As you may know, I have been using Cryosphere’s Antarctic Sea Ice Area data to show the record levels of Antarctic Sea Ice.
But I just found another data set, NOAA’s Sea Ice Extent here. (thanks to commenter HaroldW at the Blackboard)
And it turns out day 265 set an all time record, and then day 266 (Sept 22nd) broke that record. Days 265 through 270 are now the 6 highest Antarctic Sea Ice Extent’s of all time (in the satellite record)!
11 of the top 15 extents are now in 2012.
Anyone wonder why NOAA isn’t making a fuss about this?
| Year | Day of Year | Ice Extent |
| 2012 | 266 | 19.45418 |
| 2012 | 268 | 19.4478 |
| 2012 | 267 | 19.44631 |
| 2012 | 270 | 19.4433 |
| 2012 | 269 | 19.41601 |
| 2012 | 265 | 19.36135 |
| 2006 | 264 | 19.35934 |
| 2012 | 257 | 19.35567 |
| 2012 | 271 | 19.35207 |
| 2006 | 267 | 19.34999 |
| 2012 | 264 | 19.34204 |
| 2012 | 259 | 19.33522 |
| 2006 | 265 | 19.3289 |
| 2006 | 268 | 19.32669 |
| 2012 | 258 | 19.31503 |
Global warming is responsible. Warmer temperatures put more water vapor in the air which then falls to the Earth as snowfall.
Let me know if anyone is foolish enough to fall for that line. I have some beach-front property in the Gobi Desert that I will sell for a very reasonable price.
just state the tons of ice in the Antarctic versus the tons of ice in the Arctic…..simples
Why not the fuss? No government funding involved with record high ice?
Lots more information from the same source here:-
http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g02135_seaice_index/index.html
Check the Antarctic tab for Monthly Sea Ice Extent Anomaly Graph here:-
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/
They are waiting for the Austral summer. Then they will talk their heads off about the big melt.
Seems a rather odd coincidence that while Arctic ice is at a “record” low Antarctic ice is at a “record” high.
“Anyone wonder why NOAA isn’t making a fuss about this?”
No, we aren’t wondering. We know why, because it’s counter to the story they want to tell.
If indeed there’s a true long term trend here rather than simple random variations or shorter term cyclic events like solar wind fluctuations and such, then what meaning might be attached to the reduction in Arctic ice and the increase in Antarctic ice? Is our angle of precession (or somesuch) changing in some way so that the northern hemisphere is getting more sunlight and the southern hemisphere less?
😕
MJM
… and at this rate all of the southern hemisphere’s oceans will be solid sea ice by …
That’s as the climatists speak, just had to beat them to it this time! ☺
Quick! Someone tweet Michael Mann!
NOAA already has a range of ice-front properties on the market on the West Antarctic peninsula, as they are convinced that according to CAGW theory, Antarctica will soon be ‘the only habitable continent’. They know that by the end of the century the earth will have warmed at least 5 degrees and with only another 50 degrees, they will be in business in a big way!
Hot summers, hurricanes, excessive rainfall, snowfall, winds; it is global warming. Even Antarctica has more ice than ever, caused by man made CO2 in the atmosphere! We need to return to medieval living with no electricity, no phones, no AC, no transportation unless it has 4 legs, travels at less than 5mph and needs to have a dump every 200 yards. Rickets, pestilence and the Black Death need to be reintroduced into society ASAP to complete our miserable existence. This is the way to save our planet and to make humanity pay for our ongoing prosperity (despite Socialism and Communism’s efforts to the contrary!).
Let’s stay consistent. If we ridicule those for using the phrase “all time record” when it pertains to low levels of arctic ice, it should not be used going the other way either, even with the stated explanation of “in the satellite record”.
If this years Antarctic sea Ice extent is the record and when (not if but when) the Antarctic sea Ice extent gets lower, will this be seen as the beginning of another man made global warming trend?
If faced with two choices;
1. An interglacial period of warming.
2. An Ice age.
Which would you prefer?
Sparks says:
If faced with two choices;
1. An interglacial period of warming.
2. An Ice age.
It doesn’t matter. The climate change fanatics will be screaming about the imminent collapse of the sky either way.
They have already proven they have no shame and they won’t hesitate to terrorize the sheeple with threats of a coming ice age if it suits the team agenda. They may very well have the gonads to blame it all on CO2 as well (if it suits their agenda, which I think is rather likely).
The data simply don’t matter. The game and the gravy train must go on.
Yin and Yang eh? Go figure……
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_yang
michaeljmcfadden says:
September 29, 2012 at 4:53 pm
If indeed there’s a true long term trend here rather than simple random variations or shorter term cyclic events like solar wind fluctuations and such, then what meaning might be attached to the reduction in Arctic ice and the increase in Antarctic ice? Is our angle of precession (or some such) changing in some way so that the northern hemisphere is getting more sunlight and the southern hemisphere less?
No, things are not clear.
The Arctic “swings” (high sea ice extents getting larger since 2000, though still not up to the previous (1970’s average, minimum sea ice extents getting smaller in the same period); the more frequent “highs” in Antarctic sea ice extent maximums (Antarctic sea extents have regularly been over 15.5 million km^2 the past few years) and the persistence “steadiness” of DMI’s 80 north air temperatures are puzzling. At the same time that measured Arctic OCEAN waters are steady – if not declining slightly at 80 north, mid-Canada and Mid-Siberian LAND (air) temperatures are increasing – most likely due to increased CO2 causing greater plant growth, and that plant growth is “greener” , earlier, and more widespread -> all of which will decrease albedo and increase sunlight absorption. None of which are changed in the CAGW GCM model assumptions, of course.
I will not assume any cause for the above right now, but want to open it up for discussion.
Now, as to effect of those changes ….
A) In the Antarctic, at the time of maximum sea ice extents, the “edge” of the sea ice very closely approximates a “crown” around the continent between latitudes 60 south and 62 south. At those latitudes, ANY increase in Antarctic Sea Ice extents will significantly increase energy reflections from the ice, and reduce the absorption of energy from the sun into the newly covered ocean waters. The result – of ANTARCTIC sea ice maximums expanding – is increased heat loss from the earth into space, and decreased global temperatures.
B) In the Arctic, on the other hand, all of the sea ice is now concentrated in a single “Beanie” cap around the north pole. This cap can be very closely approximated as a cap extending from the pole down to latitude 80 degrees (for 4 million km^2 sea ice) or to 81 degrees for today’s 3.4 million km^2 sea ice extents.
However, at those very high latitudes, during the time of minimum sea ice extents at the equinox, more energy is lost from the exposed ocean surface by radiation into space and evaporation (both of which will begin as soon as the sea ice “insulation” is melted out) than is gained by the ocean surface absorbing sunlight. NOTE: This effect -reverse of the conventional CAGW alarmism about sea ice albedo! – is ONLY true for the far north latitudes. But, then again, those are the only latitudes where sea ice exists at the present minimum, so it is pointless and distracting and wrong to worry about any other latitudes …. FOR ARCTIC SEA ICE.
What the alarmists are not saying of course is:
Extra ice in Antarctic is much closer to the equator than the open water in the arctic so there is a net gain in reflected sunlight. So as of today, the amount of sea ice on the planet Earth is causing net cooling. There is no tipping point in the Arctic causing warming.
OK. I am totally confuzzed.Ice melts when it’s warm.And freezes when it’s cold?So my drink is?Sheesh.
This event clearly demonstrates that the “Global” warming theory is a total farce. It would be more honest to state “Regional” weather variations. But that would not be hysterical enough. The “warmist” scientists have already confessed and admitted they overstate and inflate every possible fluctuation and “modelled” variations regarding the weather, in order to promote their very own “good cause”. For the benefit of the people only, of course.
Disclaimer: No government subsidy or taxpayers funding was forthcoming for this opinion. Comment was given free of charge, without coercion or consideration of public position or personal benefit or future funding applications.
@Tom in Florida (where we really don’t give a damn about ice except in our drinks).
What?…. ice in your wine or beer………. cringe !
I have seen it done.. blasphemy !
“The all time high” and “satellite record ” comments are purely a dig at the warmists..
We ARE being consistent.. with THEIR standard, ……….. 😉
Anyone wonder why NOAA isn’t making a fuss about this?
Probably because they know that is weather noise on a barely significant trend which their own data tells them is far below the extent observed in the late 70s?
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/fig2-16.htm
Our little 2 year old girl just outsmarted us.
We have banned play dough indoors, because it gets embedded in everything – cloth sofas, carpets, you name it.
So today we discovered she was smuggling small pieces of play dough into the house, hidden inside some of her dolls house toys.
I see this as proof of the imminent danger of catastrophic global warming.
I am new here and very appreciative of the knowledge and open mindedness that is continuously displayed in the articles and comments posted. I do not have a science background so my learning curve is rather steep right now. In any event, I am trying to educate myself so I thank you in advance for putting up with my ignorance.
I posted the last WUWT article on the Antarctic sea ice record to facebook and was surprised by the rather rancorous response of one of my “friends.” Apparently, he is an ardent AGW proponent as he posted the following : “What a terribly bull$hit article this is! First, it does not even mention the reason why Antarctic ice is increasing, it just leaves the reader to assume, erroneously of course, that it is because “global warming is a hoax”. Second, it make the erroneous correlation between decline of Arctic sea ice and the angle of the Arctic sun in September, ignoring the fact (yes, fact) that Arctic sea ice continues to decline, and is continuing to decline, in September. And third, it conveniently conflates “sea ice” and “ice” in its attempt to refute the NSIDC’s assertion that ” Arctic sea ice is more significant to understanding global climate because much more Arctic ice remains through the summer months.” The reason, of course, is because there is far more Arctic sea ice that Antarctic sea ice, simply because the Arctic is a sea, and the Antarctic isn’t.”
When I asked him why he didn’t think it was unusual this wasn’t being reported he said the following:
“The reason it’s not being reported is because it is not scientifically significant. Again, the article misleads its readers by failing to report the reason why ice levels are increasing on the Antarctic continent, and deliberately confusing land-based ice and sea ice, which are formed through completely different processes. It isn’t reasonable to draw any conclusions about global warming from the increase of land-based ice in Antarctica. It IS reasonable to include Antarctic temperature anomalies in any study of global warming. It happens that Antarctic temperatures are increasing, and this may be (maybe, but not certainly) a contributive factor in the increase of continental ice.
As far as hot and cold extremes, yes: the last couple of years have seen a greater number of both hot and cold extremes occurring planet wide. This was predicted as a corollary to global warming. Despite the record-breaking cold in parts of Europe and Asia last Winter, however, January 2012 was the 19th warmest ever recorded worldwide, February was the 22nd warmest (and 2008 was cooler), March was the 16th warmest on record, and December 2011 was the 10th warmest December.
And lest we forget, despite the record breaking solar minimum that occurred in the last decade, all but one of the warmest years globally also occurred in the last decade – the outlier being 1998. The warmest year of all, 2005, occurred at the lowest point of the solar minimum.
Obviously there are other things going on besides greenhouse-induced global warming. But reporting on an increase of continental ice in Antarctica as if that somehow refutes global warming theory is just bad, bad science.”
He also later went on to say that increased snow in the Antarctic was due to the ozone hole above the pole which was caused by CFC’s. Anyhow, this is how the average global warmist is reacting to the Antarctic sea ice record. If anyone can point me to some good, foundational reading on climate science (without AGW bias),. I would be very grateful. Thanks for reading.
Gore’s cold sore.
Inconvenient truth.
Damn inconvenient, indeed
Oh, apologies…my facebook “friend” was ranting about this article: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/09/16/antarctic-ice-area-sets-another-record-nsidc-is-silent/
not about one posted on WUWT. Sorry for the confusion!
Curious,
Low temperature records are set when there is a clear sky. Take the recent record set in Oklahoma last year in Bartlesville. -31F. The ground was covered with snow (blocking heat from the earth), and it was perfectly clear sky. Temperatures dropped to a record low because the heat was radiated to space. However, since CO2 increased so much, this should be impossible. However, it happened. Here’s what the CAGW fanatics don’t get. CO2 is one of may green house gases, with water being number 1. Now if you increase CO2 from 250 ppm to 400 ppm, that seems like a big increase. However if what your are doing is increasing TOTAL greenhouse gases from 2.03% to 2.04%, then that is not even noticeable. Which is why Oklahoma set a record low.
Curious says:
September 29, 2012 at 6:06 pm
“I am new here and very appreciative of the knowledge and open mindedness…”
Ask your friend if he (or she) knows about this:
Hubbard Glacier is defying the global paradigm of valley or mountain glacier shrinkage and retreat in response to global climate warming. Hubbard Glacier is the largest of eight calving glaciers in Alaska that are currently increasing in total mass and advancing. Hubbard glacier is the largest tidewater glacier (76 miles long) in North America. Here’s the link to U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-001-03/
Another proof that the Gore effect is real. If my memory hasn’t totally failed me didn’t Big Al and Hansen just recently make a personal visit to Antarctica? We need to donate for funds for him to make a trip to the Arctic and presto CAGW fixed!
