Arctic Sea Ice Increases at Record Rate

One of my colleagues, who has been recruited by IPCC for three years, says that though the polar ice area is apparently increasing the ice layer is thinner so that the ice mass itself is slowly decreasing in line with the AGW theory. Is his opinion reasonable or not ?

With winter this cold, I cannot imagine the Arctic not freezing up big time.
Keep it up, the public is growing wary of these roasting & drowning stories.

This is a simple case of geography. Melt ice to a record low summertime extent and you then can freeze a record amount of ice in the subsequent fall. Of course, your replacing metres thick once permanent ice with very thin seasonal ice and as a result the volume is a fraction of what it was.
This change is exactly as expected under global warming and will continue for a period while the Arctic switches from a perennial ice regime to a seasonal ice regime.

Craig Moore (18:01:39) :
I would appreciate your thoughts on this graph and its source: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
WRT, they seem to be providing accurate information on sea ice.
WRT the information, sea ice, in the Arctic, is behaving pretty much normally. However, one could observe that the growth trajectory seems to be heading for a ten year high.
Did you have a point you wanted to make?

since the various “software glitches” changes without explanation @ cryosphere today
http://mikelm.blogspot.com/2007/09/left-image-was-downloaded-from.html
PLUS the masking of NH data (snow borders ect, posted here) PLUS changes at NOREX (again without explanation as I understand) (as posted on WUWT) it is becoming more obvious that the ice data may also have been or be in process of being “adjusted” to suit AGW. In the light of it all.. only the “sea ice index” data seems reasonably close.. beware of changes to this data soon!. Its clear that cryosphere today favours the AGW hypothesis see recent link to “clarifications”
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/global.sea.ice.area.pdf + all changes suit AGW

Proof that you can statistically get your data to say what you want it to say (it’s the first law of publishing). If you want it to say warmer, it will, if you want it to say not warmer, it will. Knowing that, we should always look at peer reviewed journal articles with an eye to that law…and yes, as well as our own.

DJ If you look closely Ice is appearing thicker (concentration) on NH cryosphere today than previous so wrong again….

He particularly noted a rapid change in old ice vs new ice.
And we need old ice because…?
This is starting to remind me of people who oppose a lunar base because it could damage the delicate lunar ecosystem.

Smokey,
If you don’t mind who made these plots? Where is the data from?

rss for January 2009 is 0.322
http://www.remss.com/data/msu/monthly_time_series/RSS_Monthly_MSU_AMSU_Channel_TLT_Anomalies_Land_and_Ocean_v03_2.txt
John M Reynolds

We do know courtesy of the Royal Navy and its nuclear boats [submarines] that since they first started to measure it in the late 1970’s the thickness of the Arctic ice has been declining. Likewise our satellite data only dates back to 1979.
The Arctic ocean is a largely enclosed sea so ice formation and melting is subject to many different weather factors, and is highly variable from season to season.
The idea that there is old ice and new is misleading, vast amounts of ice melt and huge amounts of water freeze every year. The motions of the ice vary so much from season to season that it is hard to say when this or that bit of ice was formed.
Whilst there has been a retreat of Arctic ice in the past thirty years this is nothing unusual, we know from historical records going back five hundred years that this has happened before, most recently fifty years ago. We do not know why there are periods when the ice retreats and then grows in extent again. And we know nothing about how the thickness of the ice might have changed in those times.
In short these variations in the Arctic ice are nothing to get excited about, they have happened before and will probably happen again. To suggest they they somehow represent some sudden change in the Earth’s climate or even to read into them that such changes might be afoot, is to say the very least melodramatic.
Rather more speculative science fiction than fact.
Kindest Regards

“your replacing metres thick once permanent ice ” –
Permanent ice. Hmm. . . . back in a minute:
“When I visited the North Pole in July 1996* (on board the Yamal, , the same icebreaker from which the photograph of the pole surrounded by open sea was taken), the captain had to sail six miles away from the pole to find ice thick enough to permit safe disembarkation. Small areas of open water were clearly visible at the pole, with larger areas nearby. It is to be expected that on some occasions, by chance, a large area of open sea will surround the pole. This has likely occurred a vast number of times over the millennia, even if it was photographed for the first time this year. ”
This is from a Dr. Leonard Evans, Bloomfield MI, phd in physics from Oxford U, who notes that the satellites don’t show the poles. I guess that is the “satellite hole” that is referred to above. I suppose I am trying to say that Artic ice has prolly always been in more or less a state of flux, of melting and remelting, as I understand it. Permanent seems inappropriate except as a general term. Perhaps somebody could shed some light on this . . .
I am also distrustful of the term “multi-year ice”. I perfectly understand the intended meaning, but doubt its importance, since I expect that Artic ice is never permanent. The experience of one expedition in deploying portable automated mesonet stations causes me to suspect thusly:”More than once we found a PAM station the victim of ice motions. In fact, one of the stations we deployed first, Cleveland, was engulfed in a pressure ridge and had to be removed from service for repairs. The same equipment, after repairs, was later redeployed at Seattle, where again it was threatened by leads and was moved to Maui. And that Maui site almost suffered total immersion twice as a consequence of the unpredictable ice pack.” Ice station Sheba was established 300 miles north of Barrow AL, and drifted 800 miles from Oct to May, 1998. Such movement suggests impermanence as was seen when much Artic Sea ice was “dumped out of the refrigerator” in 2007 by unusual polar winds. Other posters may actually have some factual comment on the subject of “permanence”. I’m just giving impressions I have built up over the past few years (since 2007 and the big ice melt story).
If there were really such a thing as permanent ice, we could build things up there, leave for the winter and come back and find them next fall. I bet you can’t.

Soot from Asia is settling all over the arctic ice. Look at satellite photos of the globe. It absorbs more radiation heat than white snow (albedo effect), causing melting of ice, exposing more of the darker oceans that absorb more radiation heat, etc.–but the CO2 alarmists are blaming it on, well, CO2, of course, which doesn’t stand up to physics calculations. I believe soot, plus the many “correction factors” that NASA and Hadley, et al, apply to all the data, account for all the perceived “global warming” trends.

I just LOVE that the warming Fanatics are stopping by to explicate their theories. It signifies the attention this site is getting, and the impact it is exerting on the fantasy “consensus”.
DJ…. news flash: All increases in ice footprint BEGIN as NEW ice. … mainly because they are…. well, …. NEW. 🙂
I plan to construct a 10 ft tall carbon edifice of Al Gore in my back yard this summer, (or, extension of spring if the last two years are any indication) …. and I will invite channel 4 to witness as we douse Al, el-Carbon, in gas, and set him alite. Then, we’ll spin brodies around him with our SUVs in the hope this will generate enough C02 to keep us from another Maunder event. 🙂
Cheers!

Wally (18:48:28): Cool blog, Wally. Thanks for the link. Would you take a moment to add it to your information when submitting here so we can simply click your name to go there? Anthony generously makes this option available to all contributors.

Jet stream area that is. The ice will rebuild, both in terms of concentration and extent, quickly, once the cold air is allowed to circulate once again in its normal pattern. The jet stream affect can be very powerful up there, along with warm and cold oceanic currents.

