Guest essay by Eric Worrall
In the real world, Antarctic ice is growing at a ferocious rate, hitting a new record extent every other year. But on planet Green, Antarctic ice is melting at a dangerous rate.
According to MensJournal;
“Global Warming Opens Up Antarctic Waterways – On February 13, a yachting crew from Poland sailed its 67-foot sloop, Selma, to a latitude in Antarctica’s Bay of Whales that’s traditionally frozen solid, and only navigable by icebreaker. It was a hundred miles farther south than anyone had ever taken a sailboat. Temperatures hovered around zero degrees Fahrenheit (it’s the height of summer in the south pole) as the crew took turns hacking a heavy layer of frost that coated the ship’s deck and rails. A storm briefly sent twenty-foot waves in their path, but the surface was calm when Selma finally ran out of sea. “We touched the ice of the Antarctic,” skipper Piotr Kuniar told Radio Poland. “We cannot sail any further.”
A pair of recent studies helps explain why there is more sea around Antarctica than ever before.
http://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/outdoor/global-warming-opens-up-antarctica-waterways-20150319
The sad thing about this kind of hysterical group think, is that every so often a group of greens become so convinced the ice has melted away, that they sail down to the Antarctic to take a look, without proper preparation. A few of them get lucky – but in at least some cases, ordinary people have to risk their lives and disrupt fragile scientific schedules, to rescue groups of idiots who think it is sensible to sail to Antarctica without proper preparation and equipment.
This post makes no sense. Everything quoted is a simple statement of fact – that they sailed further south than any sailboat before and that the area is usually navigable only by icebreaker. There’s no indication that the sailors were ill-informed about the conditions into which they were sailing, let alone that they were deluded by climate change science into believing something erroneous. And they didn’t have to be rescued by anyone.
So what precisely is it about this story that the poster finds so rage-inducing? Possibly that in spite all the science-flavoured truthiness on these blogs which claims warming is over, the planet keeps disagreeing with you?
Thank you for the elucidating comment. Now we really know how stupid you are. It is very easy to see the article is doing the same kind of propaganda as you are:
‘A pair of recent studies helps explain why there is more sea around Antarctica than ever before.’
The amount of sea hasn’t increased or decreased, but the sea ice is and has been increasing. Not decreasing, as the article is trying to mislead people into thinking.
More proof that Flashman is an undisciplined shill of the AGW, give me more money, and I don’t care about the poor, folks.
As someone who lives in Australia and checks the Antarctic conditions on a daily basis, I can inform you that no part of Antarctica was above freezing point throughout the entire summer.
So that melting land ice you’re talking about must be special Warmist ice…you know the stuff I’m talking about!
If you can tell me where to line up for my AGW money I’d really appreciate cause I could use a few extra bucks right now.
Sir Harry Flashman says;
Well you could try applying for a grant from The Rockefeller Brothers Fund:
From 2003 to present;
Bill McKibben’s;
Step it Up ($200,000)
1Sky.org ($2,100,000)
350.org ($875,000)
Total RBF grants to Mckibben = $3,175,000
Al Gore’s – Alliance for Climate Protection = $250,000
David Suzuki Foundation = $185,000
The Sierra Club = $1,665,000
Friends of the Earth = $777,500
Friends of the Earth International = $290,000
The Pacific Institute (President; Peter Gleick) = $670,000
Greenpeace Fund = $550,000
Center for Climate Strategies = $5,171,600
The Union of Concerned Scientists = $75,000
Media Matters for America = $375,000
Environmental Defense Fund = $550,000
Natural Resources Defense Council = $1,660,000
National Wildlife Federation = $1,025,000
Sceptic ‘think tanks’;
The Heartland Institute
The Cato Institute
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)
Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT)
= $0.00
Sir Harry Flashman ,
Bruce just put your butt in the pipe but I doubt he tried to smoke it.
Did you smoke your own?
I do apologise ‘Sir’ Harry, I forgot to supply my source;
http://www.rbf.org/content/grants-search
Please, feel free to c&p the above organisations/institutes in the keyword field (no need to enter/change any other fields).
Oh….while you’re there, you can also apply for a grant.
Or you could apply for a grant, since presumably you or some like-minded scientist could disprove the whole AGW idea handily. On the other hand if you’re afraid they would reject you, there’s plenty of money available for “skeptics” although not from the er, “think tanks” because that’s not actually what they do, but from “dark money” where the ultimate sources aren’t revealed. I wonder why that is. At least with legitimate climate research you can find out who pays for it.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-money-funds-climate-change-denial-effort/
http://phys.org/news/2013-12-koch-brothers-reveals-funders-climate.html
I think there may be some confusion here between sea ice (>15% coverage by floating ice), and ice that is attached to the land mass. Can a sailboat makes its way through an area that is “covered” (15%) by sea ice? Of course it’s the melting land ice that causes sea level rise.
SHF says:
…presumably you or some like-minded scientist could disprove the whole AGW idea handily.
You are trying to frame the debate so you can’t lose. But you have already lost it, and if it were not for misrepresenting skeptics’ positions, you wouldn’t have much at all to say.
Most skeptics accept radiative physics, which assumes that CO2 has some effect. But that effect is negligible at current CO2 concentrations, and even adding another 20 – 30% would not result in any measurable global warming.
So the real question is: should we continue to waste immense taxpayer funds on useless grants to “study climate change”? Or, have we wasted enough with more than $100 BILLION spent so far — with no verifiable results?
Your problem, Flash, is that you BELIEVE that human CO2 emissions will cause climate catastrophe. You have stated that in your comments. So all you’re doing is looking for confirmation, and rejecting any facts that don’t fit.
In that, you are pretty much like any other climate alarmist.
Here, read what the Co-Founder of Greenpeace just wrote:
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2015/03/20/why-i-am-climate-change-skeptic
db you don’t realize you’re describing yourself. The scientific world is against you, and it’s not conspiracy – scientists are not that organized. Also, it’s entirely untrue that Patrick Moore “co-founded” Greenpeace (although he was an important member before leaving for more lucrative pursuits in 1986, long before climate change was a public issue) ,and the fact that the Heartlanders continue to spin it tells you everything you need to know about their interest in facts.
Flashman talks of ‘dark money’ for sceptics. How about . oil money for warmists? Here are the other jokers in the pack. Gore has not just dabbled in oil but cultivated and sold tobacco too.
THIS IS HOW TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE PLANETARY EMERGENCY.
Al Gore
Daily Mail– 30 January 2013
“Al Gore brushes off critics of his sale of Current TV to oil-backed Al Jazeera by saying he ‘understands the criticism but disagrees with it'”
Dana Nuccitelli
Dana is a Guardian environmental contributor and has worked for Tetra Tech oil and gas services company since June 2006. In June 2012 it was announced that Tetra Tech had acquired Rooney Engineering. “REI has worked on projects across the United States, including in Alaska and the Gulf Coast, but many of the firm’s current clients are strategically located in the Bakken and Niobrara shale oil regions.”
Dr. Rajendra Pachauri
On the 20th April 2002 Dr. Rajendra K. Pachauri was elected Chairman of the IPCC.
In 2005 Pachauri set up a residual oil extraction technology company called Glorioil. It advised and gave technical assistance to oil companies on extracting residual oil from fields which would otherwise have been abandoned. Pachauri is no longer linked with the now defunct firm now re-named Glori Energy based in Houston, Texas.
2007 – “Glorioil delivers state of the art bio-technology solutions to improve and increase recovery from mature oil wells. Operating from our new state of the art 20,000 sf headquarters in Houston, TX, GloriOil is ready to discuss and apply this breakthrough technology to increase recovery from your mature assets today.”
Jimbo,
You’re right. The enviro crowd is composed of hypocrites and Orwell-style re-writers of history. As Flashman claims:
…it’s entirely untrue that Patrick Moore “co-founded” Greenpeace
O really? Entirely untrue? Moore himself has always been identified as a co-founder of Greenpeace, right from the very beginning. That was never controversial until the scales fell from his eyes, and he saw the Light. Ever since he broke from them, Greenpeace has tried to disown him. So who should we believe? Moore, and history? Or Flash?
Patrick Moore is credible, far more so than Greenpeace, which has devolved into a monument-defacing, lawbreaking, self-serving entity that refuses to ever allow an audit of its very rich finances. To be blessed as a Greenpeace director assures instant multi-millionaire status, no less than being appointed a Medieval Archbishop. Only the credulous buy into the Greenpeace narrative now.
Whenever an apostate appears, all religions go after that person tooth and nail. Moore is an apostate to the Greenpeace religion — which is reacting exactly as expected. And of course, Flashman is part of that lynch mob; he will be granted Indulgences and a place in eco-heaven for spreading the Word.
Finally, I had to laugh at Flash’s belief that “the scientific world is against” me. I recall the ‘scientific world’ being against one Albert Einstein, too. Like any skeptic, I fart in the general direction of anyone who might be against my scientific understanding. And especially those who presume to speak for them. All I ask is a credible, verifiable, testable measurement quantifying AGW. If they hate me for asking, then the onus is on them and their acolytes.
I remind ‘Flashman’ that the people he refers to have never been able to produce a single measurement of MMGW. They — and Flashman — would start to regain some credibility if they could find such a measurement. Absent that, they need to acknowledge that MMGW is nothing more than a conjecture. But if anyone is waiting for them to admit that, don’t hold your breath.
Flashman says:
Be careful with the words “entirely untrue“. It has been gone over on WUWT. It’s more complicated than YOU previously thought! See the first link and see my comments. Internet archives show the trickery at hand. They call him a founder, then they don’t! LOL.
Flashman, read Patrick Moore’s account of the ‘founders’ of Greenpeace. Most of those attacking him today from GreenPISS headquarters were but a glimmer in their daddy’s eye back in the day.
http://greenspiritstrategies.com/who-are-the-founders-of-greenpeace/
OBSERVATIONS are against you. The man-made global warming
theoryhypothesisspeculative drivel is in the dust when we sit back and look at the surface temperature ‘response’. NIL. NADA. ZILTCH. Warmists have put themselves in hot water. Painted themselves into a corner. Dug themselves into a hole of no return. It is very sad to me to see my fellow human beings deliberately set back our evolution. Or should that be advance…………Darwin Awards time I think.Sir Harry Flashman says;
Well Sir Harry, if it’s facts you want, I wouldn’t be referring to Greenpeace’s current history page or any other warmist blog that links to it, esp. Greg Laden who repeatedly repeats (ad hoc) Greenpeace’s current statement;
(my bolding)
Let’s look at those highlighted statements made by Greenpeace.
WRONG. For starters, it was Paul Cotes, not Phil. Paul Cotes, Irving Stowe, and Jim Bohlen were co-founders and co-directors of the Don’t Make A Wave Committee, 1970-71 (oops…we already have a date problem!).
Yep, he sure did….along with most of the other 12 crew members of the Phyllis Cormack…including Robert ‘Bob’ Hunter who is regarded as the ‘Father’ of Greenpeace. All letters were addressed to, and the returned response from, The Don’t Make A Wave Committee.
HOW?
On January 21, 1972, The Don’t Make a Wave Committee resolved to change its name to the Greenpeace Foundation. The Metcalfes, the Hunters, Patrick Moore, Rod Marining, and others remained active. The Stowes and Bohlens withdrew but stayed in contact with the Metcalfes. Stowe’s closing financial statement showed that between June 1970 and December 31, 1971, the Don’t Make A Wave Committee raised $62,703, and spent $53,025 on the Amchitka campaign. Stowe turned over $9,678 to Dorothy and Ben Metcalfe.
On May 4, 1972, The Provincial Societies office in Victoria, British Columbia registered the name, ‘Greenpeace Foundation.’
Finally, Greenpeace debunks themselves on their own website;
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/history/Patrick-Moore-background-information/
For starters, it’s Paul Cotes, not Phil.
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/bob-hunter/
Oops!
I don’t know how you loonies can pretend that the ice is not shrinking. All reputable scientists know that polar bears can not be found in Antarctica.
How can you condemn these cuddly furry creatures to a life without ice? These days they would die trying to swim to the Pole!
Unlike those verminous penguins.
No one would deny that fact!
PS !
[Reply: When you write that Climate skeptics are Holocaust deniers, you violate site Policy. Please read it and abide by it when commenting here. ~mod.]
Because you one eyed idiot, they are saying that global warming is responsible for the chance opening of a piece of water. As of course you know Antarctic sea ice extent is at a 30 year high, no doubt also because of global warming
“one-eyed idiot”? Really?
“of course you know Antarctic sea ice extent is at a 30 year high, no doubt also because of global warming”
Possibly, due to increased precipitation from warmer temps, but noone knows for sure so we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and say it’s some other reason.
However, I also know that Antarctic land ice, which is what really matters in terms of sea level rise, is melting at a rather astonishing rate in both West and East Antarctica :
http://www.livescience.com/50174-east-antarctica-glacier-melt.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141204-antarctic-ice-melt-sea-level-climate-environment-science/
And that for all the “skeptic” crowing about how Arctic sea ice has recovered, we just hit a new record low winter maximum up north. So there’s that.
http://www.wired.com/2015/03/arctic-ice-extent-hits-30-year-low/
One eyed?
flashman said: “However, I also know that Antarctic land ice, which is what really matters in terms of sea level rise, is melting at a rather astonishing rate in both West and East Antarctica :”
So, sea ice doesn’t really matter, huh? What a joke.
I have to ask then, Since Snow/Ice melts at temperatures above 32deg F and these are the current temperatures
http://ecn.t2.tiles.virtualearth.net/tiles/ho3?g=671&mkt=en-us
And current Statistics like
Amundsen-Scott Base -51f
Bouvet Island 34f
Browning Pass Starion 8f
Casey Station 19f
Commandante Station 32f
Enigma Lake Station 8f
Escudero Station 32f
Esperanza Station 14f
Fossil Bluff Station 15f
Frei Station 32f
With the vast majority at or below freezing, what mechanism is “Melting” the Antarctic Ice?
Warm water coming coming up from underneath and melting the waterborne part of the glaciers, as determined by a new on-the-ground study.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/03/the-new-west-antarctica-yep-its-east-antarctica/388018/
David, you might want to work on your comprehension skills. The author of the article talks about global warming, there is zero (0) connection between any quotes from the crew and that issue.
Please, David Johnson, do not call “Sir” Harry Flashman a “one eyed idiot”. It is rude, demeaning to people with one eye, and there is not one bit of evidence that he is not stone blind with no eyes at all. Please cease this jumping to conclusions.
(Do I really need to add the /sarc; and note this is “rebuke via humor” on the whole name calling thing?)
How you guys don’t make a living at standup comedy is beyond me.
SHF
The comedians are standing on stage behind the CAGW podiums, spending 22 billion a year while deliberately killing millions of innocents
So Harry Flashman, you say the land ice is melting, and when the real temperatures are pointed out, you say that the ice is melting from below due to melt the floating on water part of the glaciers, so which is it? Land or water ice?
I wrote too fast. The ice adjacent to the land is melting from underneath, meaning the glacier behind it is vulnerable to slipping into the sea and melting as well. Nice catch though, I thank you.
This article in Nature (Nov 2014): suggests that science really doesn’t know how thick the ice is
http://www.nature.com/news/robot-reveals-surprisingly-thick-antarctic-sea-ice-1.16397
“Although researchers have been generally successful at modelling the huge declines in Arctic sea ice, the extent of Antarctic sea ice has actually increased in recent years, contrary to the predictions of models. More under-ice AUV surveys could calibrate satellite measurements of ice thickness, allowing researchers a better understanding of what is really going on around the frozen continent.”
Doe East Antarctica ice ‘melt’ during the southern winter?
Try melting ice in this.
Losing ice, gaining ice. Is there no end to the madness in East Antarctica?
It is like the Arctic and Antarctic are Polar Opposites
That isn’t fair.
It takes two good eyes to be that deliberately blind.
Unless it is found to be sporting, there is no reason to engage people the likes of flashman . I have seen the damage that AGW theory can do to the human brain.. I worked at a research station in Antarctica. Even with sea ice less than 50 yards outside the window preventing them from conducting science months after [their] arrival, a group of “scientists” accused me of lying when I told them that sea ice was at a record extent…. dead serious – they could see it out the window behind me… so even with 100 eyes flashman will never see
David,
Being blind in one eye I have copyrighted “one-eyed idiot” for my sole usage and resent you using it promiscuously. However, since my copyright includes a hyphen and your pejorative doesn’t I will refrain from filing suit at this time. I will be keeping my eye on you though.
Sir Harry, you might want to check on the mechanism for ice loss. The vast majority is through sublimation due to the excessively low humidity, cause by low temperatures…
Denniswingo
Sublimation is only a major factor for land ice loss. Antarctic sea ice melts from below with significant areas of new snow on the sea ice through almost all of the year and thus a higher sea ice albedo; but Arctic sea ice melts from above – with significant areas of local melt ponds trapped above the sea ice between 1 May and 15 August, and a very low sea ice albedo between 1 May and 1 September.
I see a current temperature of -84 F in the Antarctic today and it’s only the first week of Fall down there. I’d hate to see what it will be in the depths of Winter.
Couldn’t say, I didn’t detect any “RAGE” in it that could have been induced. Seems like a mildly inflammatory remark on your part though. I believe that the point of the post was to point out that the ECO-ZEALOTS do and will continue to do carelessly idiotic things in the name of proving AGW/CAGW/CS/CD that the normally prudent person otherwise wouldn’t.
Like: Travel to the edge of the Antarctic Ice in a 67′ sailing yacht (pols to the poles)
or Rowing a boat along the northern shore of Alaska (Arctic Ocean??) to the Russian coast (didn’t make it, even had to lay over off the coast of Barrow before stopping short)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/09/here-we-go-again-row-row-row-your-boat-arctic-edition/
What is your evidence that they are ECO-ZEALOTS (I guess lower case is not sufficient to make your point). What, all sailboats that go to Antarctica are skippered by ECO-ZEALOTS?
One thing about leftists, is that they always project their emotions onto others.
If they are enraged, they assume that everyone else is as well.
I’m pretty happy. A little drunk too. This is fun.
Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is my friends
Then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is
After looking at the stats of the Selma Yacht, apologies to any and all Zealots that might have been offended by my careless remark. These people are just plain crazy to sail into that area so close to BIG ICE in a 67′ steel sided tin can and quite lucky not to have been stuck like that other ship was.
Totally agree Bryan
Harry, maybe his beef is that although there is sea ice regression in three places, overall the Antarctic sea ice is bigger than evah! The sea ice growth toward South Georgia is immense. Yet this journal focuses on one place where the sea ice is currently in regression. Quite amusing, really. Deliciously rich of you to say that the planet is disagreeing with the post here. The planet (especially the Antarctic!) is not performing how the models say it should, and how warmists thought (and hoped) that it would. There is no tropical hot spot, the troposphere isn’t warming in relation to the surface, the stratosphere isn’t cooling as the models suggested it would, the surface temperatures aren’t anywhere near where the Met Office said they would be in 2007 (hello, Vicky Pope!), and we don’t have the predicted rapid rise in sea levels. The planet is disagreeing with YOU.
