NASA’s updated data appears to suggest the annual rate of global polar ice loss has actually decreased
Greenland’s Riviera – their green southwest. Will another Maunder minimum
grip the region in cages of ice again, or will bells ring in the portside squares,
as they did in the 1300’s before that cooling came, and ships sailed the fiords?
(Source: NASA)
Excerpt:
Washington Post correspondant Juliet Eilperin, in her 12-26-08 report entitled “New climate change estimates more pessimistic,” dutifully surveys the latest bleak findings of the climate change community. Her primary source is a recently released survey comissioned by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program – expanding on the findings of the 2007 4th IPPC Report on Climate Change. Apparently this “new assessment suggests that earlier projections may have underestimated the climatic shifts that could take place by 2100.” One of Eilperin’s primary examples of alarming new data is reported as follows:
“In one of the reports most worrisome findings, the agency estimates that in light of recent ice sheet melting, global sea level rise could be as much as 4 feet by 2100. The IPCC had projected a sea level rise of no more than 1.5 feet by that time, but satellite data over the past two years show the world’s major ice sheets are melting much more rapidly than previously thought. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are now losing an average of 48 cubic miles of ice a year, equivalent to twice the amount of ice that exists in the Alps.”
Three years ago what NASA quantified as an alarming loss of annual ice loss from Greenland was easily demonstrated at that time to be an insignificant loss, and today NASA’s updated data appears to suggest the annual rate of global polar ice loss has actually decreased since then.
http://ecoworld.com/blog/2008/12/26/pessimistic-reporting-optimistic-data/
I’m guessing you would be less cavalier if you were one of the about 200 million people who will be displaced by a sea level rise of 50cm.
This assumes we sit around, wringing our hands, doing nothing. Holland, the country most affected by sea level rises in history, is also one of densest populated countries. In fact the highest population densities are in areas close to or below sea level. Empirically you would conclude increasing sea levels increases populations and not displaces them.
As for bets, why don’t you collectively underwrite the costs for a small island state if you are wrong?
What you propose is not a bet. A bet, for example, would be I’d pay for sea defences should they prove necessary in the next 100 years, but you would pay me the amount the sea defences would cost should they not prove necessary.
I’d take that bet for the Maldives, commonly cited as the best example of a state that will suffer from sea level rises, because I know that measurements show sea levels have actually decreased in the Maldives.
How much glacial ice is there locked up in Greenland and the Antarctic and how much is lost to melt each year? Well, if the figures for these are as good as the figures for ice extent in the Arctic, it’s anybody’s guess. Just look at the differences in three recent posted numbers for Arctic ice extent:
NSIDC – 25 Dec – just shy of 13 million km²
IARC-JAXA – 27 Dec (initial reading) – 12.075 million km²
NANSEN – 26 Dec – approx 11.8 million km²
A million km² is quite a ballpark figure to play with for something that’s so much easier to calculate than the measurements of glacial ice.
I would like to know why the Arctic ice extent has suddenly dipped down: But so far, no-one has given me a satisfactory answer.
The recent/current outbreaks of very cold Arctic air in N America, Europe and Asia means warmer (relatively speaking) air has been drawn into the Arctic to replace it.
The graph you show is anomalies, and the dip at this time of year means ice is forming less rapidly than usual due the warmer air.
It’s weather.
Roger Sowell mentioned using spherical geometry.
Scott Gibson mentioned not all sea is bounded by cliffs.
Intrigued by these comments, I decided to check how much _extra_ water the oceans will gain, adding 5cm to the radius of the globe. The surface of a sphere is calculated as 4*pi*r^2, so there should be some effect.
It appears the ocean surface will grow with 5.67 square km. For 5cm, this would have a content of 0.000142 cubic km, or 141,865.56 cubic meters. That’s a lot of water, but not significant at all…
Inputs used:
r = 6,378.137 km
water area = 70.8 %
Cheers,
Remmitt
I’m guessing you would be less cavalier if you were one of the about 200 million people who will be displaced by a sea level rise of 50cm. A rate of 2.5cm in 5 years would be huge and nearly double the current rate of rise.
