginning. Something like, “Total Global Sea Ice Has Set an All Time Record,” can be a good start. People who might react by tuning you out will be sucked in. Then hit them with the fact that it’s a record high.
This works especially well if you can do it in person just as a believer has taken a mouthful of beer or soda.
These studies simply give us an idea of the time lag between undertaking a piece of research and reporting it after completion vs the immediate reporting of results from an expedition.
Large research projects, often collaborations, tend to be funded for two to three years. Results are reported only towards the end or after completion. The most high profile conferences require submission of abstracts or full papers, often for peer review, on average 9 months before the conference. What I mean is that the research may well include data from the period 2005-2007.
That said, yes, they should be aware of the current situation, however consider this – perhaps they did mention it but it was conveniently overlooked in selective reporting.
To those concerned about RC not reciprocating the links, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That they are so petty should not be of any concern to open-minded folks.
I’d love to see George Monbiot of UK’s The Guardian suffer a sudden and highly embarassing Damascene conversion over AGW.
It’s only a matter of time now…
“How will this occur? – gradually? – precipitously? When will this occur?”
If the summer arctic ice extent breaks through the NSIDC mean, that would be a “news peg” for a fence-sitting, head-scratching, thumb-sucking article–or maybe something stronger.
Another news peg would be the trend of the odds on global warming bets on Intrade–if someone fair and knowledgeable will only approach the site to ask it to set up such bets.
was that final 2 AGW paragraphs in the press release included to give the press something else to write/broadcast about than inconvenient data?
OT: April North American temperatures are now in the NCDC database though the narrative on the front page is still March.
The real agenda?
Not hard to see:
-A little bit of old time religion (Gore’s prelapsarian idylls);
-a bit intellectual faddism, always a danger;
-mix in some self-serving careerism and some big egos who like to have the world’s attention and want to “save” everyone;
-good ole fears of or for the apocalypse, always bubbling away below the surface;
-add a terrific dash of ignorance about science and analytical methods;
-don’t forget the rise of environmentalism, the secular religion that, for many, replaces that dead bearded guy in the sky, and which is often a pretty beneficial thing;
-also the distrust of Big Oil (not very nice guys, after all), and a dislike of pollution;
-and finally, some advocacy groups who are riding this like crazy as a way to grow the “movement” and fund raise
Is it really so mysterious? No need for dark conspiracy theories. Just human beings carrying on as usual. References to Goebbels’ “Big Lie” are just vicious and misplaced. AGW folks like to have a dragon to slay, and so do a lot of the people commenting here – the evil, lying, socialistic, human-engineering, liberal, elite, GREEN, political cabal. Get real…
No heat = no AGW.
Promotion of AGW = promtion of fraud.
This is how you prove warming
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learningzone/clips/2553.flv
Would be interesting to know what the ice cores say about the MWP
Don B (10:57:08) :
“As the oceans lose heat (falsifying the AGW theory, by the way) global sea ice is likely to prosper.”
The problem is that record ice formation means record amounts of heat transferred to the atmosphere. With its low specific heat, that will result in significant atmospheric temperature increases.
So warmists will switch hype back to air temperatures.
Steven
Nice article. You know all this about ice and I now all this about ice.
However, we need to get to grips with the fact that the science has become subservient to the agenda spun by environmentalists who are leading politicians -who are only to willing to be led – to a tax bonanza that has a very appealing green cloak. There are few people willing to speak up as that would mean they appear willing to sacrifice the planet for their own selfish ends. The sooner we get to grips with the reality that climate science is one of the most unscientific sciences there is-and that scrutiny of it is not all that it should be-the better we will be able to counter the message.
Tonyb
a leading expert told peers ……from the Moon University, with its campus located at the “Mare Ibrium”, of the Lunatic Faculty of crazy studies, where highly respected professors, who came directly from the NASA asylum of Boulder, Colorado, USA, currently lecture on the matter.
All visitors are commonly honoured with the local and most delicious syrup of “Moonish” (Highly Concentradted Lysergic Acid).
Catlin expedition: Obvious error in design? If they wish to evaluate ice thickness for anaomalies should it not be done over a very short time period? During 100 days the weather, including temperature, sunlight,clouds and winds, would I presume make their readings of little use since they are inconsistent and not homogenious. Plus they would be blown in different directions. That DC3 flyover was probably done over 1 week. If the Catliners stayed until August I bet their readings would really show thining!
“Rainforest film brings out stars”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8033535.stm
The rainforests should be protected for their own sake. In the future after the global warming apocalypse has failed to materialise people arn’t going to listen especialy those in the third world who have been told they cannot industrialise for the sake of their childrens children
I can see the headline now:
Rutgers Study Says Less Ice Promotes Warming
Many on the alarmists side, such as radio host Thom Hartman, have been declaring that we are witnessing AGW caused “climate chaos” just as the IPCC predicted.
Well, they’re half right.
We are clearly witnessing chaos.
Climate? Not so much.
If the three Catlin stooges were so convinced the North Polar ice cap was melting dramatically……..
Catlin Quote.
“Regardless of exactly when the summer ice will disappear, the downward trend is clear, and shrinking ice cover will change almost everything in the Arctic, and will also be felt globally.”
……..then why did they plan to be picked up in June when they would [by their own claims] have had to be walking on water/or travelled at Olympian speed for all the time they were on the ice? Not 6.12 Kms a day average.
Whatever the final days bring, the ‘scientific data’ they collect will have to be massaged to provide ‘proof’ of something outside the natural variation that Mother Nature provides.
I can see them lining up at Buckingham Palace for their medals as I type…….
UK Sceptic (11:26:21) :
I’d love to see George Monbiot of UK’s The Guardian suffer a sudden and highly embarassing Damascene conversion over AGW.
Me too! I’m not holding my breath, though – he’s so far down the road, it’s going to take some turning back.
It will be interesting to see how the Internet affects this, though. IIRC, the ‘ice age’ scare of the 70’s (using Hansen’s model!) died relatively quietly, but then we weren’t being told to modify our behaviour or suffer extra taxes, and nor was it discussed widely in the media.
Now, everything anyone wrote about AGW is preserved and there will be some awful wailing and gnashing of teeth by those who have been dining out on it for so long.
I’m not a vindictive person, but I have to say that it will give me a lot of pleasure…
Dr. Svalgaard @(10:09:19)!
“with perhaps some help from that third [and much hotter] place…”
What! An admission that the sun might conceivably prove us all wrong?!? Heresy! 😉
(Yes, I know you were referring to a hot, snowball-melting netherworld, but my initial misreading struck me as amusing.)
The problem I have with statements like those of the UNSG is that we have no idea what “expected” is. If they really think that a human lifespan or two indicates what should be “normal”, well, that’s as bad as thinking the Sun revolves around the Earth. And in most cases they’re only talking about 30 years. It’s narrow, arrogant, and just plain silly.
Why is 1979 the starting point for so many trends?
As I have often commented previously, for as long as the media are in on the scam it will persist.
One weekend of “Cooling” programmes and it all falls apart.
Never underestimate the power of the press even when we have that great friend the Internet.
Last week we were warned of an impending Pandemic called Swine Flu…so we waited…and waited for the first fatalities of the 750,000 predicted for the UK…yet within days we were shown interviews with people who had survived it.
Today in England a 12 year girl proudly pronounced it was “like a cold”.
We await the media reaction.
Once they get used to eating “humble pie” they might…they just might give AGW another look.
Well we can hope.
MikeN (12:25:27) :
Why is 1979 the starting point for so many trends?
Because that was when the trends began to head upwards….
You don’t want to have your trend diminishedby including earlier years with the opposite trend, do you?
The problem with the MSM is that, for them, impending disaster is much more newsworthy than impending normality…
Quoting:
“The Alarmists have already been proved wrong. That was the easy part–the Earth has done it for us.
The next step is getting the Alarmists to ADMIT they were wrong and that, I’m afraid, will take heaven AND Earth.”
Commenting:
You’re bucking for quote of the week, ain’t ya? 😉
What is the real agenda?
There are multiple agendas at work here.
Many people are genuinely concerned about the environment. They take the precautionary principle to heart and cannot separate science from the propaganda, cannot distinguish skeptical arguments from the straw-man counter arguments and believe a scientific consensus on AGW is both real and meaningful.
Others are profiteers like Al Gore. They are rent-seeking by playing upon the fears of the ignorant and gullible. Many scientists fall into this category because they depend upon government funding for their livelihoods. No crisis, no grant money.
Others, particularly politicians, are seeking more control. They don’t like capitalism, the internal combustion engine, or free choice and believe they know how best for everyone to live. Some of these believe they are saving the planet from catastrophe will others are just capitalizing on a crisis. Some are die-hard Marxists, despite the fact that communist nations have the worst environmental records ever.
Others, like Hansen, have a mixture of these plus a healthy dose of megalomania.
“Why is 1979 the starting point for so many trends?”
Possibly to do with when the satalites started recording data.
this is just a case of wether not climate, wether you look at facts or use the climate of hype
Most of the AGW crowd’s hysterical propaganda is based on the notion that summer Arctic sea ice minima was consistently in the 8-11 mil km2 range in the first half of the 20th century, though how exactly those projections are arrived at is seldom discussed, mostly from GCMs I would imagine, Given that kind of assumed baseline, nothing that’s likely to occur in the Arctic will stop them from cranking out dramatic graphs showing plummeting ice levels, to be dispensed to useful idiots in the media who have no idea what they’re looking at.
http://oregonstate.edu/groups/hydro/Seminars/spring09/docs/042209_Mote.pdf see pgs. 10-12
http://www.amap.no/acia/GraphicsSet1.pdf see pg. 10 http://nihongo.wunderground.com/climate/SeaIce_Fig04.asp
Echoing Kim, above, Wow!
Totaly OT but interesting
“We are animals”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2009/04/map_of_the_week_wicken_fen.html
I am still wondering why these results are ‘worse than expected’ when there is so much accuracy attributed to the GCMs.
