From WOOD-TV, Grand Rapids, MI
Chief Meteorologist Bill Steffen has been a familiar face in West Michigan since 1975.MSNBC needs to read Bill’s Blog
MSNBC is running a four-part series entitled Future Earth. On their website they say you can “find out why Earth’s climate machine — the North Pole — is melting alarmingly fast. Learn about our planet’s future, and how you can stop its decline.”
First, the North Pole is not “Earth’s Climate Machine”. There is far more heat and area in the Tropics than at the North Pole.
Second, YOU can’t stop it’s decline (assuming it’s declining)! Nature is big – you personally are insignificant compared to nature. Don’t you wish you had the power to control icecaps! If you don’t mind some profanity, check out George Carlin’s take on “Saving the Planet”.
Third, MSNBC does not know “our planet’s future”. The scenario they portray in this piece is about as remote a possibility in the near future (and more than likely the very far future) as the Lions going 16-0 next season. The Antarctic icecap (which is much bigger than the Arctic icecap) has been growing. In Sept. 1979 (first year of satellite data) the Antarctic icecap was 18.4 million sq. km. In Sept. 2008, the Antarctic icecap was at 19.2 million sq. km. That’s a 30-year trend.
By comparison, Michigan is 151,586 sq. km, so that’s an increase in icecover of over five times the area of Michigan. MSNBC could instead be doing a story on the trend of cooling in Antarctica and possible falling sea levels due to ice accumulation in Antarctica. Keep in mind that if the Polar icecap (without Greenland) melted…it would hardly cause sea level to rise, because the icecap is currently displacing water in the Arctic Ocean. The Antarctic icecap is over a land continent, not floating over an ocean. Significant ice accumulation over the land of Antarctica would cause sea level to fall. The Arctic icecap did decrease significantly (yes, very significantly) from 1979 to 2007. To do a fair piece on Arctic ice…MSNBC or anyone would have to note this. However, to also be fair…they should also tell what’s been going on in the Arctic since 2007.
Please, CHECK OUT THIS GRAPH from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Note that the current icecap has grown significantly and is now much closer to the 1979-2000 average than it is to the low level of 2007. There are meteorological reasons for this increase (PDO – Pacific Decadal Oscillation going negative, etc.) that have nothing to do with CO2. Some scientists predicted there would be no icecap this summer. It’ll actually be bigger than last summer. Al Gore predicted last year that “the icecap will be gone in five years!”. I would be willing to not only bet Al Gore but also give him 100 to one odds that there will still be a polar ice cap in 2013. One last point, MSNBC is owned by General Electric. GE is already making money off the issue with their Carbon Credit Master Card (link from “Treehugger”, no less).
Here’s CNN’s story on the new credit card. Interesting note: In the fourth quarter of 2008 as GE/NBC stock fell 30 percent, GE spent $4.26 million on lobbying — that’s $46,304 each day, including weekends, Thanksgiving and Christmas. In 2008, the company spent a grand total of $18.66 million on lobbying.” Reviewing their lobbying filings, GE’s specific lobbying issues included the “Climate Stewardship Act,” “Electric Utility Cap and Trade Act,” “Global Warming Reduction Act,” “Federal Government Greenhouse Gas Registry Act,” “Low Carbon Economy Act,” and “Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.” Do you think this “big business” is just concerned about the environment?
Well, check out this column from the Politico, which says: “Several of the companies would gain a commercial advantage after a cap and trade was established. General Electric has an “ecoimagination” line of green appliances and equipment. Robert Stavins, a professor of business and government at Harvard University, said a cap and trade program would be fantastic for GE and other companies that sell products that consume power. He said that if energy costs go up as a result of the regulation — something he believes is likely — a wide array of products from appliances to power plants would become prematurely obsolete and need to be replaced with greener models.” That would mean big money for GE (parent company of NBC and MSNBC). Take a moment and read my previous post on polar ice…check out the graphs and charts…they speak for themselves.
ONE LAST ADD: Check out this website with pictures of submarines in open water at the North Pole. Also: The Weather Channel is now owned by NBC, so they will have a similar policy.
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Sandy 03:36:13
Yes, interesting paper. Last I heard she was at Georgia Tech with Judy Curry and Julien Emile-Geay.
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It looks like that sun speck is disappearing already.
Allen M R MacRae
The E.ON report that you referenced was referenced here last year I believe. It is a very important report and anyone with the slightest interest in commercial wind power should read it. It’s actually a very upbeat report but you have to actually look at the information it gives. Here are some items to consider when looking at the numbers.
1. The report is very upbeat, it reads like a report to stockholders.
2. E.ON claims to be one of the top producers of wind power.
3. They are located on the very wind rich North Sea and Baltic Sea.
Items 1 and 2 indicate that any information is at least accurate; you will find no numbers that are inaccurately low here. While item 3 indicates that the wind capacity is probably as good as you can get.