An ice-free pole should be no surprise, due to axial tilt. Cloud cover over the Arctic is random, as are the ocean currents. The non-variable affecting melting is solar radiation which has maximum impact on the (nearly) unmoving polar ice.

I just wonder about the ice situation during MWP if this study is to be trusted.
http://www.ulapland.fi/?newsid=6995&deptid=11589&languageid=4&news=1

“This means their use of the monthly data to establish a monthly trend was in error …”
So what happens when one uses yearly data to establish a yearly trend?
Incidentally, the article text refers to Figures 1 and 4 without labeling the figures, assuming you’re referring to the figures in this article.

From what I’ve read the polar cap is ~20My old, ~ 0.5% of earth’s age. Seems abnormal to have any ice there at all.

When I see a headline like, “. . . Fastest August Ice Retreat in History” I immediately wonder what notion of history is being applied — first signs of civilization, Adam and Eve, the invention of the thermometer, the birth of Swedish astronomer Anders Celsius, the baptism of Al Gore? When reading further and I find that, for the story, history began in 1980, I am immediately skeptical about the importance of the message. It effectively begins history concurrent with the late 20th Century warming and avoids the mid-20th Century cooling period. That’s deaky and snevious!
It reminds me of the early 2000 presidential campaign. In January of that year the US Weather Service announced that 1999 was the warmest since the agency had been keeping records. That was a fair enough statement as the agency began in 1817 and their data was known, though there was some discussion about the Urban Heat Island and its affect on the more recent data. Then the media got hold of the story and two national news organizations (ABC and CBS) reported, “According to government scientists, 1999 was the warmest on record.” It was only a day or two before a certain presidential candidate declared in a speech that 1999 “was the warmest in history.”
By nearly all recognized accounts the Medieval Climate Optimum, the rise of the Roman Empire, the heights of the Egyptian dynasties, and the heart of the Eemian Interglacial (when first signs of culture appear in the anthropological record) were all periods substantially warmer than now.
Can we be a little more careful on how we use the word ‘history’ or at least be clear about when history began within the context of a given story?

a jones (19:21:59) :
“We do know courtesy of the Royal Navy and its nuclear boats [submarines] that since they first started to measure it in the late 1970’s the thickness of the Arctic ice has been declining. Likewise our satellite data only dates back to 1979.”
Unless those boats measured the ice at consistent locations. not necessarily the same lat and long since the ice moves, the data is of little value. So, if they deployed locator beacons at each measurement location and made all further lmeasurements based on those data points, the data might be valid. More likely, they were measuring the ice along their track which may have been different every voyage. Tim Ball has commented on this kind of evidence, he finds it to be of very little value.

I’m as much of a skeptic as the next guy on this forum, but, on this one, I have to agree with DJ. Arctic sea ice has decreased, but reaches a similar maximum each winter, so of course the freeze rates are higher than ever. The melt rates look higher too if you ask me.

Anyone who thinks the artic has maintained huge areas of very thick ice can go here. http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh put in the date sep 3 2003 and see that there was very little thick ice. Most areas are 60 percent concentration.

This could be huge.. climate conf Santa Barbara
“Klaus was invited to the conference in Santa Barbara by Australian media magnate Rupert Murdoch.
They met at the economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week, Euro.cz writes.”
ie 99% papers in Australia are owned by this man.. they are nearly all 100% AGW (except The Australian)

John W: did you actually really write that Arctic ice is back to “normal”? And ready to set a 10-year record? We definitely don’t live on the same planet:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Unless hovering at about 1 million km^2 from the average is “normal” of course. And the ice tends to be more-or-less equal to the 2006-2007 values, which were a record of course.
TallDave: there is absolutely NO global warming model that predicts dropping maxima and minima each year. Actually, the decrease we saw over the last 10 years is way more rapid than first predicted.
WRT the initial post: I think the NSIDC gave some explanation as to why most rapid decreases/increases appear simultaneously during the long-trend melt. And I don’t know any source (that you don’t cite, either) about the fact that 30-years long trends appeared “regularly” in the past in similar conditions.

Slightly off topic, but still related to ice and warming, or cooling….but this time in relation to the recent report that concluded that contrary to all the previous interpretations of the available data, the Antarctic is warming; Steve McIntyre has examined……and torn apart…. that particular report. I thought that readers of this blog, from all sides of the debate, would be interested. Here is a link to an Australian blog article about it:
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/going_cold_on_antarctic_warming/
As this linked item concludes…. I also wonder if the mainstream media will report the fallacy of the warming with the same zeal that they reported the original report.
Personally I would be VERY surprised if the BBC report it at all. No doubt they will be claiming that Antarctica is warming from now on right up until Broadcasting house becomes encased in 200 feet of ice!!!
Sorry, silly me, when an inch of snow stops people getting to work in London…
Anyway, that’s a whole other topic, back on track….
If the only way to report Antarctic warming is to rely on statistical error, then the reportage and the “science” it is based upon is not worth a hill’o’beans!

Please correct me if I am wrong, but, surely new ice is cleaner (has less particulate pollution like soot) and therefore has an increased albedo?
So therefore if what we were told by alarmists in September-October 2007 is true, that the melting ice decreases albedo, thus absorbing more heat, thus increasing temperature in a positive feedback leading to more melting and the Arctic becoming ice free?
Then surely the reverse is also true and the increase in ice extent (if not thickness) of crisp new pristine ice will increase albedo and therefore reflect more heat back, lowering temperature over-all and thus causing more freezing, more ice and a negative feedback loop that if extrapolated in the way alarmists did, would result in a new ice age???

Re:
VG (18:32:32) and
Paul Friesen (23:05:13)
“Sea Ice Concentration” is not thickness of the ice, but a value showing how much water is covered by ice.
100% Concentration says nothing about the ice being 10 cm or 10 m thick, just that there is ice and not open water in the actual measured crid cell
And regarding the “permanent” ice thing and lack of kilometre thick ice: Permanent does not mean that the same ice allways stays put on the same spot…remember…north pole is solely sea ice and drifts around making the maximum age of ice just a few years, but: The amount of ice older than one year is now very low, and consequently much thinner, and the NSIDC graphs showing that the extent now is very close to the record 2006/2007 season…hey…just combine those factors and use your logic, folks…
(“Best science blog of the year” – Yeah, right…)

The Washington post, ice age July 9, 1971 Hansen
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=275267681833290

There is a British explorer named Pen Hadow who is going to measure the thickness of the ice and find out about melting. He will be starting in Februrary of this year

Didjeridust…… I think you forget that the PDO is now in a cooling phase, which evidently effects arctic ocean currents. I think your new Ice will become old ice in due course.
Did you notice that it is snowing quite heavily in London at the moment, that it has brought the city to a standstill with minus 10c degree temps? That London had it’s first October snow in 70 years?
It may be that you need to …. er, Cool it, for a while and observe the natural world going about it’s natural cycles…..
There is currently no evidence to suggest that anthropogenic CO2 is having a significant warming effect on Global average temperatures or effecting climate…. Though it apparently has been theorized to have an beneficial effect on increased crop growth, which is nice to know…. and something that can actually be measured and observed : )

If the AGW were true, and it’s way out there, then the resulting cold that has swept down on N. America and Europe would be displaced from the Arctic by warmer air from the tropics. That action would result in massive thinning of the Arctic Sea Ice. Come summer, there wouldn’t be jack left. I see the conveyor belts that ran up there just like I described in fronts spanning from Baja to Alaska. These are the result of impaired Sunspot heating that drive the Jet streams West to East.
What’s really going on? The shields are down in the Arctic. The Neutron Count is up and the upper atmosphere has shrunk by 1/3. The tropical heat, instead of warming the Arctic is escaping out the highly thinned atmosphere up there. Earth is losing heat. Just like it always does in deep solar minima. The returning flow of air is frigid.
You can fool some of the people some of the time, you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you’re not going to put ideas in my head anytime soon. I do that all by myself, and I will paddle my own boat, thank you.
You can’t fake a spotless sun, and you can’t fake ghostly remnants of what once were dark sunspots when they do appear.
I see you.