And why do we often see quotes that sea levels are rising but there never seems to be any information on where this has occurred in order to check the accuracy of the statement?
No, it is not clear. One meaning is true, and that is made apparent when the sentence is reordered as “Just two years ago, polar ice caps were melting far faster than expected.” Look at the graphs at the top of this page, and you’ll see that around 2006 and 2007 there was less ice than now in the Arctic.
His statement is incorrect in the “ice caps” part, as the Antarctic’s ice has been growing, so it should say “Arctic ice cap”. Then there is the related issue about what was “expected”.
However, the fact that he said “just two years ago” indicates that he knows that the statement is completely false now. So despite the other errors in the statement, his addition of the “two years ago” phrase confirms that he knows he is being deceitful in using that description in a pronouncement.
Someone has already pointed this out on this forum, but to reiterate: the parallels to Orwell’s 1984 vision in his classic novel, 1984, are remarkable.
DOUBLETHINK and revisionist history are no longer figments of a genius’s imagination–they are today’s reality. The agenda: accumulation of power and subjugation of the masses by the governmental elite through scaring the daylights out of people, and other means of wool-pulling-over-eyes and destabilization of society.
According to Orwell: ” If human equality is to be for ever averted—if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently—then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.”
@ Dave Middleton (09:58:54)
“Why do they always put a linear trend-line on the ice extent and temperature graphs?”
Excellent point. In fact I remember most of my undergrad science teachers docking us points if we *EVER* used the microsoft excel trendline feature. It is a very dubious thing to do but somehow this one area of science gets away with it time and time again.
In Texas we have a saying that describes this pretty well. “Beating a dead horse.”
Richard Heg (11:02:35) :
OT with all the discussion on the UHI on this site here is an article on the reverse “Farmers’ crops keeping US cool ”
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17079-farmers-crops-keeping-us-cool.html
I went to New Scientist, but the article is embargoed.
“The World’s No.1 Science & Technology News Service
Sorry, this article is embargoed”
WUWT?
I only hope I live long enough to hear Al Gore eat his “the planet has a fever” words. Oops how silly of me, by then it will be manmade climate change, right? For you scientist types would that be AGCC?
I’m having a déjà vu’ experience over all this. It Reminds me of my son when he was 14 and claimed to know everything even when he was dead wrong. Perhaps these spoiled children all need a good spanking.
Regarding the Catlin expedition, has anyone who is more patient and detail oriented than me been keeping a log of the daily latitude and longitude readings for the Catlin expedition and plotting those readings on a map? I keep noticing odd anomalies, such as today the “Time on the Arctic Ocean” is listed at 67 days, even though the counter indicates 65 days, 15 hours and counting. Also, I assume the wind has been shifting all around while they have been waiting for the resupply, because they have drifted this way and that for the last 9 days. Given the misleading biotelemetry data, what are the odds that the latitude and longitude readings are fudged?
You have all missed the most significant point in the article. The ice has awakened.
Ice melts much faster when it is awake.
The NSIDC offers us a strange analysis: “For the past few years, Arctic sea ice extent for most months has been more than two standard deviations below the 1979 to 2000 mean, particularly in summer. Two standard deviations provide an estimate of the expected range of natural variability. Because of cooler than average temperatures, Arctic sea ice extent at the end of April 2009 was within the expected range of natural variability.” AND “Compared to previous Aprils, April 2009 is near the middle of the distribution (10th lowest of 31 years). The linear trend indicates that for the month of April, ice extent is declining by 2.8% per decade, an average of 42,400 square kilometers (16,400 square miles) of ice per year.” SO the decline is therefore perfectly within the boundaries of NATURAL VARIABILITY. Thank you NSIDC!
But wait there is more…
NSIDC writes: “Causes of the slow April decline Cool conditions over the Bering Sea, noted in the April 2009 update, persisted through mid-April. Cool weather also slowed ice loss in the Barents Sea. The cool temperatures resulted from the movement of cold air from eastern Siberia across the central Arctic. After mid-April, the pattern shifted to relatively warmer conditions in the Bering Sea and melt progressed, resulting in the faster decline in the total extent during the second half of the month.” SO clearly polar air masses control the temperatures AND the ice conditions…
“It is difficult to assess how the slow decline through April will affect the summer minimum ice extent. Persistence of cool conditions through the summer could lead to a greater September ice extent compared to that of recent years. However, as discussed in our last post, the spring ice cover is thin and hence quite vulnerable to summer melt. However this summer unfolds, scientists expect to see high year-to-year variability in ice extent embedded within the long-term decline.” YET the Alfred Wegener Polar Institute measured the sea ice thickness and found unexpected thicker ice (4m insted of 2m…) NSIDC, please update your database… LOL
But wait there even funnier…
NSIDC quotes a study: “”Can summer ice extent affect winter weather? A new study suggests that Arctic ice extent at the end of summer can affect precipitation at lower latitudes the following winter. Jennifer Francis from Rutgers University and colleagues compared winter weather following summers with below-average ice extent, to weather following summers with above-average ice. The researchers found that low summer sea ice extent is linked to drier winters over much of the U.S., Scandinavia, and Alaska, and wetter winters in the northern Mediterranean, Japan, and the Pacific Northwest. The study showed that extensive ice loss in summer warmed the Arctic atmosphere during autumn. This warmth weakened the storm track that encircles the northern hemisphere, affecting weather patterns far away from the Arctic. As sea ice continues to decline in summer, these influences will become more prominent.” WHAT’s really funny is that the map attached showing the areas of dryer winters or wetter winters show the OPPOSITE result than the 2008-2009 winter… UK is supposed to be dryer OOOOOPS they had SNOW in London!!!! and the UK Met Office prediction was dead wrong… at 6 months, they could not predict the proper character of the winter… Really, One also can smile at a paper that “This warmth weakened the storm track that encircles the northern hemisphere,”… Perhaps Miss Francis should be well inspired to read about atmospheric circulation and study the works of Leroux about Mobile Polar Anticyclones, read the 2005 PhD thesis of Alexis Pommier on the North Atlantic AMP trajectories in the past 50 years… Oh but wait a minute: the AGW crowd always tell us “this is weather not climate”… LOL
There are two distinct groups of climate scientists.
Group one – let us call them alarmists – plays computer games depicting a virtual Nature with images of fantasy and unreality.
Group two – let us call them skeptics – observes, records, studies and reports on the reality of Nature.
————————————————————-
Hot-air doomsayers
Ian Plimer | May 05, 2009
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25429080-7583,00.html
Well-known catastrophists criticised the book before they actually received a review copy. Critics, who have everything to gain by frightening us witless with politicised science, have now shown their true colours. No critic has argued science with me. I have just enjoyed a fortnight of being thrashed with a feather.
Primary producers should be very worried about an emissions trading scheme underpinned by incomplete science. Unions in industrial centres may even make conditional financial support of the ALP because the workforce they represent will be lambs to the slaughter with an ETS.
The huge number of recent letters tell me that there are winds of change. The average punter has been told for more than two decades that we are all going to fry. He is not stupid and is blessed with a rare commodity missing in many academic circles: common sense.
Life experiences of rural people are very different from those of city folk who have little first-hand experience of nature. My correspondents feel helpless and disenfranchised with the unending negative moralistic cacophony about climate change. They know it smells but they cannot find where the smell comes from. The reason why the book has been a publishing sensation is because the average person knows that they are being conned and finally they have a source reference.
In the past, climate change has never been driven by CO2. Why should it be now driven by CO2 when the atmospheric CO2 content is low? The main greenhouse gas has always been water vapour. Once there is natural global warming, then CO2 in the atmosphere increases. CO2 is plant food, it is not a pollutant and it is misleading non-scientific spin to talk of carbon pollution. If we had carbon pollution, the skies would be black with fine particles of carbon. We couldn’t see or breathe. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong appeals to science yet demonstrates she does not have a primary school understanding of science.
The atmosphere contains 800 billion tonnes of carbon in CO2. Soils and plants contain 2000 billion tonnes, the oceans 39,000 billion tonnes and rocks in the top few kilometres of the crust contain 65,000,000 billion tonnes of carbon in carbon compounds. The atmosphere only contains 0.001 per cent of the total carbon in the top few kilometres of the Earth.
It is human arrogance to think that we can control climate, a process that transfers huge amounts of energy. Once we control the smaller amount of energy transferred by volcanoes and earthquakes, then we can try to control climate.
Until then, climate politics is just a load of ideological hot air.
To argue that human additions to atmospheric CO2, a trace gas in the atmosphere, changes climate requires an abandonment of all we know about history, archaeology, geology, solar physics, chemistry and astronomy. We ignore history at our peril.
I await the establishment of a Stalinist-type Truth and Retribution Commission to try me for my crimes against the established order and politicised science.
Discovery News –
May 5, 2009 — Perched on the soaring Karakoram mountains in the Western Himalayas, a group of some 230 glaciers are bucking the global warming trend. They’re growing.
Throughout much of the Tibetan Plateau, high-altitude glaciers are dwindling in the face of rising temperatures.
…in the rugged western corner of the plateau, the story is different, according to a new study. Among legendary peaks like K2 and Nanga Parbat, glaciers with a penthouse view of the world are growing, and have been for almost three decades.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/05/05/himalayas-glaciers.html
Just how much does this alledged ‘man made global weather change‘ is about real science and how much is it about governments lying to its citizens and reaching into the collective wallets to extort more taxes?
Professor Philip Stott’s Clamour Of The Times.
http://web.mac.com/sinfonia1/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Clamour_Of_The_Times/Entries/2009/5/4_Mine_On_Australia_Fair.html
Mine On Australia Fair
[The tune is here]
Australians all let us rejoice,
For Rudd has set us free;
We’ve jet black coal and iron for toil;
Our mines are delved for thee;
Our land abounds in Nature’s gifts
Uranium rich and rare;
In history’s page, let every stage
Mine On Australia Fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing,
Dig On Australia Fair.
