I noted yesterday this story in Slashdot:
Canadian Ice Shelves Halve In Six Years
The CBC reports on new research that shows thousand-year-old ice shelves (much different than sea ice) are breaking up and have been reduced by half in a region of Canada over the last six years. ‘This summer alone saw the Serson ice shelf almost completely disappear and the Ward Hunt shelf split in half. The ice loss equals about three billion tonnes, or about 500 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza.’ More detailed pictures can be seen at The Conversation, with a quote from Professor Steven Sherwood, Co-Director of the University of NSW’s Climate Change Research Centre: ‘The real significance of this, in my view, is that this ice has reportedly been there for thousands of years. The same is true of glaciers that have recently disappeared in the Andes. These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural.
Meh. Last year it was Manhattan Island units, this year it’s Giza pyramid units. I suppose we can designate symbols for these: // and Δ
Whatever you call it, I call it the “Terrifying Petermann glacier ice chunk 2.0“, dubbed “deniersberg” by feckless Congressman Markey, which later refroze in the Nares Strait ice before it could wreak havoc on worldwide shipping. Before the satellite era we weren’t watching this stuff, so we really only have a few years of observations. Glaciers calve ice into the sea, its what they do. It has been going on for millions of years. By the logic presented in The Conversation, some might argue though that the glacier berg that sunk Titanic was payback for coal use. Just reading through the author list, and you’ll understand why.
Of course the science says, nothing to see here move along.
Papers, like “Late Pleistocene-Holocene Marine Geology of Nares Strait Region“, from Mudie et al., don’t leave much doubt about what was the past climate of the region:
Palaeoceanographic reconstructions from dinocyst assemblages show that from ~6.5 to 3.3 ka BP, there were large oscillations in summer sea surface temperature (SST) from 3 °C cooler than now to 6 °C warmer, and that variations in SIC ranged from two months more to four months less of heavy ice compared to now.
Imagine my surprise though, when I discovered the majority of early commenters at Slashdot taking this article to task. Usually they eat this stuff up. Here are some of the comments:
Re:”These observations should dispel…” (Score:5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 30, @03:44PM (#37571112)
So I’m not one who tends to dismiss things that experts outside my field say, but this statement is quite a blatant fallacy: just because it’s been that way for thousands of years doesn’t mean that any change is certainly not natural. It’s these types of statements that cause so many to lose credibility. It doesn’t give me much faith in someone’s ability to interpret complex data when he can’t even construct a valid deduction from simple facts…
Uh, Greenland redux? (Score:5, Insightful) by arpad1 (458649) on Friday September 30, @03:39PM (#37571068)
How about a bit less in the way of hysteria? All the folks who were having kittens over the phony reduction in the Greenland ice sheet are looking like schmucks now so perhaps a few people, like the editors of Slashdot for instance, could forgo schmuckdom by not engaging in heavy breathing ahead of the facts?
Amazing (Score:5, Insightful) by avandesande (143899) on Friday September 30, @03:43PM (#37571104) Journal
These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural.
So you are saying that if there was natural global warming these ice shelves wouldn’t melt? That’s pretty amazing!
Bad phrasing (Score:3, Insightful) by OverlordQ (264228) on Friday September 30, @03:47PM (#37571162) Journal
‘The real significance of this, in my view, is that this ice has reportedly been there for thousands of years. The same is true of glaciers that have recently disappeared in the Andes. These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could be natural.'”
How’s that saying go, past performance is no guarantee of future results. The Andes used to be under water for thousands of years; the continents used to all be one big land mass. If we lived back then I’m sure we’d be hearing about Anthropogenic Tectonic Drift.
Dont jump from “There used to be ice, now there isn’t.” to “We did it”
These unique and massive geographical features that we consider to be a part of the map of Canada are disappearing and they won’t come back
Alarmist.
The researchers say their disappearance suggests a possible return to conditions unseen in the Arctic for thousands of years.
So there used to be conditions where they would have melted anyways, climate changed and they appeared, now they’re disappearing again and you say we’ll never see them again?
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And those comments are just the tip of the iceberg. More here.
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I just went to look and there is only one comment?
REPLY: They have this comment filter slider bar thingy, you probably need to expand it.
