Opposite Behaviors? Arctic Sea Ice Shrinks, Antarctic Grows
September 2012 witnessed two opposite records concerning sea ice. Two weeks after the Arctic Ocean’s ice cap experienced an all-time summertime low for the satellite era (left), Antarctic sea ice reached a record winter maximum extent (right). But sea ice in the Arctic has melted at a much faster rate than it has expanded in the Southern Ocean, as can be seen in this image by comparing the 2012 sea ice levels with the yellow outline, which in the Arctic image represents average sea ice minimum extent from 1979 through 2010 and in the Antarctic image shows the median sea ice extent in September from 1979 to 2000. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio and NASA Earth Observatory/ Jesse Allen
The steady and dramatic decline in the sea ice cover of the Arctic Ocean over the last three decades has become a focus of media and public attention. At the opposite end of the Earth, however, something more complex is happening.
A new NASA study shows that from 1978 to 2010 the total extent of sea ice surrounding Antarctica in the Southern Ocean grew by roughly 6,600 square miles every year, an area larger than the state of Connecticut. And previous research by the same authors indicates that this rate of increase has recently accelerated, up from an average rate of almost 4,300 square miles per year from 1978 to 2006.
“There’s been an overall increase in the sea ice cover in the Antarctic, which is the opposite of what is happening in the Arctic,” said lead author Claire Parkinson, a climate scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “However, this growth rate is not nearly as large as the decrease in the Arctic.”
The Earth’s poles have very different geographies. The Arctic Ocean is surrounded by North America, Greenland and Eurasia. These large landmasses trap most of the sea ice, which builds up and retreats with each yearly freeze-and-melt cycle. But a large fraction of the older, thicker Arctic sea ice has disappeared over the last three decades. The shrinking summer ice cover has exposed dark ocean water that absorbs sunlight and warms up, leading to more ice loss.
On the opposite side of the planet, Antarctica is a continent circled by open waters that let sea ice expand during the winter but also offer less shelter during the melt season. Most of the Southern Ocean’s frozen cover grows and retreats every year, leading to little perennial sea ice in Antarctica.
Using passive-microwave data from NASA’s Nimbus 7 satellite and several Department of Defense meteorological satellites, Parkinson and colleague Don Cavalieri showed that sea ice changes were not uniform around Antarctica. Most of the growth from 1978 to 2010 occurred in the Ross Sea, which gained a little under 5,300 square miles of sea ice per year, with more modest increases in the Weddell Sea and Indian Ocean. At the same time, the region of the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas lost an average of about 3,200 square miles of ice every year.
› View larger The ice covering the Bellingshausen Sea, off the coast of Antarctica, as seen from a NASA Operation IceBridge flight on Oct. 13, 2012. Credit: NASA/Michael Studinger
Parkinson and Cavalieri said that the mixed pattern of ice growth and ice loss around the Southern Ocean could be due to changes in atmospheric circulation. Recent research points at the depleted ozone layer over Antarctica as a possible culprit. Ozone absorbs solar energy, so a lower concentration of this molecule can lead to a cooling of the stratosphere (the layer between six and 30 miles above the Earth’s surface) over Antarctica. At the same time, the temperate latitudes have been warming, and the differential in temperatures has strengthened the circumpolar winds flowing over the Ross Ice Shelf.
“Winds off the Ross Ice Shelf are getting stronger and stronger, and that causes the sea ice to be pushed off the coast, which generates areas of open water, polynyas,” said Josefino Comiso, a senior scientist at NASA Goddard. “The larger the coastal polynya, the more ice it produces, because in polynyas the water is in direct contact with the very cold winter atmosphere and rapidly freezes.” As the wind keeps blowing, the ice expands further to the north.
This year’s winter Antarctic sea ice maximum extent, reached two weeks after the Arctic Ocean’s ice cap experienced an all-time summertime low, was a record high for the satellite era of 7.49 million square miles, about 193,000 square miles more than its average maximum extent for the last three decades.
The Antarctic minimum extents, which are reached in the midst of the Antarctic summer, in February, have also slightly increased to 1.33 million square miles in 2012, or around 251,000 square miles more than the average minimum extent since 1979.
The numbers for the southernmost ocean, however, pale in comparison with the rates at which the Arctic has been losing sea ice – the extent of the ice cover of the Arctic Ocean in September 2012 was 1.32 million square miles below the average September extent from 1979 to 2000. The lost ice area is equivalent to roughly two Alaskas.
Parkinson said that the fact that some areas of the Southern Ocean are cooling and producing more sea ice does not disprove a warming climate.
“Climate does not change uniformly: The Earth is very large and the expectation definitely would be that there would be different changes in different regions of the world,” Parkinson said. “That’s true even if overall the system is warming.” Another recent NASA study showed that Antarctic sea ice slightly thinned from 2003 to 2008, but increases in the extent of the ice balanced the loss in thickness and led to an overall volume gain.
The new research, which used laser altimetry data from the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), was the first to estimate sea ice thickness for the entire Southern Ocean from space.
Records of Antarctic sea ice thickness are much patchier than those of the Arctic, due to the logistical challenges of taking regular measurements in the fierce and frigid waters around Antarctica. The field data collection is mostly limited to research icebreakers that generally only travel there during spring and summer – so the sole means to get large-scale thickness measurements is from space.
“We have a good handle of the extent of the Antarctic sea ice, but the thickness has been the missing piece to monitor the sea ice mass balance,” said Thorsten Markus, one of the authors of the study and Project Scientist for ICESat-2, a satellite mission designed to replace the now defunct ICESat. ICESat-2 is scheduled to launch in 2016. “The extent can be greater, but if the sea ice gets thinner, the volume could stay the same.”
Maria-José Viñas
NASA’s Earth Science News Team
I picture a cloud of Satan’s gas (CO2) moving over Gaia’s planet causing havoc wherever it goes – for example, over Moscow, in summer a couple of years ago causing infernal heat, then over Europe the next winter causing cold never seen in a hundred years, then the cloud of Stan splitting this year – half to over Antarctica and half to The Arctic – simultaneously causing record levels of ice in the former and the greatest melt in recent history in the latter.
/sarc (Just in case there are any warmers are out there…)
‘Stan’ was a typo but I like it. I can picture him being called Stan…
So if wind patterns cause Antarctic ice to expand it’s global warming, and if wind patterns cause Arctic ice to decrease it’s global warming. I think I’ve got that.
“This year’s winter Antarctic sea ice maximum extent, reached two weeks after the Arctic Ocean’s ice cap experienced an all-time summertime low, was a record high for the satellite era of 7.49 million square miles, about 193,000 square miles more than its average maximum extent for the last three decades.”
Note that the record low in Arctic was an “all-time low” while in Antarctica it was just a “record high for the satellite era” or “last three decades”.
If it should not be considered as biased, the time frame for the data used should be mentioned for both ice sheets.
Anthony, you are an absolute meteorological superstar.
Your stance is dismissing so-called AGW as a hoax is about to be fully vindicated.
Tragically, as you appear to be a fundamentally very decent human being, you probably would not wish what is coming on your worst enemy.
The coming Northern Hemisphere winter will be brutal.
There is no human-induced warming in the offing.
The climate is certainly changing.
It is getting colder, much colder and the freezing behaviour of the Antarctic and Arctic sea ice are giving us valuable clues.
Unfortunately, for the alarmist Mr Rintoul of Australia’s CSIRO, and the changes observed by him in the depletion of the Antarctic Bottom Water, (Rintoul has found the layers of missing Antarctic Bottom Water but he has clearly failed to assist one Tremberth locate the famous missing heat) he somehow has managed to conflate the cause and effect of the recent warming trend.
The mighty Antarctic Circumpolar Current that is primarily driven by the rotation of the Earth and thermohaline effects of the freezing of Antartic seawater will no doubt soon enough educate Mr Rintoul.
In the meanwhile, a decent start is to monitor the deflection of the Gulfstream brought about by the increasing power of the Labrador current and its effects on temperatures in Northern Europe this coming winter.
The next attraction for lovers of truth and honesty in climate science and meteorology is to watch as for the global warming hoaxers and their apologists squirm as they try to explain away the re-apperance of icebergs in the North Atlantic sealanes.
Thanks sincerely for your tireless work in exposing the greatest scientific lie since the Piltdown Man.
Robert
“This year’s winter Antarctic sea ice maximum extent, reached two weeks after the Arctic Ocean’s ice cap experienced an all-time summertime low, was a record high for the satellite era of 7.49 million square miles, about 193,000 square miles more than its average maximum extent for the last three decades”.
So the Arctic was a record all time low but the Antarctic was only a record high for the satellite era.
Bias anyone.
Having watched GISS fiddle the data for the past five years or so I have doubts about the accuracy of this report. Maybe she’s right but NASA has a warming agenda and so I wonder. Pity because we now have the dilemna of who can the layman believe?
Changes in ice area at both poles:
http://i47.tinypic.com/72zrio.png
Changes in length of melting season at both poles
http://i50.tinypic.com/2mdgitw.png
Despite the very different geographies they seem to act with complementary variations. That is a *global* effect not local geography.
That also suggests that whatever is driving these complementary changes is of extraterrestrial origin.
We’ve just seen 30y or one trend since we’ve been looking. Since 2005 we’re moving in the other direction. Once we understand that, we can see what room is left for a “global warming” signal.
Climate does not change uniformly: The Earth is very large and the expectation definitely would be that there would be different changes in different regions of the world, That’s true even if overall the system is static or going through natural cycles, which is why the melting in the Arctic isn’t really proof of global warming.
Quick question: I would swear I’ve heard for decades, that ‘man-made’ global warming would lead to warming at both poles, twice as fast as the rest of the globe, simultaneously. Even algor claims this. Can anyone lay that to rest, or confirm it?
Oh, just in case anyone get’s in a panic after seeing Arctic ice plummeting off the graph there, best to take a look at rate of change if you want to know how things are changing
http://i49.tinypic.com/xudsy.png
http://i46.tinypic.com/r7uets.png
In short, Arctic big slide ended in 2007.
WARMISTA WARNING: these graphs were produced by cherry-picking ALL the available data so may be misleading.
Oh, really?
It’s interesting to note that the one place where Antarctic ice has reduced from the average is off the Antarctic Peninsula. This suggests to me that there is a real increase in temperature there and it isn’t just down to UHI around bases.
So what might be responsible for that? Undersea volcanoes? A change in Foehn winds coming over the mid peninsula ridge?
The important facts are; record sea ice winter increases in both Arctic and Antarctic, record summer decrease in Arctic sea ice., no difference in summer Antarctic melt.
Decreased clouds, combined with black carbon embedded in Arctic sea ice, absent in Antarctic sea ice, causes all these effects. As well as other observations like retreating south facing glaciers, while north facing glaciers are advancing.
first question:
Why are they comparing an average minimum (for the whole year) with a September median?
Comparing apples & oranges immediately raises suspicions about intent…
Maybe the aim was to get people to look more carefully?
Could be a way to save money during a time of budget cuts – i.e. get volunteers to do the thinking for them…?
Note that they are also using different date ranges:
“[…] yellow outline, which in the Arctic image represents average sea ice minimum extent from 1979 through 2010 and in the Antarctic image shows the median sea ice extent in September from 1979 to 2000.”
WUWT ?
I’m no scientist, but Harry Potter started with a Nimbus 2000, so NASA are way out of date.
“Climate does not change uniformly: The Earth is very large and the expectation definitely would be that there would be different changes in different regions of the world,” Parkinson said. “That’s true even if overall the system is warming.”
Is this not a valid argument against the use of global temperature anomalies in the climate models and elsewhere. We know that some 30% of stations show long term cooling and that the PDO, NAO etc. have differing cycles that affect climate differently across NH continents. Climate behaves zonally and should be examined as such in climate models.
There’ll be glaciers in Texas, Kenya and northern Australia and GISS will still be showing evidence for global warming.
Vostok is the Russian word for ‘east’ and in Jan 2012 the Russians drilled thru 2 miles of ice, with a surface temperature average of -60F into the liquid Lake Vostok. No atmospheric forces can be the cause of this condition. The heat for this 32F liquid water can only come from below, from a variable rate, fission heater in the mantle.
Consider the Inert Gas, Radon with a half-life of 3.8 days. This element cannot form any compounds and a pound of Radon becomes 1/8 ounce in just 21 days. FOR THERE TO BE ANY RADON ON THIS PLANET, IT MUST BE IN CONTINIOUS PRODUCTION. That production can only be as an ‘elemental atom’ by-product of nuclear decay. Earth’s fission decay is continious, but NOT constant, and is related to climate change as well as to seismic activity. One key marker to Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions is a spike in Radon concentrations in ground water monitoring stations.
There are over 2 million cubic miles of fissionalbe Uranium and Thorium in the mantle, which is subject to variable solar and cosmic particle bombardments, and is partially protected by a variable magnetosphere. Why do otherwise educated Earthlings DEMAND that this fission energy level is the ONLY CONSTANT IN THE UNIVERSE ?
Are they or is this report, mixing apples & oranges with areas & rates of loss/gain, in an effort to misdirect through smoke & mirrors? The upshot still seems to be that total sea-ice area has increased in the same time frame! Either way there is little effort to explain the rate of loss in the Arctic, other than to imply AGW. No mention of the super storm in 2007 & 2012 that broke up the ice when it was conveniently measured.
Why is NASA concerning itself with bolstering the warming paradigm instead of providing meaningful information or (God forbid) space exploration?
Why are they so quick to explain Antarctic ice gain with weather but never mention the weather contributions to arctic ice loss?
Nice big iceberg on view here http://www.andreassen.gl/andreassen/webcam.htm
Tasiilaq is on the southeast coast of Greenland.
Faux: The heat for this 32F liquid water can only come from below
Don’t assume that water melts at 32F with several km of ice pressing on it. Check the pressure, then find out M.P. of water at that pressure.
“The extent can be greater, but if the sea ice gets thinner, the volume could stay the same.”
A year or so ago it was reported that Antarctic was loosing billions of cubic km each year +0/-100%
Now it’s gaining a little bit +0/-100% .
Quite a turn around now they’ve “refined their models” from the outlandish guesses used before. Next paper will refine a bit more and in ten years we may get near to the truth.
They will never admit they were wrong.
@ tallbloke:
October 24, 2012 at 3:29 am
“This suggests to me that there is a real increase in temperature there and it isn’t just down to UHI around bases.”
Antarctic Peninsula weather:
http://www.meteoexploration.com/mountain/Antarctica.html
mouse over:
red symbols – near real time conditions
blue triangles – 6 day forcast
Near real time temps:
Limbert Antarctica – Temperature [C]: -28.1
Sky Blue Antarctica – Temperature [C]: -25.6
Butler Island Antarctica – Temperature [C]: -18.8
Dismal Island Antarctica – Temperature [C]: -6.0
If there’s any ‘warming’…..I bet they’re glad for it.
Besides using different annual average comparisons & failing to mention the Aug 2012 storm, the graphics are at different scales, with a much tighter shot of the Arctic. Greenland is in fact only 15% as large as Antarctica (without its ice sheets, however the continent would remain an archipelago, even with isostatic rebound; much of Greenland would also be under the new, higher sea level).
The effect is to exaggerate Arctic sea ice loss & reduce apparent Antarctic gain.
The decrease in summer Arctic ice while the Antarctic ice hits record highs my be consistent with global warming theory, but it is also consistent with no global warming due to CO2. Funny, but they did not mention that.
tallbloke says:
October 24, 2012 at 3:29 am
It’s interesting to note that the one place where Antarctic ice has reduced from the average is off the Antarctic Peninsula.
===========
The earth’s magnetic poles are in a period of rapid change, faster than at an time previously observed. Has anyone thought to track cloudiness at the poles, to see if this is changing as the magnetic poles are changing?
If you look at the motion of the earth’s magnetic poles, you find that the southern magnetic pole is moving northward and reduced ice at the Peninsula is the result. While ice is increasing at the south pole as the magnetic pole moves away from the geographic pole.
At the north pole, ice is reducing as the magnetic pole moves towards the geographic north pole. Co-incidence, perhaps. However, the magnetic poles control where the solar wind enters the earth’s atmosphere, and it seem highly improbable that a massive stream of ionized particles entering the atmosphere has no effect on earth’s weather and climate.