Beneath our radiant Southern Cross
We’ll toil with hearts and hands;
To make this CO2 of ours
Renowned in all the lands;
Emission trades we now shall freeze
Our Kev has laid that bare;
With courage let us all combine
To Mine Australia Fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing,
Dig on Australia Fair.
The political burying of totally impractical ‘global warming’ policies gathers pace – they are now ‘Rudderless in Oz’.
__________________
P.S. Australia emits more carbon per head than any other advanced industrial nation. What a mine of information we are.
a bit OT but of interest, almost worth a post
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=polar-bear-prompts-climate-change-action&print=true
Professor Philip Stott:
Excellent New Comment from India
http://sunderbanislands.blogspot.com/2009/04/great-global-warming-hoax.html
well-known Indian journalist working with The Times of India has just launched a new blog, ‘Vanishing Islands of the Sunderbans’. Like me, Achintyarup Ray has decided that there is an urgent need to launch a campaign against ‘global warming’ alarmism. His first posting, ‘A Global Warming Hoax’, is excellent, and it makes some very necessary observations about what is really happening to islands within the World Heritage zone of the Sunda(e)rbans [pictured from a satellite], the largest extent of tidal mangrove swamp in the world. The region embraces the delta of the mighty River Ganges, and it is spread across the coastal districts of West Bengal, India, and Bangladesh. The mangroves are renowned for the Royal Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris), as well as for many rare birds, spotted deer, crocodiles, and snakes. Inevitably, there has been a constant cry that the Sundarbans islands are threatened by sea-level rise caused by ‘global warming’, despite, I might add, scathing criticisms of this viewpoint from Indian Sub-Continent specialists, such as Dr. Robert Bradnock.
Shaun (14:19:21) :
Ice melts much faster when it is awake.
Presumably because it is hitting the gym twice a week in an attempt to maintain its girlish figure.
Mark
The Vikings liked living in Greenland when it had far less ice than now. 😉
“There is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition.”
–Richard Lindzen,
MIT, Alfred P. Sloan Endowed Chair of Meteorology
“We find that the current Greenland warming is not unprecedented in recent Greenland history. Temperature increases in the two warming periods are of a similar magnitude, however, the rate of warming in 1920–1930 was about 50% higher than that in 1995–2005.”
–Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L11707, 13 June 2006, doi:10.1029/2006GL026510.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL026510.shtml
(h/t Benny Peiser)
I’m glad you reproduced the article. The Australian seems to have pulled the link.
Jeremy (13:48:53) :
@ Dave Middleton (09:58:54)
“Why do they always put a linear trend-line on the ice extent and temperature graphs?”
Excellent point. In fact I remember most of my undergrad science teachers docking us points if we *EVER* used the microsoft excel trendline feature. It is a very dubious thing to do but somehow this one area of science gets away with it time and time again.
****
In a recent WUWT blog,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/11/making-holocene-spaghetti-sauce-by-proxy/
a debator “could only accept linear trend graph” despite Vulcanoes, La Ninas that randomly affected the linetrend a lot.
I then referred to many other trends:
Temperature difference 1980 to 2000 and 2009 :
UAH actual vals, 5 year smooth. 2000: 0,10K 2009: 0,20K
http://www.climate-movie.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/uah_global.gif
hadcrut, actual vals. 2000: 0,1K 2009: 0,3K
http://img201.imageshack.us/img201/5254/tropicshadcrut3rb1.png
polynom UAH trend. 2000: 0,18K 2009: 0,25K
http://www.holtlane.plus.com/images/uah_anomaly.jpg
polynom 2 UAH trend. 2000: 0,2K 2009: 0,15K
http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/extensions/InlineImages/image.php?AttachmentID=631
polynom 5th order trend. 2000: 0,1K 2009: 0,0K
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/uah_june08_curvefits.png
(- linear trend also shown to compare)
Linear trend , UAH. 2000: 0,24K 2009: 0,36K
What is the “Correct” trend type for data graphs?
Is there a correct trend type? I think not. I personally prefer 3 – 5 degr. polynomial as they are much less sensitive to random effects.
Money and power. That’s what global warming has been about from the beginning. Our instincts tell us this. That answers the agenda question, doesn’t it?
Poll numbers show many don’t believe the global warming hype. This news from the UN likely won’t change that.
Science a Slave to Expediency
By John McLean, The Australian
http://www.icecap.us/
To the best of my knowledge, no climate conspiracy has ever existed. But another force has driven science into its present parlous state where the output of computer software is held in higher regard than observational data, where marketing spin is more important than fact and evidence, and where a trenchant defence of the notion of man-made global warming is seen as paramount. The single, pre-eminent force driving this distortion of science originates in the once-august UN.
For many years climate researchers have understood that their proposals will only be funded if they are pitched in line with government policy. Even worse, unless some aspect of their results appears to perpetuate government thinking, renewal of their funding is unlikely. Other climatologists are acutely aware of the potential consequences for their employers and their own employment prospects should they speak out in criticism of the dominant alarmist paradigm. Scientists who have criticised the hypothesis of human-caused climate change have had their funding curtailed or employment terminated.
>>>What’s the real agenda?
>>>A global command economy.
Yup. That’s why everything is global nowadays.
Global Warming
Global Pandemic(s)
Global Property Price Rise (and Fall)
Global Credit Crunch (resulting)
Global Markets
Global Migration
Global Immigration
Global Corporations
I’m sure there are more…. Anything to convince people that there are global problems that only a global government can solve – so we all get sucked into a One World Government.
JR (14:19:05) :
“Regarding the Catlin expedition, has anyone who is more patient and detail oriented than me been keeping a log of the daily latitude and longitude readings for the Catlin expedition and plotting those readings on a map? I keep noticing odd anomalies, such as today the “Time on the Arctic Ocean” is listed at 67 days, even though the counter indicates 65 days, 15 hours and counting. Also, I assume the wind has been shifting all around while they have been waiting for the resupply, because they have drifted this way and that for the last 9 days. Given the misleading biotelemetry data, what are the odds that the latitude and longitude readings are fudged?”
***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
You’re right.
Catlin ops must be mathematically challenged. They’ve jumped a day; today’s updated data should have been for day 66 not 67. On top of that, they’ve once again ‘lost’ 20 km to the pole. How ever will they find them whem they go pick them up in 3 weeks — 400-450 kms & 15 days short of their stated goals. Rev up the spin machine…
The Arctic ice was shrinking but now returns to normal. Even the shrinking seems to have been primarily due to a natural cycle, the Arctic Oscillation. See piece:
“Winds, Ice Motion Root Cause Of Decline In Sea Ice, Not Warmer Temperatures
ScienceDaily (Dec. 29, 2004) — Extreme changes in the Arctic Oscillation in the early 1990s — and not warmer temperatures of recent years — are largely responsible for declines in how much sea ice covers the Arctic Ocean, with near record lows having been observed during the last three years, University of Washington researchers say.”
Another natural cycle, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, may also be involved in Arctic ice behaviour; see Patrick Michaels, Ice Storm, Tech Central Station, 17 Feb. 2006. Note that the highest temperatures recorded in the Arctic were around 1940, before heavy increases in our emissions.
Down here in Australia we are having a fine old debate over the Antarctic ice. Temperatures have not risen on most of the continent since the 1970s (World Climate Report, Antarctica Again, 30 Jan. 2009), and land ice is in equilibrium with any losses balanced by gains elsewhere. Sea ice is growing not shrinking. A British team blames all this on cooling by a wind from the ozone hole coming down to the surface, swamping AGW and causing sea ice gain. But then why does the surface wind reach a maximum in autumn when the sea ice is at a minimum at this very season? (See British Antarctic Survey Press Release: “Increasing Antarctic sea ice extent linked to the ozone hole” 05/2009 April 21). Recent dramas involving some ice loss from the Wilkins ice shelf involve part of the Antarctic Peninsula, an unusually fast-warming region which extends far out from the continent and may thereby be encountering unique natural current variations (Duncan Wingham).
Whatever they have to do to get the tax money, they will do it. And yes grant money comes out of the exact same pot.
OT: But in the spirit of… 🙂
Green Carbon Neutral Expedition was fortunate to be saved by a hulking great oil tanker.
The British crew of a polar expedition have been rescued after their yacht was caught in a hurricane-force storm and capsized three times in towering north Atlantic swells.
The three members of the Carbon Neutral Expedition, two of whom were planning to cross the Greenland ice cap as part of a nationwide educational initiative, were hauled to safety on Saturday 400 miles off the coast of Ireland. They are now nursing their bruises on their way to Portland, Maine, where they are due to arrive in three days’ time.
Raoul Surcouf, 40, a landscape gardener from Jersey, and Richard Spink, 31, a physiotherapist from Bristol, had set up the expedition to show how journeys to some of the most remote places on the planet can be undertaken with minimal impact on the environment. Their relief was tinged with a sense of irony as the rescue craft sent by Falmouth coastguard was the Overseas Yellowstone, a 113,000-tonne oil tanker.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/may/05/polar-expedition-yacht-rescue
Well, last year was basically “no trend since 1989” as well, and the 1st year ice phenom did eventually bite. Now that NSIDC is claiming 2nd year ice is still vulnerable (but presumably less so than 1st year ice to some degree) I think we’re going to end up better than 2008 (and much better than 2007), but perhaps not much better than 2005 mininum. 2010 might be the real year when the arctic ice numbers will be so vividly embarrasing for AGWers that the twisting and turning to explain them should be very entertaining.
Mick J,
From the article…
“The CNE team would like to give heartfelt thanks to Falmouth and Irish coastguards for their professionalism in the rescue operation.”
What? No thanks to the brave crew of the oil tanker? Thanks to their professionalism and their BAB (Big Boat) the econauts were saved.
Finally we’re seeing the true picture of the ice at the Poles. First, it “awakens” as though sensing its own doom. Soon after, it “collapses” (probably after reading the morning paper with its cries of impending doom), and finally, almost magically it “evaporates” into thin air.
Of course, it isn’t the ice that’s awakening but people’s skepticism, and that has the Alarmists truly alarmed.