As for bets, why don’t you collectively underwrite the costs for a small island state if you are wrong?
*snort* David, as a person that lives near the coast in Florida, I’m not losing any sleep over “global warming”. I keep seeing exaggerated claims about how the earth is warming and the sky is falling. The earth warms and cools without any input from me or what I choose to drive.
Did you know that James Oglethorpe found thriving (abandoned) orange groves on Amelia Island (NE coast of Florida) in 1735? It is too cold for orange groves on Amelia Island now. The Spanish settlement on the island was wiped out by the British in 1702, so those orange trees had been on their own since then.
A 1900 book on http://books.google.com/books?id=OhcDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA577&lpg=PA577&dq=history+of+orange+propagation+in+the+USA&source=web&ots=qSfKSDPebd&sig=A4sOafdRtxJnpFG8VbK3UXLZTIo&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPR1,M1The Fruit Trees of America commented on the excellence of the oranges from the St. Augustine groves.
An 1850 school history book about the state of Georgia commented on the citrus fruits produced by Georgia (oranges, lemons, and limes) and that an acre of orange trees produced 6,000 to 8,000 oranges. How many acres of citrus fruits are under cultivation in Georgia today?
William Bartram wrote about the widespread orange groves throughout NE Florida (including on Amelia Island) during his travels in 1773-1774. Some of the trees were reportedly 150 years old. The NE Florida citrus boom was wiped out by the 1895 freeze.
The Jacksonville Naval Air Station is built on a former plantation that used to have orange groves.
In my lifetime, the citrus belt has retreated from just south of Jacksonville to central Florida.
I find that most people that harangue others about global warming have an abysmal ignorance of past climate conditions.
KOC,
You say:
“If summer ice melt continues to increase then global warming is continuing”
Ice melt is more complicated than that. It doesn’t just depend on “global temperature” whatever that might mean. If you look at the graph on your link you’ll see it defines ice extent as “Area of ocean with at least 15% sea ice”. So “ice melt”, if that means a reduction in extent, will depend on what happens in the ocean at the margins. For example, a change in wind direction or oceans currents (not necessarily warm) which carries ice away from an area (say, from 16% sea ice to 14% sea ice) becomes a reduction in “ice extent” but has nothing to do with melting. It seems to me that the rapid change seen on the graph (if not an “adjustment”)probably reflects an event of this kind. If it reflects “global temperature” it seems that the world stopped cooling for about 2 weeks, then resumed at its pevious rate.
Oh, snap. My html link is going to roger the thread. Please feel free to remove it!
On another site, they talk about the loss of corn that the US produces to feed the world. They talk about the over-wintering of ear worms, yet they never think that the corn could be grown further north (i.e. southern Canada) and that the wheat grown there would move further north as well, meaning no loss of corn or wheat with the potential for more year round crops in the mid-US, which means a net increase in food for the world. Something that will be drastically necessary to feed the worlds ever growing population.
davidc (13:59:05) :
http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/facts/00-077.htm
This is from the Ontario govt and recommends CO2 supplementation in greenhouse production to around 1000 ppm. If that’s wrong, and the 450 ppm is right, all greehouse production in Ontario will have stopped. If that has happened, wouldn’t someone have noticed?
Must be a misprint – surely they recommend 100 PPM, not 1000 PPM.
At 1000 PPM all the polar bears in the green houses will have drowned…
😉
dear mr watts and friends:
have you read “The Guardian” lately?? they have written this article: “Nasa hunts for its rubber ducks” (22/XII/08). you have post some time ago an article about the “90 bathtub toys” and a robotic probe with a GDS transmitter… apparently they can not find them…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/22/nasa-arctic-icecap-climate-change
¡¡¡FELIZ NAVIDAD Y PRÓSPERO AÑO NUEVO PARA TODOS!!!
“If summer ice melt continues to increase then global warming is continuing but no loss of argument for the pro CO2 lobby. But if the Arctic summer ice increases from now on then Al Gore is doomed.”