“
Here’sHere are some of the comments:”There, fixed it for you. No charge 😉
REPLY: Thanks Pedantic Man. The world is safe from contractions, thanks to you. – Anthony
Wikip on Ayles ice shelf –
‘On August 14, 1946, a U.S. Air Force patrol plane flying 300 miles (480 km) north of Port Barrow, Alaska spotted an ice island, dubbed T-1, which was 15 miles (24 km) wide and 18 miles (29 km) across. It was estimated to be from 240 and 1,600 feet (490 m) thick, with sides that rose from 30 to 200 above the sea surface – much larger than the Ayles Ice Island. Over the following three years, it travelled 1,500 miles (2,400 km) along the Beaufort Eddy, a slow-moving ocean current that flows eastward across the North Pole, then back west along the coast. In 1950, the U.S. Air Force 58th Reconnaissance Squadron was ordered to find T-1, and any other ice islands in the Arctic. In July, 1950, T-2 was found, a roughly rectangular ice island estimated to be 20 miles (32 km) by 20 miles (32 km) by dimension. In 1947, a joint U.S.-Canadian expedition had noted and photographed a fresh water sea formation in the sea off Ellesmere Island. From a photographic examination of its ridges, T-2 was discovered to be the same ice island spotted off Ellesmere Island in 1947. Later in July 1950, the U.S. Air Force found T-3, a kidney-shaped island, nine by four and a half miles. This was later occupied for brief periods in the early and mid 1950s. In August 1951, T-1 was relocated, nestled along the coast of Ellesmere Island. It is not known how long prior T-1, T-2, and T-3 had been formed, but it is believed they had calved from ice shelves on northern Ellesmere Island.[8] There are an estimated 80 ice islands in Canada’s High Arctic, most of them part of the pack ice that covers the region.
Between August 1961 and April 1962, almost 600 square kilometres of ice broke away from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf. [9] This event was attributed to tidal and seismic events.’
Calving actually means that precipitation at the upper end of the glacier adds fresh ice that forces old ice out at the bottom end. It’s to a great extent a symptom of an increase in ice cover.
My moto is “the average person is a moronic herd animal”.
AGW is the perfect example of that lack of thinking.
When Keith Kloor decides the alarmist community needs to use humour to get their message across, you can bet your bottom dollar he’s feeling the taunts of ridicule by skeptics.
Excellent work (/.). My chapeau slips to ya’.
===========================
These are the conversations that Al Gore thought would make deniers as rare as racists. Maybe he should start blogging.
============
1. How do they know these ice “shelves” have been there for thousands and thousands of years?
2. If they disappeared in six (6) years, how can that be related to AGW which has been going on since the industrial revolution or as Gavin Schmidt recently said “since the 1980s”?
3. And those comments are just the tip of the iceberg? Nice one!
Does anyone know if ice shelves are older the further out to sea they are, or whether they “young” from the bottom up?
I guess I am becoming a curmudgeon. I hear these outrageous claims of the ice disappearing and think, “I have heard this before….and before and before” It is like my present response is perverted by my memory of the past human extinction level events (ELE) that didn’t happen.
I am numb to all claims by “scientists” that anything we do effects the environment.
I have concluded that all of this nonsense has a source and that source is eugenics as a concept, and Paul Ralph Ehrlich who mutated the eugenics concept into an anti human being ELE. The global warming subject is an attempt by its adherents to prove that humanity exists in sufficient numbers to yield a deleterious effect on the planet. This the proof they need to have their government arm (the UN) implement actions in service to the “threat to humanity”. I suggest that there are a large number of people who believe that the earth is overpopulated (I don’t) and they are looking to anything to prove it. They are in good company at the UN.
I think they are frustrated that the majority of the population of the world sees there efforts as false and now they cannot implement their UN actions. Sadly the scientists (biologists mostly) have surrendered their reason in service to this earthly god and their reputations are being swept away with their ace-in-the-hole of AGW.
I now exhibit a habit….
Hear claims of widespread catastrophe based on humanity, think closet eugenicist and UN sympathizer.
Not sure that is as a good habit but it works most of the time.
Good to see the alarmists being taken to task.
Just because we’ve never seen it doesn’t mean it’s never happened before…
“The real significance of this, in my view, is that this alarmism has reportedly been there since the beginning of slashdot. The same is true of alarmism that has recently disappeared in the GOP. These observations should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that global warming is still happening.”
