Shooting At a Rapidly Moving Target
Guest post by Steven Goddard
Arctic ice area has recovered to normal (one standard deviation) levels, so ice area no longer matters. The issue is now thickness, which is measured by a team of explorers (Catlin) with a tape measure, who intentionally seek out flat (first year) ice for their route.
The team systematically seeks out flatter ice because it is easier to travel over and camp on. Typically, the surface of first‐year ice floes is flatter than that of multi‐year ice floes.
Arctic ice area back in the normal range
Antarctic ice extent has been setting record highs, so the AGW team now claims that Antarctica doesn’t matter.
the scientific community has known for some time that that on a warming planet, sea ice in the global North (Arctic) is expected to melt while sea ice in the global South is expected to remain constant or even sightly grow.
Buoy data which shows thickening doesn’t count, because buoys don’t cover a wide enough region. Even though their region is much larger than the Catlin coverage.
Thus, while the buoys provide an excellent measurement of thickness at a point through the seasons, they do not provide good information on the large-scale spatial distribution of ice thickness.
Two year old multi-year ice no longer counts, the ice now has to be three years old to matter.
The Arctic is treading on thinner ice than ever before. Researchers say that as spring begins, more than 90 percent of the sea ice in the Arctic is only 1 or 2 years old. That makes it thinner and more vulnerable than at anytime in the past three decades, according to researchers with NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.
Dr. Hansen’s original prediction that Antarctic ice would diminish symmetrically with Arctic ice no longer matters, because the models have improved since he made that prediction.
A new NASA-funded study finds that predicted increases in precipitation due to warmer air temperatures from greenhouse gas emissions may actually increase sea ice volume in the Antarctic’s Southern Ocean. This adds new evidence of potential asymmetry between the two poles, and may be an indication that climate change processes may have different impact on different areas of the globe. … numerical models have improved considerably over the last two decades”
Apparently the only valid target are the latest computer models, which are constantly backfitted to mask their failures to date. Is this how science is supposed to be done?
So, does that explain the solid 7 days of snow coming to the Wallowa Mountains?
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?site=PDT&llon=-117.978747&rlon=-116.368747&tlat=46.342084&blat=44.732084&smap=1&mp=0&map.x=109&map.y=184
Are we saying that increased warming also increases snow in the NH too?
Explain global warming again. I don’t get it.
Seems to be the way the weather is forecast as well! Whenever I read articles such as this, I picture a child standing with their fingers firmly stuck in their ears, crying “Na Na Na, I’m not listening!”
Resistance is futile!
Despite their own numbers proving them wrong, the Alarmists continue to practice their “religion”.
You can lead a horse to knowledge, but you can’t make him think.
For a consistent comparison, is there a graph like the 1 Standard Deviation one available for the antarctic? I know it is above average, but is it statistically significant?
Up is down, left is right, black is white, wrong is right. Poor is rich, dead is alive, brown is green, and cold is hot. They’ve gone stark raving mad, I tell you, and they look totally normal.
First it was global warming, until it got COOLER. Then it was global climate change, until the two poles started acting differently. So now is it anthropogenic hemispheric climate change? Or should we just call them bi-polar now? (No offense to those to whom the real and actual medical term applies.)
Sue Pam, my middle name is Sue. Too funny. I’m Pam Sue and you’re Sue Pam. The only time anyone ever used my middle name was when I was a little girl and in serious trouble. Then it was “PAMELA SUE!” Whereupon I would drop and break whatever I was holding and run like hell.
Another outstanding earmark of pseudoscience: whatever occurs supports the theory–it cannot be falsified. Facts that refute earlier iterations are ignored or said to have been predicted all along, just unseen–oops.
Maybe that’s how an Ice age happens. The AG$Wers think we are going to have runaway warming but maybe we are going to see runaway freezing just like in the video but on a global scale. Interesting.
The studies are coming so fast and furious that there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that can falsify the blitzkrieg of global warming. If glaciers were fast approaching the great lakes, you can rest assured that this is precisely what the models had already predicted, even as study after study would pour forth from our higher institutions of learning detailing exactly why this had already been predicted. The rewriting of history continues apace, helped along by a populace ignorant of history, the internet, a collusion of interests, a consensus of the ennabled and the apathy of the majority.
“Apparently the only valid target are the latest computer models, which are constantly backfitted to mask their failures to date. Is this how science is supposed to be done?”
No. This is decidedly NOT how science is supposed to be done. Tweaking models to fit current data, and then using those tweaked models to “predict” the current data is abhorent at best, and outrageously deceptive at worst. It seems that the “observables” that the GW alarmists called to our attention a few years ago are problematic:
i. Ice caps melting (well, that ain’t happening)
ii. Global temperatures rising out of control (nope)
iii. Water levels rising and swamping cities (hasn’t happened even to the ones we wouldn’t miss)
iv. Winter season shortening (I’m unsure as to this…might be worth re-calculating…but for what its worth, this past winter still seems to be hanging on)
Now that their observables are failing them, they are switching to non-observables or difficult-to-observe observables such as:
i. ice depth
ii. this idea that everything is “on pause” and that in a few years down the line, boy are we ever gonna get it!
This is certainly NOT good science. Those that are practicing it should be ashamed of themselves.
The lowest Arctic summer melt season in the satellite record back to 1972 was actually 1996 (even though many don’t know that – everyone thinks it was 1979 or earlier etc.)
The current trends that 2009 are on are very similar to 1996 in that there was a very low start-off melt at this time of the year in 1996 and the ocean influences in the north Atlantic were similar.
The 2009 Arctic season to date is actually about 300,000 km^2 higher than 1996 so if the same melt conditions continue as in 1996 and the ocean influences stay the same, we could be looking at an extraordinary year (in terms of the silencing the pro-AGW arctic-free-of-ice crowd).
Bill Illis,
You may not realize this, But there are already fourteen studies ready to be published explaining why that would be exactly what was expected. They will be released when the melt is much lower than expected.
Don’t worry the studies have already been paid for.
Mike
From what I read, the arctic is melting more and faster all the time. If it weren’t for too much ice, it would be ice free in 2009. Yes, that’s right, too much ice is there for it to be ice free, even though it’s melting more and more and faster and faster. Scratching head, hum, I think my 8 year old son can figure this one out. More ice is freezing than melting during the past 2 seasons, possibly?
There are no black spots on the sun today
It’s the same as yesterday
Correction,
I also meant to say really nice article Steven.
Surely everyone realizes that once the operative description was changed from “Man-made Global Warming” to “Man-made Climate Change”, ANY change will be attributable to man. I, for one, feel myself downright omnipotent now that I’ve realized my pitiful carbon footprint is amplified by mysterious (and unnatural) positive feedback to fry some poor schnook in Bangladesh. I fire off my weedwhacker and birds fall from the trees in Dipsylvania while heat-crazed polar bears (possibly bi-polar bears) attack a German women out for a swim in the park. According to recent scientific studies, fat people are even more powerful than I.
George Orwell was a genius.
Apparently the only valid target are the latest computer models, which are constantly backfitted to mask their failures to date. Is this how science is supposed to be done?
Which is the nut of the problem. A substitution of a flawed methodology (models constantly corrected post-hoc and then treated as data) for actual science – predictive theory tested against actual empirical evidence capable of independent replication.
This also goes to a post over at Jennifer Marohasys site where Bob Carter explains the reaction of local Australian Politicians to the rupture of explanations regarding AGW/Climate: REF: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/04/on-a-tortuous-political-problem/
The Politicians respond with (to quote Bob Carter).
“1. BEWILDERMENT about being faced by two implacably opposing views from two groups of scientists who, prima facie, seem equally professionally credible, yet are each certain that their view is the right and the other’s wrong.”
The reason that they are bewildered is because of their incapacity to assess the methods employed to reach the different (Pro/Anti) AGW positions. – Because they are not aware that there is a difference of methodology in play.
BTW: The AGW Proponent “Pseudo-Science” Methodology does not provide new useful knowlege, except by accident, and is explicitly designed to hide the flaws in the models and to ensure that the fundamental assumptions (i.e. man made emissions of CO2 causes catastrophic warming) are never tested.
Comon guys, look at how 2008 fell off a cliff about now. It’s not over till the baby ice melts.
No! No! No! They have it all wrong, The Telegraph in England is now reporting that the increase in Ice Mass in the Antarctic is caused by the Ozone Hole! Who would of thought that the previous man-made catastrophe ( loss of all of the Earth’s Ozone ) would someday save us from the horrors of Global Warming! Shoot, all we have to do to stave off the Climate Catastrophe is produce more fluorocarbons.
The increase in Antarctic ice doesn’t count because it’s due to the ozone hole according to the British Antarctic Survey report released today. The ozone hole caused wind patterns over Antartica to shift blowing ice away from the land, allowing more ice to form.
In other words, the increase is sea ice is due to man. But don’t worry, it’ll return to normal as the ozone hole heals over the next 2 to 3 decades.
Steven Goddard:
Not only does the Norwegian data show the ice is within 1 STD: it’s based on a 1979-2007 average. NOT a 1979-2000 average.
I’ve had it.
Arguing with the Alarmist is pointless.
As the guy wrote a few spaces up………up is down, white is black in the mind of the disciples of the global warming faithful……..ice flows could be covering New York City in July and they’d still attribute it to global warming…….insisting that “the models had predicted that very phenomenon all along” or “just you wait until next year”.
All the evidence you show them will not sway their religious adherence to the “global warming”, “mankind is evil”, “we’re all gonna die” mantra as they drive off to catch a mid-winter vacation flight to the Galapagos Islands in their chauffer driven limousines while munching on their tofu laced granola bars.
It’s a fad that will die a slow death just as disco dancing, hula hoops and pet rocks, (and hopefully the Prius). I just keep forwarding the information that Goddard/Anthony and the remaining sane people provide to keep them at bay.
Me the paranoid again beware of norex (and cryosphere), they did a massive change downwards last year when this began to happen. Cryosphere is not prepared to let you compare NH current ice with past NH ice either. The only one I trust at this stage is probably NCDC and DMI. BTW one wonders if it ain’t in fact way over anomaly since last year (norex) but they aint showin it LOL. This would be truly the end of AGW if it does happen hence the strong resistance to accepting this fact (NH ice “over” anomaly)
I like the gap (sarc) between what is accepted and what is not :
Arson fires and UHI heat records in Australia–accepted–climate
record cold temps broken throughout this past winter–not accepted–weather
Arctic ice in growing trend–not accepted–ice still in ‘death spiral’
record heat in California in UHI areas–accepted–Steven Chu was right, California beyond hope
—————–
I have the popcorn ready for watching Arctic 2009 melt–fun to watch it not surpass 2008!