This will have to be verified by a commission made up the finest climate change scientists before a definitive statement is released. The information is very preliminary and seems to confirm CAGW. NOAA is releasing grant criteria as we speak.
Man Christian_J., classic! Mind if we clone that disclaimer? That even stands taller than the letters behind a name and says it all.
Eric Worrall says:
September 29, 2012 at 6:02 pm
Our little 2 year old girl just outsmarted us.
We have banned play dough indoors, because it gets embedded in everything – cloth sofas, carpets, you name it.
So today we discovered she was smuggling small pieces of play dough into the house, hidden inside some of her dolls house toys.
I see this as proof of the imminent danger of catastrophic global warming.
==================================================================
Cute. Take a picture of it.
Anyone wonder what the link to CAGW is? That’s all a CAGW-based economy will leave us with, “play” dough.
Curious says:
September 29, 2012 at 6:06 pm
“It happens that Antarctic temperatures are increasing”
Show this to your friend : http://amrc.ssec.wisc.edu/news/index.php?id=41
South Pole New Temperature Record
Posted: 2012-06-18
On June 11, 2012 the temperature at South Pole Station in Antarctica was -73.8°C/-100.8°F.
This broke the previous minimum temperature record of -73.3°C/-99.9°F set in 1966.
Good thing smart people are watching and reporting the polar sea ice extent.
It would be a travesty if no one was and all the fluctuations happened without anyone knowing about it.
We would never know when to intervene.
RE:
Phil. says:
September 29, 2012 at 5:56 pm
Anyone wonder why NOAA isn’t making a fuss about this?
Probably because they know that is weather noise on a barely significant trend which their own data tells them is far below the extent observed in the late 70s?
http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/fig2-16.htm
*********************************
What are you showing us in the link?
Anomaly up to year 2000.
You are not comparing extent in 2012.
Curious seems to have an alarmist friend with a reading disability.Article clearly states “sea ice area” with no mention of continental ice mass.
Arctic sea ice extent started turning up several days ago as well.
Not terribly surprising – this was predicted as a consequence of global warming in 1991, by Manabe et al 1991 (http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0442%281991%29004%3C0785%3ATROACO%3E2.0.CO%3B2 and http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0442%281992%29005%3C0105%3ATROACO%3E2.0.CO%3B2). See pages 795 and 811 for details of this rather counter-intuitive effect.
Mechanism: additional _fresh_ water on the surface from more melting land ice increases the halocline gradient, reducing upwelling of warmer bottom waters transported from the tropics (the surface being cooled to the air), thus making for more sea ice. In the Southern Hemisphere _winter_, where it doesn’t affect albedo very much (sea ice around Antarctica melting almost _entirely_ during the summer). And an effect that will likely fade in importance with additional warming.
Increased Antarctic sea ice doesn’t balance out the huge decreases in Arctic sea ice, and as I note Antarctic ices is a not surprising effect of warming.
We can’t explain the increase (Antarctic sea ice extent) and it is a travesty that we can’t.
Curious
Glad you realize your friend is filled with scientific garbage. There is no known relationship between ozone levels and ice formation. In fact the CFL conjecture regarding ozone depletion has become a bit iffy in recent years. Some maintain the ozone may always have gone through cycles and we merely discovered the same without understanding all factors. The jury may have to reconvene. Warmists maintain ozone depletion is associated with Arctic ice depletion and Antarctic ice growth. It is unlikely both are true. In fact there is no real science on ozone and surface temperature excepting a hypothesis that the stratosphere will get sharply colder. Of course Warmists also say global warming causes the stratosphere to get colder.
The distinguishing feature between ground ice versus sea ice is the latter much more susceptible to melt because of wind and currents. Speaking of which. That is responsible for the current Arctic decline. Breakup because of weather, and then melt. And note that your friend would consider the melt of southern Greenland to be of extreme importance. Antarctic ice build up? Not so much.
But hysterics go hysterical at anything and have the curious ability to work every catastrophic fad into the grand mal.Your friend can likely discuss for hours GMO, chemtrails, and other grand schemes.
No abnormal weather has occurred in decades. The weather has been surprisingly moderate and historically benign. Likely attributable to the very mild global temperature increase since 1985 or so.
In a ‘movie scene’ I can imagine Mr. Dr. Mark Serreze at NSIDC pounding his fists on his desk and shouting his displeasure.
No NO NOOOOO!
Das Infidel!
NO NO NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
He then picks up his phone and calls the President of the United States of America.
[Some negotiation necessary … and ‘careful words … then … Voundarba.]
[His Excellency Mr. Dr. Imperial Mark Serreze] Ah. My Mr. President I am Zo happies to Zpak to Zu.
[Barak Obama at the White House] Well could you speak more clearly … the line seems a broken from our end or something like that.
[His Excellency Mr. Dr. Imperial Mark Serreze] My Dearest Mr. President in the Whole Vorld. Dearest Me. I muzet request a thermonuzular sztrike on Anatarctizua at vonze. Time vi of ezzenze and ve much destry the Infaidel en ark now.
[Barak Obama at the White House] Mr. errr …. Serreze is that it … we … should I say …. the transmittion is breaking up … could you please fax a copy of your request to …. errrrr……
the ‘Mail Room’ here at the White House please. We …. errrr….. well …. It could …. errr ….
might be …. important …. errr ……..
[His Excellency Mr. Dr. Imperial Mark Serreze] Zoooo … my misted beloveded Furer Mr. Execullency President Obama … My you Like be Zlong and Sforphous.
An so it ends. Another distraught entanglement of a deranged citizen of the USA and his beloved President is brought to a quiet and soiled end.
8D
Any decent journalist would be questioning why the big melt in the North but a big freeze in the South? Trouble is we don’t have any decent journalists anymore, just lackeys of the big climate lie…
KR, a contrary point of view is that:
1) Southern Hemisphere SST has a slight negative trend for the last 15 years.
2) Icesat says more land ice.
3) UAH says So_Pol is colder with a negative trend over the last 15 years.
4) If melting land ice causes more sea ice, and Greenland is melting supposedly, why isn’t there more sea ice in the arctic or at least near Greenland and all the large island in northern Canada which have ice sheets on them?
5) The AMO plays a role and I will have an interesting graph in the next day or so.
“… all time Antarctic sea ice extent record …” No, we’re comparing like with like.
The reading you choose will depend on your background. Visit the blogs that Wattsupwiththat links. Find those that ‘speak’ to you. Try to read broadly rather than deeply. Get to know what sounds reasonable. You will get convincing arguments on both sides of the issue that are hard to refute but which don’t pass the smell test if you have broad knowledge of the field.
As an example, I will give you my own conversion to a skeptic. I believed in AGW until Michael Mann presented us with the hockey stick. I had been a student of Viking history. I knew how the climate affected the settlement of Greenland. The hockey stick didn’t pass the smell test so I became curious. Because of my background, the two people who speak most convincingly to me are Burt Rutan and Richard Lindzen. Your background is different and you will find different voices more compelling.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/09/09/a-cool-headed-climate-conversation-with-aerospace-legend-burt-rutan/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/18/profess-richard-lindzens-congressional-testimony/
Dear Curious,
I’m not a commenter, I’m a lurker 🙂
But I can definitely empathize with your plight – I faced the same back in the early century and was rescued by the work of one man, John Daly, may he rest in peace – whose site “StillWaitingForTheGreehouse” is still being maintained, I believe by the family. His work, and about 300 hours online on his site, took me, with little science background, to what I still perceive to be a comprehensive overview of the complexities of the Global Climate System. Of course since then I’ve discovered the works of the many, many courageous scientists who are steadily advancing our understanding of this wonderful and mysterious world we live upon…in the face of viscious attacks by the often academically corrupt and compromised.
I got pretty deft at using online research for terms and concepts that were beyond me, but generally his presentation of ideas, and the linked papers he posted while he was with us, are approachable even for the science-challenged, while not sacrificing scientific integrity or over-simplifying the issues. He basically taught me Weather and Climate 101.
Oh…and my conclusion? CAWG is extremely high likelihood a total crock, purely political at this juncture, and if at all a ‘risk’, nothing (or only remotely) related to CO-2 (I’m hedging bets here due still-unknowns like land use, soots and sulfur particulates, (albedo effects) etc) (oh, and HAARP and Chemtrails :o))
This all too typical of the big lie tactic. Totally contradict the truth repeatedly until the 60 % who are basically uneducated in the World believe it out of shear conditioning. These are a vicious minority of powerful elitests who believe its their destiny to rule and enslave what they view as the inferior. This is notin fact about competing scientific ideologies.
CURIOUS
I am not one of the smart people here so can’t really reply to your post — but i can tell you something about warmist “thinking”.
The current warmist dialogue is that summer Artic ice shrinkage is extremely important and proves global warming — and that the increase in Antarctic ice on land and sea is not important.
What you must understand about warmist thinking is that if the observed facts were exactly the opposite — WITH ANTARCTIC ICE ON LAND AND SEA SHRINKING AND SUMMER ARCTIC ICE SETTING NEW RECORDS FOR GREATER EXTENT — then the warmists would be touting the lesser Antarctic ice as extremely important and proving global warming and the increase of summer Arctic ice as not important at all.
That cataclysmic man-made global warming is happening is the conclusion that must always be reached no matter what is observed! That is warmist “thinking” I hope this has been helpful to you.
Eugene WR Gallun
Curious says:
September 29, 2012 at 6:06 pm
If anyone can point me to some good, foundational reading on climate science (without AGW bias),. I would be very grateful. Thanks for reading.
I too am curious, namely because starting from an Antarctic sea ice post you end up asking for readings on climate science.
So first, I suggest you find the search box on WUWT (its under the ad at the top right) and enter “sea ice” – at the bottom of the returned links note that there are older posts to be found. Keep clicking backward until you are several years back, perhaps 5. Then start reading forward, following links to other blogs and papers.
Then you could start with another topic. Your choice. Then note other skeptical-view blogs such as Jo Nova, Climate Audit, and The Reference Frame (the last two can get very technical – you may want to go to your local university and ask at the Physics and Chemistry Departments for a slightly older copy of an introductory text).
Read all the comments so you learn who knows what and how they know what they do. For example, a fellow named ‘tonyb’ knows history. You can take what he says to the bank if he writes that folks froze to death in city x in year n. If you read enough you will learn about the views folks hold and how they treat other folks. You could read at Tamino’s site or at Real Climate for a comparison with the above mentioned ones. A different sort of material can be found at “The Chiefio” site and at Lucia’s The Blackboard.
Anyway, after about 100 to 200 hours of reading, come back and ask more specific questions.
Funny how no matter what happens, KR and his fellow AGW cohorts can always find a prediction that agrees with the current conditions. If the Antarctic had been doing the opposite with a record low, rest assured that too would be “not terribly surprising”, with myriads of references.
Just reach in the magic bag and pull out a prediction that matches reality.
Jeff D says:
September 29, 2012 at 6:34 pm
Another proof that the Gore effect is real. If my memory hasn’t totally failed me didn’t Big Al and Hansen just recently make a personal visit to Antarctica? We need to donate for funds for him to make a trip to the Arctic and presto CAGW fixed!
=====================================================================
If I remember correctly, they went down there at the end of the southern hemispheres “summer”, the best time to get a photo op with glaciers calving. AlGore is a politician after all. So is Hansen it seems.
Is there any way to shame main stream media to run with this story, despite whatever embarrassment it causes?
I would just love to see it all over msm,.as it shoud be!
KR: “Not terribly surprising – this was predicted as a consequence of global warming…Increased Antarctic sea ice doesn’t balance out the huge decreases in Arctic sea ice, and as I note Antarctic ices is a not surprising effect of warming.”
Yeah, yeah, yap. If the Teams models had predicted this, then they would be trumpeting this as one of their few successes. But they haven’t so your point is moot.
I don’t believe that warm or cool is something that is a property of the Earth , there is just a change of average temperature or total energy.The ice ages are no more a sign of the earth being cool than the large amount of ice and snow we have today in the northern and southern hemisphere during the winter ,Those who go on about “warming” forget that we are in an ice age.
Here’s what’s going on: we have CAGW in the Northern Hemisphere because of increases in CO2 in the atmosphere
AND
we have CAGC (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Cooling) in the Southern Hemisphere because of increases in CO2 in the atmosphere.
Is everyone happy now?
KR says:
September 29, 2012 at 6:56 pm
Not terribly surprising – this was predicted as a consequence of global warming in 1991, by Manabe et al 1991…..