We know that ionization affects clumping rates of particles. This effect is widely used in air purifiers in the home. We know that cloud formation is dependent on the number and size of seed particles. Thus it seems likely that the solar wind could affect cloud formation independent of cosmic ray interaction. Clouds remain one of the poorly understood drivers of climate. Largely ignored as billions are poured into CO2 research.
“Climate does not change uniformly: The Earth is very large and the expectation definitely would be that there would be different changes in different regions of the world,” Parkinson said. “That’s true even if overall the system is warming.”
Thus the Medieval Warming Period can indeed have been global, even without evidence that everywhere wasn’t warming, nor did the warming that was detected have to have happened at exactly the same time.
Or will the (C)AGW-pushers declare special rules again, anthropogenic global warming may be spotty in spatial and temporal coverage but natural global warming must be everywhere simultaneously? Wouldn’t be the first time they’ve claimed reality itself will distort and be reformed due to the unprecedented effects of the miraculous consensus-creating CO₂ molecule.
This illustrates my issue with the concept of a “global average” of anything to try and draw conclusions. If scientists want to think in terms of a global average, and this value is plotted against a factor (such as CO2 level) then if a response (such as ice level) at the North Pole decreases by 10% but the response at the South Pole increases by 10% then the average will show a change of 0%. These “global average” scientists will have to conclude that the factor has no bearing on the average response value.
If there’s a more realistic appreciation that the system is complex and it’s the microscopic investigation of the complex behavior that is important then one might be able to discuss that the factor of interest my drive Northern responses in one direction while driving the Southern response in a different direction.
Unfortunately the generic AGW scientists insist on global average measurments when the local measurements don’t support their hypothesis, and then focus on the local measurments when the global average measurements don’t support their hypothesis.
“There’s been an overall increase in the sea ice cover in the Antarctic, which is the opposite of what is happening in the Arctic,” said lead author Claire Parkinson, a climate scientist with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “However, this growth rate is not nearly as large as the decrease in the Arctic.”
Classic red herring. Whether or not sea ice has decreased in the north fatser than it has expanded in the south is absolutely irrelevant. BOTH hemispheres are supposed to be losing polar ice, according to the IPCC reports based on NASA models. They aren’t. Your models are wrong.
Parkinson and Cavalieri said that the mixed pattern of ice growth and ice loss around the Southern Ocean could be due to changes in atmospheric circulation. Recent research points at the depleted ozone layer over Antarctica as a possible culprit. Ozone absorbs solar energy, so a lower concentration of this molecule can lead to a cooling of the stratosphere (the layer between six and 30 miles above the Earth’s surface) over Antarctica. At the same time, the temperate latitudes have been warming, and the differential in temperatures has strengthened the circumpolar winds flowing over the Ross Ice Shelf.
Yes, those things point out additional problems with your models. They do not accurately predict stratospheric ozone, stratospheric temperature, circumpolar winds, or the effect of circumpolar winds on sea ice. As you sum it up, they do not accurately model “atmospheric circulation”.
Given that this is the fundamental purpose and claim to fame of a General Circulation Model, maybe you guys ought to STFU, stop making red herring press releases trying to prop up the political efficacy of your ‘global warming’ theory, and go back to the drawing board to fix the models that embody that theory. Step 1: fix the theory.
You listening, Perlwitz?
I think this is strong evidence that “global atmospheric temperature” is not a good measure of climate change and that a correlation between that measure and anthropogenic emissions of CO2 is very suspect. The Arctic is warming and the Antartic is cooling while atmospheric CO2 has been increasing at both poles. Natural longterm climatic changes are so much greater than any possible anthropogenic contribution. It is time for climate scientist to start doing their mass and energy balances on local and regional levels and concentrating on the water cycle rather than CO2. Their is at least an order of magnitude difference in energy exchange with evaporation/condensation, freeze/thaw of water and the possible warming of .04% atmospheric CO2
@P.solar
I’m fully aware of the P-V-T curves for fluids and gases. Normal deep drilling from solids into liquids requires some form of “well seal” as BP discovered with their Deep Horizon blowout. The Russians used the LIQUID state of the first estimated, then measured above 32F water to rush up the bore and freeze, forming an ice seal. This is exactly what happened. There are nodes of Uranium and Thorium mixed in the mantle, subject to varying particle bombardments, daily Earthtides [look it up] and core stirring from a 900 mile permanent magnet core that rotates faster than the surface. This geology is explained in “Earth’s Elemental Petrol Production” and results in variations in both time and location of geothermal outflux. The Russians have been extracting above freezing samples and hope to launch a remote camera robot. Laboratory half life decay is restricted to LABORATORIES….much like “Carbon heat capture”.
“shrinking summer ice cover has exposed dark ocean water that absorbs sunlight and warms up, leading to more ice loss.”
Sunlight in the Arctic at the height of summer is only 3% of normal sunlight as it comes in at a low angle and through a greater distance of atmosphere (the W/m^2 is down 97%). Any heating of the water will be near the surface and will be rapidly lost to evaporative cooling.
In 2007, most of the melting was from sea ice driven OUT OF the Arctic by the prevailing winds—it melted elsewhere, not in the Arctic. The NAO also pumped a large bolus of warm water into the Arctic Basin where the warm water rose under the ice and melted it from below. As the ice melts, the cold water sinks and the warm water stays at the top against the bottom of the ice.
Warm air moving into the region can do some melting, but warm water is much more effective. Solar input is the least of these factors.
The myth that the Arctic would remain melted if it ever lost all of its ice is silly. Do they really think that 6 months of no energy input is going to maintain a climate above freezing?
Wow…we have been given two new measurement parameters to parse…. Connecticuts and Alaskas! Anyone know what the conversion rate is into Manhattans?
On another note, the Arctic is a vast open ocean which only contains sea ice; the Antarctic is a huge land mass surrounded by sea ice. How can they compare the two sea ice areas as if they were the same thing? If the Antarctic were just an open ocean…then they could…correct?
“The steady and dramatic decline…” ??
One method to contain Antarctic ice expansion is to simply mislabel the data points on the chart as Cryosphere does:
http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format=go&key=cdee124b11d6baacda6c3e29b12e23dc&loc=http%3A%2F%2Fwattsupwiththat.com%2Freference-pages%2Fsea-ice-page%2F&v=1&libid=1351089865866&out=http%3A%2F%2Farctic.atmos.uiuc.edu%2Fcryosphere%2FIMAGES%2Fseaice.recent.antarctic.png&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwattsupwiththat.com%2F2012%2F10%2F24%2Fnasa-on-earths-bipolar-sea-ice-behavior%2F&title=Sea%20Ice%20Page%20%7C%20Watts%20Up%20With%20That%3F&txt=%3Cimg%20class%3D%22%20%22%20src%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Farctic.atmos.uiuc.edu%2Fcryosphere%2FIMAGES%2Fseaice.recent.antarctic.png%22%20alt%3D%22%22%20width%3D%22640%22%20height%3D%22480%22%3E&jsonp=vglnk_jsonp_13510899118231
Usually they also obscure the current value by overprinting with the always lower average number, just to make sure. No answers to several queries to them about this.
Oddly enough this is a prediction made by Svensmark, that sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic will be in opposite cycles. see his book ‘The Chilling Stars’.
The vast majority of multi-year ice is lost during the winter, not the summer. Winter winds blow the thick ice out into the North Atlantic where it melts when it contacts warmer water.
Between 1988 and 1996, two thirds of the five year old ice disappeared.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/the-dirty-little-secret-about-arctic-ice/
10:30 min
From higley7 on October 24, 2012 at 7:28 am:
Except the incoming warmer ocean waters would be supplying energy, as would the incoming river runoff from the lower latitudes.
Another attempt at “re-framing” à-la-Trenberth. Not just attempting to reverse the normal order of disproving the null-hypothesis, as should be used when the scientific method is applied correctly, but subtly trying to imply that skeptics are claiming something they are not?
The issue is that the modelers have not really got a clue about WHY these two, apparently contradictory, observations occur. There is one thing that they get spot-on though, and all the carefully chosen superlatives hedged-around with “could”s, “possible”s, and “can”s, cannot disguise it:
Global warming causes the seas to fall? If you want to save Venice and the Maldives, haul all the misdirected polar bears to the right pole in SUVs. (/s)
Regarding the scale of the two polar regions. The Arctic Ocean is almost equal in size to the continent of Antarctica – both are approximately 14 million square km
@tallbloke:
I believe there is an active volcano on that penninsula. All we have to do is go back to Anthony Watts, 2008. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/22/surprise-theres-an-active-volcano-under-antarctic-ice/. I love this site! Glad to see and read you making sense out there Tallbloke.
Can I make a suggestion? Can one of you whizzes drop the arctic area onto the antartic area to show a visual perspective of the comparison in size. I think a lot of people look at the big open gap between the orange line in the arctic pics and panic. I think it would be quite an interesting view for the less informed?
Parkinson said that the fact that some areas of the Southern Ocean are cooling and producing more sea ice does not disprove a warming climate.
But of course it doesn’t.
Hey Claire – What would?
Please be specific.
I hate this kind of biased reporting. For example, looking at the two yellow lines in the opening graphic, you’d think that the difference between the amount of melting is quite large. But the left graph is the average of the minimum ice extent in the North, and on the other hand it is the September median ice extent in the South.
w.
“Parkinson said that the fact that some areas of the Southern Ocean are cooling and producing more sea ice does not disprove a warming climate.”
–
True, but by the same token, isn’t it also the case that recent loss of ice in the Arctic does not prove a warming climate? There are other factors like wind, sun, and oceanic oscillation that could be factors as well. I see no reason to jump to conclusions either way. But one thing’s for sure, catastrophic, accelerating warming on a global scale is not currently happening.
With the water radiating basically into outer space and heat transfer proportional as T^4, sink at 3K and source at about 273K, you think heat transfer from the currents and runoff are going to stay ahead? I remain,,,doubtful.
@Fred Allen
“There’ll be glaciers in Texas, Kenya and northern Australia and GISS will still be showing evidence for global warming.”
—
There’ll be open water in the Arctic and a glacier-free Glacier National Park (in ten years) and you guys will still be fantasizing evidence for global cooling / no warming / warming but not man-made / maybe man-made but not harmful / possibly problematic but I don’t like hippies and government regulation / a huge catastrophe but it’s too late now so let’s enjoy the party while it lasts.
From D. J. Hawkins on October 24, 2012 at 11:39 am:
So do I. That was pedantic nitpicking about the absoluteness of “6 months of no energy input”. There’d be a net energy loss, but still energy inputs.
Keith Distel @ October 24, 2012 at 8:51 am
Re: active volcano on the Antarctic Peninsula. There is one on Deception Island that destroyed a couple of research stations in the 1960’s. Also erupted in 1987 (wrongly stated as 1970 in Wikipedia).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deception_Island
“higley7 says:
October 24, 2012 at 7:28 am
“shrinking summer ice cover has exposed dark ocean water that absorbs sunlight and warms up, leading to more ice loss.”
Sunlight in the Arctic at the height of summer is only 3% of normal sunlight as it comes in at a low angle and through a greater distance of atmosphere (the W/m^2 is down 97%). Any heating of the water will be near the surface and will be rapidly lost to evaporative cooling.”
The North Pole gets more sunlight at the height of summer than the equator. Hint: It’s getting it 24 hours per day.
The arctic wouldn’t be ice free throughout the year immediately after becoming ice free, but the alligator fossils in Alaska tell a different story about it won’t be ice free year round and the continents were basically as they are today. Recent findings also show ice sheets can melt much faster than once thought. If we lose the arctic sea ice, Greenland will quickly melt, but overnight. I expect to see more of those 2012 melts in the future, maybe next year. The reason has nothing directly to do with the sea ice, it has to do with the June snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere being nearly 6 million square kilometers less than the base period.
http://daisy.sodor.no/generated/36311_sn__dekke.jpg
That snow cover loss is on the order of 3 times the area of Greenland or 3 times the area of the 2012 arctic sea ice minimum. Those lands aren’t oceans that can absorb nearly all the solar radiation, but northern areas can become quite warm if they aren’t covered with snow reflecting sunlight and the sun is most intense. Air masses travelling over such places can remain warm and large warm air masses will find their way to Greenland causing melt.
Once the arctic is ice free, it won’t have to bother melting multi-year sea ice and first year sea ice will melt away quickly each year. The top 50 meters of the arctic has low salinity and a lower temperature, but waves and storms are going to mix that up. The Arctic Ocean will tranform to a temperature gradient ocean, like the rest, instead of one based on salinity.
How soon it will become ice free year round is hard to say, because that northern area has unusual clouds and fog and it’s hard to predict how that will evolve. The climate has to change, so I would expect the old AO high to move to Greenland and I also expect the currents to change. There is still a lot of melting to do with permafrost and Greenland until all heat becomes dedicated to warming oceans, land and air. In a hundred years, I’d say there would be trees able to grow in once tundra next to the Arctic Ocean, but the alligators might have to wait a little bit.
Some European says:
October 24, 2012 at 12:20 pm
“There’ll be open water in the Arctic and a glacier-free Glacier National Park (in ten years) and you guys will still be fantasizing evidence for global cooling / no warming / warming but not man-made / maybe man-made but not harmful / possibly problematic but I don’t like hippies and government regulation / a huge catastrophe but it’s too late now so let’s enjoy the party while it lasts.”
============
No reference to the demise of a cute critter ?
No mention that ice is an enemy, with almost no equal ?
To imagine that production of a trace gas, could affect a planet that raises mountain ranges only to have them washed into the sea, seems to indicate a lack of perspective.
Other than a sudden party crasher, She is only playing out perterbations put into the system long ago.
Sorry, it is not about you.
At first sight opposite ice trends at the to poles are suggestive of the bipolar seesaw associated with both the beginning and the end of an interglacial. However closer reading of the paper by Tzedakis on this:
http://www.clim-past.net/8/1473/2012/cp-8-1473-2012.pdf
shows that, evidently, the bipolar seesaw is only reactivated 3 kYr after an interglacial is already ended.
A low magnitude bipolar seesaw might be a permanent feature, possibly due to the higher-than-cloud albedo of the white-than-white Daz automatic snow in Antarctica, so that increasing cloud warms Antarctica but cools the rest of the planet.
In any case, it is likely that Gary Lance’s wait for Alligators in the Arctic will be about as long as another Lance’s wait for another Tour do France medal.
“Recent research points at the depleted ozone layer over Antarctica as a possible culprit.”
Fact check follows.
1. Annual maximum size of Antarctic ozone hole is pretty stable since 1989 (last 24 years).
2. The same is true for annual minimum ozone concentration (in Dobson Units)
3. Production of halocarbons decreased dramatically since the Montreal Protocol was signed (1987)
3. The Antarctic ozone hole is a spring phenomenon (September – November)
4. Antarctic sea ice cover has increased over the last 2 decades in spite of stable ozone levels
5. Sea ice increased in all seasons, even in those with no ozone hole
6. 2012 summer (February) ice cover being 251,000 square miles over average is not a “slight increase” (it is 23% over average).
7. In summer there is no ozone hole whatsoever over Antarctica
8. Air over Antarctica is very dry, therefore water vapor couldn’t mask effect of CO₂ if there were any
9. CO₂ concentration over Antarctica is increasing at the same rate as anywhere else
Now, these facts are inconsistent with claims
a. Antarctic sea ice increase is caused by ozone depletion
b. ozone depletion is caused by overproduction of halocarbons
c. increasing CO₂ concentration traps significant amount of thermal radiation to space over Antarctica
Whenever claims are inconsistent with facts, claims should be abandoned.
One more thing. Honest research either proves or disproves something or, as a last resort, leaves the question open, but never points at anything as a possible culprit.
