Guest post by Steven Goddard
Last week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon warned that “polar ice caps were melting far faster than expected just two years ago“
This was based on a number of widely publicized scientific studies released this year claiming that both the Arctic and Antarctic are melting faster than expected.
As recently as last week, scientists were sounding the alarm.
Tues., April 28, 2009OSLO – The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica have awakened and are melting faster than expected, a leading expert told peers ahead of a conference of ministers from nations with Arctic territory.Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, an expert with the Center for Ice and Climate at the University of Copenhagen, told the conference in the Arctic town of Tromsoe that the need for a wake-up call was genuine for the polar and glacial regions.
He apparently didn’t read this paper from last Autumn’s AGU Meeting
Ice loss in Greenland has had some climatologists speculating that global warming might have brought on a scary new regime of wildly heightened ice loss and an ever-faster rise in sea level. But glaciologists reported at the American Geophysical Union meeting that Greenland ice’s Armageddon has come to an end.
One has to wonder if some scientists are lacking access to the Internet, as the amount of polar sea ice on the planet is above the 30 year mean.
Yesterday, NSIDC announced that “Arctic sea ice extent at the end of April 2009 was within the expected range of natural variability.” and “The decline rate for the month of April was the third slowest on record“
The NSIDC graph below shows that April ice extent has actually increased by more than the size of Texas over past last two years. Clearly The UN Secretary General is mistaken when he claims “”polar ice caps were melting far faster than expected just two years ago.”
I took this graph a step further and compared 2009 vs. past years. Current April extent is the greatest in the last 8 years. It is greater than it was 20 years ago.
If you look at the last 20 years, there is no statistically significant trend in the data.
Arctic ice extent is essentially normal.
It is important to remember that ice area between mid-April and mid-August is what affects the earth’s climate, because that is when the sun is up highest in the sky. When the ice reaches it’s minimum in September, the sun is so low above the horizon that the presence or absence of ice has little impact on the earth’s SW radiation balance. A more complete explanation here .
Also, the claim of Polar Bear endangerment is based largely on the idea that the ice is supposedly breaking up earlier than it used to in the spring. The “third slowest melt on record” would hardly support that popular claim.
I continue to be astonished at the amount of misinformation being propagated by some scientists and governmental officials. The correct information is readily available to anyone who has access to Google and five minutes of time. What is the real agenda?
Indiana Bones @ur momisugly 09:06:49
…how do these politicians plan to extract themselves from the backlash that is inevitable,
They will point out they were honest and sincere victims of advice that was was thought to be accurate at the time, but turned out to be erroneous.
Neil,
Please read the linked articles more carefully.
These reported statements make it clear that there is a political agenda at work and misleading or false claims are part of that agenda.
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.”
– Club of Rome,
The First Global Revolution
and…
“…we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination….So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts….Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest.”
– Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
lead author of many IPCC reports
and…
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…climate change provides the greatest opportunity to
bring about justice and equality in the world.”
– Christine Stewart,
fmr Canadian Minister of the Environment
AGW causes floods.
AGW causes droughts.
AGW causes floods and droughts in the same place at the same time.
What’s incoherent?
_she_ might not have read the paper. In Danish “Dorthe” is the name of a woman.
Great site BTW
This matches my result pretty well. The extent is reading slightly lower than area anomaly relative to mean.
Why do they always put a linear trend-line on the ice extent and temperature graphs?
These date clearly do not appear to be the result of linear functions.
If you fit a third or fourth order polynomial trend-line to the Arctic Sea Ice Extent graph, you’d have a much better fit…And you’d clearly see that the sea ice extent began to expand right about when the PDO shifted.
Too bad the satellite data don’t go back to the early 1900’s…This whole AGW fraud might have been avoided.
Frederick Michael (09:19:32) :
………….
“I’d like to see a headline that starts with the words, “Break Out the Tar and Feathers.”
And the guillotines.
@ur momisugly LOL in Oreogn (09:30:22) :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie
You are absolutely right! And the Wikepdia quote from Mein Kampf that you point to says it all. People only actually expect and comprehend in others what they habitually they do themselves. So that the vast majority of honest people never expect to be lied to, and can hardly believe it when it happens. And even professional embellishers of the common or garden variety ( politicians? journalists? ambitious academics? stock promoters?) never expect THE BIG LIE. Nobody expects it, apart from the big liars themselves, and the occasional uniformed psychopath.
And if anthropogenic global warming were a stock, it would be a dotcom dream that has just run from 2c to $35, or a little Canadian gold company with a name like Bre-Ex. It’s what happens. The big lie is told and everyone belives it. And then one day suddenly we all go “Oops..”
Very important people talking about very important things, with no facts to justify their importance or their views. Sounds normal for our government or the UN. Maybe Austrian is spoken and they need a translator. Or maybe a link to WUWT to get the ice extent and a look at the sun.
