Bering sea water temperature, headed down

Where was climate science state that ocean temperature was monolithic?
From the article;
“While there has been a rapid retreat of sea ice in
the western Bering Sea, most of the western Arctic had
been cooler than normal. A strong positive phase of the
Arctic Oscillation (AO) characterized unusually low sea
level pressures in much of the Arctic Ocean and drew
warm air into the eastern Arctic.”

This is anecdotal, but I have some fisherman friends on the Oregon coast one of which occasionally goes north to help his Brother-in-law do a little crabbing- he has said:” I think the
North Pacific’s cooling off, our total catch is better!” He holds that the deep water is cooler and we ain’t seen nothing yet…
But what does he know- he’s just a Fisherman/Crabber….

Meanwhile, a kerfuffle about a ship that tried to sail to the north pole in the 20s. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/norwegians-want-sunken-ship-back-from-canada/article2101549/

Interesting read. Joe Bastardi had a tweet a few days ago saying, “Just looked at JAMSTEC Atlantic ocean forecast over next year. AMO shifts to cold next year,1st cold PDO/AMO year since 70s.” AMO going cold could increase sea ice as well as making for colder temps for the northern hemisphere and so forth. This is what people should eye in the next decade. It’s the other half ingredient that could have a notable effect on global temps.

For more than 55 million years, Canada’s Ellesmere Island in the high Arctic, remained in one place while the world around it changed. Fifty-five million years ago, verdant forests grew at 75° North latitude. These wetland forests, comprised of species now primarily found in China, grew on an alluvial plain where channels meandered back and forth and periodic floods buried stumps, logs, and leaves intact. Today the forests are preserved as coal seams that outcrop on the edges …of modern Ellesmere Island, where there are no forests, and the tallest vegetation grows less than 15 cm high. Large parts of the area are polar desert, subject to intensely cold and dark winters and minimal precipitation.
Why can’t we demand AGW fanatics explain that? Why don’t we demand the AGW fanatic explain no petroleum products to blame for that this earth that completely heated up on its own. No SUVs to blame. No human made CO2 to blame. Then why did this earth warm up so much? Who or what gets the blame for that? And why did this same earth with no help from humans freeze over where todays Ellesmere is a cold dead place literally frozen in time where nothing over inches grow?
It is fully appropriate the Bering Sea, like every other sea on the planet, acts in its own environment, especially considering in the case of the Arctic we barely have 30 years of modern knowledge in which to rely on is ridiculous for anyone to make any judgments on long term climate in light of what I wrote above. This is a 4+ billion year old entity with a long history of changes both warm and cold with no humans available to effect the vast amount of historical changes. Therefore, it occurs to me WE have the winning hand here – we on this site know earth science and its about time we actually used our knowledge to fight back.

Steven Mosher says:
July 19, 2011 at 10:25 am
“In a world that is warming, all other things being roughly equal, arctic sea will retreat, over time. It wont retreat every day or every month or every year ( cause all other things are not really “equal”) some years may see huge losses, some years may rebound. but over time, over long stretches of time, those few extra Watts per year, integrate. slowly, methodically, they integrate. and since 1979 that is what you see. The ice that grows and shrinks every year, every year, on average, shrinks a little more. and a little more.”
For the sake of discussion I’m willing to stipulate to most of that, although I remain dubious that “those few extra Watts per year” have actually been demonstrated to be the primary driver of the situation in the Arctic. But, be that as it may, I still find myself with the same question I have posited here and elsewhere, on numerous occasions, without ever receiving a satisfactory response. That question is; why exactly are we supposed to be getting our undies in a bunch about this? Or somewhat less flippantly; what is the exact nature of the “catastrophe” that supposedly awaits us if this trend was to continue to its doom prophesied conclusion?

Dave Wendt says:
July 19, 2011 at 12:19 pm
About 2/3000 years after the next ice-age starts the Greenland ice-cap will begin it’s catastrophic 5000 year melt-down. /sarc
Mosher’s statement should read “In an Arctic that is warming, all other things being roughly equal….”
Global warming. Monolithically. At high latitudes. In winter. Mostly at night, that’s what they say, mostly. (HT to Eric Cartman)
They shriek that albedo drops and runaway warming takes hold. It’s never happened before, apparently.

If you look at a small enough area over a short enough time period, you will always be able to find what looks like a trend going in the opposite direction to any trend that exists on the larger scales in space and time.
Do you not think that ignoring what is happening over the Arctic as a whole, and looking just at the one little bit of data that confirms your point of view, is a bit desperate?
Do you also have no comment about the statement from NSIDC about northern hemisphere snow cover? It turns out that while you were oh-so-excited about lots of snow in a couple of places in the US, it was overall the year with the second lowest snow cover in the northern hemisphere since 1966.

@Steven Mosher
Is that the latest version of the ‘we’re all doomed sermon’?
To me it’s just one big recreation area opening up. /sarc

@Mosh – as a slight query/aside on the ‘few watts’ issue, I assume you are talking ‘net’ values here. On the reasonable assumption that (for whatever reason) a net heat energy increase takes place in the atmosphere/LT and oceans, etc – there will be a corresponding net increase in radiative heat loss to space, albeit delayed by a time factor reflecting that it takes a period of time for that net increase to occur. During cooling, of course, the opposite occurs. So the really important point is the length of the time period over which such a net increase (or loss) occurs.
If one wants to consider that the earths atmosphere has been heated by a couple of watts constantly for the last 50 years as a result of CO2/AGW (though of course we know we are warming from the last ice age in any case – but we will ignore that for a minute) – is this 50 year time frame enough for the external (into space) radiative emmisions to have risen by the same ‘couple of watts’ and thus ‘equilibrium’ to have been reached? (though of course we must remember that at the TOA, the actual emission rate would be proportionately lower due to its greatly increased surface area – indeed, would it even be measurable?)
My query is therefore quite simply, what is the actual thermal ‘mass’ of the planet and how much energy would be required to change that thermal mass a signifcant (i.e. measurable amount) – or put another way, would a few watts over 50 years be physically enough to cause the alleged temperature rises allowing for the ‘spread’ of the heat energy through the entire thermal mass of the planet?
Has anyone ever worked this out, to a reasonable degree of acuracy, say +/- 50% (which is exceedingly accurate in climate science terms!)?
It strikes me that a primary indicator of an actual real life ‘almost’ proof if you like, of AGW based global warming as a result of any net heat energy increase (your few watts) would require that it can be shown that such a constant net increase over the requisite period of time could be demonstrated by an empirical analysis of the total earth thermal mass and its temperature (should this amount of energy actually be ‘retained’ instead of passing back out to space)?. Has this ever been done?