================================================================
Like has been said before, contradictory predictions will be put out about the effects of Man on the climate and, after the fact, the one that seems to fit what happened is the one that will be trotted out as “proof” of CAGW.
Thanks KR.
KR … “A recent paper in the Journal of Climate finds that most climate models erroneously predict that Antarctic sea ice extent decreased over the past 30 years, which “differs markedly from that observed.” As noted in the abstract, Antarctic sea ice has confounded the models by instead increasing over the satellite era.”
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.ca/2012/09/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-record-high.html
A discouraging cartoon in my local paper yesterday:
Panel 1: Worldwide food shortages are predicted as U.S. crops fail due to crippling drought conditions.
Panel 2: The arctic summer ice sheet continues to shrink at an alarming rate, while melting permafrost will release tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
Panel 3: We reached out to a leading climate change denier to get his comments…
Panel 4: … but he’s gone into hiding.
http://www.tricitynews.com/eeditions/?iid=i20120928070815242
Page 10.
Reply to KR
sept 29 6:56pm
Hey pal,
But what about all the other warmist papers that predicted different things? You mean all those other warmists were full of crap? Thank you for demonstarting that the overwhelming majority of warmist can’t get anything right. If a blind man throws enough darts eventually he will hit the bull’s-eye — but would we want him on our team at the local pub?
When you got to go back 21 years to find something a warmist got right (prehaps for all the wrong reasons but we won’t go into that) you are stretching it a bit.
After having had my bit of fun let me just add that I realize that “science is not made in a day” and many scientist do wait years for vindication. Science can be a very slow process indeed.
But after saying that let me also add that warmist demanding a “rush to judgment” on global warming are not good scientists — in my opinion.
Eugene WR Gallun
We all know that the CAGW crowd only looks to the ice twice each year – when it approaches the minimum.
Since the Arctic didn’t totally disappear with this year’s minimum, they’ll ignore it till the next melt season.
They’ll move on.
We can expect them to give us day-by-day listings of Antarctic sea ice values, watching each day’s drop, and comparing to the averages. And gloat every time they drop below the averages, saying “remember when they bragged about the record” and “now let’s see them deny CAGW”.
This should all happen around the first of the year (minimums for Antarctic occur about Feb). The lowest values shown on Cryosphere Today (http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/antarctic.sea.ice.interactive.html) are around 1.3 million sq mi (in 1993). The highest minimum was about 2.47305 million sq mi.
The min this year (2012) was 1.96297 million sq mi, so expect unprecedented coverage somewhere around that point. And claims of Global Warming if it passes through that point.
So remember, it’s only gonna get worse – much worse…
Curious says:
September 29, 2012 at 6:06 pm
If anyone can point me to some good, foundational reading on climate science (without AGW bias),. I would be very grateful. Thanks for reading.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
There was a very nice lady ( I think her tag here is Lucy Skywalker? )that linked me to her site that had some decent Climate Wars 101 stuff. She told me some of the info was dated but the overall information was helpful. I will try and find the site, or if any of the other posters know the link please pop it up.
I was you 2 years ago. I think a regular here by the name of Smokey put it best. ( Alice, welcome to the rabbit hole.) I was surprised how deep the dam hole went.
One last bit of advice. Question EVERYTHING.
What KR failed to mention:
Antarctic temperatures have been trending down for at least 15 years.
Antarctic Sea Ice has been above the “average” or “normal” line for an entire year now… Winter, Summer, doesn’t matter, the anomaly has been positive.
Antarctic land ice has also been increasing, NOT DECREASING as his theory requires in order for his theory to have any merit whatsoever.
A theory with no merit whatsoever is called a falsified hypothesis, and according to the scientific method, falsified hypotheses must be rejected.
I will agree with several of the posters that increasing Antarctic ice with warming is counter-intuitive, and that many researchers may have had different predictions. Nevertheless:
* The mechanism Manabe et al 1991 described fits the evidence – reduced vertical exchange due to a stronger halocline.
* Winter sea ice around Antarctica (when insolation is at it’s minimum) has little effect on global warming.
* Summer sea ice around Antarctica still melts back to <20% of the winter range.
* Total global sea ice is declining – any increases in Antarctic sea ice extent are dwarfed by Arctic reductions.
To put it bluntly – Antarctic sea ice increases do not contradict global warming (let alone the many other lines of evidence for that warming), and do not supply any sort of “Get Out Of Jail” card regarding the Arctic reduction. The world is warming, total sea ice is shrinking, and, not incidentally, the reduction in summer albedo is a strong feedback for further warming. Loud noises about small Antarctic winter sea ice increases notwithstanding… that’s just a distraction.
Curious says:
September 29, 2012 at 6:06 pm
http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Curious.htm
I found the information helpful. It may not be as neutral as I think you are looking for but that does not exist. You will have to read some from both sides of the street and make up your own mind with “all” the facts available to you.
Jeff D wrote: http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Curious.htm I found the information helpful. It may not be as neutral as I think you are looking for but that does not exist. You will have to read some from both sides of the street and make up your own mind with “all” the facts available to you.
Thank you, Jeff D! I will check it out.
While both Cryosphere Today and NOAA data show a record Antarctic sea ice extent, the Cryosphere Today anomaly plot shown on the WUWT Sea Ice page suggests that higher anomalies occurred in 2007 and 2010. Is it because of different measuring techniques or why is there this discrepancy?
Re Tom in Florida and ice in your drinks. Tell that to the dead astronauts in the first space shuttle crash caused by O rings frozen in a Florida frost causing catastrophic failure.
Except that this “all time record” is only for the satellite era. No record at all in my book – it’s far too short a time period to determine anything of value.
Eugene Wr Gallum: “If a blind man throws enough darts eventually he will hit the bull’s-eye”
And yet, if you think of climate models as darts, the IPCC’s models are all hitting off the dart board way too high … except for Antarctic Sea Ice … the models are off the bottom of the dart board.
(That would make a good Josh cartoon … the IPCC as blind dart thrower).
To all my fellow skeptics commenting here:
What a refreshing change from Dr. Judith Curry’s Climate Etc. site this is! For all her prestige, it is my opinion that Dr. Curry knows that AGW is a fraud yet still refuses to take an unequivocal stand against it.
The physical evidence to the effect that human activity represents an infinitesimal fraction of total earthly CO2 activity, and that CO2 itself is an infinitesimal factor in climate change, is overwhelming. This is a matter of simple observation and even simpler arithmetic – you don’t have to have three Ph.D.’s in climate science to see this. And the historical record makes past fluctuations in global temperatures, such as the Medieval Warming Period, and the preceding Roman Empire and Hittite-Mycenean warm periods (to which, since I happen to hold a Ph.D. in history, I can directly and authoritatively attest) undeniable, despite the AGW scaremongers’ lies to the contrary.
Simple observations like how global temperatures have historically – and recently – varied with zero correlation to CO2 in the atmosphere. Simple observations that show that at observed temperatures and humidity, water vapor most of the time constitutes anywhere from 30 to 140 times as much of the atmosphere as does CO2 (easily calculated from the vapor pressure of water and the relative humidity). . And how does this grab you: animal respiration alone accounts for somewhere between 40 and 100 times as much CO2 emissions as fossil fuel burning (again figured simply by the amounts of animal biomass and their rates of CO2 emission per pound of body weight).
The behavior of the AGW crowd, with their unabashed lies, intimidation of skeptics, and disregard for the basics of scientific inquiry, should also call anything they say into question. The so-called “scientists” who are pushing AGW (even if they have top credentials, their conduct marks them as not being scientists) are nothing but hack politicians pushing an odious agenda which will only waste trillions of dollars that could be put to good use (such as cleaning up pollution, or investing in economic development in poorer countries), will only enrich a few elitists like Al Gore, and could very well result in millions of avoidable deaths – in effect, another Holocaust, with not dissimilar ideological roots – as the result of crippled economies and perpetuated third-world poverty.
One should be under no illusions that the AGW scaremongers care about the environment. In fact they could care less about the environment. Not only is what they propose harmful to the environment, they are using the environment solely as a guilt trip to manipulate uninformed people into going along with their reactionary agenda.
Did I say reactionary? You bet! These are people who proceed from authoritarian impulses and inhumane ideas long since discredited, who want to go back to the bad old days of tyranny and thievery of the fruits of the labor of those who produce. That fits the dictionary definition of “reactionary” perfectly. One shouldn’t be deceived by these people stealing the name of and calling themselves “liberals” – they are the diametrical opposite of true liberals, at least as the word used to be taken to mean. True liberals, 50 years ago, wanted to extend people’s rights and freedoms (Civil Rights Act, 1964) and let them keep as much of the fruits of their labor as possible (John F. Kennedy’s tax cuts, 1961). Today’s so-called “liberals” want to tax and regulate everything to death, take away our money to use for their perverse purposes, and dictate every detail of our lives. Their mendacity, hypocrisy, effrontery and sociopathy know no bounds.
There is no overstating the evil these people represent.
ALARM! HORROR!!! THE OCEANS ARE ICING OVER!!!!!
Overdone? Well, isn’t that about the same degree of stupid as “The oceans are turning acid”? And the alarmists don’t have a problem with that one.
“of all time (in the satellite record)!”
I appreciate the contextual honesty (that we wouldn’t expect from “the team” in statements about lows at the OTHER pole).
Interesting point made above. in fact there are cruise ships that go to Antarctica every summer on global warming tours. Hmmmm
Mechanism: additional _fresh_ water on the surface from more melting land ice increases the halocline gradient, reducing upwelling of warmer bottom waters transported from the tropics (the surface being cooled to the air), thus making for more sea ice. In the Southern Hemisphere _winter_, where it doesn’t affect albedo very much (sea ice around Antarctica melting almost _entirely_ during the summer). And an effect that will likely fade in importance with additional warming.
The data doesn’t support this prediction. The sea ice increases have been greatest in areas most distant from the Antarctic continent, where glacier melt will have least effect. The area to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula where glacier melt should have the greatest effect, as this is where most warming has occured and the sea ice margin is closest to shore, is in fact well below the long term average. The only place that is.
I’d say the prediction is clearly falsified.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_bm_extent_hires.png
Curious:
While the near-Antarctic sea ice figure is interesting to report, sometimes some skeptics do interpret it in unjustified manners.
A thought experiment, oversimplified and exaggerated yet illustrative:
Have two buckets. Bucket #1 is full of water, with no land (little land nearby). Bucket #2 in contrast has an internal shelf which represents land, slightly above its water level. Suppose we start bucket #2 by placing a pile of ice cubes on the shelf while having none in the water. If we warm bucket #2, we can get more ice in the water if some of the melting and sliding ice stack has pieces fall in the water. Thus warming can cause more ice in the water in in bucket #2. That is contrast to bucket #1, in which warming just causes less ice in the water.
Thus, if we warm both buckets, depending on the details and starting conditions, it is possible for bucket #1 to decrease in ice in the water while bucket #2 simultaneously increases in ice in the water. It is also possible to get those waterborne ice trends by instead warming bucket #1 and cooling bucket #2 if bucket #2 is cooled so much as to make its liquid water start to freeze. In other words, an increase in waterborne ice in bucket #2 does not in itself tell whether the bucket is warming or cooling without further analysis.
(The preceding is not meant to argue against such as Philip Bradley’s recent point but just to illustrate why I don’t think skeptics should present antarctic sea ice in isolation as an argument; with further analysis, background, and support, it can be a better argument).
With that said, however, here’s part of the real overall picture:
Arctic temperature over an entire century:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif
The preceding shows arctic temperatures were warmer in the late 1930s than in the 1990s.
Then, keeping that in mind, compare recent arctic ice area to the extent in the 1990s by looking at
http://www.webcitation.org/6AKKakUIo
Observe, in annual averages (not cherry-picking a single month after a storm), arctic ice extent in recent years is actually comparable to in the 1990s. But, as just illustrated, the 1990s are comparable to or rather less than the 1930s in arctic temperature. So much for grand warming of the arctic! That is despite the arctic being the spot of the greatest warming from global warming.
And there is no need to limit ourselves to looking back one century alone. See the graph, second from the top, of the past 200 to 11000 years within:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/11/does-co2-correlate-with-temperature-history-a-look-at-multiple-timescales-in-the-context-of-the-shakun-et-al-paper/
Utter lack of correlation of temperature with CO2 trends is illustrated.
