A question to the USGS and NPR

Oh my goodness. Does Ms Ferrigno believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth as well?

Why let mere details get in the way of a good hysterical narrative?

The first iceberg, B9B, broke off in 1987 and has been floating around for 23 years.
Are these the two icebergs she is counting as lost?

According to your graph (still less than Texas)
0.223 x Million s KM = 223,000 sqKM.
Assuming there’s not an averate/slope that would be 1/20th of that even..

The sea-ice anomaly graph is of absolutly zero relevance to a piece about ice-shelf loss. But it tells the story you want other to hear, right?
REPLY: No, it tells the story that is constantly ignored. Here’s a few more:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/17/ipcc-gate-du-jour-antarctic-sea-ice-increase-underestimated-by-50/
Most people fail to realize the difference in the peninsula versus the continent of Antarctica:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/18/what-happens-when-you-divide-antarctica-into-two-distinct-climate-zones/
Here’s one that deals with the improper weighting of temperature data in the Antarctic peninsula:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/29/steig-et-al-falsified/

You’re not so perfect yourself. Guess you need to brush up on your chart reading skills. The title in the chart you preface with “Here’s the story on all Antarctic ice from Cryosphere today:” is “Southern Hemisphere SEA Ice Anomaly.” Not ALL ice or even Antarctic ice. SEA ice in the SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE.
Pot meet kettle.
REPLY: Which includes all Antarctic sea ice. But you’re right, I’ll make it clearer.

Ms. FERRIGNO: ” The fact that the ice shelves are changing on the peninsula”
Pardon my ignorance, but what is exactly an “ice shelf on the peninsula”? Is that sea ice?

Maybe Lou Ferringo [The Incredible Hulk], is Ms Ferringo’s dad and he will burst onto the AGW scene and make short work of all the sceptics.
We had better be careful what we say.
YIKES!

Texas is more than twice as large as The Antarctic Peninsula.
UAH shows no warming in the Antarctic Peninsula.
http://climate.uah.edu/25yearbig.jpg

I don’t understand how ice shelf breakup is of overriding importance in the grand scheme of things. What is important in the grand scheme of things is if the output of glaciers (ice shelf ice plus melt water) exceeds input (snowfall). I do not believe that Jane Ferrigno has shown this to be the case. In what ways are the glaciers themselves retreating or otherwise shrinking? Just because someone grows inch long fingernails doesn’t necessarily mean their nail matrices are any healthier than the next person’s. Come to think of it though, I suppose someone might be able to show that Antarctica is growing rotten ice shelves.

@ just The Facts
And below average Arctic temperature aswell :O)
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

She IS persuading the public. Many have been persuaded that she does not know what she’s talking about.

Oh come on. Whats the problem? She was only off by a couple orders of magnitude. Well within the standard error bounds of climate science.
Next you’ll be complaining that the core of the earth isnt really several million degrees, as the world’s most famous Nobel Prize winning climatologist has stated.
Move along, nothing to see here.

I just wonder how much Ms Ferrigno got for this peer-reviewed report LOL

Sorry, dumb question. Didn’t think straight for a second.

Aside from her 10x gaffe, I’d say she’s cherrypicking. The southern sea ice, according to the graph, has *increased* by roughly 200,000 sq km since 1979, an area comparable to 1/4 the size of Texas.

Well as the old joke goes; “If those Texans don’t quit bragging, we’ll just cut Alaska in half, and make Texas the Third largest State.
And Just for curiosity sake, Veep Joe Biden’s home State of Delaware can be placed in 12 different places, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in Alaska, with no overlap.
20,000 square km is about 76.4 nautical miles on a side. Not a heck of a lot different from those two icebergs that were playing Ooops a daisy the other day.
Is that area shrinkage the real difference between then and now, or is it just the integrated amount that has fallen off; and what about all the extra ice deposited on top during that time.
I wonder if Lou Ferrigno agrees with her.
I won’t complain; if she were any smarter, maybe she would have my job.

The moral to the story is that geologists will occasionally confuse thousands, millions and billions… Too many zeros.

Huh? It’s not her number that’s the problem (regardless of whether it’s accurate or not) it’s that she claimed this number was comparable to the size of Texas and Alaska. Forget about the number, in her mind the amount of ice loss is 30 times greater than it could possibly be. Makes you wonder if she’s ever seen a map.