Since Anthony has left the WUWT ship in other crew members hands the ship has been steadily steering away from real science, beyond pseudo science and deeply into the murky realms of conspiracy theory. I suggest Anthony grabs the wheel and steers back to the real world quickly.

DJ: same here I am most happy for “AGW’s” to keep talking about anything concerning climate… the data is/will destroy their “theories” LOL.

DJ (01:25:15) :
DJ….
Lots of very confident statements but not one single reference…. none from you either.
… its defence merely shows a misunderstanding that Arctic sea ice … back at ya!
….Personally, I am most happy for “sceptics” to keep talking about sea ice because these data are irrefutable evidence of a rapidly warming world…… I’m a skeptic, in part, because of words like “irrefutable” in arguments. I dislike “skeptic” being used as an insult, I’m proud to be one. And, wonder how it’s possible to do science without being a Skeptic?

DJ
What exactly is old ice / permanent ice, please,? Is it ice with an age of 10yrs, 20 yrs, 30yrs, 100 yrs or some other arbitrary figure, because you will know that the arctic has melted on several occasions in the past for which there is ample historic evidence.
Secondly, please instruct us all on how ice volume can be measured and when those measurements began. The year date will suffice.
Thirdly, but I can’t speak for Anthony, I think you may well have missed the point. I don’t believe that A was trying to prove that global warming does not exist but that using the same data but unadjusted, and with a different statistical ‘method’ gives a different picture to that most published. Which is the correct situation on the ground? I will have to leave that to your intelligent analysis.

We skeptics did not rush out on a campaign to scare the world half to death.
We did not seek to remodel data or rewrite history.
We did not go before Congress and other bodies to present dire staits.
It is not we whom you have to worry about. It’s the politicians who will soon hear the public screaming at them, and in turn, the politicians will throw the AGW program under the bus, and the proponents with it.
You did this to yourselves.
You had only to stick to calm scientific debate.
Now the political sword lived by will come into play.
Sorry, but the political world is not the friend of science.
Come back to calm waters of peer review before it is too late.
I am not science. I’m the layman.
There are hundreds of millions who have far less tolerance than I.

Alano, what is frustrating about so much reportage in the mainstream media about climatology is that they refuse to allow comments, so that every time they report the sky is falling alarmism backed up by palpably absurd and factually incorrect data, they cannot be corrected.
For example, Quote:”and last year saw the ice cap at its lowest level since records began. ”
That claim is completely false. Ignoring the fact that the “fabled Northwest Passage” was open in the late 1930’s and the fact that the records referred to by the AGW alarmists are only some 30 years old (therefore irrelevant in geological or even recent historical terms) this article does not even acknowledge that GLOBAL ice has been constant for the past 30 years and there was less Arctic melt in 2008 than 2007 in spite of wild speculation in the spring and summer of last year that the Arctic ice was going to disappear altogether. We had more ice cover and surely if the AGW alarmists are correct about the feedbacks from low albedo from melting ice, surely the increased ice means higher albedo meaning increased rate of cooling feedbacks and therefore we are headed for a new ice age!!! (assuming that the AGW alarmist science is *irrefutably* correct, of course!)
As for the main reason for this telegraph article, it will be interesting to follow this expedition. How will they know if the ice is getting thinner? Thinner than what? there is no recent baseline from which to compare. Is the ice thinner than 40 years ago? 80 years ago? 150 years ago?
But is it thinner than 2007? probably not, but there is no way to know. Additionally this will not tell us if the ice is going to continue to get thinner, or thicker. But will only be a baseline for the state of a tiny part of the moving and constantly changing ice over successive days.
How is this data to be used? How often will they repeat the expidition to see what direction ice thickness is moving in?
Undoubtedly they will report that the ice is thinner than decades ago, well DUH! what would you expect when we have come out of a little ice age 100 years or so ago to the warmest years in a century up until 1998? We already know that the globe warmed during the 20th century. This will add nothing to the knowledge as to why the earth warmed during that time.
If they did this expedition every year for 100 years, then we would have useful data. As it is they will only produce a partially useful baseline and a lot of alarmist propaganda.

Personally, I am most happy for “sceptics” to keep talking about sea ice because these data are irrefutable evidence of a rapidly warming world.
When one reads non sense like that , one can only agree with Dr L.Motl who identifies climate “scientists” as crackpots who would be utter failures in any serious domain of science .
Their followers like this DJ are then of course sub par crackpots that confuse thinking with parroting the Hansens , Manns and similar doom prophets .
Obviously locally melting ice (or freezing ice for that matter) is “irrefutable” proof of nothing and certainly not of a rapidly warming “world” .
If anything and if it was statistically relevant (what it is not because of a ridiculously short time of observation) it would suggest something about the LOCAL fluctuation of oceanic currents .
As the climate video games don’t resolve the oceanic current fluctuations they can say nothing about the rate of local phase changes .
What serves here as “science” is a phase change parametrization and heavy averaging .
Of course extrapolating from a local empirical measure to a global result (like “the whole world is warming”) is only hand waving which is the usual “scientific” method of the warmers and nobody expects better anyway .
If somebody is interested to go a bit deeper in the arctic climate dynamics and the fact that it has nothing to do with “global” factors , there is f.ex Polyakov’s paper : http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~igor/research/amplif/amplif_jul02_2.pdf
A quote :
The ice-extent and fast ice thickness time series display a combination of decadal and multidecadal variability, with lower values prior to the 1920s, in the late 1930s-40s, and in recent decades, and higher values in the 1920s – early 1930s, and in the 1960-70s (Figure 3). This is consistent with the multi-year variability (LFO) evident in SAT records (Figure 1). Analysis of trends in these records shows that they are not statistically significant. Trends for recent decades seem to be larger but because of the fewer degrees of freedom in these shorter time records they are not statistically significant either.

And, as I said, the NSIDC actually pointed out the very rapid sea ice increase in their news
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2008/111008.html
but as it lasted a half month only, I think it is not very relevant, compared to the long and rapid melt.

