From NSIDC sea ice news
During the first half of August, Arctic ice extent declined more slowly than during the same period in 2007 and 2008. The slower decline is primarily due to a recent atmospheric circulation pattern, which transported ice toward the Siberian coast and discouraged export of ice out of the Arctic Ocean. It is now unlikely that 2009 will see a record low extent, but the minimum summer ice extent will still be much lower than the 1979 to 2000 average.
Figure 2. The graph above shows daily sea ice extent as of August 17, 2009. The solid light blue line indicates 2009; the solid dark blue line shows 2008; the dashed green line shows 2007; and the solid gray line indicates average extent from 1979 to 2000. The gray area around the average line shows the two standard deviation range of the data. Sea Ice Index data.
Figure 1. Daily Arctic sea ice extent on August 17 was 6.26 million square kilometers (2.42 million square miles). The orange line shows the 1979 to 2000 median extent for that day. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole. Sea Ice Index data. About the data. <!–Please note that our daily sea ice images, derived from microwave measurements, may show spurious pixels in areas where sea ice may not be present. These artifacts are generally caused by coastline effects, or less commonly by severe weather. Scientists use masks to minimize the number of “noise” pixels, based on long-term extent patterns. Noise is largely eliminated in the process of generating monthly averages, our standard measurement for analyzing interannual trends. Data derived from Sea Ice Index data set. –>
Note: This mid-monthly analysis update shows a single-day extent value for Figure 1, rather than the usual monthly average. While monthly average extent images are more accurate in understanding long-term changes, the daily images are helpful in monitoring sea ice conditions in near-real time.
Overview of conditions
On August 17, Arctic sea ice extent was 6.26 million square kilometers (2.42 million square miles). This is 960,000 square kilometers (370,000 square miles) more ice than for the same day in 2007, and 1.37 million square kilometers (530,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average. On August 8, the 2009 extent decreased below the 1979 to 2000 average minimum annual extent, with a month of melt still remaining.
Conditions in context
From August 1 to 17, Arctic sea ice extent declined at an average rate of 54,000 square kilometers (21,000 square miles) per day. This decline was slower than the same period in 2008, when it was 91,000 square kilometers (35,000 square miles) per day, and for the same period in 2007, when ice extent declined at a rate of 84,000 square kilometers (32,000 square miles) per day. The recent rate of ice loss has slowed considerably compared to most of July. Arctic sea ice extent is now greater than the same day in 2008.
AMSRE from JAXA shows similar extent conditions:
As does NANSEN:
Leland Palmer (00:41:56) :
.. the Permian-Triassic mass extinction was no fantasy. It took life many millions of years, tens of millions of years in some areas, to regain the the diversity that was shown before that event.
… Concerning politics, well, there’s nothing patriotic about allowing the destabilization of the climate leading to a mass extinction.
What’s patriotic about that?
Dear Leland Palmer : You seem to have something wrong with your thinking processes. A fixation that somehow the burning of fossil fuels will lead to another Permian-Triassic mass extinction.
Please rest assured that this is somewhat unlikely for the following reasons:
1. In Earth’s early history large body impacts were almost certainly common since the solar system contained far more floating bodies than now. They have since been “vacuumed” out by Jupiter and Saturn, principally, and also by strikes on us and other planets and moons. These impacts included strikes by asteroids hundreds of kilometers in diameter. Although this heavy bombardment began to slacken about 4 billion years ago, permitting life to appear and evolve on Earth, some bombardment inevitably must have continued but with greater intervals and comparatively lesser explosions.
Almost certainly one such impact removed the Dinosaurs from the Earth and very probably a much larger impact accounted for the Permian-Triassic extinction, which was much earlier in the Earth’s history.
2. The AGW hypothesis has failed in its many predictions. A hypothesis that fails in its predictions needs to be rejected / revised.
The predictions it failed in include: the warming from increased carbon dioxide emissions has been greatly overestimated, the current global cooling trend, despite rising CO2 levels, the absence of a tropical hot spot in the troposphere, which was supposed to be a signature of AGW, Antarctic cooling, ocean cooling and unchanged rates of sea level rise.
3. Even the IPCC does not predict a Permian-Triassic extinction, as you seem to think might happen by the mere economic progress of humans.
I suggest therefore that you desist from repeating these absurd claims, which due to their sheer repetition is very annoying, and get some counseling for your paranoia.