P.S. very interesting video Steven Goddard
Anthony…
Apparently the only valid target are the latest computer models, which are constantly backfitted to mask their failures to date. Is this how science is supposed to be done?
Nope, it’s not. Science must be done honestly. These people conceal unprocessed databases, formulas, methodologies, etc. Moreover, their counterarguments make me know that we, open scientists, are struggling against an irrefutable hypothesis, which is adjusted every time it is falsified with data taken from real nature.
There is a predictable silence coming from the AGW true believer sites concerning this: click
OK my last comment was pessimistic. Now I’m optimistically saying that it seems that more more websites like this and celebrities and commentaters are seeing the light of truth. We might pull out of this yet. We have to stop carbon taxes and cap and trade. We must summon the will to make a regime change. and I mean throw them ALL out and start over. Take the keys away and send them all home. Then stop all the retirement benefits and let them go to the county health department and the state funded agencies. Stop all the money from going out of your state and accept no funny money from the feds… It is valueless now. We need a new union based on the Constitution not world law.
See how easy it’s gonna be? 🙂
OT: Speaking about shooting at a rapidly moving target, this little ditty just popped up on Drudge:
“Air pollution helps plants blunt climate change: study:
Cleaning up skies choked with smog and soot would sharply curtail the capacity of plants to absorb carbon dioxide and blunt global warming, according to a study released on Wednesday.
Plant life — especially tropical forests — soak up a quarter of all the CO2 humans spew into the atmosphere, and thus plays a critical role in keeping climate change in check.
Through photosynthesis, vegetation transforms sunlight, CO2 and water into sugar nutrients.
Common sense would suggest that air pollution in the form of microscopic particles that obstruct the Sun’s rays — a phenomenon called “global dimming” — would hamper this process, but the new study shows the opposite is true.
“Surprisingly, the effects of atmospheric pollution seem to have enhanced global plant productivity by as much as a quarter from 1960 to 1999,” said Linda Mercado, a researcher at the Met Office Hadley Centre in Britain, and the study’s lead author. ……..”
The gist of the story is that if we clean up the air we are going to have to cut CO2 levels even more !!!!! Wow, will this make Al Gore one very happy [and CO2-challenging fat] puppy. It will make Obama happy too as the number of carbon credits the government will get to sell to support his slush fund will increase well beyond what had been predicted to amount to about $800 Billion.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.3bb1cb136038ab4034b51162ec256bcc.281&show_article=1
Will “multi-year ice” become the new ‘old growth forest’?
How long will it be until the some unique and critical to the ecosystem aspect of multi-year ice is claimed? Maybe polar bears need it to breed, or seals need it to bear young. Some important aspect wil be discovered to help perpetuate the crisis.
Personally, I very much look forward to the day –perhaps not too distant– when AGWers are arguing that the current extent is within one standard deviation ABOVE the long-term trend, so it doesn’t really make a difference.
The Antarctic sea ice paper about the Ozone Hole causing the increase in sea ice in Antarctica is faulty on its face since the timelines do not match up.
The Ozone Hole forms from September to December (the end of the winter season in the southern hemisphere) and the increase in the Antarctic sea ice extent has exclusively ocurred in the February to May period.
There has been no real increase in the Ozone Hole period – it is flat.
The authors say that the Ozone Hole creates increased polar vortex winds which creates increased freezing potential of the ocean (six months later apparently).
The study ends with “or it could be a natural increase in the sea ice extent”, which is a consistent practise I am starting to see.
The researchers themselves want to present their data and start to get things turned around but they still need to attach a “global warming” “human-influence” spin to their study to get it published and stay on the good side of the enviro-nazis. They can always go back later and say “hey we said the ice extent was increasing and we noted it could be a natural increase so we were being objective enough.”
Btw, on a warming planet, *of course* northern ice will be lower than southern ice. Heat rises!
And if someone takes that seriously I may cry. 😉
The video is interesting, but at the risk of quibbling I would point out that you can take a supersaturated (but still clear) solution of something, whack it, and initiate massive precipitation. If I had to swear to it in court, I could not say that this is freezing and not precipitation.
About the rest of the comments (sea ice), I’m in agreement that this is causing problems for the Gorenites.
Pamela: Excellent logical presumption.
If Global Warming causes 7 days of snow in the Wallowa Mts, then more Global Warming will regenerate the glaciers & polar caps. It will also lower the oceans, as where else will that ice come from but ocean water?
AGW seeks to fall on it’s Sword of Stupid.
So funny that CT doesn’t support the Comparison Product any longer. Also so very far behind on the seasonal graphs that are fatally flawed. Their website is so shabby and falling apart like the AGW hypothesis itself…
(I accidentally made this same comment on the Solar Minimum post, Sorry)
“A new NASA-funded study finds that predicted increases in precipitation due to warmer air temperatures from greenhouse gas emissions may actually increase sea ice volume in the Antarctic’s Southern Ocean.”
OK, this is feasible, but it does nothing to explain why Antarctic ice extent has increased. I love how they purposely mix up volume with extent to try to explain away the increased extent of ice — which can only be caused by colder temperatures.
Go Baby Ice, Go!
==========
Love those short term trends.
OT, but not so much. It involves the Arctic ice. I sent a note to ABC World News Tonight protesting their BIG Earth Day story with not less than 3 prime reporters showing a sad “stranded” polar bear, the clouds of gas from factories, the coral reefs bleaching, the frogs disappearing and the sad and starving people of Earth with no water (drinking dirt). I was disappointed Charles Gibson didn’t limit the topic or show anything about the opposing view with doubt of AGW/HGW. The NOAA lady really tweaked me. She got her 30 seconds of fame to tell me the human race will perish.
So, on this Earthday…with Arctic Ice is nearly hitting the 1979-2000 “holy gail” mean…and with global ice above that same average. I hope Charles Osgood, the Catlin grandstanders, Hansen, Gore and the IPCC go out with the tar and feathers they deserve. ABC News: Bad reporting.
“Heat rises!”
Warm things rise! 😛
I meant “holy Grail” Please correct my comment typo
Mike Bryant (19:35:22) :
OK my last comment was pessimistic. Now I’m optimistically saying that it seems that more more websites like this and celebrities and commentaters are seeing the light of truth. We might pull out of this yet. We have to stop carbon taxes and cap and trade. We must summon the will to make a regime change. and I mean throw them ALL out and start over. Take the keys away and send them all home. Then stop all the retirement benefits and let them go to the county health department and the state funded agencies. Stop all the money from going out of your state and accept no funny money from the feds… It is valueless now. We need a new union based on the Constitution not world law.
See how easy it’s gonna be? 🙂
Mike,
It will be like fighting the Mafia on steroids.
The mortality rates are high for those who did.
Only this time the Mafia controls Law Enforcement Agencies, the Military, Home Land Security and the Secret Services.
If you take too much time you also have to deal with the promised Civil Army, EPA and all the dope dealers in the USA.
Ans this is only the first half of the story because the the representative power you want to send out covers for the real power. These are the guys who are working to create a Global Empire.
Many of their big corporates have their own security staff and their numbers and fire power exceeds that of the US Army.
If you read USA, read Corporatism!
Read John Perkins book “Economic Hit Man on Democracy” to know what you are up against and know that this book is written five years ago.
http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/john_perkins_former_economic_hit_man
Also know there is No refuge outside the USA
They are everywhere!
So, start organizing the “good people” who cherish freedom and truth.
The mutable object of AGW will be deconstructed by the irresistible force of truth.
Well, we do have to see whether all the cold being swept further south is reducing the amount of Arctic cold, or if there’s still plenty of cold to go around.
“A new NASA-funded study finds that predicted increases in precipitation due to warmer air temperatures from greenhouse gas emissions may actually increase sea ice volume in the Antarctic’s Southern Ocean.”
What the heck has this purported increase in precipitation have to do with sea ice? I can see how an increase in precipitation would add to glacial ice, but sea ice? If this is true then the same should happen in the arctic with the increase in open water, resulting in more snow which should then result in more and thicker sea ice.
Interesting methodology in play here.
Public figures engage in spin; accountants cook the books. What are scientists doing who try to make the data fit the fantasy?
Re previous warning about changing goalposts
see DMI here current
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
see AMSR here current
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
notice anything?
I note that last year the ice extent went from just within the normal range down to below the 2007 line within the space of about 2 weeks.
That stuff aT Drudge sound like a recycled version of that dumb-ass terraforming idea from a few weeks back–yeah lets fire some high albedo crap into the upper atmosphere. Zinc Oxide!!! Damn those Aussie surfers knew it all along.
Another nice piece, Steven. Love the video. If I recollect correctly, Jules Verne used that effect in a story where a party had to cross a body of water which one of their members realised it was below freezing and disturbed the surface, causing it to freeze immediately, allowing for passage.
I can’t put my finger on the actual report, but I remember that GWing was supposed to turn the world into a desert, not increase precipitation.
Regarding ozone I do have this archived, and unless it has been disproven, the ‘hole’ isn’t largely anthropogenic. Also, isn’t the creation of ozone due to the sun, I know old sol doesn’t effect climate (sarc), but its lack of energy must not be contributing to ‘normal’ ozone creation.
“Journal of Physical Chemistry, 2007, DOI: 10.1021/jp067660w
Ozone chemistry confounds everyone By Chris Lee | Published: October 01, 2007 – 08:59AM CT
In fact, a team of scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have put together a rather complicated experiment, one that allowed them to isolate the Cl2O2 molecule in a form that was much more pure than what had been previously obtained. They did this through a combination of laser induced reactions, cooling, and trapping. Having obtained a much more pure form, the researchers were able to use UV lasers to cleave the chlorine molecule and measure the rate of the subsequent reactions. To their shock, they found that the reaction rate was not just at the lower end of the published results, but about an order of magnitude slower than the average of previously reported values. Firstly, using the new reaction rate, scientists can no longer account for 60 percent of the observed ozone depletion.”
Same old-same old
“A new NASA-funded study finds that predicted increases in precipitation due to warmer air temperatures from greenhouse gas emissions may actually increase sea ice volume in the Antarctic’s Southern Ocean.”
Back in the 60’s we had a theory.
1-Global Warming
2-More open water
3-More evaporation
4-More cloud
5-More Snow
6-Growing ice caps
It has been rediscovered
Which brings back memoies of a song, possibly written by or inspired by Robert Service, called”Till the ice worm nests again”.