However, when you look at the numbers you can see that there is not much hope despite what the report says. The less than 14% capacity generation for the equivalent of ½ year is definitely not good. Building more windmills won’t solve that problem. Improved efficiency will allow for a few more MW but efficiency has its limits and I can’t see it overcoming the just plain lack of wind. In fact the only accomplishment that the company can boast of is a change in German law that mandates the equal sharing of the cost of the conventional spinning reserve with the other 3 German power companies.
The difficulties with power scheduling and overloads is also quit informative.
Thank you, Bill Steffen, for speaking out. We need everyone who opposes the radical AGW agenda and it’s ramifications for our country and economy to speak out.
There is something we all can do. I, for one, will think twice before purchasing any General Electric products or services. I don’t purchase “news”papers like the NYT, USA Today, etc., who regularly run AGW propaganda without any hint of balance. As for cable “news” and entertainment companies such as NBC/MSNBC, I do not watch their channels or visit their websites. And I gave up on the Weather Channel a long time ago after the Heidi Cullen debacle…
There’s good reason for a manufacturer such as GE to promote wind machines. They’re more capital intensive than even nuclear. When you take capacity factor into account (average usable output/peak capacity), the best wind machines come in at around $10,000 per average kw installed. A combined cycle gas turbine plant comes in at around $500 per average kw installed. Fuel cost savings included, the wind machine never comes close to competing with conventional power over the economic lifetimes of the machines. Solar is much less competitive than even wind. Brace yourselves for the skyrocketing electric rates that will attend all that “free” wind and solar power.
Not a single such “renewable” machine would be on line in the U.S. today without benefit of huge tax subsidies that camouflage the real economics (I built 23 such projects before retirement). The “energy density” limitations of wind and solar preclude “economy of scale” breakthroughs for either technology that would make them reasonably competitive with conventional sources of power. The “carbon tax” is simply a way to make ALL power as expensive as alternate energy. Again, brace yourselves for the utility bills that must come out of this Brave New World and that will drive up the cost of EVERYTHING!
Just Want Truth… (23:52:04) :
TYPO!!
~800 billion, not ~8 billion. MY BAD!
Now that news channels are owned by infotainment groups and are commercialized by large now-green conglomerate companies, they have no choice but to toe the line. Commercial income would dry up and shrivel away if someone like The Weather Channel started reporting on what we see happening every day. Whoever controls the media controls the people. Could be why the American Revolution was fought and won by a small Army, not the people. They hardly knew it was going on or why. People always complain about the liberal media (or what some of us thought was the conservative media during the Bush administration). The media can do nothing without the commercials that pepper it. The question is, “Who owns the commercials?” You will discover that corporations are chameleons. They look for opportunity based on the wind of the day. GE may have been ultra conservative just 5 years ago. Now it is as green as Oregon tomatoes.
The media will not, and cannot report the end of global warming without going out of business. It’s that simple.
Miles (05:41:07) :
I know that this is OT, so I’ll be brief :
The writer said this, “I voted three times for Al Gore,…The former Vice President spoke before the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week. It was not his shining hour.”
http://www.examiner.com/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m4d27-Al-Gore-global-warming-and-truth
He also said this in a column in his archive, “The pictures we see of the polar bears ‘stranded’ on a small ice floe make them look forlorn, but in fact these bears are either surfing–or fishing. Polar bears swim quite nicely, thank you and rest on the occasional floe, or use it as cover while they look for something to eat.”
http://www.examiner.com/x-9111-SF-Environmental-Policy-Examiner~y2009m4d27-Of-Arctic-Ice-and-Polar-Bears
This from a man in San Francisco?
“Pamela Gray (07:02:43) : …they have no choice but to toe the line.”
“Without any censorship in the West, fashionable trends of thought and ideas are fastidiously separated from those that are not fashionable, and the latter, without ever being forbidden, have little chance of finding their way into periodicals or books or being heard in colleges. Your scholars are free in the legal sense, but they are hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad.”
~~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
Harvard 1978 commencement address
GE = LOL, just sit back and watch this flop like a fish out of water
kurt:
“This is a common source of confusion among climate change sceptics. As the world warms, the atmosphere’s ability to hold water vapour increases. Think of how humid it is in the tropics, and how dry the Arctic air is. The largest desert on Earth is the continent of Antarctica”
I must be missing something ’cause this “climate change sceptic” is still, apparently, confused . . . .
Yes, the ability of air to hold water vapor increases with temperature but that quality is independent of *relative* humidity.
Further, “The Tropics” are defined by latitude (the areas between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn) which is to say that there are areas within “the Tropics” that do not exhibit a “tropical” climate. Note for example that, as I write, the relative humidity in very warm Aswan, Egypt is but 11% while arctic Anchorage is at 82%.
Is it possible, measured in absolute terms, that there is more water in the Egyptian air than Alaskan? Sure, but that means nothing. Precipitation will occur when when the temperature of a given mass of air drops to below the dew point which is to say that although I haven’t checked the forecast, I can be pretty sure that it is more likely to rain in Anchorage today than in Aswan.
