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?
================================================================
And those comments are just the tip of the iceberg. More here.
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 @ 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 @ 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…..
The Petermann glacier is part of the Greenland inland ice sheet which advances at about 1km per year. Where it meets the Arctic ocean, it extends into the sea as a floating ice tongue. When the ice tongue becomes too large, it breaks off (calves). This happens regularly every few years or so. Last time the ice tongue managed to grow to an exceptional length of 70 km before calving. This is what gave rise to the ‘terrifying’ giant iceberg. The only surprise is that it managed to grow so much before calving
This is not a freak event, it is part of the natural process and it will continue to happen whilst the glacier continues to grow. It is a symptom of the glacier growing, not of it receding.
Jason – “My moto is “the average person is a moronic herd animal”.
AGW is the perfect example of that lack of thinking”.
Jason,
We all agree . . .
For a refreshing view of natural change, witnessed, photographed, and documented as it happened, read the stories by Diana and Brad Thayer as published in the Atlin Whisper, a news sheet published in Atlin, BC. It records the collapse of an ice dam and the sudden draining of a glacial lake at the snout of Llewellyn Glacier. Beautiful photos, great story told first person, no moralizing, just a very powerful, natural change.
http://storage.ubertor.com/cl1890/content/document/929.pdf
http://storage.ubertor.com/cl1890/content/document/933.pdf
Thanks tty 😉
I looked into Meuller – one of the authors – and in 2003 he published a doom and gloom paper on the Ward Hunt ice shelf in GRL.
http://www.cen.ulaval.ca/warwickvincent/PDFfiles/175.pdf
Seems as though (as tty points out above) the melting was well underway in the 1890s and that the remaining 6 ice shelves are mere remnants of a much more extensive ice mass along Ellsemere Island. Meuller also points out that these ice shelves do not grow from the glaciers attached to them but instead from snow accumulation and basal accumulation of sea ice.
Meuller points out that because of the drop in precipitation these ice shelves will never recover.
I saw that article last night and had the exact same reaction. The small percentage of comments lambasting the majority “deniers” were actually all written by just a handful of repeat-posters.
“So you are saying that if there was natural global warming these ice shelves wouldn’t melt? That’s pretty amazing!”
This has to be a candidate for quote of the decade.w
OK, I’m a simple thinker, and generally apply simple solutions to what seems to be simple problems (works most of the time, until some moron complicates it) 🙂
Is it not possible that these huge chunks of ice are just too big and heavy and break up at the weekest point? Thereby creating ice islands.
Just simply thinkin’ out loud. (Which is a fairly simple think to do, but tends to complicate things, these days) 😉
Anthony,
You’ll see similar blossoms of understanding at Digg, Fark, Reddit, etc. Keep up the push I’m certain the scale is about to tip. The emotional knee jerk reaction to the hysteria is dying down and people are starting to investigate now that they understand their own money is on the line.
Is the ice calving or receding? Receding is obviously a sign of melting. Isn’t calving common when the ice is growing? It grows at the source and calves at the end?
Ooh … the twin towers icon might be a bit overboard there, Athony. Good points, though!
Yessah! the comment about “Anthropogenic Tectonic Drift” struck a chord. Here’s an idea, Anthony: How about setting up a new feature for your site called ATD Science, to which bored, scientifically literate readers might submit tongue-in-cheek “science” mocking and mimicking the pseudoscience of AGW.
I might work one up myself.
Did you realise that the building boom in Los Angeles and the influx of very heavy tourists and their vehicles at certain times of the year are leading to minute, but “statistically relevant” isostatic compression of that sensitive contenental shelf and exacerbating the San Andreas fault? Every earthquake from that region that hits the news is another harbinger of the enormous man-caused disaster that is looming, in which half of California is going to hive off into the sea! Be afraid. Be very afraid! And call your congressman!
… except of course we’d work it up properly with graphs, scary statements from expert geologists, actual rock core analysis that “shows the ATD fingerprint”, photographs of cliffs crumbling into the sea and great chasms opening up mid-continent, sink holes and so on. Lots of bandwidth possible here.
Pyramids make a refreshing Change to the BBC’s number of Wales scale.
