Climate Craziness of the Week – MSM jumps on alarming headline

Beavis and Butthead never read past the headlines, so I’m sure this will be inscribed on some enviro sandwich board soon.

If “Titanic-sized” refers to James Cameron’s ego, we’re all in trouble.

I had better stop procrastinating and get back at building the ark in my driveway. Umm…just how much is a “cubit” anyway?

Part of their calculation depends on the rapid melting of Arctic sea ice, which is refreezing. They are grasping at hairs.

Did they remember to subtract the necessary increase in atmospheric H2o? That ought to bump it up a few decades…

The authors themselve estimate that a complete melting of all floating ice worldwide would lead to an extra sea level rise of about 4 cm (1.5 inches). We are all going to die! (anyway…)

I’m having a hard time putting my finger on the exact place in my thermo book, but I distinctly recall a thermodynamic principle that when you mix a more concentrated solution and a less concentrated solution, the resultant volume of mixture is always less than the sum of the individual volumes, which means that that 49 micron figure can’t be right; the number has to be negative. All the real-world examples in the thermo book behave this way.

“and it’s extent (sea ice) varies considerably over the seasons.”
Yes and no. Obviously sea ice melts in the summer and freezes in the winter. However, the total of Arctic plus Antarctic sea ice extent has remained remarkably stable since 1979. Currently the extent is less than 1 m sq kms from the 1979/2000 mean. Further, the current slow start to the melt season in the Arctic is matched by a slow start to the freeze season in the Antarctic. Can this really be a coincidence? Or is there, maybe, possibly, some unknown mechanism that ensures the total of Arctic plus Antarctic sea ice extent stays approximately constant?

Won’t that actually be +/- 0 micrometers, as the ice gets replenished every year anyway? Or are we taking the view that all Arctic ice gets a one-way ticket to melty-melty land?

…Since our summer house at Island of Öland is only some 9 meters ASL, I doubt I’ll have
time to blog here anymore before it becomes like the “Cathédrale engloutie”…9x40x526=189360 years, that means…in some 150000 years we’ll have
a nice beach property for 30000 years…”Många bäckar små blir till en stor å”…[many
small creeks form a small river…] Is there some inofficial competition in the CAGW
camp to find the smallest possible climate threat??? Logic: The smaller the threat, the
bigger the scare…

Based on the estimate of 620,000 cubic km of floating sea ice in the world today, the total possible sea level increase if all floating sea ice melted is 1.61 inches.

Staffan Lindström wrote: “Många bäckar små blir till en stor å”…[many
small creeks form a small river…]”
Actually, the correct translation from Swedish should probably be “many small streams become a large river”.

From the CATLIN ARCTIC TEAM
Ice Base Ready For Lift-Off
The Ice Base has now been almost completely dismantled, with the happy campers deciding a last minute dunk in the science sampling hole was in order. Watch the team diving in to the briny darkness in this video.
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/
Any guesses as to the thickness of the ice

Well I guess in 526 years the Mile High City, Denver, will have to rename itself the 5279 ft and 11 inch high city.

Bwahaha! Al Gore’s new beach front home will be under water in 400 years!
Oh, hell….never mind.

Okay, now that I’ve managed to stop laughing (I think I might have actually broken a rib). 49 microns/year, really? You know what else you measure in mircrons? That’s the peak in the wavelength of black body radiation at about 130 – 140 Kelvin.
I guess we should all start to worry now.

526 years is but a blip in Earth’s history.

old44 says:
April 30, 2010 at 1:34 pm
A standard Co-ordinate Measuring Machine used in industry to measure engine components for your car has a volumetric accuracy of about 5-7 microns. I would love to know what they are measuring the oceans with.
_______________________________________________________________________
Yes and how the heck they are measuring global temperature to tenths of a degree C per century. A L Strata, a former member of NASA does an analysis. If you have not read it, please do. His Conclusion:
“…The CRU, GISS and NCDC all derive global profiles by making some incredible and unproven assumptions about how a temperature measurement can be extrapolated to represent a city, a region, a country, a hemisphere and the globe. For example, in the CRU data they assume you can create a 500 km ‘grid’ from one or a small number of temperature stations. Even worse, they assume you can create a neighboring 500 km grid that has no stations from nearby grids….
….What is clear from these two simple analyses is that any regional (≥ 160 km) or global temperature index is too inaccurate to detect a 0.8°C rise over 100 years. We can’t even get to that level of accuracy when we are really guesstimating 99.9% of the actual temperature from sparse ground sensors.
And even if there was a 0.8°C rise, is that really significant given the daily ranges temperatures can swing?
All this proves the AGW theories are mathematically invalid, there claimed results are impossible to achieve with the approach they use.”

John Peter (April 30, 2010 at 12:58 pm)
…Famous “åar” of the world??: The Amazonas, The Rhine, The Danube, The Volga, The Yellow River…and FROM the “Mississippi man”: Mark Twain : Denial is not just a RIVER in Africa…So John Peter, I should have written “…a big small river” So why is
it that English does not have different words for different sizes of waterways like the Scandinavian languages?? Etymologists and language historians, where are you when needed??