DR. FEYNMAN: Mr. Mulloy, when you use a math model, do you have any idea of how accurate it is?
MR. MULLOY: We did not just use the math model. What we did was build a math model that was correlated to test. There was a test fixture that was built to empirically determine the maximum erosion that could occur while filling the annulus between the putty and the primary O-ring and the annulus between the primary and the secondary O-ring.
Then Thiokol’s, Dr. Salita’s math model was shown to correlate very well with that, and I guess I can’t put a percentage accuracy on that. But the fact that the math model correlated pretty well with the test results gave us some confidence in that and the fact that the test demonstrated that there was a significant margin that was tolerable in terms of the amount of erosion, given the dimensional tolerance.
DR. FEYNMAN: I think that the math model determined how the constants were determined and a line was put through the previous data on a somewhat similar
material. And the line that was put through deviated. It doesn’t always give the same answer. You took an average rather than the maximum, so that there were factors of 2 above and factors of 2 below on the original data. If you would have known that, you could have appreciated that what this thing predicted could easily be a factor of 2 below the right answer, because in fact it didn’t even fit with the data on which it was constructed.
You weren’t aware of that?
MR. MULLOY: No, sir. I was not aware of that.
Sorry mods – I put an extra r in my email address.
MR. LUND: Yes. The machine forms the other seating surface that would occur in a rocket motor.
What this said was that at 100 degrees, as that head came back to its original position, I’m sorry, not to its original position, but to within 5/1,OOOths of its original position, still maintaining the squeeze, that at a high temperature, at 100 degrees, the O-ring came right back.
It followed the machine right up. At 75 degrees, it took several seconds to recover. And, as we went lower in temperature, it took much longer to recover.
DR. WHEELON: That’s pretty nonlinear. How do you account for that?
MR. LUND: It is the modulus of the rubber. Those polymers do that.
DR. FEYNMAN: The rubber – ordinarily in materials, like steel or something when you squash it, you are compressing the molecules together and they simply expand back. When you stretch a piece of rubber, the reason that it responds is because of dynamic motion. It is trying to shake molecules and pull something; like, you take a long chain across a room, which has a lot of tennis balls bouncing in it. The chain will be “ponged” by the balls and pulled together. If the balls are slowed up, and low temperature means slowed up, then there is much less ponging and much less pulling back together, and the same way responding.
I used the expansion. But you can do the same thing with compression. If you compress it out of shape, it goes back into shape because of thermal notion, really, not because of spring. And when the thermal temperatures change, it goes back very, very much lower.
It is very characteristic of materials of this kind, that have this enormous effect. Temperature has such enormous effect.
DR. COVERT: Does it follow the square root?
DR. FEYNMAN: No. It’s E to the minus A over T. It is exponentially. So, at 32 degrees on the scale, you probably wouldn’t be able to measure the time. It would be too late to wait for the hour, or whatever.
My point being that these so-called “experts” in their field couldn’t even predict the resilience of a piece of rubber vs T over a 20 degree F range using curve fitting models. Try graphing Feynmans equation and see what it looks like over the T= 70 to 30 degree F interval. “A” refers to the Shore A hardness scale.
The really interesting thing is that except within that within that very narrow range, the resilience jumps basically from “none” to “total” up the the point it decomposes or burns on at a specific high T.
Tom C
The resistance point is determined with a DMA analyser and once characterised, is highly predictable.
If only NASA had a Canadian designing the O-rings in the first place, that never would have happened. Or, in fact, anyone who lived in a climate that occasionally reached -30C, where the phenomenon of “square tires” is well known. It takes longer for the rubber to warm up and press out the flat spots caused by the weight of the car pressing against the pavement when parked in extreme cold than the entire duration of an SRB burn, and anyone who has dealt with rubber in extreme cold would know this.
The weird part about it is that Shuttle engines use cryo fuel, so there WERE people experienced with weird effects happening in cold temperatures that probably could have easily corrected the erroneous assumptions and models being used by Thiokol, based in a significantly warmer climate. Although in all fairness, their engineers DID raise significant objections to that launch.
Amusingly, climate “science” is not even remotely up to the level that even o-ring development was at in the 70s when they chose that design. For example, they knew enough to test burn-through after each launch to gather empirical data, and there is no evidence that they fabricated or altered that data in order to advance their presuppositions.
(Sorry Big Jim for adding to your response count)
Did Feynman really say “if you would have known” rather than “if you had known”?
Very disappointing if so.
Feynman’s grammar always left a little to be desired…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AEUcmKDaklY
Crispin, I stand corrected. But in spite of all that data, NASA and Thiokol had already decided on the result they wanted, and proceeded accordingly.
DR. WHEELON: A question. It is normal to establish specifications on a unit and then to complete a qualification program for a unit, prior to flight. Did you have a temperature specification on the O-ring or the joint assembly, either one? And can you describe what your qualification program of testing to verify that that specification was being met?
And if you personally don’t know the answer to that question, I would like that question then to revolve to whoever in your organization picks it up. But I think we need a clean, crisp, clear answer to the question.
MR. MASON: Okay. I think it would be better that I not – I think I know the answer, but I have not enough confidence to try it.
DR. WHEELON: Who are you going to lateral that football to?
CHAIRMAN ROGERS: Who can answer that?
MR. MASON: Joe, can you answer that?
MR. KILMINSTER: I believe, as Jerry mentioned, the major focus of emphasis was on the 40 to 90 degree requirement for the mean bulk temperature. When it comes to the seal, we have a procurement spec for that material, a Mil R specification, that calls out that material being capable over the temperature range of minus 30 to 500 Fahrenheit. And it was on that basis that we qualified the use of that material as far as the seal is concerned.
GENERAL KUTYNA: Capable of what?
MR. WALKER: Isn’t that specification for a captured O-ring inside of a groove with a flat mating surface, not this kind of configuration?
MR. KILMINSTER: I don’t believe the specification specifies what type of construction or what kind of design. It is a material capability.
MR. WALKER: Could we have that information? That information must be in Parker’s specifications.
MR. KILMINSTER: It’s in the Mil R specification.
DR. WHEELON: What did you do to assure your material was meeting that specification? What was the qualification program?
MR. KILMINSTER: Early in the program, it was determined that we would not have a program, a development program, and a test program that would qualify over that full temperature range.
DR. WHEELON: What range were you going to qualify over?
MR. KILMINSTER: Again, the emphasis was based on the solid propellant bulk temperature, and that qualification was done by analysis. We did not conduct a test.
DR. WHEELON: Let’s set aside the question of bulk temperature on the propellant. The question is what specification did you have on the joint and the O-ring, and how did you test to verify that in fact you were meeting that specification, or did you not have a specification and not test?
MR. KILMINSTER: The specification we have is a Mil R specification.
DR. WHEELON: Which is a generic spec to cover a whole range of military equipment, right?
MR. KILMINSTER: In this case, it is this specific material.
DR. WHEELON: Okay. So it is minus 30 to plus 500, is that correct?
MR. KILMINSTER: That’s correct.
DR. WHEELON: And how did you shade that requirement and how did you test to make sure that you had met that shaded requirement?
MR. KILMINSTER: We did not test specifically to identify that requirement or test against that requirement.
DR. WHEELON: Don’t you find that a little surprising?
DR. KILMINSTER: There are many areas, as I mentioned, based upon the original intention that we would not conduct full-scale firings, full-scale tests, using a full range of temperatures.
DR. WHEELON: Did you use any subset of that full range of temperatures in your tests?
MR. KILMINSTER: Yes, we did.
DR. WHEELON: What range was that?
MR. KILMINSTER: That will be discussed when Bob discusses his charts. I believe we had a static firing as low as 47 Fahrenheit.
DR. WHEELON: Ambient?
MR. KILMINSTER: No, that was the predicted O-ring temperature, using ambient calculations lower than that.
DR. WHEELON: So you think went down to 47 degrees, in terms of a spec for ground testing of the seal?
MR. KILMINSTER: Yes.
DR. WHEELON: But no lower than that?
MR. MASON: That was the seal temperature.
DR. WHEELON: I understand, not the ambient. But you qualified the seal at 47 degrees Fahrenheit?
MR. KILMINSTER: We verified it in a static test at 47 degrees.
DR. WHEELON: A static ground test?
MR. KILMINSTER: Yes, sir.
DR. RIDE: And you did no tests on the joint below 47 degrees?
MR. KILMINSTER: That is correct.
[620] GENERAL KUTYNA: Bob Crippen, I thought somebody said yesterday, maybe it was you, that the shuttle was cleared to fly with a shuttle temperature of 31 degrees or thereabouts.
VICE CHAIRMAN ARMSTRONG: Arnie said that.
GENERAL KUTYNA: Now, how do you correlate the fact that the shuttle is cleared to fly at 31 degrees and yet you have only tested down to 47 degrees, and by analysis only to 40 degrees? How do you explain that?
MR. KILMINSTER: The only explanation I have is that we felt that we had a margin because of the material being capable down to minus 30 as identified in the specifications.
DR. WHEELON: Capable of what?
MR. KILMINSTER: Capable of functioning.
MR. WALKER: I really think we need to understand exactly what that specification implies in terms of the use of O-rings in various kinds of configurations. We would really like to have that information as soon as possible on exactly what that specification implies.
DR. WHEELON: Or better yet, can you give us the specification from which you were working?
MR. BOISJOLY: The specification in question is Mil R 83248A.
DR. WHEELON: A further question. Did you do any further testing of the O-rings or the O-ring material on your own, independent of the motor?
MR. KILMINSTER: Not that I can recall.
DR. WHEELON: So you were just working to the specification of the material as provided in the Mil Spec?
MR. KILMINSTER: I’m talking in the original qualification program. We subsequently have done testing.
DR. WHEELON: How subsequently? The last couple of days?
Code Tech:
Yes, even though NASA and Thiokol could have done controlled experiments to prove the material performance in that configuration, they chose to use a curve fitting model which was basically linear. Turns out dR/dT was not linear at all, a lot of people knew it at the time, and they still erred.
The climate guys don’t even have the ability to do a controlled experiment, as far as I know, not even one.
Tom C – the only “controlled experiments” the climate guys can dream up fail miserably anyway… which is why the entire thing is mind boggling. It’s like watching a cartoon version of “science” being played out by people who took drama instead of Science courses in school.
Full Disclosure:
Dr. Wheelon was a personal friend. He was in charge of Project Corona and was appointed the CIA’s first Deputy Director of Science and Technology by President Kennedy. When he noticed the dramatic topography changes between the earliest satellite photos and what he saw in the 90’s, he lobbied the Clinton Administration to de-classify them all. I never heard him express an opinion one way or another on Climate Change, but he did fight like hell to get all the data he knew of out to the public with the idea it would spark a scientific debate. He died in late 2013 and I miss him a lot.
[Reply: Labeling readers as “deniers” violates site Policy. To avoid having your comment snipped again, please read and follow our Policy. Thanks. ~mod.]
“So what precisely is it about this story that the poster finds so rage-inducing?”
We’re just supposed to watch for further news about this ship over the next several weeks.
Or someone trying to do as they do, but who get in trouble.
No Harry – the planet keeps disagreeing with you and your religious bretheren. “They sailed further than any other sailboat before” is quite a statement. Where did they sail to exactly? How are they defining a “sailboat”. A scientific mind questions ill-defined statements. And this was full of them. One such as yourself who religiously follows the AGW crede questions nothing that has condemned Earth to the deadly CO2 peril.
How do they define a sailboat????? Uh, a ship whose propulsion is provided by sails.
I see Chris, so they went to Antarctica on a 15 ft day-sailor they kept in their garage. I mean it could be, day-sailors are sailboats after all.
Apparently their definition of a sailboat doesn’t include a Yankee Clipper, because if it did then this wasn’t the furthest south one has gotten.
[Nor whaling ships. .mod]
In any case, the air temperature over the water around Antarctica is below normal right now, so [the] water is probably too.
[Your WordPress login id appears to be miss-typed. You want to start a new account with the right_id? .mod]
I want to know more about the ‘sailboat’ issue. Has a propeller driven boat ever gone “farther south than anyone had ever taken a” propeller driven boat? Indeed this is how a sceptical mind works. They may be right but questions should not meet with ad homs.
Axl said: “I see Chris, so they went to Antarctica on a 15 ft day-sailor they kept in their garage. I mean it could be, day-sailors are sailboats after all.”
Within 10 seconds you can be on the web site of the expedition – click on Men’s Journal and then on Selma. Everything is there about the length of the boat (76′), crew experience, etc. Here is the section on the boat specs: http://www.selmaexpeditions.com/en/jacht.php
So yeah, I get a bit peeved when people can’t be bothered to do the most basic of checking before posting.
I suggest you get a book cold ice bird , has it is a very good story about someone that sailed to further south than this and had one hell of an adventure , which included rebuilding large parts of the boat at polar base .
And that was in 1960 , long before any claims of ‘ice free ‘ Antarctic
Antarctic Circumpolar Wave. You can see its effects as the position of the sea ice buldge moves around the continent. Sir Henry may need to look this up.
The basics of the major force behind Antarctic weather pattern variations. And a note to both sides, an increase in Antarctic sea ice extent does not necessarily mean that the world is cooling. Or warming.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccpo.odu.edu%2F~klinck%2FReprints%2FPDF%2FwhiteNature96.pdf&hl=en&sa=T&oi=ggp&ct=res&cd=0&ei=yY8NVdTAAsebrQGnpIGwAg&scisig=AAGBfm0HUuqCFVdxJhSc6UCz1OIKelfX5g&nossl=1&ws=1524×711
I have tried to post a link to an article published in Nature in 1996 describing the Antarctic Circumpolar Wave that describes the major force behind Antarctic weather pattern variations that affect sea ice extent. It won’t post. So I found a reprint:
http://circulaciongeneral.at.fcen.uba.ar/material/White-Peterson.1996.pdf
Of course, several new authors have mined this phenomenon by adding global warming to the mix, likely just for a piece of the gravy train. Otherwise there is no money to further study this pattern of warm and cool waves that slowly circle the Antarctic.
@Sir Harry
“This post makes no sense.”
It makes no sense if you think “global warming” is responsible for melting the Antarctic, because it isn’t melting. It’s freezing over more than ever.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Antarctica_-_Location_of_the_Bay_of_Whales.png
The claim that they “sailed further south than any sailboat before” is perhaps related to the fact that the Bay of Whales happens to be the southern-most ocean bay in the world. But the claim is invalid. Other ships have sailed there.
For example, the Norwegian Berserk II was there in 2011, dropped off supplies for an expedition and then mysteriously disappeared. (You could say it went ‘berserk’).
http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/10s/berserk.html
But the current “Bay of Whales” is not the original ice shelf bay discovered by Shackleton in 1908. A 99-mile long piece of the Ross Ice Shelf which contained the bay broke off in 1987 and floated away (causing the shoreline to move 99 miles further south).
Perhaps you haven’t heard, but there is geothermal activity near the Ross Ice Shelf, which is melting ice under the the surface. No ice is melting due to global warming.
http://fusion4freedom.us/climate/ai3.jpg
http://fusion4freedom.us/evidence-shows-geothermal-activity-linked-to-west-antarctic-ice-melt/
The Totten glacier is melting due to warm water currents. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/0320/Why-record-low-Arctic-sea-ice-only-tells-half-the-story
Sea ice can increase due to many many reasons. from wind, ocean currants, temp, etc.
Most likely reason for increased sea ice is that its coming from the land ice that antarctica is losing so fast. Sea ice does not mean new ice, more and more is sloughing off the glaciers into the ocean. its well known that the ice shelves are breaking up.
any effect hydrothermal/volcanic action has on sea temps or melting is highly localized. produce your source that volcanic action is responsible for widespread oceanic heating or heating the currents that flow under the ice shelf
What does an increased extent do for albedo? Also back up your assertions with some references.
There are more boats today than in the 1960s!
What do you have to say about this?
WE WERE WRONG.
BUT WE WERE RIGHT ALL ALONG!
This is Flashpats’s crew at work. They think we are all nodding on the job.
Just read this about the Guardian….
…But losses at the paper, with a circulation under 200,000 — and a staff of more than 800 — have run as high as $100 million a year (they are currently about $45 million)…
Just who is funding the Guardian’s campaign of dis-information?
I’m comfortable with the idea that the models can be wrong. That’s how we learn.
“I’m comfortable with the idea that the models can be wrong”. I think most skeptics would agree with that statement. Their problem is with the “settled scientists” who insist that the debate is over, and that it is now time to inflict 100s of billions of dollars in costs on the public and to strip the public of a considerable portion of their remaining liberties.
Which is it?
If “the science is settled”, then it should not be necessary to keep moving the goalposts in an effort to deny falsification.
If the science is not settled, then the alarmists should be forthrightly addressing the concerns of skeptics, rather than refusing to acknowledge their points
Here is the EPA head versus Sen. Sessions clip where she completely blows off problems with the models.
Here are more details on the observation from satellite photos from the 1960s. In 1964 there was a record high in Antarctica’s sea ice extent. In 1966 there was a record [low] in Antarctica’s sea ice extent. All in just 2 years! Global warming?! Of course trends are what matter. The trend in Antarctica’s extent are up since 1979, so a sailing boat’s course are not very important. 2 years is just the weather (unless it ‘proves’ catastrophic global warming!)
Here is the press release on the above paper.
Sir Harry Flashman March 20, 2015 at 5:06 pm
”I’m comfortable with the idea that the models can be wrong. That’s how we learn.”
No, you’re not. And that’s why everyone is laughing at you.
You can’t mentally cope with the fact that the central premise of the inane “models” you worship are wrong. Adding radiative gases to the atmosphere reduces the atmosphere’s radiative cooling ability?! Utter drivel! But you believed it.
CAD/CAM, FEA or CFD. I do computer modelling every day. It works –
http://i57.tinypic.com/23vca6v.jpg
This week? –
http://i58.tinypic.com/1z48k0h.jpg
Yep. All to CNC direct from my computer modelling. Weights, COG, deflection all spot on. No team, just one guy.
I know the limits of computers. I know when to use the wind tunnel or the hydrodynamics lab. I know the limits of CFD. You, on the other hand cannot even begin to understand the hideous computational mistakes at the very foundation of your crazed religion. “Sir” Horny Fleshlight, you are nothing and no one.
What will I be doing this year? Global tour of ANZAC memorial. Primary structural design for FX on Pirates of the Caribbean 5 & 6. Touring Samsung Slideliner with the world cup ending in Qatar.
And you? Blogging from your mom’s basement ….Oh good lord, the sadness!
Yes, why don’t we all listen to the ever so wise words of “Sir” Harry? Oh wait, that might be because you are a worthless warmulonian drivel monkey whose entire existence is a net drain on the contributions of those you criticize.
Do you contribute anything of value to the society that supports your worthless hide Harry?
We should go for a beer sometime. I’ve done a few things too. Also, while I don’t quite get your level of anger and personal abuse towards someone about who you know nothing, I do think “Sir Horny Fleshlight” is a good one.