Point is that Antarctica may be the world’s largest desert, I’ll take your word for that, but this is not a result of it being cold; it is the result of myriad other factors that determine its climate like latitude, geography, and ocean currents, to name a few.
” Pamela Gray (07:02:43) : Whoever controls the media controls the people.”
“The ruling class has the schools and press under its thumb. This enables it to sway the emotions of the masses.”
~~Albert Einstein
Peter Plail,
I noticed a very interesting paragraph in the news that you link about the n+1 collapse of the Wilkins Ice Sheet:
“The loss of ice shelves does not raise sea levels significantly because the ice is floating and already mostly submerged by the ocean”.
It is the first time that I read about the Wilkins Ice Shelf Collapse without the scientist subsequently talking of the incredible ammount of meters the sea level could rise as a result.
Something seems to be changing in some minds. For the good.
In Sept. 1979 (first year of satellite data) the Antarctic icecap was 18.4 million sq. km. In Sept. 2008, the Antarctic icecap was at 19.2 million sq. km. That’s a 30-year trend.
Except if you use his link to the data you find that he’s wrong, in Sept 2008 it was 18.5 million sq. km., in his terms that’s 30 year trend of zero!
Warning! NORSEX is an AGW biased site
http://www.nersc.no/~knutal/NORSEX_current.html
judge for yourselves.
So be ready for a sudden downwards “adjustment” again to this graph soon…
http://eva.nersc.no/vhost/arctic-roos.org/doc/observations/images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
The Antarctic is growing and the Arctic isn’t doing so bad this year either.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
It’s within a hairsbreath ( a truly scientific measurement 🙂 ) of the 79-2000 average (I’m still puzzled as to why NSIDC uses that time frame as the metric.).
John Edmondson (23:57:22) :
If Barry Brooke of Bravenewclimate.com claims that the sea around Antartica is warming, where is his evidence? What about the record level of sea ice?
What record level? Last year’s maximum was bang on the 79-00 average as was this February’s Minimum (actually very slightly below).
This can’t be explained by glacier runoff. The reason there is more ice is simple, the sea is colder and freezes more readily. Is there any other explanation of the facts?
Well first get the facts right (see above). Over the last couple of years there has been a rapid early refreeze for a month or so followed by a decline to normal rates, last year it barely made average at maximum, probably the same this year.
kurt (00:41:29) :
The common AGW theory is that the glacier’s terminus is grounded on the seafloor and is thereby holding back the shear mass of glacier above it. As the grounded terminus (aka, sea ice) breaks away (due to AGW), the glacier, and all its pent up energy comes sliding down the hill into the sea and destroys New York City. At least that’s the way it was described to me by some of the intellectual elites from the AGW side of the argument.
I’m not sure how the sea bed is able to hold back a glacier when none of the rock on the continental land mass is able to stop it. Must be some sort of magical power yet to be discovered.
Question, are Mars air temps cooling, I know its off topic.
the best wind machines come in at around $10,000 per average kw installed
That sounds a lot. We have a local manufacturer (Vestas) that makes 2MW turbines, and even if you use a duty cycle of 1/3 (i.e. you have to install three to get an average output of 2MW) I’m sure they wouldn’t cost $20m – nearer a fifth of that, I believe. I’m no apologist for them, but I see no real objection if they earn their keep. It may be windier in the UK, of course…
OT, more or less:
“US admits responsibility for emissions to bring big polluters together”
“Hillary Clinton offers admission to ease obstacles towards reaching agreement at climate change summit in Copenhagen”
From the article:
“[Mrs. Bill Clinton] saw climate change as the gravest problem facing the international community: ‘The facts on the ground are outstripping the worst case scenario models.’” (my emphasis)
As if these people had any idea of what “the facts on the ground” actually are. . .
/Mr Lynn
It´s a real “war against terror” which you face. WUWT with the gigantic help of old Sun will win. Just open the bottles, there will be plenty of ice for preparing quite a lot of Gwrs. “on the rocks”.:)
…and we know where their “intelligence”(??) headquarters is: Boulder, Colorado
[snip]
In Sept. 1979 (first year of satellite data) the Antarctic icecap was 18.4 million sq. km. In Sept. 2008, the Antarctic icecap was at 19.2 million sq. km. That’s a 30-year trend.
Except if you use his link to the data you find that he’s wrong, in Sept 2008 it was 18.5 million sq. km., in his terms that’s 30 year trend of zero!
vg (01:43:39) :
Check this:Global ice +1.158 two days ago (recorded on this post), no visibly change on graph SH or NH since then but today 0.7!
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/iphone/iphone.anom.global.html
this is why files need to be saved!
It’s an anomaly plot! That means it’s compared with the mean for the date, if the sea ice doesn’t increase at the same rate as the average year the anomaly must go down!
Of course it’s also possible that you’re mixing up global anomaly with SH anomaly which is currently 1.228?