Have they factored in the sea level rise due to the displacement of water caused by the hiding of the Iraqi WMDs in the ocean off Basra?

Hilarious …49 microns increase across the globe, the width of the average human hair. Better start thinking about moving all those at-risk communities near the sea.

It’s obvious that universities need to be shut. This kind of garbage doesn’t even help the alarmist cause. All it shows is that taxes are being paid to fools who do nothing but proclaim their foolishness. They can’t even lie well.

M. White said
From the CATLIN ARCTIC TEAM:……
These guys caused quite a stir yesterday, claimed it rained on them. Environment Canada says it has never rained in April where they are:
“”It’s definitely a shocker the general feeling within the polar community is that rainfall in the high Canadian Arctic in April is a freak event,” Pen Hadow, the team’s expedition director, told Reuters in an interview from London this week.
“Scientists would tell us that we can expect increasingly to experience these sorts of outcomes as the climate warms.””
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/cbc/100429/canada/canada_north_north_pole_rainfall
Of course no video of it.

Eureka!

OMG soon the world will be bald ‘an we’re all gonna drown.
Will hair restorer bring the ice back?

I’m surprised they didn’t warn about a 49,000 nm rise in sea level. That is a scarier number. Do you remember what the IPCC did following their first report? The graph of sea level rise based on six predictive computer models showed a worst-case sea level rise of 0.64 m. The graph was wider than is was tall (200-year time axis longer than sea level axis). The graphs produced for public consumption and in subsequent IPCC publications had squeezed the 200-year time axis so the image was taller than wide (increasing the apparent scope of the line) and showed a worst-case rise of 64 cm. Obviously, 64 is a bigger number than 0.64.

I call this ‘National Enquirer’ journalism.
All the crazy made up stories take place in far away places that are impossible for the reading population to fact check.
Examples:
‘Alien Baby Boy Born in Katmandu, Nepal!’
‘Calamitous Ice Melting at the North Pole Sure to Kill Millions! – Wasteful Auto Driving by Caucasian Christian Hetero Conservative Males to Blame’

Yes, I’ve finally figured it out.
There IS a slight increase in the volume of the sea, when you add “fresh water”, to whit – – –
Buoyancy
When floating ice melts, does water level rise?
When floating ice melts, does the water level rise?
Seed Expert Claude Baudoin writes:
Water expands when it freezes, so you might think that when it melts and reduces in size, the water level will go down. Alternatively, because part of the ice floats the water, you might think that when it melts, the water level will rise.
Neither is true, as explained by Archimedes principles.
When an ice cube (or an iceberg, which is a big ice cube) floats in water, then by definition the weight of the ice cube is exactly equal to the buoyancy force, which is equal to the weight of the displaced water.
When the ice cube melts, its volume changes, but its weight is conserved (law of the conservation of mass). So the melted water from the ice cube has exactly the same weight as the water that was displaced by the ice cube when it was frozen — therefore the volume of melted water fits exactly in the previously displaced volume — and the water level stays the same.
Note that this argument applies only if the ice cube is made of the same water as the water that it is floating in. This is true, for example, with the Arctic ice pack, which is made of frozen sea water. However, it is not true for Antarctic icebergs, which are blocks of fresh-water ice from the continent that are floating in salt-water sea. In this case, we must take into account that the salt water is denser than the fresh water. The fresh-water iceberg still weighs as much as the weight of the displaced salt water, but because of the difference in density, the volume of melted fresh water will be slightly greater than the displaced volume of salt water — so when the iceberg melts, the water level will rise, although the difference is very small.
BUT this means one has to TOTALLY IGNORE THE PROCESSES WHICH ARE CONTINUOUSLY ADDING TO THE SOLUTES IN THE OCEAN. Which of course, may make the claim by the authors moot, due to a lack of “due diligence”. (I’m going to hedge on this, having NOT SEEN the actual article, and being too cheap and financially unable to afford such papers as a matter of priority right now.)
This, aside from the ludicrous nature of the minuscule effect that the authors DO point out.

I looked up paper http://www.agu.org/journals/pip/gl/2010GL042496-pip.pdf .
They say that the effect they studied contributed 1.6% to the measured sea level rise to date. I don’t see the scientists exaggerating their findings. How it gets reported in the media is another matter.
It is worth noting that if the melt rate accelerates the 1 inch mark would come before Anthony’s 500 years. Also, sea level rise is not uniform. In the Arctic the rise would likely be higher. Still the effect is small. A better headline would be: “Melting sea ice contributes slightly to sea level rise.”
I only got 5500 hits with Google. I’m not sure why the difference.