Anthony
J. Peden (12:55:34) :
An apropos quote by William Dipuccio that should be considered as a quote of the week is to be found in the last sentence of this article steered to by J. Peden. The subject of the article would also be a great post.
http://climatesci.org/2009/05/05/have-changes-in-ocean-heat-falsified-the-global-warming-hypothesis-a-guest-weblog-by-william-dipuccio/
“Open and honest debate has been marginalized by appeals to consensus. But as history has often shown, consensus is the last refuge of poor science.”
Hi all,
The other day I posted an opinion piece I wrote for Examiner.com on one of WUWT’s posts. Got a lot of interesting feedback (I’m a liberal who happens to be skeptical about AGW catastrophes.) I’m actually the Examiner’s SF Environmental Policy Examiner (whatever that means…) and I have written about 20 pieces skeptical of the Al Gore POV. (But! I’m not 100% on your ‘side,’ as I am still a liberal–I strongly support Obama’s energy policy, and yes, that includes cap and trade.)
Examiner.com is (I think) a model for newspapers that won’t go out of business. As such, I do not believe for one second that they have an editorial opinion on global climate change, or on much of anything else, for that matter. Nobody has spoken to me about it, that’s for sure. There are many other writers who are following the conventional wisdom, but it’s clear that they also are writing independently.
Would you like to help me shape a de facto policy for Examiner.com? I could perhaps interview Anthony Watts in the comments section of a post, with you all pitching in (I’m interviewing Bjorn Lomborg tomorrow morning by telephone–he doesn’t want an email interview). I could post a survey on the site and invite readers to fill it out.
Don’t agree too quickly–I know a lot of you are Republicans, or at least far more conservative than I–and I’m sure some of what I think will annoy you. But we’re fairly close to being on the same side about the state of play on this particular issue. If you want something close to MSM coverage of what you’re thinking, I may be able to help.
I owe Anthony something–I think I’ve got ‘Hat tip to WUWT’ as a macro entry now. If I could do something in return, I’d be happy to oblige.
Do you have other thoughts?
“Many trends begin in 1979 because that is the beginning of satellite data.”
It is amazing to me how ill-informed at lot of the alarmists are.
Tom Fuller,
You may be on the cutting edge. If public opinion goes through a sea change and begins to question the “carbon” scare, you’d have bragging rights as an MSM guy who reached the “tipping point” first.
I hope you at least understand that the AGW scare is pretty much all about the money. It really is. That’s why when one scare is deconstructed [polar bears drowning, coral bleaching, global warming, sea ice melting, ocean acidification, sea level rising, etc., etc.], another scare immediately takes its place. Sometimes the scares run concurrently. The goal posts are moved from the original scare to the next new scare. They have their scares lined up and waiting their turn.
The original reason for Cap & Tax was because CO2 was gonna getcha; runaway global warming. But with a cooling planet, that is losing traction. If this were only about science, then the practical response should be: “Well! Good thing we were wrong. Look at all the money we saved everyone!”
Instead, all the C&T and other costly proposals are left fully in place. The gov’t is just looking for an ostensible reason to cash in — and raising taxes is so much easier when there’s a crisis happening.
Finally, you could use your column to set up a debate between someone like Viscount Monckton and just about anyone the AGW true believers could come up with. At least issue the challenge, and watch the fireworks.
Tom Fuller (16:49:38) :
Liberal skeptic.
I can’t believe there would be the least interest in your offer for the following reasons:
1) True scientific viewpoints are not ideological. It is insulting to a true scientist to equate political ideology to scientific position in a debate. It says that to promote a political agenda, we would skew facts, hide facts that we find inconvenient and lie when we can get away with it. Actually, much of the “skeptic’s” point in this long battle is this is precisely what is been going on with the AGW consensus.
2) Why would you be a believer in CO2 needing capping if it is not doing any harm? I believe in cleaning up toxins, unsightly land scars, shameful clear cut forests and massive ocean going fish factories that scoop up dolphins and millions of tons of unwanted species and people who spit their gum on the sidewalk but not capping and taxing the biospheres most defining element. We are trying to stop a shameful and very life altering and expensive hoax having a deep political agenda.
3) This debate is not a matter of opinion available to those who don’t understand science. You didn’t ask the average reader of the Examiner if they could offer any ideas or opinions on how to build the Golden Gate bridge. We didn’t ask the citizenry to check our calculations or offer alternative designs for the Mars missions….. This is the trouble with this whole thing. Newspaper editors, florists and interior decorators are all lining up to shout their anger about global warming without having the least clue. They rely on the “consensus” that has ordered the debate closed. The Synod of Medieval Bishops who jailed Galileo weren’t much different than the AGW consensus and the chimney sweeps, fruit vendors and boatsmen in Rome undoubtedly, angrily supported the Synod.
Tom Fuller,
You might be surprised that there are more liberals on this site and elsewhere who are deeply skeptical of catastrophic AGW than many would have you believe.
But I don’t see the AGW panic as a left/right position, as there are plenty on the political right who go along with the panic, and plenty of liberals (like Philip Stott and myself) who firmly oppose.
The question is really about scientific ethics and the conduct of science – in that sense the views of a small vocal minority have had a disproportionate effect on the body politic, even while their scientific conduct has been disgraceful.
Ed Scott wrote: “The single, pre-eminent force driving this distortion of science originates in the once-august UN.”
And the UN’s motivation (I read here a week ago) came from a desire to make nice to its billion-dollar donor, Ted Turner, an alarmist, who requested that the UN set up a climate change study group. Naturally, it was staffed with other alarmists. After that, faddism and bandwagonism took over and did their things.
Tom, if we are cooling long term, and I believe we are, then encumbering carbon and raising the price of energy is going to kill millions of people, presently living on the margin.
=============================================
Its ironic that the GW people are walking on thin ice when its getting thicker!
Mick J,
Did you notice that the yachtmen and their group heaped priaise upon the coas guard (who undoubtely did a competent job of finding a passing ship to save them), but had not one word of thanks for the crew of the Overseas Yellowstone?
Were they struck dumb by irony, perhaps?
Icecaps around the North and South Poles are melting faster than expected, raising sea levels as a result of climate change, a major scientific survey has shown.
What rising sea levels?
I don’t see no stinking rising sea levels.
Looks the same to me as it did 50 years ago.
Heck, I haven’t seen photo #1 of before & after.
Probably because any sea level rise is academic: Lost in the noise of tides.
C’mon man, where’s the beef?
(i previously posted in one 04/30 post, but i intended to post here). Changing (a bit) the subject, i want to comment some old record temperatures posted earlier here: All the continental records presented in that table (except for North America and Antartica) were found to be not reliable, they were taken under not standardized conditions, as the Mildura’s 50 and Melbourne’s 47, they were not AIR TEMPERATURE but instead measured inside shelters that acted like “mini saunas”, all discontinued by BOM, some australian cities even used Glaisher Stand that had highs as much as 3 to 4 degrees (celsius) above stevenson screen in clear days. The Seville (50ºC) record was already discontinued by spanish meteorological office some time ago, today the accepted is the Murcia’s 47.8ºC, Argentina 47,3ºC Campo Gallo and Victoria’s (Australia) 48.1 in the (INDEED) record breaking heatwave this year (natural, records are expected to be broken from time to time, no doomsday here). I’m also agains climate alarmist (or AGW), but we sohuld not act like them manipulating data to validate unreliable old temperature records. Sorry for the por english, i’m a foreigner.
Tom Fuller (16:49:38) :
If you have some real guts and journalistic integrity, the biggest service you can provide is not to us, but to your readers. Consider the previous thread on the Nat Geo solar article. Here you have Mike Lockwood, a solar terrestrial physicist at the University of Southampton in the U.K. making this comment:
“I think you have to bear in mind that the CO2 is a good 50 to 60 percent higher than normal, whereas the decline in solar output is a few hundredths of one percent down,” Lockwood said. “I think that helps keep it in perspective.”
I know it’s manipulative, you probably know it’s manipulative and it’s so easy to expose as being manipulative. First, his percentage is exaggerated and I’m sure he knew it (if not, he’s in the wrong field. Second he’s using apples and oranges to make his point. As was pointed out in the thread, the CO2 positive warming impact is <1.3 watts/sq. meter and the solar energy negative cooling impact is 1.3 watts/sq. meter, netting at least a neutral.
I think all we’re asking is to expose the crap. Don’t let those that shout loudest and wave their arms most vigorously get the spotlight. Let the science get the spotlight!
For a little inspiration, visit the late Michael Crichton’s website and look at his speeches. He has some great stuff about looking past the arm waving and looking at the science, climate mostly, but ethics and policy as well:
http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches.html
Catastrophic Ice Cap melting is going to raise sea levels.
Where’s the rise?
Where’s the before & after?
Where’s the measurements?
I’ll tell you where the proof is, it’s out at your favorite beach.
Find a rock bluff. The one you walk by on your sojourns.
You’ll find that nothing is happening as regards sea level rise.
Most likely, the biggest problem you will witness is the trash washing up.
Go ahead, do it. Get out there and observe for yourself.
Robert Wood (09:43:28) :
Indiana Bones @ 09:06:49
…how do these politicians plan to extract themselves from the backlash that is inevitable,
They will point out they were honest and sincere victims of advice that was was thought to be accurate at the time, but turned out to be erroneous.
I expect the scientists to carry the can on this one.
“One has to wonder if some scientists are lacking access to the Internet”
Well, I for one, am willing to donate 50c/year to the “Help Connect a Poor Climate Scientist to the Internet” fund.
It’s the least one can do!
After reading this, a strange thought occured to me. The CO2 propagandia is too bizar. What if it’s being minipulated by the oil producer counteries to stop liquid fuel being made from coal. It reminds me of the era that the KBG was minipulating world politics.
“”NSIDC writes: “Causes of the slow April decline Cool conditions over the Bering Sea, noted in the April 2009 update, persisted through mid-April. Cool weather also slowed ice loss in the Barents Sea.””