There are all sorts of data showing warmer past temperatures. For instance, in a study on northern Europe-Asia, the biomass of vegetation there was reconstructed to be 20% higher than now during the Holocene Climate Optimum 6000 years ago (warmer than now) and 55% higher than now during the Eem Interglacial Optimum of 125000 years ago (warmer still): http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0009254199000297
Returning to the topic of more recent arctic temperature variation, there are ocean cycles in effect as well, but http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/GW_Part6_SolarEvidence_files/image023.gif has far more correlation than http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/GW_Part6_SolarEvidence_files/image024.gif
The misleadingly-named TSI (“total solar irradiance”) labeled in the prior graph is far from the only factor changing. See:
http://www.sciencebits.com/CosmicRaysClimate
and
http://www.space.dtu.dk/upload/institutter/space/forskning/05_afdelinger/sun-climate/full_text_publications/svensmark_2007cosmoclimatology.pdf
(Bonus: The above link explains why temperatures in Antarctica can go even the opposite direction of Arctic temperatures).
In the direction of contributing to terrestrial warming (via reduction in cloud seeding), there was about a 3% change in average cosmic ray flux between solar cycle 20 (1964-1976) at the height of the global cooling scare versus solar cycles 21 and 22 from 1976 to 1996 (the heart of the global warming scare).
In the late 1990s, global temperatures peaked with the 1998 El Nino. Since then, there has been a semi-high plateau of temperature (substantially cooler than prior warm periods like the Holocene Climate Optimum yet mildly warm by modern standards), but global average temperatures have been flat to declining from 1998 through 2012 (now). That is seen, for example, in http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1998/plot/rss/from:1998/trend
There are all sorts of claims contrary to the preceding, contrary to what is seen in the satellite temperature data when unskewed by urban heat island effects and when unskewed by messed-up interpolation/”adjustments.” But there are all sorts of false claims in general. For example, a 1 foot sea level rise in California in 10 years is predicted (i.e. http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-06/study-says-california-sea-levels-will-rise-more-five-feet-century ), yet one can quite readily compare to reality in a few years to see how much such is fallacious junk. (Rather, during prolonged recovery from the Little Ice Age, albeit with the Modern Maximum in solar activity recently starting to plateau and taper off, global sea level rose more slowly on average in the second half of the 20th century, about 1.4 mm/year on average, than in the first half of the century, as seen in http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Holgate/sealevel_change_poster_holgate.pdf ).
In the case of cosmic rays, also see, regarding a common false claim about recent-year cloud trends which has found its way into CAGW-movement graphs and papers:
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/further-attempt-to-falsify-the-svensmark-hypothesis/
Curious says:
September 29, 2012 at 6:06 pm
“If anyone can point me to some good, foundational reading on climate science (without AGW bias),. I would be very grateful.”
I slipped into essentially arguing in the above rather than having the style of unbiased objective education covering everything, partially since the former was far faster to write. Unfortunately, although you have a very reasonable and good question, there is currently no single unbiased source which educates comprehensively in a time-efficient manner. There should be. But there is not. It takes many tens of hours, in practice easily hundreds of hours, to find and compile what in theory could be learned in a few hours if better organized.
Sites like drroyspencer.com , sciencebits.com , co2science.org , nipccreport.org , appinsys.com , and others are far from exactly what one would want for such but can be worthwhile reading. So is, for example:
http://www.meteor.iastate.edu/gccourse/history/paleoclimate/climates.html
Incidentally, while far from unbiased in style and while anti-CAGW rather than about general education, still one of the better concise summaries of some aspects is the 12-page article here:
http://www.petitionproject.org/review_article.php
While utterly biased, sometimes probably wrong, and actually too overboard, iceagenow.info can be fun variety.
In principle I could do a far better job at giving references here, having many links and references saved over time in a compilation elsewhere, but I think I’ll go to sleep now.
Even amongst scientific papers, just about all implicitly falsely treat as 0% effect one or more of the major climate influences, not even having best-guess values, by just ignoring such entirely (such as ignoring GCRs, ocean cycles like the AMO, or both depending on the paper). About the only organization large enough that they have the resources and enough pages of writing to cover everything in theory if they tried is the IPCC, but they are terribly biased and do not really try. (For instance, page 1 of chapter 7 of the NIPCC report in contrast describes the IPCC’s blatant bias in one example: http://nipccreport.org/reports/2009/pdf/Chapter%207.pdf )
Anything published anywhere prior to the 1980s is usually not intentionally biased, though, being prior to the political era. (Most of what was published in the 1980s and a lot in the 1990s is trustworthy too but not so guaranteed). Also, what is published in Russia even now is usually relatively good. For instance, the following, in English, provides a relatively accurate picture of the past century of arctic ice:
http://nwpi.krc.karelia.ru/e/climas/Ice/Ice_no_sat/XX_Arctic.htm
which includes, for example, this graph of Siberian Basin ice extent in August from the 1920s through the rest of 20th century:
http://nwpi.krc.karelia.ru/e/climas/Ice/Ice_no_sat/fig2.gif
Whoever said that the press was biassed in its reporting of sea ice levels at the two poles?
From Robin McKie in today’s British Observer (Sunday version of the Guardian)
“The impact of global warming is being felt first at the poles. This year summer sea-ice levels in the Arctic plunged to a record low and there is every sign that equally profound changes are taking place in the Antarctic.”
Absolutely uninteresting and irrelevant for climate.
The sun does not shine there in winter, so no influence on albedo.
It is the ice extent in summer that does matter.
Antarctic appear to be directly plugged into solar activity
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/TMC.htm
with decline in the solar output it would be reasonably to expect increase in the ice coverage
Curious says:
September 29, 2012 at 6:06 pm
Curious,
If you want a site that is mostly unbiased data (referenced with links) and fact (or as close as you can get in the climate debate) with a small amount of opinion (in the ‘reflections’ section), may I suggest you go to:
http://www.climate4you.com
Read the ‘about this blog’ section and then feast on as much data as you want. It’s a very good place to start. If you want an opposite view, try ‘scienceofdoom’. Both sites are ostensibly science based. I’ll let you decide which way you want to lean.
However, I would also advise that you
1. question everything
2. Accept only fact, not assumption
3. Try to rationalise the debate from distance, rather than getting embroiled in the ‘he said, she said’ stuff.
For what my opinion is worth…
Arfur
forget the MSM – their interests lie elsewhere:
29 Sept: MSNBC: Could asteroid dust counter climate change on Earth?
Sounds crazy: Scientists suggest anchoring space rock between us and the sun
To combat global warming, scientists in Scotland now suggest an out-of-this-world solution — a giant dust cloud in space, blasted off an asteroid, which would act like a sunshade for Earth
The main challenge of this proposal would be pushing an asteroid the size of Ganymed to the sun-Earth L1 point…
The scientists will detail their findings in the Nov. 12 issue of the journal Advances in Space Research
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49226984/ns/technology_and_science-science/
fitzgerald writes a column 3 times a week on any and every subject under the sun, but he knows best:
30 Sept: Stockton Record Calif: Michael Fitzgerald: Believe it or not, climate change is a reality ag must face
In the past few days, the media reported that climate change threatens Valley crops. What is interesting about this is most Valley farmers don’t believe in climate change…
A recent University of California, Davis, study found Valley “chilling hours” – cold temperatures required by many crops (including cherries) – have declined up to 30 percent.
“Usually there’s two sides to the scientific data, too,” (cherry grower Bruce) Fry said. “Just like in statistics, you can manipulate that one way or the other.”
***Fry has been keeping records of chilling hours back to the 1990s. His data shows no warming trend.
***”This year we had a beautiful crop,” Fry said.
Global warming denial would seem to set Valley agriculture up for a huge fall…
So why deny?
Of course, reasonable people can disagree; climate skeptics may be right. But I believe they are wrong, and more, that their wrongness says something about the Valley…
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120930/A_NEWS0803/209300317
Chad Wozniak says:
September 29, 2012 at 11:13 pm
To be honest, I don’t think Curry can renounce the AGW meme because she has been wrapped up in it for so long.
I strongly suspect she is secretly waiting/hoping/praying that new science findings (the real ones, not the psuedo science BS) will ‘save her face’ because she (and others on the team),know FULL WELL they have operated a ‘bad science’ regime.
Should new truthful findings show the scam/sham of the CAGW team – they can all sit back and say ‘Oh, well, we didn;t know THAT’, ‘Not our fault’, etc, etc
That way, their scam/sham will be ‘forgotten’…and they will keep their jobs, pensions, etc……..safe in the knowledge that their bad science/fraud will not be questioned again!
It’s really sad that they don’t have the decency to even admit their own failures and confirmation biases NOW, and the whole episode has and will hopefully be remembered as ‘bad for science’ so future generations may learn. But in practise, the miserable frauds will probably survive intact IMHO, that is the way I think it will all pan out……..make me very very angry…………
Curious,
I’d have a look at numberwatch.co.uk as well as John Daly’s site. John Brignell’s been keeping an updated list of everything that’s going to be caused by global warming for many years now (and was the first place I read about greenflation and the coming economic bust – at least 10 years ago anyway).
Basically to summarise alarmism, take whatever weather you already have too much of (heat, drought, rain, floods, cold, whatever) and global warming will give you more of it.
“Anyone wonder why NOAA isn’t making a fuss about this?”
Their silence speaks volumes.
Henry says also @ Pat, Curious
Interesting. When such a report comes in, I always go back to my tables, of which we now know that the fall in maxima is the most reliable variable to look at ( = all results of 47 weather stations summarized, balanced by latitude to as close to zero as possible and see/inland 70/30)
I note that maxima in the NH dropped from 0.028 degrees C / annum since 1974 to -0.022 since 2000
That means we fell by 0.05 degrees C per annum absolute in the NH.
I note that maxima in the SH dropped from 0.043 degrees C / annum since 1974 to -0.010 since 2000
That means that here too we fell by about 0.05 degrees C per annum absolute,
Both results would suggest we are currently falling by that same amount per annum on both hemispheres.
However, putting all the maxima in a sine wave, best approximation with wavelength 88 years, I get that we are currently cooling at a rate of about -0.04 degrees C per annum, globally, on the MAXIMA
I think as correctly surmised in the whole discussion we recently had on the arctic sea ice, we had a very big storm in the arctic that may have given us the false impression that the arctic is still warming.Note that such a storm does release a lot of energy due the the condensation of water.
The truth of the current situation is different: ask the tomato farmers in Anchorage where (mean) temps. dropped by about 1.5 degrees C since 2000.
Pat is completely right. The idea that CFC’s caused the drop in ozone was a red herring.
I did find a correlation that shows increasing maxima against decreasing ozone and decreasing maxima against increasing ozone; it checked out that way on both hemispheres, at exactly the same times in history. I think the reason for this is the change in chemical reaction (top of the atmosphere) of UV with NOx, HOx and Ox due to a small change in the distribution of energy, mainly in the UV region, coming from the sun. In turn this changes the shield of earth: if there is more ozone & others, there is more back radiation of high energy light by the ozone & others, so the oceans (mainly) get a little less energy.
Hope this gets a few people started in doing some research on that….
by “record” do you mean if you ignore the extent?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
Well, it’s a dry cold, so you barely notice it…..
More importantly, all the Antarctic sea ice is…. Um…..thin ice, so it really doesn’t count…
Moreover, the record growth of Antarctic ice extent is perfectly consistent with global warming models, which consistently project both growing and shrinking Antarctic ice, depending on the current reality, so as to avoid confusion and bias.
Curious.
I have a scientific background, but I am not a climatologist. I got involved with WUWT a few years ago because I had read that mankind was responsible for increasing global temperatures due to increasing CO2 emissions. The CO2 acts like a greenhouse preventing heat from radiating back into space so we end up cooking ourselves. Then the “Runaway Greenhouse Effect” was trumpeted where temperatures rise even more sharply causing carbonate rocks to break down and put even more CO2 into the atmosphere. Then CO2 dissoved in water on the Earth comes out of solution (in general cold liquids can hold more gases in solution than hotter liquids, it is the opposite for solids) so more CO2 enters the atmosphere. At this point, so we were told, the effect is irreversible, it becomes a positive feedback, which in science is always destructive. We would eventually have a planet that is lifeless, with temperatures of several hundred degrees, just like Venus.
I was horrified, but then having an enquiring mind (like yours) I did some reading and found the following:
1) Venus has an atmosphere consisting mainly of CO2 and a surface temperature which averages 462 celsius. BUT it’s atmosphere is 90 times denser than ours (about the same pressure as exists in our oceans at a depth of a 7/10ths of a mile!
Common sense tells me that there is not that much CO2 on our planet, nor if we burned all the fossil fuels, forests and anything else combustible is there ever likely to be. The warmists quietly dropped the Venus analogy a few years ago when they realised it was making them sound ridiculous.
2) The percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 0.038%, in other words 99.962% is not CO2. How can increasing that by let us say 100% (note the figures here, this seems like a massive increase) affect the climate? CO2 is now 0.076%, but 99.924% of the atmosphere is not CO2. Common sense tells me that climate is not going to change as a result of this, imagine a greenhouse with 10,000 panes of glass, all removed,bar 4, you add another 4. Is that going to affect the temerature in the greenhouse? I don’t think so.
