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?
ziusudrablog (06:22:23) : “How does a blogger know about the polar ice caps by just sitting in front of a monitor. ”
Hmmm, I think it’s called looking at readily available scientific data:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_timeseries.png
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
“The above is a record of sea-levels at Stockholm, which clearly shows falling sea levels.”
I bet it is because land is actually rising there and it has been that way since the last ice age. Massive glacier forced surface downwards and it has been slowly recovering after the ice age.
It has been said that someday one can walk from Finland to Sweden (or vice versa).
ziusudrablog :
Please go back and play with the other children, dear; the adults here are talking.
The most telling passage in Congressman Stupak’s response is “Congress needs to move beyond the debate over whether global warming exists.”.
Yes of course they need to move beyond the debate. They need to move now before more skeptic step in, and destroy their tax scheme with the truth. They need to move past the now constant storm of holes being punched in the NASA and the IPCC reports. They need to move before the earth shows cooling, so that they can take credit for it. They need to move past the debate before the graft money from the potential carbon traders and green energy groups goes cold. Most of all they need to move past the debate because they have 70 trillion in unfunded obligations and debt, and they really need the $2,000+ per household that the taxed and betrayed scheme will bring them annually.
My questions to Congressman Stupak would go something like this.
1) Before you move beyond the debate, I would like to take part in it. I would like to make a presentation to the committee, and then would welcome a debate with the AGW promoter of your choosing.
2) Can you produce evidence of any current climate elements that are outside of the normal range of variability demonstrated in our climate over the past 300 million years? Proxies show that at one point CO2 was over 7,000ppm, and geology shows us that not only have sea levels been 200 feet higher, at one point Alaska was a sub-tropical forest. All occurred before man’s rise. In that context, what is unusual about our current climate?
3) Have the frequently discredited NASA or IPCC reports shown any proof of use of the scientific method, IE Hypothesis, experiment vs control, conclusion, test for reproducibility? By my understanding, we are still in the hypothesis stage. At one point we also hypothesized that blood letting was the answer to all sorts of maladies.
4) It is apparent that the above mentioned reports ignore the cyclical nature of our climate, and specifically elements like the PDO, ENSO, AMO, and solar cycles. Why were these not considered, or if they were, why were they discounted?
5) Can you explain how your tax and impoverish plan will address the return of previous climate events like Dansgaard-Oeschger?
6) What is obliquity and precession, and how do they enter into this conversation?
7) Michigan has a long glacial history, and is common with kettles and moraines. As our last glacier receded, the warming was dramatic enough to leave gravel hills of outwash 300 feet high, but less than a mile across. What kind of warming would be required for a mile-thick sheet of ice to drop this much this quickly?
8) Are the US Government, NASA, and the IPCC financially or politically invested in a certain outcome? All seem to benefit enormously from moving this scheme forward with a predetermined result. AGW promoters frequently discount deniers as being funded by energy interests. Are these organizations neutral in their funding regardless of outcome, or will they benefit from one result or the other?
9) How much in campaign contributions have been paid to your committee by the various pro and anti AGW interests in the last 10 years?
10) While the press and the democrats refuse to believe it, the real science is anything but settled. The IPPC reports have been widely discredited, as have been those from NASA. There is a large body of the scientific community that discount those position papers and many errors have been found. Some appear intentional. Over half of the country believes that AGW is a tax and political power hoax and nothing more. A court in England found substantial untruth in Al Gore’s “Documentary”. Exactly WHAT is settled about the science, and if it is settled, why are we still in the hypothesis stage?
And finally, I would show up for the debate in a T-shirt that read..
“Younger-Dryas
Climate change that you can believe in!”
.
I honestly don’t know very much about the environment, so don’t take me too seriously. I don’t deny that humans could stand to treat nature less arrogantly. But I suspect greasy hands are taking advantage of people’s concern for the earth, for the economy, for the Third World, and for flu epidemics.
It’s a grand strategy, if you want your speech written in red letters in the popular bible: convince people they’re in peril, offer to help them out of that peril, and on the next election day when the world hasn’t gone to Hell after all, claim it’s all because of your party’s hard work. And blame the previous administration for anything that went wrong. And, most importantly, cut your competition down to size. Let citizens be rich and independent, sure…but not rich or independent enough to give more charity than you!
Even if the government is truly concerned for the environment, I’d say this to all parties: let us get ourselves somewhat out of the economic horror film we’re supposed to be in, and help us where needed. THEN use our money to assuage your own conscience.
ziusudrablog, real scientists are just as concerned for evidence AGAINST their hypotheses and theories as they are for evidence FOR. Anything can be evidenced – unicorns can be evidenced – but nothing is ever proven. Today’s obvious facts are tomorrow’s flat-earth theories.
ziusudrablog (06:22:23) : “How does a blogger know about the polar ice caps by just sitting in front of a monitor. ”
Well don’t tease us.