Because what’s the proposition here to which a truth-value should be assigned? It must be “Depleted ozone layer over Antarctica is pointed at as a possible culprit”. Now, what’s the negation of this proposition? For, if the negation of a proposition is proven to be true, the proposition itself is surely false. However, unfortunately it sounds like this: “Depleted ozone layer over Antarctica is not pointed at as a possible culprit.” And this one is certainly false, because the phenomenon is in fact pointed at. By the researchers themselves. And then, we have not even ventured into the murky depths of modal logic implied by the presence of the phrase “possible culprit.” Neither did we scrutinize usage of the term “culprit” in an impersonal context.
with all the recent papers on cosmic rays and their putative effects on clouds and such, I have to wonder if there is some issue with the solar system’s position relative to the galactic plane. As you know, we cycle above and below the galactic plane in a regular rhythm With more or less bombardment of [fill in the blank] you get more or less polar ice. I’m not well read in this area so I would hope someone who is can take a whack at this idea. Perhaps it is nothing.
Berényi Péter says:
October 24, 2012 at 2:37 pm
Are you saying they can’t measure wind speed and notice it has increased? Are you saying they can’t measure precipitation and notice more snow on sea ice, when they land on it? They said the snow was so thick it cracked the sea ice and allowed ocean water to thicken the sea ice. 1 meter sea ice is only 4 inches above sea level. It doesn’t take much snow to weigh it down and flood that.
It’s first year sea ice and it all melts away, except for a small amount that gets saved in the Ross and Weddell Sea gyres. The antarcitic is essentially sea ice free at it’s minimum.
As far as you ozone nonsense, they only said they thought it might be because of the ozone. If the ozone is speeding up the circumpolar wind, it can speed up the circumpolar current with time. Once the current speeds up it has it’s own momentum. It’s stronger than the Gulf Stream.
The antarctic sea ice gets a little crazy at it’s maximum, though it didn’t do it last year for some reason. I expect this year to be like all others and the sea ice will melt following the average. The trend has been to be above average as the sea ice is forming and be right on the base average once serious decline begins. You aren’t going to find charts drawn comparing the antarctic sea ice minimums, because there really isn’t a trend there and the minimum all depends on the weather at that time. I’ve seen archived satellite data of both gyres being cleaned out of sea ice and I’m sure it will happen again. That’s when the antarctic sea ice will reach an all time record minimum, but it will bounce back, because the gyres protect the sea ice.
Yesterday’s news reports of the ice melting on Australia’s Antarctic airstrip are relevant to this discussion.
But unexpected surface melt has sharply curtailed use of the summer airstrip.
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/environment/climate-change/antarctic-airstrip-melting-away-20121023-283kx.html
They have made a small area of Antarctica, like the Arctic by planes depositing black carbon on the ice surface and then the surface melts.
Friends:
Gary Lance says at October 24, 2012 at 3:25 pm
It is a pity that he does not know the minimum Arctic sea ice is also determined by the weather.
Richard
RE: “At first sight opposite ice trends at the to poles are suggestive of the bipolar seesaw associated with both the beginning and the end of an interglacial.”
This. Be scared. Be very scared. No, not about that … about the other thing, the unmentionable thing.
Philip Bradley says:
October 24, 2012 at 3:41 pm
===========================
BBC, in concert with a number of media outlets announced today that global warming was melting the Wilkins ice runway in Antarctica. This announcement lends itself to examination of the nature of media behavior regarding global warming–what is really happening and where? First of all one might wonder, what season is it in Antarctica as I write this response? Our October is equivalent to the South Pole’s April. Summer has not yet arrived, yet runway meltdown is announced. And just a little digging brings up the source story, from January of this year in the Tasmanian “Mercury.” It turns out that last summer, nine months ago, the ice runway had its second season of extra warm weather, which prevented its use in January.
Australia spent some 40 million dollars on this asset, and so far only a few dozen flights have been made from Tasmania, thus costing about a million dollars per flight so far. The fact that the runway is only four years old leaves us to wonder, how much has the planet warmed in the last four years, and didn’t these planners know about global warming four years ago? And are they absurdly blaming on global warming what is really the result of their own incompetence? Or have they just had a couple of years of bad luck with the weather? After all, we’ve had over a decade with no global warming to speak of.
So no, global warming is not responsible for the limited usefulness of a nearly new ice runway, and no, this is not spontaneously generated news of a recent event. Rather it is the calculated propaganda of a consortium of radical environmentalists–who understand that there’s a sucker born every second–and gullible or complicit journalists. Take an old story, dress it up in the garb of long term climate change, and the media will eat it up. And most of the people will believe it. Shame on the fools! –AGF
From Gary Lance on October 24, 2012 at 1:45 pm:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100824132417.htm
The Arctic was warm enough for alligators in the past. Ellesmere Island, adjacent to Greenland, was swampy.
Yet somehow there were not tipping points that were passed that lead to catastrophic life-destroying global warming. Life went on.
Even though Ellesmere Island was so warm yearlong that an Arctic Ocean that was ice-free year round not only seems possible, but most likely.
Philip Bradley says:
October 24, 2012 at 3:41 pm
Yesterday’s news reports of the ice melting on Australia’s Antarctic airstrip are relevant to this discussion.
But unexpected surface melt has sharply curtailed use of the summer airstrip
Wilkins runway 66° 41′ 27″ S, 111° 31′ 25″ E
http://toolserver.org/~geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Wilkins_Runway¶ms=66_41_27_S_111_31_25_E_type:airport_region:AU
you can find the runway on Google Earth with these coordinates
A polar circle is either the Arctic Circle or the Antarctic Circle. On Earth, the Arctic Circle is located at a latitude of 66° 33′ 44″ N, and the Antarctic Circle is located at a latitude of 66° 33′ 44″ S
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_circle
66° 33′ 44″ Antarctic Circle
66° 41′ 27″ Wilkins runway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Polarkreis_-_zwischen_Narvik_%26_Mo_i_Rana_Norwegen.JPG
You think someone with a brain thought of that spot to build a runway on the ice ? If the sun is warm enough in Norway to make plants grow don’t you think it is warm enough to melt the upper part of the runway on the Antarctic ? It has more or less the same coordinates.
Distance from the South pole 2500 km
Distance from open seawater in summer 50 km
Elevation AMSL 2,529 ft / 771 m
Strange maths Gary.
Let’s say power at surface on the Equator is ~1000w/m^2 and for the sake of argument that is for six hours per day (to account for Sun rising to overhead, then setting). That’s 6000wh/m^2
I’m not sure higley7 is correct about 3% but if correct, that’s 30w/m^2. (NB seems a little low to me but never mind.) That’s 720wh/m^2
One thing about the dark ocean water thing that bothers me is this…
Albedo is measured at the normal, (90° to the surface). Try driving towards the Sun in the early morning. Even dry tarmac reflects Sunlight at a low enough incidence and I don’t think anyone would argue that the albedo of tarmac is high. Once the surface is wet, the effect can be blinding.
DaveE.
You think someone with a brain thought of that spot to build a runway on the ice ? If the sun is warm enough in Norway to make plants grow don’t you think it is warm enough to melt the upper part of the runway on the Antarctic ? It has more or less the same coordinates.
You are correct that it is sunlight that is causing the melt, and not temperatures.
Reports say the airstrip near Casey Station can’t be used between December and February. Average December high temperature there is 1.4C, with most of the day below zero. Clearly melt from air temperatures will be small and quickly refreeze.
But decrease the albedo and you will get significant melt from solar radiation.
I’d say the problem here is scientists believing that rises in air temperatures are causing ice melt, and seeing air temperatures never get warm enough at that location to cause significant melt, decided there would be no problem building an ice airstrip there.
Hopefully some of those scientists have had a lightbulb moment and seen that air temperatures aren’t the primary cause of polar ice melt. Solar insolation and ice albedo are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Station
Notice in the Antarctic picture, there is virtually no pack ice at all in the “sloshosphere”, that region between the tip of Sth America, and the Antarctic Peninsula (which is outside the Antarctic circle).
Well you would have a hard time hanging onto the land there, with the whole Pacific/Atlantic Ocean sloshing back and forth twice a day.
Antarctica’s ice is, of course, more important than the sea ice in the Arctic.
But the real issue of the Arctic sea ice is not each year’s minimum annual area.
The real issue (even though Arctic ice area is less important, anyway) is: Does the ice recover each year to a within-normal area? And it always does.
Steve Garcia
At the end of the day we are still left with the fact that we have Antarctic sea ice increasing while the Arctic sea ice is decreasing however people try to project this.All the Arctic sea ice that was lost in August has reformed in October and this seems to happen every year, it happened also in October 2007, so that we only had record ice gain in October this year because we had record ice loss in August. Just because some said the area where we have had rapid refreezing was clear of ice that was not true ,the sea ice just broke up and was transported elsewhere leaving the water still freezing cold.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/important-reminder-none-of-this-ice-exists/
Some people due to confirmation bias only see evidence for AGW never evidence against and if the Antarctic sea ice contridicts AGW then it has to be explained away but this years Arctic sea ice minimum was still evidence for AGW despite being caused by a strong storm in late August.
“A new NASA study shows that from 1978 to 2010 the total extent of sea ice surrounding Antarctica in the Southern Ocean grew by roughly 6,600 square miles every year, an area larger than the state of Connecticut. And previous research by the same authors indicates that this rate of increase has recently accelerated, up from an average rate of almost 4,300 square miles per year from 1978 to 2006.”
From To Years Sq Miles Years * Sq Miles
1978 2010 32 6600 211,200
1978 2006 28 4300 120,400
——– ———–
2007 2010 4 90,800
This seems to indicate that for 2007 – 2010, total extent of sea ice surrounding Antarctica in the Southern Ocean grew by roughly 22,700 (90800/4) square
miles every year. That is about four Connecticuts or one West Virginia.
Ed of Mess from his WordPress account.
“richardscourtney says:
October 24, 2012 at 3:53 pm
Friends:
Gary Lance says at October 24, 2012 at 3:25 pm
You aren’t going to find charts drawn comparing the antarctic sea ice minimums, because there really isn’t a trend there and the minimum all depends on the weather at that time.
It is a pity that he does not know the minimum Arctic sea ice is also determined by the weather.
Richard”
It is a pity you don’t know the meaning of words and concepts and say ridiculous things.
The arctic minimum is influenced by weather and that’s why I watch the weather in the arctic daily, but if that multi-year ice is lost for any reason, it’s gone and not coming back. All sea ice is influenced by weather at all times, but influenced isn’t the same as determined. The antarctic minimum is all about how lucky the sea ice is to hide in the gyres and that is determined by the weather. The satellite record has examples of the gyres being flushed out of sea ice in the antarctic. That would lead to a record minimum for that year, but the sea ice would return and the minimum would return to the trend. The antarctic used to have sea ice left along the coast at it’s minimum and that trend is gone. If the arctic loses sea ice by unusual weather, it isn’t returning to an established minimum amount, because the trend in the arctic is for all the sea ice to melt.
In the arctic, multi-year sea ice hides along the coast of northern Greenland and the CAA, but recently the trend has been for a high pressure zone to be over Greenland and that exits sea ice out the Fram Strait and move sea ice north of Greenland towards the east. The Nares Straits opens early and exits sea ice. The CAA has started leaking sea ice through it’s many passages.
The record minimum antarctic sea ice area from satelitte data is around 1.3 million square kilometers (msk) and it was set 20 years before this melt season’s minimum which will be in 2013. The largest minimum was about 2.4 msk in 2003. In the 34 years of satellite minimum area data, there were 5 years with minimums above 2 msk and it’s usually a little less than 2 msk, but not like a flush out year, like 1993. The antarctic sea ice is free to expand in all directions around the continent and never comes close to other continents.
The arctic is an entirely different story. The arctic used to have large amounts of sea ice that would survive a melt season and now it only has small amounts of any sea ice hugging North America where conditions have changed to allow an exit to the south The record for the arctic is much more complete than the antarctic, so the change is well documented. The sea ice isn’t free to expand in the arctic, because land and warm ocean currents limit it’s expansion. The prognosis for the sea ice in the arctic is terminal and it will die much sooner than anticipated.
Gary Lance says:
“The arctic minimum is influenced by weather and that’s why I watch the weather in the arctic daily,”
Get a life.
If we compare like with like, both the Arctic and the Antarctic winter sea ice maxima are increasing. The Antarctic summer sea ice minimum is currently zero every year. If this were to change to non-zero, that would be interesting.
Gary Lance:
In response to my having pointed out that minimum Arctic sea ice is determined by the weather, at October 25, 2012 at 2:53 am, you write to me saying.
I copy the first of these quoted sentences so everybody can get the laugh at you saying that to me.
The rest of the quote is plain wrong.
The minimum IS determined by the weather. If – as this year – ice is blown out of the Arctic by winds then the minimum is low. And if the ice is not blown out of the Arctic then the minimum is high. The summer median is similar for all years because recovery rate is higher when the minimum has been low.
Richard
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
October 24, 2012 at 4:26 pm
Tipping points! You act like you have an interest in history, but is that interest only to serve your agenda? Do you have a concept of what the differences in time scales means? We are changing our Earth today in hundreds of years that would have taken the Earth millions of years. Species that can adapt over millions of years, can’t adapt over hundreds of years and species are a natural resource, too. Many species have given us insight about life that have directly benefited man, such as medicines. There is evidence the Earth has been through such drastic changes before and survived, right? They are called mass extinction events, so why should you care, if it happens after you aren’t around to get yours?
Just ask yourself the simple question: What changed during the period since 50 million years ago?
Around 40 Ma Australia and New Guinea separated from Antarctica and around 23 Ma South America separated and the circumpolar current was born. That isolated Antarctica allowing it to glaciate, which dropped sea levels. India had closed the gap with Eurasia around 70 Ma and CO2 was dropping quickly by 50 Ma. Greenland has had significant ice sheets as far back as around 18 Ma, but it’s varied. Modern Greenland is a product of ice ages. Around 2.5 Ma North and South America became connected and our modern thermohaline circulation began, making the Earth prone to ice ages. This also altered the remnants of a circum-equatorial current that existed for around 150 million years. Longitudinal currents behave very differently than latitudinal currents like the newly formed Gulf Stream, which now became connected with the circumpolar current.
So that 50 million years had massive changes to make the world as it is today. Essentially, 50 Ma was a different planet.
A tipping point is the concept in climate science that at some point the change becomes irreversible by it’s own momentum, based on a cause. It doesn’t mean some extreme event can never reverse the change. The arctic sea ice is beyond a tipping point and so is the change to produce exceptional weather. Cutting the emissions isn’t going to stop it now and only geoengineering including CO2 reduction could change that Humpty Dumpty world your kind has fought so hard to create and put it back together again.
Robertvdl says:
October 24, 2012 at 5:00 pm
The Gulf Stream doesn’t warm Antarctica and if it wasn’t for the Gulf Steam, Norway wouldn’t even be growing icicles. What makes you think the one dimension involving latitude determines how a land warms?
Gary Lance says:
October 25, 2012 at 2:53 am
The arctic minimum is influenced by weather and that’s why I watch the weather in the arctic daily, but if that multi-year ice is lost for any reason, it’s gone and not coming back.
Yes it is. Once the old ice with its embedded black carbon melts out. We will see the current trend of increasing and record Arctic sea ice formation continue, resulting in increasing Arctic sea ice.
In the arctic, multi-year sea ice hides along the coast of northern Greenland and the CAA
Anthropomorphic sea ice, a novel concept.
The largest minimum was about 2.4 msk in 2003.
Nonsense. The largest minimum Antarctic sea ice extent was 3.9 million sq kms. Set, I recall twice since 2000.
The antarctic sea ice is free to expand in all directions around the continent and never comes close to other continents.
False. At its maximum extent extent Antarctic sea ice was closer to Australia and New Zealand than Antarctica.
The arctic used to have large amounts of sea ice that would survive a melt season and now it only has small amounts of any sea ice hugging North America where conditions have changed to allow an exit to the south
This sentence doesn’t make any sense. The facts are that older sea ice has melted faster than newer sea ice. Care to suggest a mechanism? Hint: embedded black carbon and increased solar insolation from reduced clouds.
The record for the arctic is much more complete than the antarctic, so the change is well documented.
In the satellite era the records are the same.
The sea ice isn’t free to expand in the arctic, because land and warm ocean currents limit it’s expansion.
You’ve already told us that Arctic sea ice gets exported. How is that not expansion?