CORRECTION for my comment here.
‘Sir Harry Flashman
March 20, 2015 at 5:06 pm
I’m comfortable with the idea that the models can be wrong. That’s how we learn.’
Whys does the IPCC insist they have a high level of confidence in the models?
Ready, steady, learn!
===================
Sir Harry Flashman March 21, 2015 at 10:17 am
”I don’t quite get your level of anger and personal abuse towards someone about who you know nothing”
Harry,
In your case you don’t even rate anger. You are just not good enough at pushing the propaganda. Although, due to persistence, you do rate as the comic relief. 😉
But on the personal abuse issue, have you ever stopped to consider what telling people more skilled in radiative physics and fluid dynamics than you and yours are that they are “holocaust deniers” might be unwarranted abuse?
Actually that is the joy of being a hard AGW sceptic (not one of those weak lukewarmers). Radiative physics actually rules that AGW is a physical impossibility. The oceans are an extreme SW selective surface, not a “near blackbody” as claimed in the foundation dogma of the church of radiative climastrology (and accepted unquestionably by the thicker Lukewarmers). You and yours got the “basic physics” of the “settled science” completely and utterly wrong. And on that false foundation the believers went on to call sceptics “holocaust deniers”.
It’s too good to be true! You and yours did this in the age of the Internet, where your burning shame is permanent! Politics cannot change scientific reality. No amount of words will work. Who cares that the entire lame scream meeja is (for the moment) on your side? Ultimately you cannot win. You and yours got the physics wrong and tried to vilify those who pointed out the multiple errors into silence. Every activist, journalist and politician of the left has just committed political suicide. The UN is now totally discredited, so too every “environmental” NGO.
It’s a true delight Harry, all the worlds most useless parasites now have a permanent Internet record of failing the Global Warming Global IQ test. If the old meeja rules applied, you and yours may have been able to slink away. But the new rules apply. The lame scream meeja are no longer the gate keepers of opinion or record. No, there can be no “warming but less than we thought “ soft landing. CO2 doesn’t cause any warming, just immeasurably light cooling. You and yours have managed to destroy the careers and credibility of an entire generation of the professional left!
Thanks Harry 😉
@ Jimbo… wasn’t it just a few weeks ago AGW found rivers of moisture that dumped tons of new snow in Antarctica? Of course global warming was causing more snow that was supposed to explain the lack of snow melt by increasing the amount of snow that was falling. So which is it for AGW? The logic of AGW is truly puzzling. .. counterintuitive aside..
Apart from it being complete bollocks you mean ?
Far from being usually only navigable by ice breaker it was named by Shackleton in 1908 because
of the number of whales he saw there when sailing his 300 ton wooden sealer the Nimrod
in the area. It was hardly an ice breaker. The first explorer known to have visited the area was James Clark Ross who sailed through the area in 1843 when he discovered the Ross ice shelf. The ships he sailed in were the refurbished 370 ton sloops HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.
The Selma is rather more sturdy than your average yacht having a strengthened steel hull that is
60 ft in length and has a 122 hp auxillary engine.
As for being ice locked the following polar explorers established bases there.
Amudsen January 1911 – February 1912.
Richard Evelyn Byrd – first expedition – 1928–1930:
Richard Evelyn Byrd – second expedition- 1928–1930:
Richard Evelyn Byrd – third expedition – 1939–1941:
In fact the cruise ship Ortelius also visited the bay of whales this year. Her skipper reported conditions as being really quite normal.
The bay was closed for a period from 1987 when it was blocked by a glacier that had broken off the Ross ice shelf, at present it has cleared but polar explorers know that being at a junction of two major ice systems its always changing.
60 ft in length and has a 122 hp auxillary engine.
==========
Technically Selma is not a sailboat. It is sailing auxiliary. A sailboat has no engine.
Sure, that’s a great idea to sail to somewhere where it is dangerous to begin with. In a little boat no less. I consider it little. I don’t like going in bigger vessels. I suppose some people have nothing better to do with their lives or money than to put themselves and possibly other people at risk if something went wrong. In that environment something going wrong is easy. I wonder how much insurance they carried. By the way, hiking around some of the national and state forests you should have insurance. Just the cost of a helicopter ride out is around $50 K. Extra is all those people looking for you, if they know you’re there.
Comparing the risk, going there in something like that is insane.
Sir Flashman,
Agreed that the post is short on facts.
However, your defence of CAGW appears to be causing you painful cognitive dissonance.
I don’t know you, and I could be wrong, but here’s my take on your position and reaction to scepticism. You are a public employee and are determined to do good in this world. CAGW confirmed your suspicions that Man and capitalism are evil. Now that empirical science definitely shows that CAGW is not happening, you are disappointed. Your belief system is crushed. Your brain is trying to be rational but it isn’t working, is it ? You seek to square a circle but How can ice-melting in the Arctic and ice expansion in the Antarctic both simultaneously be proxies for CAGW ? Your rational self is in conflict with your emotional self. And it hurts.
The solution is simple. Your rational and emotional selves must understand that capitalism has been the least worst political system on this planet for both humans and the environment. Poverty and communism have been terrible for Humanity and our environment.
Good luck. I wish you a speedy recovery.
I will go ahead and disagree with you there. the capitalist system that exists today is about as “Free Market” as the Soviet Unions system was communist; in short, its not! Its completely dominated and regulated by big corporations. There is a break between ideological and practical systems, and you failed to bring the burden of proof that your idea is better.
I love the way leftists blame everything on big corporations.
Even the biggest of corporations pales in comparison to the influence of the US govt, not to mention the 50 states. (57 if you use Obama’s geography book)
As to big corporations buying influence with govt, what do you expect them to do. If they don’t, someone else will do it to them. The solution is not more power for govt, but rather to limit the ability of govt to determine who wins and who loses.
As to the claim that the Soviet Union wasn’t really communist, that’s laughable. Since pure communism is impossible, it will always devolve into the govt run kleptocracy that we saw in the Soviet Union.
I work in the most capitalist industry in the world, and cheerfully so. Nice guess, though.
I work in the most capitalist industry in the world
===============
ah, sex trade worker.
Nobody would pay me for that.
Manager of such. It fits. Able to rationalize that what you say/do is reasonable, and at the same time laugh about it.
Hi Sir Harry,
May one ask please your view as to whether both a decreasing and increasing sea ice extent are both equally consistent with AGW?
I myself can construct an argument to support both views but I would like to know your own view on this vexatious subject.
Please?
Andy
The expansion of Antarctic sea ice is subject to a number of theories, not necessarily dependent on AGW. Interesting for sure.
Thank you for the reply Sir Harry.
May I assume then from your response that a reduced Arctic ice cover is ONLY due to AGW?
If I may please just know your view.
Andy
Honestly I don’t know, there are always many factors at work. But the unusual heat north of the Arctic Circle is characteristic of what we’d expect from AGW.
Thank you very much for quick reply.
So, as you say,Arctic ice cover loss is “consistent” with but not necessarily “confirmation” of, AGW. Fair enough I guess.
Indeed, it is most interesting.
I guess the reduced ice is just falling elsewhere instead in the form of Northern Hemisphere snow. I’m not sure this is “consistent” with the AGW hypothesis but then maybe that’s a reflection of our lack of understanding of the processes involved perhaps?
Thanks again Harry.
A
P.S. I am putting words into your mouth with my quotation marks….That is wrong of me..
Apologies.
Andy
It’s currently about 25K below freezing at Lat. 80 N. Is that the “unusual heat” that you mentioned?
Does this expansion of thinking extend to the Arctic?
Check summer maximum air temperatures since 1958. For example 2014 was cooler than 1958, 1959 or 1960 and so on!
Interactive (click on dates)
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Flash says:
…the unusual heat north of the Arctic Circle is characteristic of what we’d expect from AGW.
How do you get from here to there?
First, there is no “unusual heat” in the Arctic. And second, there is no ‘fingerprint of AGW’ to be found anywhere.
It’s all in your head. Really. AGW has never been measured or quantified, so you are making baseless assumptions. As usual.
Dear Harry guy:
I’d recommed the following:
1) Get yourself a sailboat
2) Sail to Antarticia
3) Do this 30-or-so times (valid sample space and all that)
4) Come back home & tell us all about it
Since when does this qualify as a guest “essay”? there is more quoted text than what the submitter wrote.
I agree the post is nonsensical and superfluous, and somehow managed to piss all of you off again.
I have a theory, i think you guys will like it: The sailors were able to reach that far “south” because of plate tectonics and continental drift. there’s no climate change, the pieces of the earth are simply moving into new ecological and spacial places. Thats why the weather isnt the same as it used to be.
Fascinating, the troll gets upset when the stupidities of it’s side are pointed out and instead of actually dealing with the article seeks to discredit it.
Gosh, I never thought continental drift happened so fast!
Somebody else says:
I have a theory, i think you guys will like it
I don’t like it. What’s your fallback position now?
Ignore diversions, please.
This post suggests that a sailing boat has gone further south –
“a hundred miles farther south than anyone had ever taken a sailboat”.
If accurate – well done to the Master and crew!
Basis they get out from there before the onset of the cooling of the Antarctic autumn about now.
I note the reported date of February 13th – and that will be fairly close to the maximum annual sea temperature thereabouts, and some weeks ago . . . .
Looks like much homework has been done by Mission Selma. Magic!
Since there is nothing in the Interwebb about a rescue, I assume that this bunch of adventurers (with homework) have made sub-temperate waters.
Auto – giving credit where it’s due – but noting that playing with Oceans (let alone Polar bits of same) will likely invalidate life insurance.
So.
Take care!
Few sailboats have attempted to sail that far south because doing so is extremely dangerous because conditions there can change over night.
It’s not that it has never been possible to sail so far south in the past, it’s that nobody has been stupid enough to try.
Only fools such as yourself are taken in by cheap propaganda stunts.
Mike Borgelt
ONLY if – and if and only if must be re-emphasized! – the “previous trends” for an earlier period are assumed continuing, continuous, and not changing.
WHEN climate trends change, the FIRST indication of a change is being able to observe that more recent trends no longer follow a straight-line extrapolation from earlier linear trends. NO part of the world’s climate can be approximated by a straight line.
The longer any trend is extrapolated backwards with a straight line from today’s measurements, the less likely that trend is going to be valid.
Mike Borgelt
Again, you are blindly assuming a linear trend, or your new measure of static “mean” is somehow important in climate predictions.
And, yes, my graduate work is in statistics and process control.
““Longer time periods make for better climatological trend analysis””
And, I will join in with RACookPE1978 and inform you that, as a general principle, what you say is completely out to lunch.
Try fitting a trend to a random walk. Call me when you get consistently repeatable readings. Then, junk your random number generator.
Mike Borgelt,
For many years now there has been no global warming — as was predicted incessantly by the climate alarmist crowd.
Global warming has stopped.
Now that their origional conjecture has been thoroughly debunked, why should we give any credence to their endless nitpicking, backing and filling, and forced climbdowns? They were wrong. They won’t man up and admit it, but that is their problem.
Mike Borgelt @ March 20, 2015 at 5:48 pm
Doesn’t know what a random walk is. Doesn’t know what a linear trend estimate signifies. I’m afraid this is a lost cause.
Mike Borgelt,
You can buy into that blog if you want. I don’t. I prefer to rely on Dr. Roy Spencer’s global temperature record:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_February_2015_v5.png
As we see, neither 2014 nor this year so far are “the hottest EVAH!!“. They just aren’t.
I really wish you would stop the confrontation with everyone. Have you suddenly become part of the alarmist crowd? So far as I know, the climate Null Hypothesis has never been falsified, therefore, there is nothing either unusual or unprecedented happening. If you have ebvidence that global warming is gonna get us, please post it here, instead of the innuendo. Thanx.
‘As we see, neither 2014 nor this year so far are “the hottest EVAH!!“.’
Wouldn’t matter if it were. Whatever warming there is, is nowhere close to what was expected on the basis of the AGW hypothesis. Ergo, the hypothesis as formulated was wrong.
What are the Inuit telling you? I’ve been able to get to know some inaliq from little diomede (much further north than the Inuit) and they speak of natural cycles and Nothing to see here folks move along.. So I’m curious.
@Borgelt,
Since we’re now on a last name basis, here’s a fact for you:
NONE of the databases agree exactly. They all diverge from each other. Why don’t you explain that?
And when I read your comment to Bart:
Seriously buddy, take a vacation and go to Glacier National Park. Look at Nature. You have no clue to what is happening. If you have the opportunity, talk to the Inuit. They will tell you what is happening.
All I see are vague, hearsay accounts. Opinions. Worse, opinions about highly selected areas, and a single tribe. Nothing that is either objective, or scientific.
I don’t understand your recent and sudden animosity. You used to be one of the most skeptical of scientific skeptics. I’ve read your comments for many years here. But now, it looks like you’re suddenly commenting as one on the SkS boys.
What gives?
Borgelt – ‘1) Last year was the warmest year in the temperature record.’
With 38% certainty or 48% certainty, IIRC. Depending whether you believe NASA or NOAA.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/briefings/201501.pdf
1] Take a look at this WUWT post on the warmest year claim. The claim is funny. You should have said there was a 38% probability that 2014 was the hottest year on the record.
GISS & NCDC Need to Be More Open with the Public when Making Proclamations about Global Warming Records
2] What do you mean by the “lowest ice extent in the Arctic since we’ve been able to measure it”? The lowest since 1979 was 2012 in the summer. What did the FEb 25 extent have to do with warm air? Nothing at all because around the ice edges air temperature was way below freezing. Look to your winds and currents. Click here and look at temperature by clicking on any date since 1958. Tell me what you see for summer temps.
Arctic sea ice low
http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/2015-arctic-sea-ice-maximum-annual-extent-is-lowest-on-record/
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/21/world/arctic-sea-ice/
Who here would bet their homes that 2014 was the hottest year evaaaah? It’s been dubbed “The Most Dishonest Year on Record“.
?w=720
?w=720
Glaciers around the world have been in a general state of retreat since around 1850. That includes glaciers in Glacier National Park.
Can an Inuit tell me about their experiences during the 1920s to 1940s Arctic Warm Period? Does it matter if one could? Can I ask a child about winter snow in the UK? Will they know what it is?
SHF says:
…the planet keeps disagreeing with you…
Why is it that alarmists always turn the truth upside down, and project their own false narrative?
Planet Earth has been busy proving the alarmist crowd wrong. To their immense consternation, exactly none of the alarmist predicictions have come true. Not one of them. They were all wrong.
But rather than admit that all their predictions were wrong, now they lie outright, like SHF here. The planet is proving the alarmist cult wrong. Everyone else here can see that.
They just can’t admit it, any more than a Jehovah’s Witness could admit that their religion is wrong. <—[lookin' at YOU, Mr. Flasherman.]
Mike Borgelt
Why? The more that Arctic sea ice retreats from today’s conditions and extents, for 9-1/2 months of the year, the more heat that is released back into space, and the more the Arctic cools.
Mike Borgelt,
I think you should read RACook’s comment again. He was not saying that there is more heat being added than previously. At least that’s how I read it.
Mike Borgelt
I admitting that there (are) more heat LOSSES under today’s specific Arctic conditions of sea ice loss 3/4 of the year..
Hmmmn. Re-read what was written, not what you want to think I said. To repeat:
The more Arctic sea ice that is lost from today’s conditions (between mid August and April) => The more heat released back into space => The more heat losses from the Arctic Ocean. More Arctic sea ice loss (from a given condition), during most of the year, yields more heat losses away from a given body, and those losses are from the Arctic Ocean (ultimately) up into space.
In years past, when Arctic sea ice was higher, there were fewer losses from the Arctic Ocean, and less heat lost (from the ocean into space) compared to present conditions. You have been trained and fixated on the three summer months when the Arctic sun does shine high enough in the sky to warm the ocean (slightly). By mid-August, losses from the exposed Arctic ocean exceed solar heat gain, and the ice begins re-freezing each night.
The Arctic Ocean is between 2 deg C and -1 deg C, depending on location. It is therefore always has “more heat” than space, which is a convenient 3-4 deg K.
To repeat yet again, the “more heat lost” compares two conditions on this planet: one where there is a nominal 1979-1990 nominal Arctic sea ice area, and one with today’s lower average Arctic sea ice conditions. In both conditions, the Arctic Ocean is definitely warmer than space.
Mike Borgelt says:
1) Last year was the warmest year in the temperature record.
2) Feb 25 showed us the lowest ice extent in the Arctic since we’ve been able to measure it.
OK, by the numbers:
What “temperature record” was that? We should only accept satellite data, because it is the most accurate. Keep in mind that UAH and RSS are competitors, and that they diverge by only a tiny fraction of a degree.
Next, where did you get your Arctic ice information? It looks like Arctic ice extent is now recovering.
Yes, Arctic ice declined for several years. But even now it is not really that low. In this image, we see that Arctic ice is very close to average. Keep in mind that the alarmist predictions were for NO Arctic ice by now.
Next, we see here that whatever the Arctic loses temporarily, the Antarctic more than makes up. The result is that global ice is right at its long term average. Thus, there is nothing to worry about.
“Ice” is the last gasp of the climate alarmist cult. It means nothing — and every last prediction they’ve made has been flat wrong. When one side is 100.0% WRONG in every scary prediction they ever made, wise and intelligent readers will reject their subsequent assertions.
Mike Borgelt
No. Over the entire year, 168% more solar energy was reflected from the 20% – 35% excess sea ice around Antarctica than was absorbed on clear days up in the open Arctic waters exposed by a 7% loss of sea ice. No, the Arctic sea ice is NOT as important as the Arctic – increased losses up north only serve to cool the planet. Besides, a today’s Arctic sea ice anomaly is well within past few years of March trends. So what is to worry?
Most years, a “low” spring sea ice anomaly is followed by a low summer and fall sea ice extent.
A high spring sea ice anomaly is followed by a very low fall sea ice minimum.
And in 2012, the Arctic sea ice set near-record high values in March-April. Then it went off and set an all-time record low extent in September, 2012.
In the years with low September Arctic sea ice extents, there are near-record high increases of sea ice the next spring.
In years with high Arctic sea ice anomalies in March-April, there follows tremendous losses through the summer and very low sea ice extents in September at minimum.
Your concern about the Arctic sea ice is misplaced, and is based on hype and sophomoric logic. The real Arctic is not obeying your assumptions and simplifications.
Mike Borgelt
And today’s Antarctic sea ice minimum – as it has almost all of the past 2-1/2 years! – remains more than 2 std deviations above its normal for the date. And, at all times of the year, the Antarctic sea ice is closer to the equator than the Arctic, thus reflecting between 1.5 to 5 times the solar energy that the Arctic can receive on that same date.
If the Arctic gets any solar energy at all – and, between mid-October to mid-February, the Arctic sea ice receives no solar energy at all.