Lucy Skywalker (02:22:13) responding to Philip_B (19:46:46) : “Perhaps that’s because, thanks to the special stratospheric warming event, the North Pole has sent its cold surplus down to the UK.”
May I add that another shot of “surplus cold” has moved all the way into Florida. Inland temps tonight could hit the teens north of Tampa and definately into the 20’s even south of Tampa. Luckily I live near the Gulf coast south of Tampa so the water temp will keep me just slightly below the freezing mark for only a short period. I can also add that this will be the third time this year I will experience below freezing temps at my location. My coconut palms are probably not going to make it as they have been overly stressed by the two previous cold snaps. My banana trees likewise. My grandmother who has lived here since 1960 has told me that once there were plenty of coconut palms growing naturally here, now there are none unless you buy one and plant it yourself. Perhaps the canary in the coal mine should be the latitude of survivability for coconut palms.

DJ,
Are you asserting that in recent years three was permanant Arctic sea ice?
Additionally, do you know at what temperature sea ice forms?

Link – http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1598
As explained by an 11 year old.

That pic of the submarine in 1959 prompted me to do some research. On the one hand, the water around the sub is probably a bit misleading, since it’s no doubt due to the sub itself breaking through the ice. On the other, I came across a reference to a study on ice thicknesses as recorded in submarine voyages from 1958 to 1992. The study notes that ice thicknesses are highly variable and consequently probably not a useful indicator of climate change.

John Finn,
You said,
“the NH is also much warmer than average.
RSS anomaly for January is +0.322
NH anomaly (0 – 82.5) is +0.449
I’m certainly growing wary (and weary) of the constant stream of unsubstantiated “global cooling” pronouncements.
Wow… The Earth is almost a third of a degree warmer than the long term average? YIKES!!!! I didn’t realize the huge numbers involved here… OK, take all my money and please lower the thermostat by precisely .322 degrees.
Thank you for caring,
Mike Bryant

You wrote code, therefore I do not believe you.

Flanagan (00:09:04) :
John W: did you actually really write that Arctic ice is back to “normal”?
No. I didn’t. Go back and read what I posted. Think about the meaning of the phrase “behaving pretty much normally. ”
What I will assert is that, since I don’t subscribe to either AGW or Creation Science, I have a hard time with the concept of anything “permanent” in nature. (Even the constancy of the Fine Constant is questioned.)

The last part was referring to January anomalies only.

“I expect the alarmists will say that the winds were caused by CO2!”
Actually, they do say that. On another discussion forum I brought up the fact that the unusual melt was due in large part to a change in the Arctic Oscillation, wind not heat. The True Believer (TM) response was that the changing wind pattern was…. consistent with AGW theory.

David L. Hagen (18:29:45) :
“Al Gore gave a presentation at the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Jan 28. 2009, 10 AM. During that he showed graphs of the Arctic ice changing. He particularly noted a rapid change in old ice vs new ice. See:
ADDRESSING GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE: THE ROAD TO COPENHAGEN”
David L. Hagen,
People can say about Al Gore what they want to say but I think friend and enemy will agree that he is an intelligent person with a mission.
Therefore he will grab any argument to support his case.
Unfortunately all his arguments have been debunked in detail and now his arguments are reduced to a discussion about old and new (baby) ice!
It’s pathetic.
There is however a difference between old ice and baby ice.
Old ice is covered by a thick layer of algae and soot from erosion, volcanic and industrial emissions.
The new ice is clear, has better reflective properties and therefore grows thicker much faster.
It’s all part of a natural cycle and we should be discussing real world problems instead.
I think Jeff has done a fine job with this article and makes perfectly clear that humanity can stop worrying about the alarmist’s doom messages of a melting arctic, rising sea levels and drowning polar bears.
If we can now stop the cap and trade business and the pathetic efforts to generate our basic energy needs with wind mills and irresponsible wet green dreams we can
focus on real world priorities such as:
1. solving the current economic crises.
2. feeding the world under a changed climate regime (colder)
3. Clean water, housing and population growth.
4. Prevention of loss of habitat (stop palm oil exploitation, one of the other green dreams that cause havoc and destruction)
5. all other priorities that need rational approach and money which is now invested to fight a hoax.

TallDave: there is absolutely NO global warming model that predicts dropping maxima and minima each year.
You warmenists are straight out of Orwell.
The 4th assessment report (AR4) of the IPCC (IPCC, 2007) has compiled projections of Northern hemisphere sea ice extent from future climate scenarios calculated with global coupled climate models. The results of these experiments exhibit a persistent decrease of summer sea ice extent as seen in the ‘model ensemble mean’ of 19 climate models, i.e. the average of all 19 model applications (Fig. 1).
http://www.damocles-eu.org/artman/uploads/2007-record-low_sea-ice-event.pdf
Of course, given that we’re working with only 30 years of data anyway, having “record lows” is almost meaningless anyway.
But never mind that. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

Also, it’s worth mentioning again that this total lack of scientific rigor is why scientific forecasters have said global warming predictions have no scientific basis, as previously posted here at WUWT, and that IPCC predictions violate 72 tenets of scientific forecasting.

I am not surprised,,, 1996, 2007, 2008 are all years notorious for relatively brutal winters

The earth is how old? A better question is perhaps a record since when, since the last ice age or since we just started measuring the Arctic sea ice extent 30 years ago with satellites?
We haven’t really been tracking the Arctic sea ice extent or the Arctic sea ice mass for very long.

RE: Lance (01:33:24) :
The Washington post, ice age July 9, 1971 Hansen
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=275267681833290

Hansen appears to be consistent throughout. Once an alarmist, always an alarmist. The exact nature of the predicted calamity is irrelevant, apparently.

a jones (07:04:18) :
‘Att Rhys Jagger
There is a wealth of historical data on this which is usually discounted by climate scientists: for instance ship’s logs noting when and where they encountered ice. A colleague is compiling a survey of this. This is a small offshoot of the programme to compile and analyse all the met data of all RN ships’ logs from the late 18th century onwards. This is a huge project which will take several years but should give us a wealth of information on the climate around the world from that time onwards.
Kindest Regards.’
Thanks a jones – I look forward very much to hearing about this in the future.
Regards
RJ

Wait, record lows in ice extent is followed by a record rate of refreezing? Its almost as if having less ice at the end of the summer might allow for more area to refreeze…

AnonyMoose (21:31:20) :
“This means their use of the monthly data to establish a monthly trend was in error …”
So what happens when one uses yearly data to establish a yearly trend?
The monthly data is sensitive to short term filtering/processing, annual trend from a monthly anomaly would not be very sensitive to that.
—-
I don’t go around looking for these things, they just happen. I was exploring the magnitude of the difference in ice melt to see how much faster the ice had melted. BTW: Everyone knows some arctic ice has melted.
I like numbers, it is my belief that there is a great deal more to be learned from actually working with the data than you can get from just reading the papers. When I saw that the ice had set two record growth rates in 07 and 08 and the maximum melt rate was actually before 07, it kind of pisses me off. That isn’t what we were told by the ‘experts’ and it sure as heck isn’t what I expected when I spent the days of time working on the data.
One thing I’m interested in now is in the measurement quality. I want to look at how the ice concentration near the pole change from one satellite transition to the next. My first look at it showed that there may be some differences in sensitivity to concentration percentage on what I would expect to be 100% ice.
I flew over the Hudson bay area, last month. It was solid ice as far as you could see with clear skies from 30,000 ft but I see a light grey color in the hudson bay in the Feb 09 plot above. It’s difficult for me to imagine that any of that area wasn’t completely covered with ice. That’s for the future though.