David Middleton (09:14:37) :
(…)
The moral to the story is that geologists will occasionally confuse thousands, millions and billions… Too many zeros.
————-
Reply:
She’s no geologist I’d ever claim.
Maybe she confused SQUARE km with LINEAR km, and in that case 20,000 km is indeed LONGER than Alaska, which is reported to be 3,639 km in length.
Beyond that, I can’t see where there’s any excuse for what she said.

Somebody failed their geography class…

USGS? – Universe of Stupid and Gullible Scientists not to be confused with NPR – Nutty People’s Radio.

Some of the 10 comments on the NPR site are interesting.

Murray Carpenter (09:26:37) :
For a winter that blew cold air all over the N. Hemisphere, the Arctic temp. average was no worse for the wear, and the Sea Ice extent didn’t miss a beat either.

Criticism of Gore keeps piling up:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/03/03/gore_still_hot_on_his_doomsday_rhetoric/

Aren’t these the same folks trying to say that the relative stability (even cooling) in the US is not that important because the US is such a small part of the Earth’s surface?

Simple solution – let’s have Congress pass a law (their solution to every perceived problem) to save the ice shelves, ordering the winds to stop blowing, the sea waves to quit crashing on the ice and fracturing it, and the glaciers to quite pushing ice too far out onto the sea where it becomes unsustainable.

@JinHO
“Is there anyone left out there that still takes these people seriously?”
Yes! My wife and most of our friends as well. Well… as seriously as most people in California can get at least. Driving a car and listening to NPR is like being in the oracle at Delphi, with the rarified local air amplifying the effect.
20,000, 200,000, 2000,000… Yeah, whatever, it’s all good, dude…

Reminds me of a question asked, on record, during the international meeting, by Clinton’s Secretary of Energy: “What country, exactly, supplies our nuclear warheads?”
Face it, fellow US citizens, we are being ruled by the people who know only one thing: how to embezzle our money. Everything else is beyond their comprehension.

Which way would be best to make the comparison between 89-90 and 09-10 (or 88-89 and 08-09), by the peaks, the trough or the average? Looking at 89-90 season on the graph, the peaks are about the same and the trough is a little lower in 09-10. The average for the base period might be a little more than currently but, by eye, it seems to be pretty much irrelevant considering the intervening variations.
Ferrigno would have been much better off going with the interviewer’s 10 years. Is it possible he knows more about the subject than Ferrigno?

Climate alarmists are rapidly reaching the intellectual level of The Flat Earth Society. People like Ms. Ferrigno who should be sources of fact seem to be quite comfortable saying things with certainty that are not close to reality.

Eyeballing a straight line over the last 20 years on the anomaly map, I’d say Antarctic sea ice has gained by about 300,000 sq km, i.e. half the state of Texas. Like snowstorms in D.C., that’s proof of AGW – the models predicted it!

I have always wondered how Antarctica ice can melt with temperatures so far below freezing. Does anybody think a degree or two matters in Antarctica ?
When you look at satellite shots the ice is breaking off, not melting off the main Antarctica ice shelf.
If anybody cares, in the history of earth all the ice has melted and the whole planet was an ice ball before. And it survived.

I’ve solved the puzzle. When she refers to Texas, she means Texas County, Oklahoma, in the panhandle, area 5,306 km².
See, move along folks, no problem here!

Unfortunately, the general public with their dumbed down educations and the soundbite du jour will accept this misinformation as fact and,
they will even try to tell all of their friends.
We need to look for some way to force debate on the radio to let the incompetents we fund expose themselves.
Or we could just sue the bad apples for defamation of the truth?

[snip – dialed back]

Folks, let’s cut her a little slack. She made these comment on Feb 28, and hadn’t yet seen Gavin’s comments of March 2 where he instructed all climate scientists everywhere that “Their job is not persuading the public.”
What’s even more appalling is that I’m sure she had time to prepare for this short segment on NPR, with a friendly host, so how could she get the story so wrong. If wasn’t like she was blind sided with some unplanned question.
Oh, I know, her scary story follows the consensus thinking so it must be right. And anyway, even if the numbers are wrong won’t we be doing the right thing for the planet? /sarc off.

