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?
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
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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?
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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!