Interesting they use the term ‘cool conditions or cool weather’. ‘Cold’ would undoubtedly be a better choice of words.
Reading through this thread was exhilarating. Some months ago, I wrote a paper on GW. At the end, I speculataed as to how the issue would play out. Many of my thoughts and scenarios were mentioned by the respondents. One of my favorites (noaprogrammer–11:11:18) ponders which MSM will break with populist media, first. I think that if that happens in a forceful, convincing way, others will be propelled to follow and require defense from the AGW crowd. Perhaps we would then have something like an honest debate.
cotwome (19:57:12) :
If it were record warmth it would be “Blistering or Searing Heat”.
When it’s below zero, it’s “somewhat cooler”.
Of course, the record warmth leads to catastrophic melting and unprecedented sea level rise.
Okay. I’ve really read about all the boiling over ocean levels I care to.
How’s about something about the Sea Level?
It’s one of thier biggest fearmongering claims.
Fine.
Let’s see some graphic images of sea level, like in 30-50 years ago and now.
Like BeachCity, USA at high & low tide in 1970 or 1960 or whatever.
And the same place in 2008 or 2008, low & high tide.
Let’s see what the Sea has to say.
In my experience politicians don’t often bother to do their own reseach. They prefer meeting people, talking and exerting their influnece. They tend to rely on staff for research, who may sometimes prefer to tell them what they think they want to hear, or even have their own itineraries.
Laurence:
I would definitely agree. I am a TV meteorologist. I wrote our District Congressmen:
Congressman Stupak:
I would like to commend you on your efforts to protect Lake Superior. You are a champion of one of the nation’s most precious resources. That being said, I urge you to reject a bill that’s being touted as a piece of legislation that will help protect our environment for future generations–the Waxman-Markey Energy and Climate Bill.
For years as a broadcast meteorologist, I kept silent about the issue of “global warming.” Declaring skepticism labeled you (and still does) as an anti-environmentalist. After former VP Gore’s movie hit the big screen, I could remain silent no more. “An Inconvenient Truth” was filled with so many gross distortions and outright scientific misrepresentations; I felt it was my obligation to speak out.
My school presentations now center on global warming and climate change. In them, I first state a fact–that CO2 is NOT a pollutant, but a life-giving, naturally occurring element in our atmosphere. I then show how small the human contribution to atmospheric CO2 really is compared to ocean out-gassing, etc. On the theme of small contribution, I then explain how water vapor is by far (>95%) the most dominant greenhouse gas. The bottom line is that the burning of fossil fuels contributes around 4% to a gas that is just 3% of the total volume of greenhouse gases.
I also show how the modest warming we’ve experienced over the past century is NOT alarming or out of the ordinary and how the cycles of warming and cooling oceans (which are relatively recent discoveries) correlate quite well with the ups and downs of global temperature over the last century. Another element I focus on is the sun. The IPCC report states that solar fluctuations in the climate system are not as important as rising levels of the trace gas CO2. The graphs and charts I show, prepared by eminent meteorologists and astrophysicists, call that assertion into question.
The fact is these natural fluctuations are all pointing toward global cooling over the next few decades. The Pacific Ocean has entered its cool phase (and global temperatures have leveled off and even declined some), while the Atlantic is beginning to cool after reaching its warm-cycle peak around 2005. The sun is in a deep slumber that has confounded most astronomers. These big atmospheric players are all pointing toward sustained cooling despite rising CO2 levels.
CO2 is not a pollutant and it’s not a problem. The problem is rent-seeking corporations looking to cash in on cap and trade and low-output, high-cost alternative energy. As your Michigan House colleague Congressman Dingell says “cap and trade is a tax, and it’s a great big one.” This is not the time to raise energy prices, which is what this bill will surely do. I believe the majority of your constituents will suffer adversely if this legislation is passed.
There are serious environmental problems that we can do something about. From what I understand, there are hundreds of Super Fund toxic dumps that are not being cleaned up. These dumps represent a real threat to human well-being. Carbon Dioxide is an environmental “boogey man.”
Please do the right thing and vote “no” on this bill.
Sincerely,
Karl Bohnak
Chief Meteorologist
WLUC-TV
He wrote back (I just pasted the portion that supports your statement):
Dear Mr Bohnak:
Thank you for contacting me regarding the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), a discussion draft of energy and climate change legislation proposed by Chairman Henry Waxman and Chairman Ed Markey. ACES is the basis for discussions amongst the House Energy and Commerce Committee members. I sit on the Energy and Commerce Committee and have been an active participant in the discussions. I appreciate hearing from you concerning this important issue.
Let me be clear, I believe we need legislation to combat global warming caused by human activities. According to scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the five hottest years on record have all occurred in the past 10 years, with 2005 breaking the record for the hottest year since 1895. An overwhelming majority of scientists agree that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing this unusual warming of our planet.
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finalized its most comprehensive report yet. The report concluded that global warming is caused by human actions, and if nothing is done to curb our greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures could increase, causing the melting of polar ice caps, significant rise in sea levels, untold impacts on global water supplies, agriculture production, and more intense natural disasters. Since that report, the evidence has become more apparent and the predictions more dire.
Congress needs to move beyond the debate over whether global warming exists.
Yes Laurence, he just regurgitated Al Gore’s talking points. I emailed him a response in which I attached graphics and links to further support my claims. There will be no response from him. I did post a blog with these correspondences on my station’s website:
http://www.uppermichiganssource.com/news/news_blog_post.aspx?id=295986
Tom Fuller (16:49:38) :
I have read a bunch of your articles and have been impressed with your journalistic integrity and dedication to the facts.
I think that a de facto policy towards Earth’s climate that offers a clear delineation between opinion and facts, encourages healthy skepticism and develops an appreciation for, and comfort with, the tremendous complexity and uncertainty, would serve your readers well. We have around 30 years of reasonably accurate climate data on a 4.5 billion year-old incredibly complex continually evolving planet. At present our understanding of Earth’s climate is in its infancy and it will take us centuries to unravel the mysteries. Anyone who thinks they’ve already figured it all out is deluding themselves and anyone who claims that they have all the answers is lying.
“Climate Heretic (10:34:01) : The Titanic comes to mind… Big Massive Ship thought Unsinkable…chunk of ice…and you know..”
The housing and DotCom bubble come to mind too…
The AGW bubble…… and you know…
What you should expect to see is something along this scenerio….. Even though warming was over estimated by some models, x model and y model have been right all along.. what they show is that the other guys were wrong but we still know that we are headed for imminent disaster..
They will not admit to being wrong, they will spin whatever events we see as weather into proof that they really have any clue what the climate is doing. In about 10 years, when its safe, the chicken littles will come screaming out of the closet saying we will die of cold unless… They never seem to get that lag time between hot and cold cycles right, so will assume because it continues to cool when it should be warming that we are at the end of times.
I honestly wonder what crisis they will dream up to get cap and trade passed in the US.. It seems like lately anytime Washington (and Im talkin Dems and Republicans here equally guilty) needs something controversial passed or someone controversial appointed, a huge crisis gets drummed to force it through. Honestly, Im betting the current swine flu was already in the US well before it was needed to announce it. What worries me is cooler summer, and a bad next winter could be very bad for all of us.
The Arctic winter makes an interesting story in words, too. From NSID:
…..February 3, 2009….. …January ice extent remained well below normal compared to the long term record. Ice extent averaged for January 2009 is the sixth lowest January in the satellite record.
…..March 3…..The temporary decline in ice extent from February 18 to 22 illustrates the sensitivity of Arctic sea ice extent to transient weather conditions. Conditions along southern boundary of the ice cover, such as in the Bering Sea, are typically just barely cold enough for ice to exist, and the ice there can quickly expand or retreat in response to changes in temperatures and winds.
…..March 30…..On February 28, Arctic sea ice reached its maximum extent for the year…making it the fifth-lowest maximum extent in the satellite record. The six lowest maximum extents since 1979 have all occurred in the last six years (2004-2009).
…..April 6…..Overall, it was a fairly warm winter in the Arctic. Air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean were an average of 1 to 2 degrees Celsius (1.8 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above normal this winter…..((The Bering Sea was colder))…..This warmth probably stemmed from unusually low sea ice extent in the region throughout much of the winter, which allowed the ocean to pump heat into the atmosphere.
…..May 4…..Arctic sea ice has declined dramatically over at least the past thirty years, with the most extreme decline seen in the summer melt season.
…..close to the mean extent for the reference period (1979 to 2000). The thin spring ice cover nevertheless remains vulnerable to summer melt.
I haven’t seen any mention of the La Nina, which ended last month after cooling global temperatures (since 2007?). Doesn’t if affect the Arctic?
Honestly, Im betting the current swine flu was already in the US well before it was needed to announce it.
Pat Buchannan was discussing it this past week, that there is evidence that it originated not in Mexico, but in California. Might want to check that out.
What worries me is cooler summer, and a bad next winter could be very bad for all of us.
Keep an eye on Australia, it preceeds us as far as next winter goes.
I’m looking for a much cooler summer in the Pacific Northwest.
The Sun isn’t doing it.
How long has it been?
UAH has April at +0.09
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
Dr Spencer says RSS satellite is undergoing a lot of “drift.”
George Bruce (09:40:00) : and others —
…. “What is the real agenda?” That is the real question. ….
If you haven’t found this paper (OK, “rant”) then those of you wondering how all this came about will want to read this:
UN Infects Science with Cancer of Global Warming
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/EDBLICKRANT.pdf
[i] …how do these politicians plan to extract themselves from the backlash that is inevitable,
They will point out they were honest and sincere victims of advice that was was thought to be accurate at the time, but turned out to be erroneous.[/i]
Has anyone pondered what it will do to the general public perception of science if AGW turns out to be wrong? Several posters here suggest thet AGW proponents do so because of the money. I doubt it. The reputation of the scientists involved is at stake, and on top of that the credibility of science at large. These are very strong motives.