“The message has to be dramatic. If you say 20,000 km2, that means nothing. Especially to Americans. There are about 1.619 km per mile. If Ms. Ferrigno had said 12,427 square miles, the audience would know that Texas isn’t that big. But Americans don’t know square kilometers. So, in this case, obfuscation enabled Ms. Ferrigno to make a dramatic announcement.”
Except there are only ~7600 square miles in 20,000 square km…even more revealing.
You have to divide 20,000 by 1.612^2 (2.62).

I think it’s important to point out that this wasn’t some off-the-cuff gaffe, where Ferrigno said, “20 thousand square kilometers have been lost,” and then the interviewer followed up with, “Can you give us a sense of large an area that is?” She could be forgiven if she just panicked on air and said something stupid.
But from the transcript of the interview, this appears to be a prepared talking point. Hard to imagine that a geographer could be so utterly and completely clueless.

According to my calculations 20,000 square km equals 7722 square miles.
To put that in perspective we are talking about 6 Big Bend National Parks (the little green spot):
http://www.pmansbach.com/BigBend/texas.gif

Paul Daniel Ash (09:34:45) :
A complete farrago of misinformation from Ms Ferringo?
No, she blew it on the comparison, but she was correct on the number. A New Jersey of ice is quite a lot…
——————-
Actually, to put into perspective (assuming she is correct) Antarctica lost a ‘New Jersey’ of ice in 20 years, since there are approx 590 ‘New Jerseys’ of ice in Antarctica it would take roughly 12,000 years to lose all of it. To me that says a ‘New Jersey’ of ice isn’t all that much.

I think I may have cracked the Texas-sized code.
According to this Washington Post article from last year, the area of the Western Ice Shelf is comparable to the size of Texas.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/13/AR2008011302753.html
So Ferrigno’s mistake was that she was basically claiming that the entire ice shelf had melted.
I feel much better now.

Well, this USGS scientist is persuading me rather well.

Even the claim that the Antarctic has lost ice at all is misleading, and deliberately so, by our AGW promoting friends.
Ice may have been lost, but more was gained than lost, in the Antarctic region.

Ms. FERRIGNO along with Al Gore got an A in science. I think they attended the same Class.

Everyone knows that Al Gore is not particularly intelligent or educated. The “million of degrees” Earth is far from an exception. Let’s admit it, he is an idiot. But there is a lot of sense in which Al Gore is equally intelligent and educated (or non-intelligent and uneducated) as the “scientists” he uses as the ultimate authority.
These people are third-class stuff, the people who barely got through schools and grad schools because they have never been good at anything. Because they happened to get somewhere where they don’t really belong, their current position is their greatest source of pride – they don’t have any valuable results – and they’re gonna do anything to keep this position.
Junk science. Junk scientists.

This gets better and better…
Perhaps no surprise that mistakes/exaggerations were made, the Director of the USGS is a Dr. Marcia K. McNutt :-))

since there are approx 590 ‘New Jerseys’ of ice in Antarctica it would take roughly 12,000 years to lose all of it. To me that says a ‘New Jersey’ of ice isn’t all that much.
First, who said anything about all the ice in Antarctica? That’s just gross goalpost-moving… twenty thousand square kilometers of ice is twenty thousand square kilometers of ice. A New Jersey, six Big Bends… that’s a buttload of ice.
If you want to say she exaggerated, fine: she either screwed up, which is pathetic, or intentionally misrepresented the facts, which is odious. But saying an amount of ice equivalent to an entire US state “isn’t all that much” is reaching, in my opinion.
Hard to imagine that a geographer could be so utterly and completely clueless.
Yes, it is. Good thing she’s a geologist.
People make mistakes, whether it’s mixing up words that begin with “geo” or confusing sea ice for land ice.

20 000 km2, that’s 2/3 the size of Belgium. How impressive ! There’s more change of Belgium disappearing from the map than the polar ice caps.

John Barrett (10:40:23) :
Come on you Americans, get with it.
20,000 sq km is the size of
Wales !
You should know by now that Wales has become the standard unit for measuring area, be it icebergs or rainforests.
REPLY: Save the Wales
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wales says thank you.
Cymru am Byth!