“Personally, I am most happy for “sceptics” to keep talking about sea ice because these data are irrefutable evidence of a rapidly warming world.”
Nah, they’re not. Truth is, we don’t know what they’re evidence of. They may, as Pamela Gray suggests, be evidence of a relocation of some existing heat. Or not. From my view as a biologist, I laugh at a lot of the smug commentary that comes out of the “climatologists”. One thing that slaps a biologist upside the head in his early days of study, is the extent to which we really have no handle on the base periodicities of many natural phenomena, and worse, no handle on the fact that we likely haven’t even identified many that exist. Couple that with the alarmist propensity for trying to define everything in time-frames of human lifespans (as if) and you have content for movie scripts, not prognostications based on science. It has to be kept foremost in one’s mind that the alarmist’s concerns are not for the planet, but for themselves. The planet will continue to do just fine, as it did before us, and will after, in its own way.

tom (06:32:26) :
I’ve been musing over these posts and have come to a sad conclusion. The dummies who push global warming have done a real disservice to themselves and to the planet. These knuckle heads decided to use a scare tactic which will not be proven or dis-proven till the globe either warms or, it doesn’t.
I believe the original idea came from those wanting to clean up the planet. After all, we are a messy specie. We use more than our share of resources and pay no attention to small, inconvenient facts like all the fish in all the lakes in the Midwest(USA) have a Mercury warning attached to them or, kids in cities have a higher chance of getting asthma or, that cutting down too many trees will make our air stinkier than it already is.
To those who don’t believe carbon dioxide is bad for you, try inhaling some. The same goes for sulfur dioxide, methane, etc.
The bottom line is everyone is caught up in this stupid ice melt/sea rise debate, which is unprovable, and we have taken our eyes off of the real problem. Pollution is bad for all of us.

Tom:
You and I and everyone else inhale carbon dioxide every time we take a breath.
Unlike those other compounds you mentioned, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Another inconvenient fact is that carbon dioxide is necessary for life. Reduce carbon dioxide enough and plants will die. Add more carbon dioxide and most plants grow better.
Another inconvenient fact is most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from natural sources. Human civilization produces only a fraction of the carbon dioxide Gaea produces.
A really inconvenient fact is stopping carbon dioxide emissions won’t reduce real pollution, unless the idea is to just shut down everything.

Actually everyone seems to be forgetting that black carbon was found to be a significant driver for Arctic warming and ice melt.

Vernon (08:04:02) :
Actually everyone seems to be forgetting that black carbon was found to be a significant driver for Arctic warming and ice melt.

Black carbon is not part of the currently agreed upon AGW narrative, at least until such time that it is.
We have always been at war with Eurasia.

John Galt,
Actually, the reason your body exhales carbon dioxide is because it is a waste product; try inhaling some, as I’ve suggested.
True, small quantities are harmless. The trouble comes in when you put in more carbon dioxide whilst and at the same time, you cut down the trees which filter it out.
Look, I am skeptical of all science because for the most part, we’ve only been doing real science for such a short time that to jump to any conclusions about anything is un-scientific.
All I’m saying is we need to pollute less; a lot less. We are involved, as a society, in a scientific experiment, the outcome of which is totally unknown. The outcome doesn’t even matter unless you take into consideration our future generation.
So, what happens when we add all of these chemical compounds to our environment? Maybe nothing.
All I know is it is making our home planet stinky and detrimental to all biological life. What happens to humans who are consistently exposed to the mercury from jet exhaust? How about all of the exhaust from burning all of that coal? Maybe there’s a reason all of that stuff is buried.
So, the question becomes “what kind of home do you keep?”

the rate going from one extreme to the other (minima to maxima) will always increase if the difference between those extremes increases. while the maximum sea ice is slowly declining, the minimum sea ice appears to be declining even more, making for a larger gap and greater changes between the two.
as lulo pointed out, this works both ways – freezing and melting.

John Galt,
Actually, the reason your body exhales carbon dioxide is because it is a waste product; try inhaling some, as I’ve suggested.
True, small quantities are harmless. The trouble comes in when you put in more carbon dioxide whilst and at the same time, you cut down the trees which filter it out.
Look, I am skeptical of all science because for the most part, we’ve only been doing real science for such a short time that to jump to any conclusions about anything is un-scientific.
All I’m saying is we need to pollute less; a lot less. We are involved, as a society, in a scientific experiment, the outcome of which is totally unknown. The outcome doesn’t even matter unless you take into consideration our future generation.
So, what happens when we add all of these chemical compounds to our environment? Maybe nothing.
All I know is it is making our home planet stinky and detrimental to all biological life. What happens to humans who are consistently exposed to the mercury from jet exhaust? How about all of the exhaust from burning all of that coal? Maybe there’s a reason all of that stuff is buried.
So, the question becomes “what kind of home do you keep?”

I inhale carbon dioxide with every breath I take. No problem!
My question is are we still talking about carbon dioxide, a benevolent and essential atmospheric gas, or are we talking about pollutants such as sulfur dioxide or toxins, such as mercury. You keep lumping these together. Drinking too much water can kill you, should we classify water as a poison?
Trying to redefine carbon dioxide as a pollutant is another losing tactic for the alarmists. Reasonable voices are getting drowned out by the extremists. It’s too bad because we could be spending our time and valuable treasure on solving real problems like reducing toxic emissions, fighting poverty or disease.

If it is not a poisonous gas (to animals), then why do we exhale it as a waste product? In other words, if it was a “benevolent” gas, as you say, why are our bodies constantly getting rid of it. Why do our bodies not use it, like oxygen, for instance.
The argument is getting off the point. A little carbon dioxide isn’t going to kill us. So, what happens when we keep putting more and more into the atmosphere, while and at the same time, we cut down the forests. Where is the tipping point between non-toxic doses and levels which are too high to support animal life?
We could go round and round with this one but, I do believe we agree on the need to clean up the planet.
Global warming is a non-issue. Global pollution is. Perhaps we should spend more time trying to address those issues.

“Greenhouse Theory Disproved a Century Ago”
http://globalwarmingnot.blogtownhall.com/2009/02/03/greenhouse_theory_disproved_a_century_ago.thtml
What do you all think of this analysis of some old research? Is it an anti-Gore/Hansen bomb?