They want it to be true, admitting they are wrong is the worts defeat imaginable.
Tom Fuller (16:49:38) :
I saw the link to you page in another thread here. I live in the Bay Area. I was pleasantly (to put it mildly) surprised to see someone from the Bay Area whose columns didn’t fall in lock step with Al Gore. In fact, I can see you are disappointed with Al Gore. Sorry to hear you are for cap and trade though. Do you think the world needs more tax and regulation right now? Did you see Vaclav Klaus’ column on that? He sums up what I think. Since Vaclav Klaus is involved in politics it might give you the impression I like politics. But I’m don’t. I’m not a Republican. And I loathe politics. (I think it’s amusing how Bernie Goldberg sums up politics in America : “Crazies to the Left of me, wimps to the Right!”)
Here’s a link to the Vaclav Klaus column :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/may/01/vacla-klaus-emissions-economy
You might consider an interview with him, if he’s willing.
My last point to you : I am all for reducing pollution. But co2 is not a pollutant. I can’t see accomplishing one goal by making people think you are accomplishing another. After all, I just want truth. Richard Lindzen sums up very well in this video what I’m trying to say in this point :
P.S. I hope Anthony grants you an interview. HINT, HINT Anthony.
Green Carbon Neutral Expedition
“Their relief was tinged with a sense of irony as the rescue craft sent by Falmouth coastguard was the Overseas Yellowstone, a 113,000-tonne oil tanker.”
This is the sort of thing that makes me laugh in the most unlikely and embarrassing places – funeral, church, wedding, and so on. There are many sites using the phrase “You can’t make this stuff up!”
I wonder if the company will calculate how many CO2 credits they will have to buy to offset this rescue. And will they highlight that in their next carbon neutral brochure.
.
>>>Icecaps around the North and South Poles are melting
>>>faster than expected, raising sea levels as a result of
>>>climate change, a major scientific survey has shown.
I think you mean that sea-levels are falling….
http://www.john-daly.com/ges/images/stokholm.gif
The above is a record of sea-levels at Stockholm, which clearly shows falling sea levels.
.
Robert Bateman (20:44:54) : Let’s see what the Sea has to say.
At first this would seem to be much like the “How not to measure Temperature” series (click on Projects at the top of any WUWT page). Companies have made millions of $$ selling film to people headed to a beach somewhere. However, the complication is that the shore is a very dynamic and high energy environment. There are lots of changes – sometimes in a single storm event. Thus, some effort would have to be expended to document the changes you would see in historic photos and those taken now. Otherwise, a set of photos could easily be interpreted to show what the rising sea did, rather than what some external event did. For example there are spots on the Washington coast where trees were killed by salt water from a “tsunami” that originated near Japan. A report of the event was found tucked away in a Japanese library. Discovering these sorts of connections would be crucial to “Let’s see what the Sea has to say.” [I know – people moved weather stations around without documentation – so it is not all that different. ]
It’s naive to think that our politicians are only pushing the green agenda because of some real or imagined scientific consensus. Politicians are driven by ideology and are perfectly happy to go against science when it suits them – the recent flip-flopping in the UK over the classification of cannabis being a case in point.
Politicians are only using the claimed scientific consensus to push green policies because they had already decided that they wanted to push those policies, and of course there are many good political and economic reasons to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. There’s no reason to expect the policies to be dropped, even if the consensus weakens.
Likewise, the people who are most vocal in wanting to prevent ‘climate change’ are the same ones that had already decided that industry is bad even before the current fad.
Arn Riewe (18:43:17)
For a little inspiration, visit the late Michael Crichton’s website..
Thank you for that link. I was going to quote from it here, but the more I read, the more I wanted to include! We could use him now.
Smokey, your comment that “Instead, all the C&T and other costly proposals are left fully in place” is only too true.
Even income tax was originally a temporary measure (both in the UK and US), just like speed limits and anti-terrorist legislation, none of which ever seems to get repealed…
Smokey (11:03:34) :
. . . why promote RealClimate on the sidebar? Game theory says that quid pro quo is the successful strategy in situations like this.
Harry (11:09:42) :
I think it might be worth pointing out this webite and CA both link to “Real Climate” while the reverse cannot be said.
It’s a matter of having class, and how much you fear the other site’s message.
.
juandos (14:50:49) :
Just how much does this alleged ‘man made global weather change‘ is about real science and how much is it about governments lying to its citizens and reaching into the collective wallets to extort more taxes?
Observe ye these two facts, and come to enlightenment –
1. Every consequence of global warming is bad, and requires government intervention.
2. Every solution for global warming requires raising taxes.
kim (09:32:02) wrote: “We can start reminiscing about Michael Piltdown Mann, now.”
Wish I could come up with lines like that, Kim. Probably does not even need the “Michael”, just the extra “n” would do the trick. Between you and Steve McIntyre even the hockey is just shtick…
I notice that Dr Roy Spencer has now published the April global temperature on http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/ at plus 0.09 degree C. It would appear that the slight downward trend is continuing. I wonder if anyone has any views on the relationship between this trend and the current slower melting of Arctic ice cover compared with previous years. I feel we are at a point where global temperatures can go either way and it is difficult to predict with a very high degree of certainty. The next few years will indeed be interesting particularly if the Sun remains quiet and global temperatures continue with the current slight decline combined with steady or growing ice cover around north and south poles. I am not a scientist but I must admit I follow these developments with great interest because of the stakes and they are high indeed.
John Peter (01:54:19) :
I notice that Dr Roy Spencer has now published the April global temperature on http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/ at plus 0.09 degree C.
******************
Thank you Jon Peter,
This decrease in the global LT anom in the Spring seems to be the pattern for the past few years.
Bottom lime – No Net Warming since 1940 – one full PDO cycle, despite an 800% increase in humanmade CO2 emissions.
See the first graph at:
http://www.iberica2000.org/Es/Articulo.asp?Id=3774
If CO2 is really driving global warming, it’s running out of gas.
Regards, Allan
Excerpt:
And, Mr. Luntz and Mr. Perkowitz agree, “climate change” is an easier sell than “global warming.”
http://www.icecap.us
May 03, 2009
Seeking to Save the Planet, With a Thesaurus
By John M. Broder, New York Times
The problem with global warming, some environmentalists believe, is “global warming.” The term turns people off, fostering images of shaggy-haired liberals, economic sacrifice and complex scientific disputes, according to extensive polling and focus group sessions conducted by ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing and messaging firm in Washington.
Instead of grim warnings about global warming, the firm advises, talk about “our deteriorating atmosphere.” Drop discussions of carbon dioxide and bring up “moving away from the dirty fuels of the past.” Don’t confuse people with cap and trade; use terms like “cap and cash back” or “pollution reduction refund.”
EcoAmerica has been conducting research for the last several years to find new ways to frame environmental issues and so build public support for climate change legislation and other initiatives. A summary of the group’s latest findings and recommendations was accidentally sent by e-mail to a number of news organizations by someone who sat in this week on a briefing intended for government officials and environmental leaders.
Asked about the summary, ecoAmerica’s president and founder, Robert M. Perkowitz, requested that it not be reported until the formal release of the firm�s full paper later this month, but acknowledged that its wide distribution now made compliance with his request unlikely.
The research directly parallels marketing studies conducted by oil companies, utilities and coal mining concerns that are trying to “green” their images with consumers and sway public policy. Environmental issues consistently rate near the bottom of public worry, according to many public opinion polls. A Pew Research Center poll released in January found global warming last among 20 voter concerns; it trailed issues like addressing moral decline and decreasing the influence of lobbyists.
“We know why it’s lowest,” said Mr. Perkowitz, a marketer of outdoor clothing and home furnishings before he started ecoAmerica, whose activities are financed by corporations, foundations and individuals. “When someone thinks of global warming, they think of a politicized, polarized argument. When you say ‘global warming,’ a certain group of Americans think that’s a code word for progressive liberals, gay marriage and other such issues.”
The answer, Mr. Perkowitz said in his presentation at the briefing, is to reframe the issue using different language. “Energy efficiency” makes people think of shivering in the dark. Instead, it is more effective to speak of “saving money for a more prosperous future.” In fact, the group’s surveys and focus groups found, it is time to drop the term “the environment” and talk about “the air we breathe, the water our children drink.”
Frank Luntz, a Republican communications consultant, prepared a strikingly similar memorandum in 2002, telling his clients that they were losing the environmental debate and advising them to adjust their language. He suggested referring to themselves as “conservationists” rather than “environmentalists,” and emphasizing “common sense” over scientific argument. And, Mr. Luntz and Mr. Perkowitz agree, “climate change” is an easier sell than “global warming.”
*************************************
John Peter (01:54:19) :
“It would appear that the slight downward trend is continuing. I wonder if anyone has any views on the relationship between this trend…”
I don’t understand it. Maximal sea ice formation should correspond to maximal transfer of heat to the atmosphere. We should be seeing significant warming in polar air masses.
Reading between the lines I think you have already been a little tainted by the CAGW crowd. If it were just about the Science there should be no ‘de facto policy’.
The multiple references to politics, yours and ‘ours’, make me think that you haven’t really looked at the ‘skeptical’ position very closely. AGW shouldn’t be political policy it should be judged on the available scientific evidence and outside of computer models there is none. Hence the scepticism.
If this were a court case, apart from smearing the character of the defendant and defence witnesses , the prosecution has offered no evidence that convinces me. Worse still, while I’m on the trial analogy, the charges keep getting changed at hourly intervals to the extent that I couldn’t even tell you what the prosecution is charging any more.
As for ‘our’ politics I wouldn’t dream of speaking for other readers but being from the UK I support our welfare state and in particular the NHS which would make me a Communist to the US right. On the other hand I’m suspicious of big government, increased bureaucracy and anything that interferes with free enterprise and free trade. Which would probably qualify me for free lifetime membership of the Republican party. The point is that Satellite data doesn’t care about my politics, the Tropospheric hot spot doesn’t care and neither does Polar ice. Frankly my scepticism comes from watching years of the CAGW ‘whack a mole’ game.