“In Antarctica, you’ll find 90 percent of the world’s glacial ice, but new research from the U.S. Geological Survey shows that every ice front in the southern part of the Antarctic Peninsula is retreating.
Jane Ferrigno is the lead author of that new report. She says scientists have known for a while that some of the peninsula’s ice shelves are breaking up.”
Being the “lead author” there is no way she could make that kind of mistake. We must be missing something or they tried too hard to dum it down for us. Where is the report? My consulting engineering friends label us geologists as “Soft Scientists” referring to our tendency toward looking at the general picture and not the hard numbers. I guess this shoe fits here.
And don’t get me started on “All Things (warming) Considered”. I was an NPR junkey as a young man but had to stop listening a few years ago with all the Gore-like alarmist garbble they feed us. Very dissapointing!

John Barrett (10:40:23) :
Wales is so old hat. The current European standard for ice extent comparison is Luxembourg
See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7322754/Giant-iceberg-could-disrupt-ocean-currents.html

Jane seems to be a geologist, NOT a geographer. She seems to have had problems with facts for a long time. The followind appears to be from 2002. (Scroll to end. amnh = American Museum of Natural History)
http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/antarctica/i_ferrigno.html

Tarpon – The earth can survive a lot. However, we are going to go back into a glacial period sometime in the next few hundred years, and that is going to result in a huge extinction as humans eat everything, trying to survive. “AGW is serious”? It is to laugh.
MikeH – Want the job of building some more down there? 8D

Even if it were a square 20,000 km per side that is still less than Texas!

whoops lost a 000 there, of course 20,000 km on a side would be 400 Million km2 much, much bigger.

Ferrignorant!

It’s depressing how science in the US has become more like,
“this is what you can do to be a better human being.”
NPR science fridays and many other outlets tend to follow this line. I call it more some strange mixture between policy and religion.
It’s time to teach again what science actually is.

Robert L (12:00:34) :
Even if it were a square 20,000 km per side that is still less than Texas!
————–
Reply:
Sorry, Robert, but as a THINKING geologist I’m going to have to offer a correction on that. 20,000 squared is 400 million sq km, which is about 575 times bigger than Texas and 233 times bigger than Alaska.
Think of it this way: 20,000 km is about 12,427 miles, which about half way around the equator (40,724 km). Or compare it to Earths entire surface area, which is 510,072,000 km², just a quarter larger than a square 20,000 km on a side.

Greenland Ice Volume approx 5 million cubic kms
Antarctica ice volume approx 30 million cubic kms
and 1 cubic km of ice weighs 1 gigatonne
Greenland therefore has approx 5 million gigatonnes of ice
Antarctica therefore nhas 30 million gigatonnes of ice
Greenland’s low coastal regions lost 155 gigatons (41 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2003 and 2005 from excess melting and icebergs, while the high-elevation interior gained 54 gigatons (14 cubic miles) annually from excess snowfall….so net loss is 100 gigatonnes per year…this would therefore create a global sea level rise of about 0.3 mm per year
Therefore combining Greenland and Antarctica we are at the moment looking at a global sea level rise about 1 mm per year.

Viv Evans 11:38:08 . . . . ..
REPLY: Save the Wales
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wales says thank you.
………………….
England doesn’t!
For years and years we English have been learning of global disasters destroying “an area the size of Wales”, but why is it never actually Wales itself? Still, perhaps one day!
P.S. Actually the English are just a teeny bit sorry for the Welsh at the moment because vast tracts of their best wild landscape have been vandalised on the altar of AGW by the erection of useless wind turbines that do nothing but slice up birds and drive the tourists away.

Cut the lady some slack. She’s a government employee so “Close enough for government work” applies.

homo sapiens (13:03:47) :
Viv Evans 11:38:08 . . . . ..
REPLY: Save the Wales
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wales says thank you.
………………….
“England doesn’t!
For years and years we English have been learning of global disasters destroying “an area the size of Wales”, but why is it never actually Wales itself? Still, perhaps one day!”
Amen to that!
I’m ¼ Welsh, so even in PC terms I am allowed to insult them, just so long as I insult the English pro rata.

homo sapiens (13:03:47)
For years and years we English have been learning of global disasters destroying “an area the size of Wales”, but why is it never actually Wales itself? Still, perhaps one day!
Very good.
I was in a pub deep in Welsh Wales some years ago and asked what I was doing there. I replied that we English had won a war a few hundred years back that allowed us to visit Wales without a passport and I was just exercising my rights! The entire pub fell silent except for the sound of my shoes running across the flagstones. My humour was not appreciated.