Great ice extent was reported for the winter of 2007-2008. You just don’t read all the headlines 🙂 At that point, it was not at all clear whether the rapid decrease in areal extent and volume (very very important; not covered by your analysis) seen in the summer of 2007 marked a transition point in the long-term decline that has been noted for a number of years. The summer ice of 2008, however, while greater in extent because of the cold preceding winter, melted and declined rapidly. BECAUSE IT’S THIN! So right now, winter ice seems to be on the fence, and with the expected regional cooling over the next decade, perhaps it will hold it’s own. But summer ice may very well have crossed a threshold, in which case we can expect the Arctic oceanography, ecology and economy to undergo some very interesting changes over the next few decades.
Ice cubes in your freezer, and ice cubes in my freezer, are more or less the same (though we have a relatively old fridge). But there are significant differences (dynamic and causative) between permanent, long-term, and summer ice in the Arctic.

tom (09:35:28)
“Where is the tipping point between non-toxic doses and levels which are too high to support animal life?”
The tipping point for a grand mass extinction of most life on the Earth is somewhere for the sake of informal discussion about 100ppm to 175ppm less than the present levels. We live in an inter-glacial period that is extraordinary with respect to the rest of the ~542 million year period of the Phanerozoic Eon. The temperatures and carbon dioxide levels are now the lowest they have been since the Late Devonian major mass extinction event.
By contrast, the Earth has typically been 10C to 12C warmer than at present, and the carbon dioxide levels have typically ranged between around 1200ppm to 4800ppm, with multicellular life deveolping in the early Phanerozoic around 5000 to 7000ppm.
In other words, we are presently living in conditions within 0C to 2C and ~110-175ppm of carbon dioxide minimums in which major mass extinctions occurred in the past. Many types of plants such as grasses cannot thrive or even survive with reductions of carbon dioxide to levels of half or less of the present amounts. We are also presently around 10C in temperature and 1000ppm to 4200ppm in carbon dioxide less than the environmental conditions normal for most life on the Earth.
Perhaps you should consider the fact that the past 600 million years of experience shows us that the only tipping point we risk is having too little carbon dioxide and too low of a mean temperature for the biota to survive and thrive.
If you want something environmental to worry about, you may want to find a replacement for fossil fuels to maintain higher carbon dioxide levels to avert a major extinction event and a means of eliminating persistant plastics pollution.

Ok, ok, I’m almost convinced. Seems the majority here feel carbon dioxide is a harmless gas.
The only way to settle this is through scientific experiment. Those who feel carbon dioxide is benevolent, harmless, etc. here’s a good way to convince all who feel otherwise. Lock yourselves in air tight rooms and start breathing. Just breathe, till all of the oxygen has been used up and all that’s left is carbon dioxide. If you can survive this condition for 10 min., we’ll all be convinced. If you die, we will all know for sure that carbon dioxide is a poison.
I believe it to be a poison so, I’ll sit and wait for all responses (if any.) 😉
Robert Bateman; I am familiar with OSHA guidelines. Being a tradesman, I received extensive OSHA training.
One can say that all gasses displace oxygen. Perform the above mentioned experiment. Let me know how you do. 🙂

D.Patterson;
Thank you for your eloquent presentation of facts. Truly enlightening for me, at least. Your answer captured what I’ve been saying all along, with one difference; if people want to categorize carbon dioxide as being bad and if that categorization leads to environmental improvements, so what?
I am doing something. I’ve started a company specializing in the reduction of energy use in buildings and renewable energy systems installations. I am also working on a wind turbine design.

tom (11:08:54) :

Lock yourselves in air tight rooms and start breathing. Just breathe, till all of the oxygen has been used up and all that’s left is carbon dioxide. If you can survive this condition for 10 min., we’ll all be convinced. If you die, we will all know for sure that carbon dioxide is a poison.

CO2 is Oxygen to plants. Most or our crops would not be doing as well as they are without the current atmospheric levels. In fact…. an increased elevation in atmospheric CO2 would help most crops even more. We are far, far from levels that would be harmful to man.
Heck…… even in a ‘controlled’ breathing situation…. the Navy permits up to 1000 ppm of CO2 in compressed air Scuba tanks. But wait…. The US Navy standard for air on submarines is 8000 ppm.
But…. you call it a poison. Well…. we breath Oxygen. Pure oxygen is harmful to man. So do you suggest we start reducing the poison Oxygen from the atmosphere? Doing so, after all, would eventually eliminate any potential for future anthropogenic global warming.

Flanagan (00:09:04) :
WRT the initial post: I think the NSIDC gave some explanation as to why most rapid decreases/increases appear simultaneously during the long-trend melt. And I don’t know any source (that you don’t cite, either) about the fact that 30-years long trends appeared “regularly” in the past in similar conditions.
Arctic Decadal and Interdecadal Variability
Igor V. Polyakov
International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Mark A. Johnson
Institute of Marine Science, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Atmospheric and oceanic variability in the Arctic shows the existence of several oscillatory modes. The decadal-scale mode associated with the Arctic Oscillation (AO) and a low-frequency oscillation (LFO) with an approximate time scale of 60-80 years, dominate. Both modes were positive in the 1990s, signifying a prolonged phase of anomalously low atmospheric sea level pressure and above normal surface air temperature in the central Arctic. Consistent with an enhanced cyclonic component, the arctic anticyclone was weakened and vorticity of winds became positive. The rapid reduction of arctic ice thickness in the 1990s may be one manifestation of the intense atmosphere and ice cyclonic circulation regime due to the synchronous actions of the AO and LFO. Our results suggest that the decadal AO and multidecadal LFO drive large amplitude natural variability in the Arctic making detection of possible long-term trends induced by greenhouse gas warming most difficult.

I expect a race to answer tom’s experiment; here’s my entry:
Displace the oxygen in a room with carbon dioxide, and the subject dies.
Displace it with nitrogen, and the subject dies.
And this “toxic gas” is about 80% of the air we breathe! Yikes! 🙂

D. Patterson, as a paleontologist, I can only ask where on Earth you got those numbers and interpretations?? We have no “tipping point for a grand mass extinction”. Any such points depend entirely on the conditions under which the ecosystems under consideration evolved, the type of disturbance or perturbation, and the rate of the perturbation. Anyone who claims to understand the complex relationships among these factors is a charlatan (and yes, I would include fellow scientists here). It is precisely one of the most pressing questions that we are currently trying to understand. I am not saying that the tipping points don’t exist; they almost assuredly do (see here). But to even begin to claim that one understands the relationship between atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and ecosystem tipping points, and that we are currently in a safe zone, is nonsensical.
You simply cannot equate past conditions for life with the current ones. The Earth has been considerably warmer, and considerably colder, in the past, including the Phanerozoic. But, the rates of change of climate that we can measure in the distant geological record are all far slower than the rates observed today, and slower than those predicted to occur in the near future. (This is a simple function of the resolution of the geological record). Whether many organisms will be able to adapt to such rapidly changing conditions is unknown. Some undoubtedly will, but many others will be critically endangered. And, and this goes for so many others reading this blog, WHY do you think that predicted warmer conditions, if accurate, will be fine for humans??! Our ancient ancestors being able to migrate back and forth with glaciers and so on is totally irrelevant to the modern world. The human population is immensely greater than it was back then, resources are more limited, and the global population is, for all intents and purposes, globalized. Simplistic analogies with the past will not serve us well.

DJ:

Of course, your replacing metres thick once permanent ice with very thin seasonal ice and as a result the volume is a fraction of what it was.

Any increase over the summer minimum is, by definition, seasonal ice. Conversely, the ‘permanent’ ice extent cannot, by definition, be greater than the summer minimum, and is probably considerably less.