One thing I’ve learned about watching the interest in ice sheets is that calved ice generates cash cows thanks to our generous but nearly broke government treasury.
“The researchers say their disappearance suggests a possible return to conditions unseen in the Arctic for thousands of years.”
I thought the conditions thousands of years ago were of continental ice sheets. So global warming means means colder UK winters and the return of glaciers in North America.
I do apologise for my previous post. I should not have confused surface area ( a Wales) with Volume (a Pyramid).
But I do welcome the latest measurement standards and suggest that temperature is recorded in a Brass Monkeys’ balls scale.
Safe from incorrect contractions, hopefully. I was hoping you might learn, but I guess not.
This is the “tipping point” for AGW that they’ll never recover from! It’s one thing to have a bunch of icy skeptics on a site like wattsupwiththat, but if they’re on slashdot too now it’s PROOF that global warming is not accepted science and is therefore false. I know several scientists or science hobbyists who frequent that site, so I think it’s fair to say that there is not a consensus about global warming among scientists.
When I was reading the /. post and comments what was most stunning was the major shift in attitude from earlier articles where just about all the participants supporting CO2 Climate Doomsday Rapture with scathing attacks on anyone (such as myself) posting critical comments. Now we actually see relevant and cogent arguments supporting critical rational evidence based science in many of the participants comments. That’s a sea change for such a cynical crowd as Slashdot’s.
zac says:
…But I do welcome the latest measurement standards and suggest that temperature is recorded in a Brass Monkeys’ balls scale.
This idea has merit, but as a regular Brass Monkey attendee ( http://www.brassmonkeyrally.org.nz/ ) I can assure you that the error bars for this temperature scale would be very large.
Oh My Gawd, we’d all better watch out for another massive ice shelf break-off, which might then cause another Titanic Disaster…… Like the Disaster that was the Film “Titanic II”. Here is a comment from Internet Movie Database (IMDB) on that particular sequel……
“Not only a waste of a hour and a half of my evening but quite possibly of my entire life! It was so painful I do not believe I could begin to adequately describe the trauma I now feel – I genuinely write this as a warning to my fellow human beings who value their sanity. Never in my life have I seen work (of any form) of such poor quality. Having only just finished viewing this film I feel the need for a shower and referral to a good psychiatrist. I’ve been more entertained watching paint dry – and a tin of paint could produce/direct a better cinematic experience. Simple put, if 0 out of 10 was I option I’d have awarded that instead – I want my 1.5 hours back!! THE HORROR, THE HORROR!!”
……. Just like the “Horror” of watching the AGW Fraud disintegrate and the Warmist Advocates carry on as usual, as though nothing at all had happened to expose their multiple scams.
Anthony, you jested ….
” …….. then I’m sure we’d be hearing about Anthropogenic Tectonic Drift.”
But it could be a “reality”……
Anthropogenic Continental Drift: An Incoherent Truth
by Ivan Betinov – 1/7/2008, 10:25 pm
http://thepeoplescube.com/current-truth/anthropogenic-continental-drift-an-incoherent-truth-t1668.html
REPLY: Better get your fact straight, I never wrote that on this thread. – Anthony
Someone posted a link to Watts Up With That article “Icy Skepticism hits Slashdot” as a comment on cited Slashdot article and received a score of “1”. LOL
REPLY: Lots of other comments got zero, many comments also got 1, means nothing except to snarkmeisters like yourself – Anthony
The melting of 1000 year old ice sheets on a ten year time scale disproves 2 ideas popular around here:
1. That it is warm now because we are at the peak of a 20/40/60/80/whatever natural warming cycle.
2. That it is as warm now as the medieval warm period 1000 years ago. Remember that even if the ice did melt 1000 years ago it would have to have started refreezing immediately after the MWP ended.
LazyTeenager says:
October 1, 2011 at 3:07 pm
Where does it say the ice shelves “melted”. It says that they “broke up”. Not exactly the same phenomenon, don’t you think? There is more involved here than mere air temperature, I am sure you will agree.
Jeff Alberts says:
October 1, 2011 at 1:46 pm
REPLY: Thanks Pedantic Man. The world is safe from contractions, thanks to you. – Anthony
Safe from incorrect contractions, hopefully. I was hoping you might learn, but I guess not.