Maybe some people just aren’t impressed by Texas.

snowmaneasy (12:50:15) :
Therefore combining Greenland and Antarctica we are at the moment looking at a global sea level rise about 1 mm per year.
The Antarctic ice Ferrigno is talking about was not on land – it was shelf ice over water next to the peninsula. That would mean, if the sea level measurements are trusted, up to 220 cubic km of water mysteriously appearing in our oceans(?)
If I know my Consensus well enough, there is also thermal expansion and I wouldn’t doubt somewhere someone is saying that the 220 cubic km is coming from other areas of the Antarctic… but please clarify! Where is the 220 Antarctic gigatons of ice loss coming from?

“”” Turboblocke (11:09:42) :
You do realise that she’s talking about ice on the Antarctic penisular , not sea ice.
Perhaps it’s time to assess the state of disarray on this site first? 😉 “””
Starting with the meaning of the adjective “peninsular”.

Far too many warmists just don’t have a clue!
Witness this article in the Globe and Mail last week:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/lets-not-fret-over-climate-migration/article1483245/
In it the author, one Doug Saunders, states:
“If the predictions were true, the people of Ivalo would be gone, the first wave of refugees in a human tide caused by climate change.
Their river valley Arctic village in northeastern Finland is the first really unambiguous victim of melting polar caps. Starting around 2005, much of the village was suddenly below sea level.
There’s no question that global warming is having its way with Ivalo.”
Interesting commentary given that Ivalo is notably inland, UP a river flowing into Lake Inari which has an elevation of 119 metres above sea level! A quick check of the facts reveals that Ivalo has notable flooding in 2005 due to the river overflowing its banks due to excessive snowmelt!
Facts never matter to the warmists! Just ask Al Gore!

NickB. (14:27:40) …
This is ice on the continent…

Peter Miller (09:22:28)
Miskolczi has derived formulae to give the cooling effect of water vapour.
A very readable explanation of Miskolczi’s ideas can be found here [19 pages – best to print it first!] :
http://www.landshape.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=introduction

Maybe she envisioned massive shrinkage of, instead of in, Texas due to this so called global warming winter of 2010.

Bill Marsh (10:56:36) :
Paul Daniel Ash (09:34:45) :
A complete farrago of misinformation from Ms Ferringo?
No, she blew it on the comparison, but she was correct on the number. A New Jersey of ice is quite a lot…
——————-
Actually, to put into perspective (assuming she is correct) Antarctica lost a ‘New Jersey’ of ice in 20 years, since there are approx 590 ‘New Jerseys’ of ice in Antarctica it would take roughly 12,000 years to lose all of it. To me that says a ‘New Jersey’ of ice isn’t all that much.
Actually (assuming you’re correct), they’re talking about edge ice. So, your number is off (on the small side) by a very large factor. The ice is much thicker just a little ways from the edge. So multiply your 12,000 years by a very large number to get closer to the ballpark. Being lazy and not doing the math, I’d guess many millions of years is more accurate.

3 George E. Smith (14:36:52) :
“”” Turboblocke (11:09:42) :
You do realise that she’s talking about ice on the Antarctic penisular , not sea ice.
Perhaps it’s time to assess the state of disarray on this site first? 😉 “””
Starting with the meaning of the adjective “peninsular”.”Big deal, I made a typo… or was I doing it to sow confusion?
Interestingly, I’ve been corrected about “my mistake”. The majority of the Antarctic Peninsula ice is on land and much of the “sea ice” in the link Nick B gave is/was grounded, so comparing it to a plot of “sea ice anomaly” is not really relevent.

oops again, should have been the increase in sea levels amounts to 4″, not change.

Almost exactly the same claim was made on TVNZ’s “Sunday” documentary on 3 May 2009. See:

NARRATOR: “…on the Antarctic Peninsula, ten massive ice shelves, some as big as Texas, have broken off”
It provoked discussion on the website Hot-Topic where even the warmists admitted it was garbage.
http://hot-topic.co.nz/morning-morgantown/
And yet, like some mutant chain letter, this claim get recycled through the warmist backchannels. This is the sort of “evidence” which is supposed to stampede us into global energy rationing? Pathetic.