If you want a good clear (sceptical) starting point then there is a concise and up to date itemized list. All of it is interesting but much is Monkton having to play ‘whack a mole’ with the alarmists (Polar Bears, Hurricanes, disease …..). A distraction. The key points, I feel, are in red flags 1, 10, 20, 25 and 29.
On the upside, as a journalist, you are unlikely to run short of ‘alarms’ in the near future. As I posted on another thread, ever since we saw the first picture of our planet from space, the big picture, all data has become anomalous. Uncharted territory. Many people just have a pathological need for an impending disaster and any sign or portent will do. This need has been exploited in scandalous ways throughout history, CAGW being just the latest.
.
>>of course there are many good political and
>>economic reasons to reduce our reliance on
>>fossil fuels.
Not if you replace them with renewables. Not only are renewables generally two or three times as expensive as fossil fuels, you still have to keep the fossil-fueled infrastructure for the days when renewables simply do not work.
.
New global temperature graph.
I like this quote:
Quote:
The smooth curve in the graph … smooths out the … variability in the data and helps reveal the underlying ‘trends’. (There is no claim that this curve has any predictive power for the coming months or years.)
http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/
Either is shows a trend or it does not. The reason that they don’t want to acknowledge any predictivity in the graph, is that the trend is looking decidedly cooler.
.
the north pole is tilted closer to the sun than usual. you couldn’t do anything if you tried. chill.
propernoise.wordpress.com
maduniversal.wordpress.com
thatshaute.wordpress.com
2 years warming and global warming is over? well, ok, guess an alternative view wouldnt be scientific
Mike Bryant (16:39:49) :
WestHoustonGeo (18:29:08)
Yes, disappointing and illustrative of the group think if true.
Another defection? I think this has been doing the rounds but summarised succinctly in this report.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/06/mike_hulme_interview/
Top British boffin: Time to ditch the climate consensus
Don’t use science to get round politics, says Hulme
By Stuart Blackman • Get more from this author
Posted in Environment, 6th May 2009 12:02 GMT
Interview Just two years ago, Mike Hulme would have been about the last person you’d expect to hear criticising conventional climate change wisdom. Back then, he was the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, an organisation so revered by environmentalists that it could be mistaken for the academic wing of the green movement. Since leaving Tyndall – and as we found out in a telephone interview – he has come out of the climate change closet as an outspoken critic of such sacred cows as the UN’s IPCC, the “consensus”, the over-emphasis on scientific evidence in political debates about climate change, and to defend the rights of so-called “deniers” to contribute to those debates.
As Professor of Climate Change at the University of East Anglia, Hulme remains one of the UK’s most distinguished and high-profile climate scientists. In his new book, Why We Disagree About Climate Change, he explores how the issue of climate change has come to be such a dominant issue in modern politics. He treats climate change not as a problem that we need to solve – indeed, he believes that the complexity of the issue means that it cannot be solved, only lived with – and instead considers it as much of a cultural idea as a physical phenomenon.”
Perhaps the most surprising thing to hear from a climate scientist writing about climate change is that climate science has for too long had the monopoly in climate change debates. When we spoke to him on the phone, Hulme cited as evidence the 2007 protests against Heathrow’s third runway, where marchers made their case by waving a research paper at the TV cameras under a banner bearing the slogan “We are armed only with peer reviewed science”. [The paper wasn’t actually peer-reviewed science – see Bootnote]
“To me, that’s the most dispiriting position,” says Hulme. “For these people who feel so passionately about this, their ultimate authority is a report from a group of scientists, and they’re saying ‘this is where we stand, forget about our moral concerns, forget about our ethical positions, forget about whether we are Right, Left or centre, forget about whether we are Christians or Buddists, no, none of that matters.’ The only thing that matters is that they’re holding a report from peer-reviewed science that in itself justifies their position.”
“To hide behind the dubious precision of scientific numbers, and not actually expose one’s own ideologies or beliefs or values and judgements is undermining both politics and science”
And it’s not just protesters who are hiding behind the authority of science. World leaders are doing it, too.
Much more at the link given above and the related links are also of interest. The Register or “El Reg” as it is affectionately known to its patrons has previously also given space to Steven Goddard of these parts. 🙂
Ralph Ellis (00:30:27)
You don’t have to go as far as Stockholm to find falling sea levels. I’ve seen somewhere that, of the six or so United States’s sea level gauges; the one in Sitka, Alaska, is falling.
It is appaling to read such comments. The USA seem to be obsessed with denying the obvious fact that we are experiencing man-made global warming. To say the contrary is wrong, no matter how often it is repeated.
How does a blogger know about the polar ice caps by just sitting in front of a monitor. Get serious. Scientist have conducted research for decades and facts are simply clear. Ecology is not domestic US politics, you can write what you like about your administration.
If you want to state that the moon is rectangular, that evolution does not exist etc, fine. But there are so many proofs that sea level is rising by 1 mm a year, Tuvalu is being submerged etc that discussion must concentrate on what to do against global warming. That is the point.
MODERATOR NOTE: readers, troll alert.
Global warming has stopped, or at least taken a break. Still, it is apparentliy able to melt ice in such a rate that the ice cover increases. Global warming must be magic!
ziusudrablog (06:22:23) : “How does a blogger know about the polar ice caps by just sitting in front of a monitor. ”
Hmmm, I think it’s called looking at readily available scientific data:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
“The above is a record of sea-levels at Stockholm, which clearly shows falling sea levels.”
I bet it is because land is actually rising there and it has been that way since the last ice age. Massive glacier forced surface downwards and it has been slowly recovering after the ice age.
It has been said that someday one can walk from Finland to Sweden (or vice versa).
ziusudrablog :
Please go back and play with the other children, dear; the adults here are talking.
The most telling passage in Congressman Stupak’s response is “Congress needs to move beyond the debate over whether global warming exists.”.
Yes of course they need to move beyond the debate. They need to move now before more skeptic step in, and destroy their tax scheme with the truth. They need to move past the now constant storm of holes being punched in the NASA and the IPCC reports. They need to move before the earth shows cooling, so that they can take credit for it. They need to move past the debate before the graft money from the potential carbon traders and green energy groups goes cold. Most of all they need to move past the debate because they have 70 trillion in unfunded obligations and debt, and they really need the $2,000+ per household that the taxed and betrayed scheme will bring them annually.
My questions to Congressman Stupak would go something like this.
1) Before you move beyond the debate, I would like to take part in it. I would like to make a presentation to the committee, and then would welcome a debate with the AGW promoter of your choosing.
2) Can you produce evidence of any current climate elements that are outside of the normal range of variability demonstrated in our climate over the past 300 million years? Proxies show that at one point CO2 was over 7,000ppm, and geology shows us that not only have sea levels been 200 feet higher, at one point Alaska was a sub-tropical forest. All occurred before man’s rise. In that context, what is unusual about our current climate?
3) Have the frequently discredited NASA or IPCC reports shown any proof of use of the scientific method, IE Hypothesis, experiment vs control, conclusion, test for reproducibility? By my understanding, we are still in the hypothesis stage. At one point we also hypothesized that blood letting was the answer to all sorts of maladies.
4) It is apparent that the above mentioned reports ignore the cyclical nature of our climate, and specifically elements like the PDO, ENSO, AMO, and solar cycles. Why were these not considered, or if they were, why were they discounted?
5) Can you explain how your tax and impoverish plan will address the return of previous climate events like Dansgaard-Oeschger?
6) What is obliquity and precession, and how do they enter into this conversation?
7) Michigan has a long glacial history, and is common with kettles and moraines. As our last glacier receded, the warming was dramatic enough to leave gravel hills of outwash 300 feet high, but less than a mile across. What kind of warming would be required for a mile-thick sheet of ice to drop this much this quickly?
8) Are the US Government, NASA, and the IPCC financially or politically invested in a certain outcome? All seem to benefit enormously from moving this scheme forward with a predetermined result. AGW promoters frequently discount deniers as being funded by energy interests. Are these organizations neutral in their funding regardless of outcome, or will they benefit from one result or the other?
9) How much in campaign contributions have been paid to your committee by the various pro and anti AGW interests in the last 10 years?
10) While the press and the democrats refuse to believe it, the real science is anything but settled. The IPPC reports have been widely discredited, as have been those from NASA. There is a large body of the scientific community that discount those position papers and many errors have been found. Some appear intentional. Over half of the country believes that AGW is a tax and political power hoax and nothing more. A court in England found substantial untruth in Al Gore’s “Documentary”. Exactly WHAT is settled about the science, and if it is settled, why are we still in the hypothesis stage?
And finally, I would show up for the debate in a T-shirt that read..
“Younger-Dryas
Climate change that you can believe in!”
.
I honestly don’t know very much about the environment, so don’t take me too seriously. I don’t deny that humans could stand to treat nature less arrogantly. But I suspect greasy hands are taking advantage of people’s concern for the earth, for the economy, for the Third World, and for flu epidemics.
It’s a grand strategy, if you want your speech written in red letters in the popular bible: convince people they’re in peril, offer to help them out of that peril, and on the next election day when the world hasn’t gone to Hell after all, claim it’s all because of your party’s hard work. And blame the previous administration for anything that went wrong. And, most importantly, cut your competition down to size. Let citizens be rich and independent, sure…but not rich or independent enough to give more charity than you!
Even if the government is truly concerned for the environment, I’d say this to all parties: let us get ourselves somewhat out of the economic horror film we’re supposed to be in, and help us where needed. THEN use our money to assuage your own conscience.
ziusudrablog, real scientists are just as concerned for evidence AGAINST their hypotheses and theories as they are for evidence FOR. Anything can be evidenced – unicorns can be evidenced – but nothing is ever proven. Today’s obvious facts are tomorrow’s flat-earth theories.
ziusudrablog (06:22:23) : “How does a blogger know about the polar ice caps by just sitting in front of a monitor. ”
Well don’t tease us.
Where and how did you learn about the polar ice caps?
