Leaving The Ice Pack Behind
Guest post by Steven Goddard
2009 Arctic ice extent has jumped into a big lead over the previous four years. Danish Meteorological Institute Ice Cover April 21, 2009
NSIDC shows Arctic extent continuing to close on the 1979-2000 mean
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
AMSR-E data shows Arctic extent extending it’s lead at a seven year high :
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
Global sea ice continues to move up towards a twenty year high.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/images/iphone.anomaly.global.png
Meanwhile, US Energy Secretary (and Nobel Prize winner) Dr. Steven Chu warns of impending California flooding due to polar ice melt:
PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago — Caribbean nations face “very, very scary” rises in sea level and intensifying hurricanes, and Florida, Louisiana and even northern California could be overrun with rising water levels due to global warming triggered by carbon-based greenhouse gases, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Saturday.
In order to highlight the “very, very scary” danger California faces, I created some frightening visualizations of what California may look like once flooded with water from Arctic ice, which – as we are told by top government officials – is melting at a record pace. If you are squeamish, look no further – this is indeed scary stuff.
Here is what the Santa Ana UHI Station may look like after being flooded :
And most frightening is what might happen to Mt. Whitney after the next Biblical flood:
If these pictures don’t scare you into buying a hybrid (or even better an aquatic car) I don’t know what will.
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sorry just noticed me wrong global v NH
But, I=PAT.
I=Ice?
…-
“Use Energy, Get Rich and Save the Planet
New York Times ^ | April 20, 2009 | John Tierney
When the first Earth Day took place in 1970, American environmentalists had good reason to feel guilty. The nation’s affluence and advanced technology seemed so obviously bad for the planet that they were featured in a famous equation developed by the ecologist Paul Ehrlich and the physicist John P. Holdren, who is now President Obama’s science adviser.
Their equation was I=PAT, which means that environmental impact is equal to population multiplied by affluence multiplied by technology. Protecting the planet seemed to require fewer people, less wealth and simpler technology — the same sort of social transformation and energy revolution that will be advocated at many Earth Day rallies on Wednesday.
But among researchers who analyze environmental data, a lot has changed since the 1970s. With the benefit of their hindsight and improved equations, I’ll make a couple of predictions:
1. There will be no green revolution in energy or anything else. No leader or law or treaty will radically change the energy sources for people and industries in the United States or other countries. No recession or depression will make a lasting change in consumers’ passions to use energy, make money and buy new technology — and that, believe it or not, is good news, because…
2. The richer everyone gets, the greener the planet will be in the long run.”
Read more at nytimes.com …”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2234531/posts
John H.- 55 (08:59:15) :
Where does one go with updates like this?
I like to share these updates with my Blue friends here in Oregon, the home of new NOAA head Jane Lubchenco.
…
No doubt they will accept any explaination for the growing sea ice extent as long as it retains their faith in AGW.
John – You could try the following.
“I’m shocked to find that not only are we all going too fry within 5 years from global warming, but the atlantic conveyer belt must have shut down causing the Arctic Ice to go wild.
Look at this REF: http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
2009 Arctic Ice Extent (red line) is at a 7 year high. We must stop burning fossil fuels before all the polar bears drown or freeze.
Looks like “The Day After Tomorrow” Movie is coming true.
The IPCC had better get onto this one quickly and warn everyone about the increasing ice.”
Just kidding…
How long till mankind ruins this celestial paradise with CO2 emissions, SUV driving and so on? The clock is probably already ticking for its poor ice caps.
I thought I had read earlier that winds were responsible for piling up some of that first year ice and that kept it from reaching even higher extents during the winter. If true that may mean the first year ice is thicker than standard first year ice and will last longer than many expect.
If all this is true, it will be somewhat ironic that wind (not heat) will be responsible for the recovery just like it was responsible for the huge drop in 2007.
It would seem hard for the current Sea Ice Extent to fall below any of the past years there based on current values.
We will see what happens in August. Maybe we will see warm currents from the Pacific and strong winds blowing the Ice out into the Atlantic again.
If these pictures don’t scare you into buying a hybrid (or even better an aquatic car) I don’t know what will.
All that water and you want me to get a hybrid?!
No thank you; I’ll have a Lotus Esprit.
http://www.cinemaretro.com/uploads/spylotus.jpg
aurbo,
“Note that this year’s coverage is 141,250 km² greater than 2003, the next highest year.”
Wow that is an area greater than New York State. That’s alot of ice, and that’s just the ice you can see…
(not the total volume of ice)
What’s the weird spike in June, seen in nearly all years on the AMSR-E graphs?
Phil (14:13:41) asks
Wow. You mean that when my wife drives her SUV she is ruining this celestial paradise?