“Professor Shepherd and his team used a combination of satellite observations and a computer model to make their assessment. ”
Last time I checked the TOPEX/ JASON satellites that they use to measure sea level orbit at an altitude of about 1335 km. That’s 1,335.000,000 mm. The sat. instruments measure altitude by sending a signal to the ocean surface and calculating the distance from the time of reflectance. In another life I spent a fair number of years working in the surveying field with instruments that operate on very similar, though not identical principles. It’s been nearly 20 years since I was actively involved, but even today a topline survey instrument’s standard error is 2mm
+/- 2ppm. That’s from an instrument setup on a solid tripod, well leveled, with proper atmospheric corrections entered, reading from a block of precision retroprisms similarly situated at something less than 2.5 miles. Reading from a natural surface loses 1-3 or more orders of magnitude of precision. The time required for each reading is usually over a minute.
The sat. instruments are reading an ocean surface that is constantly variable in elevation and reflectance, both systemically and chaotically. They are scanning swaths of ocean that are hundreds of kilometers across, which brings correction for the curvature of the Earth into play. Measurement times are a second or two. At the altitude at which they orbit deviations from orthogonality to the center of the Earth which are within the range of any instrument’s ability to detect introduce significant error. The newer JASON satellites have improvements which greatly enhance atmospheric corrections and orbit precision, but orbit error is still only claimed to be less than 10cm.
Given all that, even if the satellites could somehow match the survey instrument’s best performance, the error per measurement would be +/-2.7 meters. I would suspect, if they’re only doing an order of magnitude worse than that, it would be a minor miracle. If you take a million measurements in which the range for the standard error for each measurement is a close match of the range of variability of the distances measured it won’t be surprising if the distance derived when you attempt to analyze the numbers resolves to a very precise degree. That won’t mean that you know the distance that precisely, but only that the variability is concealing the error.
I haven’t been able to access anything that describes in any detail the exact methodology by which the satellite sea level numbers are derived and it is possible that modern science has somehow been able to resolve these seeming contradictions. I am willing to be convinced if anyone wants to argue the point. But, unless or until I can be shown something pretty miraculous, I will continue to consider the the notion that sat. measurements can derive values for mean sea level, a concept which is in itself more meaningless than even global average temperature, accurate to a tenth of a millimeter to be essentially laughable.

“At this rate, to see an inch of sea level rise from melting icebergs we’d need:
1 inch/0.0019 inch/yr = 526 years
Yeah, I’m worried about that.”
Well, I’m worried for my descendents. At this rate, the whole planet will be completely covered in water by the time my great^100 grand children are born. I won’t sleep tonight knowing this. Will write to my government and ask them for a new tax to stop the ice melting.

49 micrometers per year? Well let’s see, that amount to about 2 thousandths of an inch per year. So in 100 years sea levels will rise .2 inches. Oh NO!!!! We’re all gonna drown!
Seriously these scientists need to get a life.

What a waste of UK taxpayers’ money to be funding this nonsense. What a state academia is in when it is reduced to producing drivel like this.

Well until all the ice is gone, the melting ice leaves a fresh water layer on the surface of the ocean that you can actually drink. I would think that the arctic ocean surface is therefore comparatively low in salt and the refreeze is that of perhaps brackish to fresh water. So, unless I’m far off the mark here, sealevel will save up most of this rise perhaps for several centuries and then it will go rise up 1.0″, probably stretching the the time scale out to 600-700yrs.

Seems to me that in the last few decades there has been a catastrophic decline in the quality of climate science.

That sound? ‘Tis Newton, spinning in his grave!

Sean Peake – Completely off topic, but did you look at all of Thompson’s journals in the Archives of Ontario? If so, I have a question for you.
Thanks.

Anthony’s Reality punchline: “1 inch/0.0019 inch/yr = 526 years. Yeah, I’m worried about _that_.”
Yes, but you know that they’ll use that figure to back up their models that say we’ll run out of water by 20XX, due to population bombs. We can only have catastrophic global warming or resource depletion. We cannot _ever_ be fine and have little to worry about.

Al Gored says:
April 30, 2010 at 5:04 pm
Sean Peake – Completely off topic, but did you look at all of Thompson’s journals in the Archives of Ontario? If so, I have a question for you.
Yes, and I transcribed them all from 1789 to 1812, and a few in between and from 1849 to 1851. I used them for my upcoming version of “The Travels of David Thompson” (2 volumes) that includes his weather observations for that period.

Stephan says:
April 30, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Very big story
http://au.messages.yahoo.com/news/top-stories/1595100/ So Nature has decided it better save face while it can of course with this data it has to now….
How the hell will RC get out of this one…..
—–
Indeed. Good question. Although I did see that it was a “soon to be published” paper so I guess they still have time to have the dog eat it, or something.
In any case, since Nature has been firmly in the camp, and thus held up as one of their great ‘peer reviewed’ authorities, this is highly inconvenient to the gang.
And I somehow doubt that CO2 even accounts for the 5 to 10%…

So if all these titanic sized icebergs raise the ocean level by a hairs breadth then it says all their previous alarmism about the melting ice would only raise the oceans a couple of hairs breadth. The MSM does itself no favours

Then factor in Post Glacier Rebound, plate tectonics, earthquakes, subsidence, uplift, sedimentation, earth tides, the hydrological cycle, land reclamation, and probably several other things I haven’t thought of, and “measurements” like this are well lost in the noise. What is their point?

In my physics class, one of the lessons dealt with “Trivial Considerations” such as applying E=MC2 to chemical reactions, or using General Relativity in calculations of travel times for a car or plane from one point to another. The point was to show that while you could calculate an effect, the effects were utterly trivial and down in the tenth decimal place and included a statement from the lecturer that if you wanted to show this in a exam answer, fine, but no marks.
The “Floating sea ice” paper is thus a worthy candidate for utterly trivial considerations.