In the land of the pale blue snow,
Where it’s ninety-nine below,
And the polar bears are roaming o’er the plain,
In the shadow of the Pole
I will clasp her to my soul,
We’ll be happy when the ice worms nest again.
PS there are two types of ice worms.
Those that live in glaciers, and those that are a strand of overcooked spagetti in a glass of gin or vodka.
The latter are more palatable.
It’s been a long day for a dangerous global warming/climate change skeptic.
Thanks everyone – the video is actually Anthony’s contribution
Last year (2008) the ice was at the greatest extent since 2000 for a full 2 weeks. I hope the same doesn’t happen with our 2009 ice.
Speaking of ice, why does the AMSR-E Ice Extent chart show virtually every year ice extent taking a jump up (increase) at the beginning of June?
Nasif Nahle (19:30:32) :
Anthony…
Apparently the only valid target are the latest computer models, which are constantly backfitted to mask their failures to date. Is this how science is supposed to be done?
Nope, it’s not. Science must be done honestly. These people conceal unprocessed databases, formulas, methodologies, etc. Moreover, their counterarguments make me know that we, open scientists, are struggling against an irrefutable hypothesis, which is adjusted every time it is falsified with data taken from real nature.
———————————-
Let those clowns have at it with their silly and fraudulent counterarguments.
The unwashed, voting masses may not understand the scientific process, but they sure as hell know how to differentiate between people who are lying to them and those who are not. In this modern world, that would be a skill set that is honed, by necessity, on an hourly basis.
Their multi-year Arctic ice argument is particularly puzzling to me. As I see it, the only argument is that first year ice melts more rapidly than 2-, 3-, multi-year ice. So what ?? How does that impact anything other than sea ice extent ?? So it seems to me that (increasing) sea ice extent should continue to be the “valid” parameter that it was when it was declining and the darling of the AGW movement. Am I missing something ??
Another thing: If warming oceans cause the volume of the oceans to rise and, consequently sea levels to rise, I’m assuming that the same laws of nature would hold for the opposite too. Since the oceans have cooled and piles of new snow and ice are now on terra firma, sea levels, not trends in sea level rises, but actual absolute sea levels should be falling. Other than the obvious five letter “f” word, am I missing something ??
In stagnating companies, boards frequently make a change at the top, because a change is needed. What this field needs is a change at the top, and hiring of scientists who perform experiments in real time, and analyze past data, as opposed to this set of clowns who have convinced the people in charge of their taxpayer-payed funding that in CO2-climate research, all experiments have to be conducted in the future. The passage of time and recent data now shows this approach to be bogus ….
…. something we, on here, already knew.
Hansen’s new model!
10 INPUT “CURRENT DATA “;D
20 INPUT “CURRENT DATE “;DATE$
30 PRINT “ASIMO PREDICTS DATA WILL BE “;D; “BY THE DATE “;DATE$
RUN!!!
Regarding the video. Water changing state to Ice expands by 9%. Water does not expand when cooling, only when changing state to ice. So, how come the bottle doesn’t distort or the cap pop off due to the expected 9% expansion if the super-cooled water is actually turning to ice.
BarryW (19:08:42) :
Are you referring to the 2008 ice area? If so, it fell off the cliff about 10 days (and one one year ago). 2007 had a very steady melt rate during that period. It appears to me from that limited data that expecting this year to behave like last year is foolish.
However, the ice extent map at http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png shows a recent sharp drop. Personally, I think we’re paying too much attention to the graphs now, things really start sorting themselves out in July and August. Patience.
If not all the baby ice melts this year (it didn’t last year) will it be over some year in the future where all the baby ice does melt?
Mike Strong (20:14:50) :
OT, but not so much. It involves the Arctic ice. I sent a note to ABC World News Tonight protesting their BIG Earth Day story with not less than 3 prime reporters showing a sad “stranded” polar bear, the clouds of gas from factories, the coral reefs bleaching, the frogs disappearing and the sad and starving people of Earth with no water (drinking dirt). I was disappointed Charles Gibson didn’t limit the topic or show anything about the opposing view with doubt of AGW/HGW. The NOAA lady really tweaked me. She got her 30 seconds of fame to tell me the human race will perish.
So, on this Earthday…with Arctic Ice is nearly hitting the 1979-2000 “holy gail” mean…and with global ice above that same average. I hope Charles Osgood, the Catlin grandstanders, Hansen, Gore and the IPCC go out with the tar and feathers they deserve. ABC News: Bad reporting”.
Mike Strong,
We all have to grow up and learn.
The real consensus can be found among a the “powerful and mighty” on this planet who have decided to create a Global Empire. The vehicle they use is called Fascism, or Corporatism see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
The AGW scare comes from them.
And they control our Media.
You think you address an independent journalist or worse, an independent editor?
In the real world you address a slave of “Corporatism” who will lose his or hers job if the guidelines are not fulfilled.
We have had a short window of “objective news presentation” until the Press Agencies lost their independence and were bought by the Publishers and the Publishers were bought by the Media Thai Coons and and big Corporates,
Ted Turner (CNN), General Electric (CNBC), Walt Disney (ABC), Reuters (Thomson) etc.
Ted Turner is one of the most open supporters of the New Global Empire and he certainly puts his money where his mouth is.
He has donated millions to the United Nations and he is quoted at http://green-agenda.com
I think it’s better to publish or link the articles and debunk them on the net.
I think we are all doing all right here.
Jim Papsdorf (19:36:57) : “Air pollution helps plants blunt climate change: study:
These folks are nuts. Some quotes from the article with comments:
“Although many people believe that well-watered plants grow best on a bright sunny day, the reverse is true. Plants often thrive in hazy conditions,” said colleague and co-author Stephen Sitch.
It depends entirely on the plant! Corn wants direct hot August sun. Kale is happy with weak winter sun, cool and frost. Fava beans grow in the winter here. Sheesh. There absolutely is no one size fits all answer and anyone with a clue about plants knows this.
This process of diffuse radiation is well known. But the new study is the first to use a global model to calculate its impact on the ability of plants to absorb CO2.
Yikes! The disease is spreading! Now even botanists have learned that writing video games makes more grant money…
The findings underline a cruel dilemma: to the extent we succeed in reducing aerosol pollution in coming decades, we will need to slash global carbon dioxide emissions even more than we would have otherwise.
They must know that CO2 enrichment promotes plant growth. So the answer to lower plant growth is reduced CO2? This is flat out pandering.
Without this particle pollution, he said, average global surface temperatures would have increased by 1.0 to 1.1 Celsius (1.8 to 2.0 Fahrenheit) since the start of industrialisation, rather than 0.7 C (1.25 F).
Well, at least I can drive comforted by the knowledge that my smokey old 1980’s era Diesel is helping to save the world from Global Warming 😉
A major scientific review released last week at the United Nations showed that warming is itself limiting the capacity of plants to take up CO2, and that an increase in two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) would transform forests from a sink into a net source of CO2.
This, too, is nuts. Have they never noticed where all the vegetables come from? HOT places, like Imperial Valley California and Arizona. 2 C isn’t enough to even notice in a field unless it’s the difference between frost kill and not frosted. The rice and peaches really grow well in summer in California when it’s 100+F (and the standard unit to measure ripening is “degree days” meaning more degrees grows and ripens faster).
I’m simply astounded at the brazen falsity (nicest word I could come up with fearing a “snip” for what I really think…)
Don’t know if anybody has seen this regarding historic Greenland ice levels. Might be interesting to see where the climate information cited here came from and how it can be checked
http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/vinland/othermysteries/climate/4157en.html
Mike Bryant (18:32:32) :
“The studies are coming so fast and furious that there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that can falsify the blitzkrieg of global warming. If glaciers were fast approaching the great lakes, you can rest assured that this is precisely what the models had already predicted, even as study after study would pour forth from our higher institutions of learning detailing exactly why this had already been predicted. The rewriting of history continues apace, helped along by a populace ignorant of history, the internet, a collusion of interests, a consensus of the ennabled and the apathy of the majority”.
Mike, this is war, nothing more nothing less.
A war to establish a Global Empire.
Let’s take each of these reports and tear them apart.
Pamela Gray (18:04:39) : “So, does that explain the solid 7 days of snow coming to the Wallowa Mountains?”
The scientific community has known for some time that the Wallowa Mountains are teleconnected to the West Antarctic Peninsula, as well as to Al Gore’s swollen dumpadeedus, home of the discovery of the Internet. It’s a robust correlation, confirmed by the average model trendlines, and the forthcoming paper will be pee-er reviewed tonight as soon as we finish the pizza.
Graeme Rodaughan (19:05:04) :
Apparently the only valid target are the latest computer models, which are constantly backfitted to mask their failures to date. Is this how science is supposed to be done?
Which is the nut of the problem. A substitution of a flawed methodology (models constantly corrected post-hoc and then treated as data) for actual science – predictive theory tested against actual empirical evidence capable of independent replication.
I will say AMEN to this, a clear confusion of the issue of the scientific method.
I want to speak up though for the use of models and the continuous feedback with data. It is practically biological, though not science. Every living thing models its environment, tests it and progresses a molecule 🙂 at a time. It is a more than time honored method for evolution. Modeling has been a useful tool in scientific disciplines, from engineering to particle physics, but it is just that, a tool, and tools have to be used appropriately.
Modeling is appropriate for weather prediction: a model fits existing patterns and projects ahead for a few days. Next day it incorporates the fresh patterns and projects ahead, like the biological evolutionary models. It is very useful, but it does not try to prove anything. The correct predictions show the extent to which the approximations used in the model are good enough.
In contrast to the evolutionary modeling, the scientific method poses a hypothesis, tests it, and rejects the hypothesis if in error with data. The scientific method is predictive, not exploratory. The tools are kept( we do not throw away integration 🙂 )
The logical fallacy that the AGW have fallen into is that they confuse the tool with the hypothesis and by jiggling the tool when it does not fit, think they prove the original hypothesis. This is also very influenced by human psychology, in addition to grant money and peer reviews, where scientists want their own pet theory vindicated. History of science is full of examples of scientists sticking to their guns while drowning in opposite proof.
Leon Brozyna (20:37:28) : “…Interesting methodology in play here. Public figures engage in spin; accountants cook the books. What are scientists doing who try to make the data fit the fantasy?”
Prostitution comes to mind.
Many of them actually realize that they’re shooting at a rapidly moving target – and that their arguments are therefore fabricated at every single moment (locally), and therefore also at all moments (globally).
But they don’t care. Their idea is that “isn’t it a good thing what we’re doing even if all the justifications are untrue?” They’re driven by pure politics and science is just held hostage.