Where and how did you learn about the polar ice caps?
From Al Gore?
Or directly from a Polar Bear Cub?
Honestly, your post was so ludicrous I suspect it was a spoof.
Harry (10:18:49) :
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.”
You may be right. Which is why following the money from politician to research center becomes more important. Cases such as the accusation of fraud at SUNY Albany – will uncover some of the AGW government/climate industrial complex.
can I just say this..
Ice ice baby.
Serious comments are serious. Chill out winston. Do your part to stop this after that..what can you do. Get angry at people you dont know? That’s worked out well so far.
jc
mastercontrolcast.wordpress.com
Here we are, 3 days after the NSIDC update on April sea-ice and no mention of it on their from page in the ‘recently updated news’ banner running vertically along the right side of their front page, nor is there any media reporting the headline “A slow start to the spring melt season”.
Usually the NSIDC updates are picked up on by media hounds within hours of it’s release and blasted over the media…
Oh well, I guess the media have their hands full trying to hype up the “early start to the fire season in California due to global warming” (San Bernadino fires) and covering the tornado in the South “Which could have been made more violent due to global warming”.
There’s no losing when every possible weather event is somehow tied into global warming. Weather is one of the most highly variable occurrences on this planet.
Indiana Bones:
“Which is why following the money from politician to research center becomes more important. Cases such as the accusation of fraud at SUNY Albany – will uncover some of the AGW government/climate industrial complex.
Rare and not widely reported with connections to any other AGW fraud ignored. Like I said, the press will run interferance. A story followed only by you and me and the rest of us here, and we are the “deniers”. AGW is going to be difficult to knock down.
Molon:
We have in fact seen significant warming in the Arctic air masses – I don’t think there are similar data loggers in the Antarctic, where the sea-ice is a fringe on a very large continent – and the main rises have been in late autumn, after the summer sea-ice reaches its minimum. This suggests a strong heat transfer from the ice-free Arctic seas to the atmosphere – and it creates a strong signal. However – it should be remembered that at these latitudes the region is in permanent heat deficit – losing heat to space. Thus, what the loggers of ‘anomalous’ air temperature easily forget to state is that this represents an accelerated LOSS of heat from the Arctic ocean. Thus, we can expect the Arctic sea temperatures to drop and for the next year’s ice to be thicker. The recent losses to 2007 were due to increased influx of warm Atlantic waters under the ice and increased cloud from a warm Pacific (until the PDO shifted) – there has been a phase-shift, and i would expect to see lower sea temperatures, more sea-ice, less cloud and eventually lower arctic surface air temperatures, which are known to shift on an approximate 70-year cycle, with many records set around 1940. If CO2 is having a significant effect, it cannot be greater than the difference between 1940 and 2007 temperatures, but the data sets are not so readily compared. When I looked at them, I thought the difference was about 20% – and of course, there are other factors in the ocean cycles that would make this an upper estimate.
I actually see that red graph moving to both extremes, which is exactly what Global warming is. up until about 2000 the red is pretty consistent, once 2000 hits, the graphs moves both up and down in larger extremes. This is the climate change we need to be afraid of. 3 days of snow and sleet followed by 3 days of 90 degree weather will be extremely detrimental to our planet.
Speaking of incoherence, has anyone made any heads or tails of the the Obama Administration’s biofuels policy? It seems to read that they will consider the total environmental impact of producing biofuels (which by all I’ve read should be a negative) but Tom Harkin is celebrating in the streets which means that a lot of corn growers are lining up for thier stimulus money.
AGW-Housing crisis-terrorism-pandemics etc, etc, etc…
The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis-Hhhhhmmmmm
.
>>You don’t have to go as far as Stockholm to find
>>falling sea levels. I’ve seen … six or so United
>>States’s sea level gauges … falling.
As far??
Stockholm is just down the road in comparison to the US!!! A US-centic view?
.
Sea levels.
>>>I bet it is because land is actually rising there
>>>and it has been that way since the last ice age.
Indeed, but the point of my post is to illustrate that an exact sea level rise is difficult to deduce. Yes, land levels in Scandinavia are rising, but by exactly how much? Can we tell to the nearest few centimeters, which is the accuracy needed to deduce net sea level rises. I doubt it.
Other sea level datums also point towards either stable or lowering sea levels.
http://www.john-daly.com/ges/msl-rept.htm
Forget it all. CAGW depends on +ve feedback. Lets look at/wait for the evidence. Everything else is a distraction. No +ve feedback= possibly 1deg over the next 100 years = panic ye not.
I have to say that the evidence so far suggests i should sleep soundly tonight.
(AEGeneral: May I quote you?) “It just keeps going on like the Energizer Bunny”.