I wonder how much water is taken out for desalinization world wide.

You got the date wrong – it is the 1st of May today*, not the first of April, surely?
[*At least it is here, where we get days nice and fresh, not like the tired old used-up days we leave for the rest of the world ;-]

Sea level has been 100 meters higher and 100 meters lower. A small amout of perspective may be in order. And who is it that deems everything that is, will always be, as is, are going to be in for some huge surprises.
Change is how the universe has worked for billions of years.
And then a volcano goes off, or a meteor comes crashing the party.

And if the ice is made *from* sea water, it would then offset any trivial increase by a similar amount.
And since floating sea ice worldwide is actually slightly higher than average’ they are actually showing a mechanism for decreasing rates of sea level increases.
And oh, by the way: The writers of this paper are jerks.
John Maddox, publisher emeritus of ‘Nature’ magazine, would have tossed this sort of trash right into the round file where it belongs.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.07/doomsday_pr.html
His most excellent book, ‘The Doomsday Syndrome’ is easily available on line:
http://www.amazon.com/Doomsday-Syndrome-John-Royden-Maddox/dp/0070394288
I think it should be returned to publication. It is long past time for grownups to take science back from the loonies.

*yawns loudly*
… someone wake me up when some real science hits the floor running…

We should take this very seriously, but NOT in the way it was intended.
I refer back to the comment about the Australian ABC Catalyst TV program on much the same topic.
It took up the whole half hour which is most unusual for them.
They sent 2 reporters to the opposite ends of Anarticia to do the program.
That requires money and real planning, and for the Bureaucratic ABC, quite some elapsed time.
This is just the latest of a well orchestrated series of global scare campaigns, trying to claw back their dwindling number of true believers.
It smells of big money, and a very competent PR machine.
These types of coincident alarmist reports from opposite ends of the globe do not just happen.

At this rate, to see an inch of sea level rise from melting icebergs we’d need:
1 inch/0.0019 inch/yr = 526 years
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Ya, but what if you lived on the coastline? One day you’ll be walking too close to the water, and bam! You get your shoes wet!

We really have to start building another ark. BTW, how did Noah figure out that time that there was going to be a big flood?

They should have put a smiley at the end of the title 🙂

“REPLY: b and n are right next to each other on the keyboard. Fat fingers. -A”
There you go, yet another sign of AGW Anthony? Can I get a grant?

Here’s what I don’t get. I checked the math on the 2.6% and that appears accurate based on densities listed in wiki of water, ice, and sea ice. I came up with 2.52%.
Anthony said:
At this rate, to see an inch of sea level rise from melting icebergs we’d need:
1 inch/0.0019 inch/yr = 526 years
But Anthony, your 4 times too long. According to my calculations you would run out of sea-ice in about 140 years! 😉
If ever single bit of floating ice today melted, I come up with a scary total of 6.9 mm assuming the 3m average sea-ice thickness cited in the article. That is based on 15 million sq-km for arctic and 18 for antarctica.
What, are these “scientists” just wanting to get their silly little millimeters in IPCC’s black kettle? How much did that research cost? (With a physics calculator and wiki it took less than an hour. Will post my calcs if someone wants to check the math. I double checked and 7 mm seem correct. less than the width of a pencil for all of the sea-ice in this whole world!)

Do these folks ever read their own work? One has to wonder?
So much for getting cheap ocean front property in my lifetime!
Just have too worry about wild waves and hurricanes.

OkieSkeptic says:
April 30, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Seems I recall that maybe much more important than melting ice is the volumetric expansion from warming.
—
I agree that if the oceans get warmer they will rise slightly vertically from expansion but don’t you consider that the land would also be warmer and it would rise vertically from expansion in the same manner and much the same amount? I never seem to hear anyone question the land’s rise, well, that’s not never scary is it? (Hey, I’m an OKie too 😉 )

Curiousgeorge says:
April 30, 2010 at 4:19 pm
They probably would have [warned about a 49,000 nm rise in sea level], but I suspect that someone may have told them that nm can also be interpreted as Nautical Miles . Which would be really scary! 🙂
—
Nice observation, C-george. I guess I could have used mµ (millimicron), but that use is archaic. I suppose they went with 49 micrometers because it is a much larger number than 0.0019 (inches) and most Americans don’t know what a micrometer is or how many fit in an inch.