Leland Palmer (00:41:56) :
“Hi Smokey and all-
Well, the Permian-Triassic mass extinction was no fantasy”
The fantasy seems to have been saved up for the present era. Cherry-picking methane hydrate from other possible causes is a familiar scientific approach these days. Wik:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event
“There are several proposed mechanisms for the extinctions; the earlier peak was likely due to gradualistic environmental change, while the latter was probably due to a catastrophic event. Possible mechanisms for the latter include large or multiple bolide impact events, increased volcanism, or sudden release of methane hydrates from the sea floor”
I was taught the middle one- asteroid impact. I think an asteroid impact would shake the methane hydrate loose too, wouldn’t you, and I suspect the creatures were pretty near all dead with the primary cause. These are the kind of catastrophes we should give some thought to instead of the AGW fantasies.
Oh and Leland, an asteroid impact would also likely increase volcanic activity so all three can be tied together.
Leland Palmer:
“Concerning politics, well, there’s nothing patriotic about allowing the destabilization of the climate leading to a mass extinction. What’s patriotic about that?”
The fact that you give China, Russia, the UN/IPCC, and everyone else a free pass, while blaming us for your perceived problems is unpatriotic.
Since Kyoto was signed by just about every country except the U.S. and Australia:
Emissions worldwide have increased 18.0%
Emissions from countries that signed the treaty increased 21.1%
Emissions from non-signers increased 10.0%
Emissions from the U.S. increased only 6.6%
There is a reason you always attack the cleanest country on the planet, while giving a free pass to the worst polluters. And it isn’t because you’re patriotic.
Hi Gary Pearse-
Well, the Permian-Triassic mass extinction was no fantasy, and yes, many causes have been proposed for it.
One thing that we do know, and this is hard scientific data, is that there were huge negative C12 to C13 ratio shifts in the fossil record at those times. It’s really hard to make the math add up, because to explain those shifts you need a huge input of “isotopically light” C13 depleted carbon to enter the climate system. It’s hard to explain this by volcanism, for example, because volcanic CO2 is only slightly depleted in C13, while the methane hydrates are much more depleted.
The methane hydrates are one such reservoir of trillions of tons of C13 depleted carbon, and appear to be the only plausible explanation for such huge, rapid shifts in the isotope ratios.
By some estimates, the amount of methane in the methane hydrates makes them the largest source of fossil carbon on the planet – bigger than all the other fossil fuels combined. More recent estimates are smaller, giving the methane hydrates as much carbon as coal.
The alarming thing about the clathrate gun hypothesis is that it presents a plausible explanation for those isotope shifts, and presents the possibility that the earth’s climate system can undergo rapid shifts from one state to another given relatively small perturbations. In other words, the clathrate gun hypothesis presents the possibility that the climate system may be very sensitive to relatively small, geologically rapid increases in greenhouse gases.
The fear is that the warming, and increases in greenhouse gases, will become self-sustaining.
Modern Americans have little exposure to runaway positive feedback processes, I think. One example of such a process is lighting a fire. In a fire, heat produces combustible gases from the fuel, which produces more heat, which produces more combustible gases. Given the right conditions, such positive feedback loops can quickly run away. Given dry fuel, especially if the fuel consists of small particles, the fire can quickly burn out of control, burning until all fuel is exhausted. One extreme example of this are dust explosions, which can result from very rapid burning of very small particles, and which sometimes occur in grain silos and coal mines.
The clathrate gun hypothesis presents the possibility that the true explanation for those previous mass extinction events was that a relatively small perturbation of some sort- volcanic activity, perhaps- set off a runaway positive feedback loop.
There is a real, plausible scenario leading to this runaway positive feedback loop being set off by our continued combustion of fossil fuels. To some of us, it looks almost inevitable, given the fact that fossil fuels represent a huge, cheap source of stored solar energy. Plotted on a geological timescale, the appropriate timescale because natural carbon sequestration processes like mineral carbonation act very slowly, the greenhouse emissions from continued fossil fuel use are coming at us like a vertical wall moving a thousand miles an hour.
On this blog, which apparently occupies an earth separate from all the rest of humanity, warming is not occurring, and all of the scientific data which shows warming is somehow due to errors. Scientists are badmouthed as greedy people, sponging off of the UN, making huge profits from following a fad.
An intelligent species would react more to facts than to badmouthing:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jLv3LpI0fw21ULmgkJtinBFrwm7AD9A6OUF06
Oh, oh. Water temperatures, from bouys out in the middle of the ocean, not located next to air conditioners or any possible source of manmade interference, seem to be telling the readers of WUWT something they don’t want to hear.
What creative skeptical strategies will be employed to badmouth these bouys?
Hi Smokey-
Well, as you know, Smokey, the U.S. started from a very high baseline of fossil fuel emissions at the start of that period.