In summary, the usual drivel from the Warmists. Short on facts and long on baseless speculation.
David A. Evans says:
October 24, 2012 at 5:14 pm
I didn’t say anything about absorbing sunlight, I said the poles get more sunlight around the time of the their summers than the equator does and it’s a fact, because the poles are getting sunlight 24 hours per day. The amount of time receiving sunlight makes up for the lower angle of the sun. It’s also a fact that the equator is getting it’s least amount of sunlight at that time. If our poles didn’t have ice, they could get quite warm during their summers. Oceans can retain enough heat to get it through a winter and land can have dry winters allowing it to quickly recover and warm. It isn’t a surprise that trees have grown in Antarctica, long after it started to cool. Trees shake off the snow and even if the ground is snow covered, it doesn’t reflect much sunlight. West Antarctica is a different animal, which is prone to changing back to that much different past. East Antarctica is a hugh ice age leftover.
“feet2thefire says:
October 24, 2012 at 9:46 pm
Antarctica’s ice is, of course, more important than the sea ice in the Arctic.
But the real issue of the Arctic sea ice is not each year’s minimum annual area.
The real issue (even though Arctic ice area is less important, anyway) is: Does the ice recover each year to a within-normal area? And it always does.
Steve Garcia”
The arctic sea ice doesn’t recover each year to it’s base period (1979 – 2008), which includes many of the recent years. In fact none of the 4 seasons they track sea ice shows normal levels. They all have a downward trend and that is expected to continue, until the summer season reaches zero.
“donald penman says:
October 24, 2012 at 10:26 pm
At the end of the day we are still left with the fact that we have Antarctic sea ice increasing while the Arctic sea ice is decreasing however people try to project this.All the Arctic sea ice that was lost in August has reformed in October and this seems to happen every year, it happened also in October 2007, so that we only had record ice gain in October this year because we had record ice loss in August. Just because some said the area where we have had rapid refreezing was clear of ice that was not true ,the sea ice just broke up and was transported elsewhere leaving the water still freezing cold.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/important-reminder-none-of-this-ice-exists/
Some people due to confirmation bias only see evidence for AGW never evidence against and if the Antarctic sea ice contridicts AGW then it has to be explained away but this years Arctic sea ice minimum was still evidence for AGW despite being caused by a strong storm in late August.”
You are the one with the bias. Warming should cause mass increase on the driest continent on Earth. So what if Antarctica warms to the point where it can’t freeze carbon dioxide, does that mean it’s still warm enough to snow?
The sea ice is not increasing in Antarctica and if it was the minimum sea ice would show so. Getting more sea ice because of increased precipitation and wind doesn’t prove it isn’t warming, in fact it’s consistent with warming. Precipitation on antarctic sea ice will melt away, like it does every year.
Antarctica is shielded by the strongest current in the world and circumpolar winds. It’s hard for a weather system to penetrate that shield.
adjacentworlds says:
October 24, 2012 at 11:08 pm
Sea ice extent means an area had 15% sea ice over a 5 day period. That means an area is included in sea ice extent when 85% of that area is ocean.
“D Böehm says:
October 25, 2012 at 3:06 am
Gary Lance says:
“The arctic minimum is influenced by weather and that’s why I watch the weather in the arctic daily,”
Get a life.”
In other words you can’t say anything about a subject and have to troll!
In 1900 whalers and sealers sailed over latitudes that had been charted as land a century earlier because of the multiyear sea ice. Present diminution of polar ice is primarily an artifact of the Little Ice Age. When Capt. Cook sailed the coasts north of the Bering Strait in 1778 he found ice everywhere “10 to 12 feet high” –meaning 100 feet thick. It was too cold for polar bears back then. Global warming has been upon us for some time now, no thanks to CO2. –AGF
Gary Lance says:
October 25, 2012 at 4:56 am
The Gulf Stream doesn’t warm Antarctica and if it wasn’t for the Gulf Steam, Norway wouldn’t even be growing icicles. What makes you think the one dimension involving latitude determines how a land warms?
so what do you think is the reason they can’t use the runway, Global Warming ?
“phlogiston says:
October 25, 2012 at 4:02 am
If we compare like with like, both the Arctic and the Antarctic winter sea ice maxima are increasing. The Antarctic summer sea ice minimum is currently zero every year. If this were to change to non-zero, that would be interesting.”
Where do you get your data?
The antarctic sea ice minimum is around 2 million square kilometers, although it’s usually less and it’s very consistent. It might even be as low as 1.9, if all satellite data was averaged and rounded off.
The arctic sea ice minimum is decreasing and has been rather consistently, though there are yearly weather related variations.
I use Cryosphere Today CT data and they prefer to use area, which is less than extent, but they try to estimate the percentage of sea ice in an area. Both are just numbers useful for trends, because the real measure is volume, which would mean how much sea ice is actually there. We don’t have accurate ways to measure volume or to show the quality of the sea ice. If CryoSat2 is launched in 2016, we may start getting accurate data, but the arctic sea ice may be gone by then and we’ll know the quality and volume rather accurately after it becomes ice free and starts to refreeze.
The problem with using extent or area is the amount of sea ice can decline, while the extent or area doesn’t. Sea ice that is 5 meters thick and 100% across an area is counted the same as sea ice 1 meter thick and 15% across an area for 5 days when considering extent. In 5 days that sea ice can move a good distance and if the areas are small enough, none of the original sea ice may be left in that area. NSIDC extent data comes from DOD NIC data. NIC data is designed to be analyzed daily and over cautiously to give navigation information to our Navy. As such the data is biased towards sea ice existing, when it might not be and that is done for safety reasons. Sea ice that is white can easily be identified, but sea ice with melt water on top can look like the ocean. The NIC has to devote it’s resources for the next day and isn’t concerned about correcting past data. The NIC has no interest besides daily safety for the Navy. I know this for a fact, because I’ve spoken with people who have done that work. The data sets are turned over to the NSIDC, who has an academic reason to determine if it’s sea ice or not. DMI analyzes the data at 30% concentration and I believe they use a 3 day running average. CT area tries to measure the area that is sea ice. PIOMAS tries to estimate sea ice volume.
Good job Gary!
From Gary Lance on October 24, 2012 at 1:45 pm (bold added):
I mention when alligators were in the Arctic. So now you say:
Etc. The continents were basically as they are today, except when that’s an Inconvenient Truth, then they no longer were basically as they are today.
You perform as well as a trained monkey when given the proper cues. Excellent work, Gary. Have a banana.
richardscourtney says:
October 25, 2012 at 4:35 am
If someone cares about your trolling reasons, they’re as bad as you are.
Sea ice wasn’t blown out of the arctic and the only thing that mattered was some of that ice removed from the pack was multi-year ice and maybe some first year sea ice that could have become lucky, if the weather pushed it in the right direction to avoid destruction by some miracle.
You have to ask yourself and others a question. Why are you bothering to discuss sea ice? I discuss it and analyze it, because it involves a very dynamic process that people glimpsing at a chart don’t see. Do you know why I’m the only one discussing multi-year sea ice? It’s because I’m the only one who is interested in sea ice and not some agenda. I know once the multi-year arctic sea ice is gone, the first year sea ice can’t survive a melting season. The only thing that will be of interest at that point is to see how long the arctic remains sea ice free, so next year’s sea ice can be estimated.
I look at it like it’s suppose to make sea ice. If more sea ice forms in the Bering Sea, that isn’t news when the Barents and Kara Seas have less than normal. The Bering Sea will be sea ice free every year. The thing to watch next year is whether the Canadian Archipelago becomes a player in exiting large amounts of sea ice. If so I can see someone pointing out the Northwest Passage didn’t open and ignoring the arctic flooded it with it’s precious multi-year ice to make it that way.
Philip Bradley says:
October 25, 2012 at 5:13 am
There is just way too much nonsense on your post to correct, like there isn’t black carbon on multi-year sea ice causing it to melt faster.
Stick around for a few years and see how wrong you were and let me define few further as in three!
I’ll bet on the sea ice being gone before you have a clue what it is or the dynamics involved in it being there.
From Gary Lance on October 25, 2012 at 8:04 am (bold added):
Wikipedia (bold added):
See the ESA Mission Overview.
Perhaps you’re referring to another CryoSat-type mission after the current one concludes.
As it is, CryoSat-2 has been measuring sea ice thickness, the data is available. They’re also using CryoSat-2 for high-resolution mapping of the ocean floor.
“agfosterjr says:
October 25, 2012 at 7:50 am
In 1900 whalers and sealers sailed over latitudes that had been charted as land a century earlier because of the multiyear sea ice. Present diminution of polar ice is primarily an artifact of the Little Ice Age. When Capt. Cook sailed the coasts north of the Bering Strait in 1778 he found ice everywhere “10 to 12 feet high” –meaning 100 feet thick. It was too cold for polar bears back then. Global warming has been upon us for some time now, no thanks to CO2. –AGF”
You don’t know the difference between sea ice and an iceberg.
Found it, Gary!
You were mistakenly referring to the ICESat-2 project by NASA.
Proposed launch date in 2016, if everything goes on schedule. Will carry a single instrument, a LIDAR, and can only measure elevation.
With the current US deficit woes, with the Europeans having already deployed more versatile satellites, with the Europeans and the Japanese willing to partner with the US on space projects and share costs…
And with the “problem” of loss of Arctic sea ice being ignored and considered beneficial…
Limited, pricey, addressing a non-issue. Offhand I severely doubt ICESat-2 will be launched in 2016, if ever.
“Robertvdl says:
October 25, 2012 at 7:58 am
Gary Lance says:
October 25, 2012 at 4:56 am
The Gulf Stream doesn’t warm Antarctica and if it wasn’t for the Gulf Steam, Norway wouldn’t even be growing icicles. What makes you think the one dimension involving latitude determines how a land warms?
so what do you think is the reason they can’t use the runway, Global Warming ?”
I haven’t examined it, but my first choice would be Rossby waves or meanders in the polar jet stream allowing it to warm there, while it dumps cold somewhere else. Our jet stream has been stalling weather conditions with similar meanders. High pressure over Antarctica and low pressure on the other side of their polar jet stream will cause Rossby waves. Rossby waves were discovered in 1939, so they have been around influencing weather for who knows how long. Antarctica is the coldest place on Earth and cold air is high pressure. If we could find weather data, I’d bet there were low pressure systems on the other side of the jet stream around that location.
The evidence shows the runway wasn’t used enough for carbon to become a problem, so it can’t be something easy to eliminate. It can’t be something like the latitude, because the Aussies have a claim on that area and know about it’s history for weather. It’s not suppose to get warm there at this time of year, but just as we have had exceptional springs, so can they. The antarcitc circle and the arctic circle aren’t the same, so that logic is a fail.
Rossby waves can stall conditions allowing prolonged weather that would have came and gone without them. They can dump cold at low latitudes and bring warmth to high latitudes.
The problem with the way people think about these things is it’s one dimensional thought. They don’t look for the obvious, because their agenda has consumed their brains. Everything has to be examined from their prejudicial side about global warming. We have very little weather information in the present about Antarctica, let alone a base period to compare with. You can’t make a case for warming or not, except an anecdotal case. We can say it was exceptionally warm for that area.
Gary Lance:
Your post addressed to me at October 25, 2012 at 8:57 am contains your usual twaddle which I do not deign to answer and it poses this question to which I am responding.
No, I don’t have to ask any question which you demand. Especially when you say you are asking the question because you “see” something which you cannot describe or define and you admit that others don’t see it.
Instead, I choose to ask you to justify your ignorant and unfounded assertions concerning Arctic ice loss. Therefore, I yet again ask you the questions (concerning your assertions) which you have so steadfastly refused to answer on the earlier Arctic ice thread.
For convenience of any who have not seen them, I copy the questions here. They are
1.
Please educate me on how “an ice free arctic … will be the most pivotal event related to the Earth that man has ever witnessed”.
This will be more “pivotal” than the exit from Africa, than the end of the last glaciation, than the invention of agriculture, and than the industrial revolution? How?
2.
You tell me, “The areas that will benefit from that change are not well populated and the areas who will be losers are well populated.”
Why is such a coincidence likely? And why will people not move if it happens?
Gary Lance, you made the assertions. Explain them, please. I have waited your answers for a long time.
Richard
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
October 25, 2012 at 8:27 am
Do you think our world was like this one?
http://www.earthscrust.org/science/transects/img/india/image005.jpg
The ocean circulation patterns were very different, but I see you are trying to get us back to Hothouse Earth.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
October 25, 2012 at 9:09 am
I meant IceSat2.
Friends:
I had to copy this in case anybody missed it.
At October 25, 2012 at 9:55 am Gary Lance wrote:
Yes, really! Gary Lance wrote it! You could not make this stuff up.
Richard
Gary Lance says:
October 24, 2012 at 1:45 pm
“Sunlight in the Arctic at the height of summer is only 3% of normal sunlight as it comes in at a low angle and through a greater distance of atmosphere (the W/m^2 is down 97%). Any heating of the water will be near the surface and will be rapidly lost to evaporative cooling.”
[adjacent paragraph:]
“The North Pole gets more sunlight at the height of summer than the equator. Hint: It’s getting it 24 hours per day.”
=====================================================================
So, it gets “only 3% of normal sunlight” while at the same time getting “more sunlight at the height of summer than the equator”! I’m not sure 24 hours is long enough to accomplish this unless equatorial days are just a few minutes long. The latter of his two claims is correct, and thoroughly contradicts his first claim–one wonders where he came up with this nonsense, but the humorous thing is he doesn’t grasp the contradiction.
Then he says to me: “You don’t know the difference between sea ice and an iceberg.” Well maybe Capt. Cook didn’t either; sure, icebergs 500 miles long are seen all the time.
And of course Kadaka is right: during the Cretaceous the continents were a whole lot different, which apparently Gary Lance has only just learned.
Stick around, Gary, and we will separate you from the likes of those who believe global warming is at fault for the melting runway at Wilkins. –AGF
Gary Lance,
Still thread bombing, I see. You really need to get a life. You’re making no headway convincing anyone here, despite your incessant posting of alarmist talking points 24/7.
“kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
October 25, 2012 at 9:43 am
Found it, Gary!
You were mistakenly referring to the ICESat-2 project by NASA.
Proposed launch date in 2016, if everything goes on schedule. Will carry a single instrument, a LIDAR, and can only measure elevation.
With the current US deficit woes, with the Europeans having already deployed more versatile satellites, with the Europeans and the Japanese willing to partner with the US on space projects and share costs…
And with the “problem” of loss of Arctic sea ice being ignored and considered beneficial…
Limited, pricey, addressing a non-issue. Offhand I severely doubt ICESat-2 will be launched in 2016, if ever.”
IceSat and GRACE work as a team, plus IceSat is needed for ice sheets. I think it will be launched, because ice sheets are going to replace the strategic interest in the satellites. I don’t expect the arctic sea ice to be around in 2016 to give the Navy problems. They will only be concerned about icebergs and remnants of ice shelves by then. They could bore holes and calculate ice thickness based on meteorological stats, basically figuring out how fast and thick the ice will grow.
When we first put nuclear submarines under in the arctic, one of the first things they did was surface, in fact it was done many times as if they were training. Those submarines were designed to carry cruise missiles, so they needed to surface and that requires information on the sea ice thickness. Stealth became an early part of submarine warfare, so using active sonar was an early taboo, because it gave away your position. I know there have been many advances in sonar and I’ve often wondered if the Navy has ever put devices that could give good sonar imaging and whether it could image the sea ice thickness from below. You would think if two navies were playing cat and mouse with each other that such devices would be logical.
Some ancient maps seem to indicate the extent of the southern ice during the LIA. Here’s one:
http://www.gracegalleries.com/images/WOR/WOR159.jpg
Here’s another:
http://www.gracegalleries.com/images/WOR/WOR158.jpg
The Terra Australlis Incognita shrunk first through the voyages of exploration and second through receding ice. There’s not much left to shrink. –AGF
“richardscourtney says:
October 25, 2012 at 10:14 am
Gary Lance:
Your post addressed to me at October 25, 2012 at 8:57 am contains your usual twaddle which I do not deign to answer and it poses this question to which I am responding.