============
So, your mission is to teach ?
Teach me something.
That’s why I’m here.
Instead of your website.
**REPLY: Better get your fact straight, I never wrote that on this thread. – Anthony**
Anthony, yes you did , but you were quoting “Bad phrasing – (#37571162)”
HAHAHA it is amusing nevertheless, whatever ludicrous scenario someone might invent, then there are so many “monkeys with typewriters” now on the web that it isn’t only Shakespeare that you will find they have rewritten. How about this olde chestnut.
Anthropogenic Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) Crisis.
Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is a colorless and odorless chemical compound, also referred to by some as Dihydrogen Oxide, Hydrogen Hydroxide, Hydronium Hydroxide, or simply Hydric acid. Its basis is the highly reactive hydroxyl radical, a species shown to mutate DNA, denature proteins, disrupt cell membranes, and chemically alter critical neurotransmitters. The atomic components of DHMO are found in a number of caustic, explosive and poisonous compounds such as Sulfuric Acid, Nitroglycerine and Ethyl Alcohol.
The government is currently using DHMO as a form of torture, forcing inmates in the “Justice” Department’s political prisons to stand under streams of the liquid form while breathing in clouds of Hydric Acid in gaseous form. This is inflicted on a daily basis for most inmates. Enough of this ingested into the lungs can cause convulsions and death, yet no one is speaking out against this menace.
Capitalist industrialists regularly inject DHMO into our food and drink in a variety of manufacturing and/or processing stages. This goes on with virtually no federal regulation–other than to determine that the DHMO used is “pure” by government standards. There have been reports of it found even in baby foods and formula. Does anyone care what we are putting in our bodies? While trace amounts have been shown to have little effect on the body, in sufficient quantity ingestion of this insidious substance can kill. It can induce a state of hyponatremia, causing in some cases disorientation, brain swelling, and death:
– http://www.dhmo.org/
LazyTeenager says:
October 1, 2011 at 3:07 pm
The melting of 1000 year old ice sheets on a ten year time scale disproves 2 ideas popular around here:
=======
Please define “ice sheet”.
It is a term I’m unfamiliar with.
Another thing that I’ve noticed over at ./ is that currently the normally uber-liberal /. crowd is giving Al Gore the same respect as they give Glenn Beck, he’s not just thrown under the bus, they’re using him as a speed-bump at the bus station.
All I can remember from the comments above is Motos, Montras and Death Throws.
LazyTeenager says:
“The melting of 1000 year old ice sheets on a ten year time scale disproves 2 ideas popular around here:”
Say what?!!!
Jeff Alberts says:
Safe from incorrect contractions, hopefully. I was hoping you might learn, but I guess not.
How about you learn that you are wrong. “Here’s” for “here are” is a natural and long-standing contraction.
Very long-stainding. I bring you Shakespeare, As You Like It:
Peace, ho! I bar confusion;
‘Tis I must make conclusion
Of these most strange events.
Here’s eight that must take hands
Now if you want to argue that Shakespeare did not know how to write English, go ahead and knock yourself out.
Anyway Jeff:
Anthony used ‘some’ as a collective noun, so what’s wrong with ‘here is some’?
British and American usage differ on collective nouns. I’d try to straighten it out but on my last transatlantic SST trip I landed before I took off. Now I have no idea whether I’m in England or the US.
=============
Paul Westhaver says:
October 1, 2011 at 10:10 am
“I guess I am becoming a curmudgeon……
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…..”
You can only hear ” The sky is falling!” so many times before it becomes a big YAWN and you start looking for the money trail. Wipe out the poor peasants and take their land has been a common human habit for centuries.
Ehrlich’s version of the eugenics concept is just a new twist on this very old human habit of conquest and wipe out the natives. They have just dressed it up in pretty new clothes to make it more palatable to the mases whose wealth they are using to advance their extermination plans.
They had to burn the village to save it from global warming is the plan in action. It is not by chance that a tree with really nasty characteristics was picked by Al G.re’s Company. See my comment: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/25/they-had-to-burn-the-village-to-save-it-from-global-warming/#comment-754959
From the comments on slashdot it looks like more and more people are finally waking up Thank goodness. Rasmussen reports 69% Say It’s Likely Scientists Have Falsified Global Warming Research,
Robert of Ottawa says:
October 1, 2011 at 11:00 am
There are two things going on here. one is a logical fallacy; the other is a deliberate lie employing that same logical fallacy.