Regarding Ms. Ferrigno’s difficulties in mentally conceptualizing the relative size of things, there is an old and terribly crude and sexist joke on this subject.
Why are women such poor judges of size and distance?
Because men have been lying to them for centuries about what six inches looks like.
This will probably be snipped in moderation, but people need a good laugh once in a while and if you can’t laugh at this nonsense all that’s left is to weep.

A lot of the problem for the pro-AGW ‘scientists’ is that when they are put in the public eye they come across as really dumb guys when they actually have to explain anything. Admittedly it takes a knowledgeable listener to spot the errors, and sites like this to bring it to a wider audience!
When I was working I was unhappy with the number of management layers, and above a certain level they seemed to be ineffective – I referred to them as the ‘fantasy management layers’, nothing they did made any difference.
We seem to have a ‘fantasy climate science’. Now they are being asked to PROVE IT for real, not just have their claims accepted as gospel. First they need to understand what ‘science’ is and what constitutes ‘proof’, and also to understand the concept of a ‘healthy scientific debate’.

In replay to: JP Miller (09:44:08) :
I sent an email to Dr. Ferrigno and her apparent supervisor at USGS, Dr. R.S. Williams, using their email addresses at the USGS website, asking if they would care to comment on the WUWT blog. Both bounced back saying the addresses were not valid.
I thought the USGS might like to know what their “scientists” are saying. Guess not.
I sent an email to ‘jferrign@usgs.gov’ and it has not bounced after over 1 1/2 hours. I have asked her for an explanation and a public apology for her alarmist comparisons of area. Time will tell if she responds; I’m not expecting much but live in hope.

JP Miller (09:44:08) :
I sent an email to Dr. Ferrigno and her apparent supervisor at USGS, Dr. R.S. Williams, using their email addresses at the USGS website, asking if they would care to comment on the WUWT blog. Both bounced back saying the addresses were not valid.

Note that the USGS is still back in DOS mode. Email addresses are clipped at eight characters, thus no “o” in jferrign@.
I sent the following (with no bounce-back):

Would you care to clarify your statement, “I think I’ll go back 20 years, and in the last 20 years, I would say at least 20,000 square kilometers of ice has been lost [from the Antarctic peninsula] , and that’s comparable to an area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska.”?
Texas covers more than 695,000 sq.km., while Alaska is more than 1.7 million sq. km.. Did you misspeak, or were you simply parroting some special interest P.R. release?
How is 2,000 km^2/year at all significant, especially in light of the peninsula being volcanic, and the ice buildup on the continent?
I look forward to your response.

cheers

Back on 3 December 2008 on the ‘Tonight Show’ they had one of the battles of the “Jaywalk All Stars.” I don’t remember the question but it led to the 3 young folks (Paige, Zach, and Natalie) expressing the belief that Alaska is an island. Leno was astonished. I sent him a couple of links to maps showing Alaska as an island – one by the U.S. Mint is now gone. Alaska was off the coast of S. Calif. But it must be floating. In this one it is south of Big Bend, TX – and it is smaller than Texas. Look for yourself. Moving, shrinking, floating – Earth is strange indeed.
http://www.infoplease.com/states.html

20,000 square kilometers?
As a complete side-liner, I’ve been watch and recording the daily numbers for Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
Data provided by NSIDC: NASA SMMR and SSMI
There hasn’t been a single day over the last 2 weeks that we haven’t gained or lost more then this value.
Or this for a cooling figure 😉
022110: -.597 (92,000 sq. km increase in the past 2 days |
This one was pretty warming for a 1 day figure 😉
022210: -.684 (87,000 sq. km decrease since yesterday)

As is typical of these blunders, the average Joe will not understand the significance of 20,000 square km of ice compared with Antarctica’s total area, they will remember instead that Texas has melted.

Ms. FERRIGNO: In the last 20 years at least 20,000 square kilometers of ice has been lost, and that’s comparable to an area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska, would you believe it?
I don’t think so.
Would you believe, Nebraska?
No.
How about a small village in Wyoming?
Appologies to Mel Brookes.