3) The percentage of CO2 in prehistory was a lot higher in the past and a lot lower too but the world did not end.
4) The more CO2 there is in the atmosphere even at these tiny percentages, the more the plants love it. They grow faster, so we have bigger crop yields and they take the CO2 out of the atmosphere (this is never mentioned by the doom mongers).
5) There is a lot of money given to researchers into AGW. If AGW is not happening this money dries up, they lose their jobs.
6) Likewise with governments and green taxes, they need to make us feel bad about taking flights and running our cars, so we pay a penance in higher taxes to make us feel better. Personally it makes me feel worse.
7) If goverments and scientists really believe that AGW is happening why are we not building thorium reactors (much safer than uranium). Why is research into fusion reactors not given a huge priority? Because everyone knows it is rubbish and they can give the impression that something is being done by building windmills everywhere to generate electricity from the wind. Because this electricity cannot be stored, backup power stations need to be running to put power into the national grid when there is no wind or too much that prevent thes turbines working. Windmills are cheap because the consumer is paying for them.
8) Anyone who calls other people “deniers” and wants laws passed to make it illegal to question AGW, must have a screw loose. This smacks of fanaticism and has no place in science.
9) Various e-mails, sites for weather stations etc make me doubt any claims of warming, hockey sticks, that the medieval warm period did not exist and all the doom mongering.
10) Electric cars are not environmentally friendly, far from it. Their batteries contain substances that are highly toxic and difficult to dispose of. If the wind is blowing or the sun is shining then they can be charged, cheaply, but more often than not they use power from a fossil fuel power station. Oh, and in winter, the heat byproduct from an internal combustion engine keeps the car warm and windows free of condensation. An electric car will have it’s power drained substantialy by the need to use battery power to achieve the same.
Converting chemical energy (coal or gas) to heat energy, to mechanical energy (steam turbine) to electrical energy (losses in power cables are huge) to charge a battery up and then convert the electrical energy to mechanical energy to propel the car is not as efficient as an internal combustion engine. Chemical energy (petrol) to heat energy to mechanical energy! But electric cars are being sold as better alternatives to petrol/diesel cars.
11) When scientists realise their claims ar not coming true they try to bolster their position with more outlandish claims. We have been treated to some absolute corkers on WUWT.Alien invasion and deaf fish are just two of them
All of the above have made me very suspicious of the claims and motivation of climate scientists and governments. Anthony and the moderators do a great job in informing people about scientific reality, unfortunately mainstream challenge to AGW is not as forthcoming as it should be due to the one factor that has always held mankind back; Apathy!
Best of luck with WUWT in the future, Curious, and I hope my thoughts and opinions have been of some help.
I like
It’s offical!!!
I checked the BBC and The Guardian websites and not a sniff of this being reported anywhere.
Why do I think that failing a new minimum come the Spring melt, percentage ice lost will be the new harbinger of doom?
Is the comparison here between approximately 5 million square km of Arctic sea ice to approximately 18 million square km of Antarctic sea ice? Or does the Antarctic figure include the area of the Antarctic land mass?
From the WashPost:
Antarctic sea ice reaches greatest extent so late in season, 2nd largest extent on recordhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-greatest-extent-so-late-in-season-2nd-largest-extent-on-record/2012/09/28/472625d8-098e-11e2-a10c-fa5a255a9258_blog.html
Tis strange the way some believe all this CAGW push with an almost religious fervor. And don’t seem to think the whole thing needs to be understood a little better.
For the record: (and I find it all intriguing in its complexity)
Currently, a difference of only 3 percent (5 million kilometers) exists between closest approach (perihelion), which occurs on or about January 3, and furthest departure (aphelion), which occurs on or about July 4. This difference in distance amounts to about a 6 percent increase in incoming solar radiation (insolation) from July to January.
Currently, northern summer occurs near aphelion.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Milankovitch/milankovitch_2.php
Read Svensmark. His theories call for exactly this occurrence – low Arctic ice and high Antarctic – vice versa.
David Borth says:
September 30, 2012 at 3:59 am
Is the comparison here between approximately 5 million square km of Arctic sea ice to approximately 18 million square km of Antarctic sea ice? Or does the Antarctic figure include the area of the Antarctic land mass?
———————
The Antarctic continent itself is 14.0 million km^2, the NSIDC page says explicitly that it is ‘sea ice extent’ (area of ocean with at least 15% ice).
What annoys me most is that the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice graphs are plotted on different scales. This may at first seem reasonable as there is more Antarctic sea ice anyway but it also gives the visual effect that Antarctic sea ice gain is minimal and Arctic sea ice loss is catastrophic.
You’ll never hear about this in any press, except maybe Fox….
Peter Fraser says:
September 29, 2012 at 10:59 pm
Apparently you see the glass as half empty as I see it as half full, with or without ice. Lighten up.
The usual bias from UK left wing papers,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/sep/17/polar-arctic-meltdown-climate-change
Note how quikly they closed down the blog and the digs at WUWT from a Warmista.
The Warmists are far angrier at this article though,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/30/ice-age-human-survival-alice-roberts
Reality can be so harsh…
well,
it seems to me that the bloggers from the SS (blog) have arrived here to claim we are on thin ice….
With names like SAMURAI in bold capital letters, who would not be afraid of them?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/29/according-to-noaa-data-all-time-antarctic-sea-ice-rxtent-record-was-set-on-sept-22nd-2012/#comment-1095536
A record is set for Antarctica’s ice
A truth inconvenient, but this will suffice.
To nix the decision
“Curb carbon emission”
CO2 is the gas to grow corn, wheat and rice.
Curious, one of the more informative articles relating natural cycles to global temperatures can be found here:
http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/SixtyYearCycle.htm
Please could i ask if anyone knows ( as i havnt been able to find any info ), there has been a record release of ice cold meltwater into the northern seas , possibly many many billions of tons of it. Does it stay where it is or drift south , as it is likely to send a massive chilling effect to wherever it goes to and effect the winter temperatures of nearby land . Britain might well be in range but as no one seems to be concerned about the meltwater does it matter at all ?
KR,
But which IPCC models made the predictions you claim?
On the p.795 you cite, they claim a “thinning” of “Arctic sea ice” from 3m to 1m over a century. If someone else then points to an ice free area that has disappeared in a decade, does that prove the above prediction, or merely show that nobody really understands the situation? [Zonally averaged decadal mean thickness also does not seem like “area” or “extent” to me so I question even these definitions.]
If I make a prediction something will happen in a century, then you may have to wait a century to prove me wrong. Of course if I can claim any arbitrary point in the next hundred years as proving my prediction then random fluctuations have a better chance of “proving” my prediction for me. It is a “prediction” that is too asymmetric and poorly defined to be useful [except to those earning a living from the prediction-business].
If I say a Governor of Massachusetts will win the Presidency in the next 100 elections, and Romney wins this year, can I claim I predicted it? Yes. Should you take my predictions seriously? Probably not.
Curious….it is really very simple.If the UN or IPPC or any politician or government and any agency like NOAA,or unviersity says anything about weather,which it really is,you know the exact opposite is true.
This is just so exciting! Yet another thing that proves that CAGW is a total FRAUD.
Growing antarctic ice will soon be engulfing Australia, and all those nitwits can worry about is a little melt in the arctic. This lunacy has surely gone too far.
No one cares, they only notice if arctic melting
RACookPE1978 says:
September 29, 2012 at 5:47 pm
Be sure to include in your remarks the obvious difference with arctic ice is it floats on top of an ocean; the wind moves and breaks it up, sea currents move the ice breaking it up, and ice breakers move breaking it up; whereas the antarctic ice extends off a continental object not being push by wind, current or man made machines.
KR,
If I was feeling less even-handed towards the predictions in that paper, I might be tempted to point out that Figure 11 c) on p.795 appears to indicate that at the shorter time-scales of 15-25 years, some thickening of Antarctic sea-ice is a consequence of DECREASING atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
My conclusion: Unchanged. These are not useful predictions. [Especially when you read the caveats to the modelling which are, quite properly, mentioned in the third sentence of the abstract and Appendix B].
John Brookes: ” CAGW is a total FRAUD.”
Nice, you’re finally starting to catch on.
The warmists are going to have to revoke Gore’s passport. He might travel to the North Pole or Greenland.
John Brookes says:
September 30, 2012 at 6:08 am
As usual, nothing of substance.
My dear KR, you are indulging in gross hyperbole. There is ample evidence that the offset is close to equal. The global sea ice extent may, indeed, have increased since 1979, ie. the satellite era. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/14/global-sea-ice-trend-since-1979-surprising/
For the Antarctic sea ice to be at a record high, the sea surface and air temperatures around Antarctica must also be the lowest in the satellite record.
I imagine winds and ocean currents have played some part but “temperatures” have to be below or near the coldest it has been since 1979.
Now remember, whaling and scientific expedition ships have “landed” on Antarctica as early as 1821. They were not using ice-breakers in those days so the summer ice could not have been much different than today. Even in 2012, it would have been difficult for a non-ice-breaker-type ship to reach land through the minimum ice (on February 23, 2012).
One of the coldest winter seasons ever in Antarctica. How can that be in global warming world, where polar amplification should have the poles increasing by twice the global average. Nada instead.
Interesting lecture by Svensmark;
vukcevic says:
September 30, 2012 at 1:08 am
Looks plugged in to me. Nice work Vuk !! Keep em coming, more are starting to notice.
Bill
Interesting points.
Captain Cook made a number of attempts to explore Antarctica in the 1770’s
http://www.south-pole.com/p0000071.htm
Doesn’t seem to be a lot of difference between then and now-Polar amplification seems to have bypassed the South Pole
tonyb
commieBob says:
September 30, 2012 at 7:07 am
The difference between the NASA Team algorithm and the Bootstrap algorithm in measuring sea ice extent shows how statistical data manipulation is all in the method and whether the modeler is content (or motivated) with the outcome or going to press for better data and improved algorithms.
David Ball says: blah blah blah…
Yes, David, but since you mob won’t be changing your minds any time soon, it makes more sense to mock you than to argue with you.
anthony holmes says:
September 30, 2012 at 6:03 am
“. . . there has been a record release of ice cold meltwater . . .”
You just made that up! **
Anyway, ice floating on the Arctic Ocean melts every year to a great extent beginning about the Ides of March and continuing for the next 6 months. Some years there is greater ice mass that melts and some years less but it is not all released at once. In certain instances, such as this, folks will look at “analogue-years” and guess that results this year will be similar to results from their year chosen for its similarity.
So, pick your analogue-year. Check the character of the following winter. Relax.
~~~~~~
**Ice was reported to be thin this year. Thus, there may not have been a record release because the mass of ice going back X years would have to be known – and I don’t think such is known.
Keith says:
September 29, 2012 at 10:33 pm
While both Cryosphere Today and NOAA data show a record Antarctic sea ice extent, the Cryosphere Today anomaly plot shown on the WUWT Sea Ice page suggests that higher anomalies occurred in 2007 and 2010. Is it because of different measuring techniques or why is there this discrepancy?
Looking at the CT area data during the year it follows the average data rather closely with a superimposed short term fluctuation (weather).
E.g. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
The fluctuation is most noticeable near the max and min where there is only slow change otherwise. At the maximum the average area is 15.059 Mm^2 on day 267 however because of the phase shift in the fluctuation the maximum area in any given year occurs on a different date so even if the maximum area on two different years were the same the anomaly would be different because it would be compared with a different value,.
For example, the max has occurred at the following times over the last few years: 268, 263, 279, 267. This year the anomaly was 1.165 Mm^2, on the same day over the last few years it has been: -0.040, -0.448, 0.834, -0.331, 1.004, 0.477.
Note that the area has dropped ~0.3 Mm^2 since the max (2 days), anomaly now 0.871.
Adding to my comment @ : 8:37 am
If there is a year that northern sea(s) ice reaches an unprecedented large amount the summer’s melt might be delayed, then rapid and record breaking – and interesting.
We are in a period of rapid magnetic pole change.
As the north magnetic pole moves towards the north geographic poles, the ice is decreasing at the north pole. As the south magnetic pole moves away from the south geographic pole, the ice is increasing at the south pole.
100 billion dollars spend on climate research, at the “best” minds in the field missed this very simple connection between climate change and the earth’s magnetic field. The paleo evidence is clear, the cliamte changes when the magnetic poles change.
Or, are we to believe that CO2 and climate change control the magnetic poles?
alex says:
September 30, 2012 at 12:49 am
Absolutely uninteresting and irrelevant for climate.
The sun does not shine there in winter, so no influence on albedo.
It is the ice extent in summer that does matter.
False. Totally false. Can you and KR even “look” at a globe before you write such blatant falsehoods in “defense” of your CAGW-dogma??)