I’ve not had a chance to check whether someone has already posted a similar remark, but I am very interested to see what happens in the Barents Sea over the next week or so. This together with the Okhotsk sea the main areas where sea ice is missing by comparison with the long term average. So, if it fills up, we should start to see the 2009 line begin to converge again with the long term average.
It does seem odd that the data just seems to have stood still for the last few days – just as temps in that area have taken a dive. I noticed the same thing happening when Hudson Bay suddenly filled up earlier on in the season.
Whatever the case however, both Hudson Bay and the Barents Sea have been late at best this season, which may lead to less thickness before the melt onset. It may be the case of course that Barents Sea fails to catch up before the melt. The Barents Sea is of course in the firing line of the Gulf Stream, so tends to be the area of the Arctic Ocean with least winter ice pack.
Ben

By my calculations, 2008 Global temps were only .092 degrees above normal. Is that correct?
http://www.remss.com/data/msu/monthly_time_series/RSS_Monthly_MSU_AMSU_Channel_TLT_Anomalies_Land_and_Ocean_v03_2.txt

tom (11:25:13) :
“D.Patterson;
Thank you for your eloquent presentation of facts. Truly enlightening for me, at least. Your answer captured what I’ve been saying all along, with one difference; if people want to categorize carbon dioxide as being bad and if that categorization leads to environmental improvements, so what?”
Because there is substantial reason to believe categorizing carbon dioxide as bad for the environment in a best case scenario will result in extensive environmental damage and human death, while in a remote worst case scenario doing so might result in contributing to all of the harm to be expected with an early return of the ice age. A most likely scenario is that not focusing on carbon dioxide can only help and avoid the substantial harm resulting from ill conceived responses to an illusory threat.

By the way, anyone know why NSIDC’s daily ice extent charts have gone on the blink since the end of January?

This is good. Conversation, that is. I wish I would have been able to read the [snip].
Here’s the way I see it. Carbon dioxide is the boogey man! Global warming is it’s terrible effect (not to mention rising sea levels.) Is any of it true . . . who can tell. The bottom line is the Western Powers are about to embark on a huge clean up mission. Clean up the carbon dioxide by reducing emissions. The emissions which carry all the rest of the crud will be cleaned up because of the Global Warming scare. I really don’t see the benefit of disputing this theory.
I’ve often wondered why they chose carbon dioxide instead of . . . ohhh, I don’t know . . .carbon monoxide or sulfur dioxide or . . . . Then I realized that it just doesn’t matter. We’re going to clean up our mess because “the polar bears are drowning.”8-o
The argument has been made that there are many people perpetuating this scare in order to make a lot of money. So, what’s the difference between them and those who make money from sewing gasses into our atmosphere?
Rhys Jaggar (cool name) Let’s do it. 20% oxygen, 75% carbon dioxide, the rest nitrogen. Now you’ve my curiosity aroused!;-)
Peter: I do believe DPatterson said for “informal discussion’s sake” before giving those stats.

Dave
Would you feel better if I locked several plants in the same air-tight room until they died from lack of CO2? I guess one man’s poison can be a plants food for growth. What’s the point?

To Charles the moderator: Yes but I was right. Wasn’t I?!!
Reply: not for me to say, but the choice of words was above average ~ charles the moderator

Tom,
I would respond to this:

I really don’t see the benefit of disputing this theory.

But…. I don’t think that Anthony’s ‘science’ blog is the place to get into the realities which include heavy politics.
Catch me at MY CLIMATE BUZZ or the Sean Hannity Forums (This THREAD will do: Global Warming Watch) and I will be more than happy to go into all of the issues.

Jeff you’ve id’d this one correctly. Thank-you for your clear explanation. No wonder those birds are being seen all over. I’ve heard people talk of those waxwings coming as far south as the midlands (uk). When it all clicks you know its right. Fog gone. Appreciated, Ed.

AlGore says that when the Arctic/Antarctic sea ice melts, a big chunk of the world will be underwater. Funny, but I put ten ice cubes in a big glass; filled the glass to the absolute rim; came back 60 minutes later and, guess, what? The water didn’t overflow. Did Al “The Bore” Gore forget the “Inconvenient Truth” of “displacement?

DJ,
Would you like to propose a wager for your confident prediction about ice?

I am not a scientist. But reading the main article and the comments, in regard to discussions of “normal” climates or apropos something like “normal climate change” (the opposite of AGW), how does one establish a “norm” at all?
For millions of years this planet was a habitat to various kinds of “terrible lizards.” Was that in appreciation of its longevity a “norm”? In contrast homo sapiens is really a new kid on the block. So, even, let’s say, that Anthropomorphic Global Warming is real … perhaps that is just part of what THIS species does. (There may be some ecological advantage in being a big dumb lizard.) I raise this, admittedly otherwise off-topic point, because the entire AGW debate strikes me as something like the Medieval conundrum of “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
There is something very weirdly psychological about all this arguing.
I also note that atheism is a fad among scientists today — not that I’m making claims about what scientists believe — who knows what they believe. But I note a “fad,” rather like the changes in hemlines and lapel styles are fads. And this fad is particularly interesting from a psychological perspective because sometimes the same people who argue that there is no God and that change occurs “randomly” are the same demographic that says the climate is no longer “normal.” But how does one define “normal” in a randomly functioning system?
I have no scientific training to analyze the scientific claims being made here by dueling parties. But I have sufficient experience of human nature to observe some of the psychological dynamics.
Certainly if human beings were changing the planetary habitat in ways that threatened their own existence, one couldn’t fault them for trying to take corrective actions. But looking at the arguements from a more cosmic perspective, I must say I find it amusing to think that non-scientist Al Gore gets a particular statum of Western society in alarms when — any stray, “randomly” arriving meteor of sufficient size could render the entire debate and the proposed “corrective actions” moot (to say the least).
Whatever. One must marvel at the economy of the terrible lizards. They flourished in one form or another for such a marvelously long time. In contrast some of us are already on the verge of expiration from the tedium of this teapot tempest.