The funny thing is that Texas is two to three times as big as the entire Antarctic peninsula…
…and still the area of ice that the Antarctic Peninsula has lost is bigger than Texas…that sounds dramatic indeed…dramatic in regards of the American education system.

When the facts aren’t enough, exaggerate and distort. It worked for Gore.

Bottom line is that the Southern Sea Ice Anomaly is still growing despite any ice shelf loss. To the tune of 500,000 km2, which swamps 20,000 km2 (or the 24,000 km2 above).
What’s the point?
For each km2 lost, 20 more take it’s place.
That’s not warming, that’s a cherry picking expedition, extreme edition.

Prediction: There might be noticeably increased ice loss within the next three years in the Antarctic peninsula.
Reason: The Chilean earthquake, forcing deeper colder water to the surface, slowing water from the Equatorial Current diverted South off the South American continent (arising from the Coriolis force of the rotating Earth) and making its way to circumpolar Antarctic water. The slower water will absorb more solar heat in the remaining Southern Hemisphere summer, melting more ice.
How to decide: From the signature of the resulting thermohaline gradient, aiding in the convection of circumpolar Antarctic water returning to the Equator.

Texas has no replaced Manhattan for disasterholics?

Hal (09:53:10) :
I wonder how Ms. Jane Ferrigno would do on “Are you smarter than a 5th Grader?”
Europe is a country and everyone speaks french there
………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
or how about this poor girl? I feel so sorry for her, I really do

Hunter:(09:16:52) LOL. Mind if I borrow your quote? 🙂

Ms Jane Ferrigno deserves the Nobel Price for her work !
This would please Al Gore and Barack Obama both at no end , finding such an excellent recognition for the fantastic science she is representing

@ Tarpon
“I have always wondered how Antarctica ice can melt with temperatures so far below freezing. Does anybody think a degree or two matters in Antarctica ?”
I wondered about that too, but ice evaporates too:
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem03/chem03444.htm

“Is there anyone left out there that still takes these people seriously?”
Yes. Me. I’m still slurping the Kool-Aide but I have to say that all of these damn graphs and stuff that knock the hell out of AGW are making me crazy!

Mike86 (11:22:02) :
I listen to NPR and usually donate. This year, with the AGW coverage, not a dime.
I listen to their classical music channel and always had a generous annual donation. Not only did I stop donating two years ago but wrote them a letter explaining why.
I put the cash in Anthony’s and Steve’s tip jars instead.

Amino Acids feels bad for Miss South Carolina. Why?
She was asked why “a sixth of Americans can’t locate the US on a map.”
Miss South Carolina provides a complete explanation “why” by her answer, and I think people are being too hard on her.
Miss South Carolina is the product of poor education in a country fixated upon things like “beauty pageants” – as Miss South Carolina demonstrates perfectly.

Michael Spencer (04:54:54) :
“Is there anyone left out there that still takes these people seriously?”
Yes. Me. I’m still slurping the Kool-Aide but I have to say that all of these damn graphs and stuff that knock the hell out of AGW are making me crazy!
Ah, that would be the cognitive dissonance kicking in. It’s a war between the irrational belief that man’s additions of C02 (plant food) to the atmosphere is causing dangerous climate change, with the completely rational idea that climate change is natural, and C02 has little to do with it, and man’s C02 even less.
The cure is knowledge. The more you learn, the more you realize this supposed concern about C02 is completely silly.

@ Mark
ref: Ivalo/Finland
the place is famos for driving like mad on the ice of the lake. Probeably the CO2-emissions of all these Porsches, Beamers, Audis, etc. have meltet the snow in the vincinity. If you shell out about 6.000 $ y’ll hav a lot of fun with tyres, armed with 1 1/5 inch spikes.
😉
http://www.focus.de/auto/news/ivalo-finnland-porsche-training-im-ewigen-eis_aid_479778.html

DISCOVERED THE TRUTH ABOUT THE NPR INTERVIEW:
I have figured out the NPR [National Public Radio] hidden secret behind the claim.
“Ms. FERRIGNO: I think I’ll go back 20 years, and in the last 20 years, I would say at least 20,000 square kilometers of ice has been lost, and that’s comparable to an area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska.”
I have found it! San Juan County located in Southeastern Utah:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Juan_County,_Utah
Comes in at an area of 20,547 sq km, and is located in an “area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska.”
;>P

“if..if…if…if”…..Have any climate scientists taken a course on logic? Aren’t they constantly commiting the logical fallacy of “Slippery Slope” and many others?
“IF the warming continues, IF the retreat continues, IF the amount of ice on the continent starts to flow into the water, THEN there will be substantial impact to the sea level”
Please……stop with the logical fallicies….Thank you.