Qubert: That’s impossible! Nothing can go faster than the speed of light!
Professor: That’s why scientists increased it in 2208.
This science thing is pretty easy when you manipulate it to fit your needs.
I’m surprised that no one has suggested using tug boats to move some of that extra ice in Antarctica up to the North Pole where it can be used as Polar Bear habitat.
All of this science through computer modeling makes me think of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The knights are all set to converge on Camelot, but someone mentions that “it’s only a model.” Then someone quickly gives the universal hush sound, “shhh!” There is an awful hush out there in the over computer models substituting for reality in science. It’s almost as if computers are not to be questioned.
Meanwhile, on Greenland: “Man Survives 3 Days Lost in the Arctic”
When reading it, consider the following: How much infrastructure is the NSF supporting in Greenland?
Steven Goddard wrote
“Arctic ice area has recovered to normal (one standard deviation) levels, so ice area no longer matters. The issue is now thickness”
Which is what the scientists have been saying ever since that silly Daily Tech, Geroge Wills mess claimed it did! Glad you now agree with them Steve.
Regards
Andy
This is Super Mario Brothers science.
You twiddle the dials on the computer to make Mario jump at just the right places.
It works great so long as you see where to jump.
As soon as you don’t see the jumps, you lose.
That’s all the AGW crowd is doing. Twiddling the knobs on the free parameters to make it look as though the models predicted the future when all they did is replicate the equivalent of Super Mario’s jumps.
The point is, the models break down as soon as they are called on to predict where the jumps will occur in the future.
It is surprising that people don’t understand that.
Karl Popper must be spinning in his grave. This is not science because it is not falsifiable. It is a silly computer game.
It seems that they have gotten to the point where they are creating something equivalent to a legal fiction, a thing clearly false but accepted as true in law to achieve an equitable or worthy result.
In other words, they have reached the point of dressing up a scientific fiction that must be accepted as true, despite all evidence to the contrary, to achieve a desired political end.
In law a recognized and accepted fiction can be a benefit; in science it is a disgrace and growing disaster.
Unfortunately, their ultimate political end may result in a literal physical end for a fair portion of humanity, much as the ban on DDT did for Africans.
Justin Sane (21:08:12) :
Speaking of ice, why does the AMSR-E Ice Extent chart show virtually every year ice extent taking a jump up (increase) at the beginning of June?
Justin,
After speculating (wrongly) that it was an instrument sensor drift, I emailed JAXA and got this reply which I also posted on a previous topic (“leaving the icepack behind”)
Dear van Burgel,
Thank you for inquiring about our AMSR-E sea-ice monitor web.
You are right.
Current version of data processing makes an erroneous bias of
sea ice extent on June 1st and October 15th which are seen
in the graph of sea ice extent as a small peak on these dates.
The apparent bias arises due to a switching of some parameters
in the processing on both dates. The parameter switching is
needed because the surface of the Arctic sea-ice becomes
wet in summer due to the melting of ice which changes
satellite-observed signatures of sea-ice drastically.
We are planning to improve the processing to make the gap
much smoother in the coming year.
Sincerely,
Masahiro HORI
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
The latest paper on the Ozone Hole controlling the direction of polar air masses and the patterns of associated winds would certainly make Marcel Leroux laugh… As Lubos Motl points out, they are desperate and fire off anything to counter the growing public perception of a scam. One has to check the summary of April 2009 Geophysical letters to realize how anything that is global warming minded seems to be published these days and fast. As the Arctic sea ice is getting back to normal (and its higher albedo since new ice is clean of soot particules), the silence of the media is deafening…
There is a joke about genetics: “It can explain why your son looks like you and why he does not, if that’s the case”
Paraphrasing that we may say: “AGW can explain why the planet gets hotter and why it cools, if that’s the case”.
They make up the rules as they go, along with the data and the models.
Apparently the only valid target are the latest computer models, which are constantly backfitted to mask their failures to date. Is this how science is supposed to be done?
It’s global warming yesterday, and global warming tomorrow…but never global warming today.
If “increases in precipitation due to warmer air temperatures from greenhouse gas emissions”, how come yesterday we were all worried about the rivers drying up. Black is white!
Leon Brozyna (20:37:28) :
“A new NASA-funded study finds that predicted increases in precipitation due to warmer air temperatures from greenhouse gas emissions may actually increase sea ice volume in the Antarctic’s Southern Ocean.”
What the heck has this purported increase in precipitation have to do with sea ice? I can see how an increase in precipitation would add to glacial ice, but sea ice?
Snow still falls on sea ice and because of the proximity of the ocean to the antarctic sea ice snow fall can contribute significantly to the ice thickness and hence volume.
If this is true then the same should happen in the arctic with the increase in open water, resulting in more snow which should then result in more and thicker sea ice.
Generally there is much less snow fall on the arctic sea ice due to it being surrounded by land.
Interesting methodology in play here.
Public figures engage in spin; accountants cook the books. What are scientists doing who try to make the data fit the fantasy?
Instead of shooting from the hip about a subject you clearly don’t fully understand perhaps you should do some reading instead?
http://nsidc.org/seaice/characteristics/difference.html for example
Bruce Foutch (21:17:08) :
Regarding the video. Water changing state to Ice expands by 9%. Water does not expand when cooling, only when changing state to ice. So, how come the bottle doesn’t distort or the cap pop off due to the expected 9% expansion if the super-cooled water is actually turning to ice.
_________
Was wondering that myself Bruce…
Here we go again. I became absolutely bored with the breathless attention paid to the ice melt last season.
It is not a demonstration of anything except that the ice has/not melted.
There is nothing in it to show how, or why it has/not melted – that must be left to serious science to determine (and I wager that there are serious scientists doing just that and perhaps have been doing so for a long time).
I just can’t get overwrought by whether or not the ice melts this/last/whenever year.
Whatever happens, it does so as a result of physical processes in the oceans and the atmosphere which are not yet understood.
BUT THEY WILL BE.
The exploration of those processes is what is interesting. I am reasonably convinced that CO2, whilst not wholly irrelevant, is simply not a sufficient cause for what is observed. On the other hand, I am not convinced that other causes e.g. solar activity, are sufficient either.
The argument that CO2 is the only available candidate for the warming because the “others cannot explain it” runs rapidly and inextricably aground on the observations that a) there is nothing happening now which places the present circumstances outside the realms of what can and does happen to the earth’s climate from time to time; and b) a complete failure to explain why an apparently linear increase in CO2 in the atmosphere has failed to produce a corresponding increase in temperature.
I take absolute delight in a position of skepticism in relation to all of the explanatory theories proposed so far.
It may well be that one of them is correct, but we just don’t know yet.
Hansen’s and other AGW proponents’ computer models are useless and wrong. They didn’t predict the most important changes in the climate: they didn’t predict the PDO turning negative… they didn’t predict the AMO turning negative…. they didn’t predict the sun becoming dormant… they didn’t predict the temperatures declining since 2004 despite the fact CO2 levels continues to rise… they haven’t predicted the coming several decades cooling period similar to the Dalton Minimum.
E.M. Smith, I think you meant Brazen Senselessness – there you have the acronym I think you were looking for.
While I find the current (short -time) developments interesting indeed, I would think that it is wise to wait until July/August/September to make any strong conclusions. When eye-ballng the “melting” curves, there is little inter-annual spread at this part of the season. The greater variability is around June-Sep.
tetris (19:25:48) : said
————————————-Beginquote
Steven Goddard:
Not only does the Norwegian data show the ice is within 1 STD: it’s based on a 1979-2007 average. NOT a 1979-2000 average.
————————————–Endquote
While this is corect, I would think the former (Nansen ROOS) mean (having incorporated the relatively low ice extent levels in 2000 +) is LOWER than the latter.
Anyway, to summarise the current AGW description of the situation in the Arctic:
* CO2 is up (=more warming)
* Sulphate arosols are down (=less shielding=more warming)
* Soot appears to be up (=more heat capture=more ice melt)
* Multi-year ice is apparently down (remaining ice more vulnerable to melting.
I would think the only reasonable prediction from this is a record low ice extent in September 2009.
Personally I do not think the system is well enough described (above), and will sugest a september ice extent around 6 mill km2, possibly more.
Perhaps we should get Lucia (The Blackboard) to arrange a new bet ? 🙂
Cassanders
In Cod we trust
I hate to spoil the party but the most recent graphic shows the trend is already falling back to the 2003 level. Just like the 2008 ice extend did. Now if the summer low would be as high as the 1979-2000 trend, then there would be a case against AGW.
Claiming victory now is just as much bad science as claiming the arctic melt is increasing. We simply have to wait another year and see how this works out.
Mind you, if I read some of the comments here, such as Ron de Haan’s claims of a fascistic world goverment or Bill Illis “enviro-nazis”, combined with the eagerness to conclude AGW is over based on such a small snippet of data, I get the feeling that the realists are extremely rare.
Patience is required. I agree that various factors suggest the 2009 Arctic summer ice minima might be “surprisingly” high. However, in the short term, don’t be surprised if Arctic ice extent dips back well below the “normal” range in the next few days, given the forecast of sustained strong southerly winds off western Alaska. Here’s yesterday’s NOAA sea ice advisory valid through Monday 27th April:
“FORECAST THROUGH MONDAY…WEST OF 180…WARMING AIR AND WATER
TEMPERATURES WILL DIMINISH ICE. THE ICE EDGE WILL RETREAT TO THE
NORTH UP TO 60 NM THROUGH MONDAY.
FORECAST FOR WATERS BETWEEN 180 AND 165W…WARMING AIR AND WATER
TEMPERATURES WILL ERODE PACK ICE. PERIODS OF STRONG SOUTHERLY WINDS
AND WARM TEMPERATURES WILL FORCE THE ICE EDGE TO RETREAT TO THE NORTH
60 TO 75 NM THROUGH MONDAY.
FORECAST FOR WATERS EAST OF 165W…INCLUDING BRISTOL BAY…CONTINUED
SOUTHERLY WINDS AND PERIODS OF MUCH WARMER TEMPERATURES WILL DIMINISH
ICE SIGNIFICANTLY IN BRISTOL BAY. ICE WILL BE FORCED TOWARD THE NORTH
BUT WARMING LAND TEMPERATURES WILL CAUSE ICE CONCENTRATIONS ALONG THE
NORTH SHORELINE TO REMAIN LESS THAN 4 TENTHS.”
http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/marfcst.php?fcst=FZAK80PAFC
I don’t see the problem with backfitting to match observations. The problem comes when putting faith in the “predictions” of models which require continual backfitting.