Bilderberger Nark (for fun).
http://www.bryancore.org/pdf/encore3.pdf

Way, way OT
Al Gored:
Since neither of us had a direct response from the mods, here is what I have about grizzly bears (there are many references, but these below are taken from the manuscripts. Note: It is my belief that the grizzly of the barrens is a direct descendant of the extinct plains grizzly):
“A few days after our arrival [December 1787, near Calgary AB] , the death cry was given and the men all started out of the tents, and our old tent mate with his gun in his hand. The cry was from a young man who held his bow and arrows and showed one of his thighs torn by a grizled bear, and which had killed two of his companions. The old man called for his powder horn and shot bag, and seeing the priming of his gun in good order, he set off with the young man for the bear, which was at a short distance. They found him devouring one of the dead. The moment he saw them, he sat up on his hind legs, showing them his teeth and long clawed paws. In this, his usual position to defend his prey, his head is a bad mark but his breast offers a direct mark to the heart, through which the old man sent his ball and killed him.
“The two young men who were destroyed by the bear had each two iron shod arrows and, the camp being near, they attacked the bear for his skin and claws. But unfortunately their arrows struck the bones of the ribs and only one irritated him. He sprung on the first and with one of his dreadful fore paws tore out his bowels and three of his ribs; the second he seized in his paws and almost crushed him to death, threw him down and when the third Indian hearing the cries came to their assistance, [he] sent an arrow, which only wounded him in the neck, for which the bear chased him and slightly tore one of his thighs. The first poor fellow was still alive and knew his parents, in whose arms he expired. The bear, for the mischief he had done, was condemned to be burnt to ashes. The claws of his fore paws, very sharp and long, the young man wanted for a collar but it was not granted; those that burned the bear watched until nothing but ashes remained.
“The two young men were each wrapped up separately in bison robes, laid side by side on the ground and covered with logs of wood and stones, in which we assisted. The bear is, as the Indians express it, “See Pee ne” (strong of life). However mortally wounded, except thro’ the head or heart, he has life enough to do mischief.” (Chapter 10, Return to the Trading Houses)
[Below are excepts written to describe the time he was travelling on the plains, at Fort Augustus ,and at Fort George c. 1797-99 and 1800-01]
“The grizled bear (Ursus horribus), by far the largest of all the species, cares for neither Man or horse and will attack either. Every year, two or three Indians are destroyed by these bears, but as soon as he sees a man on horseback (which is a combination of skill, courage and swiftness) he runs away, and when wounded tries to get away. Such is his dread of a man on horseback, but alone he cares nothing for him. The large black bears with red noses often chase the grizled bear and appear to have no fear of him.
“The grizled bear (something of an iron grey) is a very powerful animal. I have known him trail on the bare ground a bison bull killed by a hunter above two hundred yards. A grizled bear killed by LeDuc had on each side of him something covered with earth which he was guarding. Upon opening them, one was half an antelope, and the other, half a young black bear. How such a clumsy animal could catch such a swift animal as the antelope, none could tell.
“The claws on the fore feet are five to six inches in length on the curve. I traded many of the latter, which I gave away, except two, which I have still by me. They are much valued by the Indians and a necklace of them is the value of a good common horse. All other bears find or make dens to shelter themselves during winter, but the grizled bears only looks for shelter in bad weather and when the weather is fine, prowls about the whole winter. Fortunately, they are not numerous and confine themselves to the east foot of the mountains.
“An Indian, who had been running the bisons and killed three of them, saw a grizled bear. Depending on his swift horse, he soon came up with him and with an arrow, mortally wounded him. On this, the bear suddenly turned on them, the mare was too tired to wheel quick enough from the bear. With one of his fore paws, he struck the mare behind the shoulder and tore the ribs away. She fell dead and the Indian, partly under her, lay quiet. The bear went a few yards, laid down and died, which allowed the Indian to extricate himself. He had the skin of the bear; a poor recompense for his fine mare.
“Apistawawshish, a Nahathaway Indian, was hunting for food at the foot of the Woody Hill, (north of the Saskatchewan about 30 miles) and had killed a moose. According to custom, he had embowelled it and separated the large joints to prevent the meat spoiling, and placing bits of the skin with his gun case in a few small piles to scare the wolves, left it for the night and returned to his tent. Next morning, attended by his son, a lad of about ten years old, he went off on foot to cut up the moose ready to be carried away by two horses led by two women who were coming behind. On approaching the place where the moose lay, the lad ran ahead and came quite close to it without perceiving a large grizled bear was in possession of the deer. The bear instantly sprang upon the lad who from fear fell down and the bear put his foot on him to devour him. The screams of the boy brought the father to his assistance who sprang forward and aimed his gun close to the heart of the bear. It missed fire, upon which in agony of mind he threw down his gun and seized the enormous savage bear by the two ears. In an instant the bear tossed him to the ground and seizing him by the calves of his legs, tore a great part of his flesh from them. In this dreadful extremity the Indian lost neither his courage nor his presence of mind, but drew his keen two-edged dagger and plunging it into the side of the bear’s belly, cut him with all his force downwards a great gash, out of which the bowels fell. The bear gave a hideous growl and quitted him. The lad had received no other injury than the squeeze of the bear’s paws, and had got loose and ran away on his father’s seizing the bear, and he informed the women who were now near of the disaster. The Indian as soon as the bear quitted him hastily bound up his lacerated wounds, and made a shift to walk a little way, and being perceived by the women was borne away to his tent, when his life was for a long time despaired of. He, however, recovered and regained the use of his legs, tho’ very much disfigured.” (Chapter 21, Animals of the Plains)
“A few days after, as two of them were hunting (they always went by two) they met a coloured bear , which one of them wounded. The bear sprung on him, and standing on his hind feet, seized the Iroquois, hugging him with his fore legs and paws, which broke the bones of both arms above the elbow, and with its teeth tore the skin of the head from the crown to the forehead, for the poor fellow had drawn his knife to defend himself, but could not use it. Fortunately his comrade was near, and putting his gun close to the bear shot him dead. The poor fellow was a sad figure. None of us were surgeons, but we did the best we could, but for want of proper bandaging his arms were three months in getting well. These accidents happening only to the Iroquois made them superstitious and they concluded that some of the Algonquins had thrown bad medicine on them, and a quarrel would probably taken place had we not been with them. ” (Chapter 36, Migration of the Iroquois)
Hope this helps.
S

50 atoms deep is atomic!