Historically, of course, we are by far the biggest contributors of fossil carbon to the climate system.
http://images.wri.org/map_cartogram_global_warming_large.gif
We are also one of the richest countries on earth, and as the past technological leader have the most ability to do something significant about greenhouse gas emissions.
I have attacked U.S. fossil fuel corporations and their disgraceful, socially irresponsible actions, in deliberately lying to us about global warming, when their own scientists were telling them that the link between global warming and fossil fuel use was incontrovertable. I have attacked them and will continue to do so. Their actions are disgraceful, and should be severely punished by huge civil lawsuits to recover some of the cost of fighting global warming from them, or as punitive damages, IMO.
I have certainly criticized the Bush Administration, that fiddled and delayed and denied, until we arrived at our present state.
It may in fact be too late to do anything about runaway global warming, and I do blame the Bush Administration and its fossil fuel backers for this.
Back to the Arctic:
Link to the above:
http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2009/08/22/climate-change-opens-arctics-northeast-passage/
As usual, Leland criticizes the ultra clean U.S., while defending the right of his Chinese cronies to pollute to their heart’s content. His posts are really all about politics and his Leftist agenda, not about science.
At the same time, Leland drives his fossil fuel burning cars while lecturing the rest of us about how evil we are. That hypocrisy is so thick you could cut it with a knife. Anyone who truly believed that we’re on the road to perdition as a result of fossil fuel use would be a traitor to the human race if he continued emitting gas when he could be using a bicycle, or moving to within walking distance of work.
I’d easily deconstruct Leland’s pathetic arguments as usual, but I’m, headed out of town for a day. Deconstruction awaits when I return, Leland. Can’t let your silly globaloney go unanswered. It wouldn’t be fair to the scientific method, to the public, or to the truth.
You have 24 hours.
Hi Smokey-
Thank you for your honesty, if it is honesty, in your estimation of my character. I’m certain that I will take your criticisms of my character under advisement, taking into account the state of your own knowledge about me and your own possible motives for such criticism. Considering the nature of this debate, the extent of my own character flaws, or lack of them, seems somewhat irrelevant.
Individual action on limiting greenhouse emissions will not stop climate change. We all need to do what we can, of course, but the numbers just don’t add up for individual lifestyle change to stop climate change.
Only concerted political action and technological change, of the type that you and your fellow “climate skeptics” oppose can stop climate change at this point, IMO. And even that might not be enough.
What I advocate is the use of carbon negative and carbon neutral technologies, to capture CO2 from the air, and put it back underground.
This is relatively straightforward: combine biomass sources of fuel with carbon capture and sequestration, the so called “clean coal” technologies. This would transfer carbon from the biosphere, back underground, and so in effect transfer carbon out of the atmosphere and sequester it underground.
http://www.etsap.org/worksh_6_2003/2003P_read.pdf
Check out figure 3, which shows the effectiveness of this strategy.
If we don’t do this, I am very much afraid that the positive feedback loops we already see developing in the Arctic will send the climate into a methane catastrophe.
We are witnessing thousands of years worth of normal climate variations, within individual human lifetimes.
These rates of change are totally unsustainable, over any long timescale.
How do you get out of a hole?
Stop digging, and start filling in the hole.
In other words, go to carbon neutral energy technologies like wind, solar, and biomass, but also go to carbon negative technologies like combining biomass and biochar with carbon sequestration.
We will also have to do something about those methane plumes, rising up from the dissociating methane hydrates, if we can.
It seems possible to collect at least some the methane, burn it by oxyfuel combustion with carbon capture and storage, and then deep inject the captured CO2 into basalt formations under the sea. The electricity generated this way could be transmitted to shore via underwater electrical cables, and the CO2 would end up in stable storage:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=2464617&blobtype=pdf
This is a huge task, and we need to get on with it, if we want to keep the oceans from acidifying due to the methane being oxidized into CO2, and also becoming anoxic because all the available free oxygen is used up.
If it gets bad enough, the capacity of the oceans to capture this methane will be lost, and the methane will start escaping directly into the atmosphere, at ever increasing rates.
If it gets that bad, it’s game over for us. No do-overs.
If it gets that bad, we’ve shown ourselves to be an irresponsible, half-intelligent species, not worthy to be entrusted with a beautiful, self-regulating biosphere that gives us huge amounts of free goods and services for free, including clean air, clean water, and abundant carbon neutral sources of energy.
Phil. (22:36:37) :
…. but as I pointed out in a previous comment, since the satellites seem to rank age based on thickness alone, they don’t seem to be able to distinguish piled up first year ice from ice that has persisted for longer.
.. And it is possible to distinguish between new and old ice by satellite they have different scattering signatures (QuickScat).