On a realted note, could someone tell me how the models could be expected to be right, given that there are things about climate that we do not understand, things that we understand poorly and many things that the models do not incude?
Anna V
Thanks for the insightfull explanation. We desperately need more of that in this discussion. I am getting a bit tired of the activism of both sides.
reality doesnt matter. today on the major italian newspaper
http://www.corriere.it/scienze_e_tecnologie/09_aprile_22/clima_fiumi_rischio_e9665e98-2f40-11de-89c1-00144f02aabc.shtml
“global warming drying up major rivers”
notice the section in which the article was published: science and technology.
On Channel 10 news tonight here in Australia a report into a British study which contradicts the consensus about ice melt in the Antartic. According to the news report, holes in the ozone layer are changing weather patterens causing ice to increase. Penny Wong, the environment minister, dismissed it staright off stating that “the science should not be ignored”. Australia is to introduce “climate pollution policy” this year.
The one thing that serves us more than anything else in this fight is that the AGW camp likes to drive ‘facts’ home to people by constant quotation and drastic prediction. The more these events do not happen, the more they change their cause/effect, the less people believe them.
Failed expeditions that ran into cold and ice work for us. I looked at some of their pictures, if thats one year ice.. Im not really worried about the Artic.. lol . Its the give them enough rope and they will hang themselves trick. Just wish we hadnt given them such a long rope:).
A few muses on the weblink to Bob Carter’s report at the Marohasy blog on bemused Australian politicos:
1. In order to evaluate between competing claims, you must first understand the basis of their claims, then the suppositions, then the presumptions for the future. It’s never an exact science, but the more you model futures the better you get at it. If good modelling is your aim rather than political power……I don’t build big computer models, but I do try and guess when and where to go ski-ing each year. I get better at it with the passing years, even if at one point I started getting worse due to a new factor at play which I was unaware of. As I became aware of it, my predictions became better still. So it can be done……..go speak to Aborigines and Maoris and I think you’d find their cultural subconscious has been doing it for centuries too……….
2. In order to learn how to evaluate between competing claims, you need independence of thought and rigorous analysis. How many political parties do you know which encourage that? [None in the UK, that’s for sure….] And how many do you know that expect subservient sycophancy from first-rate minds toward experienced pamphleteers who know about POLITICKING but not about GOVERNING?
3. Where can you gain such rigorous thought processes outside of politics? Well, anywhere where either you don’t get paid very much (high pay usually demands orthodoxy and hence repression of free thinking) or where free thought is promoted (well that’s certainly not academia any more, is it? Actually, our best free thinker in UK politics, Mr Vincent Cable, learned real-life modelling at that bastion of capitalist evil, the oil multinational Royal Dutch Shell. He’s a Liberal Democrat, not a right wing fascist….)
Based on thinking about those questions, can you conceive of a situation where regular politicians DO have the capability to deal with two warring factions?
Eh????
This logic reminds me of this logic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0LPUI0lfVw
In Australia, the Climate Change Minister (Penny Wong) has dismissed the British Antarctic Survey announcement of a 30 year growth of Antarctic ice and claimed “we have to go with the science”.
Obviously, she is being very selective with the science she is ‘going with’ and, if it does not agree with their stated position of AGW, it is not science.
It was refreshing, though, to see a major television news item explaining an alternative to the AGW mantra.
Why, but why didn’t you show the AMSR-E data
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
which are the data WUWT is showing on its frontpage?
The answer, in my sense, is simple: that’s because the ROOS picture conveniently plots the 97-07 average, i.e. it includes the 07 and 08 records.And also because AMSR-E shows the ice is now rapidly declining (as many people pointed out it would do)
.
Apart from rime ice, that gathers on our aircraft wings (which is supercooled), I have only seen supercooled once in nature.
It was a still, freezing night with ice everywhere, when I came across a liquid puddle. It was so odd to see it, I went over and trod on it – at which point it froze instantly, trapping my boot in the process.
.
Re: Bruce Foutch (21:17:08) :
Water expands as the temperature decreases from 4C to 0C. I don’t know if it continues the expansion as it becomes supercooled, but if it does this would explain why there is no distortion of the bottle as it turns to ice
Ric Werme (21:21:59) :
Yes, it would be foolish to assume that it would behave like 2008, but it’s also foolish to assume that it won’t. I was trying to caution against “irrational exuberance”. I’m not taking either bet. It’s a wait and see situation from my POV.
I wish the video showed you exactly how to do the experiment. And how not to bust the bottle with the ice expanding. It should be repeatable, hey, it’s bad science if it’s not transparently repeatable and open to falsification! but thanks anyway Steve and Anthony.
Flanagan: Not sure how the 97 – 07 average contains the 08 data?? But yes, it is best to compare with the longest dataset available. I’m sure we all agree that the ice extent will rapidly decline in the next four months.
OT for those of you in the US it might be time to invest in a wood burner and a generator, not only is it not getting any warmer but also “No new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said today.”Wellinghoff said renewables like wind, solar and biomass will provide enough energy to meet baseload capacity and future energy demands. Nuclear and coal plants are too expensive, he added.”
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=will-the-us-need-new-coal
Good luck on a cloudy cold January day with no wind blowing.
As of 10:30 am 2009-04-23 the amsre chart has taken a dive. Frequently this is adjusted later (I believe they do a 2 day average – minimal to give a fast update to the daily data). Frequently this is an upwards adjustment
All this crowing about seaice area at this time is ridiculous. The whole yearly area anomaly gets minimised around june/july time and it is only after this that the final extent is even vaguely predictable – see 2006 (black line on amsre curve) lowest from jan to july then in the top 3 in sept.
I have a question that may have been answered before but I haven’t come across with the answer in this extensive blog.
If an apolar molecule like CO2 can absorb IR light and cause more warming, how come polar molecules like SO2/SO3/H2SO3/H2SO4 can cause less warming, don’t they absorb more IR light since they have dipole moment?
Sorry if it is OT.
But the expansion is minimal, compared to the 9% expansion that happens when it changes state.
And empirically bottles break, believe me, I have done this experiment several times.
Using an AGW type analogy here….
If global warming causes cooling then it must also be true that global cooling causes warming. Therefore, this increase in ice extent must be the cooling signature of the past 30 years of warming.
But more seriously, I have often wondered if the increased southern vortex may be a factor which results in less mixing of the polar air mass with warmer air. This could also explain the warmer peninslar region if the polar air mass gets pulled further south. I have also wondered if the vortex is more related to sunspot activity and less to ozone loss through man made causes. It’s possible that the current solar minimum may shed some light on this. If, in a few years we start seeing a weakening of the vortex back towards it’s 1950’s level.
It’s interesting that the increase in strength of the vortex occurs after 1950 which is when solar activity ramped up.
See attached article …
http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/council/scfpa/water/submissions/SCFPA%20Water%2031%20App%203.pdf
The idea being that an increased temperature differential between the polar and tropical regions is the cause of the vortex increase. Although most media quoted science leans towards the greenhouse related cause, it could be just as likely that reduced GCR resulted in fewer clouds (ie:Svensmark’s theory).
@ jae (19:03:43)
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
Jules Verne used that effect in a story where a party had to cross a body of water which one of their members realised it was below freezing and disturbed the surface, causing it to freeze immediately, allowing for passage.
A similar event appears in the New Testament for the Sea of Galilee. Apparently.
Funny article here. I think it must have been written for The Onion, but somehow found its way into the Daily Telegraph.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/5202877/Global-warming-slowed-by-pollution.html
Just think how cold it would be if we didnt have all this global warming going on at the same time.
They will say ‘yes it is cooling a bit, but just think how warm it will get when this cooling stops”. “this is giving us more time to prepare for the coming warming”, “it might be cool for 20 years but this will just give us more time to prepare for the inevitable warming”. and so on……
NH and SH sea ice added together date sychronously is surely not a good way of determining sea ice health?
In NH maximum extent is in some part land locked and in SH minimum extent is also land limited. (NH can only extend the maximum on 2 quadrants and SH a large proportion of the antarctic continent is ice free in summer so the extent cannot shrink as quickly)
Wouldn’t a better measure be adding the extents mid melt or perhaps a more significant figure would be NH min+ SH max. No idea whether this would indicate increasing or decreasing ice extent
Brute et al;-))
Thought for the day!
IF we are going to decend into another Little-Ice-Age in the coming years, & it is a big if I hasten to add as I don’t like the cold, may I please ask all women out there to abolish all herbal remedies/pulses, or any eccentric behaviour of any kind that could be misconstrude, & conform to whatever norm prevails in their neck of the woods. In the UK at the peak of the last LIA, we were burning women by the dozen as witches such was the mental state of the Rich & Powerful Church, & general “consensus” of the time.
The new Rich & Powerful Church of AGW dogma appears to have a frigteningly similar trend in attitude. When we had the ducking stool, & I have said this before, if the poor girl drowned, she was innocent as the water accepted her she was so pure. Makes sense to me. OTH, if she didn’t drown because she had a good pair of lungs on her, the water refused her becuase she was a witch, the poor girl would then be dragged off kicking & screaming to the stake for a barbecue. Sound science to me!
It was a wonderful Heads I Win Tails You Lose scenario. The result of course being the same, dead woman, god appeased, less sin & wickedness& dancing with the devil about! Hence black is white, up is down, left is right, warm is cold, more ice in Antarctica is AGW, less ice in Antarctica is AGW, etc. It really doesn’t matter because they want metaphoric (I hope) blood & will stop at nothing to get it. I wonder if Al Gore will be the new Witchfinder-General in the USA? His badge of office would surely be AG-W. Be warned girls, although I haven’t yet heard of armies of women going round every village filling in the local pond & hiding the ducking stools!
We really haven’t grown much over the years, have we? Scientific evidence isn’t really falsified or adulterated, “honest my lord, I saw her turn into a black swan before my very eyes & fly three times round the church tower, then change back again into a woman!” Must be true then.
Patrick Kirk (22:19:47) :
From Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain (one of my favorite all time passages):
Since my own day on the Mississippi, cut-offs have been made at
Hurricane Island; at island 100; at Napoleon, Arkansas; at Walnut Bend;
and at Council Bend. These shortened the river, in the aggregate,
sixty-seven miles. In my own time a cut-off was made at American Bend,
which shortened the river ten miles or more.
Therefore, the Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelve
hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago.
It was eleven hundred and eighty after the cut-off of 1722.
It was one thousand and forty after the American Bend cut-off. It has
lost sixty-seven miles since. Consequently its length is only nine
hundred and seventy-three miles at present.
Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and ‘let on’
to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred
in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far future
by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here!
Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from!
Nor ‘development of species,’ either! Glacial epochs are great things,
but they are vague–vague. Please observe:–
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower
Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles.
That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year.
Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic,
can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period,’ just a million
years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards
of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out
over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token
any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now
the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long,
and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together,
and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual
board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science.
One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling
investment of fact.
Replying to…
Flanagan (01:23:04) :
Why, but why didn’t you show the AMSR-E data
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
which are the data WUWT is showing on its frontpage?
The answer, in my sense, is simple: that’s because the ROOS picture conveniently plots the 97-07 average, i.e. it includes the 07 and 08 records.And also because AMSR-E shows the ice is now rapidly declining (as many people pointed out it would do)
Rapidly declining? You mean like it does every spring and summer?
As it declines into summer, it’s still closing on the 1979-2000 mean. NSIDC don’t plot the Std. Dev. on their curve; but it’s a fairly safe bet that the Arctic Sea Ice Extent is pretty close to, if not, within 1 Std. Dev. of the 1979-2000 mean as well.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
IOW…Arctic sea ice is now pretty well right where it has been every April since the recorded history of sea ice extent began.
Aerosols
Interesting to see that Real Climate is starting to talk about aerosols. In my own mind, I predicted some time ago this would happen: that when AGW predictions fail, it will be argued that global warming is being overtaken by global cooling. Thus we are still to blame for climate change and the cause is still fossil fuel burning. This will be a gradual shift – just starting as I say on RC. (Analogy: the shift from ‘removal of WMD’ to ‘regime change’. Thus ‘even if we were wrong in the reason, the actions are still right’).
“Apparently the only valid target are the latest computer models, which are constantly backfitted to mask their failures to date. Is this how science is supposed to be done?”
Yanno, in my business (trading), I see this all the time. Some noob who’s going to get rich trading his system that he’s gotten PERFECT based upon historic data, and which he has tweeked with the most up-to-date data.
He’ll inevitably be quite certain he will be successful.
Right before he zero’s his account out.
In the prediction business, real pros understand back-fitted back-testing is almost assured of being wrong, and in fact, prediction itself is fraught with massive uncertainty.
I’m struck by how the AGW true believers are like the stopped-clock Perma-Bears (or Bulls). The big problem is that the latter lose money, while the AGW’s just keep spending ours…
Flanagan:
And also because AMSR-E shows the ice is now rapidly declining
As it does every year at this time on the AMSR-E graph. From now until at least July, there’s not much point to even looking at this graph. Even so, 2009 has the most ice on record since records began in 2003. Are you ready to call for an ice free arctic this summer based on a day or 2 of melt???
Arctic ice is going to rapidly melt causing fear and panic throughout the world as sea level rises 20m. /sarc off
This morning I clicked on a Yahoo News article that linked to a Space.com article on Black Holes. I noted an advertisement on the side that said
“Catlin Arctic Survey. How Soon Will Global Warming Affect Your Business?”
Again reconfirming what we all know. The “results” of this ‘expedition’ were determined well in advance.
God speed to all. Let’s keep up this fight for truth and sanity.
AndyW,
If you read Hansen’s paper linked above, or any of about another thousand similar publications, you would know that ice area was always considered the key factor. This is because ice area controls the albedo of the Arctic and thus the temperature. Ice thickness has no effect on albedo.
Pamela Gray (18:04:39) :
“Explain global warming again. I don’t get it.”
Well ya see, warmer weather causes snow build up and growth of glaciers in Antarctic. And oh, the hole in the ozone layer causes it to be colder in the antarctic and this causes sea level to um ……. Well in the NH… I’m going to have to get back to you on that.
The spring time area and extent does matter, because it is an indication of temperature, and because the Arctic generally melts from the outside in.
Don’t forget that as late as August 1, 2008 NSIDC was still considering a possible return to normal ice extent. A very large storm that week broke up the ice in the East Siberian Sea, and paved the way for another year of Arctic panic journalism.
Re: urederra (02:57:00) :
If water expands as it is supercooled and ice contracts as it temperature decreases then logically there will be a temperature at which the volume of both ice and supercooled water is the same.That 9% expansion will decrease as the temperature gets lower and there will be a temperature range that the bottle can safely handle any expansion.
I think it a good idea to have a live record of the twists and turns, updated daily and published say biennially. It would be like chronicling the dying out of a species or recording the death of leach with salt shaken on it.
the worm is turning
Just watched the late news here in Australia on Channel 10 (one of the 5 main stations in Aust) and one of the headlines was about how alarmist predictions may be wrong since it looks like Antarctica has been expanding for the last 30 years. They then showed a map showing the whole West Antarctic shelf breaking off and I thought, here we go, but then it showed the East Antarctic expanding in size by about 30% dwarfing that part that broke off West Antarctica. They said it is expanding about 100,000km2 per decade over the last 30 years.
They also interviewed skeptic Prof. Ian Plimer and actually let him get his message across without editing, a first – he said that climate changes naturally and has for millions of years. They then said that scientists said the expansion is caused by the hole in the ozone layer… The Climate Change Minister then made a statement that now is not the time to put your head in the sand and think that global warming is not happening, to listen to the science and reduce carbon dioxide. The androgynous Penny Wong looks stupid at the best of times but she looked like a right goose when the science had just been presented and it directly contradicted her.
What ever happened to the Bird Flue Scare? Remember we were all going to die?
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v430/n6995/full/430004b.html
Sound familiar?
Sorry flue is supposed to be flu. But you get the point. Trumped up fear by the media/scientists/activists.
REPLY: “Bird Flue Scare” was a scene from Hitchcock’s movie “the Birds” when they came down the chimney into the living room- Anthony
Spring, Summer, and Fall area and extent are VERY important indicators of ice cap conditions. The lead theory is that ice caps and glacial periods grow because of a lack of or slowing melt during the melt season. Incrementally, when melt is lessened, the ice cap grows during the winter season, as do the glaciers. It likely happens slowly at first, or in jumps and starts, then speeds up to a regular increase a bit later.
Leon:
“Public figures engage in spin; accountants cook the books. What are scientists doing who try to make the data fit the fantasy?”
Those “scientists” are fudging data.
Anyone have the NSIDC sea ice extent data in excel? or where to get it?
Chris and others have it right. Find a good weatherman and report format. Follow weather pattern variations, pressure systems and fronts, trade wind data, and jet streams around the globe but especially over the oceans. And then add to that data from the end of melt season regarding ice area and extent for ice conditions. The goodies are in the data NOISE! Follow the noise on a weekly basis and you will learn plenty. Weather pattern variations rule. Climate change drools.
And Flanagan, you did it again after I asked you not to. The phrase “green chain puller” comes to mind.
Loved the Hitchcock ref!
With regard to the gentleman who spent 3 nights in the elements: the article states that the average nighttime temperature at this time of year varies between -10 degrees and +10 degrees (fahrenheit). That seemed pretty warm to me, all things considered, so I looked into what the National Science Foundation employee actually endured.
The actual nighttime temperature on his first night outdoors was -38 degrees, second night -12, and third night -36.
Those would have been some long nights, even in a well-dug snow hole.
Obviously yes it is. Surprising really given modellers obvious success in the financial markets. The difference with climate models though is that their failures can be easily masked, targets changed and turned into an academic dispute and no one outside the field is any the wiser.
The target in finance is easily measured and the model discrepancies obvious to everyone but with climate you simply change the “goal posts” and everything is back on track at least until new measurements arrive and reality intrudes yet again.
Take Tropospheric warming. Can’t find it? Turn it into an academic quibble about measurement history, measurement accuracy or measurement methodology and relegate it to the sidelines. The public, while feeling sorry for Polar Bears, remains blissfully unaware that a central pillar of AGW theory is missing. Misdirection at every milestone, a complete house of cards.
If reality intrudes account for the discrepancy with a new reality anything is possible in the virtual world it just needs to sound plausible.
I don’t think it much matters what happens to Arctic ice this year, any change in the ice is by definition a climate change. Let’s face it, even if Arctic ice extent doubled over last year there is somebody waiting with an Anthropogenic explanation. My bet, if extent increases, is that thickness will become the new goal post. Yet another metric where no historical data is available and reality is whatever you can justify using whale bones and statistics.
Pat a cake, pat a cake, Michael Mann, justify my metric as fast as you can.
The comments made by the AGW team in the post above remind of Winsotns efforts to rewrite or omit history altogether in “1984”.
When you keep resetting the goal posts I suppose anything is possible.
I can see alarmists are white knuckling it hoping there will be some rapid melting soon. I saw the same thing last year, all summer, and even after ice began to grow again in September.
Got your popcorn ready?
Hi everybody,
I just wanted to draw the attention to the fact that it is in fact complete nonsense to say the long-trend melting of Arctic sea ice has stopped because it is “only” one standard deviation below the average, and following one source only.
I pointed to the AMSR-E data because they show that the extent is seemingly going away from the lowest bound of the (plus or minus std) 79-07 average. So the “news” must have had a lifetime of about one day.
BTW, if one must consider +- std, then one must also draw the conclusion that the Antarctic hasn’t been growing at all.
I remember seeing the freezing water experiment in a science class about 40 years ago. The key is to have very clean or distilled water, so that there is nothing for the ice crystals to nucleate around.
Oh, it’s still out there. Here in Afghanistan a few weeks ago the Food Nazis decided we can’t have our eggs cooked with runny yokes anymore. Real morale issue right now.
This was done by the US Army Medical service in the face of the following facts:
1. No new confirmed cases of H5N1 in the bird population anywhere in Afghanistan since early in the scare. (CDC and WHO).
2. No confirmed cases of human infection in Afghanistan at all. (CDC and WHO).
3. Overall transmission of H5N1 to humans very rare (CDC and WHO).
So what they did was apply the generic guidance from the USDA and FDA that has always been out there, “So to stay safe, the advice is the same for protecting against any infection from poultry: Cook eggs until whites and yolks are firm. ”
More overuse of the “precautionary principle” which is only making people who aren’t happy on their bases, unhappier.
Same mindset of wanting total control as that possessed by the AGW proponents. We can get really stupid trying to mitigate 100% of risk.
Flanagan,
After a long, steep and unprecedented downwards trend, Arctic ice is normal. Makes perfect sense in the world of AGW. Like the Beatles’ song :
The fact that the ice area fell below the +/- 1 standard deviation band is not especially disturbing. About 70% of the data is expected to fall with that band. That means 30% is expected to be outside it, about 15% above and 15% below. So out of 30 years we should expect 4 or 5 years to be below the band, just as a result of normal variation. But how meaningful is that band when it is based on only 30 years of data? The band does not even include 1934 which is thought to be the warmest in US history. And how representatives is 30 years when one considers that the Holocene period we live in is 10,000 years old. But think back even further to the last half million years. The earth spend most of that time in an ice age. So the entire 30 year period would likely be well below the +/- 1 std dev band for that time frame.