So, through the past two years, the Arctic sea ice tripped along right within 2 std deviations from the normal. Low certainly, but with 2 std deviations of the assumed normal for each day of the year. That today it is below 2 std deviations only means the arctic cools more than it does on a “normal” 1979-1990 year.
1. See the graph from NSIDC. This year’s Antarctic sea ice minimum is above the 2 std deviation limit for the normal at this date. As it has been for most of the previous 2-1/2 years.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
2. Nothing “funny” about it. This means the planet is losing solar energy because of excess reflection from the southern hemisphere sea ice between September and March every year. Significantly.
3. You are the one worried about the Arctic. It is not “meaningless” but it is less critical to a yearly heat balance than the Antarctic; but the Arctic – and you were in the group bringing the Arctic sea ice reduction and maximum into a discussion about a sub-powered small boat in trouble in the Antarctic because of rising sea Antarctic sea ice! – is much less important to the global heat balance than the Antarctic.
A 62′ steel-hulled cutter-rigged ketch with 162 m^2 sail area and a 122 hp Perkins diesel auxiliary is neither small, nor underpowered. With watertight bulkheads fore and aft, she wouldn’t be impossible to sink but it would be damn difficult. My only misgiving might be the pilothouse, but from the looks of the photos, it appears that it’s more of a permanent hard dodger built over what would otherwise be an open center cockpit. My guess is that there’s a fully securable inner companionway to keep the water out. In a good blow, drop all sail, get all but one of the crew below, batten the hatches and run under bare poles using the pilothouse helm. If the rig comes down, the steel ‘house stands a good chance of keeping a spar from taking your head off. A more bombproof — and lovely — blue water passage-maker is difficult for me to imagine.
Its not exactly an ice breaker Brandon. The “ship of fools” ship was an ice hardened Russian boat, still woefully under spec for what they were attempting – which is why they got into trouble.
Eric,
I’ve translated and read some of their pages and the dispatches from the Selma. There is danger in every venture into the Arctic and Antarctic seas but these guys are not Chris Turney, The Guardian & Company. They are quite experienced in sailing in rough polar waters. Also, they don’t seem to push any global warming propaganda—that was slapped on by the half-wit at the Men’s Journal. They look like a bunch of stiffs working a good and simply equipped boat, knowing when to go forward and when to back off. Unlike the arrogant promoters and their tourist bunch on the Shokalskiy, these men are more of the Age of Exploration kind.
I have contempt for the article writer but admiration for these sailors. I hope I am right about their experience and judgment, and I wish them well.
Thank you.
Mike Borgelt
Technically, there is no particular reason to expect the southern hemisphere sea ice to expand as the northern sea ice area (or extent() reduces, but it has. I will be humble enough not to claim any particular reason why, I will only point out what has been measured.
There were Antarctic sea ice extent records set. Recently.
in June, 2014, the Antarctic sea ice set a new record high anomaly of 2.06 Mkm^2. (An area as large as the entire area of Greenland.)
In September, 2014, the Antarctic sea ice set a new all-time satellite record high sea ice area of 16.0 Mkm^2. And a new all-time time satellite record sea ice extents anomaly of over 17.0 Mkm^2.
This entire Antarctic sea ice melt season, the Antarctic sea ice has been steadily (but not every day) seen a sea ice anomaly of greater than 2 std deviations over its long-term average sea ice extent.
Mike Borgelt
No, solar energy is reflected in the immediate few microseconds between hitting a flat object (either sea ice or an open ocean surface) and its path back into the atmosphere or as absorbed energy into the surface. Once reflected, it is lost to the planet and is on its way back into space.
Greenhouse gasses only have significant impact on a planet’s energy balance AFTER a solar energy “wave” has been absorbed and is re-emitted as long-wave radiation from the surface. If it is never absorbed (but is immediately reflected from the surface), a solar energy “wave” has as little probability of being absorbed on its way “out” of the atmosphere as it had on its into the atmosphere down to the surface.
Mike Borgelt,
I always try to be polite and respectful to those who I think are scientific skeptics. I request that you do the same, instead of being angry and confrontational [“You need to get back to reality there buster.”, Nice try Cook”, “I’m sure you will never admit to your error.”, etc.]
RA Cook did exactly as you demanded when you doubted it: he posted a chart showing that Antarctic ice is 2 S.D. above average. But you rejected that out of hand, saying, “…you might be wrong about it.” After you demanded that he must support his statement, he showed that he was correct.
You could at least have the courtesy to acknowledge that, instead of still insisting that he could be wrong. And where is your link showing that he is not correct? RACook is extremely knowledgeable regarding polar ice. He has written articles here about it. You could surely learn from him, if your animosity didn’t get in the way.
Next, you say:
…please try and focus on the Arctic.
I would like to ask, why?
The Arctic ice situation has been cherry-picked by the alarmist crowd because it is the last possible prediction that has not been completely deconstructed by skeptics. However, there were endless predictions that Arctic ice would be gone by now.
That has not happened. It now appears that Arctic ice is recovering from what was simply a natural fluctuation, nothing more. As I have posted repeatedly with links, the Antarctic holds 10X more ice than the Arctic. So why are we required to limit discussion to only the Arctic? The only reason seems to be that the Antarctic destroys the global warming narrative.
The issue is global warming. More to the point: the issue is AGW. But AGW remains a conjecture, nothing more. There is still not one verifiable measurement specifically quantifying AGW as a fraction of total global warming. With no measurements, all we are left with is hearsay “evidence”, such as Native American folklore, or a carefully selected area of the globe.
That isn’t good enough. We need MEASUREMENTS quantifying AGW. Without empirical, testable measurements, man-made global warming [MMGW] is simply an opinion, nothing more. Wasting national assets on an opinion is a waste of taxpayer resources. So unless and until we have measurements quantifying MMGW, we would be far better off waiting until instumentation improves to the point that we can measure AGW.
So far, we are not at that point. It may well turn out that AGW is so minuscule that it can never be measured. Why should we waste money on something so insignificant?
That statement of yours is wrong on so many levels. Why is Mike fixated about “winter sea ice extent at the North Pole” where in winter the air temperature is way below freezing?
Mike Borgelt, here are some reading materials for you on the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation and Stadium Waves. Time will tell who is correct. Please read them in your spare time.
Here is more.
They are like Jehovah’s Witnesses, but at least they don’t come banging on your door at 9 o’clock on a Saturday morning when you’re trying to get a lie in, and thrust dubious literature at you……at least, not yet!
When the LIA kicks in, the warmistas will all be glad of good ole coal, ha ha……..:-) Don’t waste time trying to have a rational debate with these people. It ain’t worth it.
““However, I also know that Antarctic land ice, which is what really matters in terms of sea level rise, is melting at a rather astonishing rate in both West and East Antarctica :” Just plain wrong.
You are right, I was wrong and miswrote in my enthusiasm. However, what I INTENDED to say per my link was that the area of the relevant glacier which abuts the land is indeed melting from underneath, leaving the currently landlocked portion vulnerable to slipping into the sea at some from future date.
Harry, what exactly is the floating ice pushing against…that is holding the land ice back now?
What type of idiot are you? Why are you referring to “the poster” instead of mention his name which is clear at the top of the post. His name is Eric Worrall. I doubt you have much reading ability if you can’t even find out who wrote things.
This seems remarkably like the comment awhile back by Warrenlb where he had no idea that the poster [was] Dr Tim Ball. Because all of “sir” Flashman’s posts sound like Warrenlb’s posts I suspect they are the same person. Of course unless either one of them tells us their real name we will never know.
Tom Trevor,
I suspect you may be right. They certainly have the same wacky mindset.
These alarmist types all have one thing in common: they demand that everyone must DO SOMETHING NOW, based on their beliefs. Because when we ask them to quantify things with measurements, all we get are emotional arguments…
…and whatever happened to warrenlb, anyway?
Noted here too, DBStealey. Those who arrive to attack and divert the discussions seem to arrive ‘by the busload’ (said at the risk of upsetting someone again). That was my reason for commenting as I did earlier this week. Either they are highly organized as a group and fear coming here alone, or they are multiple manifestations of a single personality. I have in good faith revealed my identity again on this comment, though I am ‘no one special’ in the academic community I retired from. This is only a pledge that I intend to speak honestly and constructively in these discussions and come here as a humble student.
Sorry, forgot to change my ‘handle’ before posting.
I saw nary a word concerning “rage”. Neither is the planet disagreeing with this blog. The so-called “pause” continues and Antarctic ice continues to increase at record levels. Go peddle your nonsense elsewhere.
That’s funny Harry, It stopped making sense to me too after the first two words quoted were ”Global Warming” I mean, what a way to start. Total nonsense.
It would be more honest to say, the planet keeps disagreeing with the warming models. Unless of course you’re living on a different planet to the rest of us.
Eamon.
Rage inducing????
Is that a simple statement of fact? Of ‘science-flavoured truthiness’?
You sure don’t miss much, Barney…. other than the planet disagrees with you by producing year-on-year increasing antarctic sea ice records!
You were doing fine up until the last line.
It’s like going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Whether the person lives or not it amazes most people that anyone could be so stupid to even try it.
Eugene WR Gallun
Anthony
We really need a tedious troll section for this type of fatuous comment. There is no need to censor them like in alarmist blogs, they would all be recorded and if anyone wanted to be irritated by their banality, they should be easy to access.
Recently, there has obviously been some kind of deliberate attempt by some small group of die hard alarmists (or maybe it is just one individual operating under several pseudonyms) to be the first to comment on many of WUWT’s articles. This then sets off an avalanche of counter comments, which in turn has the troll spouting further banal comments and so it goes on.
The purpose of these comments is to disrupt, deceive and divert, kind of like the Taliban’s attitude towards polio immunisation in Pakistan.
You guys always give me way too much credit. I wish I was part of a conspiracy and had like minds to pal around with and plan assaults on WUWT. Unfortunately, I”m just a guy (one handle only!) who started reading this blog as a means of getting a balanced picture and started seeing so much drivel, and getting so much abuse for calling it out, that I keep coming back. Your buddies who say “don’t feed the trolls” are actually right – I don’t mean to be a troll, but as long as you keep baiting and insulting, I’ll probably keep responding.
Flashman,
So what precisely is it about this story that the poster finds so rage-inducing?
Perhaps because weather is only climate when it’s freakishly cold in the Eastern CONUS.
I note that in recent weeks Sir Harry Flashman is a bit reluctant to respond to my rebuttals to his astrology. Why? 97% of Climastrologists believe we will cook our beloved planet with co2 afterall. They say so, so they must be right. Dam observations. Dam failed predictions. Dam it all man. We must be right. LOL.
When will they ever learn?
Please read reblogg of this article for an illustration that might, just might open some person’s eyes….
If they are willing to learn not only to believe in politic science….
As I have stressed AGW theory makes up the data does not adhere to the data which proves them to be consistently wrong.
I predict based on the sea surface temperature anomalies in the S. Ocean that Antarctic Sea Ice, this season will be close to if not at new record highs.
Green cherry picking can also involve ignoring satellite data when convenient, and ignoring the funded budget of research centers (Illinois) dedicated to the same subject with taxpayer funds.
These stories serve the same purpose as “miracles” do in religious groups. I have a religious friend who is always trying to save my soul. I tell her I’d like to believe, thereby escaping my inevitable end, but I need to see some evidence. Evidence comes in the form of miracles she says. A babies cry, a birds song, the sunrise itself, are all miracles. Well, the “hottest winter evah!,” the “farthest south ever sailed,” the “first time the NW passage has opened”, are the miracles that sustain the warming enthusiast in the face of an almost two decade “pause.”
if there was evidence you wouldn’t need faith. Your friend is kind but misguided. The things listed aren’t miracles, because they fit with what is known and expected of God’s creation. Miracles are outside the normal.
…and if there is faith you wouldn’t need evidence = the warmunists!
She’s knows better than hit me with the supernatural stuff. Nobody has sufficiently explained how it’s possible that we exist, so faith in “something” could be warranted. It’s just not for me. I meant no insult.
So, rh, you truly believe that everything, from the beginning of time itself, is nothing but an accident I take it? That the world starts out from pure nothing and just happens to turn into not just something but everything? Sort of like the scientist that can’t except “creation” because he can’t prove nor disprove it, but can believe that everything comes from nothing? I can think of no greater “miracle” than what it would take to create your apparent belief. Then again, it has always been my conjecture that in the mind of God, all things, even “big bangs” are possible, since they are possible in the mind of Man. But possible doesn’t necessarily mean probably or even likely.
By the way, “miracles” might be needed to sustain “religion,” but they are not needed to sustain “faith.” Church or religion does not refer to the same thing that “faith” does. If that isn’t obvious at first thought, think about it once in a while and I am sure you will understand at some point.
As for this “journey to the southern most point a sailboat has ever been,” it can and would only be done by absolute fools, since there is no way to prepare for or survive the worst vagaries of nature in a 67 foot sloop. Their “guardian angels” must have worked overtime to insure their “touching the ice of Antarctica,” but I don’t see anything that tells me they were able to successfully retrace their steps to safety. Nor do I care if they did or did not, as long as no one had to risk life or limb to pluck this group of eggplants from dire straits – not to be considered a bad reflection on eggplants, by the way.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend.
RH, no need to apologize. A considered opinion honestly given is never offensive. In such cases, some people choose to be offended. Another’s choice is never your fault.
That said, something from nothing happens all the time in the physical universe. Virtual particles appear from out of nothing, and go back to nothing (except around black holes). We know they’re real because the effect of their existence can be measured as the Casimir force. These virtual particles represent the vacuum energy — the basic stuff of the universe itself
So if you can’t explain , then there must be a God?
” everything, from the beginning of time itself”
Why assume that time had a beginning? The weird speculations of cosmologists notwithstanding, there is no proof that time had a beginning.
“is nothing but an accident I take it?”
I suspect you are assuming a false dichotomy of “accident or creation”. But there could be other possibilities. For all we know, not only has the universe always existed, but it may be impossible for it not to exist. There may be some fundamental logical or nomological principle that makes the existence of the universe inevitable without any divine creator or sustainer.
That seems at least as acceptable a hypothesis as that of a creator God, and somewhat more ontologically economical.
I too find all the things your friend described as miracles, just not supernatural, angel or God(s) related. THey fill me with awe and wonder at how amazing and awe inspiring this universe is. .
I have no probable with faith based beliefs, it seems it is a human characteristic since recorded time.
I do have a big problem with people who equate faith which requires no evidence and belief based on objective, corroborated evidence. If there is a hell, equating those two things is a sure way to get there.
Alx said: “I do have a big problem with people who equate faith which requires no evidence and belief based on objective, corroborated evidence. If there is a hell, equating those two things is a sure way to get there.”
Whoa, that’s a pretty low bar for eternal damnation.
Hell is going to get real crowded going forward.
As rh says:
…the first time the NW passage has opened…
The entire Arctic was sometimes ice-free during the present Holocene, before human emissions mattered. Thus, the NorthWest Passage must have been open.
Since the alarmist cult collectively hung their hats on Arctic ice, they are now stuck trying to explain why Arctic ice never disappeared, as they repeatedly predicted.
The reason is simple and straightforward: they were wrong.
Also, they never adequately explained why it is called the Northwest PASSAGE.
I’m aware, but that didn’t stop the most recent event from being reported as though it was some sort of miraculous event which validated their religion.
More of a pilgrimage or a hadj?
There’s a lie or two in there. Water mist will not freeze on contact at 0°C. No indication as to how far south and where. Satelites show that the ice around antartica is at record levels. Why were polish in a sailing boat. Where did it leave from? Who was sponsoring it?
“Why were Polish in a sailing boat?” I can’t conceive of questioning the nationality of a group of sailors when they hail from a country of 38 million people with more than 400 km of coastline.
Here is the web site of the expedition: http://www.selmaexpeditions.com/en/selma.php
And here are the profiles of the crew members:http://www.selmaexpeditions.com/en/zaloga.php
Stephen, It looks like the mist and vapor was freezing on contact during this leg but if I got the translation right it was considerably colder than 0°C:
I wouldn’t hold the drivel in the Men’s Journal against the sailors. And I think Chris already answered the other question: The Poles own the boat.
It’s not helpful that the latitude they sailed down to or the location they were sailing was not disclosed. After all, Weddell sailed to 74S in 1823 – heart of the last ice age… a feat not repeated for a couple of decades (although 1823, a time before anthropocentic global warming was even conceived, does appear to have been a good time to go sailing south with several explorers getting to 74S, unaware land was close by…).
Certainly for Weddell, given no one sailed that far south in the Weddell Sea for over a century (I think), I’d put it down to freak winds opening up the east side of the Weddell Sea, similar to what was witnessed in 2003 with satellite imagery.
The above article is definitely devoid of any information which helps to explain whether the feat by the sailors mentioned was anything extraordinary or not.
It’s not helpful that the latitude they sailed down to or the location they were sailing was not disclosed. After all, Weddell sailed to 74S in 1823 – heart of the last ice age… a feat not repeated for a couple of decades (although 1823, a time before anthropocentic global warming was even conceived, does appear to have been a good time to go sailing south with several explorers getting to 74S, unaware land was close by…).
Certainly for Weddell, given no one sailed that far south in the Weddell Sea for over a century (I think), I’d put it down to freak winds opening up the east side of the Weddell Sea, similar to what was witnessed in 2003 with satellite imagery.
The above article is definitely devoid of any information which helps to explain whether the feat by the sailors mentioned was anything extraordinary or not.
Selma has made a new record by reaching 78°43’S 163°40W.
Read more at http://www.yachtingworld.com/blogs/elaine-bunting/polish-crew-sets-record-for-sailing-furthest-south-in-the-antarctic-62710#YRxyCb4FQl2pz5mI.99
Well they do claim to have reached the shore in the Bay of Whales. The Bay of Whales is an indentation in the Ross sea, considerably further north than Ross penetrated in 1841 when he discovered Mt’s Erebus and Terror, named after his sailing ships.
The claim to have penetrated further south than any other sailing vessel seems to rest on shaky foundations.
You can see the boat’s exact route on the map here: http://www.selmaantarktyda.com/pozycja-selmy/
We went from the dark ages to the enlightened age to the age of truthyness. Apparently we are expanding our definition of truth, socially, spiritually, politically and unfortunately scientifically.
The boat is a ketch, not a sloop.
Yes, and looking nice.
Indeed.
But I never knew penguins were so large.
Sir Flashman is ignoring that the sea ice extent in Antarctica goes along with extremely low temperatures recorded in the same time.
For example, the 2014 june month in the french Station Dumont-d’Urville in “Terre Adelie” was booked as the coldest ever since that station was settled (1956)
Jack,
That can’t be correct.
We have had all the experts tell us that 2014 was the “hottest year evah”.
aahhhh CO2… seems about time for a remake of the “MacGyver” (sp) show, with a bottle of compressed CO2 as his “Swiss Army” knife or bags of tricks that always saves the day. cue scene…. man trapped in burning car, no one else around…. poof here’s MacGyver with his bottle of compressed CO2 “whoosh” fire put out….. “whoosh” jammed door freed up. Next “whoosh” and the jammed seat belt is cut free with a blast from the compressed CO2…… and so on… hey Hollywood producers I will just take a small cut and my name in the credits for compensation…. whoosh!
cheers!