I missed this response of yours, I hope you’ll forgive the tardiness of this reply since you also seem to have missed the previous comment I referred to, but everybody else seems to have also, so that’s understandable. Since I’ve posted something very similar a number of times and am growing weary of retyping it I’ll just do a copt and paste to save time
Dave Wendt (21:09:23) :
Pamela Gray (17:40:37) :
By the way, I have said this before, but the ice up there is thicker than bees on honey! How do I know? Wind patterns shoved it together. In fact, if we were to measure the ice displacement before and after the melt season, I would bet the ranch that there was precious LITTLE melt this summer. The graph assumes the ice melted. I am thinkin a lot of it didn’t.
A clear example of what you are talking about is revealed by these two sea ice thickness animations
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/quikscat/index.uk.php
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/324806main_meierfig3_full.gif
The first is a DMI animation showing the Arctic from Sept 2007 to June 2008, the second is a Nasa animation covering Sept 2008 to Feb 2009. What I find interesting is that the DMI sequence clearly shows the residual “multiyear ice” left after the 2007 summer minimum is either flushed from the Arctic or homogenized by the Beaufort Gyre until the final images from June 2008 show an almost total absence of “multiyear ice”, yet the NASA sequence commencing a mere three months later after the 2008 minimum shows the residual ice as being almost entirely “multiyear ice” with a goodly portion coded as more than 2 years old. I wasn’t able to locate a description of what satellite provided the data for the NASA graphic, but comparing some of the other images on the site from the period of the DMI graphic would seem to indicate that the two should be fairly comparable. Assuming that is correct, how do you get from ice that is almost entirely classed as first year in June to ice that is almost entirely classed as old ice three months later. This seems to me to indicate that much of what the satellites are classifying as old ice is just thick ice that may well be the result of drift driven stacking, not year to year persistence.
The graphics I referred to seem to me to cast serious doubt on the ability of the satellites to distinguish reliably the age of polar ice, but I could be wrong, which wouldn’t be that unusual, since what from I’ve seen no one else’s speculations on this entire kerfuffle are any more “robust”.
It all seems fairly irrelevant anyway, since as you’ve pointed out we’ve experienced quite an extended period of dramatically increased summer ice loss in the Arctic, and I don’t see any evidence of emerging deleterious effects as a result. That makes me tend to doubt, that even in the unlikely event that the trend continues to point where the remaining 20% of the ice also goes, the result will be necessarily catastrophic. In fact it seems reasonable to suggest, in one of the beautiful synchronicities our planet is capable of, that the increasing amounts of ice being flushed from the Arctic to melt at lower latitudes may be acting to counterbalance any warming trend in the larger climate.
Interesting discussion, about the arctic ice animations.
Why do you limit yourselves to such short time spans?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2009/apr/06/arctic-sea-ice-old-first-year
It’s a lot easier to see the trend of declining ice thickness and old ice, when the animations are done over 30 years, for example, as in the above link.
REPLY: Why do you limit yourself to criticisms of this blog done without first searching for what you accuse of?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/31/arctic-sea-ice-time-lapse-from-1978-to-2009-using-nsidc-data/
This video, the first of its kind, discussed here on May 31st 2009, using 30 years worth of data, was not even attempted by NSIDC using their own data.
An apology would be in order I think, Mr. Palmer.
– Anthony
Apology? Whatever you like, Anthony.
I sincerely apologize for not looking here on this blog first for information.
I have to say, though, looking at the link I gave versus the one you gave, that I like the one I gave better.
I think that the colors from the link I gave add information content to the video animation, and make it easier to see the old ice (colored red in the video) being moved out of the Arctic region, and not being replaced by ice of equivalent thickness.
I guess the University of Colorado produced this one, with help from NASA.
Is there a better one I don’t know about?
Is there something wrong with this one?
I would like to see side by side videos of both the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere for the same time frame. The N.H. has lost some sea ice, but the S.H. has gained more than the N.H. lost. Global sea ice is rising. That’s why the warmist crowd only points to N.H. sea ice.
The implication by the warmist contingent is that sea ice extent/thickness is due to global warming. In fact, it is a function of wind. Really, how can a fraction of a degree change in temperature cause so much sea ice to melt? Only someone whose mind is closed to facts would believe that.
It’s interesting to note that not one of the eco-alarms sounded by the warmist crowd have ever panned out. They are never right. Yet they continue to mendaciously cry “Wolf!!” at every opportunity.
Their mass cognitive dissonance means they will continue to be wrong, and so they will continue to refer to completely natural climate variability as AGW.