You have to ask yourself and others a question. Why are you bothering to discuss sea ice? I discuss it and analyze it, because it involves a very dynamic process that people glimpsing at a chart don’t see.
No, I don’t have to ask any question which you demand. Especially when you say you are asking the question because you “see” something which you cannot describe or define and you admit that others don’t see it.
Instead, I choose to ask you to justify your ignorant and unfounded assertions concerning Arctic ice loss. Therefore, I yet again ask you the questions (concerning your assertions) which you have so steadfastly refused to answer on the earlier Arctic ice thread.
For convenience of any who have not seen them, I copy the questions here. They are
1.
Please educate me on how “an ice free arctic … will be the most pivotal event related to the Earth that man has ever witnessed”.
This will be more “pivotal” than the exit from Africa, than the end of the last glaciation, than the invention of agriculture, and than the industrial revolution? How?
2.
You tell me, “The areas that will benefit from that change are not well populated and the areas who will be losers are well populated.”
Why is such a coincidence likely? And why will people not move if it happens?
Gary Lance, you made the assertions. Explain them, please. I have waited your answers for a long time.
Richard”
That word you was beyond your mind’s ability to grasp. Your only interest in sea ice is to post bull about your agenda and you show it by your lack of knowledge on the subject.
You can troll away forever and I’m not answering your questions again. I’m not playing that game where a question is answered, you don’t like the answer and keep asking the question.
If you have something to say about a subject dealing with climate then say it and if you troll, you aren’t worth of getting a response. I’ve been around that game of trolling by repeating the same questions before. Keep it up and you won’t get the time of day!
“agfosterjr says:
October 25, 2012 at 10:24 am
Gary Lance says:
October 24, 2012 at 1:45 pm
“Sunlight in the Arctic at the height of summer is only 3% of normal sunlight as it comes in at a low angle and through a greater distance of atmosphere (the W/m^2 is down 97%). Any heating of the water will be near the surface and will be rapidly lost to evaporative cooling.”
[adjacent paragraph:]
“The North Pole gets more sunlight at the height of summer than the equator. Hint: It’s getting it 24 hours per day.”
=====================================================================
So, it gets “only 3% of normal sunlight” while at the same time getting “more sunlight at the height of summer than the equator”! I’m not sure 24 hours is long enough to accomplish this unless equatorial days are just a few minutes long. The latter of his two claims is correct, and thoroughly contradicts his first claim–one wonders where he came up with this nonsense, but the humorous thing is he doesn’t grasp the contradiction.
Then he says to me: “You don’t know the difference between sea ice and an iceberg.” Well maybe Capt. Cook didn’t either; sure, icebergs 500 miles long are seen all the time.
And of course Kadaka is right: during the Cretaceous the continents were a whole lot different, which apparently Gary Lance has only just learned.
Stick around, Gary, and we will separate you from the likes of those who believe global warming is at fault for the melting runway at Wilkins. –AGF”
Let’s start off with something simple so you don’t get confused! I quoted someone saying that 3% of normal sunlight nonsense. The way to measure the sunlight is to use a square at noon and measure the area it projects. Since the sun isn’t directly above, it will project a rectangle with an area showing how the sunlight is spread over a surface. Common sense would tell someone it isn’t 3 %. It is a fact that the pole receives more sunlight at and around the beginning of it’s summer than the equator. If someone can’t handle that fact, then who cares! We all know the Earth is still flat to some people.
If ice in an ocean is 10 or 12 feet tall then the 10% rule applies and that can’t be sea ice, because sea ice never gets that thick. Ice shelves can be like skyscapers, so they make large icebergs. If you see pictures of flat areas in the arctic and tall ice here and there, there is a lot of ice under that tall area.
“And of course Kadaka is right: during the Cretaceous the continents were a whole lot different, which apparently Gary Lance has only just learned.”
Kadaka was talking about the Eocene and we both agreed the continents were basically as they are today in position. You get a zero on that test.
I already said I thought it was Rossby waves at Wilkins and they were first indentified in ’39.
“D Böehm says:
October 25, 2012 at 10:27 am
Gary Lance,
Still thread bombing, I see. You really need to get a life. You’re making no headway convincing anyone here, despite your incessant posting of alarmist talking points 24/7.”
You assume I am trying to convince you. I could care less about what you think now or will ever think.
Gary Lance:
At October 25, 2012 at 11:07 am you write:
You have NOT answered the questions.
You cannot cite where you have answered the questions because you have not.
You cannot copy your answers to the questions to here because you have not answered them.
You are the very worst kind of troll. You write nonsense, assert to having expertise you can only dream about, post rubbish and object when called to justify the rubbish you have posted.
I told you I would “hold your feet to the fire” about this. And I am doing it.
Answer the questions.
Richard
“agfosterjr says:
October 25, 2012 at 11:00 am
Some ancient maps seem to indicate the extent of the southern ice during the LIA. Here’s one:
http://www.gracegalleries.com/images/WOR/WOR159.jpg
Here’s another:
http://www.gracegalleries.com/images/WOR/WOR158.jpg
The Terra Australlis Incognita shrunk first through the voyages of exploration and second through receding ice. There’s not much left to shrink. –AGF”
Are you talking about ancient maps putting land they hadn’t discovered at the bottom of the Earth, because they believe it had to have land? When they discovered Austrailia, they thought it was the southern lands, until they realized it wasn’t big enough. The southern lands on ancient maps are based on the belief of order in their universe. They believed such a large area had to have land and they just made it up based on myth.
Gary Lance says:
“You assume I am trying to convince you.”
You could easily convince me, if you had any empirical evidence. But you do not.
And in case you haven’t noticed, you are not convincing anyone here of anything.
“D Böehm says:
October 25, 2012 at 11:44 am
Gary Lance says:
“You assume I am trying to convince you.”
You could easily convince me, if you had any empirical evidence. But you do not.
And in case you haven’t noticed, you are not convincing anyone here of anything.”
Figure where you are! Not too many people with an interest in science would come here to talk to you or the people who agree with you.
Can you think of a subject in climate science and show the world how much you know?
Gary Lance says:
“Figure where you are!”
I know exactly where I am: commenting on the internet’s “Best Science” site, which has more than 130 million unique views in only 5 years, and close to a million reader comments. None of the alarmist blogs come anywhere close to those numbers. They are just thinly-trafficked, censoring echo chambers that spoon-feed credulous believers like you their one-sided climate propaganda.
Here, anyone is free to comment. And if you haven’t noticed, your alarmist beliefs are not getting any traction despite your incessant thread bombing.
Friends:
I copy another comedic gem from Gary Lance in case anybody missed it.
At October 25, 2012 at 11:58 am Gary Lance asked
Richard
Gary Lance says:
October 25, 2012 at 11:32 am
===============================
Then you should learn to put your quotation marks in the right place and otherwise quit speaking through your nether orifice: “The arctic wouldn’t be ice free throughout the year immediately after becoming ice free, but the alligator fossils in Alaska tell a different story about it won’t be ice free year round and the continents were basically as they are today.” Your science is as bad as your grammar. And of course, you lied.
And this: “The southern lands on ancient maps are based on the belief of order in their universe. They believed such a large area had to have land and they just made it up based on myth.”
You are confusing three stages of thought: the Ptolemaic, the Magellanic, and the premodern. This map shows the middle stage:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Typusor.jpg
and is to be contrasted with the later maps I posted which limit their depictions to actual observations. It’s too bad you can’t tell the difference, but it’s clear your cartography is no better than your paleontology. I’m sure you can keep farting indefinitely at this perfume exhibition.
–AGF
agfosterjr says:
October 25, 2012 at 12:54 pm
I quoted the person and the person has a name in the quote.
When was the first official siting of Antarctica and did they make a map?
Is it too hard to believe it was put on ancient maps because they believed land belongs there? They thought the land should be much bigger than Antarctica is and Antarctica is 1.3 times the size of Europe.
Figure it out, if you can’t stick with the subject of climate change, you aren’t worth being in a discussion with me! I’m here to discuss a subject and not the person.
Gary Lance says:
October 24, 2012 at 1:45 pm
“higley7 says:
October 24, 2012 at 7:28 am
“shrinking summer ice cover has exposed dark ocean water that absorbs sunlight and warms up, leading to more ice loss.”
Sunlight in the Arctic at the height of summer is only 3% of normal sunlight as it comes in at a low angle and through a greater distance of atmosphere (the W/m^2 is down 97%). Any heating of the water will be near the surface and will be rapidly lost to evaporative cooling.”
Since you are going to claim you are right, because you didn’t use my post, do you see the quotes, agfosterjr says:?
Friends:
Again, I copy from the comedic source which keeps on giving. In case anybody missed it, at October 25, 2012 at 1:30 pm Gary Lance said to agfosterjr
Richard
Gary Lance says:
October 25, 2012 at 1:36 pm
When a new paragraph continues a quotation, it is customary to put quote marks at the beginning of the subsequent paragraph, not at the end of the previous one.
“When was the first official siting of Antarctica and did they make a map?” The Terra Australis was gradually discovered from top down (north to south), and as the ice receded they realized the early perimeters were transitory and landless. A couple of centuries followed where the maps showed an empty southern ocean, until better ships and receding ice allowed the discovery of terra firma. We’re here to help.
–AGF
agfosterjr says:
October 25, 2012 at 2:26 pm
I’m not going to edit someone’s quotes. higley7 quoted someone and didn’t identify them.
I haven’t found anything describing the format for html code on this site. Is it [ or <? I know it's used and using it is much better than using quotes, but we can't preview a post here. My guess is it's [, because YouTube is used and I've never seen YouTube use <. I don't recall seeing images ever being posted in comments, but they would be helpful.
"We’re here to help."
Is spreading misinformation helping someone? It's real simple and a known fact that the Cartographers who made the early maps just drew something to represent Terra Australis to fill the void of the empty ocean in areas that weren't explored. Austrailia was thought to be Terra Australis when it was found and that's how it received it's name. When they discovered it was too small, they drew another Terra Australis to fill in the map.
If you want to help someone, don't feed them misinformation. It's like a habit around here. There is no shame in not knowing something, but it is a shame to not know and spread that lack of knowledge to others. What I told you about Terra Australis isn't an opinion, it's a fact.
[ The triangle brackets are used. Mod]
From Gary Lance on October 25, 2012 at 11:32 am:
When the Hell did that happen? I referenced a study “which looked at temperatures during the early Eocene period 52 to 53 million years ago”. You could read the relevant section of the Wikipedia Eocene entry and know how different they were.
Come on now, India hadn’t even collided with Asia yet! Basically as they are today? Are you kidding?
Gary Lance:
At October 25, 2012 at 3:30 pm you ask
No! It is not! Please stop it.
Richard
From Gary Lance on October 25, 2012 at 3:30 pm:
For formatting and HTML codes, head to the top of any page and click on “Test” in the toolbar. That’s the page for the formatting primer with a test posting section to try stuff out.
WordPress-dot-com accounts don’t have Preview as an option. But individuals can have their own Preview button by installing CA Assistant, which also provides formatting help.
Ordinary commenters can’t post images, which is a good thing. WUWT doesn’t have control of the images at remote links, so if they approve an image today, the image might be changed to something objectionable in the future.
Hope that helps, as we’re here to help.
“kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
October 25, 2012 at 3:49 pm
From Gary Lance on October 25, 2012 at 11:32 am:
Kadaka was talking about the Eocene and we both agreed the continents were basically as they are today in position.
When the Hell did that happen? I referenced a study “which looked at temperatures during the early Eocene period 52 to 53 million years ago”. You could read the relevant section of the Wikipedia Eocene entry and know how different they were.
Come on now, India hadn’t even collided with Asia yet! Basically as they are today? Are you kidding?”
You agreed they were basically in the same location and I pointed out Austrailia and New Zealand just broke away just broke away and South America was still preventing a circumpolar current. I pointed out there was a circum-equatorial current then and showed the major changes that would happen later to make our modern Earth.
You were talking alligators, mentioned 50 MA and it was quoted. I know India started colliding with Eurasia in 70 MA and was kicking by 50 MA, removing CO2, because of weathering new material. Once the CO2 dropped to a certain level, Hothouse Earth ended. Hothouse Earth is 22 degrees C Earth, which for some reason the temperature maxes out, probably because of clouds preventing sunlight.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayas
20 million years X 15 cm per year = 300 million cm = 3 million meters = 3 thousand kilometers.
India was 3,000 kilometer past colliding with Eurasia, so obviously mountains and volcanos had formed.
Now, what were you saying about 50 MA and India “hadn’t even collided with Asia yet?”
Can anyone explain to me why the huge area 5degree plus anomaly hot spots which then disperse from areas that otherwise would be colder than the norm is of no interest to climate scientists. To me as an engineer I would think this is the most significant difference between the Arctic and Antarctic? But then I suppose engineers get bogged down in details like that which are below the Titanic intellects of the climate scientists who find their AGW theory totally unsinkable.
AMSRE_SSTAn_M on NASA’s site shows these hot spots up pretty clearly.
Being fair to some climate scientists I did find this put forward as an area for investigation in 2002 and again in 2009 but both of these papers showing the temperature changes were too regional to be caused by a global phenomena seem to have disappeared without trace from the web.
Gary Lance says:
October 25, 2012 at 5:41 pm
“kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
You agreed they were basically in the same location and I pointed out Austrailia and New Zealand just broke away just broke away and South America was still preventing a circumpolar current. I pointed out there was a circum-equatorial current then and showed the major changes that would happen later to make our modern Earth.
You were talking alligators, mentioned 50 MA and it was quoted. I know India started colliding with Eurasia in 70 MA and was kicking by 50 MA, removing CO2, because of weathering new material. Once the CO2 dropped to a certain level, Hothouse Earth ended. Hothouse Earth is 22 degrees C Earth, which for some reason the temperature maxes out, probably because of clouds preventing sunlight.
No. CO2 had no role in reducing temperatures 50 MYa, in fact never has had any role in temperatures on earth, going all the way back to the Huronian ice age with 10-50% atmospheric CO2 during the deepest and longest snowball earth ice age. Where was runaway CAGW then?
Climate scientists instinctively genuflect toward CO2 in accounting for any climate change, but the end of “hothouse earth” was due to the formation of the southern circumpolar current around Antarctica, as has been well explained here previously by Bill Illis. This alone reduced earth’s atmospheric temperature by 2-3 C and ushered in our current glacial epoch. It is wholly uinnecessary – as always – to invoke CO2 at all.
The arrival of the “India ferry” at Eurasia caused cooling in other ways also, including by formation of the elevated Himalaya mountain range.
CO2 is basically the “spare prick at the wedding” as far as climate and global temperatures are concerned.
Gary Lance says:
October 25, 2012 at 8:04 am
“phlogiston says:
The problem with using extent or area is the amount of sea ice can decline, while the extent or area doesn’t. Sea ice that is 5 meters thick and 100% across an area is counted the same as sea ice 1 meter thick and 15% across an area for 5 days when considering extent. In 5 days that sea ice can move a good distance and if the areas are small enough, none of the original sea ice may be left in that area. NSIDC extent data comes from DOD NIC data. NIC data is designed to be analyzed daily and over cautiously to give navigation information to our Navy. As such the data is biased towards sea ice existing, when it might not be and that is done for safety reasons. Sea ice that is white can easily be identified, but sea ice with melt water on top can look like the ocean. The NIC has to devote it’s resources for the next day and isn’t concerned about correcting past data. The NIC has no interest besides daily safety for the Navy. I know this for a fact, because I’ve spoken with people who have done that work. The data sets are turned over to the NSIDC, who has an academic reason to determine if it’s sea ice or not. DMI analyzes the data at 30% concentration and I believe they use a 3 day running average. CT area tries to measure the area that is sea ice. PIOMAS tries to estimate sea ice volume.
However if we are talking about year-on-year trends, then much of the systematic error introduced by differences of method and emphasis will come out in the wash. So something more than a systematic error is needed to account for year-to-year trends, such as the one since 2007 of increased Arctic sea ice maxima.