Jim Watson (09:00:53) :
The next step is getting the Alarmists to ADMIT they were wrong and that, I’m afraid, will take heaven AND Earth.
with perhaps some help from that third [and much hotter] place…
Frederick Michael (09:19:32) :
Notice that the slope of the antarctic sea ice for May is about 4 million sq. km. per month. That’s more than twice the slope for the arctic and that means that the total is going to rise a lot over the next month (or more).
================
Unfortunately, this trend will be explained away by “a cooling offset” created by the ozone “hole” (another ridiculous farce propagated by bad science and federal research dollars).
Indiana Bones:
“In the face of these facts – and having the benefit of hindsight – how do these politicians plan to extract themselves from the backlash that is inevitable. Do they think they will not be held responsible for perpetrating an inhumane hoax?”
The left has painted themselves into a corner with AGW and will fight bitterly to maintain the hoax. This is very important to them for deep rooted ideological reasons, however; I’m not so certain exposing AGW as the hoax that it is will end up being that devastating to more people than an Al Gore or two. Why?
The political left will simply bury “Climate Change” and/or morph the hoax into two forms: 1. “Alarmism in support of a better environment for our children is no vice”. (Many of us have already heard that). 2. “We’ve never said what flat-earth wingnuts claimed we have said.”
The press will run interference and the vast middle of the electorate, (“moderates” & “independants”), who are politically incurious, will not know the difference.
The real agenda, as Dr. Lockwood puts it in the previous post, is “pre-emptive denial.” They know the earth is cooling, and they are pre-emptively denying the cold hard facts!
Anthony,
Let’s hope we get some unbiased facts from this expedition (NASA JPL?)…um probably asking for too much…
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/arctic-20090429.html
G
Frederick Michael (09:19:32) :
There’s a news story coming that’s could bring down the AGW hoax like a house of cards. Compare this graph with the arctic graph above:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png
Notice that the slope of the antarctic sea ice for May is about 4 million sq. km. per month. That’s more than twice the slope for the arctic and that means that the total is going to rise a lot over the next month (or more). There is a good chance the all time HIGH record for sea ice worldwide will be broken. This is at such perfect variance with the idiotic pronouncements by the AGW fanatics that they won’t be able to dance away.
I’d like to see a headline that starts with the words, “Break Out the Tar and Feathers.”
Thanks for that link; but don’t hold your breath waiting for that headline anytime soon. The only thing propping this up now is the media, and they’ve become so politically vested in AGW being true that they’ll never let go of it no matter what.
Think “Baghdad Bob” here talking to the press with a 1,000-foot glacier floating behind him. “There is no global cooling here! No global cooling!”
I feel like I wake up in a parallel universe some mornings. Every time I think, in light of current observation, that this can’t go on much longer, it just keeps on going like the Energizer Bunny.
‘melting faster *than expected* ‘ can mean anything, just find someone who didn’t expect it to melt at all.
To their credit, the AGW media are careful to put these little disclaimers in, which, when it comes to bollocking time, will excuse many of wrong doing.
They will “misrepresent” the data until it puts them into a position to simply be marginalized due to their “exaggeration of reality”, we just have to keep the course and let them swerve back and forth and wait for the crash.
The Titanic comes to mind… Big Massive Ship thought Unsinkable…chunk of ice…and you know..
Strange, not a whiff of climate alarmism on the BBC news so far. How could they have missed this golden opportunity?
Steven Goddard please note that Dorthe Dahl-Jensen is actually a female. She is apparently on the AGW side of the argument and do not forget that we have the Copenhagen conference coming up in December and the Danish politicians would not like to see that conference finishing without a result – the “right” result.
meemoe_uk (10:33:29) :
‘melting faster *than expected* ‘ can mean anything, just find someone who didn’t expect it to melt at all.
Indeed, just like the recent expedition to the Arctic that initially said that they had measured ‘thicker than expected sea ice’ but reported results within the usual range for the areas they measured.
santitafarella ,
Thanks for pointing us to realclimate.
None of us had ever heard of that before and it will be very exciting to read what “real climate scientists” have to say about this important issue.
Interpreting simple X-Y graphs is well beyond the capabilities of most of us with only advanced degrees in science in engineering.
santitafarella, you reccomend “Real Climate” as the sole scientific source? No others? Climate Audit per chance? Or must the site “comply” with the “correct” viewpoint?
The media are no longer concerned about fairness and objectivity. The post-modern journalist is an activist first and foremost. Facts don’t matter. Facts often confuse the narrative. All that matters is public opinion and public policy are steered towards the greater good.
The same goes for science. Facts and objectivity are also o longer important. Advocacy is the new science. Another problem: Many (if not most) scientists depend upon government funding. No crisis, no funding. Since scientists who don’t work can’t promote the greater good, they may have to exaggerate or fudge a little here and there.
As the oceans lose heat (falsifying the AGW theory, by the way) global sea ice is likely to prosper.
http://climatesci.org/2009/05/05/have-changes-in-ocean-heat-falsified-the-global-warming-hypothesis-a-guest-weblog-by-william-dipuccio/