S’funny, I’d already figured this out by watching the ice melt in my gin and tonic. (Needs real patience this experiment – the temptation is always to start drinking before the ice has gome.)

They are completely wrong u no. About more than half the rain coming down over the oceans [I calculated that from the area of the oceans and the land and u no there is plenty of rain over here where I live and not considering the deserts because there are no deserts on the ocean] which is what lets the sea levels rise u no.

Well, Czech power plant Prunéřov also contributes just a few microns of sea level rise per century – and it was almost enough for its upgrade plans to be abandoned, because of Greenpeace and Micronesia claims that it will sink the islands.
It was a real threat before the new environment minister – a technically educated woman – canceled the climate department of the environment ministry and gave green light to the coal plant’s plans. 😉
At any rate, microns of sea level rise *can* sometimes have a big impact (if there is a sufficient number of green, mouldy brains around).

Man’s gullibility seems to rise in tandem with the rise in general literacy.

Floating ice will not raise sea level one iota if it melts.

This amounts to 1342.465753 Angstrom units per day. This is scary stuff!
Or a waste of calculator batteries.

Somewhat OT, but can someone help me, please, with figures for polar bear numbers. After publishing a brief “sceptic” view in a local magazine a response has just been published saying polar bear numbers are “not only dropping, but they are dropping faster”. This was apparently on the basis of a 2009 survey of 19 sub-populations (with 2005 numbers in brackets) saying: increasing 1(2), stable 3(5), decreasing 8(5).
I am sure I have seen figures somewhere recently showing that at least as many sub-populations are increasing as decreasing. Can anyone point me at relevant figures or articles, please.

Al Gore’s Weather (AGW) : Free m and m.
More “mangled” more “moribund”.
C’monna to mah Tower of Babel.
It’s a dialogue, the “Petersberg Climate Dialogue”, “More than three dozen environment ministers” = +36. A dialogue?
AGW’s Tower Of Babel.
…-
“Environment ministers gather in Bonn to save climate talks”
“More than three dozen environment ministers are to meet near Bonn this weekend in a bid to revive global climate talks left mangled and moribund after the UN summit in Copenhagen.”
It will be the highest-level political meeting on climate since the much-criticised December conference fell spectacularly short of delivering the binding treaty that nearly all nations say is needed to spare the planet from the worst ravages of global warming.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mexican President Felipe Calderon, host to the next UN conference in Cancun at year’s end, will kick things off late Sunday, setting the tone for the two-and-a-half-day closed-door brainstorming session.
“It is the return of the ministers, who are there to give political guidance to (technical) negotiators,” said Brice Lalonde, France’s climate ambassador. “What counts at this point is political initiative.”
One avowed aim of the Petersberg Climate Dialogue – named for the castle where it is to be held – is confidence building.”
http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20100430-26903.html

Tom in Florida says:
April 30, 2010 at 6:33 pm
I wonder how much water is taken out for desalinization world wide.
I don’t know, but another comparison is the amount of irrigation water pumped from the earth is a volume equal to 2mm/yr sea level rise, or about 2/3rds of the total 3.2mm/yr current rate. This may be totally off as I used UN guesstimates, but is an interesting perspective, IMHO.

Err, solid H2O is of greater volume than liquid H2O. Melting an iceberg lowers, not raises the sea level. Of course since the amount of ice in the Arctic is increasing we should in general thus see a sea level decrease from ice, rather than the reverse. In either case, the effect is horrifically small.

While we are on climate craziness, some time back I did a pixel count of the images CT uses when they added snow coverage to their image in late 2004. It appeared the snow impinged on the shoreline, reducing the sea area some .5 X 10^6 Km^2, coincidentally equal to the step function in their anomaly graph at 2005 on. This year they have expanded the diameter of the earth, but managed to shrink the arctic sea even more on a bigger earth. This is getting just too silly.
http://i44.tinypic.com/2vrwuae.jpg
In the above image, I created a two pixel wide shoreline on the 1979 image, no it isn’t perfect, but plenty close for examining gov’t work. I then transferred the same shoreline to the 2010 image, scaling it to the larger diameter of the recent image. The image speaks for itself.