In general you are clearly very well informed about mechanisms of the recent undeniable Arctic ice decline, no doubt this is your professional field. However it is your implicit assertion that what has been observed over the last 2-3 decades must continue indefinitely, that is really in question. How can you be so sure that these observed changes are not a cyclical phenomenon? An inductive argument that “the GCM models programmed around CO2 AGW predict it” does not really cut it, this inevitably includes an element of circular argument.
David Cage says:
October 26, 2012 at 12:21 am
Can anyone explain to me why the huge area 5degree plus anomaly hot spots which then disperse from areas that otherwise would be colder than the norm is of no interest to climate scientists. To me as an engineer I would think this is the most significant difference between the Arctic and Antarctic? But then I suppose engineers get bogged down in details like that which are below the Titanic intellects of the climate scientists who find their AGW theory totally unsinkable.
AMSRE_SSTAn_M on NASA’s site shows these hot spots up pretty clearly.
Being fair to some climate scientists I did find this put forward as an area for investigation in 2002 and again in 2009 but both of these papers showing the temperature changes were too regional to be caused by a global phenomena seem to have disappeared without trace from the web.
What makes you think it isn’t of interest, but climate requires long term and not short term deviations? We don’t have base stations to monitor weather all over the Earth and for something to be an anomaly. It requires land base stations during the base period, which are usually 30 years. Base stations are on land with a 5 degree grid and they need to reflect the data in that area. A 5 by 5 degree area is large and often has many different features with unique weather data.
That’s just land base and the oceans need monitoring too.
You need a base period to show anomalies and we don’t have the ability to set a base period for the futrure for some of our planet and it’s a significant some. The climate is changing faster than the ability to monitor what is, let alone what was.
Why did you bring it up?
Gary Lance says:
October 25, 2012 at 3:30 pm
“Is spreading misinformation helping someone? It’s real simple and a known fact that the Cartographers who made the early maps just drew something to represent Terra Australis to fill the void of the empty ocean in areas that weren’t explored. Austrailia was thought to be Terra Australis when it was found and that’s how it received it’s name. When they discovered it was too small, they drew another Terra Australis to fill in the map.”
====================================================
A typical warmist: zero honesty and zero intellect.
I wrote: “Some ancient maps seem to indicate the extent of the southern ice during the LIA. Here’s one:
http://www.gracegalleries.com/images/WOR/WOR159.jpg
Here’s another:
http://www.gracegalleries.com/images/WOR/WOR158.jpg”
If you had taken the trouble to examine the maps you would see the southern shore is intermittent just as the observations are intermittent–just like I said. Too hard to understand.? And like I said, there was a period of more than a century where they gave up on such transitory depictions and showed the the southern ocean as empty–long after Magellan but before the circumnavigation of Australia. Those who know not and know not that they know not–and lie and lie and lie–there’s no way they can be educated. Just keep on fartin’. –AGF
phlogiston says:
October 26, 2012 at 3:17 am
Gary Lance says:
October 25, 2012 at 5:41 pm
“You agreed they were basically in the same location and I pointed out Austrailia and New Zealand just broke away just broke away and South America was still preventing a circumpolar current. I pointed out there was a circum-equatorial current then and showed the major changes that would happen later to make our modern Earth.
You were talking alligators, mentioned 50 MA and it was quoted. I know India started colliding with Eurasia in 70 MA and was kicking by 50 MA, removing CO2, because of weathering new material. Once the CO2 dropped to a certain level, Hothouse Earth ended. Hothouse Earth is 22 degrees C Earth, which for some reason the temperature maxes out, probably because of clouds preventing sunlight.”
No. CO2 had no role in reducing temperatures 50 MYa, in fact never has had any role in temperatures on earth, going all the way back to the Huronian ice age with 10-50% atmospheric CO2 during the deepest and longest snowball earth ice age. Where was runaway CAGW then?
Climate scientists instinctively genuflect toward CO2 in accounting for any climate change, but the end of “hothouse earth” was due to the formation of the southern circumpolar current around Antarctica, as has been well explained here previously by Bill Illis. This alone reduced earth’s atmospheric temperature by 2-3 C and ushered in our current glacial epoch. It is wholly uinnecessary – as always – to invoke CO2 at all.
The arrival of the “India ferry” at Eurasia caused cooling in other ways also, including by formation of the elevated Himalaya mountain range.
CO2 is basically the “spare prick at the wedding” as far as climate and global temperatures are concerned.
Note: I edited out “kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:, because he didn’t say that and I did. If you are going to copy and edit a post, do it in a way where it doesn’t change the meaning.
If you want to believe a fantasy that changes in CO2 don’t change temperature, then Climate Scientists are the least of your worries. You have entered the realm of the Phsycical Sciences and mentioned Snowball Earth, so the logic is simple: If Snowball Earth existed, only a greenhouse gas could stop it’s existence. The sun was too weak back then and the condition existed for tens of millions of years. If greenhouse gases didn’t change it, what did and don’t say water, because you have ruled it out? Methane doesn’t last long enough in the atmosphere and is converted to CO2.
Your problem isn’t with a Climate Scientist, your problem is with all real scientists. Only a buildup of CO2 can end a Snowball Earth. The evidence shows an increase in oxygen after Snowball Earth, so where did the oxygen come from if it wasn’t CO2?
It isn’t Climate Scientists who consider CO2 a major force in a planets climate, it’s all Scientists.
Gary Lance,
When nobody agrees with you, it is time to re-examine your Belief system. No one agrees with you. You are like the little kid watching a military parade who says, “Look, mom, everyone is out of step but daddy!”
You make such outlandish and provably wrong assertions in your comments that it’s hard to keep up. And it appears from your time stamps that you don’t have a job. Your incessant thread bombing 24/7 is getting tiresome, and violates site Policy.
Note to Gary: everyone else is not wrong. You are. That is validated daily by Planet Earth, which is not doing anything unusual. Your wild-eyed belief in catastrophic AGW is amusing, but it does not hold up under scrutiny.
phlogiston says:
October 26, 2012 at 3:24 am
Gary Lance says:
October 25, 2012 at 8:04 am
“phlogiston says:
The problem with using extent or area is the amount of sea ice can decline, while the extent or area doesn’t. Sea ice that is 5 meters thick and 100% across an area is counted the same as sea ice 1 meter thick and 15% across an area for 5 days when considering extent. In 5 days that sea ice can move a good distance and if the areas are small enough, none of the original sea ice may be left in that area. NSIDC extent data comes from DOD NIC data. NIC data is designed to be analyzed daily and over cautiously to give navigation information to our Navy. As such the data is biased towards sea ice existing, when it might not be and that is done for safety reasons. Sea ice that is white can easily be identified, but sea ice with melt water on top can look like the ocean. The NIC has to devote it’s resources for the next day and isn’t concerned about correcting past data. The NIC has no interest besides daily safety for the Navy. I know this for a fact, because I’ve spoken with people who have done that work. The data sets are turned over to the NSIDC, who has an academic reason to determine if it’s sea ice or not. DMI analyzes the data at 30% concentration and I believe they use a 3 day running average. CT area tries to measure the area that is sea ice. PIOMAS tries to estimate sea ice volume.
However if we are talking about year-on-year trends, then much of the systematic error introduced by differences of method and emphasis will come out in the wash. So something more than a systematic error is needed to account for year-to-year trends, such as the one since 2007 of increased Arctic sea ice maxima.
In general you are clearly very well informed about mechanisms of the recent undeniable Arctic ice decline, no doubt this is your professional field. However it is your implicit assertion that what has been observed over the last 2-3 decades must continue indefinitely, that is really in question. How can you be so sure that these observed changes are not a cyclical phenomenon? An inductive argument that “the GCM models programmed around CO2 AGW predict it” does not really cut it, this inevitably includes an element of circular argument.
I didn’t edit this one.
Why do you keep editing my posts in ways that change completely their meaning? Your “phlogiston says:” is something I said. This is twice in a row you have announced your failure to post something resembling even the reality of this site. It’s little wonder a real scientist doesn’t want to give this place the time of day and deal with these childish troll tactics.
Without man geoengineering, the arctic sea ice is gone and gone, means around 2015. Being very lucky with weather means it happens in 2020. It can’t naturally reverse, because there are too many forces making it that way.
Gary Lance says:
October 26, 2012 at 8:36 am
“Your problem isn’t with a Climate Scientist, your problem is with all real scientists. Only a buildup of CO2 can end a Snowball Earth. The evidence shows an increase in oxygen after Snowball Earth, so where did the oxygen come from if it wasn’t CO2?
“It isn’t Climate Scientists who consider CO2 a major force in a planets climate, it’s all Scientists.”
===========================================================================
The ignorance and stupidity know no bounds. For your information, Gary Lance, positive feedback from ice ball albedo is of three orders of magnitude greater than CO2. Oxygen has never been over 40% –all the forests would burn–but has always been of a concentration many orders of magnitude greater than CO2. The present ratio of O2 to CO2 is 12000:1, and it takes millions of years to make so much oxygen. The notion that sufficient CO2 floated free in the air at any one time to greatly increase O2 content is as absurd as the rest of your science.
Do you really think you’re impressing anyone with anything but your perfect incompetence? Have you no shame? The grade school flunky comes to lecture the professors. Give up already.
–AGF
No, that ratio is 500:1, for the good it will to GL. –AGF
agfosterjr says:
October 26, 2012 at 6:19 am
Gary Lance says:
October 25, 2012 at 3:30 pm
“Is spreading misinformation helping someone? It’s real simple and a known fact that the Cartographers who made the early maps just drew something to represent Terra Australis to fill the void of the empty ocean in areas that weren’t explored. Austrailia was thought to be Terra Australis when it was found and that’s how it received it’s name. When they discovered it was too small, they drew another Terra Australis to fill in the map.”
====================================================
A typical warmist: zero honesty and zero intellect.
I wrote: “Some ancient maps seem to indicate the extent of the southern ice during the LIA. Here’s one:
http://www.gracegalleries.com/images/WOR/WOR159.jpg
Here’s another:
http://www.gracegalleries.com/images/WOR/WOR158.jpg”
If you had taken the trouble to examine the maps you would see the southern shore is intermittent just as the observations are intermittent–just like I said. Too hard to understand.? And like I said, there was a period of more than a century where they gave up on such transitory depictions and showed the the southern ocean as empty–long after Magellan but before the circumnavigation of Australia. Those who know not and know not that they know not–and lie and lie and lie–there’s no way they can be educated. Just keep on fartin’. –AGF
Is there some kind of problem in your brain with separating what you view as a person’s opinion with the person? The topic of this site is not me, so discuss climate science.
Is it a known fact that the southern continents were a myth, which Cartographers added to maps of known areas?
Your point is mute to anyone in academia. You only focused on it to cover up the many other mistakes you made and see how far your ignorance could go.
I keep pointing out, I don’t want to play the troll games of calling people names like Warmists, particularly on a site with a bias. Let’s keep the subject the science, known facts and not the person!
D Böehm says:
October 26, 2012 at 9:27 am
Gary Lance,
When nobody agrees with you, it is time to re-examine your Belief system. No one agrees with you. You are like the little kid watching a military parade who says, “Look, mom, everyone is out of step but daddy!”
You make such outlandish and provably wrong assertions in your comments that it’s hard to keep up. And it appears from your time stamps that you don’t have a job. Your incessant thread bombing 24/7 is getting tiresome, and violates site Policy.
Note to Gary: everyone else is not wrong. You are. That is validated daily by Planet Earth, which is not doing anything unusual. Your wild-eyed belief in catastrophic AGW is amusing, but it does not hold up under scrutiny.
Science agrees with me and not you, but we aren’t the topic that a troll like you keeps trying to make it. If you don’t have something to say about the topic, don’t post!
Gary Lance says:
“Science agrees with me and not you…”
Assertions like that mean nothing.
agfosterjr says:
October 26, 2012 at 9:48 am
Gary Lance says:
October 26, 2012 at 8:36 am
“Your problem isn’t with a Climate Scientist, your problem is with all real scientists. Only a buildup of CO2 can end a Snowball Earth. The evidence shows an increase in oxygen after Snowball Earth, so where did the oxygen come from if it wasn’t CO2?
“It isn’t Climate Scientists who consider CO2 a major force in a planets climate, it’s all Scientists.”
===========================================================================
The ignorance and stupidity know no bounds. For your information, Gary Lance, positive feedback from ice ball albedo is of three orders of magnitude greater than CO2. Oxygen has never been over 40% –all the forests would burn–but has always been of a concentration many orders of magnitude greater than CO2. The present ratio of O2 to CO2 is 12000:1, and it takes millions of years to make so much oxygen. The notion that sufficient CO2 floated free in the air at any one time to greatly increase O2 content is as absurd as the rest of your science.
Do you really think you’re impressing anyone with anything but your perfect incompetence? Have you no shame? The grade school flunky comes to lecture the professors. Give up already.
–AGF
What are you talking about? Oxygen was around 6% before Snowball Earth and did eventually go up to around 34%. You were asked a simple question and that was what ended Snowball Earth.
Time to quit feeding the troll.
From Gary Lance on October 25, 2012 at 5:41 pm:
Dang, just a little bit more searching and you could have avoided looking so foolish. When India hit Asia is actually an issue of some controversy, as covered in the Wikipedia Indian Plate entry:
Etc. Read up on it, India colliding with Asia around 55-50 Ma seems unlikely, significantly after 50 Ma is where the evidence is pointing.
Our new “”expert in everything”” says:
“What are you talking about? Oxygen was around 6% before Snowball Earth and did eventually go up to around 34%. You were asked a simple question and that was what ended Snowball Earth.”
First, nothing in Lance’s reply contradicts what agfoster wrote. Lance’s response amounts to changing the subject, since he cannot refute agf.
Next, regarding the question of what causes the great stadials, no one knows. We have some educated guesses, but they are at most hypotheses.
Finally, scientific skeptics [the only honest kind of scientist] are not obligated to answer questions like that, because skeptics have nothing to prove. The onus is entirely on the alarmist crowd’s conjecture that CO2=CAGW. That conjecture has been repeatedly falsified, not least by Planet Earth — the ultimate Authority.
It comes down to who we should believe: Gary Lance? Or Planet Earth and our lyin’ eyes.
pochas said on October 26, 2012 at 10:28 am:
If you don’t feed the rats, then how do you get them to take their medicine?
kadaka (KD Knoebel):
re your point at October 26, 2012 at 11:29 am
I tried to feed the “medicine” for days – and I used every type of “medicine” I could think of – but the troll just flamed in response.
I suggest the only thing we have not tried is ignoring him. It seems he is only here to gain attention which boosts his low self esteem. Ignoring him will remove his reward so he may go away.
This option has no risks. His statements display such ignorance and his assertions are so outrageously ridiculous that they need no refutation because no onlooker could take them seriously.
Richard
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
October 26, 2012 at 11:11 am
Read this and let me see if images work!
http://web.missouri.edu/~hbmq3/images/paleom13.jpg
http://web.missouri.edu/~hbmq3/images/paleom13.jpg
D Böehm says:
October 26, 2012 at 11:27 am
Our new “”expert in everything”” says:
“What are you talking about? Oxygen was around 6% before Snowball Earth and did eventually go up to around 34%. You were asked a simple question and that was what ended Snowball Earth.”
First, nothing in Lance’s reply contradicts what agfoster wrote. Lance’s response amounts to changing the subject, since he cannot refute agf.
Next, regarding the question of what causes the great stadials, no one knows. We have some educated guesses, but they are at most hypotheses.
Finally, scientific skeptics [the only honest kind of scientist] are not obligated to answer questions like that, because skeptics have nothing to prove. The onus is entirely on the alarmist crowd’s conjecture that CO2=CAGW. That conjecture has been repeatedly falsified, not least by Planet Earth — the ultimate Authority.
It comes down to who we should believe: Gary Lance? Or Planet Earth and our lyin’ eyes.
These are simple questions!
How did the Snowball Earth melt without it being CO2?
Where did the Earth get the oxygen after Snowball Earth, if it wasn’t from CO2 and plants?
Run away and don’t answer, but don’t pretend you know science and I need to study!
From Gary Lance on October 26, 2012 at 12:11 pm:
I never said that. You know, with a few seconds of editing you can avoid confusion about who said what. Try it sometime.