The Antarctic Sea Ice at its 16.5 million km^2 maximum near the equinox in mid-September is a near crown-shape: A circular ring whose lower (sea-side) edge is between 62 south and 60 south latitude, and whose upper (pole-side) edge varies between 65 south and 72 south latitude. During its mid-winter GROWTH range – that period BEFORE its maximum extent when its will reflect the most solar energy – it will have about 50% of its area between 66.5 south (the Antarctic Circle) and 60 south latitude.
Now, at that latitude, EVEN AT MID NH SUMMER (darkest time of the year for the Antarctic continent in mid-winter) the Antarctic sea ice WILL be reflecting light energy … for the simple reason that the Antarctic sea ice is exposed to southern hemisphere sunlight every day – even at the shortest day if the winter at June 22.
BUT … Antarctic Sea Ice is NOT at its maximum at mid-winter (the darkest days), but rather, Antarctic Sea Ice is at its maximum at the equinox when there IS sunlight for 12 hours per every latitude on the planet. Further, Antarctic Sea Ice at its maximum IS exposed to strongly absorbed sunlight at solar incidence angle between 15 and 30 degrees for 10 of those 12 hours. Worse, from a cooling world standpoint, a DECREASE in Arctic Sea ice from its present “circular cap” up between 81 north latitude and the pole DOES NOT result in increased solar absorption into the exposed sea surface, but rather an increased LOSS of heat energy from the exposed water due to evaporation and radiation.
The difference? The angle of the incidence sunlight. In the Antarctic, the light is inbound on the newly freezing sea ice at 30 degrees angle: At 30-25 degrees incidence angle, open water absorbs 90-95% of the inbound energy, sea ice reflects about 98 percent of the incident energy.
in the Arctic, at 4-8 degrees incidence angle, open (rough) water reflects 95% of the solar energy. Ice reflects about 98% of the incoming solar energy. Open water loses another 117 watts/m^2 compared to ice-covered water.
Thus, “simple” physics and geography shows that an increase in Antarctic Sea by 1.5 million km^2 ABOVE its previous “average” of 15.0 million km^2 SIGNIFICANTLY increases heat loss from the planet. An (potential) loss even of the entire remaining sea ice of 3.4 million km^2 increases heat loss from the planet.
And NO IPCC report nor ANY climate model predicts ANY increase in Antarctic sea ice at the same time as a Arctic Sea Ice decline. They only predict sea ice declines due to “a warming world” and “prove” a warming world by that same sea ice decline.
Except sea ice is not declining in the “right” places.
andrewmharding says:
September 30, 2012 at 3:19 am
Curious.
I have a scientific background, but I am not a climatologist.
2) The percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 0.038%, in other words 99.962% is not CO2.
=============================================
When trying to explain that to the ” panic at any thing” groups of people, be sure to point that the CO2 % is actually 3/100 %. Some will think that “0.038%” = “3.8%”
Thank you all for your responses! I am so appreciative of the suggestions made, links offered, and stories shared by those of you who so kindly responded to my post. Obviously, I have a LOT of reading to do to get adequately informed on this topic. So I will start reading, question everything, and keep an eye on your discussions here to help fill in the big (ozone);) holes in my knowledge. Much gratitude!
For those confused about Cryosphere’s Anomaly Graph, they are graphing sea ice AREA, not EXTENT.
AREA came within 10,000 sq km of an all time record.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/antarctic-sea-ice-could-it-get-an-closer-without-breaking-the-all-time-record/
My post reblogged here is sea ice EXTENT.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/wow-antarctic-sea-ice-extent-all-time-records-set-in-2012/
“Area and extent are different measures and give scientists slightly different information. Some organizations, including Cryosphere Today, report ice area; NSIDC primarily reports ice extent. Extent is always a larger number than area, and there are pros and cons associated with each method.”
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/faq/#area_extent
2006 was the previous record holder for EXTENT.
2007 is the current record holder for AREA.
Ferdberple says
We are in a period of rapid magnetic pole change.
As the north magnetic pole moves towards the north geographic poles, the ice is decreasing at the north pole. As the south magnetic pole moves away from the south geographic pole, the ice is increasing at the south pole.
100 billion dollars spend on climate research, at the “best” minds in the field missed this very simple connection between climate change and the earth’s magnetic field. The paleo evidence is clear, the climate changes when the magnetic poles change.
Or, are we to believe that CO2 and climate change control the magnetic poles?
Henry says
Considering there are giga tons of bicarbonate in the oceans, that react like
heat + HCO3- => CO2 g + OH-
it is clear that the heat increase was leading CO2 up, as from about 1950 or 1951, when (natural) global warming started. So that was a red herring to start off with.
I doubt the connection you make, though, as my results are showing that, although the SH and NH are cooling at different rates, the absolute value for the rate of cooling down (when looking at energy-in) is more or less constant for both hemispheres.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/29/according-to-noaa-data-all-time-antarctic-sea-ice-rxtent-record-was-set-on-sept-22nd-2012/#comment-1095536
I think my connection with a difference in the shield on top of earth makes more sense, but if you can prove to me that this could somehow be related to the earth’s magnetic fields, somehow, I am open to that, but waiting for some proof. (Vukcevic?)
I’m looking specifically for changes that occurred at around 1951 and 1995.
For those confused by Cryosphere’s Anomaly graph, they are graphing sea ice AREA.
This post is about sea ice EXTENT.
Sea Ice Area came within 10,000 sq km of breaking the 2007 record.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/antarctic-sea-ice-could-it-get-an-closer-without-breaking-the-all-time-record/
Sea Ice EXTENT blasted the 2006 record.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/wow-antarctic-sea-ice-extent-all-time-records-set-in-2012/
“What is the difference between sea ice area and extent?
Area and extent are different measures and give scientists slightly different information. Some organizations, including Cryosphere Today, report ice area; NSIDC primarily reports ice extent. Extent is always a larger number than area, and there are pros and cons associated with each method.”
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/faq/#area_extent
NOAA probably isn’t making a fuss about this because it is behavior that is well within the limits of models. The Arctic, on the other hand, IS outside of most modeled ranges.
redoing the analysis of NH I did this week, for SH we find this:
Taking ALL available data not just this years’ min/max, whatever. We are talking about climate change so we’d better look at the rate of change directly rather than trying to guess it from the ice cover time series.
Taking rate of change and applying a 365d filter to remove the annual component we find this :
http://i48.tinypic.com/5dsb68.png
The post 2007 period has been unique in the record which both poles showing increasing rate of change at the same time , rather than the usual see-saw.
We are not in what appears to be also unique with BOTH poles showing +ve rate of change in ice cover at the same time.
OMG, it’s worse than we thought!
Skeptic and Alarmist talking:
(Any resemblance to any actual conversation is coincidental.)
Alarmist: The ice is melting, we’re doomed!
Skeptic: What ice?
Alarmist: The arctic sea ice is melting unprecedentedly; this proves that the world is warming catastrophically due to man’s activities.
Skeptic: The arctic is one region not the whole world, Antarctic sea ice is growing. Evidence of regional warming is not evidence of Global Warming or whether the warming will be catastrophic or what causes the warming.
Alarmist: The Antarctic sea ice doesn’t matter.
Skeptic: Antarctica is part of the world isn’t it?
Alarmist: You’re not a climatologist.
Skeptic: I’m not a mathematician either, but I still know 2+2=4.
Alarmist: It’s more complicated than that; it takes computer models to figure out what’s going to happen and why.
Skeptic: A computer model can only make projections based on its programming, GIGO.
Alarmist: Most climatologists agree that the world is dangerously warming due to man’s activities.
Skeptic: Most cryptozoologists agree that the North American Wood Ape exists.
Alarmist: Why would climatologists lie?
Skeptic: I didn’t say they were lying, most probably believe what they’re saying.
Alarmists: So, if you believe that they believe and they’re the experts then why not believe them?
Skeptic: Because they could be under the influence of confirmation bias, noble cause corruption, or conflicts of interest.
Alarmists: You’re a denier.
Skeptic: What am I denying?
Alarmist: You probably don’t believe we went to the moon.
Skeptic: There’s ample evidence we went to the moon, so I do believe we went to the moon.
Alarmist: The same people, NASA, say the world is warming dangerously from CO2 emissions.
Skeptic: It’s not exactly the same people, but nevertheless it’s not about who says what but rather what can be reasonably established by evidence.
Alarmist: Evidence like the arctic sea ice disappearing?
Skeptic: Yes, that is evidence of arctic warming but not necessarily evidence of global warming and certainly not evidence that it’s anthropogenic or catastrophic.
Alarmist: But arctic melting is consistent with the models that project dangerous global warming due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions so it is evidence of man-made dangerous global warming.
Skeptic: Ok, but its thin evidence at best, for example, a half-eaten cookie on Christmas Morning is consistent with a visit from Santa Claus, it’s not solid evidence of a visit from Santa Claus.
Alarmist: But the climatologists say they can’t think of anything else that might have caused the warming, unlike you’re example where others could have eaten half the cookie.
Skeptic: So, I’m to take “argumentum ad ignorantiam” as evidence solid enough to base policy that effects the entire population of the world?
Alarmist: Yes, the precautionary principle demands we act now, just in case.
Skeptic: The precautionary principle demands we not apply the precautionary principle, it’s self-contradictory. We’d never do anything or make any progress if we didn’t violate the precautionary principle.
Alarmist: You’re exaggerating; taking it too far.
Skeptic: Well, do tell, what is the acceptable threshold of precautionary principle application?
Alarmist: It depends.
Skeptic: Let me guess, on the opinion of the experts?
Alarmist: What’s wrong with that?
Skeptic: Only everything.
Alarmist: You’re such a cynic.
Skeptic: Hey, I have some future beach front property I’m selling, think of your great grandchildren.
A recent paper by Tsedakis (I think – ref not to hand) described a polar seesaw – reciprocal cooling and warming by the two poles – as a prelude to the end of an interglacial period.
Curious
I too was pretty lost when I began to look into this area. With two postgraduate degrees, I believed that I could learn the subject to some extent, but as my areas of study had zero to do with what all climate science involves, I decided to begin at a very basic level and build on that foundation. A number of books were highly readable, understandable and well-documented.
1) Bjorn Lomborg’s “The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the State of the Real World” (Revised 2001) served well as a basic primer on the broad topic of enviromentalism and pollution. The book covers the entire issue of what and how bad certain pollutants are. CO2 gets a large review. The book also provides a detailed history of how the IPCC muscled into the area and stretched data and internationalized the cabal. The book is a good but not easy read and the reader needs to pay close attention. It is studded with footnotes that support his statements (2930 of them). There is also a large, but probably now out of date bibliography.
2) Lomborg has a second, smaller book, “Cool It” (2007) that is not as encyclopedic as TSE, but his thesis is “OK, assuming we are going to have this global warming you are predicting, what is the most practical, reasonable and economical response to it.” Rather than the Kioto and other wildly expensive and expansive (of governmental power) responses the AGW’s are clammoring for, Lomborg shows that a rational,universal and appropriate response can be raised that will save millions upon millions of lives (assumimg what we’re assuming) and cost billions upon billions of dollars less. His suggestions are so obvious and attainable that one wonders why Lomborg is the only one espousing his program. (Naw: follow the Money).
3) One of the Holy Scriptures of the CAGW people is the 1998 paper by Mann, Bradley and Hughes and its bastard spawn purporting to show the hockey stick-like elevation of world tempetures in the late 20th century. A.W. Montford has produced a book, “The Hockey Stick Illusion: Climatgate and the Corruption of Science” (2010). The book explores the Mann, Bradley, Hughes (MBH) paper and explodes its validity in a large number of areas. The book reads like a great detective story except that the clues, dead bodies and missing persons are arcane (to me) statistical concepts used (improperly) in MBH. The book relates in Conan Doyle style how the heroes (McIntyre and McKitrick among others) followed the statistical clues and evidence in MBH that led them to the startling conclusion that MBH is not just flawed but is junk science. That part of the book does not require a statistical background in the reader as Montford educates while he elucidates. Other parts of the book show in shocking detail how the “Team”protected their own rather than scientific fact. This is disturbing to read how these AGW advocates hide and fake data, refuse to release data which forms the bases of their conclusions and began to entrain governments to their AGW purposes. The book is a great read; It does cover some complex and arcane issues but Montford does a splendid job of simplifying and explaining. I also am renewing my forty-year ago relationship with statistical analysis.
4) Another invaluable book is “Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed” (2008) by Christopher C. Horner. This book is more polemical than the preceeding ones but it is very eye opening to learn how the Team and governments collude (am I getting conspirational? Read the book) to thrust wave upon wave of AGW agitprop on all levels of society. The book will shock you, but it is documented with copious footnotes.