Laying it on a bit thick there, aren’t you.
“”” Vernon (10:17:13) :
urederra,
Actually there is a problem with Archimedes principle, namely that ice is fresh water and the sea is salt water. A study by Peter D. Noerdlinger and Kay R. Brower, in The Geophysical Journal International, 170, pp. 145-150, 2007 “The melting of floating ice raises the ocean leve”l says it does but I think there is an error. I could be wrong but here is what I think actually happens. I am not addressing grounded ice. I used 2000 numbers Arctic sea ice and got a sea ice volume of 42,500km3. I then took the total volume of sea water globally, 1,320,000,000km3. Now to be fair I used the numbers from the study. I then did the following calculations:
42500km3 Total volume of arctic sea ice
1320000000km3 Total volume of sea water
1.026 Specific Gravity Sea water
0.919 Specific Gravity Sea Ice
The increase in sea level is 0.00325m or 3.25mm.
What it means is that there is an initial rise until the mixing is complete and then the difference in sea level height is 3.25mm. So while all the sea ice in the Arctic could melt, the change will be slight. “””
Actually; nothing of the sort happens; when the floating sea ice melts, the water level goes down; not up.
It takes 80 calories per gram to melt the ice, and the only place all that energy is going to come is from the sea that the ice is floating on; remember that 9/10 or 10/11 or thereabouts of the total volume is underwater, so there is a whole lot of ice surface area in contact with the water, and only a small part in contact with the air, and water has much betetr thermal conductivity than air.
And since the sea water is salty to about 3.5% salinity; it always has a positive temperature coefficient of expansion so the water contracts, and the level goes down; and it goes down pretty much a fixed amount independent of how much the water cools. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to prove that statement. Only assumption you have to make is that the temperature coefficient of expansion is independent of temperature over the possible range. It probably isn’t; but then that is only a second order effect. Good luck !
George
Quoting:
“Hope some countries in the world will not follow this new creed you Americans have created. Why is it so you manage for inventing kind of weird beliefs?”
Commenting:
And just where are you from, you pillar of self-righteous arrogance? I’m quite sure I can think of some bit of history to throw in both your faces.
Has anyone seen Ernst-Georg Beck’s “180 Years of atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods”
[snip – yes I’ve seen it, and my view is that it is fatally flawed, which is why I don’t want to discuss it here. Plus it is OT.- Sorry, Anthony]
re Thomas J Arnold (11.17.32)
In the same article, the Telegraph (not for the first time) writes about a ” 6C (43F)” global temperature increase.
A temperature of 6C does approximate to 43F. However a temperature change of 6C equates to a change of 10.8F.
Is it ignorance or deliberate alarmism that prompts such rubbish in the press.
So, polar bears are heading south, and crocodiles are heading north. I have three questions.
(1) When will they meet?
(2) At what latitude will this happen?
(3) Given that the bear, thanks to its sharp and powerful talons, can mercilessly Gore an adversary while the crocodile, blessed with bone-crushing jaws, is rightly feared for its mighty Chew and assuming I have a few carbon-credits to spare (Yup-I’m a hopeless optimist) – on whom should I place my bet?
“”” Russ (08:51:49) :
Dr. Chu is an excellent physicist, but he is sold on an environmental agenda. The global warming stuff is well outside his laser physics background (he share a Nobel Prize for that). “””
Actually, I don’t think he shared his Nobel Prize with anybody else (regarding laser physics).
Specifically he succeeded in laser trapping single atoms (in 1985). None of his other team members was recognised; nor was Arthur Ashkin, who invented laser trapping in 1970, and who taught Steven Chu how to make laser traps.
It is now a standard manipulation technique for biologicval samples; they call them laser tweezers; and it was Ashkin and not Chu who invented the technology (at Bell Labs Holmdel NJ); after the labs cut off funding for his research. (he did it on his own anyway).
So Chu was not in any hurry to credit his associates in the field for what they taught him, and none of them were recognised.
I have in my career encountered numerous engineers or scientists, who were only to eager to take credit for the work of others; and for some it seems a cultural habit.
I know of one patent that was issued to someone who asked me to sign on as a co-inventor; which I declined to do; since all the details of that invention are in my lab notebook from perhaps ten years before I described it to this “inventor”. If it’s that important to him; let him bask in his glory; I have plenty; including a patent on “thin air”. He does have a lot more than I do, but then that is how he measured his career. For me they are just business tools that companies use to stop encroachment by competitors. (it doesn’t stop people from some cultures anyway.)
Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, on the dangers of global warming–
“We estimate that there are perhaps 20,000 prehistoric hunter-gatherers frozen up in those glaciers. Now, if they simply thaw and wander around, it’s not a problem, but if they find a leader — a Captain Caveman, if you will — we’ll be facing an even more serious problem.”