From Al Gore?
Or directly from a Polar Bear Cub?
Honestly, your post was so ludicrous I suspect it was a spoof.
Harry (10:18:49) :
Indiana Bones:
“In the face of these facts – and having the benefit of hindsight – how do these politicians plan to extract themselves from the backlash that is inevitable. Do they think they will not be held responsible for perpetrating an inhumane hoax?”
“The left has painted themselves into a corner with AGW and will fight bitterly to maintain the hoax. This is very important to them for deep rooted ideological reasons, however; I’m not so certain exposing AGW as the hoax that it is will end up being that devastating to more people than an Al Gore or two.”
You may be right. Which is why following the money from politician to research center becomes more important. Cases such as the accusation of fraud at SUNY Albany – will uncover some of the AGW government/climate industrial complex.
can I just say this..
Ice ice baby.
Serious comments are serious. Chill out winston. Do your part to stop this after that..what can you do. Get angry at people you dont know? That’s worked out well so far.
jc
mastercontrolcast.wordpress.com
Here we are, 3 days after the NSIDC update on April sea-ice and no mention of it on their from page in the ‘recently updated news’ banner running vertically along the right side of their front page, nor is there any media reporting the headline “A slow start to the spring melt season”.
Usually the NSIDC updates are picked up on by media hounds within hours of it’s release and blasted over the media…
Oh well, I guess the media have their hands full trying to hype up the “early start to the fire season in California due to global warming” (San Bernadino fires) and covering the tornado in the South “Which could have been made more violent due to global warming”.
There’s no losing when every possible weather event is somehow tied into global warming. Weather is one of the most highly variable occurrences on this planet.
Indiana Bones:
“Which is why following the money from politician to research center becomes more important. Cases such as the accusation of fraud at SUNY Albany – will uncover some of the AGW government/climate industrial complex.
Rare and not widely reported with connections to any other AGW fraud ignored. Like I said, the press will run interferance. A story followed only by you and me and the rest of us here, and we are the “deniers”. AGW is going to be difficult to knock down.
Molon:
We have in fact seen significant warming in the Arctic air masses – I don’t think there are similar data loggers in the Antarctic, where the sea-ice is a fringe on a very large continent – and the main rises have been in late autumn, after the summer sea-ice reaches its minimum. This suggests a strong heat transfer from the ice-free Arctic seas to the atmosphere – and it creates a strong signal. However – it should be remembered that at these latitudes the region is in permanent heat deficit – losing heat to space. Thus, what the loggers of ‘anomalous’ air temperature easily forget to state is that this represents an accelerated LOSS of heat from the Arctic ocean. Thus, we can expect the Arctic sea temperatures to drop and for the next year’s ice to be thicker. The recent losses to 2007 were due to increased influx of warm Atlantic waters under the ice and increased cloud from a warm Pacific (until the PDO shifted) – there has been a phase-shift, and i would expect to see lower sea temperatures, more sea-ice, less cloud and eventually lower arctic surface air temperatures, which are known to shift on an approximate 70-year cycle, with many records set around 1940. If CO2 is having a significant effect, it cannot be greater than the difference between 1940 and 2007 temperatures, but the data sets are not so readily compared. When I looked at them, I thought the difference was about 20% – and of course, there are other factors in the ocean cycles that would make this an upper estimate.
I actually see that red graph moving to both extremes, which is exactly what Global warming is. up until about 2000 the red is pretty consistent, once 2000 hits, the graphs moves both up and down in larger extremes. This is the climate change we need to be afraid of. 3 days of snow and sleet followed by 3 days of 90 degree weather will be extremely detrimental to our planet.
Speaking of incoherence, has anyone made any heads or tails of the the Obama Administration’s biofuels policy? It seems to read that they will consider the total environmental impact of producing biofuels (which by all I’ve read should be a negative) but Tom Harkin is celebrating in the streets which means that a lot of corn growers are lining up for thier stimulus money.
AGW-Housing crisis-terrorism-pandemics etc, etc, etc…
The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis-Hhhhhmmmmm
.
>>You don’t have to go as far as Stockholm to find
>>falling sea levels. I’ve seen … six or so United
>>States’s sea level gauges … falling.
As far??
Stockholm is just down the road in comparison to the US!!! A US-centic view?
.
Sea levels.
>>>I bet it is because land is actually rising there
>>>and it has been that way since the last ice age.
Indeed, but the point of my post is to illustrate that an exact sea level rise is difficult to deduce. Yes, land levels in Scandinavia are rising, but by exactly how much? Can we tell to the nearest few centimeters, which is the accuracy needed to deduce net sea level rises. I doubt it.
Other sea level datums also point towards either stable or lowering sea levels.
http://www.john-daly.com/ges/msl-rept.htm
Forget it all. CAGW depends on +ve feedback. Lets look at/wait for the evidence. Everything else is a distraction. No +ve feedback= possibly 1deg over the next 100 years = panic ye not.
I have to say that the evidence so far suggests i should sleep soundly tonight.
(AEGeneral: May I quote you?) “It just keeps going on like the Energizer Bunny”.
Here’s an idea. Maybe some big newspaper somewhere that is finally coming to terms with the “Big Naughty Fib” could bite the bullet and (don’t they need a big boost in sales right now?) admit that they have been telling us whoppers. Straight out, like that! Dress it up a bit, they’re good at that anyway. Accuse others as well, nicely of course. Make it a big promotion. Imagine the sales! It might, just might start a run on honesty, you know, like the sound of glaciers melting. Someone’s got to do it. They would go down in history.
thekronic3001 @ 12:52:07:
You make the point that global warming causes greater climate instability. You’re arguing for global cooling sir. You need to understand some systematic basics.
In the climate system (and all other real world complex systems), the farther away from the normal equilibrium you get the more unstable the system becomes. AGW proponents base their argument of increasing climate instability on this well understood fact.
Systems theory clearly establishes that the further you are from the point of equilibrium, the more likely you are to encounter third, fourth, and higher order subsystems (feedbacks) that will become greater in force (sensitivity) than the instability and seek to regulate the system back to a state of equilibrium. In a system in equilibrium, the feedbacks are relatively insensitive and the system more stable. This principal is central to the high CO2 climate sensitivity argument of AGW proponents.
AGW proponents presume global warming must have pushed our climate system into a state where feedback sensitivities are very high. This presumption can be seen in current general circulation models. However, to accept such an assertion, one has to accept that our climate system is very unstable to begin with. Our climate system is very stable else our atmosphere would have vanished eons ago. We must observe that our climate system has been becoming progressively more unstable over a statistically meaningful timeframe. We observe the opposite.
What is not understood by AGW proponents is a warming climate does not become less stable, it becomes more stable. Or inversely, a colder climate is a climate of greater temperature extents. The paleoclimatic record clearly shows this. You can see this by looking at this graph:
http://www.eos.ubc.ca/research/glaciology/research/AbruptClimateChange.html
The AGW proponents who use this argument are actually arguing against global warming and know too little about complex system theory and paleoclimatic history to understand their folly.
Unbelievable,
You’ve taken a graph which has a NON-ZERO ORIGIN, and claim to have shown that there’s no statistically significant trend by WIDENING the graph.
To show the graph ACCURATELY, the ORIGIN should be at ZERO, … NOT 13.0
Here’s a test:
Make a bar graph of my wealth, which is $101, in column “A”; and your wealth, which is (hypothetically) $110 in column “B”. Is there much of a difference?
Now, plot the same bar graph, but set the ORIGIN of the graph to $100. Is there much of a difference now? Thought so.
The graph of Arctic Sea Ice Extent has the same problem — the ORIGIN is set at 8 (or maybe 7, it’s hard to tell). [hint: it oughtta be 0, … zero, … goose-egg, … nada]
Neither of the original graphs you use is legitimate.
No one in the first bunch of comments I read even noticed this (I only skimmed the rest of the comments; so if some later comment already noted this, I apologize to that commenter)
Further, you present a WIDENED graph, and then claim that it shows (read “proves”) that there is no statistically significant trend. Where did you learn this fascinating technique?
A graph does NOT, and CANNOT prove statistical significance. But, you know what does? — STATISTICS!!
If you’ve done the statistical analysis of the DATA that went into making the graph, then perhaps you could present THAT to substantiate a claim of “no statistically significant trend”. However, based on your being duped by a phony graph, and then attempting to prove statistical significance via PhotoShop; I have serious doubts that you’ve done any statistical analysis of the raw data.
FYI, I’m no watermelon. I’m a full-fledged “denier”; but this is ridiculous.
Eyas,
Anyone who has taken 2nd form (7th grade) maths knows that the slope of a line is independent of the y-offset, and that the vertical scale has no relationship to the sign of the slope.
I’m going to have to assume that group doesn’t include you.
Goddbard;
lo importante es la tendencia (slope).
Los cientificos alertan sobre que la tendencia es superior al calculo historico.
Para que tu puedas entenderlo significa que la linea AZUL cae mas de lo que debería.
HAVE YOU SEEN THE BLUE LINE???
Reply: Google translator says:
~ charles the moderator
I haven’t gone through all the comments, so forgive me if I’m repeating one or more of them, but if you’re really serious about misrepresenting the evidence, you should at least take the time to doctor the graphs completely. Don’t just white out the trend lines – you have to fill in the resulting gaps in the black annual lines, or the trends will still be discernible (as clearly negative). But hey – you don’t seem to know the difference between short-term and long-term anyway . . .
As for the last graph, on Arctic sea ice extent, looks to me like the current figure shows about 500,000 square kilometers less ice than average for this time of year, available to reflect solar radiation back into space – and correspondingly more open water, ready to absorb all that high sunlight over the next few months.
Please – anyone reading this: read all the crackpot cherry-picked analyses you want – but weigh them against the source studies! What do the NSIDC scientists themselves have to say?
(For one thing the NSIDC web-site points out that in addition to ice EXTENT being relatively low, ice THICKNESS is also much lower than average, meaning that future declines in extent per given amount of heating will be relatively rapid.)