Huge thanks again to all of you! I’m so impressed with the time you took and information you shared, jimrjbob. Really, helpful! Geeze, so many great suggestions to choose from, such limited time! In any case I will certainly put “Red Hot Lies” and “The Skeptical Environmentalist” at the top of the list but then again, I do so love a mystery ;). Anyhoo, sure do appreciate you all!
Continued to Curious
5) I have often asked myself WTF is going on; how can these supposedly intelligent, educated and committed AGW scientists become such mendacious and nasty cultists who refuse to release data, who massage data, and who spew hatred at those who have the impertinence and temerity to merely question their conclusions. How can this supposed intellectual elite becomes foot soldiers and pawns to this foolish movement and warping of science, all for the end of the Cause? A fabulous answer is provided by Rober Zubrin in his “Merchants of Despair: Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism” (2012). Probalby anyone with a college degree knows at least most of the history found in this book, but it is the way that Zubrin connects the minds and attitudes of such people as Francis Galton, Margaret Sanger, Rudolf Hess,Paul Krugman and Paul Ehrlich with today’s (self-proclaimed) climate savants and their methods and their goals. Zubrin provides a description of and intellectual connection to that movement which is (counting Malthus) hundreds of years old and going strong.
6) Blogs. I find the following blogs helpful: Climate Audit (McIntire), WUWT (Watts), Bishop Hill (Montford). They inform as to the current issues being debated; what the various “sides’ are saying and what seems to be the reasonable position. The comments provide a free insight into many brilliant (and acerbic) minds and they challlenge one to follow and understand the issues under debate.
7) This whole area is so serious and rancorous in the debate thereof that everyone needs to take a break occasionally and laugh. Other than the complete balderdash that certain true believers spew (See, Lewandowsky, Stephan), I suggest the website of Minnesotans for Global Warming. It is a hoot sort of a AGW Onion. Watch at least the following: “If We had Some Global Warming” (to the tune of “If I had a Million Dollars”) and “I’m a Denier” (to the tune of “I’m a Believer”). If you don’t LYAO, please proceed straight to Mann’s RealClimate blog. You’ll be happier there. At least more at home.
P. Solar says:
September 30, 2012 at 9:58 am
redoing the analysis of NH I did this week, for SH we find this:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
With just a quick visual fit your http://i48.tinypic.com/5dsb68.png seems to track the PDO for the SH line. I am just curious if you have plotted those two together?
So lets get this right, more melt water from land ice means more sea ice and Antarctica is warming so we get more sea ice……..whats gone wrong with the Arctic then lots of warming there and lots of glacier melt, wheres all the expected sea ice to?????
For lots of entertaiment go look at the climate forum on weatheroutlook.com Antarctic sea ice thread.
Grey wolf still predicting the downfall of Antarctic glaciers and ice shelfs, this guy never gives up……until the last record went, then he went a bit quite.heres hoping again. we all doomed
Reblogged this on The Next Grand Minimum and commented:
Are we on the cusp of another mini-ice age? This is only one event, the question is will we break a record again next year and the years after. Stay tuned.
Notice there is no ice attached to the Antarctic Peninsula in the Cape Horn gap. Why would we expect there to be, when the Atlantic, and Pacific oceans both slosh back and forth through that gap twice a day, bulging up underneath ANY floating ice shelves that tried to form there and breaking them off once they get any extent out into the venturi.
It really is tiresome reading these constant whinings about Antarctic Peninsula floating ice shelves breaking up; It is not a prime location for building floating ice shelves. If you want to do that, move around to the bigger gap south of New Zealand, and build your floating ice shelves there; and quit complaining about no ice on a place that is outside the Antarctic circle anyway.
http://i48.tinypic.com/3025d02.png
rate of change plot showing both NSIDC and Cryo Today’s area data.
The latter runs a bit later so we get to see the end of interval where both were increasing together. SH is regular enough that we can guess that it will just be crossing in to positive again, NH lagging a bit behind unless it deviates again.
Interesting to see the accelerating melting that freaks out so many people in NH was accompanied by an opposing increase down below. Just that all eyes were diverted.
Those seeking a more objective view of the science ought to stop playing along with the once a year minimum game. It is clearly not representative of what is happening. Looking at all available data gives a very different picture.
Watts demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of climate science. Put down the perennial sea ice stats, which come and go every year, meaning very little for the Earths cooling mechanism. The true regulation is kept in the land ice, which is shrinking at an alarming rate.
@ andrewmharding September 30, 2012 at 3:19 am
Excellent summation, with one tiny correction called for. A battery stores chemical energy, not electrical energy (“…..to charge a battery up and then convert the electrical energy to mechanical energy…..”).
Sorry to sound pedantic! Your summary is excellent otherwise.
IanM
John Brookes says:
September 30, 2012 at 8:26 am
Or in other words, “I have nothing of substance to bring to the discussion and am constantly being proven wrong , so I will do what I am intellectually capable of.” 8^D
I will ask again. Is it ok with you that JoNova’s site has been continually attacked and shut down?
joanne, Antarctic land ice is growing.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/10/icesat-data-shows-mass-gains-of-the-antarctic-ice-sheet-exceed-losses/
“Mass Balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet 1992-2008 from ERS and ICESat: Gains exceed losses – Presented by Jay Zwally”
Zwally is not a skeptic.
As for your comment: “Put down the perennial sea ice stats, which come and go every year, meaning very little for the Earths cooling mechanism.”
I was quite sure the SkS crowd insist that shrinking ice lowers the earths albedo … and I believe it has been demonstrated by one poster here that growing antarctic sea ice should increase earths albedo.
Can’t the warmists agree on one whiney comeback?
This posting ranks (to me) as the best, most informative, in months or years. Definitely one of the best. So many good comments- I can’t name my favorites without slighting someone else also deserving of praise.
IanM
alex says:
September 30, 2012 at 12:49 am
Absolutely uninteresting and irrelevant for climate.
The sun does not shine there in winter, so no influence on albedo.
RACook has already debunked this falsehood, but I’d add that because the SH receives 5% more solar radiation in summer than does the NH, the increase in SH sea ice, of necessity in areas closer to the equator than existing sea ice, will have a much greater climate cooling effect, via albedo, than any warming from loss of Arctic ice.
In recent years the SH has seen unusually heavy snowfalls in Australia, NZ, Argentina and this from S Africa last month, so perhaps we are already seeing the effect of the increased sea ice.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story/2012/08/07/snow-south-africa-strange-weather.html
Jeff D says:
September 30, 2012 at 11:07 am
>>
With just a quick visual fit your http://i48.tinypic.com/5dsb68.png seems to track the PDO for the SH line. I am just curious if you have plotted those two together?
>>
Well spotted.
http://i49.tinypic.com/35a9et4.png
Interesting degree of similarity pre-1995 then it goes to shit, possibly coming back in to synch at the end of the record. But then several patterns fell apart 1997-2007. I don’t know what triggered it but there definitely seems to have been a change in climate patterns during that interval.
Was the large EL Nino of 98 the cause of just another symptom.
Maybe that happens at the peak of every 60 cycle or it was a freak. The detailed records are too short to get a longer view on whether this unusual or not.
PS, just spotted, I should have labelled it d/dt (PDO) , I plotted the differential as with the ice data.
Sigh…
I doubt the writer will be doing a side-by-side comparison with the Arctic sea ice any time soon, however. For that, I’ll see these six days and raise you 30 (it’s been well over 30 days since a new record minimum Arctic extent was set, and we’re still hundreds of square km below the minimum today – see here for more http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png). And if anyone can find any way in which the Antarctic sea ice maximum even comes close to the extent of change seen in the Arctic sea ice minimum, I’ll be pretty impressed at their data fu. Whether you look at duration of the record, total extent (or area) change, relative extent (or area) change, or year-on-year trend, the Arctic change is much larger than the Antarctic.
P. Solar says:
September 30, 2012 at 1:43 pm
Well spotted.
http://i49.tinypic.com/35a9et4.png
Interesting degree of similarity pre-1995 then it goes to shit, possibly coming back in to synch at the end of the record. But then several patterns fell apart 1997-2007. I don’t know what triggered it but there definitely seems to have been a change in climate patterns during that interval.
Was the large EL Nino of 98 the cause of just another symptom.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I was kinda thinking there may be an interaction of the AMO perturbing the cycle but I have not a clue on how one would incorporate the possible interlink of the two cycles. Being a chaotic system we might not ever be able to tell.
Paddy: “the Arctic change is much larger than the Antarctic”
The maximum in the arctic this year hit went to 98% of the 1980s average.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/arctic-ice-2012-a-little-perspective/
The mean is down about 11% over 30 years. 2012 would have been higher than 2007 if not for the cyclone.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/great-arctic-cyclone-2012-caused-the-record-low/
joanne says:
September 30, 2012 at 12:20 pm
Learn something about temperatures there, not suprising ice is growing..
http://www.uni-koeln.de/math-nat-fak/geomet/meteo/winfos/synNNWWantarctis.gif
Go to the Sea Ice Page: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
That graph shows that the total sea ice has declined by about 5% (approx. a million sq. km.) since the height of the global freezing scare in 1979.
Actually, Anthony did a really good analysis a couple of years ago: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/14/global-sea-ice-trend-since-1979-surprising/ Depending on how you measure, the total sea ice may have increased since 1979.
joanne says:
September 30, 2012 at 12:20 pm
Watts demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of climate science. Put down the perennial sea ice stats, which come and go every year, meaning very little for the Earths cooling mechanism. The true regulation is kept in the land ice, which is shrinking at an alarming rate.
======================================================================
Especially on Kilimanjaro, just like all the models predicted.
Paddy says:
September 30, 2012 at 1:52 pm
Sigh…
I doubt the writer will be doing a side-by-side comparison with the Arctic sea ice any time soon, however. For that, I’ll see these six days and raise you 30 (it’s been well over 30 days since a new record minimum Arctic extent was set, and we’re still hundreds of square km below the minimum today – see here for more http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png). And if anyone can find any way in which the Antarctic sea ice maximum even comes close to the extent of change seen in the Arctic sea ice minimum, I’ll be pretty impressed at their data fu. Whether you look at duration of the record, total extent (or area) change, relative extent (or area) change, or year-on-year trend, the Arctic change is much larger than the Antarctic.
Before I explain again WHY you are dead wrong about this falsehood that percent Arctic can be compared to percent Antarctic, percent total ice extent can be compared to percent total ice extent, or even Anarctic to Antarctic, do you understand WHERE the edges of two sea ice boundaries are?
Do you understand that the southern boundary of the Arctic Sea ice is at 81 north latitude this year? Does that mean anything to you at all?
Do you understand that the sun is only 2 to 6 degrees above the horizon all day at the sea ice up there, and rises above 8 degrees for only a few hours per day?
Can you tell what the albedo of the exposed ocean water is at 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 degrees incidence angles on rough waters?
Can you tell me what the air mass is for today’s date at that location?
When you get those answers, stop telling false comparisons between Arctic minmums and Antarctic maximums.
Under today’s conditions, melting more arctic sea ice (seeing even lower sea ice minimums) will result in even more heat loss from the Arctic oceans.
Under today’s conditions in the Anarctic, increasing sea ice extents will result in MORE heat reflected from the Antarctic Ocean, and increase net loss from the earth. The difference is the LOCATION of the Antarctic sea ice edge at maximum, and the LOCATION of the Arctic sea ice edge at minimum.
Area is only a little part of teh equations. When you look up the albedo for the Arctic conditions at 81 north, tell me the albedo and air mass for the antarctic conditions at 62 south lattiude. Hint: See NOAA air mass calculator, see the reflectivity of water at low angles.
How are we supposed to know if this is a signal of an impending ice age or not?
I don’t think I’ve read about anything that says unstoppable ice growth MUST start from the north pole.
Are we all going to die? AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
😉
See what happens when you graph AMO vs Arctic vs Antarctic:
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2012/09/30/amazing-graph-of-amo-vs-arctic-sea-ice-vs-antarctic-sea-ice/
Van Grungy (@VanGrungy) says:
September 30, 2012 at 8:03 pm
How are we supposed to know if this is a signal of an impending ice age or not?
I don’t think I’ve read about anything that says unstoppable ice growth MUST start from the north pole.
———————————————————-
It does not.. It can start in either hemisphere. The funny thing about ice ages is they can be triggered by very minuet things.. The common thread so to speak is the development of huge polar vortexes which bring super cooled air in contact with the polar surface. Once these form it will be a long time before they are disrupted again.. Antarctica’s has been much bigger than in previous recorded years and if it continues to grow in size the indication will be clearly obvious.
Now its the northern hemispheres turn as its vortex has already began to form a month or so early. indicators seem to play well into this one also being bigger than previous recorded years. if it plays out as the southern hemisphere has we will see major ICE rebuilding this winter with cold phases of the ADO and PDO.