That’s as much convincing proof as an image of Mann’s Hokey Stick is convincing proof of CAGW. Now that the existence of credible counter-views has been demonstrated, a one-sided presentation that in no way addresses opposing views nor any controversy, nor even the uncertainty surrounding that singular view, is singularly lacking in persuasive power.
BTW, I’ve seen that image before. When you don’t simply Google for images and actually check the originating sources, you find things like the page where your image is posted, which has many other similar images, and the credit to “Scotese, C. R., 2001. Atlas of Earth History, Volume 1, Paleogeography, PALEOMAP Project, Arlington, Texas, 52 pp.”
Back at the Wikipedia Eocene entry, at the bottom was the link to that image on it’s page on Scotese’s site.
So that yields a 2001 date. If you had actually looked at the linked Wikipedia Indian Plate entry, you would have noticed the opposing views are newer than that, with the excerpt I provided featuring 2012 work.
You’re defending an old view based on old work with an old image, in a dynamic field with new work and new research and new theories still emerging.
The science is not settled. Deal with it.
The Expert On Everything says:
“These are simple questions!”
Questions are always simple. It is the answers that can be very difficult.
And:
“How did the Snowball Earth melt without it being CO2?”
Ah. The ever present alarmist fallacy, the Argumentum ad Ignorantium — the argument from ignorance: “Since I can’t think of any other reason, then global warming must be caused by CO2!” An admission of ignorance.
And:
“Where did the Earth get the oxygen after Snowball Earth, if it wasn’t from CO2 and plants?”
Which proves my point that CO2 was much higher in the geologic past, without ever triggering runaway global warming.
And:
“Run away and don’t answer…” As if, puppy. I don’t run. My MO is to bury your nonsense with scientific evidence, and to show that you have no empirical evidence to support your alarmist belief system.
And:
“…don’t pretend you know science and I need to study!”
No need to pretend, those are both facts.
Gary Lance
I regret that you read devious purpose into my editing of previous posts where none was present. Yes I did cut out chunks of quoted foregoing posts in previous entries – the purpose was only to quote the parts that I wished to address. I agree that leaving “phlogiston says” unnecessarily at the top could be misinterpreted.
While you have undoubted erudition in this field, your frequent repetition of “only a greenhouse gas can end a snowball earth” is really sounding like a religious mantra. It makes no sense. What for instance happened to tectonics? Tectonis continental shifts change ocean currents, and this process must be at the top of the list of candidates for ending a snowball earth. Continental configuration is poorly understood way back in the Huronian. But to take a more recent example, the start of the separation of South America from Africa caused extensive volcanism and a heat excursion which resulted in a mass extinction, marking the boundary between the Triassic and Jurassic.
The assertion that only CO2 can
end an ice age is also seriously challenged by a look at reconstructed global temperatures and CO2 levels during and after the Saharan-Andean ice age at the end of the Ordovician. Here there were tens of millions of years during which CO2 and temperature moved sharply in the opposite direction!
More recently, the ice core record of the last couple of million years of our current glaciation shows that, at each interglacial, the terminating glacial inception is associated with a peak and maximum of CO2 (kind of like now).
Your bruising encounter with kadaka on the subject of the India collision illustrates the fact that AGW scientists generally have a weak grasp of palaeo-history. The main Arrhenius-CAGW hypothesis was framed in complete ignorance of palaeo-climate history. The field of AGW palaeo-apologetics is a recent, rather desperate bolt-on to the AGW narrative.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
October 26, 2012 at 1:53 pm
From Gary Lance on October 26, 2012 at 12:11 pm:
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
October 26, 2012 at 11:11 am
Read this and let me see if images work!
http://web.missouri.edu/~hbmq3/images/paleom13.jpg
I never said that. You know, with a few seconds of editing you can avoid confusion about who said what. Try it sometime.
That’s as much convincing proof as an image of Mann’s Hokey Stick is convincing proof of CAGW. Now that the existence of credible counter-views has been demonstrated, a one-sided presentation that in no way addresses opposing views nor any controversy, nor even the uncertainty surrounding that singular view, is singularly lacking in persuasive power.
BTW, I’ve seen that image before. When you don’t simply Google for images and actually check the originating sources, you find things like the page where your image is posted, which has many other similar images, and the credit to “Scotese, C. R., 2001. Atlas of Earth History, Volume 1, Paleogeography, PALEOMAP Project, Arlington, Texas, 52 pp.”
Back at the Wikipedia Eocene entry, at the bottom was the link to that image on it’s page on Scotese’s site.
So that yields a 2001 date. If you had actually looked at the linked Wikipedia Indian Plate entry, you would have noticed the opposing views are newer than that, with the excerpt I provided featuring 2012 work.
You’re defending an old view based on old work with an old image, in a dynamic field with new work and new research and new theories still emerging.
The science is not settled. Deal with it.
I don’t know what wiki has to say, because I never looked it up in wiki. I have scotese for a quick reference, but I just copied an image from google images.
You can tell the continental plates have collided earlier than 50 Ma by the loss of CO2, so prior knowledge was the source of information. To remove CO2 you have to have much mountain building and weathering, more to offset the volcanos it will produce. You people can’t get it through your heads that any Geologist, including all that work for fossil fuel industries, knows there is a relationship between CO2 and climate. It was that way nearly 40 years ago when I took the Geology courses and it’s that way now.
Do you people think you have discovered a scientific breakthrough with your CO2 doesn’t change temperature theory? I think you’re a joke!
From Gary Lance on October 26, 2012 at 12:18 pm:
Milankovitch cycles.
Check the Wikipedia Great Oxygenation Event entry, the rise in oxygen preceded the Huronian glaciation, a Snowball Earth episode, leading theory says the GOE triggered it by converting the powerful GHG methane to the far-weaker GHG CO₂ (although an unreferenced alternative explanation of reduced volcanic activity thus less atmospheric CO₂ is also found at the Huronian glaciation entry).
Also the oxygen came from Cyanobacteria, which use photosynthesis but aren’t plants. Which generate the oxygen waste product from the energy of sunlight by breaking down water. Technically during carbon fixation the CO₂ is used for making carbohydrates.
Actually given the wide range of bacterial life, it seems not only possible that there can be bacteria that expel oxygen which don’t break down CO₂ at all, but their existence is likely at some point in Earth’s history. They could be getting the carbon from methane or other compounds.
I just noticed an article saying that the Antarctic ozone hole might be closing. It would be rather strange if it did and an Arctic ozone hole opened up . . .
D Böehm says:
October 26, 2012 at 2:00 pm
Oxygen was 6%, Troll, and rose after Snowball Earth. Where did the oxygen come from and show us how accurate past CO2 measurements are! Do you have any idea how broad the range on distant past CO2 estimates are?
phlogiston says:
October 26, 2012 at 2:51 pm
Gary Lance
I regret that you read devious purpose into my editing of previous posts where none was present. Yes I did cut out chunks of quoted foregoing posts in previous entries – the purpose was only to quote the parts that I wished to address. I agree that leaving “phlogiston says” unnecessarily at the top could be misinterpreted.
While you have undoubted erudition in this field, your frequent repetition of “only a greenhouse gas can end a snowball earth” is really sounding like a religious mantra. It makes no sense. What for instance happened to tectonics? Tectonis continental shifts change ocean currents, and this process must be at the top of the list of candidates for ending a snowball earth. Continental configuration is poorly understood way back in the Huronian. But to take a more recent example, the start of the separation of South America from Africa caused extensive volcanism and a heat excursion which resulted in a mass extinction, marking the boundary between the Triassic and Jurassic.
The assertion that only CO2 can
end an ice age is also seriously challenged by a look at reconstructed global temperatures and CO2 levels during and after the Saharan-Andean ice age at the end of the Ordovician. Here there were tens of millions of years during which CO2 and temperature moved sharply in the opposite direction!
More recently, the ice core record of the last couple of million years of our current glaciation shows that, at each interglacial, the terminating glacial inception is associated with a peak and maximum of CO2 (kind of like now).
Your bruising encounter with kadaka on the subject of the India collision illustrates the fact that AGW scientists generally have a weak grasp of palaeo-history. The main Arrhenius-CAGW hypothesis was framed in complete ignorance of palaeo-climate history. The field of AGW palaeo-apologetics is a recent, rather desperate bolt-on to the AGW narrative.
There are three known conditions that make the Earth prone to glaciation and two of them we present have. A landlocked ocean and a large continent at the pole are two of those conditions. The third is a large continental mass along the equator disrupting latitudinal currents. We don’t have that and if such a land mass caused a Snowball Earth, it can’t shift and end a Snowball Earth. For one thing it would take many tens of millions of years and the obvious thing is the disruption of latitudinal currents involves transferring heat from the tropics to the poles. Once a Snowball Earth exists there is no heat to transfer. Light doesn’t warm water miles below the ice.
http://resilientearth.com/files/images/Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.jpg
http://deforestation.geologist-1011.net/PhanerozoicCO2-Temperatures.png
“The immediate cause of extinction appears to have been the movement of Gondwana into the south polar region.”
“The event was preceded by a fall in atmospheric CO2, which selectively affected the shallow seas where most organisms lived.”
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordovician%E2%80%93Silurian_extinction_events
The early sun wasn’t putting out the amount of solar radiation like it does today. To start with we have a wide range of estimates for the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. We have an extinction event presently the second largest in history, which will become third after you guys get done with this one. It’s cause was a hugh land mass moving to the south pole and a drop in CO2.
There are charts that correct CO2 and temperature with factors like reduced solar irradiance, but it’s been my experience that posting such material isn’t allowed on this site, because the google image address mentions other sites that aren’t allowed to be mentioned here.
kadaka says to Lance:
“You perform as well as a trained monkey when given the proper cues. Excellent work, Gary. Have a banana.”
Gary Lance has been b!tchslapped around the block by everybody here. But he continues like Monty Python’s Black Knight: “‘Tis but a flesh wound!” ☺
Having read Gary Lances posts, it seems that he has refuted himself.
And if anyone asks for links, read the F’ing posts.
For clarity’s sake, he (Gary Lance) starts by saying that Co2 is the cause and then goes on to say that Paleo Co2 measurements cannot be accurate.
People can only write it, they can’t hold your hand and make you comprehend it.
Our measurements today for CO2 are accurate, but distant past measurements aren’t. That doesn’t mean we can’t see changes in the distant past of temperature and CO2, it just means we aren’t sure what the exact amount of CO2 was.
If you were bright enough to read a chart, you would notice the margin of error for CO2 measurements even millions of years ago is small, while it’s quite large hundreds of millions of years ago.
Now, since you are so smart, how can ice a mile or so thick over oceans be melted with a sun only putting out the irradiance of our ice age sun? How do you explain the oxygen levels in our atmosphere rising after Snowball Earth, if it wasn’t from CO2 and plants? In simple language, where did that oxygen come from?
According to scientists, the only thing that could get the Earth out of a Snowball Earth condition is volcanos adding CO2 to the atmosphere allowing melting in some area where albedo provides a positive feedback. The concept is the ice prohibited CO2 from making contact with the oceans and kept rising in the atmosphere over tens of millions of years. A person who doesn’t believe CO2 can warm a planet can’t believe there ever was a Snowball Earth, despite all the evidence there was.
According to scientists, if the world glaciates to the point where New Orleans has glaciers, a tipping point is reached to make a Snowball Earth.
From Gary Lance on October 26, 2012 at 6:53 pm:
Now here is where you’re confusing me, Gary. At the Indian Plate entry I see the oldest date by the old theory is 55-50 Ma for the start of the collision of the full plates. But the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) began at 55 Ma and was noted for a massive release of carbon, evidence pointing to a release of methane from clathrates that became CO₂.
So at a time of CO₂ dramatically rising to incredible levels, where is the drop showing the plates must have collided?
But the PETM was a geologically brief period, temperature rise over 20,000 years, recovery over 120-170,000 years by the C-13 isotope record.
Your mention of a CO₂ drop providing the timing of the collision is the only one I’ve seen. You’ll have to provide a reference for it. Modern dating methods such as using the paleomagnetic data say otherwise.
As Wikipedia says about the relatively quick recovery of the PETM:
The biological activity removes the CO₂, which comes with its own negative feedback as higher CO₂ spurs biological growth thus increasing CO₂ removal. More weathering which provides more nutrients also happens. But there is no requirement for mountain building, and volcanoes need not be offset as the nutrients they supply will help the removal.
You say:
We get quite a lot of geologists visiting the site. They look at the current temperature record in light of the variations during the Earth’s history over geological timescales, and wonder why there’s so much consternation over brief flickering noise. The inexorable rhythms of the planet are going to be irrevocably altered by mere humans? Humans are along for the ride, they’re not the driver.
BTW, 2007 research showed CO₂ lagged temperature about 3000 years at the start of the PETM.
Back when we were arguing at the Sea Ice post a week ago I linked to the Ira Glickstein articles explaining the greenhouse effect. CO₂ does change temperature, that’s been established. But the effect is logarithmic, and saturated at current atmospheric levels, and already small compared to the most important GHG, water vapor. Any further increases in atmospheric concentrations in the expected ranges won’t be providing any significant temperature increases, if they’re detectable at all.
Plus as it stands, we keep finding in the records and reconstructions that change in CO₂ lags change in temperature. The first 20ppm yielded over half the GHE seen at pre-industrial levels. CO₂ stopped being a causer of temperature increases, now it’s along for the ride.
Gary Lance says:
“Our measurements today for CO2 are accurate, but distant past measurements aren’t.”
It’s hard to believe someone can be so wrong about almost everything, but here we have Gary Lance as proof.
Ice core measurements are accepted by most all peer reviewed geologists, climatologists and atmospheric scientists. The error bands may be wider, but that is not what is important. What is important is the undeniable fact that ∆CO2 always follows ∆T. But there is no empirical evidence showing that ∆CO2 is the cause of ∆T.
Regarding the PETM, there is no evidence that CO2 was the cause. Again, the evidence shows that the rise in CO2 followedd the rise in temperature — as always.
So Lance’s Belief system just took another hit from kadaka, but Gary doesn’t care. His incurable cognitive dissonance protects him from the effects of doublethink. Good thing, too, otherwise his head might explode.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
October 26, 2012 at 7:32 pm
Since when is algae not a plant? Try Stromatolites!
Methane can be made by bacteria, but that only gets you carbon. The question was where did the oxygen come from and it was only about 6% of the atmosphere back then. The early oxygen was used to get rid of iron.
It’s deposits of iron not fully oxidized that supports the concept of Snowball Earth. Our present Earth gets cold enough to make dry ice out of CO2, so imagine a Snowball Earth. Water can’t exist in such a cold atmosphere long enough to warm a planet. Methane can’t exist long enough before it’s converted to CO2. The fact is the methane on Earth comes from life that doesn’t need oxygen.
Only CO2 can melt a Snowball Earth and only CO2 can provide the oxygen.
Your alchemy isn’t going to work.
Gary Lance:
At October 27, 2012 at 1:28 pm you write
I write to ask a clarification; i.e.
are you trying to imply that you have met some people who are “scientists”?
Richard
Gary Lance says:
October 27, 2012 at 1:28 pm
A person who doesn’t believe CO2 can warm a planet can’t believe there ever was a Snowball Earth, despite all the evidence there was.
…
Only CO2 can melt a Snowball Earth and only CO2 can provide the oxygen.
…
According to scientists, the only thing that could get the Earth out of a Snowball Earth condition is volcanos adding CO2 to the atmosphere allowing melting in some area where albedo provides a positive feedback.
Gary’s condescendingly exclusive use of the word “scientist” only provides observational data for other scientists, namely primate socio-biologists. What he is saying boils down to “were at the top of the tree, you’re at the bottom”. Professional scientists are paradoxically some of the most deeply primitive and old-world ape-like human social assemblages in terms of heirarchical politics. Its time that science matured into a profession and scientists into professionals.
The “CO2 only” obsession started as political expediency mixed with merely bad science. It is however evolving into something like religious fanaticism.