Joe
Excerpt from the linked article:
“A number of scientists now believe current data from Antarctica suggest sea levels could rise ten feet in the next hundred years, enough to submerge the current residences of about 12.8 million Americans.”
I don’t know how these people drag themselves out of bed in the morning.
They drag themselves out of bed to do research: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/totten-glacier-melting-with-warmer-ocean/story-fn3dxiwe-1227196815950
Quote from your link:
“The glacier is not going to melt tomorrow and we are not going to get six metres of sea level rise any time soon, it is not a doomsday scenario,” he said.
==========
Was that your point ?, I couldn’t tell from your comment.
Chris
More accurately stared: they drag themselves out of bed to get paid for doing research. They do indeed get paid; open question if they do research.
They drag themselves out of bed in order to makes stuff up for pay.
UK and Chip,
My point was that it gets very tiresome seeing climate scientists get attacked on this site for being money grubbing, on the dole and doing nothing, etc. First, many researchers DO NOT receive direct compensation from research grants. If they are in academia (as opposed to, say, NOAA), in general they do not receive compensation out of the grant – the monies goes to research assistants, travel, equipment and computer time.
Second, when a paper is published that does not support an AGW link to some natural phenomenon, it is highlighted here, and accepted as being rock solid science – even if the research institution has been criticized earlier for junk science!
Thanks for the penguins and yacht, they are magnificent!
Where exactly did they reach?
There’s such thing as GPS.
I thought it a funny post being the first calendar day of Boreal spring. Reminded me of the TV show ‘Gilligan’s Island’.
The Ballad of Gilligan’s Island, by George Wyle and Sherwood Shwartz
“Mel strike up the Orchastra.”
Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from this tropic port
Aboard this tiny ship.
The mate was a mighty sailing man,
The skipper brave and sure.
Five passengers set sail that day
For a three hour tour, a three hour tour.
The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed,
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The minnow would be lost, the minnow would be lost.
The ship set ground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle
With Gilligan
The Skipper too,
The millionaire and his wife,
The movie star
The professor and Mary Ann,
Here on Gilligans Isle.
source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/gilligansislandlyrics.html
Ha ha 😉 Happy Boreal spring all.
Which brings us to the age-old question: Ginger…or Mary Ann?
Yes
Having had to be able to sing the entire theme as a “Pledge” to the fraternity I was in at Uni ……… You have left out the part of the theme that came at the end credits.
(Ending verse)
So this is the tale of our castaways,
they’re here for a long, long time.
They’ll have to make the best of things,
it’s an uphill climb.
The first mate and his Skipper too
will do their very best,
to make the others comfortable
in their tropic island nest.
No phone, no lights, no motor car
not a single luxury
like Robinson Crusoe,
it’s primitive as can be.
So join us here each week my friends,
you’re sure to get a smile,
from seven stranded castaways
here on Gilligan’s Isle!
P.S. I DID NOT enjoy having beer splashed in my face every time we sang “The weather started getting rough..”, but I did find it funny once I could do it to others.
Here is Gilligan’s Island
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmyra_Atoll
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Orthographic_projection_over_Palmyra_Atoll.png
I know stupid when I see it, and I’m sure looking at it in that photograph. Maybe they get away with this. But if the ice closes in—- that ketch’s hull can’t possibly stand up to the crushing forces of pack ice. It’s got a fiberglass and possibly wood-filler hull that’s not more than half an inch thick anywhere.
If they get out— maybe already got out– they should thank whatever gods they serve for their deliverance.
Look at selmaexpeditions.com
Built of steel in Brittany, well equipped for extreme conditions.
I think on this occasion the “ship of fools” tag is unwarrented.
oldseadog
Yup. Titanic proved steel beats ice.
Ooops, never mind.
It’s more fun to comment without actually looking into the story.
Actually, while the steel plates were more brittle in the cold water, it was actually failed, poor quality, iron rivets and design compromises in terms of the bulkdead hight above the waterline (Or lack there of rather) signed it’s fate. The steel plates opened up like a zipper as the rivets popped. If the 5th bulkhead was built to the original specification, the ship would not have sunk. I think the 4th, 5th and 6th bulkheads were only 10-12ft above the waterline. Once the 6th bulkhead was breached it was on a one-way trip to the bottom of the north Atlantic.
There is an opinion that if the captain had sailed directly into the berg because the steel in the front keel member (A solid section of steel over 4″ thick and 14″ wide), rather than trying to avoid it, there would have been less damage. A similar ship was also damaged in a similar way and only the bow compartment was breached..
A little searching finds that Selma is selling tourist trips to the Antarctic region. They apparently have some experience in the area, and are trying to get attention for further business.
Newsflash for MensJournal. The boat has two masts, so it isn’t a sloop. Looks like a ketch.
That sounds like kvetching to me.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/antarctic-temperature-trends/
Here are the temperature trends for the continent of Antarctica again confirming AGW enthusiast make up the data.
This was a sailing record, not an all vessel, non icebreaker record. Have there been no motor boats that have gone there before? Not sure what the big deal is.
Possibly the warmists seeing a miracle?
It is possible that Sealers or Whalers went further south a couple of hundred years ago; you could try looking at old log books if you could find them. But those guys were not interested in records, just in making money.
Old Sea Dog
And, since many “whales” were found in the er – “Bay of Whales” – by sailing ships, it almost CERTAIN that the skippers who DID find “whales” did NOT publicize where they found the whales in the Bay of Whales vicinity in order to protect their next summer’s harvest from competitors.
The Ross Ice shelf polyanna did open up this February ice season in that area of Antarctica. It has now closed up completely in that area of the Ross Ice Shelf, as the Antarctic sea ice has now set near-record “high” for the amount of sea ice at minimum for the past three years at 2.5 Million sq kilometers. Before 2002-2003, the sea ice minimums never exceeded 2.0 Mkm^2, and now 2.5 Mkm^2 at sea ice minimum are often seen.https://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php#comments-form
RACook, I’d go even farther: when whales were found, the captains would no doubt report false locations, and keep the ‘best fishin’ hole’ for themselves.
I’ve a feeling they followed the channel broken by the ice breaker. These channels are kept open for long periods by the breakers to allow supplies in. The ship’s website says that this 88 day trip went to the Ross ice shelf. That’s where one of these channels is. The boat just sailed in and there’s no indication the crew are alarmist. However , the article is implying it got so far south because of global warming but it may be giving the game away by saying that it’s an area that’s only usually accessible by ice breakers. That’s what gave me the clue. I think they just sailed in behind the breaker with millions of Sq km of sea ice in all directions either side of the channel. If this is the case, it’s a disgraceful piece of journalistic spin.
From the article:
“A pair of recent studies helps explain why there is more sea around Antarctica than ever before.”
Gee, if they just took a look at some real data:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
And that’s not the dumbest statement in this article…
When you actually LOOK at that statement, ” more sea around Antarctica than ever before.” you can only come to a single conclusion – Earth has grown or pancaked. No other way there could be more sea around otherwise. Open water? Now that might have significance.
Actually that press-release starts out by telling a whopping big lie (Sir Harry Flashman please note):
“On February 13, a yachting crew from Poland sailed its 67-foot sloop, Selma, to a latitude in Antarctica’s Bay of Whales that’s traditionally frozen solid, and only navigable by icebreaker.”
The Bay of Whales is not traditionally frozen solid, and no icebreakers are needed there, in summer that is. The Ross Sea polynya has been known since it was discovered by Sir John Ross in 1841 (actually even before that, since he was told of its existence by whalers) and it is always ice-free in late summer. Bay of Whales itself was discovered by Nimrod during Shackleton’s expedition in 1908, and was used as a base by Amundsen in Fram in 1911-12, and neither ship was an icebreaker, or anything near it. It was also used by Byrd’s first, second and third expedition. The “Little America” base was situated there.
And strictly speaking it doesn’t exist any longer, at least not as a bay, after a large ice-berg broke off from the Ross Shelf in 1987.
However Selma was arguably rather lucky to be able to get there at all, and then out again, because the Ross Sea opened up very late this year, and is already frozen solid again.
And that photograph is not from the Bay of Whales – there are no rocks there, just the Ross Shelf. Actually it isn’t taken anywhere near the Bay of Whales. Those are Gentoo Penguins which do not occur in the Ross Sea area. My guess is that it is taken at Port Lockroy in the Antarctic Peninsula where there is an easily accessible Gentoo Colony. The landscape looks right too. It rather makes one wonder…..
If they did make it to the ice shelf, who would be gonzo enough to get off the boat to snap a picture?
Great comment, tty. Very informative. Thank you.
“But not only dealt with the observation of dramatic battles ice, wind and water. Selma arrived on board – again – the prose of life. Permanent water supply tanks on are frozen and waiting for warmer width. Again, we need to replenish fresh water and shoot some growlerów (large lumps of ice floating in the water). For us it’s huge loads of fresh water frozen 🙂 You just have to get out of the water, and then thaw. Hunters growlerów back in action!
Although we are not the first time – now the task turns out to be more difficult. High tide suspended high bar. It took a while – but we are proud to announce the next victory! Nałowiliśmy supplies of fresh water for the remainder of the cruise. They should last us until Cape Horn. There will be warmer ocean water and tanks should already thaw …
We say goodbye to the Isle of Peter I. Now we know why the discovery in 1821 by the Bellingshausen, the first man on the shore waiting for its more than 100 years – 1929. I never gave up beat. Despite multiple attempts, there was no permanent base. And those few who arrived here measured in hours of their stay, the highest in days. Island and we did not give to get, but provided us with water. Thank you.
We continue on the road – the direction of Cape Horn.
With Selma freshwater (again) greet:
Peter, Jacek, Leon, Kris, Luby, Tom, Arthur, Damian, Wifi, Dusan and Chris.”
http://www.selmaantarktyda.com/news/wszystkie-newsy/news/ocean-poudniowy-wyspa-piotra-i
http://www.selmaantarktyda.com/assets/Uploads/_resampled/ResizedImage586390-gora-lodowa4.jpg
“Despite multiple attempts, there was no permanent base.”
More ignorant waffle. Nobody has ever tried to establish a base on Peter I Island. It is 95% glaciated and has no protected anchorage.
yeah, this is a marketing ploy that seems to have worked for the company. they use the cagw narrative as a way of prompting the ignorant media to help their marketing.
of course the problem with having a narrative that is not being followed by the story you are attempting to relate is that eventually it becomes very obvious. this story just brings a talking point for people to say, well the sea ice is very low, so climate change must be real, and then the sceptic can point out antarctic sea ice is actually higher. this is a critical turning point for people who have no interest in cagw etc. they then start to question motivations and the truth(lies) they have been sold for so long.
the continued story is of course what happens here at wuwt, and it is here, nowhere else. ie next it goes –
-well sea ice is increasing in antarctica and decreasing in the arctic, so it is land ice melting
[but it] too cold for land ice melt
-it is the ocean melting from under the ice? land? ok lets say sea ice allowing ice to slip off the land
the sea has not warmed at all around antarctic
-but GRACE says that ice mass loss is huge
truth is that grace says no such thing, grace raw data shows no such decrease in ice mass, it is only the models based on isostatic rebound that change this to a positive anomaly, that is not all that positive
with so many jobs depending on this narrative, eventually they will fudge all data to fit, so the future may see sceptics losing the scientific data and being force to rely on nature which is a problem. maybe nature will not behave as expected, still it most likely will. frozen americans are the key to breaking the narrative completely, and there seems to have been enough of them lately.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/antarctic.seaice.color.000.png
I’ll trust the Encyclopedia Britannica on this one over the press release.
Seen (by sailing vessels!) in 1842, visited in 1908, the site of several bases – all supported by ships.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/641449/Bay-of-Whales
Based on the many informative comments and the singular uninformative comment by Flashman it is clear the Men’s journal is a fool’s article of lackluster propaganda. So no points for not knowing the difference between a ketch and a sloop but 2 points for journalistic excellence correctly describing the vessel as a sailboat.
technically, the Selma is a sailing auxiliary. sailboats have no engines.
But it’s the literal truth, isn’t it? As the circumference of Antarctic sea ice increases, the shoreline gets longer; so there’s ‘more sea’ around it than ever before. And when it extends to the equator, there will be the maximum amount of sea around it. This is just another fascinating instance of the weasel words used by warmists.
No, Jon, the shore is made of land. The ice often extends out to sea from the shore but the shore stays right where it was, even if it isn’t ice free for years on end.
The Antarctic is not warming, end of story.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/70-90S%20MonthlyAnomaly%20Since1957.gif
I hate those nomal/O lines…..who decides that crap anyway?…..move the O line up just .4 and it’s barely returned to normal
You ought to inform Professor Humlum of your view.
“The combined crew experience includes a variety of expertise drawn from their participation in the Olympic Games, The Race (Round the World Maxi Catamaran Race), Mini-Transat, Fastnet Race, Around Britain and Ireland, the Middle Sea Race as well as a previous edition of the Sydney Hobart Race and several ocean crossings. Selma Expeditions is the first Polish yacht, with Polish crew in the history of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Race.”
http://rolexsydneyhobart.com/the-yachts/2014/selma-expeditions/
Some fairly accomplished “fools”.
However I tend to agree with the comment above in that they would be more interested in promoting Selma Expeditions rather than global warming and judging from their finishing position in the Sydney Hobart race they are slow and steady rather than fast and the race was also a promotion exercise rather than an serious attempt to win anything. And if they are regular visitors to the Antarctic they would have a healthy respect for the growing sea ice.
But they also look more like professional Polish adventurers rather than entrepreneurs as I cannot see too many fare paying passengers being catered for on the ketch. It would be interesting in finding out how all their bills are paid :
http://www.selmaexpeditions.com/en/selma.php
Anyway I say – well done and good luck to them. But as far as their Antarctic accomplishment goes I would also say it has everything to do with good seamanship and nothing to do with carbon dioxide.
100%
Yep. I don’t think there are any “catered to passengers” on board at all. Their business model is: Everybody works.
The comment “more sea” could simply be a translation error. And no, I don’t mean Polish to English, but “warmnista” to whatever scam they are up to now.
If sea level is rising, there will be more sea.
Righttttttt….”IF” blows your statement out of the water. “IF” I was lucky, I would Mann. /sarc
and in the 1950s the sea lanes up in the Arctic were open for 8 months a year instead of the three today.
The real Sir Harry Flashman
Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC KCB KCIE is a fictional character created by George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008), but based on the character “Flashman” in Tom Brown’s School Days (1857), a semi-autobiographical work by Thomas Hughes (1822–1896). The character appears in a series of twelve books, collectively known as The Flashman Papers. Flashman was played by Malcolm McDowell in the 1975 Richard Lester film Royal Flash.
In Hughes’ book, Flashman (a relatively minor character) is portrayed as a notorious bully at Rugby School who persecutes Tom Brown, and who is finally expelled for drunkenness. Fraser decided to write Flashman’s memoirs, in which the school bully would be identified with an “illustrious Victorian soldier” experiencing many 19th-century wars and adventures and rising to high rank in the British Army, acclaimed as a great soldier, while remaining “a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward—and oh yes, a toady.”[1] Fraser’s Flashman is an antihero who often runs from danger in the novels. Nevertheless, through a combination of luck and cunning, he usually ends each volume acclaimed as a hero.[2]
Ok, that’s hilarious!
I loved the Flashman series. Such a lucky weasel.
Flashman (a relatively minor character) is …..a notorious bully …. who is finally expelled for drunkenness.
A very apt personification of the current ‘flashman’.
Somebody posts this every time I come here. Trust me, I know who the character is.
Sometimes this site has some interesting and informarve articles. Unfortunately this is not one of them. A 2 yr old could have done better than this.
What I find funny is the notion that melting apparently occurs at zero degrees Fahrenheit in the height of summer!
Do it all the time at 20 or more below C … with a tiger torch. 😉
My understanding is that magic “melt” number ( that is; even snow in shaded areas will melt ) is approximately +12C.
Just a few random thoughts:
1) ice is a good thermal insulator. Packed snow is even better. Most of the Antarctic continent (excluding ice shelves) is covered by thousands of meters of ice and packed snow.
2) most of the alleged melting of the ice sheets must occur at the bottom, since temperatures at the top seldom fall below zero C
3) So my question is: supposing there is an increase in average surface temperature from, say, minus 6 C to minus 5 C (the size of increase that might be due to ‘global warming’ over the past century), how long would it take for any effect at all to be felt at the base?
I don’t know the answer, and I really hope someone here can throw some light on the issue. My gut feeling is that it would take many years, maybe centuries, for changes at the surface to impact on the base. As a naive illustration of the point, we know that before refrigerators were invented, wealthy people would store ice in ‘ice houses’ during the winter, most of which was still frozen in mid summer, despite an increase in external temperatures of many degrees. Ice in ice houses would typically not have a thickness of more than 10 meters. So how long would it take a much smaller increase in external temperatures to have any effect at a much greater depth?
I would bet a few beers that much of the ice sublimates rather than melts. I was outside today on my property. Fairly cold, but sunny. The ground is still frozen solid. No water but much of the snow had disappeared by the end of the day. I think sublimation is important to consider as it puts the moisture into the air.
” how long would it take for any effect at all to be felt at the base?”
Hundreds of years. The heat flow is quite slow. At a depth of 30 feet the delay is 6 months, and the temperature of the ice is at its highest in mid-winter.
That’s what I thought. The obvious corollary is that if there is any change in the temperature gradient within the ice sheets, due to heating at the surface, there would be an immense time lag before the base was affected. So immense, in fact, that it would be far too soon for carbon emissions within the last century to have had any effect. If the base is now melting* more quickly, this might even be a delayed effect of the Medieval Warm Period!
*(the source of heat sufficient to melt ice at the base is presumably geothermal, but the rate of melting would be influenced by the temperature gradient from base to surface. There would also be some direct effect of changes in the thickness of the ice, since any change in thickness would increase or decrease pressure at the base, which would affect the melting point.)
What I find funny is the concept of ice melting at zero Farenheit
sublimation.
sublimation.
Er, sublimation creates water vapor directly from the upper surface of the land ice. Therefore, there is no “liquid water” from sublimation that will “fall” or “run in melted rivers” out from the land to dilute the now 16 Mkm^2 of seawater around Antarctica that is regularly covered by sea ice in today’s world to cause that sea water to freeze faster.
And most areas of the East Antarctic ice sheets are gaining mass. Only a few limited single glaciers are getting shorter, and the mountains of West Antarctic are gaining snow and ice.
I love how the changes to ocean circulation patterns are used to explain the record increase in Antarctic sea ice, but the same changes are never used to explain the record loss of arctic sea ice. This is called trying to have your cake and eat it.
The story states:
“On February 13, a yachting crew from Poland sailed its 67-foot sloop, Selma, to a latitude in Antarctica’s Bay of Whales that’s traditionally frozen solid, and only navigable by icebreaker. It was a hundred miles farther south than anyone had ever taken a sailboat.”