How many cold records were set this year in Antarctica? better still would be the average temperature for the region. how did it fall?
How are we supposed to know if this is a signal of an impending ice age or not?
It’s expected to start in the NH, because there will be a land snow accumulation positive (cooling) feedback. There’s hardly any land at the right latitudes in the SH.
But as we have never seen the start of a glacial phase, we don’t know.
David Ball says some mean things, and then asks (again) if I think its ok that Jo Nova’s site was hacked. Well, I don’t recall you asking the first time, David. But anyhow, its not ok. Just like it wasn’t ok to hack the UEA server to get those emails.
I might support hacking in a “war” scenario, but the climate hasn’t reached that point yet. For now its a case of supporting free speech (no matter how delusional it is).
@ john brookes..no real proof that UEA’s were hacked..just yet more supposition and lack of facts as per warminsta’s wailing
http://i49.tinypic.com/35a9et4.png
Jeff D says:
September 30, 2012 at 2:29 pm
>>
I was kinda thinking there may be an interaction of the AMO perturbing the cycle but I have not a clue on how one would incorporate the possible interlink of the two cycles. Being a chaotic system we might not ever be able to tell.
>>
Here’s AMO’s effect on Arctic.
http://i46.tinypic.com/r7uets.png
It does not seem to correlate much to the cycles in NH , so probably less so in SH.
What is interesting in that graph is that AMO does seem to have been a major player in the 1997-2007 slide but despite AMO still being in the warm phase (note inverse plot) , rate of change in Arctic ice has settles back to the pattern it had in 80s and the big melt has ended.
That suggests that a new equilibrium has been reached. Which in turn suggests that the exposed sea area is having a net negative feedback, not the positive feedback suggested by models and all the talk of “tipping points”.
Here is the Tzedakis paper about the polar see-saw:
Determining the natural length of the current interglacial
P. C. Tzedakis, J. E. T. Channell, D. A. Hodell, H. F. Kleiven & L. C. Skinner
Nature Geoscience 5, 138–141 (2012) doi:10.1038/ngeo1358
Received 23 May 2011 Accepted 28 November 2011 Published online 09 January 2012 Corrected online 10 January 2012 Corrected again 29 February 2012
The timing of the hypothetical next glaciation remains unclear. Past interglacials can be used to draw analogies with the present, provided their duration is known. Here we propose that the minimum age of a glacial inception is constrained by the onset of bipolar-seesaw climate variability, which requires ice-sheets large enough to produce iceberg discharges that disrupt the ocean circulation. We identify the bipolar seesaw in ice-core and North Atlantic marine records by the appearance of a distinct phasing of interhemispheric climate and hydrographic changes and ice-rafted debris. The glacial inception during Marine Isotope sub-Stage 19c, a close analogue for the present interglacial, occurred near the summer insolation minimum, suggesting that the interglacial was not prolonged by subdued radiative forcing. Assuming that ice growth mainly responds to insolation forcing, this analogy suggests that the end of the current interglacial will occur within the next 1500 years.
Interesting to read the replies to the request for help from Curious September 29, 2012 at 6:06 pm.
As a layman wandering through the internet sites without a guide led me to a conclusion I am unable to verify. I found myself looking into the structure of the carbon dioxide molecule and marvelling at how the electrons shared the orbits between the three atoms and how the ‘internal energy’ of the molecule was changed when the electrons ‘jumped’ to higher orbital shells when specific photons were absorbed and how other specific frequency photons could be emitted when electrons ‘fell back’ to lower energy orbital shells. All this electron activity causing the three atoms in the molecule to exhibit bending, stretching and twisting motions, all part of the molecules ‘internal excitation’ state. This behaviour within the molecule seems to define very precisely which IR frequencies the molecule can absorb or emit. These frequencies are 2.7, 4.3 and 15 microns. There is much discussion on these precise frequencies but do not move far from these numbers. Wein’s Law defines the peak temperature when a ‘black body’ has a peak emission centered on these IR bands. These are 800C, 400C and -80C respectively (these numbers are rounded).
We are informed that carbon dioxide is evenly distributed in the earth’s atmosphere. This means that when the sun is shining, photons at those frequencies are being absorbed by the CO2 molecules and warming the air. This also means those absorbed photons never reach the surface to warm it by that fraction. So what difference does this make? This specific heat energy entered the atmosphere at some altitude, not from the surface. To me this seems an improvement of the cooling function of the atmosphere as a whole. Also carbon dioxide has a lower heat capacity than the air and by adding more simply lowers the heat capacity some more.
Now on the night side of the planet all IR radiation is essentially from the surface and if the surface is said to have a radiating temperature at 15C then photons in the 2.7 band are most unlikely to be emitted (800C), and photons in the 4.3 micron band (400C) are extremely limited. This leaves the 15 micron band radiating from all the earths surfaces unless they happen to be below -80C. But let us look at the CO2 molecules in the air just above the surface. At around 15C those air molecules (and CO2) are whizzing around and colliding with each other at some 400 metres per second, that is around 900 miles per hour. All these collisions, some two billion per second, are keeping the CO2 molecules in an excited state such they are EMITTING photons in the 15 micron band and are mostly unable to absorb any photons from the surface in that band.
This situation applies quite a long way up the air column such one air temperature and density are low enough for the CO2 to absorb 15 micron photons most of the photons pass straight through to space.
So my conclusion is carbon dioxide makes no difference to the normal cooling effect of the atmosphere. But the carbon dioxide, on the night side of the planet, is indeed radiating photons in the 15 micron band, cooling the air, and about half those photons will reach the surface, but those photons will not and cannot warm the surface or all the science of radiation is wrong. I don’t think so. I think the CAGW crowd are doing bad science.
Richard111 says:
October 1, 2012 at 7:12 am
Interesting to read the replies to the request for help from Curious September 29, 2012 at 6:06 pm.
As a layman wandering through the internet sites without a guide led me to a conclusion I am unable to verify. I found myself looking into the structure of the carbon dioxide molecule and marvelling at how the electrons shared the orbits between the three atoms and how the ‘internal energy’ of the molecule was changed when the electrons ‘jumped’ to higher orbital shells when specific photons were absorbed and how other specific frequency photons could be emitted when electrons ‘fell back’ to lower energy orbital shells. All this electron activity causing the three atoms in the molecule to exhibit bending, stretching and twisting motions, all part of the molecules ‘internal excitation’ state.
The different energy states are the result of different atomic motions, vibrational and rotational.
This behaviour within the molecule seems to define very precisely which IR frequencies the molecule can absorb or emit. These frequencies are 2.7, 4.3 and 15 microns. There is much discussion on these precise frequencies but do not move far from these numbers.
That’s where the three bands are centered.
Wein’s Law defines the peak temperature when a ‘black body’ has a peak emission centered on these IR bands. These are 800C, 400C and -80C respectively (these numbers are rounded).
Irrelevant, what counts is the blackbody spectra of the sun and earth respectively, very little of the solar spectrum overlaps with the 2.7 and 4.3 micron bands so their absorption is a minor contribution to atmospheric heating. The Earth’s spectrum has a high contribution at 15 microns so CO2 is a strong absorber.
We are informed that carbon dioxide is evenly distributed in the earth’s atmosphere. This means that when the sun is shining, photons at those frequencies are being absorbed by the CO2 molecules and warming the air. This also means those absorbed photons never reach the surface to warm it by that fraction. So what difference does this make? This specific heat energy entered the atmosphere at some altitude, not from the surface. To me this seems an improvement of the cooling function of the atmosphere as a whole. Also carbon dioxide has a lower heat capacity than the air and by adding more simply lowers the heat capacity some more.
Not true the molar heat capacity of CO2 is greater than N2 or O2, adding CO2 increases the heat capacity of the air.
Now on the night side of the planet all IR radiation is essentially from the surface and if the surface is said to have a radiating temperature at 15C then photons in the 2.7 band are most unlikely to be emitted (800C), and photons in the 4.3 micron band (400C) are extremely limited. This leaves the 15 micron band radiating from all the earths surfaces unless they happen to be below -80C. But let us look at the CO2 molecules in the air just above the surface. At around 15C those air molecules (and CO2) are whizzing around and colliding with each other at some 400 metres per second, that is around 900 miles per hour. All these collisions, some two billion per second, are keeping the CO2 molecules in an excited state such they are EMITTING photons in the 15 micron band and are mostly unable to absorb any photons from the surface in that band.
No, those molecules are exchanging energy via collisions with surrounding molecules, mostly N2 and O2, the mean time between collisions is order of magnitudes smaller than the lifetime of the radiational state. It is only when the CO2 molecules are much higher in the atmosphere where the collisional frequency is lower that emission of radiation becomes a major factor. Both the day and night sides of the planet are emitting in the IR. The CO2 molecules absorb very effectively in the 15 micron band.
This situation applies quite a long way up the air column such one air temperature and density are low enough for the CO2 to absorb 15 micron photons most of the photons pass straight through to space.
So my conclusion is carbon dioxide makes no difference to the normal cooling effect of the atmosphere. But the carbon dioxide, on the night side of the planet, is indeed radiating photons in the 15 micron band, cooling the air, and about half those photons will reach the surface, but those photons will not and cannot warm the surface or all the science of radiation is wrong. I don’t think so. I think the CAGW crowd are doing bad science.
No you are doing bad science, read a Phys Chem textbook.
Even Newsmax has published a story on Antarctica’s ice extent.
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Antartica-ice-global-warming/2012/09/30/id/458115?s=al&promo_code=1035A-1
John Christy has been known to point out that the poles do opposite “things.” (My word (; )
Interviewers loved hearing it so much, that they asked him the same question twice, as Gavin Schmidt waxed on freely.
“but those photons will not and cannot warm the surface or all the science of radiation is wrong.”
This sounds like Doug Cotton’s (?) persistent misunderstanding of the thermodynamics.
_Heat_ can not flow from cold to hot. IR is E-M radiation not _heat_.
What part of ” the science of radiation” do you think prevents a body from absorbing the 15um radiation?
BTW, that’s a rhetorical qu., this thread is about Antarctic sea ice extent .
>>
Assuming that ice growth mainly responds to insolation forcing, this analogy suggests that the end of the current interglacial will occur within the next 1500 years.
>>
That’s worrying close as an outer limit. At that point Gaia will burst the ugly pimple on her otherwise beautiful buttocks that is humanity and the Earth will return to being a pristine paradise.
😉
Phil. says:
October 1, 2012 at 10:12 am
Not true the molar heat capacity of CO2 is greater than N2 or O2, adding CO2 increases the heat capacity of the air.
Gases – Specific Heats and Individual Gas Constants can be found at
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/spesific-heat-capacity-gases-d_159.html
CO2 = 0.844
N2 = 1.04
O2 = 0.919
And yes, CO2 does absorb very effectively in the 15 micron band IF IT IS COLD ENOUGH.
I refer to Perry’s Chemical Engineering Handbook for my Phys Chem textbook.
Richard111 says:
October 1, 2012 at 1:44 pm
Phil. says:
October 1, 2012 at 10:12 am
“Not true the molar heat capacity of CO2 is greater than N2 or O2, adding CO2 increases the heat capacity of the air.”
Gases – Specific Heats and Individual Gas Constants can be found at
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/spesific-heat-capacity-gases-d_159.html
CO2 = 0.844
N2 = 1.04
O2 = 0.919
Check out the units, you’re quoting the values per unit mass, however per molecule you have to multiply the values by the molecular mass, 44 for CO2, 28 for N2 and 32 for O2.
And yes, CO2 does absorb very effectively in the 15 micron band IF IT IS COLD ENOUGH.
And the atmosphere is plenty cold enough to absorb all the 15 micron IR emitted from the Earth’s surface in a few meters.
I refer to Perry’s Chemical Engineering Handbook for my Phys Chem textbook.
A good source, you still need to understand what you’re looking at.
the onset of bipolar-seesaw climate variability
I believe that view derives from flawed Antarctic ice core dating. The Taylor dome cores show synchronous warming/cooling with NH cores, at least for the Holocene.
Is there enough weight in the ice to cause any change to the earths wobble and precession?
Thanks Phil and P. Solar. You are right. This thread is about ice.
Tim at 8:46 pm, I have read that mass movement during ice ages can effect the length of day (LOD).
Can’t remember where I read it.
some of you guys/girls might be interested in these results
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
any comments?
[how many times do you intend posting this Henry? . . mod]
Henry@mod
where in this blog did I post this before? It seems to me you cut my my first attempt trying to post this here, perhaps because you saw I also posted it elsewhere….?
(seeing that I did make comments on this blog, I feel entitled to inform those interested of my latest findings)
Very funny, John West. Unfortunately too true.
Reblogged this on Standard Climate.