“According to Archimedes’ principle, any floating object displaces its own weight of fluid. For example, an ice cube in a glass of water does not cause the glass to overflow as it melts.
But because sea water is warmer and more salty than floating ice, changes in the amount of this ice are having an effect on global sea levels.”
What? This doesn’t make any sense. The ice will displace it’s own weight, and what is this ‘ effect’?
“The loss of floating ice is equivalent to 1.5 million Titanic-sized icebergs each year. However, the study shows that spread across the global oceans, recent losses of floating ice amount to a sea level rise of just 49 micrometers per year – about a hair’s breadth”.
This is an absurd level of precision considering the scale of what is being measured, unless this is a big joke.
“These changes have had major impacts on regional climate …”
What are the major impacts?
“Professor Shepherd and his team used a combination of satellite observations and a computer model to make their assessment”.
So we have satellites that can measure in single microns? I thought GPS, for example, can achieve at best an accuracy or around 1.5 meters. If a computer model is giving this accuracy then what are the real world inputs and to what accuracy?
“Because of differences in the density and temperature of ice and sea water, the net effect is to increase sea level by 2.6% of this volume, equivalent to 49 micrometers per year spread across the global oceans”.
Again. The ice will displace it’s own weight so it doesn’t matter if temperature or density changes as this will be reflected in how much ice sticks up above sea level, which will change accordingly.

The Atlantic is expanding do that the US and Europe move away from each other at around 4cm per year or around 30/40 meters in the last thousand years. This is a lot of extra ocean that must have an effect on weather, temps etc., and the wedge of Atlantic that cuts into the Arctic is only getting bigger.
4cm is a bigger number than 49microns.

Precipitation probably adds more to sea level rise than 1 micron. Better include that! Oh, and maybe there could be a super-saturated air mass with like 101% RH, better include the condensation of water vapor into the ocean until equilibrium is reached – that nanometer/decade rise is really important for long term projections and planning!

Steve Keohane says:
May 1, 2010 at 6:47 am
“… This is getting just too silly.
http://i44.tinypic.com/2vrwuae.jpg
In the above image, I created a two pixel wide shoreline on the 1979 image, no it isn’t perfect, but plenty close for examining gov’t work. I then transferred the same shoreline to the 2010 image, scaling it to the larger diameter of the recent image. The image speaks for itself.”
Well, the had to do something to hide the increase! Well spotted Steve, another landmark event in climate pseudo-science.

Al Gore’s Weather (AGW): Ah always shower after Ah have a record low “cold snap”.
““In more than 30 years of harvesting I haven’t seen anything like it,”.
“Thursday’s high in Seoul, 7.8 degrees Celsius (46 degrees Fahrenheit), was a record low for that date. The previous record for a cold day in April was 10.1 degrees in 1962.”
…-
“S. Korea: Cold snap wilts crops, inflates market prices
JoongAng Daily
Baby, it’s cold outside. And that’s why you’re spending more at the fruit, vegetable and fish markets.
Although the temperature yesterday was up a bit, Thursday’s high in Seoul, 7.8 degrees Celsius (46 degrees Fahrenheit), was a record low for that date. The previous record for a cold day in April was 10.1 degrees in 1962.
It even snowed in Gangwon yesterday.
The Korea Meteorological Administration said the recent temperature drop was largely due to cold air (below 30 degrees Celsius) blowing in from Siberia, and that temperatures will likely return to normal levels by this weekend.
“In more than 30 years of harvesting I haven’t seen anything like it, and we’ve been through numerous natural disasters like storms and hail,” said Kim Joong-bong, 51, a persimmon and pear farmer who represents the farming community in Sangju, North Gyeongsang. According to the Korea Advanced Farmers Federation, North Gyeonsgang is the area most affected by the recent cold snap.
“Some of the pear farms have suffered tremendously,” said Kim, “with more than 90 percent of their trees dying.”
According to the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, damage to onion and Korean black raspberry crops in March totaled 2.6 billion won ($2.3 million). More damage estimates will be made in May.
“It’s hard to tell how much of the agricultural goods have been affected by the recent temperature drop since we need to wait until the flowers blossom,” said an official with the agriculture ministry, requesting anonymity. “But one thing for sure is that the damage will be enormous compared to previous years.” Farmers have been having trouble with bad weather and lack of sunshine since last December.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2504539/posts

Stephen Skinner says: May 1, 2010 at 7:02 am
“Again. The ice will displace it’s own weight so it doesn’t matter if temperature or density changes as this will be reflected in how much ice sticks up above sea level, which will change accordingly.”
—
You know, when I first read this article this morning I was saying the same thing you are saying. Archimedes wrong in this case, poppy cock! But I love physics and I just had to test this out. These are the weird things that make physics enjoyable and fascinating.
So I went to wiki and got the densities of ice, water, and sea-water. Set up a thought experiment with 10x10x10 cm cube beaker (1000 ml) with a 500 cm3 (or ml) cube of ice in it and then fill it to the brim with sea-water. Get that in your mind. The ice sticks ~10% above the rim of the beaker of coarse.
The rest is rather easy to calculate, but I will be darned, he is correct. The volume of the melted ice, even though it sticks out of the beaker will be larger than the “hole” that the floating ice creates and occupies in the sea water. Amazing. I spent a good bit of today checking and double checking the calculations. I kept coming up with 2.5%, not 2.6% difference. Close enough.
Now that’s interesting to me. If he’s right (and now me), and it appears it is so, and it’s proper physics, then he deserves at least a nod for his honesty and foresight. Here is some unexpected science. We have seen so many things coming out of the AGW camp that are blatantly distorted, manufactured, and manipulated in science and physics that is hard to believe that any thing coming out from that side is true. But this one does appear so.
But put it in perspective, I also calculated base on that 2.5-2.6% difference and the effect is TINY. As I stated above, ALL of sea ice in the entire world if melted at once would only raise the oceans 7 millimeters, not centimeters. That’s about the width of a pencil or the diameter of a pea. If you were standing at sea level the rise would barely cover the soles of your shoes. Now that’s comical! How do you make a scare story from that?
But if your interested in a quirk about Archimedes principle, here are the three densities to compute it yourself, 0.9167 for ice, 1.0 for water, and 1.025 for sea water all in g/ml (same as g/cm3). The key is the volumes, not the mass that does this since water expands when frozen and salt water is ~2.5% denser than water, so Archimedes was still right all along, he was only measuring mass.