This statement is technically correct. The Bay of Whales is at the southern end of Antarctica (viewed from the aerial maps). It is in fact traditionally frozen from March until December of each year. However, it is normally open water during January and February, the height of summer there. The Polish vessel visited on February 13th, the equivalent of August 13th in the northern hemisphere.
The point reached by the Poles was in all likelihood truly the farthest south a sailboat, although not a larger vessel, has ever traveled. The gutsy part was the ‘sailboat’ aspect, not the travel to the Bay of Whales per se. Indeed, it is possible to book a tour on ship cruise ship to visit the Bay of Whales, and in fact, a Heritage Tour boat was in the Bay just a week before the date of the Selma visit:
http://heritage-expeditions.com/trip/ross-sea-amundsen-antarctic-expedition-bay-of-whales/
Here is the NSIDC page showing the anomaly for February. The Bay of Whales is normally ice free during this time of year:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/index.html
20 March: News Ltd: Ice hampers Antarctic medical evacuation
EMERGENCY efforts to evacuate a seriously ill man from Australia’s Antarctic Davis station are being hampered by sea ice.
THE ice breaker vessel Aurora Australis, which left the base on Tuesday, has turned back to collect the expeditioner who fell ill late on Wednesday with a fast-deteriorating, but undisclosed, medical condition…
“Challenging sea ice conditions are slowing efforts,” the Division said in an update on Friday afternoon.
“The ship is currently 200 nautical miles from Davis but is navigating through increasing areas of pack ice.”
The Aurora Australis is not expected to reach Davis station until overnight Saturday at the earliest, when the patient will be taken on board by helicopter…
http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/antarctic-evacuation-still-a-day-away/story-e6frfku9-1227270850568
Something that might interest SHF:
Forty people trapped on Canadian ferry for days amid ice floes near Nova Scotia
Ice up to 25 feet thick is ‘among the worst in 30 years’, says company spokesman, but with plenty of food, ‘everybody’s in good spirits’
Forty people remain trapped after more than two full days on board a Canadian ferry locked in massive, pressurized ice floes in the ocean between Nova Scotia and the mainland. The coastguard has so far failed to break through to the vessel.
The Canadian coastguard has been working for the past 48 hours to free the MV Blue Puttees, said Darrell Mercer, a spokesman for Marine Atlantic, the company that runs ferries to the peninsula. But the fleet’s largest icebreaker, the Louis S St Laurent, has so far failed to free the Puttees from the dense ice.
“The ice conditions that we’re facing this year are among the worst that we’ve seen in 30 years,” Mercer told the Guardian on Friday, adding that in bad years “the thickness of the ice is up to 25 feet”.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/20/40-people-trapped-canadian-ferry-nova-scotia
there does seem to be a lot of argument about is it a bad thing to burn fossil fuels because it is a finite resource and we do not know the consequences. There are 2 buttons, one button, if you press it a baby will die, the other button, if you press it all of the plants will die.
so there is a balance as to the number of baby humans can die V the other things that live on the planet.
The Greens moan about recycling and not over burdening the nature but it is not going to happen. Best ( like a gambler on a doubling up system ) go for broke. Use all the earth resources to gambol into space.
” my muscular buttocks it is not 97 % “
It does work both ways tho’ doesn’t it ?
The gungho guys believe it will work by rugged, individual assertion human will go where no man has gone before but the stay at home guys say no, listen this is our home, us made for it.
Both have a kind of mysticism in their thinking.
in another scenario as is true we were made to live on Earth perhaps we forgo majesty and create artificial people to do the space exploration for us and report back ?
but then there is the thing about life. I read this thing about those fish that use their front fins for crude legs and spend time in and out of water. Those cruel experimenters deprived some of them of water of any depth so they had to get about using their fins as legs and report is that their structure changed to facilitate their life.
See this is one thing.
I do not have any references ( sorry ) I read another thing that a bacteria experimented upon by altering it’s environment altered it’s own metabolism to survive.
So what these things are saying ( if true ) is that an organism can mutate itself in its own lifetime.
It is not a random quirk of reproduction that survives ( evolution ) but the INDIVIDUAL adapts ( or accesses a template ).
Premise: an INDIVIDUAL can mutate in it’s own lifetime to be more successful given enough of a kick
Flashman, Chris, others: here is what you don’t understand:
The fact remains that a sailboat from Poland without any mention of special knowledge or expertise sailed up to an antarctic ice cliff in mid summer. The article says this is stupid thing to do for dozens of reasons, not the least because they were encouraged to to go to one of the most dangerous places on earth by a stupid article by a journalist of no experience there either. Frequently in summer large parts of those white cliffs break off hit the sea and swamp your little boat with water and large chunks of ice. Any number of the ice bergs they probably passed to close to on the way can unexpectedly roll over. A nice sunny day can suddenly turn nasty and stormy with heavy snow (as beset upon the first ship of fools from Australia).
https://ca.search.yahoo.com/search?fr=mcafee&type=B111CA662D20141029&p=U+tube+of+ice+berg+rolling+over
https://ca.search.yahoo.com/search?fr=mcafee&type=B111CA662D20141029&p=U+tube+of+ice+berg+rolling+over
https://ca.search.yahoo.com/search?fr=mcafee&type=B111CA662D20141029&p=U+tube+of+ice+berg+rolling+over
Now think. Chris et al, would it be okay to climb Everest, or even the Materhorn or even Ben Nevis in Scotland with no experienced person in your group? What about walking across Serengeti with your drinking pals to go and see the lions? Or snowboarding down Aconcagua, South Americas largest mountain without specific skills, knowledge and preparation. Because we already have had a ship of fools led by a climatologist who put a ship and its passengers and crew in mortal danger, diverted ice breaker supply ships for attempted rescue, cost several millions and the most amazing thing is by shear chance, no one died. Do you get the reason for the tone of the author/
Gary Pearse
In a later radio message, their boat’s water tanks were already reported frozen solid – clearly, the interior of their (unpowered) sailboat was not “near-freezing” but was actually below freezing.
Gary,
If you looked at the web site of the expedition, you would know that the crew has extensive experience in not just blue water sailing, but polar sailing in particular. The skipper has been a qualified ocean yacht master since 1990, and a partial list of his trips is as follows:
1988 – Faeroes
2000 – Norwegian fiords
2001 – around Europe
2002 – Lofoten, Spitsbergen
2003 – Jan Mayen (first Polish ascent of Beerenberg),
East Greenland coast
2005 – Antarctic, South Shetlands, Cape Horn
2006 – Spitsbergen
2007 – Iceland – Spitsbergen
2008 – Antarctic (Charcot Island), Cape Horn
2009 – Antarctic, Cape Horn, Greenland
2011 – Antarctic, Weddell Sea
2013 – South Georgia
I found this information in 15 seconds of searching, it was simply a matter of clicking on the Selma link in the Men’s Journal article. I would be equally critical of them if they were a bunch of clueless city slickers having an adventure, but that is just not the case.
Chris, as a (former) nationally ranked competitive sailor, what you posted above is invaluable. But the Selma masters accomplishments do not undo either the historical inaccuracies or the climate innuendoes offered in support of this particular journey. He is a very good sailor, but a poor propagandist. Bought and used, one suspects.
Rud,
Did you look at the Selma site? Where do they make statements about historical accomplishments or climate change topics? You cannot conflate what the Men’s Journal author wrote and assign that to the sailors.
“Bought and used” – do you have any evidence of this? I went through the site, unlike most people on this thread. I didn’t see sponsor logos (which one would expect to find if there was a sponsor agenda). I didn’t even see any climate change quotes. All I saw on the “why we sail” page was this (Google Translated from the original Polish): “If you want to experience an extraordinary adventure – welcome aboard :). Sailing with us, you are a member of the crew. He’ll watch, cooked, cleaned, steer, change sails. You will be able to see the unusual rarely visited places and feel like an explorer sailing the white spaces on the map.”
And farther down: “Although our goal is not to break records but the exploration of unknown lands … and maybe that’s why we have to his credit several exceptional achievements:
In 2006, we reached, Polish yacht Panorama, as far as the northern Arctic Circle, with 82 ° 00.24 ‘N
In 2008, Selma reached, as a Polish yacht, far behind the southern Arctic Circle, with 70 ° 11 ‘S.
in 2011, as one of the few yachts in the world explored extremely difficult Navigation and treacherous Antarctic Weddell Sea.”
So basically a very experienced crew sails every year in the polar regions, taking along paying passengers. That payment defrays their costs, and the passengers get a great adventure. There is no talk about documenting polar ice decline, warming waters, etc – just an adventure trip run by competent people.
You caught me out Chris. Its lazy to assume that this expedition was not any better prepared or experienced than the countless other yacht, rowboat, etc. adventures we’ve seen into polar waters including the original Antarctic Ship of Fools of a year ago. My bad. However, climbing Mount Everest, for example, is a foolhardy exercise for anyone, no matter how well prepared and skilled you are and the survival statistics are not on the side of the adventurer. Doing Antarctica in a 20m ketch is itself ‘unprepared’ for what there is a scary probability of happening. Antarctic sea floor is dotted with misadventures. If you have the idea that global warming is improving your safety there (at least the magazine has that idea) then you are not as prepared as you should be. Also, looking at the credits you kindly dug up for me, tells me they are of the same kind as those who climb Everest. God bless them and their adrenaline rush – it is exciting.
Isn’t it great to have Flashman on here (named after a loathsome thug and bully, by the way?)
He gives us all a fantastic opportunity to calmly and politely trash the latest Warmist Drivel.
If Flashman didn’t exist…we’d probably have to invent him!
Check out the record low Arctic ice maximum this year.
SHF,
Wrong as usual. During the past year Arctic ice was no lower than it was a decade ago.
Chalk up ‘disappearing Arctic ice’ as another failed prediction of the alarmist crowd. It was just regional climate variability, that’s all.
Checking out the Arctic Sea Ice Volume Anomaly and Trend from PIOMAS demonstrates that “while ice volume at the maximum during April 2015 was on par with the previous two years, reduction in ice volume during the summer months was less than in previous years.”
See http://psc.apl.uw.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.1.png
Arctic is higher than 2006…and as high as 2005 right now
Check out the record low Arctic ice maximum this year.
….
Harry, air and water temps are both way below freezing….so it didn’t melt
must be just the wind…you think?
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/hycomARC/navo/arcticicespddrfnowcast.gif
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png
Except 2011 was lower.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
Although 2007 was lower.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
Although 2007, 2010, and 2011 were lower.
So, your point is?
Check out the rapid increase in multi-year Arctic ice this year!
Is the penguin an option?
http://ll-media.tmz.com/2008/03/12/0312_ginger_maryann_new_350-1.jpg
Oops … I forgot the mods want some captioning on photos.
For those who never watched the comedy sitcom Gilligan’s Island, these are two characters: the professor and Gilligan.
The two photos appear to be of Tina Louise and Dawn Wells, the only surviving cast members of the sitcom, and not of Russell Johnson and Bob Denver.
Leo, it’s a trick of the light… a Photon trick.
must be Friday night:
SHF admits to hitting the sauce and having fun, ferd has fallen into Gilligan, no sign of Janice but . . .
where’s Josh? No offense Max, I like your stuff, just a bit worried, been a few weeks it seems . . .
reading Robert Parker westerns myself so hey.
ROFL. Are you Dave Barry behind that pseudonym?
Yes, where is Josh? I enjoy his cartoons and would love to see more of them.
G Leo
How did Dawn get through the police station metal detector with those earrings?
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09/13/crew-filming-reality-tv-show-forced-to-cancel-trek-through-northwest-passage-on-jet-skis-after-costly-rescue/
Clipe: from the article on the reality TV folks trying cross the NW Passage:
“.,the goal was to cross the Northwest Passage, round the southern tip of Greenland and finish off by pulling into London, England.
Instead, they were bogged down by plummeting temperatures, a polar bear ripping apart one of their tents and the ocean freezing underneath them.”
I predict just from the news on things polar, hundreds of ships of fools will be seeking the Darwin Award in coming years.
http://www.darwinawards.com/
Mr. Flashman
About increased sea ice extent you wrote: “Possibly, due to increased precipitation from warmer temps….”
How does increased precipitation from warmer temps cause sea ice to extend? Sea ice increases with cold; land ice increases with precipitation. So in not explaining why sea ice is growing, you do explain why Antarctic land ice is.
I look forward to your next explanations. They set the “science” of AGW back to its cult origins.
SHF is busy.
http://www.supermotors.net/getfile/271335/fullsize/smiley-shit-hits-the-fan.gif
For the technically-inclined, here is how the fan is powered.
Max, seems like a bit of overkill just to get s*** faced. A good scotch would do the trick and, as a bonus, during fermentation it releases some nice CO2 to help the next year’s grain crop grow…
SHF was referring to the idea that the S. ocean is freshening due to precip and melt water runoff from the continent, allowing it to freeze at a higher temp than the previous saltier water. That is summarized here: http://www.wunderground.com/climate/facts/antarctica_is_losing_ice_sheet.asp
THE PROBLEM I HAVE — is finding hard data on that freshening. NASA has a pic showing some areas freshening, but some not. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/antarctic_melting.html
Where is the data on melt water and precip? Looking around for icecap delta, you can find values from +20 GT/YR to -200 GT/YR (or more) So is the continental ice growing slowly, shrinking fast or maybe holding its own? How much actual melt water runoff is reaching the ocean (as opposed to loss by sublimation or evap)
Is there really enough additional precip plus runoff to freshen the S. ocean enough to allow millions of KM^2 of sea ice to form 400, 500, 600 miles out to sea from the continent?
This from NASA: “The new model suggests that colder, stormier, and faster winds are rushing over the waters encircling Antarctica — especially the Ross Sea, where ice growth has been the most rapid. The winds create areas of open water near the coast – known as polynyas – that promote sea ice production.
At the same time, warmer air from higher pressure systems are simultaneously encroaching upon the Antarctic Peninsula, one sliver of the continent that is experiencing rapid warming.
In other words, it’s a little warmer but the winds are colder and the combo of fresher water and stronger, colder winds (near the coast?) are conspiring to make it just right for millions of KM^2 of new ice to form, based on a difference in freezing temp of the water of maybe 1 deg C (depending on just how much fresher the water really is) with much of that ice hundreds of KM out to sea in what was already known as the most violent ocean on Earth. Based on, you got it, a model…
Smell test –> Fail.
Bill Murphy
From your link discussing various excuses for the 1992-2015 steady Antarctic sea ice increase .
See, that area of “blue” does NOT correspond to the areas where Antarctic sea ice actually is increasing. In fact, exactly the opposite, the blue area show the least sea ice increase, the red areas the greatest Antarctic sea ice increase.
Their reasoning fails. It’s logical perhaps, but it fails to replicate what is happening.
RACookPE1978:
“Their reasoning fails. It’s logical perhaps, but it fails to replicate what is happening.”
I completely agree their reasoning fails but suggest it’s not all that logical. They suggest that the ozone hole creates colder, stronger winds while at the same time persistent high pressure causes warming while at the same time melt water is freshening the ocean, aided by increased precip — in a cold/warmer high pressure environment while at the same time the wind opens up polynyas near the coast while at the same time ice is forming 800 KM out to sea? They postulate a “perfect storm” of various factors aligning perfectly to produce “unprecedented” sea ice growth — which, anecdotally, was at the exact same place in Oct 2014 as it was in Oct 1914 when Sir Ernest Shackleton encountered it on his ill fated voyage. And, as you point out, the sea ice extent does not correspond all that well to the NASA salt data. Occam’s razor, anybody? A natural cycle or a improbable perfect storm?
Bill Murphy
They would do better to admit “We do not know” and approach the problem with no biases. But, if they did that, they would also approach the problem with no funding and no possibility of ever getting published.
It is interesting that, until last year, there was NO linkage of the 1985-86-87 “ozone hole” with stronger Antarctic winds or Antarctic sea ice extents growing or Antarctic sea ice air temperatures and sea salinity changes. None. The Antarctic ozone hole was discovered and publicized between 1984-and 1987 to justify the Montreal Protocol Restrictions of 1987. Until it was “needed ” last year to justify unacceptable attention caused by the irritating large Antarctic sea ice, it had largely been ignored by mainstream publicly-funded Big Science.
Thus, one has to wonder why the “ozone hole” had NEVER been predicted nor associated with Antarctic sea ice extents nor affecting Antarctic sea ice areas until – !! – it was suddenly needed as an excuse for growing Antarctic sea ice during along-time of measured Antarctic continental air temperature decline.
Newspeak for “Publish or Perish” == “Publish the Pravda or Perish”
RACookPE1978,
What, like you and Bill Murphy have? Newspeak for “Publish or Perish” == “Publish the Pravda or Perish”
Or: Based on, you got it, a model…Smell test –> Fail.
Right … no bias here. None whatsoever. Not demonstrating the first clue about the utility of models for hypothesis formation, which can then be followed up with directed observation. To wit —
Greenbaum, et al. (2015), “Ocean access to a cavity beneath Totten Glacier in East Antarctica”: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2388.html
Abstract
Totten Glacier, the primary outlet of the Aurora Subglacial Basin, has the largest thinning rate in East Antarctica1, 2. Thinning may be driven by enhanced basal melting due to ocean processes3, modulated by polynya activity4, 5. Warm modified Circumpolar Deep Water, which has been linked to glacier retreat in West Antarctica6, has been observed in summer and winter on the nearby continental shelf beneath 400 to 500 m of cool Antarctic Surface Water7, 8. Here we derive the bathymetry of the sea floor in the region from gravity9 and magnetics10 data as well as ice-thickness measurements11. We identify entrances to the ice-shelf cavity below depths of 400 to 500 m that could allow intrusions of warm water if the vertical structure of inflow is similar to nearby observations. Radar sounding reveals a previously unknown inland trough that connects the main ice-shelf cavity to the ocean. If thinning trends continue, a larger water body over the trough could potentially allow more warm water into the cavity, which may, eventually, lead to destabilization of the low-lying region between Totten Glacier and the similarly deep glacier flowing into the Reynolds Trough. We estimate that at least 3.5 m of eustatic sea level potential drains through Totten Glacier, so coastal processes in this area could have global consequences.
The only thing they don’t caveat is the observed rate of thinning. Their suppositions don’t seem at all unreasonable to me. At the very least, they’re out in the field observing and trying to figure out what’s going on, unlike your buddy Bill with his apparently bottomless supply of personal incredulity and rhetorical questions:
Where is the data on melt water and precip? Looking around for icecap delta, you can find values from +20 GT/YR to -200 GT/YR (or more) So is the continental ice growing slowly, shrinking fast or maybe holding its own? How much actual melt water runoff is reaching the ocean (as opposed to loss by sublimation or evap) Is there really enough additional precip plus runoff to freshen the S. ocean enough to allow millions of KM^2 of sea ice to form 400, 500, 600 miles out to sea from the continent?