Keep in mind that, during summer, albedo is very much a factor given the increased soot over the arctic these days. See: http://global-warming.accuweather.com/2008/04/a_simple_experiment_1.html
Mike
David
50 cm in a hundred years is not going to displace anybody. About the only people for which this might be a problem is living either in the Ganges delta or on atolls.
Have you ever wondered why deltas and atolls are so close to sea level, rather a strange coincidence eh? The reason is that deltas automatically form at sea level, so for a slow rise like this, they will automatically build up. It’s the same with corals, they grow up to just below sea level, and no further, and they will track slow sea-level changes.
Now if you cut off the supply of sediment to a delta (like for example the Nile) or kill off the corals, then the sea will destroy the delta/atoll fairly quickly. This has absolutely nothing to do with sea level changes, but it is a universal human weakness to try to blame others for your own stupidity.
Roger Sowell said:
“However, plants split water into hydrogen and oxygen during photosynthesis, thus somewhat decreasing the sea level.”
I may have missed your point but during photosynthesis plants take water and carbon dioxide plus solar energy to produce oxygen and carbohydrates – not hydrogen and oxygen. Of these carbohydrates, some are used to generate day by day energy within the cells (the process of respiration where carbohydrate plus oxygen reverts to carbon dioxide and water plus plant-usable energy). Some is used to produce annual growth which rots and eventually goes to carbon dioxide plus water plus energy for fungi etc. The remainder goes into long term growth (i.e. wood) made up of carbohydrates.
Photosynthesis and wood production will, in effect, sequester some water for a period but I cannot see this being a large effect. Fire will speed up the cycle of returning the carbon dioxide and water to the system.
Have I missed your point?
Hi Martin G Atkins,
I know that the Koala is not a bear, hence I didn’t use the bear suffix after its name. The bear suffix is in common use so I don’t see what difference it makes to the story line.
The facts are that they’re not endangered by AGW, period. Just like the Polar bears aren’t but they’re a convenient cuddly animal to use as a poster child in an attempt to garner public support for AGW.
I have long suspected that if Polar Bears lived in a habitat suitable for the production of Palm Oil that the Greens would be mute as to their fate. As they have been until very very recently on the Orangutans, Tigers and Pygmy Elephants resident in Indonesia.
The Indonesian forests have been undergoing massive clearance to provide land for Palm Oil plantations. This self defeating tactic promoted by the EU as a way to reduce CO2 emissions from tail pipes in Western Europe releases huge amounts of CO2 as the underlying peat layers are burnt. Indonesia has gone from nowhere to become the Worlds fifth largest producer of CO2.
I suspect most Antipodeans also know that the Koala is not a bear as by definition Antipodeans are mostly Australians and New Zealanders. Apologies to other countries Down Under if I haven’t acknowledged you.
Remmitt
It’s not the increased surface of the ocean due to the larger diameter that might be significant, but rather the fact that for e. g. a 5 cm sea-level rise perhaps a 10 cm wide strip of land on average would be covered by sea, to an average depth of 2.5 cm. This *might* be significant (and if so decrease the total rise slightly), but to calculate it you would have to know the total length of coastline in the World, and the average slope.
graeme,
The Ontario govt also has a warning somewhere (sorry, no link) about keeping polar bears in the greenhouses. I was wondering why, but now you’ve cleared it up. Thanks.
Aussie John:
Couldn’t they move those koalas to West Australia? They once lived there you know, and a small group that has been introduced at Yanchep north of Perth seems to be doing OK, so apparently the can eat the eucalypt leaves there.
swampie- Excellent post on Florida citrus historical ranges!
I had read similar things in a state horticultural report I stumbled across a few years ago. I live near Tampa, amidst former orange groves that have since been covered with suburbs. The report indicated that orange groves made two significant shifts south, once in the 1980’s and another in the 1990’s as hard frosts wiped out groves in more northern locations. Over the course of a century, the report indicated that the northernmost reach of profitable citrus groves slowly moved from southern Georgia to their present location at or slightly south of Tampa, in agreement with your comments.