Peter (11:46:52) :
The use of the term, “tipping point” was used wryly with an “if” to indicate a response to the use of the term by the Global Warming proponents. I would not use the term except to acknowledge the usage by global Warming proponents. Major mass extinctions have occurred in association with temperatures and carbon dioxide levels comparable to those at the present, and are often cited as an important factor in causing the mass extinctions. Certainly, plants, then and now, benefit from large increases in carbon dioxide and are thretened with extinction in the event carbon dioxide is substantially deceased from present levels.
“But to even begin to claim that one understands the relationship between atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and ecosystem tipping points, and that we are currently in a safe zone, is nonsensical.”
We certainly do know for a demonstrated fact that certain species of plant life will perish when carbon dioxide levels are reduced beyond a certain level. I hope you are not going to contend that present plant life will not undergo extinction if present carbon dioxide levels were reduced to less than a certain “safe zone” fraction of present levels tolerable by these plants?
“You simply cannot equate past conditions for life with the current ones.”
You certainly can to a useful general degree when certain species’ genetics and biochemical mechanisms remain virtually identical or sufficiently similar to draw conclusions. We certainly cannot pretend that we’re dealing with a completely different universe having a wholly different physics and chemical properties. As a paleontologist, you must know that the fossil record reveals massive numbers of species became extinct around the world when their environment suddenly became much colder. The oxygen isotopes in the fossils alone indicate that much.
“The Earth has been considerably warmer, and considerably colder, in the past, including the Phanerozoic.”
When during the Phanerozoic did the Earth become “considerably colder” than the present; i.e. more than 3C to 10C colder than anytime in the Tertiary?
“But, the rates of change of climate that we can measure in the distant geological record are all far slower than the rates observed today, and slower than those predicted to occur in the near future. (This is a simple function of the resolution of the geological record).”
Such was the presumed interpretation of the stratigraphy until recently. The latest ice core research has revealed details from much finer resolution than is typically possible in studying rock stratigraphy. We now have the evidence to demonstrate temperature changes of 7C in only fifty (50) years, which would appear to be virtually instantaneous in the fossil record. The world climate can and has made sudden shifts in climate in only a number of decades of time, so present changes cannot be presumed to be caused by humans at all without other very substantial evidence.
“WHY do you think that predicted warmer conditions, if accurate, will be fine for humans??!”
We already know for a fact that the Earth’s climate is not static and cannot be engineered by humans to remain static, so that is not an available possibility or choice.
We also must recognize that our environment is already at the extreme lower end of Earth’s scale of experience with temperature and carbon dioxide levels during the Phanerozoic, so any further major cooling resulting from a catastrophic event like an asteroidal impactor, nuclear war, planktonic ecological disaster, etc. could result in the mass extinction of most species of multi-celled plant and animal life.
Since we are unable to remain static with regard to climate change, and we cannot risk going lower on the scale and causing or suffering a very severe ice age or a snowball Earth event; our only remaining choice is to take our chances on survival in the warmer and wetter Earth environment that was common for most of the past ~542 million years. We already know that reducing arable land with a colder climate cannot support the current global population, but a warmer climate can increase arable land, water supplies, and plant productivity. Humans have tended to prosper in wamrer climates, and most other life preceding humans prospered in a climate wamer by 10C and with carbon dioxide levels of 1200ppm to 4800ppm (Scotese; Geocarb). It’s up to humanity to reduce and adapt its population to sustainable levels before Nature does it for us.

P Folkens (00:43:50) :
DJ (22:42:26) : >. . . multi-year multi-metre thick ice. That ice is all now nearly gone, and as best as we can tell the current ice volume is the lowest on record.
This whole thread is built on a lack of understanding of basic climatology and climate change.<
One need not have temperature or ice data or even papers on climate change to make reasonable and accurate deductions. Anthropology and even early literature are sources of direct and indirect evidence that refute your notion of “the lowest on record.” For example, recent anthropological work in northern Greenland have revealed Eskimo settlements and ancient sea shores that show a sea level more than a meter higher 800-1000 years ago compared with now. If one accepts anthropological studies and carbon dating as part of the “record,” one must therefore accept basic climatology and climate change that shows rather conclusively that it has been warmer than now within the confines of what most regard as “history.” Think Strait of Anián, Northwest Passage, the Eskimo migration east from Alaska, the Norse Sagas and ventures into Baffin Island (Helluland). It all destroys the notion that the Arctic is the “warmest on record” or the ice is the least “in history.”
Mr. Folkens–
Superb post.
Climate scientists seemed to sealed in an almost hermetic, impermeable theoretical bubble. What you are describing is simply the “medieval warm period,” as verified by independent archaeological and anthropological evidence of the arctic region. Very well done post — Anthony, I think you should ask this poster to write up a more detailed and referenced account of this. Great stuff. I wonder if eskimo folk memory recalls these warmer days?

Pamela Gray (17:10:22) :
“Here is a question for you, which came first, waste oxygen or waste CO2, back when one-celled things were all we had.”
Neither. Arcaeobacteria are anaerobic. See for one example:
Huber, C. and Wächtershäuser, G. Activated Acetic Acid by Carbon Fixation on(Fe,Ni)S Under Primordial Conditions. Science 276: 245-247 (1997). Review (Prebiotic Chemistry) by Crabtree, R. H. Where Smokers Rule. Science 276: 222
(1997).
Origin of Life on Earth: Anaerobic C-C Bond Synthesis
http://www.csun.edu/~hcchm001/NiFeS.PDF

TallDave: there is absolutely NO global warming model that predicts dropping maxima and minima each year.
Of course not “each year,” but the IPCC report does boldly (and incorrectly) predict a shrinking sea ice trend.
Actually, the decrease we saw over the last 10 years is way more rapid than first predicted
Except there isn’t any decrease in overall sea ice, and even Arctic sea ice has recovered subtantially.

mfearing (16:40:42)
We cannot afford to wait, because the politicians are enacting laws that supposedly will reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, yet will likely have a serious detrimental effect on jobs, the economy, and lifestyles.
For example, California (where I live) passed the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which requires by 2020 that CO2 emissions and other GHGs shall be reduced to the levels emitted in 1990. Further, this law requires by 2050 that the emissions be 80 percent below the 1990 level.
In practice, this means roughly a 30 percent reduction by 1990 compared to business as usual, and an 87 percent reduction by 2050.
This is far too serious for us (any of us) to sit back and wait for 50 or 100 years and see how it turns out, IMHO. I am working to repeal California’s GWSA, and I hope all will join me.
It appears that, in 2009, President Obama will sign into law a federal version of California’s law. Meanwhile, evolving economies (India, China, for two) are churning out the CO2 into the sky. Anything we do to mitigate CO2 will be overwhelmed by their activities. Lovely, isn’t it.
For information, see this link
The warmists are deliriously happy over these anti-CO2 laws. If I live to 2020, it will be interesting to see how cold the world is, and how far in the toilet the US economy is. I do not expect to live to see 2050.
The questioning performed by Anthony and others on this site is invaluable to the goal of having rational public policies rather than draconian laws that will further cripple the US economy relative to the world.
Roger E. Sowell

The NOAA global temperature anomaly is showing a huge +12C temperature anomaly for the North Pole. The same anomaly has persisted for the last week at least.

+12C ??? .. leaves me suspicious. And could this also be a contributor to the Jan. 09 significant uptrend in RSS?
Hmmm… Doesn’t smell right to me.

Peter (11:46:34) :
I might add that CO2, unlike ‘pollutants’, is completely colorless, odorless and tasteless. You have no way of knowing that it’s there without some instrument to measure it with.

CO2 is not completely tasteless. The taste of carbonated water is the taste of CO2. Easily verified by venting a little CO2 from a cylinder of same and putting your tongue in the way before it has a chance to dissipate. High concentration CO2 in the air alerts you pretty quickly to its presence!

And do GW proponets agree to accept responsability for the unintended consequences of their actions? Within the last three years our energy policy alone has cost the US at least 600 billion and helped percipatate the current economic crisis.

What can be learned from the last 30 years? Should not the last 90 years be in focus? There was a strong warmin starting in the late 1910s. The matter was already raised in a lecture held in Edinburgh by Jules Schokalsky* on Arctic warming in the year 1935, as discussed at http://www.arctic-warming.com/
*)Schokalsky, J.; ‚Recent Russian researches in the Arctic Sea and the in mountains of Central Asia’, in: The Scottish Geographical Magazine, Vol. 52, No.2, March 1936, (p. 73-84), p.77.