1. The logical fallacy 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”.
As your number 1 implies, those that hold the data determine what “normal” is.
To paraphrase a well known saying: “Those who forget about past extreme weather events are bound to state that current weather extremes are unprecedented…”
UKIP Scotland says:
October 1, 2011 at 2:57 pm
Got it right. Continental drift. Shifting tectonic plates. Yeah, you can see it in their eyes, the shifty buggers.
So what is there to get all worked up about? This planet was ice free for over a billion years of its earlier history. It’s currently in a cold period (it has ice caps and glaciers), so why get alarmed when some of the ice melts?
In 20 years or so, it will all be back …
There is coal on the Antarctic peninsular but the antarctic has moved south since those trees grew many millions of years ago. We didn’t do that so APT is a no goer.
Did anyone notice if these breakups occured before or after the Japanese Tsunami?
Lord John Franklin’s expedition of 1845 lamented in a rather good song by Burt Jansch already traded on the common belief that there was a north-west passage. That area must have had the availability of being navigated sine time immemorial.
‘Paul Westhaver says:
October 1, 2011 at 11:19 am
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,’
An identical twin to our BBC! I just wish our pathetic Conservative…sorry read Lib Dumb… govt had the balls/inclination to do the same!
One thing I like about WUWT is that sharp-eyed readers spot things in the Alarmist articles that I miss. When this article came up in a discussion a couple of days ago in
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/09/29/warming-island-greenland-sea-regional-climate-and-arctic-sea-ice-reconstruction/
I spotted this comment:
“David Middleton says:
September 30, 2011 at 2:56 am
Sounds like the ice shelf loss is slowing down.
“Between 1906 and 1982, there has been a 90 percent reduction in the areal extent of ice shelves along the entire coastline”… 1.2% per year. The ice shelves should have vanished in 1990, two years before the Canadian Arctic started to warm. ”
I think that is an astute comment by Dave. It makes me chuckle, for even when Alarmists attempt to alarm they undermine their own hysteria. If 90% of the iceshelf was gone before 1982, what is the panic about? Likely it is a process that has been ongoing since the end of the last ice age.
My favorite mush in the article states that the ice shelf was “part of the map of Canada.” Surely there is room there for a joke or two about the Times map of Greenland.
.
The less one has to spend, the less one tends to buy.
IOW – It’s the economy!
When the Greatest Depression is over, the kids will be doing the Jitter-Bug and the Charleston will be only seen in the Senior Citizen Centers (if the kids can afford to build them again;-)
Those glaciers you see
Aren’t meant to be. Eyes deceive,
And oh, so do we.
===========
Heh, tortured haiku. Probably better as standard four line doggerel.
=========
And this might just be a slight amplification of the normal melt-freeze cycle to help move Kevin Trenberth’s missing heat back off-planet. . . .
Ah, the new term for “the science is settled”; it is: “in one fell swoop the notion of skepticism has been dispelled”.
If there was a single ‘fell swoop’ on this issue it was Climategate.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/10/03/3329725.htm
if I read this correctly then the ice los cannot be attributed to warmer air. its the water temp, dummy!!
regards
On the issue of ice loss around the northern margin of Ellesmere Island. A search of the National Library’s newspaper archive (using the words Ellesmere Island ice shelf) finds a series of reports from the 1950s. I found this headline from the West Australian from the 8 November 1954 of interest:
ARCTIC IS WARMING, SCIENTISTS THINK
Two Canadian scientists, just back from the northern-most tip of Canada, said they found some evidence that the Arctic was becoming warmer.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/52963556
One of the goals of the expedition was to locate the source of 3 very large ice islands that were discovered in the Arctic Ocean in the late 1940s.