There, fixed it.
A hearty thanks to Anthony and all the moderators. You should view this vocal skepticism as a positive return for all your hard work. It is heartening to see that people endowed with critical thinking skills and a working knowledge of logical fallacies are being emboldened to speak out.
Anthropogenic Tectonic Drift, now that is something for the IPCC to get their teeth into. We could be causing more CO2 emmissions just because jets have to fly further to cross the Atlantic.
Yeah, we had a lot of fun with that CBC article. Usually the CBC is the bastion of far left wing idiocy as this is the very same network that features the ever cheerful David Suzuki. Here’s a little more humor for all our readers – check out the Ontario election. The present premier, Dalton McGuinty, is running on a David Suzuki endorsement of his Green Energy Plan – which is featured prominently in his ads.
Honesty to God you can’t make this stuff up. Now today the CBC, in wonder of wonders – featured this story today – Ontario wind power bringing down property values @ur momisugly http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/09/30/ontario-wind-power-property-values.html.
Anyway, we here in Canada if not North America are getting ready for those NON -AGW seasons otherwise known as fall and winter. And of course come the beginning of the AGW season – otherwise known as spring ice melts again. Who knew?
Floating ice melts from the top down and the bottom up at the same time. That is why ice can disappear faster than you would think just by looking at the top: it is thinning where you can’t see.
Still, the work shows that ice used to be gone for long periods before our CAGW madness. But all that doesn’t count because we live in Special times under study by Special people. it is the evangelical of times, an End of Times that is now because, like all other End of Times, this time is different from previous by having “me” in it. “I” can see the signs while the others cannot, plus “I” know that my friends and I are Special.
The past is always irrelevant when you are Special or the time in which you are living is Special. If you do not accept that premise, then the past is forced to be the key and indicator of the future. Patterns that were, are probably patterns that are and will be. You will not ascribe specialness to an event without solid evidence that dispels the past normalcy. In CAGW all the horrors of the future are not yet present – the terrors of 2100 are based on non-yet-occurring temperature and sea-level rise rates 2X to 4X the current rate. Storms etc. to devastate the world are in decline; to reach the disaster-level predicted for 2100, increases have still to begin.
You cannot argue against the warmist creed with history. None of that applies. The same is true about warmist researchers: the new researcher finds Truth in modelling, not in either history or current observations. Older researchers used models to form hypotheses that observations had to match. Today the Specialness of these researchers means that their intellectual and computer skills are superior to past or current data: the future determined a priori is more real that any determined a posteriori.
How long will it take for CO2 rises to disconnect from temperature rise predictions of the IPCC enough for CAGW to become GW. I think 4 years. But momentum is great. Perhaps we will stumble along until 2020 to find that 1.4C per century is the pattern, and CO2 reduction will become not a scientific but ideological Good Thing – which it has always been.
I suppose that my new montra will become . . . . . SO????!!!! or for variation . . . SO What??!!!
Richard G says:
“A hearty thanks to Anthony and all the moderators. You should view this vocal skepticism as a positive return for all your hard work.”
We need to constantly educate the public that CO2 is a harmless and beneficial trace gas. I keep repeating that fact because the media demonizes “carbon” using the Big Lie tactic, repeated endlessly.
Whenever I’m in a conversation with someone and the AGW scare comes up, I challenge them to give me an example of global harm due to CO2. Most can’t come up with anything, and the ones who mention things like the Arctic ice decline are quickly educated [thanks to the information provided by WUWT].
Actually, most folks agree that the scare is based on the massive amounts of money being handed out. It’s a grueling process enlightening the public, but the worm is slowly turning. Eventually we will reach an inflection point. But we have to keep the pressure on, lest the lowlife criminal bastards pushing the “carbon” lie get their way.
Now ask me how I really feel.☺
5 billion tons of ice is about 5 cubic kilometers. Big deal.
Greenland currently holds an estimated 2,850,000,000,000,000 tons, or 2,850,000 cubic kilometers, of ice.
That is 776,000,000,000,000,000 one-gallon jugs of milk.
Or, about 0.001 moles of 8.5 x 11 inch, finely crafted and individually signed carbon credit certificates.
To make up for that loss of 5 cubic kilometers, Greenland would need to accumulate an additional 3 mm of ice over its ice-covered 1,710,000 square kilometers. Satellite altimetry in central Greenland has measured a surface elevation change of +40 mm per year in recent years, presumably due to ice accumulation.