All caused by GW of course.
May Day! May Day!
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
Bobby Lane said:
“They’ve gone stark raving mad, I tell you, and they look totally normal.” (WUWT)
…-
>>> “… the characterless advocates of unreality have captured and perverted the institutions.”
“They are now using the institutions to insist that we share their delusions.”
…-
“An old teacher of mine used to say that modernity is a nightmare through which we are doomed to pass. It is so. Hawthorne and Dick foresaw the nightmare.”
“… the characterless advocates of unreality have captured and perverted the institutions. They are now using the institutions to insist that we share their delusions.”
“This compounded “reality principle” seems to have inspired, from its beginning, an opposite “unreality principle” devoted to the cherishing, finally, of nothing, but rather to vilifying what its devotees see as the Trinity of Oppression – Philosophy, Judeo-Christian Ethics, and the Market. In the late Twentieth Century and in the incipient Twenty-First century, the characterless advocates of unreality have captured and perverted the institutions. They are now using the institutions to insist that we share their delusions.”
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3880
This just in: Growth in Antarctic sea ice is man-made:
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/press_releases/press_release.php?id=838
Incredibilible…
Hey Flanagan,
Excuse my tone but what the heck are you doing?
Point to someone saying the long-trend melting of Arctic sea ice has stopped.
That isn’t the observation being talked about.
The IPCC/AGW claims of accelerated melting are not happening.
And any genuine long-trend melting that is occuring is not related to the relatively short term fabrications in the IPCC modeling.
You need to look at the broader collapse of the AGW-sea ice projections.
All of the components including the lack of Dr. Hansen’s original prediction that Antarctic ice would diminish symmetrically with Arctic ice.
Bottom line. Hansen/climate models/IPCC, without any new data, as recent as last year, were projecting an acceleration of sea ice loss.
What motivated them to make such baseless claims?
Anyone remember when there was an idea to tow massive icebergs from the Arctic to California to help eleviate the fresh water shortage? Good thing that well thoughout plan never materialized. We might not have any ice up there at all by now.
Pamela Gray-what happens when there is a realization that Glaicers are growing again in the mountain west? Will the AGW crownd admit it? Or will it take the refilling of Wallowa Lake with ice Again (year ’round that is)…
Alan the Brit-Galielo was under arrest-not because of the Church but because he had violated “Consensus” of the day-things haven’t changed a whole lot….
Galileo-dang nab it!
Off subject I know but there’s a claim by a leading Antartic Polar researcher in the UK that growth of antarctic ice is not a balancing act to arctic ice retreat, but rather as a consequence of the ozone hole.
He says that when the hole recovers, both the arctic and antarctic ice will decline, causing problems due to global warming.
Any comments/evidence-based arguments?
From the always dependable BBC. Up means down.
Hey Jezz
Unfortunately ……. beer also freezes (CO2??????)
Steven Goddard (08:01:48) :
May Day! May Day!
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
————————
Aaah, the irony – if those lines do actually intersect on May 1st !!!
Rhys Jaggar (09:09:43) :
Off subject I know but there’s a claim by a leading Antartic Polar researcher in the UK that growth of antarctic ice is not a balancing act to arctic ice retreat, but rather as a consequence of the ozone hole.
He says that when the hole recovers, both the arctic and antarctic ice will decline, causing problems due to global warming.
Any comments/evidence-based arguments?
——————————–
Is the paper available as a pdf anywhere ?? I would be interested in seeing if they actually did say what the newspapers said they said, or if it was the typical last sentence of a publication out-and-out speculation ??
Bring back Freon!
Anthony this is a little of topic , however very exciting. First news reporter in the States breaks the silence.
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/10456
“”” Benjamin P. (20:17:06) :
“Heat rises!”
Warm things rise! 😛 “””
Well “heat” is not a noun, so it can’t rise because it isn’t; and I assume you know what is is; well isn’t is just the opposite of is.
Now air or sea water that has bean “heated” (verb) will expand, and therefore rise because of Archimedes principle. Fresh water that is heated may actually sink; because fresh water does not always have a positive temperature coefficient of expansion; so if fresh water is colder than 4 deg C, it will contract if heated (but still below 4 deg C so therefore it will sink instead of rising.
George
Douglas DC:-)
I expect you’ll find that both Galileo & Galielo were probably arrested because they both violated the consensus!
I say again, ban beer, fizzy water, fizzy drinks, Champagne & all sparkling wines (the French have gone to war for less), ban exercise – all that exhaled CO2, ban sex (ouch – even more CO2) what on earth they’ll expect us to do in penitence for that I dread to think, no tonic water for the gin (outrageous sacrilege)!
When will these half-wits (polite) realise that CO2 is essential for all life, up to & including their own! All plants need it , our blood needs it for buffering acid -a coma results without it, no urea production without it either, it enables the digestion of food, frankly we’d be dead within seconds without it! Just keep chipping away & the scam will eventually collapse, the thing is already looking shakey. We’ve recenty had Dr Pope at the Met Office Climte Change Unit (it’s actually the “Research” Unit but that’s irrelevant) saying that natural warm currents could be the cause of the Arctic melts observed of late, no kidding she did! Rear end covering is suspected. She of the climate alarmism lectures has been caught out on video You-Tube spreading the alarm albeit in a somewhat calmer manner than some of her professional colleagues. They’re all being very coy at present over this quiet Sun, probably figuring out how to explain it in a computer model so that they can say we knew this all along, or something.
You scientists out there. I would like an explanation for that fascinating & amazing video of clear liquid water freezing in the bottle. Firstly why did it freeze from top to bottom or was that mere coincidence? How is the water supercooled in the first instance? AND why did that plastic bottle not distort under the rapid expansion of the water as it turns into ice, or the lid pop right off under the same conditions? Or was it just a cut clip from the The Day After Tomorrow dvd?
You guys are free to do so on the site I setup http://whatcatastrophe.com
If you decide to, let me know if there’s anything I can do to make it easier to use.
Have you noticed that you in NA are having a delayed sprigtime or prolonged wintertime while we in SA are having a prolonged summer or delayed autumm. Perhaps due to a cooler pacific and lesser evaporation rates. Where can we get some Svensmark’s clouds?
Well from a scientific point of view, the Catlin expedition’s data; if any is quite worthless.
No matter how they are measuring whatever they are measuring, it has no value unless someone actually has some reason for wanting to know the ice thickness in the locations of the exact set of holes that they dug.
But by tomorrow those locations will have moved anyway.
Why is it that the first lecture in a freshman course on “climatology” or “Climate science (oxymorons) is not a discussion of the general theory of sampled data systems, and the Nyquist Theorem.
You can’t drill a rock core in spokane, and another one in Atlanta, and then explain the entire geology of North America from any data you extract from those cores.
You can probably identify what rocks and minerals and anything else there are in those cores and their order, and likely deduce how those layers came to be; but they will tell you nothing at all about any other place on the continent, from which you have no rock core.
So this silly expedition was doomed to failure before they ever left the comfort of their homes.
Ozone and Zero Ice: A problem for us AGW skeptics ??
“Ozone Hole Causes Antarctic Sea Ice to Expand, Slows Warming”
April 23 (Bloomberg) — The ozone hole over the South Pole is canceling out the effects of global warming and causing sea ice production to build up around Antarctica, researchers said.
The human-induced depletion of the protective ozone layer has altered wind patterns and caused temperatures in most of the southern continent to fall so that more cold air flows over the Southern Ocean, freezing the water, the scientists said today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=a5EI1Y8ZCL9Y&refer=home
Why worry about ice extant/area at all? It grows and shrinks based on natural cycles. Heck, as cold as it was in the Alaskan arctic all winter I’m surprised it’s not frozen solid. By pretending it matters at all you play right into the hands of the Doomsday/chicken little crowd, who want to track each (naturally) melting floe with a disturbing eagerness, considering they believe it portents their own demise.
And what makes the 1979-2007 time frame such a perfect number to compare current ice to? Oh that’s right, 1979 is when we got our first satellite data, therefore, the ice extent at that time must have been optimal, ergo any change from optimal is bad, thus less ice now is the result of humans driving SUV’s for the last 15 years. Case closed. Isn’t science wonderful?
Since that 1 and 2 year ice is more vulnerable, shouldn’t we see it melting faster than in previous years rather than the exact opposite which we see now?
Why am I not suprised? The increase in CO2 can cause global warming, global cooling, floods, droughts, huricances and anything else they can blame on man . I didn’t know man was so awesomely powerful.
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/App/WsvPageDsp.cfm?ID=1&Lang=eng
Canadian Ice Service, some good info there, the time lapse of the “ice tongue” developments this year is interesting.
Replying to…
Jim Papsdorf (10:49:48) :
Ozone and Zero Ice: A problem for us AGW skeptics ??
“Ozone Hole Causes Antarctic Sea Ice to Expand, Slows Warming”
April 23 (Bloomberg) — The ozone hole over the South Pole is canceling out the effects of global warming and causing sea ice production to build up around Antarctica, researchers said.
The human-induced depletion of the protective ozone layer has altered wind patterns and caused temperatures in most of the southern continent to fall so that more cold air flows over the Southern Ocean, freezing the water, the scientists said today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
If the AGW crowd can believe that anthropogenic CO2 emissions can drive climate change…Then I guess it shouldn’t be a big surprise that they believe that stratospheric ozone concentrations cause the Polar Vortex.
When in fact the Polar Vortex and lack of Antarctic winter sunlight are what drive the annual ozone thinning.
urederra (02:51:06) :
The cooling mechanism is fairly straightforward. Sulfur dioxide is transformed in the atmosphere into sulfate aerosol, a fine particle that reflects away the sun’s radiation. The particles also serve as the condensation nuclei for cloud droplets which also reflect away the sun’s energy.
Although the above is a cut and paste, it is not possible for me to give you the IR absorption bands of all those molecules. So I will just give you my opinion.
Obviously the SO2 levels in our atmosphere don’t reflect all the UV. The UV that is converted to IR can be absorbed by SO2 but H2O covers most but not all the IR spectrum available.
More interesting to me though is, if SO2 reflects UV on the way in does it reflect back to earth any wave length that is not IR on the way out?
Common sense would suggest it may but common sense seldom works in science. I think in the absence of H2O, SO2 would play a greater part in atmospheric heat retention.