I did get a response from the USGS. Here it is:
JP,
The comment by Jane in the NPR interview was an honest mistake. We are sorry for the delay in responding to your email, but Jane has been out of the office. Below is an apology and clarification statement that will be posted on the NPR site soon. Jane will be in the office later today, and if you have any questions, please let me or her know.
From Jane …
I want to apologize to NPR and the listening audience for my misstatement last Sunday, February 28. During the last 20 years, an area more than 20,000 sq. km. (comparable to the size of New Jersey) has broken off the ice shelves of the Antarctic Peninsula. It is the Antarctic Peninsula, the source of the ice loss, that I meant to say was larger than the state of Texas but smaller than the state of Alaska.
Thank you,
Jessica Robertson
Public Affairs Specialist
Office of Communications
U.S. Geological Survey
(703) 648-6624
jrobertson@usgs.gov

LOL – correction to John from CA (07:38:27)
Note: 1 square mile = 2.59 km2

My response to the USGS:
Ms. Robertson,
Thank you for your kind reply and clarification.
As USGS must know, climate science has serious problems for reasons I will not elaborate, but which are obvious. Dr. Ferrigno’s comment, while an honest mistake, was certainly not a “seat of the pants” mistake. There is a difference. She had obviously thought about and prepared comparisons that the average person could understand in talking about Antarctic Ice loss. If a USGS scientist cannot be counted on to do such simple homework thoroughly, how can we trust her science? And, by extension, USGS science.
I would strongly recommend two things to the USGS:
1. Stop acting in a way that makes the organization appear to be doing as much advocacy as science regarding “global warming.”
2. Be MUCH MORE humble and tentative about what is REALLY known and not
known about climate and how it works.
I have a PhD in science and have done computer modeling and, from what I can tell (although I am certainly no expert in climate science), the various computer models created for climate analysis do nothing but codify assumptions for which data are sorely lacking (e.g., climate response to forcings, effect of hydrological cycle/ cloud cover).
Climate science has some very fundamental flaws at its root — you need to acknowledge those before the public will take you seriously.
Until then, stick to predicting earthquakes. You’ve got a better chance of being right there…

Ms. Jane Ferrigno was one of our best double agents, as a result of your laughter and cat-calls you have created a monster. She has resigned and is now fully committed to the AGW cause. She will stop at nothing to destroy us and all life on earth.
Please People! Remember that we are few in number and need every able bodied person we can recruit for our cause. In this day and age, truth is an extremely endangered commodity.

Dell Hunt, Michigan (07:18:01) :
“Ms. FERRIGNO: I think I’ll go back 20 years, and in the last 20 years, I would say at least 20,000 square kilometers of ice has been lost, and that’s comparable to an area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska.”
I have found it! San Juan County located in Southeastern Utah:
Comes in at an area of 20,547 sq km, and is located in an “area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska.”
You are totally not kidding!
We just drove through there and it’s a winter nightmare, many feet of snow, now ice, piled up in parking lots as high as the front loaders can reach, rural driveways still snowed in, buildings collapsed. Wide eyed Monticello residents grasping strangers by their sleeves to tell the tale of their most unbelievably snowy winter.
Not to worry, most of it will end up in Lakes Powell and Mead, much needed. Thanks Antarctica.
But then the salt cedars might suck it up and turn it into tornadoes in Kansas, where Dorothy might get sucked up into OZ, (at least back into the Southern Hemisphere) where she is finally able to confront the Man Behind the Curtain, also with our thanks.
All that heavy ice in San Juan County might throw off the tilt of the earth, and the subsidence from the weight might pop the Yellowstone caldera like a pimple. If If If.
If all the world were apple pie,
and all the seas were ink,
and all the moon was green cheese,
what would we have to drink?
;>P