Wil wrote about the CBC (in part):
“Usually the CBC is the bastion of far left wing idiocy as this is the very same network that features the ever cheerful David Suzuki….. Now today the CBC, in wonder of wonders – featured this story today – Ontario wind power bringing down property values @ur momisugly http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/09/30/ontario-wind-power-property-values.html.”
Friday evening I watched an excellent documentary on the CBC about “experts” and how they are very often wrong (“The Trouble with Experts”). You can view it at http://www.cbc.ca/doczone/episode/the-trouble-with-experts.html
While doing so, think of all the AGW experts who have the ear of the MSM.
IOanM
There are two things going on here. one is a logical falacy; the other is a deliberate lie employing that same logical falacy.
1. The logical falacy is that what is “normal” for the past few years is “normal” and excursions from the norm are a-normal.
2. That these excursions can be prevented by following the warmista political action dogma; i.e. give them control of your lives and they will take care of the “problem”.
The source article conveniently converts Gizas to Manhattans.
““Since the end of July, pieces equaling one and a half times the size of Manhattan Island have broken off,”
“1. How do they know these ice “shelves” have been there for thousands and thousands of years?
2. If they disappeared in six (6) years, how can that be related to AGW which has been going on since the industrial revolution or as Gavin Schmidt recently said “since the 1980s”?”
1. They have probably been there for about 4000 years since that is the age of most of the driftwood on the landward side of the shelf. However they may not be older than the “Little Ice Age” since there are apparently a few radiocarbon dates on driftwood that are only about 1000 years.
2. They have not “disappeared in 6 years”. The ice shelf was discovered by the Nares expedition in 1874, and from their description it is clear that it had already started to disintegrate then. They give very clear and detailed descriptions and illustrations of “floebergs”, i. e. detached pieces of the shelf. The disintegration mostly occurred in the 1940’s when the large “Ice Islands” detached (at least one of them was traced back to the place where it had been attached). The disintegration then largely stopped during the colder 1950’s to 1970’s and has then started again.
A little inside baseball about the CBC…the source of the article….
With the new conservative majority running Canada for the next 4 years one of the government objectives is to shut down the CBC in effect, although this has never been open stated. For the benefit of the world readers: The source of the article is the CBC, as Wil stated, is a bastion of extreme left wing propaganda with anti human being, anti-God, anti Israel, anti-industry perspective oozing from every orifice of its rotting institutional corpse.
In its death throws, every government employee (the CBC is 100% funded by the taxpayer) is throbbing with the self-preservational imperative to protect their job and more importantly, protects their church, the CBC.
One of its convulsions is the endless ejaculation of AGW propaganda. This is directed at the conservative government and conservatives, the majority of Canadians. It is 100% politics. Every purulent gob of sticky lies that the CBC metabolizes is directed so that the leftists can get their licks in before the FOI demands that the conservative government has requested reveal the towering pile of corruption in the gorged heart of the mocking filth AKA the CBC.
Yes the government has finally demanded that its own propaganda monster submit to corruption investigation.
Because of this and its long and violent ensuing death, we will be inundated with such of flood of liberal leftist filth that this blog will have to dedicate an entire category to CBC generated debunked news…..get ready. Dr MacIntyre… you have my sympathy.
This article is just one in an anticipated deluge of such articles from the CBC as a response to its inevitable death. They will all be lies. The left has no other recourse. Facts don’t matter to them.
jason says:
October 1, 2011 at 9:54 am
Jason, The average person . . . ‘should’ be able to “trust” the experts . . . .
The “crisis in confidence” has occurred because of people like Al Gore want to be respected for acting like Charles Ponzi. This was the greatest tragedy of the whole “sordid affair”!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ponzi_schemes
Smokey says:
October 1, 2011 at 10:47 am
“It’s a grueling process enlightening the public, but the worm is slowly turning. ”
Yes, but Smokey; From 1/1 2012 there is a new EU tax for commercial flights. They won that one too. And they will keep at it. And remember; As soon as a tax is introduced, you can never, ever remove it again.
The new tax will join all the other fixed cost for running the society. And when the income is reduced, what do you get then? A financial crisis. And “no one” understands how it (the crisis) could happen…..