“Barbra Streisand told Diane Sawyer that we’re in a global warming crisis, and we can expect more and more intense storms, droughts and dust bowls. But before they act, weather experts say they’re still waiting to hear from Celine Dion.” –Jay Leno
“Al Gore said over the weekend that global warming is more serious than terrorism. Unless the terrorist is on your plane, then that extra half a degree doesn’t bother you so much.” –Jay Leno
“Phil (14:13:41) :
How long till mankind ruins this celestial paradise with CO2 emissions, SUV driving and so on? The clock is probably already ticking for its poor ice caps.”
Ohhhh, those poor poor ice caps. Are they crying? Do they hear the ticking of the clock and realize that their days are numbered? And how can we ruin this celestial paradise with an SUV? Wouldn’t we need an airplane or a spaceship to ruin a celestial paradise? Wouldn’t an SUV be closer to a “terrestrial” paradise? And, by the way I thought that CO2 was a beneficial gas for the plants that reside in terrestrial paradises, or is it paradumb? Oh well please post the address of the celestial paradise you speak of, I think I better use up my skymiles before cap and trade gets started in ernest. By the way, Phil, what is the climate like on your planet?
Mike
RoyfOMR (16:35:55) :
So, polar bears are heading south, and crocodiles are heading north. I have three questions.
(1) When will they meet?
(2) At what latitude will this happen?
(3) Given that the bear, thanks to its sharp and powerful talons, can mercilessly Gore an adversary while the crocodile, blessed with bone-crushing jaws, is rightly feared for its mighty Chew and assuming I have a few carbon-credits to spare (Yup-I’m a hopeless optimist) – on whom should I place my bet?
The will probably interbreed producing a Man-Bear-Croc that will then terrorise the new warmer earth.
In the second image on this thread, the 2009 trend line looks like it’s been right-shifted. I.e., all the readings seem to correspond to dates one month earlier in the year. Consequently, the line bumped or nearly bumped against the 2007 (shrinking ice) trend line on the way up and at the peak.
If this one-month offset continues, the effect will be for the 2009 trend line to bump against the 1979-2000 average on the way down. I.e., during the retreating phase of the ice. If so, there will be warming of the WUWT-cockles.
As Arctic ice cover grows, it’s surprising that US Energy Secretary Steven Chu isn’t experiencing some robust political opposition…
Where is it? Who is the shadow Energy Secretary ? Where are his press releases ?
I write an AGW sceptical blog, and want more ammo…
The way that this is going, all hell will freeze over, before we get an ice free arctic.
Phil (14:13:41) :
“How long till mankind ruins this celestial paradise with CO2 emissions, SUV driving and so on? The clock is probably already ticking for its poor ice caps.”
Paradise? Ask the millions of grieving parents whose childrens lives were sacrificed on the verdant altar of an hubristic DDT denialism that put the theoretical thickness of avian egg-shells above the reality of febrile infant mortality!
Paradise? Have a thought Phil for the 95% of Chad citizens whose survival depends on access to an energy source that they once relied upon- Charcoal!
Yes it killed the germs – cooked the meal- kept them alive. The elite of that country – went green – and banned its usage. Does that make you feel good mate? No it doesn’t – Just think!
CO2 emissions? Someone is scamming you- please don’t take that badly – I mean no disrespect. Man is currently responsible for circa 5% of CO2 emissions, since pre-Industrial times we’ve moved from about 3% of total carbon dioxide to where we now sit. Face it, Phil, we are bit players as far as the planet is concerned.
Finally, we come to the impoverishment of the ice-caps. Is that via the mechanism of evaporation as purported by recent statements of a US politician or just numerical dissonance?
Are you utilising the mannian-made logic that sneers at historic evidence as proven legendary because they fly in the face of peer-reviewed studies of pine-cone proxies.
Sea-ice is just dandy- the bottom bit of the globe is doing very well- if increasing extents are indeed meant to be good. Northern areas do seem to be spreading icy fingers back into regions that were recently given up as weedy-warmers!
Personally, I’d be much happier if the poles were ice-free once again- but that’s just me Phil
Phil (14:13:41) :
“How long till mankind ruins this celestial paradise with CO2 emissions, SUV driving and so on? The clock is probably already ticking for its poor ice caps.”
Thank you once again, Phil, for another one of your astute, insightful, and well documented responses. I was somewhat skeptical before, but now since I’ve read your comment, I can’t understand how I could have been so foolish. Thanks for the liberation!
Ayrdale (17:31:39) :
“I write an AGW sceptical blog, and want more ammo…”
Marc Marano’s new website “Climate Depot” would be a good clearinghouse for relavant info:
http://www.climatedepot.com/