Here’s an idea. Maybe some big newspaper somewhere that is finally coming to terms with the “Big Naughty Fib” could bite the bullet and (don’t they need a big boost in sales right now?) admit that they have been telling us whoppers. Straight out, like that! Dress it up a bit, they’re good at that anyway. Accuse others as well, nicely of course. Make it a big promotion. Imagine the sales! It might, just might start a run on honesty, you know, like the sound of glaciers melting. Someone’s got to do it. They would go down in history.
thekronic3001 @ur momisugly 12:52:07:
You make the point that global warming causes greater climate instability. You’re arguing for global cooling sir. You need to understand some systematic basics.
In the climate system (and all other real world complex systems), the farther away from the normal equilibrium you get the more unstable the system becomes. AGW proponents base their argument of increasing climate instability on this well understood fact.
Systems theory clearly establishes that the further you are from the point of equilibrium, the more likely you are to encounter third, fourth, and higher order subsystems (feedbacks) that will become greater in force (sensitivity) than the instability and seek to regulate the system back to a state of equilibrium. In a system in equilibrium, the feedbacks are relatively insensitive and the system more stable. This principal is central to the high CO2 climate sensitivity argument of AGW proponents.
AGW proponents presume global warming must have pushed our climate system into a state where feedback sensitivities are very high. This presumption can be seen in current general circulation models. However, to accept such an assertion, one has to accept that our climate system is very unstable to begin with. Our climate system is very stable else our atmosphere would have vanished eons ago. We must observe that our climate system has been becoming progressively more unstable over a statistically meaningful timeframe. We observe the opposite.
What is not understood by AGW proponents is a warming climate does not become less stable, it becomes more stable. Or inversely, a colder climate is a climate of greater temperature extents. The paleoclimatic record clearly shows this. You can see this by looking at this graph:
http://www.eos.ubc.ca/research/glaciology/research/AbruptClimateChange.html
The AGW proponents who use this argument are actually arguing against global warming and know too little about complex system theory and paleoclimatic history to understand their folly.
Unbelievable,
You’ve taken a graph which has a NON-ZERO ORIGIN, and claim to have shown that there’s no statistically significant trend by WIDENING the graph.
To show the graph ACCURATELY, the ORIGIN should be at ZERO, … NOT 13.0
Here’s a test:
Make a bar graph of my wealth, which is $101, in column “A”; and your wealth, which is (hypothetically) $110 in column “B”. Is there much of a difference?
Now, plot the same bar graph, but set the ORIGIN of the graph to $100. Is there much of a difference now? Thought so.
The graph of Arctic Sea Ice Extent has the same problem — the ORIGIN is set at 8 (or maybe 7, it’s hard to tell). [hint: it oughtta be 0, … zero, … goose-egg, … nada]
Neither of the original graphs you use is legitimate.
No one in the first bunch of comments I read even noticed this (I only skimmed the rest of the comments; so if some later comment already noted this, I apologize to that commenter)
Further, you present a WIDENED graph, and then claim that it shows (read “proves”) that there is no statistically significant trend. Where did you learn this fascinating technique?
A graph does NOT, and CANNOT prove statistical significance. But, you know what does? — STATISTICS!!
If you’ve done the statistical analysis of the DATA that went into making the graph, then perhaps you could present THAT to substantiate a claim of “no statistically significant trend”. However, based on your being duped by a phony graph, and then attempting to prove statistical significance via PhotoShop; I have serious doubts that you’ve done any statistical analysis of the raw data.
FYI, I’m no watermelon. I’m a full-fledged “denier”; but this is ridiculous.
Eyas,
Anyone who has taken 2nd form (7th grade) maths knows that the slope of a line is independent of the y-offset, and that the vertical scale has no relationship to the sign of the slope.
I’m going to have to assume that group doesn’t include you.
Goddbard;
lo importante es la tendencia (slope).
Los cientificos alertan sobre que la tendencia es superior al calculo historico.
Para que tu puedas entenderlo significa que la linea AZUL cae mas de lo que debería.
HAVE YOU SEEN THE BLUE LINE???
Reply: Google translator says:
~ charles the moderator
I haven’t gone through all the comments, so forgive me if I’m repeating one or more of them, but if you’re really serious about misrepresenting the evidence, you should at least take the time to doctor the graphs completely. Don’t just white out the trend lines – you have to fill in the resulting gaps in the black annual lines, or the trends will still be discernible (as clearly negative). But hey – you don’t seem to know the difference between short-term and long-term anyway . . .
As for the last graph, on Arctic sea ice extent, looks to me like the current figure shows about 500,000 square kilometers less ice than average for this time of year, available to reflect solar radiation back into space – and correspondingly more open water, ready to absorb all that high sunlight over the next few months.
Please – anyone reading this: read all the crackpot cherry-picked analyses you want – but weigh them against the source studies! What do the NSIDC scientists themselves have to say?
(For one thing the NSIDC web-site points out that in addition to ice EXTENT being relatively low, ice THICKNESS is also much lower than average, meaning that future declines in extent per given amount of heating will be relatively rapid.)