A real scientist in the original sense keeps an open mind to all data. Yes we all know about Arrhenius and IR absorption by CO2, but we also know about saturation, logarithmic tail-off of effect with concentration, interaction with water vapour etc with the real possibility of negative feedbacks (and the bizzare improbability of positive feedback and the knife-edge instability – never observed – that dominant positive feedback would entail).
“Only CO2 can…” is not a rational scientific statement. CO2 might in some circumstances warm a planet – e.g. when introduced starting from zero CO2 in the atmosphere. But other thing also can warm a planet. Massive volcanism in contact with seawater releases huge amounts of heat energy as superheated steam directly into the atmosphere. Volcanism can also heat ocean currents if on a large enough scale like a major continental separation or a flood basalt. And as already mentioned, on very long timescales (millions to 10s of millions of years) tectonic drift changes ocean currents which profoundly affects climate and temperature, on a scale dwarfing CO2.
Also the constantly repeating evidence of CO2 levels following temperature, not preceding them – must in rational minds still further question how CO2 could drive temperatures. The most convoluted and tortuous inversions of Occam’s razor have been shamelessle advanced to apparently explain the impossible, that the following, lagging signal is somehow driving the change and the leading signal.
Why this repetition of “only CO2 can produce oxygen”. No-one disputes that photosynthesis produced O2 from CO2. What is remarkable in the context of current CAGW hysteria is that ancient atmospheres dominated by CO2 did not cause runaway heating – if they caused heating at all they only did so such as to move climate into a life supporting regime – not away from one.
In the end it again and again points back to Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis – in a planet with a biosphere, living processes move climate to suit them, as demonstrated robustly in the varied series of “daisyworld” simulations. It is odd that the CAGW scare is proposing that anthropogenic CO2 now does the opposite – moves climate away from a life-supporting regime. It is more likely that the reverse is true.
We humans are “merely” organisms ourselves, not gods. There is no need for a Ragnarok environmentalist self-apocalypse. Life will find a way.
Gary Lance
http://resilientearth.com/files/images/Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.jpg
http://deforestation.geologist-1011.net/PhanerozoicCO2-Temperatures.png
“The immediate cause of extinction appears to have been the movement of Gondwana into the south polar region.”
“The event was preceded by a fall in atmospheric CO2, which selectively affected the shallow seas where most organisms lived.”
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordovician%E2%80%93Silurian_extinction_events
Thanks for the useful links. Is this not more evidence that continental tectonic movement and ocean current re-routing, profoundly changes global temperature? This is an important observation but nothing here points to primacy of CO2 effect – if anything it is again an index of ocean temperature change, no more. (Or did I miss your point?)
phlogiston says:
October 27, 2012 at 3:53 pm
It’s been pointed out that the only way out of the Icehouse Earth is CO2 and that explains the O2 increasing. There wasn’t the tectonic movement and ocean current re-routing you claim and you are just saying it was so without proof.
The extinction event that ranks number 1 was caused by ocean acidification and the Earth will respond whether man or volcanos cause that ocean acidification. Life went on has little meaning when you’ve wiped out 70% of the species.
If you don’t think it could happen again, look at this:
Climate-changing methane ‘rapidly destabilizing’ off East Coast, study finds
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/24/14670511-climate-changing-methane-rapidly-destabilizing-off-east-coast-study-finds?lite#__utma=238145375.2143556789.1351242687.1351242687.1351242687.1&__utmb=238145375.9.10.1351242687&__utmc=238145375&__utmx=-&__utmz=238145375.1351242687.1.1.utmcsr=nbcnews.com|utmccn=(referral)|utmcmd=referral|utmcct=/&__utmv=238145375.|8=Earned%20By=msnbc%7Ctechnology%20%26%20science%7Cscience=1^12=Landing%20Content=Mixed=1^13=Landing%20Hostname=www.msnbc.msn.com=1^30=Visit%20Type%20to%20Content=Internal%20to%20Mixed=1&__utmk=23152633
phlogiston says:
October 27, 2012 at 3:41 pm
There was a warming event and the Earth gained oxygen afterwards. What besides CO2 can do that?
If there ever was a snowball earth, it was most likely ended by exceptional volcanic activity with ash covering much of the globe. CO2 couldn’t do squat about it. Can you find a scientist who says it could? –AGF
agfosterjr says:
October 28, 2012 at 2:46 pm
If there ever was a snowball earth, it was most likely ended by exceptional volcanic activity with ash covering much of the globe. CO2 couldn’t do squat about it. Can you find a scientist who says it could? –AGF
You talk about volcanos ashing the whole world and finding a scientist who agrees with what all decent scientists agree! Where did this explanation about CO2 building up from volcanos originate? It was scientists, but you don’t even know what they are. Does your ash produce oxygen?
Sorry for not making it simple enough. Ash lowers albedo to the tune of (an increase of) several hundred watts per meter. CO2 only adds a few watts per meter. And I repeat, CO2 converts to O2 on a 1:1 ratio, meaning any harmless CO2 increase doesn’t make a measureable dent in O2 content. Once again, have you found a scientist that says CO2 ended snowball earth?
–AGF
More for GL:
Raymond T. Pierrehumbert writes: “In my simulations, the system remains far short of deglaciation even at atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations of 550 times the present levels (0.2 bar of CO2). ” (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v429/n6992/abs/nature02640.html)
A problem with postulating an atmosphere isolated from the ocean is that once the ocean freezes over no more precipitation is possible. The ocean is not likely to freeze to the bottom, nor is it likely to be evaporated entirely and deposited on the continents. Tropical glaciers can hardly be fed by frozen tropical seas, and could only be fed very slowly by near frozen tropical seas. This implies that photosynthesis cannot be interrupted without a synchronous interruption of precipitation and glaciation, which in turn precludes a connection between tropical glaciation and a build up of CO2. If for unknown reasons photosynthesis ceased in cold open water, CO2 build up would quickly ensue, bringing an end to tropical glaciation. Which is to say, the more warming we attribute to CO2, the more difficult it is to get a snowball earth in the first place.
Why don’t you describe for us your interpretation of the snowball? –AGF
agfosterjr says:
October 29, 2012 at 7:32 am
Sorry for not making it simple enough. Ash lowers albedo to the tune of (an increase of) several hundred watts per meter. CO2 only adds a few watts per meter. And I repeat, CO2 converts to O2 on a 1:1 ratio, meaning any harmless CO2 increase doesn’t make a measureable dent in O2 content. Once again, have you found a scientist that says CO2 ended snowball earth?
–AGF
1. Being of a number more than two or three but not many: several miles away.
Source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/several
I take it when someone speaks English, several means at least 3, but not many.
The surface of the Earth only absorbs 161 watts per square meter, so maybe those watts per meter add all that extra energy you think the sun has.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/research/profiles/images/2009/trenberth3.jpg
Every scientist who accepts Snowball Earth knows only CO2 can end it. How does that ash make oxygen or does the meter do it too?
phlogiston says:
“The ‘CO2 only’ obsession started as political expediency mixed with merely bad science. It is however evolving into something like religious fanaticism.”
Gary Lance’s “only CO2” nonsense is the old Argumentum ad Ignorantium fallacy. Lance displays similar scientific ignorance in every comment he posts.
The earth’s crust contains ≈47% oxygen. There is plenty of oxygen available without invoking CO2, which even at its highest concentration was only about 5600 ppmv — compared with oxygen at ≈200,000 ppmv. Obviously there are other more important sources of oxygen.
But as usual Lance is fixated on CO2, like all of Algore’s religious acolytes. Facts and reason cannot penetrate his CO2=CAGW belief, despite mountains of contrary evidence.
Lance says:
“Every scientist who accepts Snowball Earth knows only CO2 can end it.”
Notwithstanding the fact that rises in CO2 follow rises in temperature. That is just an inconvenient fact to be ignored by acolytes. Faced with the choice between empirical evidence and belief, Lance chooses belief. No surprise there.
Look, pinhead: this figure of 161/23 is a global/annual average indicating an albedo of 23/(23+161) = .125, a very low albedo. Snowball earth would have an albedo of about .9. The sun puts out over 1300W/m, and temperate weather stations routinely measure 1000W when the sun shines on a cloudless summer noon. That’s the kind of energy required to start ice melting to end an ice age, and the northern hemisphere only seems to get enough when Milankovitch Cycles favor it. Notice how high the albedo is in the IR range? I doubt it. You probably don’t know what albedo and IR mean. I’m trying to teach good science to a credentialed a**hole.
–AGF
agfosterjr says:
October 29, 2012 at 9:03 am
More for GL:
Raymond T. Pierrehumbert writes: “In my simulations, the system remains far short of deglaciation even at atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations of 550 times the present levels (0.2 bar of CO2). ” (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v429/n6992/abs/nature02640.html)
A problem with postulating an atmosphere isolated from the ocean is that once the ocean freezes over no more precipitation is possible. The ocean is not likely to freeze to the bottom, nor is it likely to be evaporated entirely and deposited on the continents. Tropical glaciers can hardly be fed by frozen tropical seas, and could only be fed very slowly by near frozen tropical seas. This implies that photosynthesis cannot be interrupted without a synchronous interruption of precipitation and glaciation, which in turn precludes a connection between tropical glaciation and a build up of CO2. If for unknown reasons photosynthesis ceased in cold open water, CO2 build up would quickly ensue, bringing an end to tropical glaciation. Which is to say, the more warming we attribute to CO2, the more difficult it is to get a snowball earth in the first place.
Why don’t you describe for us your interpretation of the snowball? –AGF
You are talking about a period of time with about 6% less sunlight, less than what’s presently is available in an ice age. Photosynthesis is confined to bacteria and complex multicelled life forms don’t exist until near the end of Cryogenia. We don’t have data on what the CO2 level was at that time, so to claim CO2 levels couldn’t allow a Snowball Earth is just making things up. Do I have to walk you through the process again of how the CO2 can slowly build up in the atmosphere after the Earth freezes over and prohibits water from removing it from the atmosphere? Cryogenia (850 to 635 million years ago) was suppose to have lasted 315-320 million years, so that is a very long time.
The early photosynthesis was doing a job on iron. The early Earth’s surface and oceans had huge amounts of iron. CO2 was needed to make oxygen and remove the iron and there is no evidence of oxygen returning CO2 by life. During the Snowball Earth times, iron was deposited in a state showing a lack of oxygen, which is one of the reason to suspect it. Eventually, the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere would rise to 34%, so the Earth had to give up a lot of carbon to get rid of all that iron and eventually make all those carbonate rocks.
There was very little land mass near the tropics. The chemical signals in rocks points to CO2 losing it’s contact with the oceans, building up in the atmosphere and losing the ice cover. There is evidence of acid rain consistent with large CO2 concentrations and the increase in oxygen after Snowball Earth. That world would be cold enough to form dry ice from CO2 at the poles.
Here is the late period:
http://www.angewandte-geologie.geol.uni-erlangen.de/p_650.jpg
agfosterjr says:
October 29, 2012 at 11:28 am
Look, pinhead: this figure of 161/23 is a global/annual average indicating an albedo of 23/(23+161) = .125, a very low albedo. Snowball earth would have an albedo of about .9. The sun puts out over 1300W/m, and temperate weather stations routinely measure 1000W when the sun shines on a cloudless summer noon. That’s the kind of energy required to start ice melting to end an ice age, and the northern hemisphere only seems to get enough when Milankovitch Cycles favor it. Notice how high the albedo is in the IR range? I doubt it. You probably don’t know what albedo and IR mean. I’m trying to teach good science to a credentialed a**hole.
–AGF
The sun loses some energy just getting to our atmosphere. I see you have lost another debate and need to go ad hom. How much sun does the Earth get at night or at poles during a winter? What about seasons and times of day of getting sunlight at low angles. Those figures are the amounts for each square meter or meter as you like to call it throughout time. Having a low albedo means you don’t reflect much sunlight, so as that 23 is reduced the Earth will absorb more. Here is an older one:
http://www.optocleaner.com/images/Solar-Radiation-Budget-650.jpg
Snowball Earth would probably have a snow white albedo and would reflect about nine tenths of the sunlight of a sun putting out 6% less sunlight. Snow would be rare, but it would still happen, so mass should even out on the surface. I would still expect winds. Ice will also flow with gravity and the time scale is millions of years.
You mention Milankovitch Cycles and do you have evidence such conditions haven’t changed? What makes you think the axial tilt was the same?
GL: “Do I have to walk you through the process again of how the CO2 can slowly build up in the atmosphere after the Earth freezes over and prohibits water from removing it from the atmosphere?”
What? No precipitation? Then how can it snow? How can glaciers form? I thought tropical glaciers were the main evidence. “…very little land mass near the tropics”? We’re lucky any evidence survived at all. “…cold enough to form dry ice from CO2 at the poles”? Then why wouldn’t it all collect at the poles and stay there?
“…there is no evidence of oxygen returning CO2 by life” but “complex multicelled life forms don’t exist until near the end of Cryogenia”? Let me walk you through this contradiction:
You are claiming multicellular life evolved during snowball earth! But did so without photosythesis, or at least without returning O2 to the atmosphere (or did you mean to say there were no 02 consumers–hard to tell). Or did you mean to say they did not evolve till after the snowball? Primary evolutionary radiation in freezing water seems highly unlikely, especially in light of the fact that tropical physiology is the rule for complex life; cold adaptation is the aberration.
It seems you have a few problems to deal with. –AGF
agfosterjr says:
October 29, 2012 at 1:22 pm
Cryogenia is the name of a long geologic period, so when did I say it was all Snowball Earth? Try checking the facts and stop acting like you know something! Cryogenia is not equal to Snowball Earth. You are too busy trying to correct people who know more than you do. Correct yourself and learn the basics!
Gary Lance:
re your post to agfosterjr at October 29, 2012 at 2:29 pm.
I write to ask a genuine question because I am truly curious.
Why do you claim superior knowledge every time you have been shown to be wrong by somebody who obviously knows much, much more than you?
Richard
Gary Lance says:
October 29, 2012 at 2:29 pm
=========================
Not even a Google search brings up “Cryogenia.” It seems to be your own word for the Cryogenian period, and thus you’ll have to excuse me for not being up to date on your idiosyncratic vocabulary. I mean, if you’re going to fault me for shortening “meter squared” to “meter,” I’ll sure as hell fault you for faulting me for not knowing the meaning of words that you make up. I think I’ve had enough of this circus. –AGF
agfosterjr says:
October 29, 2012 at 3:13 pm
Gary Lance says:
October 29, 2012 at 2:29 pm
=========================
Not even a Google search brings up “Cryogenia.” It seems to be your own word for the Cryogenian period, and thus you’ll have to excuse me for not being up to date on your idiosyncratic vocabulary. I mean, if you’re going to fault me for shortening “meter squared” to “meter,” I’ll sure as hell fault you for faulting me for not knowing the meaning of words that you make up. I think I’ve had enough of this circus. –AGF
Sometimes when I type I hit a letter that doesn’t come up. I guess it happens to you too, six letters in a row.
Is there anything showing the Cryogenian was Snowball Earth?
The problem you have with science is you don’t believe changes in greenhouse gases can cause changes in the Earth’s energy balance, because your agenda is to prove CO2 emissions can’t be causing our present warming. Your agenda doesn’t take into account the consequences. I’m sure you’d jump on any bandwagon to claim it isn’t warming with glaciers, permafrost, snow cover, ice sheets and arctic sea ice melting away.
I was taking Geology courses before global warming concerns and there was no one objecting to a CO2/global temperature connection, until after it stayed warm and the fossil fuel industry felt threatened. Now, we have all these experts, who couldn’t pass a freshman class with their answers.
We already have 3 times the area of Greenland or the arctic sea ice minimum lose of snow cover in June. Whenever a glacier leaves the Earth, that solar radiation doesn’t have to spend time to melt it, so that heat is available to do other things, like raise temperatures or warm waters. The amount of heat required to melt ice at 0 degrees C to liquid water at 0 degrees C is the same amount of heat needed to warm 4 times that 0 degrees C water to 20 degrees C. That is 68 degrees F. It takes much more heat to raise the temperature of water than to raise the temperature of air. Not only do you have the albedo change, but heat can’t melt ice that isn’t there.
Let’s see if the people want to hear how natural the weather is in the next three years!