And from Bloomberg, we learn that global warming is being held up by the hole in the Ozone layer:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=a5EI1Y8ZCL9Y&refer=home
Who’dda thunk it? Probably someone desperately searching for excuses.
Sorry, I see someone’s beaten me to it. It’s been a busy day at work.
Steven Goddard (07:23:48) :
re freezing water in bottle. When I was a kid, myself and friends went to the family summer log cabin in the Lake of the Woods area to camp around Xmas time. We found a 24 of beer (Canadian size boxful) in the cabin not frozen. However, as soon as we pried a cap off it began to freeze instantly from the top down before we could get a drop. We warmed up the rest for the next trial.
David Segesta (07:56:45) I agree. I would add though, the longer a time range is considered (more data points), the larger the sigma gets. Therefore, I would bet the longterm sigma is at least a few multiples of that shown at the top of this post, and all the variation we see over the past thirty years is ‘normal’. But then, everything within +/- three sigma is ‘normal’. There can be trends within the dataset, biased to one side or the other of the mean, and that is normal too. Flanagan (07:19:13), “BTW, if one must consider +- std, then one must also draw the conclusion that the Antarctic hasn’t been growing at all.”, doesn’t seem to grasp this.
ozone paper: http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl0908/2009GL037524/
On the site I linked to about the ozone hole, on the lower left area click on pdf version. you get much better graphics etc.
The one assumption I would add re: my comment regarding sigma is the bias that there is more variation in the longer term dataset. The climate varies much more long term than the past 30 years, in spite of the Hansen/Gore/Mann et al fantasy of it being stable until humans ruined it.
Supercooled water freezing:
The second video notes that the bottle doesn’t freeze solid; instead you get slush. Presumably enough tiny ice crystals form to cloud the water, but most of the water remains liquid.
For pure water to freeze it has to give up ~80 calories (small c) per gram of ice formed. But if the water starts at -3 degreees C, it would only take 3+ cal per gram to raise it above freezing and stop the process. So one would expect only a fraction of a supercooled water sample to actually crystallize.
A bit more on Ozone
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/press_releases/press_release.php?id=838
Encroaching Ice tongue (Mars 2009) – south of Cabot Strait:
Persistent westerly winds during the second and early part of the third week of March, as well as below normal temperatures, resulted in ice flushing out of the Gulf of St Lawrence through Cabot Strait and drifting southwards. Towards the end of the third week of March the winds shifted, becoming north north-easterly drifting the ice towards the Sable Island Offshore Energy production area. While this ice event did not surpassed the record for a maximum ice extent, it was unusual and resulted in the issuing of ice warnings for the Sable and Banquereau marine areas. Climate records indicate an ice extent this far south occurs less than fifteen percent of the time. In the last 16 years only in year 2003 have we seen more ice south-southeast of Cape Breton than this year.
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/App/WsvPageDsp.cfm?ID=11930&Lang=eng
Encroaching Ice tongue (March 2009) – East Newfoundland:
Persistent westerly winds and colder than normal temperatures during the second and third week of March resulted in sea ice from the East Newfoundland waters being pushed eastwards. The eastward extent of this tongue of ice resulted in the unusual presence of ice in the vicinity of the Newfoundland offshore energy production sites. At its most extreme extent, the ice pack was approximately 30 kilometres northeast of the oil platforms. A similar scenario developed last year and in 2003. In both cases it developed two to three weeks later in the ice season. While ice in the vicinity of the oil platforms has been relatively rare in the last 12 years or so, it was a more common occurrence prior to 1995.
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/App/WsvPageDsp.cfm?ID=11929&Lang=eng
Front page news? Or just more sea ice is weather not climate?
The supercooled water vid does look a lot like sodium acetate though, or am I just becoming cynical about everything now.
@ George E. Smith (10:24:56)
Oh! an OT semantics discussion about heat!
My original response was directed at Geo who said “Heat rises” which we all know (or should know) is not true. Heat flows from hot to cold (good ol’ thermodynamics). At any rate, heat is BOTH a noun and a verb, so you are wrong in your response. Sorry.
You can heat (verb: to make warm or hot) something up by adding heat (noun: added energy that causes substances to rise in temperature, fuse, evaporate, expand, or undergo any of various other related changes, that flows to a body by contact with or radiation from bodies at higher temperatures, and that can be produced in a body (as by compression)).
And yes, water is most dense at 4 C, that’s why lakes don’t freeze in the winter (good for the fish).
Douglas DC, the lake can freeze all it wants too. I just don’t want my huckleberry slash fish haven (South Fork) to glacier up like it did last time. By the way, a fascinating ride through that Goodle satellite map thing will uncover all kinds of terminal moraines. The notion that the Wallowa Lake Moraine is one of the last undeveloped moraines in the world is nonsense. The Blues (and by extension, the Wallowas) are filled with them. As are the high plains and canyons that also pepper the area.
However, it appears that I should be more concerned with the area right around my Pendleton house! brrrrrrr. My hands, feet and butt are COLD!!!!!! Hey, I could do that pop bottle experiment on my front porch tonight!
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/pdt/
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/pdt/
I wouldn’t pin too much hope on the ICE_AREA chart. I remember last Dec. 9th when it indicated that the area was not only normal, back in the 1 standard deviation range, it had actually touched the “Average” (black) line. Two days later on Dec. 11 the last three months had been adjusted (“corrected”) such that it was not even the 1 standard deviation range. (I believe this was covered on WUWT) I wouldn’t be too surprised by another “correction”.
It seems a consistent pattern, when the data doesn’t look “correct” (i.e. too cold, too much ice, etc.) AGWers search until some corrective factor is found and applied. But if the data agrees with expectation there is no need to seek corrective measures, the data is obviously correct.
“Steven Goddard (08:01:48) :
May Day! May Day!”
Is there going to be a crash in to the 1979–2000 average?
I haven’t scanned the entire response but I’m wondering if the recent eruption of Mt. Redoubt has anything to do with the recent increase of Arctic ice.
Richard deSousa (22:26:44) :
Unlikely as not much is happening at present.
http://scienceblogs.com/eruptions/
http://volcanism.wordpress.com/
http://www.seablogger.com/?cat=22
It seems it is as vg (20:38:09) : noted. The AMSR-E graph looks like it’s still being “adjusted” unlike NORSEX and nsidc.org/data, so far!!
The “warmists” have now come to the conclusion that it is far better to get behind the climate change (CC) flag then the AGW one, as the CC flag is far berter able to provide “sustainable” taxation levels, regardless of what happens to the climate, then the AGW flag.
So now we have governments taxing the hell out of us to prevent climate change. The thing that concerns me is is how do they know that the present climate is the best one ever, and that any change is disastrous.
Remember this classic on WUWT:
Something is rotten in Norway – 500,000 sq-km of sea ice disappears overnight
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/13/something-is-rotten-in-norway-500000-sq-km-of-sea-ice-disappears-overnight/
So, Tuesday morning’s update (4/28) is my guess in the betting pool for when the NSIDC graph touches the long-term trend.
Think I’ve worked why CT does not want you to be able to compare current NH ice
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png with previous (see 1980) what a joke!
vg (14:05:00) :
> Think I’ve worked why CT does not want you to be able to compare current NH ice
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png with previous (see 1980) what a joke!
You can compare images if you edit the URL right. The reason why they disabled the form from generating URLs for 2009 images is as they state – the failing SSMI sensor is generating very poor quality data. I think Cryosphere is only two people big (at least, two scientists), and don’t have time to switch to AMSR-E.
If you want to compare 1980 Apr 24 with 2009 Apr 24, see http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=04&fd=24&fy=1980&sm=04&sd=24&sy=2009
See my last comment at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/20/sea-ice-sensor-degradation-hits-cryosphere-today/ for a few more details.
Ric Werme (18:43:55) If you look back on 4/21-4/24, 2009, Hudson Bay is very inconsistant day to day, there is a dropout on the pole itself and scattered dropout from there SE across the Artic Sea. It appears their data is trashed. I was watching the side-by-side every day since mid-December. It was available for several weeks this year, and then 2009 disappeared from the selection list, it seemed well after their sensor failed and was discussed in WUWT. You or someone here mentioned forcing the link by typing it in at the top of the page a week ago or so. I simply don’t trust how they present their data, as I have posted on the encroachment they did with their representation of snow on land. It represents a loss of 1.6 X 10^6 Km^2 of possible sea area, that started in 2004. I see a step function change (loss) in their chart from that time on. The number I give would only be represented as a fraction of that amount unless the whole sea froze solid. See here: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg
and here:F
http://i44.tinypic.com/330u63t.jpg
Ric Werme (18:43:55) :
vg (14:05:00) :
You can compare images if you edit the URL right. The reason why they disabled the form from generating URLs for 2009 images is as they state – the failing SSMI sensor is generating very poor quality data. I think Cryosphere is only two people big (at least, two scientists), and don’t have time to switch to AMSR-E.
Although their daily images are AMSR-E and are therefore of very good quality. As they explain their comparison archive is from SSMI and the recent data from that satellite is unreliable.
Steve Keohane (21:24:02) :
As you’ve been told before the apparent encroachment of the snow on the sea ice in the pictures doesn’t effect the value they produce for area. That depends on the mask file (areagrid.dat if I recall correctly), only if that file is changed would there be any change in the potential sea area, painting an image pixel white doesn’t do that.
Sorry Phil., I have never seen a response prior to yours here. If what you say is true, why is the winter sea smaller than the summer sea by about 10%, and why would the mask be larger than the area depicted? It is not just a matter of painting pixels white as you say, since the white encroaches into the sea depiction. Also why does this coincide with a step function decrease in measured ice area in time?
April 14, 2008
For the past 13 years I have kept track of the dates of freezing and thawing
for the small New Hampshire lake on which I live. Thawing is defined as the date the main part of the lake is essentially completely free of ice, which just occurred Sunday, 4/13/2008. Freezing is defined as the date on which the lake freezes over and stays that way for the duration of the winter. This ignores those times when it freezes over and then opens up again.
This now gives us a duration in number of days that the lake is open for
boating (again, ignoring the temporary freeze-overs.) The number of days
varies rather randomly from year to year, and inspection does not show a
pattern. However, there is a statistical method for determining a trend
known as least squares regression analysis. Having practiced my math by doing income taxes, I decided to do this calculation for the years from 1995 through 2007. It shows that the number of open days is decreasing by 1/3 day per year.
If this trend continues, it means that by the year 2776 the lake will be
frozen over all year long. Isn’t trend analysis marvelous?