I not read not all comments here.
I just what to say that the Planet earth is a great living sistem well, what you whan´t if we treat him bad, what you think will happen?
I think people will only open they´re eyes when the disasters appears, weel no body see.
I´m from Portugal i notice about 7 years all the weather´s changes here. The winter is different and the summer is diferent to, very different. Some people say that is normal how about Current Arctic ???????
we hope all the people in the world start to open their eyes.
Peace for all
Nuno (15:53:53) :
we hope all the people in the world start to open their eyes.
Peace for all
It must be hard to post in a different language – so thanks for the effort.
I would kindly suggest that you first focus on several things.
1. The quality of the instruments and data used to describe the increase in surface temperatures. A good start is here. http://www.surfacestations.org/ What you will note is that the instruments are for the most part very poorly sited.
2. The absence of empirical science and the substitution of political methods for scientific ones. The best exposition of this is at http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html
So, before becoming alarmed by what is printed in the Mass Media, and on AGW advocacy blogs such as Real Climate. Make sure that the data the is at the foundation of AGW is valid, and the processes for interpreting that data is also valid.
3. Beware of the trap of pseudo-science. The IPCC currently claim that Climate Change is in the warming direction – hence a continued cold period will falsify their position. This position is beginning to morph into Climate Change is in the warming/cooling “Chaos” direction which covers all events and explains none.
No one posting on this blog wants to harm the planet or it’s living systems.
Keep digging below the surface, and question what those in a position of Authority are telling you.
Alan B (15:17:31) :
“I may have missed your point” … and follows with an excellent summary of photosynthesis.
My point is that plants consume water by splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen. You are correct that the hydrogen then combines with carbon derived from splitting CO2.
What I don’t know (among thousands of things!) is whether this water consumption is accounted for in the climate models. Perhaps the amount of water consumed is trivial?
I also do not know much about the rotting and decay chemistry of dead plants and trees. I have read that some methane is produced, but again, how much of this is incorporated in the climate models?
Koalas are fussy feeders and will only eat the leaves from a specific type of Eucalyptus. There are relocation progams for many types of native Australian animals including the Koala. Unfortunately these animals have a nasty habit of quickly overbreeding and overpopulating the areas they are relocated too.
Koalas are also suffering from Chlamydia which has been severely affecting their populations. Tasmanian Devils have been suffering from some sort of face tumor and there is a fear that they are in danger of going extinct.
Animals (like AGW ) are an emotional issue and science and logic are thrown out the window where emotion lies.
Journalists and correspondents such as the article above never need to rely on science, maths and logic – only emotion (fear)
Nuno:
Are you from the Arctic as well?
(14:03:43) :
>David did you even read the NASA numbers?
Stern has previously provided estimates of people at risk.
How about that collective underwriting of the risks faced by even just one little country. It’s easy being a “sceptic” when there are no consequences for being wrong.
It’s even easier to be an AGW advocate when the response to skepticism is ad hominum “arguments,” snickers, etc., but never a clear response to the substance of the “skeptics” question.
I’ve read a number of your posts, and noted your confusion about skeptics. They, we, are following a practice called “questioning the data.”
Perhaps if you’d ever received any real training in the sciences, you’d have recognized the process.
With regard to “people at risk,” I think I can speak for many of us in stating that we are more concerned with the certainty of damage to human life if the AGW hoax continues to gain political power.
>David
>
>50 cm in a hundred years is not going to displace anybody. About the only people for which this might be a problem is living either in the Ganges delta or on atolls.
Of which you are not one. Already people have been displaced from small atolls in eastern PNG, Tuvala and northern Vanuatu. Can we prove these were due to sea level rise – of course not – but with 20-30cm of rise so far and atolls which are like table tops it’s certainly played a part.
The consequences if the world backs your non-peer reviewed ideologically driven rambles and weather wiggle watching and you are wrong will be massive. And the best odds I see here are for 50:50 on a massive 5mm/year sea level rise…
Why not commit to providing insurance for people who run the risk of displacement?