From Geoffrey Hattersley-Smith. Northern Ellesmere Island. The Geographical Journal, Vol. 122, No. 1 (Mar., 1956), pp. 13-23
“In 1946, on a reconnaissance flight, the United States Air Force sighted T1, the first of the floating ice islands of the Polar Sea to be discovered. By the end of 1950 the U.S.A.F. had discovered T2 and T3, two more of these huge ice masses with the unusual, ribbed surface pattern. T2, the largest of the three, had an area of about 300 square miles. Subsequent study of air photographs showed that all or most of the ice islands almost certainly originated on the north coast of Ellesmere Island, where the ice shelf shows the same unusual surface pattern.”
300sq miles x about 50 m thickness provides 38.4 billion cubic meters of ice, or about 38.4 billion tonnes, or about 6400 Great Pyramids of Giza. That’s about 13 x the ice loss reported above in just one of the ice islands.
It seems that the calving of large blocks of shelf ice into the Arctic Ocean is not unprecedented even in recent history. It also seems that these observations from the late 1940s should dispel in one fell swoop any notion that recent global warming could not be partly or mainly due to natural causes.
Everyone on the planet knows about the Little Ice Age and how we’re still coming out of it. Well, everyone that is that doesn’t go to Penn State. We’re on a Roller Coaster ride; we’ve gone up this huge little hill called the MWP, topped it, came down, down, down into the LIA, and then gone up, up, up, now we’re in a dark, dark tunnel; we just have no idea what’s coming next, another cold, cold decent or more hot, hot climbing, or the slow, slow stop where we all have to get off and cough up another ticket if we want to ride again. Life’s an exciting Roller Coaster ride, unless you go to Penn State.
Paul Westhaver says:
October 1, 2011 at 11:19 am re “the CBC”.
C’mon don’t beat around the bush! Tell us what you really think! Heh. Haven’t seen “purulent” used here ever before.
“”””” Jeff Alberts says:
October 1, 2011 at 9:41 am
“Here’s Here 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 “””””
No problem at all Anthony; it is as plain as day that you intended “Here’s a sample of some of the comments.” No charge for that either Mate !
George
Well I’m all in favor of using the great Pyramid as an international standard unit of melted ice; after all it’s as old as the hills; is sort of one actually, and it also has a precedent, in “The Pyramid Inch” which is used to chart the history of the world past present and future by the distance to various marks on the main shaft that goes down into the great pyramid. Starting at the King’s chamber (I believe) and the date of his incarceration, you measure the distance to the various marks on the walls and roof of the sloping shaft, in Pyarmid Inches, and it tells you the dates of everything in history; much more accurate than that silly book, by that crazy Italian No Stradamus or whatever his name was.
The only problem with the pyramid inch is that it is a “living” standard unit, much like the Liberal’s view of the US Constitution. So periodically, you have to change the scale of the pyramid inch; or else some of the great events of history, like WW-I or WW-II would need to be run over again to get them to happen at the predicted times.
This convenient fuzziness of units is just exactly what the IPCC would want to retain their 3:1 fudge factor in the uncertainty of climatic events and dates for future disasters like 20 foot sea rise.
So count me as one aye vote for Pyramid ice melts; such a unit is just too good to let go to waste; and that is the motto of the current US administration.
“”””” Gail Combs says:
October 1, 2011 at 8:49 pm
Paul Westhaver says:
October 1, 2011 at 10:10 am
“I guess I am becoming a curmudgeon……
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. “””””
Well Gail, you are much smarter than that ! Of course the world is overpopulated; and by at least the number of people who believe the world is overpopulated; so why don’t they do their civic duty, and off themselves; presumably in some fashion worthy of winning the Dawin Award.
George
@LazyTeenager,
1. How so? Does ice melt below 0 C? What happens the moment the temperature finally rises above that transition to fusion temperature?
2. Really? How fast does ice form once it’s cold enough to form?
Europeanonion says:
October 2, 2011 at 3:46 am “”” “””
http://wn.com/Lady_Franklin's_Lament,
Thank you Europeanonion
What glaciers in the Andes has disappeared? Dr. Lonnie Thompson, Ohio State U, predicted in February 2007 that Qori Kalis would disappear in 5 years. He used to issue annual horror reports of its demise. He conducted two expeditions since his prediction but prepared no report of the horrible progress towards his prediction. Looking at recent satellite photos the glacier appears larger than his last report in 2007. Is this confirmation bias at work? Inquiring minds want to know!