From KNMI — GRACE data processed by Ernst Schrama, TU Delft., mass [Gt] mass of Antarctica, interpolated single undefined anomalies linearly:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/idata_ant.png
Basal melt doesn’t have a chance to evaporate or sublime — a ridiculous thought at such low temperatures to begin with. One may as well ask why the Nile doesn’t evaporate or sublime before reaching its own delta and thence draining into the Mediterranean.
As for ice formation 600 miles out to sea away from presumably fresher coastal waters, my read is yes; that’s still somewhat a mystery, but Zhang (2006) has some ideas: http://psc.apl.washington.edu/zhang/Pubs/Zhang_Antarctic_20-11-2515.pdf
Abstract
Estimates of sea ice extent based on satellite observations show an increasing Antarctic sea ice cover from 1979 to 2004 even though in situ observations show a prevailing warming trend in both the atmosphere and the ocean. This riddle is explored here using a global multicategory thickness and enthalpy distribution sea ice model coupled to an ocean model. Forced by the NCEP–NCAR reanalysis data, the model simulates an increase of 0.20×10^12m^3yr-1 (1.0% yr^-1) in total Antarctic sea ice volume and 0.084×10^12 m^2 yr^-1 (0.6% yr^-1) in sea ice extent from 1979 to 2004 when the satellite observations show an increase of 0.027×10^12 m^2 yr^-1 (0.2% yr^-1) in sea ice extent during the same period. The model shows that an increase in surface air temperature and downward longwave radiation results in an increase in the upper-ocean temperature and a decrease in sea ice growth, leading to a decrease in salt rejection from ice, in the upper-ocean salinity, and in the upper-ocean density. The reduced salt rejection and upper-ocean density and the enhanced thermohaline stratification tend to suppress convective overturning, leading to a decrease in the upward ocean heat transport and the ocean heat flux available to melt sea ice. The ice melting from ocean heat flux decreases faster than the ice growth does in the weakly stratified Southern Ocean, leading to an increase in the net ice production and hence an increase in ice mass. This mechanism is the main reason why the Antarctic sea ice has increased in spite of warming conditions both above and below during the period 1979–2004 and the extended period 1948–2004.
Perhaps a bit strong of a conclusion for a model-based study, OTOH the physics are somewhat more sensible — and arguably quite a bit more informed by expertise — than Mr. Murphy’s evaporation/sublimation “theory” above. Do you see the irony? Probably not.
In the concluding remarks, Zhang writes: Thus, this study has identified a possible mechanism that explains the increasing trend in Antarctic sea ice under warming conditions. Note, however, that there may be other mechanisms that can be used to explain the paradox.
Personally, I would have written the concluding statement of the Abstract as: We propose that this is one plausible mechanism explaining why the Antarctic sea ice has increased in spite of warming conditions both above and below … yadda yadda yadda.
Moving on, Turner, et al. (2009) have some ideas about the role of “ozone hole”-driven circumpolar wind changes leading to polynya-enhanced sea ice augmentation: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009GL037524/full
[13] The spatial pattern of sea ice concentration trend in autumn (Figure 2) indicates that the greatest increase has been in the northern Ross Sea. The southwest Ross Sea is a region of strong sea ice production and export, as a result of the persistent polynyas. The trend in autumn sea ice motion for this region as derived from passive microwave data (not shown) indicates that there has been greater transport of ice out of the Ross Sea at this time of year, suggesting an increase in southerly near-surface winds since 1979. We find this to be consistent with changes in the MSLP gradient across the edge of the shelf between McMurdo station and the ‘Gill’ automatic weather station (AWS) on the eastern side. The Gill-McMurdo MSLP difference has increased by about 4 hPa over 1985–2000, with a greater drop of pressure at the AWS site compared to McMurdo, implying stronger flow off the ice shelf.
[14] The increase in southerly flow will give lower air temperatures, and will help maintain the polynyas along the coast. Combined, these will lead to greater ice production [Comiso, 2000] and also promote enhanced ice advection northwards.
Kind of counterintuitive at first, until one considers that a persistent polynya near the coast will tend to keep chunks of ice calving off glaciers and ice shelves from getting welded back together, hence more likely to get blown out to sea in autumn where they serve as nuclei for sea ice formation away from the coast in winter.
The paper ends with: However, the long control run of a coupled climate model does suggest that the recent increase in SIE might still be within the bounds of natural climate variability.
Demonstrating yet again that these authors at least have more objectivity than you or Bill give them credit for, don’t mindlessly put too much faith in their own models as you both allege, and very much allow for the possibility that they and their models are wrong — because that’s what honest researchers who are in touch with their own limits of human perception and cognition do when they know that they don’t know all there is to know …
… unlike some people who think that they’re omniscient, infallible, and that sea ice dynamics can be figured out by looking at a few charts on the Internet.
Thank you for your thoughts. Good things to reflect upon.
Brandon Gates:
Exactly like I did, Brandon. If you bother to read my comment you will see that most of it was a lament — “Where is the data…” and “Is there really enough…” and “So is the continental ice growing slowly, shrinking fast or maybe holding its own? How much actual melt water runoff is reaching the ocean (as opposed to loss by sublimation or evap)” I do not know and want to find out. The literature is all over the map on this issue, and you are well aware of that.
As for your statement: Bill with his apparently bottomless supply of personal incredulity and rhetorical questions:
Why, Thank You, Brandon. Personal incredulity, or perhaps its synonym “skepticism” is the Sine qua non of a responsible and informed citizen and the hallmark of a good scientist. While I’m no scientist I do consider myself a responsible and informed citizen. You should try it. Beats tilting at windmills. By the way, how is it possible to form a “rhetorical question” by asking which of the only 3 possibilities is the correct one? Maybe read a book on rhetoric before tossing about such big words.
As for the models, I’ve been using the output of various models for about 40 years, and even assisted in coding a few, way back in the 8 bit days. The first requirement is that the model demonstrates the ability to predict/simulate something with reasonable accuracy, That has not been demonstrated in climate science yet, as you also well know. Also the word “Model” does not appear anywhere in the abstract of the paper you quoted (Greenbaum, et al.) so what is your point? (That IS a rhetorical question)
Quickly (since this is too long already)
* Sublimation: http://www.igsoc.org:8080/journal/57/204/t10J220.pdf
* Evap on the continent is trivial, agreed. Once it spreads out over the ocean (since the lower density and consequent stratification is a core part of the sea-ice-due-to-fresh-water hypothesis) it may or may not be significant. I don’t know and have yet to find a paper that addresses that.
* As for: “…think that they’re omniscient, infallible, and that sea ice dynamics can be figured out by looking at a few charts on the Internet.” Is that not what you just did, too? Is that not, excluding the few professionals here, what most are trying to do here? I read and post here because after following this discussion since 1973 when “Ice Age” and “Runaway Greenhouse” were the terms de jour, and having been on BOTH SIDES of the discussion in those 42 years, I resent where certain political groups have taken it and I have concluded, based on reading a lot, that the physical effects of AGW are minor and far less catastrophic than the political, societal, economic and humanitarian cost of some of the solutions being bandied about. I’m here because I know I am fallible. Why are you here?
Bill Murphy,
A subjective determination.
Read the literature.
Not unexpectedly.
Perhaps I was hasty to tar you with the same brush I often apply to others here, but all too often I have seen “If the planet is getting warmer, why Antarctic ice increase?” Almost always leaving out the distinction between landed …
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/idata_ant.png
… vs. sea ice …
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/iS_ice_extent19862005a.png
… or noting that Greenland …
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/idata_grs.png
… is merrily melting at a visibly appreciable accelerating rate. When I see the same people repeating the same “question” about the apparent incongruity of Antarctic sea ice as some sort of falsification of a gradually warming planet even after I or others have shown them data from the exact same sources which clearly show that, on balance, far more ice is melting than freezing … well, I tend to become somewhat jaded to the whole, “Aw shucks, I’m just asking properly skeptical questions here” routine.
Which windmills would those be, exactly? That the preponderance of available data point toward a warming globe with human activities contributing to it significantly? Or pointing to that data and watching it bounce off people who are arbitrarily selective about which data are credible?
Long experience with rhetoricians has given me somewhat of a nose for the rat. It’s twitching something fierce right now, but I’ll allow that it’s been known to be wrong.
No, that is not something that I well know. The first requirement of designing a model is to specify its purpose and set targets for its required fidelity to the system it is attempting to predict. The first step in evaluating model performance is to understand its design specifications and intended use. Before claiming that a model has failed “reasonable” accuracy, it really behooves one to state what is “reasonable”.
When the modellers say, “look, these things weren’t designed to get the exact timing of internal variability correct, expect deviations on the order of decades on either side of the long-term mean” and that goes ignored by “the models suck” crowd … it’s difficult for me to conclude that the CMIP5 critics making much of an effort to be reasonable.
Good question. Lemme check. Ah. Your words: Based on, you got it, a model… Smell test –> Fail.
My comment, essentially: yes, models for hypothesis formation followed by directed observation a la Greenbaum.
Thanks for the reference. Too tired to read it tonight. The balance of what you’re delving into really is not known with what I’d call any degree of certainty in literature. But I may have missed a paper or ten … I don’t, and cannot, read them all, nor do I have the expertise to always know which papers to pay the most attention to. So, there’s a gap in what I understand layered on top of this, which I shortcut by noting that land ice is decreasing unambiguously. To me, that makes the questions about precip, evap and sublimation somewhat academic (read: irrelevant) as a point of debate for landed Antarctic ice. Greenbaum and co. are not the only ones in the game discussing basal melt as a function of warmer subsurface waters from the north upwelling near the coast and undermining ice shelves. The sea ice is an interesting conundrum, but the landed ice is of most concern. The whole Southern Ocean freezing over — or Arctic Ocean melting — would not change sea levels one whit, but the WAIS trebling or quadrupling in melt rate would not bode well at all.
Kinda figgered you’d ask, so I already had my, “Yes, I’m an insufferable know-it-all” speech queued up and ready to let fly. It’s one of my guilty pleasures, and I’m not above my petty diversions. But when push comes to shove, I yield to published experts on this, or any, topic.
The sheer amount of garbage posted here by self-proclaimed experts is worth every bit of derision I heave at it in my most humble opinion. It’s not like I don’t ever goof, but since everything I write here is “wrong” by definition it can be difficult for me to immediately know the difference.
My smelling of the rat is getting ever stronger by the paragraph. The planet doesn’t give a flying leap about whose politics you don’t like.
Oh, among the many reasons is to point out inconsistency in drearily common climate contrarian narratives, such as: “I’m here because I’m fallible, yet AGW simply isn’t an issue worth losing sleep over except for the fact that ‘certain political groups’ are very well likely to ruin us all trying to stop a non-problem.” Do you seriously not realize what an obvious discrepancy that is? Has it never once entered your mind that no one side of the politics is 100% responsible for the politicization of the science? Hmmm? Who brought politics into this discussion, only then to turn right around and complain about the politics. Was it me? Or you?
Yes. Leave off the word “significantly” and we might have a discussion. If humanity went extinct tonight, or had in 1900, can you or anyone else say with any certainty that the climate would remain as it is, or would it go into another MWP or RWP or Holocene optimum or fall into another LIA or perhaps leave the relatively stable recent climate entirely and move to a full blown ice age or even an Eocene maximum?
If CO2 could doom the planet, the Chicxulub Impact Event would have done it a long time ago, releasing more CO2 in a few minutes than all humanity has done in all human history, and starting with about 4X the current CO2 to begin with. http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/impacts97/pdf/6095.pdf
Regardless, this exchange is not worth my time (and probably not yours either) and is highly unlikely to change the outcome of the greater debate. So enjoy your windmills and I’ll enjoy mine.
I don’t know of anyone who thinks human-generated greenhouse gases are going to doom the planet, just human civilization in its current form. Which the Chicxulub Impact Event would have done handily, had we been around to see it.
Flashman:
“To destroy our planet with malice aforethought, with only the most immediate profits on the brain, with only your own comfort and wellbeing (and those of your shareholders) in mind: Isn’t that the ultimate crime? Isn’t that terracide?” Tom Engelhardt, American Empire Project
“There is enough oil in the ground to deep-fry the lot of us, and no obvious means to prevail upon governments and industry to leave it in the ground.” George Monbiot
Hi Harry. Back with more misdirection again I see. There are two for starters. And in case you missed it, all this started in the ’70s with the runaway greenhouse hypothesis that would totally destroy the biosphere, a la Venus. The catastrophe predictions have been in a steady decline in the intensity of their predictions ever since, to the point where they are, from a total global perspective, more like annoyances than catastrophes.
Obviously Chicxulub would have wiped out humanity, or very close to it. But not from CO2. The paleo climate record shows hardly a blip from all that CO2. Peer reviewed papers actually suggest that the huge release of CO2 (estimated at 1X to 5X total human CO2 to date) aided the biosphere in recovery from that disaster, just as current CO2 is aiding reforestation and agriculture. (Lomax et al. (2001))
if you want to worry about something that will doom “human civilization in its current form” then I suggest worrying about a renewed nuclear arms race, another Chicxulub, global pandemic, global food production without cheap energy………….
CO2 is not the elephant in the room, it’s the mouse.
Sure, maybe Monbiot is saying there is literally a quantity of oil that would require us to deep-fry the entire human race, or maybe he’s using a metaphor meaning that the burning of all that oil would do us great harm. No way of knowing.
Anyway, it’s easy to do a quick google and find some outrageous AGW statement that’s on a par with the kind of lunatic hyperbole we see in this forum every day (“if we use renewables, MILLIONS will DIE!”) but I thought it was evident that I was talking about serious science.
Bill Murphy,
Find an IPCC report which says, “We’re allllll going to diiieeeeeee” and you’ll have my attention. I suppose fair is fair; SHF’s statement was indeed formally incorrect.
Ruling out runaway warming looks like nothing more than good scientific practice to me. Annoyance vs. catastrophe seems a matter of opinion, not just for the qualitative subjectivity but for the remaining uncertainty about more quantitative things like magnitude and timing of effects.
I didn’t find Lomax (2001), but in my search did happen upon Beerling et al. (2002), which has one B. H. Lomax listed as a co-author. Dunno if it’s the same Lomax, but here’s the full paper, with an excerpt from the abstract: http://www.pnas.org/content/99/12/7836.full
Abstract
The end-Cretaceous mass extinctions, 65 million years ago, profoundly influenced the course of biotic evolution. These extinctions coincided with a major extraterrestrial impact event and massive volcanism in India. Determining the relative importance of each event as a driver of environmental and biotic change across the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (KTB) crucially depends on constraining the mass of CO2 injected into the atmospheric carbon reservoir. Using the inverse relationship between atmospheric CO2 and the stomatal index of land plant leaves, we reconstruct Late Cretaceous-Early Tertiary atmospheric CO2 concentration (pCO2) levels with special emphasis on providing a pCO2 estimate directly above the KTB. Our record shows stable Late Cretaceous/Early Tertiary background pCO2 levels of 350–500 ppm by volume, but with a marked increase to at least 2,300 ppm by volume within 10,000 years of the KTB. Numerical simulations with a global biogeochemical carbon cycle model indicate that CO2 outgassing during the eruption of the Deccan Trap basalts fails to fully account for the inferred pCO2 increase. Instead, we calculate that the postboundary pCO2 rise is most consistent with the instantaneous transfer of ≈4,600 Gt C from the lithic to the atmospheric reservoir by a large extraterrestrial bolide impact. A resultant climatic forcing of +12 W⋅m−2 would have been sufficient to warm the Earth’s surface by ≈7.5°C, in the absence of counter forcing by sulfate aerosols. This finding reinforces previous evidence for major climatic warming after the KTB impact and implies that severe and abrupt global warming during the earliest Paleocene was an important factor in biotic extinction at the KTB.
If Lomax is the same author he sure changed his mind quickly if your reading of the 2001 paper is correct … ah. Yes he is, this time with Beerling as a co-author: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Barry_Lomax/publication/222700904_Rapid_(10-yr)_recovery_of_terrestrial_productivity_in_a_simulation_study_of_the_terminal_Cretaceous_impact_event/links/02bfe50eee4a3f2cae000000.pdf
Our results suggest that terrestrial primary productivity initially collapsed and then recovered to pre-impact levels within a decade. Global terrestrial carbon storage in vegetation biomass exhibited a similar collapse but complete recovery took place on a 60-80 yr timescale. The recovery of both terrestrial net primary productivity and vegetation biomass was largely mediated by the high CO 2 concentration stimulating ecosystem photosynthetic productivity in the warm low latitudes.
Yup, there’s the good news, and yes it looks like a bit of a self-contradiction …
An apparently rapid recovery of terrestrial ecosystem function stands in marked contrast to the situation for the marine realm, where the organic carbon flux to the deep ocean was suppressed for up to 3 million years.
… until one reads the rest of the abstract. Figure 4 at the very bottom of the paper shows some pretty serious warming 50 years post-impact as well. Lastly, the abstract also says:
Here, we have evaluated this environmental influence on terrestrial ecosystems using a process-based dynamic global vegetation model forced with post-impact global climates, derived by modification of the GENESIS atmospheric climate model simulation for the latest Cretaceous.
How is it that you put it?
Um …..
Flashman,
‘Twas to me, but I can’t help but now ask you to define “serious”. 🙂
Dealing with quoteminers, context-snippers, word-twisters, the deliberately obtuse and those who are pedantically literal to a fault tends toward tedium, does it not?
The penguins appear indifferent
to their presumed predicament.
20 March: ChronicleHerald, NovaScotia: Marine Atlantic ferry finally closing in on North Sydney port
PHOTO CAPTION: Coast guard icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent leads Marine Atlantic ferry MV Blue Puttees into Sydney Harbour on Friday afternoon after being stuck in ice since Wednesday.
The Marine Atlantic ferry MV Blue Puttees was expected to finally make it into port in North Sydney late Friday after being stuck in thick pack ice off Cape Breton since Wednesday.
Help arrived Friday morning, but it was slow going all day, said Darrell Mercer, spokesman for Marine Atlantic…
“It’s been a challenging few days … because of the winds that were associated with that (storm) system. The ice became pressurized and caused some thicker ridges.
“This morning they’re still trying to break through the ice, but the ice pressure is still too thick, too severe. This is the worst ice conditions we’ve experienced in years.”…
http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1275679-marine-atlantic-ferry-finally-closing-in-on-north-sydney-port
a different incident :
VIDEO: `17 March: CBC: MV Highlanders breaks through ice off Cape Breton
Canadian Coast Guard ship Louis S. St-Laurent worked to free ferry
PHOTO CAPTION 1 of 7: Fisheries and Oceans Canada tweeted this photo of the iced-in ferry
“It encountered some pressurized thick ice just off Cape Breton and became stuck,” said Darrell Mercer of Marine Atlantic. “This is just another of those challenges Mother Nature seems to be throwing at us.”…
“This year, it moved in early to mid-February, and it doesn’t show any signs of going away any time soon,” he said. “I’ve heard the Canadian Coast Guard say it’s the worst of the 30-year averages they’ve been keeping.”…
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/mv-highlanders-breaks-through-ice-off-cape-breton-1.2998070
084h GZ 500 forecast valid on Mar 24, 2015 12 UTC
http://weather.gc.ca/data/ensemble/images/2015032100_054_E1_north@america_I_ENSEMBLE_gz@moy_084.png
More ice in some parts of Antarctica, less in others. Arctic ice shrunk then gained. Less hurricanes, less tornados. The western US is hot and dry, the eastern US is cold and snowy. No global warming in over a decade.