@Steve Keohane (May 1, 2010 at 6:47 am)
The side-by-side pictures at http://i44.tinypic.com/2vrwuae.jpg are at slightly different scales, so transferring a template from one image to another must be done with allowance for this change. If you compare the number of pixels between the top or bottom of the image, and the edge of the earth, it’s clear that there is less margin area in the later (2010) image.
A likely cause of this effect would be a reduction in satellite altitude between the image capture times. Other things being equal, at a lower altitude the earth will subtend more pixels in the image.

I’m reminded of a joke:
“Earth and Venus may collide in 5 billion years. We must act NOW!!!!”
I remember how they say religion only makes people afraid. Science should not go that away. The article sounds more like a satire.

The obvious fix for sea-level rise is to call Exxon-Mobil and Shell to the rescue. A few waterflood projects where they take water from the ocean to pump into oil formations will be good for oil production and keep those nasty waves at bay. There! Problem solved.

Sean Peake says:
May 1, 2010 at 12:55 am
Way, way OT
Hi Sean – Thanks very much for that! I am familar with some of that but some I’ve never seen before. But we really do need to get in direct contact as I may be able to clarify some things about them which you would probably like to know before going to print.
Did you see anything in his daily journals?
In the meantime I’m going to think of some kind of Thompson-related code for getting you my email address. For starters, I have a yahoo.com adress for net related things. It has a seven character prefix. Now to figure out how to communicate that part.
And thanks in advance to Anthony or mod for allowing this way, way OT chat.

Sean Peake – Do you have Glover 1962 handy?

Pete – I guess that means you didn’t earn your little ‘Community Moderator’ badge for deleting your quota of inconvenient/heretical comments there? I looked at that site recently and couldn’t believe that set up. Chairman Mao’s block snitches – or is it ‘ideological peer review’ – on the net! And I noticed that even some of the regulars there (judging by their other little badges) were disgusted by that new Orwellian approach. Its a sick joke… unless you are a big fan of groupthink. But I guess that group will soon have that place all to themselves, and can then claim that ‘the consensus agrees that [whatever]”
No loss really. The level of discourse there is, well, … hmmm… how to say it nicely… oh, never mind.

NSIDC shows we are heading for the great sea ice barrier again. Maybe in early May we will be above the ’79-’00 average for sea ice extent.
Did anybody else notice last months summary – NSIDC says a “cold snap” caused the late peak in sea ice extent but when i looked at temps above 80 degrees north it looked warmer in 2010 than it did in 2009 when ice peaked?
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
I would have thought atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns are the factor that has a biggest year to year impact on sea ice extent. It is well below freezing temperature in the arctic every year. What is NSIDC on about in the March summary?

Charles Higley, surely you don’t believe that Professor Andrew Shepherd would write an article with such an error of basic physics. He would be a laughing stock if he did so and his PhD would be ripped off him.
No, I believe the Professor is right, except for the scary headline. The headline should read “Melting icebergs causing infinitesimal sea level rise, then they refreeze”.
But why are we arguing about theory? Let’s do some real science and do an experiment. I hope to show the results of my experiment in a day or so.

If “small comets” contribution to the earth;s ecosystem is true, the science not being settled yet, then there is nothing that can stop a sea level rise.
I can imagine that, considering the implications, the the “science” will never be settled.

Al Gored says:
May 1, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Sean Peake – Do you have Glover 1962 handy?
Not at the moment. Why?

Al Gored, try to reach me thru LinkedIn or FB. I’m in Toronto

Of course, “recent” “floating ice” is only “recent” “floating ice.” Not the totality of floating ice. And not the much larger amount of ice sitting on top of land that, if melted, would increase sea level by meters.
So either the blogger is completely ignorant or is intentionally trying to misrepresent the information.
Or, of course, both.

I wonder how much all the sediment from rivers
& other sources raise sea level?

I’ve done the experiment with a test tube containing salt water with an equal volume of pure ice floating in it. When the ice melts the level rises about 2.5% (by 11 pixels over 441 pixels).
http://i43.tinypic.com/2dhsbyb.jpg
I was going to do it again more carefully but I think this is good enough for me.
The final conclusion should be:- if lots of sea ice melts, there will be a global sea level rise of a few thousandths of an inch. When new sea ice is created each year the sea level will drop again.