Seems like weather patterns to me.
I know you all are really serious about this but I found Mike Borgeit’s post incredibly interesting:
http://ww2.tnstate.edu/ganter/BIO311-Ch6-Eq1.gif
I read that as “SEX=the root of SIN.”
Must be bedtime 😉
But if money is the root of all evil, what is the limit as sex approaches money?
Sex tends toward infinity as money approaches. The function is unconstrained..
Um if it’s traditionally frozen solid in mid summer, why is it called a “bay”?
Article should read “sailed 100 mi further south than anyone else had been stupid and reckless enough to.”
Andrew
During the mid-summer Antarctic “thaw” there is often a recess (or notch) of open ocean in the sea ice (frequently also called a polyana), around the deep permanent Antarctic Ross ice shelf in this area. Thus, a predictable sheltered “bay” in the otherwise featureless Antarctic coastline of permanent sea ice and shelf ice.
“At such times, Antarctica draws for us pale – sine, long fingers of winter. Each ends with a claw ice cold. These hands wander the ocean groping blindly for warmth of our bodies. You can see as they pass next to bow Selma and disappear into the darkness. But sometimes wywęszą us and then like hungry snakes, crawling on all sides. There is no escape from them, you can only watch in horror as wrap around the man and despite numerous layers of clothes, suck the heat feeding it to your heart’s content. Cold bursts with redoubled strength and devour the remains of energy. Fingers and toes go numb and no longer feel anything. The body turns into one big icicle, and only a pair of blazing breath proves that man still fighting. Sticks his head deeper into the hood, so no splinter of ice time does not fall into the eye. Here the road to the palace of the Queen of Ice is so short … ”
“I close the door behind the wheelhouse, take off stiff with ice sailing, colleagues serve hot tea, soup evaporates on the table. Nice that our cottage on the water. Laughing, cozy and fragrant …, maybe with these smells are different case, but in any case, a bouquet is quite broad.
Stove heater, but you know what gives the most heat? Eleven good people … I is not really me about metabolism, indeed trivial treating us like bateryjki the Matrix. Peacefully fall asleep wrapped up in a sleeping bag, and the ice melted the heat of the ghosts disappear Eleven Hearts … And let it be sentimental ending, what the hell! Real tough guys are not afraid of emotions :)”
http://www.selmaantarktyda.com/assets/Uploads/_resampled/ResizedImage586376-Lowcy-Growlerow-02-TLopata.jpg
Has it occurred to anyone that Flashgun might be a bot?
The multiple self-contradictions – the slightly irrelevant responses, the stubborn repetitions of myths when presented with facts widely acknowledged by universally respected sources…
Maybe they’re ‘tuning’ him, by pitching him up against the creme of the ‘Denialists’ right here at WUWT.
It’s a thought though.
An interesting thought. Could it be that entire publications like the Men’s Journal are also pasted together by robots without much human intervention?
If Sir Harry Flashman is a bot, that would mean that all the other posters in this thread are stupider than a bot because he is the only one making any sense and backing it up with evidence.
WHAT “evidence”??
So far, all I’ve read are his assertions.
If you have evidence to support Flash’s view, post it. You will be the first.
I post links constantly, you just ignore them. I can only speculate why that is.
The most common English nickname for Harry is HAL . Sound familiar?
I have read over a month of the reports from this group and there is absolutely no indication of what this magazine claims. They did come into the Bay of Whales at 78 degrees 25 minutes south but they claim no record at all and it is near a whaling station that was visited many times in the past…
Is that the furthest south? More data less hyperbole..
After checking Wikipedia you immediately find out that the claim in the magazine is horse manure. There have been several ships that were not ice breakers further south than the 78 degrees 42 minutes (the Polish report was 78.25 south) claimed in the a Yachting world magazine article.
http://www.yachtingworld.com/blogs/elaine-bunting/polish-crew-sets-record-for-sailing-furthest-south-in-the-antarctic-62710
The Yachting world article has hyperbole in it as well.
Good lord people!
Setting a ”furthest south” record for ships must be done in the Ross sea, since this is the southernmost ocean existing.
How far south and exactly where this “southernmost point” is will vary from year to year. The Ross Shelf ice moves slowly northwards and from time to time large areas of ice break off it and drift away. Setting a “south record” involves finding a place where this happened recently and then sailing as close to the ice barrier as you dare. This is not a safe proposition. Smaller ice-bergs calve unpredictably from the barrier and if you are too close when this happens your craft can be crushed or swamped.
Actually voyaging in Antarctic waters, and the Southern Ocean generally is never risk-free. It is a notoriously stormy area, and there is always a risk to collide with a growler. Rescue facilities are virtually non-existent. The waters around the Peninsula are reasonably safe in summer since there are a fair number of bases and resupply and cruise ships around. The Ross Sea is much less frequented, though there is a major base at McMurdo and at least a few cruise ships each year.
Graph shows that the strong solar wind causes a drop in temperature in the stratosphere. above the polar circle.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_JFM_NH_2015.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_JFM_SH_2015.gif
Other items in “Men’s”; “The best headphones for every activity” and “The top 10 sex mistakes men should avoid”. I wonder if the latter should include the former.
You beat me to it, Ed. The Men’s Journal page also tells us about the “10 Worst Things You Can Say To A Flight Attendant” and this:
I think I’d put inertia, gravity, and heat transference at the top of my list. In any case, I learned the dangers of each at a very early age and still have the scars to prove it. 😉
That’s a good list. I would only add the biochemical effects of ethanol.
Bill Nye and science have long since parted ways…
I’ve been bailed after my arrest for drink-driving on the internet highway.
My premise is tho’ there is not accidental evolution. There is individual evolution where in an individual’s ( collection of living bits ) own lifetime it can change it’s own physique and metabolism to improve chances of survival and if you accept that you might accept that a society might make the individuals that it wants ( in dreams ) and if you accept that you might think that there is an underlying template ( of how things can be ) that a living thing can be aware of and if you accept that then you might think that there is an underlying template to everything of how things can be and that not only living things but everything can choose which way it wants to go.
this asks ” Do bees dream? “. If consciousness can be shared could the planet Earth be self aware ?
Hey guys Im as sceptical as the next guy but I’m with Flashman .They got lucky and had a ride and a half -whats not to like
Having attended George Macdonald Fraser’s sadly final book launch (got his autograph, such a nice man) I’m reminded that his multi-adventured Sir Harry Flashman charged with his Regiment at Balaclava – Lord Cardigan’s ‘CHERRYPICKERS’ as they were known because of their red trousers. Wot does this say about DATA MANAGEMENT?
By the way, let’s not descend to Wot’s Up etc website levels of personal abuse. So undignified.
Agreed. Whatever your views I cannot but respect a man who met Mr. Fraser, to my mind one of the great writers of the English language.
So much troll.
I know I am a bit late to this, but I am surprised that no one challenged Sir Harry Flashman about his assertion: “However, I also know that Antarctic land ice, which is what really matters in terms of sea level rise, is melting at a rather astonishing rate in both West and East Antarctica.”
My understanding is that Antarctic Land Ice is actually growing as well (or at least is reasonably stable), and is projected not to be a contributor to sea level rise for the next 100-200 years. Here are a couple of supporting articles:
NASA ICESat data indicates that land ice is increasing in Antarctica:
http://www.ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20120013495
Consolidation studies (which use multiple measurement techniques) indicate that Antarctic melting is at best only a minor contributor to sea level rise, and that increased snowfall in Antarctica may cause it to *lower* sea level during the next 100-200 years:
http://dro.dur.ac.uk/10898/1/10898.pdf?DDD14+dgl1p… (see bottom of page 14)
udcme,
You are right, the entire Antarctic is cooling [except for the small peninsula to the north west]. That means, ipso facto that there will be more ice. In fact, last year set a new record.
But people like Sir Harry Flashman throw out so much misinformation that it’s hard to keep up. That’s probably why no one addressed that particular point.
That is true. It does not negate what I wrote.
There is substantial melting occurring in East Antarctica as well: http://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2388.epdf?referrer_access_token=1iycSaHzBwo4_dw9hdQawNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0M6FkI2Id53a8a4YoVhkHdRvu5zQo6dS9Bd2iL29-XkpMtohsm7Q6K5gtTkrT668ijlq1NwADjpZP4PkmHzuTjD6cLvt7iGpgc5eiJQyf1AuTegdWHwKgYOdtxe5HtSzCaAGnVKS8QKbIwghZeq16vOnXq74Po1RJmpFExNNrhKCw%3D%3D&tracking_referrer=boingboing.net
I took a look at your link and here is what I find. One glacier with melting in a cavity in winter and summer, warmer water below cold surface water modulated by polynya activity involved. Please tell me what this tells me about global warming? Do you know what a polynya is? Why do you think this is substantial melting? In 2013 the coldest record broken was in East Antarctica.
Here is a wider picture of temperature in Antarctica.
[RSS Southern Polar Temperature Lower Troposphere (TLT) – 1979 to Present]
ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/graphics/tlt/plots/rss_ts_channel_tlt_southern%20polar_land_and_sea_v03_3.png
From the NASA report:
“During 2003 to 2008, the mass gain of the Antarctic ice sheet from snow accumulation exceeded the mass loss from ice discharge by 49 Gt/yr (2.5% of input), as derived from ICESat laser measurements of elevation change.”
A five year period only…hardly long enough to make the claims above by udcme.
“A slow increase in snowfall with climate warming, consistent with model predictions, may be offsetting increased dynamic losses.”
Ah yes, models hmmm…and the word “may”.
And look, it’s warming in the Antarctic according to the NASA report!
From the second study posted by udcme:
“The contribution of Antarctica to SLR is predicted to increase logarithmically with rising global temperatures (as positive feedbacks become increasingly apparent later) but with little change, and even perhaps a negative contribution, in the next 100-200 years.”
“Two models produce ice-sheet thickening over East Antarctica and increased ice flux at the grounding line due to higher snowfall. However, both studies fail to account for processes at the ice-sheet – ice shelf – ocean interface, such as grounding-line retreat or loss of buttressing.”
“An alternative method based on probabilistic extrapolation of sustained glacier retreat from such numerical model output leads to a SLR contribution of 130 mm by 2100”
Ah so the claim that there might perhaps be a negative contribution, in the next 100-200 years is on shaky ground and there might in fact be a sea level rise contribution from Antarctica of 130 mm in the next 85 years instead!
And instead of just looking at a short time frame of 5 years by NASA, what’s been happening in the past 20 years?
From the second study posted by udcme:
“During the last 20 years, the AIS as a whole (East, West, and Antarctic Peninsula) has been losing mass.”
Reblogged this on Norah4you's Weblog and commented:
This is what a scholar of mine taught us at Linköping’s University and what I have used illustrating facts about our Earth ever since:
Earth diameter Earth’s diameter is 12,756 km at the equator. (Earth’s radius is half of that)
Maximum height and maximum depth
Earth’s highest mountain, Mount Everest is ; 8848 meters high .( In other words, 8 km 848 m)
The Earth’s deep Challangerdjupet in Mariner grave, Pacific Ocean, 11034 meter deep. (In other words 11 km 34 meter)
If you on a model of Earth use 10 km = 1 mm then you will have this figure…
Man has made it to the moon is about 384,392 km (average distance) away. Few research projects have been able to get down to that depth. The reason is that the pressure increases with depth.
More info on: Fakta om Jorden
Brandon Gates
March 22, 2015 at 2:59 am
You’re a smart guy, and I admire that you present the CAGW case in a readable and complete sense on each topic – references, discussion, caveats, too. It is rare to see. Paradoxically, it is almost impossible to get a debate out of the best known scientists persuaded that a CAGW juggernaut is pressing down upon us and only a killing cure is at hand. They let psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, political scientists, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers do the heavy lifting in the debate – which is mainly to label adversaries at the lowest of levels. Kudos to you. However, I sense that you imagine yourself among Luddites who just don’t get or have an ‘agenda’ or are perhaps in the pay of scurrilous hydrocarbon mongers. Do I need to say that you are among smart guys too, that differ with the experts and are without ties to the hydrocarbon agenda. In this day and age on the internet, you of course get everybody but it’s axiomatic that it is foolish to be so dismissive of clearly those YOU can recognize as smart guys who believe what they say.
Re: losses of ice in the Antarctic: you yourself must recognize the need for skeptics in a debate where everything is presented as anomalies and models and interpretations on limited and uncertain data. For example, loss of a hundred gigatons of ice over a half a dozen years sounds like a lot to the uninitiated person. When you measure it up against 28 million gigatons of ice that remains, you can see that it would take 280,000 yrs for it to melt if their half a dozen years can be argued to be a trend. Also, a reasonable person could agree that the accuracy of measurements and calculations that 100/28,000,000 or 0.0000036 marginal loss of ice must have error bars that bury this tiny figure into meaninglessness.
Let’s see why. I’m not sure that anyone is sure what the average annual snowfall is on Antarctica. Its about 8 inches (20cm) in coastal regions and much lower in the interior. Would you go for 10cm (0.1m which is 0.01m of water) average for simplicity of calculation? This equates to (14M sq km size) 140,000 giga-metric tons of snowfall a year on the continent, which is 1400 times the “measured” loss per annum according to Gracey.
Let’s let Murphy be your friend and have half this snow disappear through sublimation so there is 700 times as much added as taken away. To talk about 100 gigatons net loss is simply ingenuous and egregious.
Gary Pearse,
Opposition against anomalies makes zero sense to me. Interpretation of limited and uncertain data is what science is all about, and yes, that often means doing modelling work. One should always be skeptical in the face of evident uncertainty. These points are academic.
The amount of ice left is not a quantity important to me. If an 18 year pause in surface warming is good enough to declare AGW dead, 18 years of ice sheet mass estimates ought to be a good enough rebuttal: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011GL046583/abstract
In 2006, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets experienced a combined mass loss of 475 ± 158 Gt/yr, equivalent to 1.3 ± 0.4 mm/yr sea level rise. Notably, the acceleration in ice sheet loss over the last 18 years was 21.9 ± 1 Gt/yr^2 for Greenland and 14.5 ± 2 Gt/yr^2 for Antarctica, for a combined total of 36.3 ± 2 Gt/yr^2 . This acceleration is 3 times larger than for mountain glaciers and ice caps (12 ± 6 Gt/yr^2).
One relevant quantity here is 365 Gt ice for 1 mm of sea level. The other is the acceleration in rate of melt. The body of the paper puts things in context in the paragraph just prior to the conclusion:
[19] If the acceleration in ice sheet loss of 36.3 ± 2 Gt/yr 2 continues for the next decades, the cumulative ice sheet loss would raise global sea level by 15 ± 2 cm in year 2050 compared to 2009/2010. The GIC would contribute a sea level rise of 8 ± 4 cm, and thermal expansion of the ocean would add another 9 ± 3 cm based on the average of scenarios A1B, A2 and B1 [Meehl et al., 2007], for a total rise of 32 ± 5 cm. At the current rate of acceleration in ice sheet loss, starting at 500 Gt/yr in 2008 and increasing at 36.5 Gt/yr^2, the contribution of ice sheets alone scales up to 56 cm by 2100. While this value may not be used as a projection given the considerable uncertainty in future acceleration of ice sheet mass loss, it provides one indication of the potential contribution of ice sheets to sea level in the coming century if the present trends continue.
Noting the final caveat there, if one does assume that the current rates of acceleration continue to hold true; starting in 2006, using 2,565,000 Gt for Greenland and 23,850,000 Gt for Antarctica, Greenland would fully melt by 2475 and Antarctica by 3815.
I don’t think making inferences about error by only considering the 0.0000036 fractional loss necessarily follows. But I can generate some ridiculously small numbers too. Recalling that this discussion started with discussions about Antarctic sea ice extent, and noting that nobody here seems to be disputing those observations: from 1979 through 2014 the rate of increase is 0.0216088 million km^2/year. The maximum extent in Sep. 2014 was 20.1 km^2. The annual trend is 0.0010751 of that, or 0.0000424 of the entire surface of the planet. Sooooo …
a) What’s all the fuss about?
b) How in the heck are they getting such unbelievable precision?
In cases such as these, I look to see whether multiple lines of evidence converge on a similar answer. The charge carried by a single electron comes to mind. Ya’ dig?
I’d consult literature and see what people who do this kind of thing for a living have to say about it.
Your argument rests on numbers pulled out of a hat AFTER having said you’re not sure anyone knows what the average annual snowfall is. Does it not occur to you that this is a bit inconsistent on your part?
I indeed concede your point about the shortness of the pause (a mere 17 years ~ as long as the warming we were to be so concerned about) and and the small numbers. Another example is the 2011 paper you quote:
” If the acceleration in ice sheet loss of 36.3 ± 2 Gt/yr 2 continues for the next decades, the cumulative ice sheet loss would raise global sea level by 15 ± 2 cm in year 2050 compared to 2009/2010.”
You probably already know that ice balance is climbing again on Greenland already (trend up above the baseline average this season) so that paper on small numbers is already heading for the trash bin.
http://beta.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
I think you will now better understand my point about small numbers being the main point that skeptics raise about the whole CAGW storm in a tea cup. These reversals are nothing to what has been happening for eons. I’m a geologist and myself and colleagues have been the putting ointment on the CAGW burns for a few decades. Ice Ages, the dried up bed of the Mediterranean, the continents drifting around, dinosaur fossils in Antarctica, hippopotamus bones in UK, crocodiles in Svalbard, tropical tree fossils in coal in Greenland, corals that grew at the rate of the 120m sea level rise since the glacial maximum, river deltas that did the same thing because they are formed when river sediment settles with river flow slowed by the sea. The reversal when sea level falls – waves break up the coral and the deltas and keep them near sea level……It’s a wonderful perspective to look out on and explains why we tend to be a quieter, peaceful lot.
I’ve got a friend was in the british navy since a lad he says to me ” never, under any circumstances, go on the water “
All this arguing over whether the current Artic ice is 2 standard deviations above or below normal. Considering that for most of the last million years or so, the northern hemisphere is in an Ice Age 80-90 percent of the time with ice extending down to the Chesapeake Bay and over to Indiana, isn’t the current status off by a few hundred deviations? Why do we argue with alarmists about the current climate status relative to the last 10, 30 or 150 years when it is on a millennial time scale that is pertinent?
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JG
Well, why do you believe that a 7% loss of Arctic sea ice is a catastrophic problem, when there is a 34% INCREASE in the Antarctic sea ice during a period when the Antarctic continental air temperatures have steadily decreased over a 38 year period, and most areas of the Antarctic land ice are increasing in depth and weight?