Hi Smokey-
It’s a strange value system displayed on this blog, as I’ve said before, and a strange distribution of anger. There’s lots of anger toward scientists, toward change of any sort, and toward “warmists” or environmentalists, but none at all toward the fossil fuel companies that profited immensely from apparently destabilizing the climate.
Many “warmists” by the way, do not consider themselves to be traditional environmentalists. It appears to many of us that massive intervention in the forests in order to fire-protect them from firestorms will be necessary, within just a few years, if we want to save them from burning, for example. Some of us also advocate massive use of carbon neutral biomass and biofuels, or even carbon negative biomass plus CO2 storage, to get us through this crisis, something that traditional environmentalists might oppose, because it would mean massive biomass plantations, and harvesting of biomass from existing forests while clearing them of undergrowth, cutting firebreaks through them, and fire-protecting them.
About Antarctica, my understanding of things down there is that it is a sort of mixed bag. Increased warming in the southern hemisphere seems to be causing increased precipitation, but on the other hand, many of the glaciers appear to be speeding up. So the whole cycle of glacial creation and destruction appears to have sped up, down there.
From wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_ice_sheet
So the general trend appears to me to be increased precipitation caused by warming in the southern hemisphere, coupled with increased glacier velocity, especially in West Antarctica.
Once again, it is hard for me to see how people on this blog can get much comfort from what appears to be an acceleration in the whole glacier generation and breakup process in Antarctica. To me, this general acceleration in glacial creation and destruction seems pretty ominous. It’s easy to imagine a scenario in which which the increased precipitation from areas in the southern hemisphere gets overwhelmed by increased rates of glacial destruction, as time goes on. What’s going on in Antarctica seems fully consistent with global warming, by the way.
Regarding the Arctic, which is after all what this thread is about, there appears to be some methane hydrate dissociation already occurring there:
http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/nocs/news.php?action=display_news&idx=628
It looks like the dissolved methane will by oxidized by methanotroph bacteria into CO2, leading to increased acidification and ocean anoxia. Short term effects from the acidification and anoxia include loss of some of Alaska’s fishery productivity, most likely. If the oceans become anoxic enough, it may be that the methane will start escaping directly into the atmosphere, if it isn’t already.
Long term effects include contributing to a self sustaining “runaway greenhouse” scenario, which once ignited could easily kill all life on earth, due to an extremely rapid release of methane from these hydrates. Past methane catastrophes have been slower, it appears, than one that could be ignited by our geologically instantaneous release of CO2 from fossil fuels.
One thing I forgot to mention in the above thread:
Environmentalists also oppose carbon capture and storage, generally.
I don’t like the idea, either, but it’s a lot better than a planetary climate meltdown, IMO.
The idea of transforming the coal fired power plants to Biomass/CCS carbon negative power plants is a win/win game for the coal fired power plants, and even for the coal industry, IMO.
It allows a phased transition from coal plants to biomass/CCS plants, keeping those power plants in operation rather than shutting them down, and shifting coal workers to jobs in biomass/biochar plantations and forest fire-proofing while harvesting biomass from existing forests.
Although I advocate seizing the coal fired power plants and forcing their conversion, because I don’t trust the coal industry to be either honest or cooperative, it would be possible to make this transition under market forces, or under a Cap and Trade system, for example, if the coal fired utilities would actually cooperate in becoming climate saviors instead of climate criminals.
Any honest system of carbon credits would massively reward power plants that put carbon back into the ground, while generating cheap electricity at the same time.
Leland:
Why don’t you just advocate making poverty illegal while you’re at it?
“Although I advocate seizing the coal fired power plants and forcing their conversion, because I don’t trust the coal industry to be either honest or cooperative, it would be possible to make this transition under market forces, or under a Cap and Trade system, for example, if the coal fired utilities would actually cooperate in becoming climate saviors instead of climate criminals.”
Made yourself a blackshirt and an armband yet?
Leland Palmer said:
And you trust the government?
All the evidence I need that you’ve been visiting Mrs Palmer and her five daughters too much.
Mr. Leland Palmer.
Actually no.
First as I pointed out in a letter to the Times of London which they published the Pine Island glacier, is being melted by volcanic activity beneath it as incidently are several other glaciers along the West Antartic volcanic range.
We can do nothing about this, indeed since we have never observed it before we cannot predict what is going to happen except that if you have a volcano under a glacier then the geothermal energy released will tend to melt the glacier.
But Mr Leland Palmer if you feel you can control volcanic activity with a mere wave of your hand pray do so.
Likewise we know very little about the mass balance in the Antartic since the changes observed by satellite are within their margin of error by a considerable degree: so we can deduce nothing from them.
We do know from more reliable surface measurement that the ice mass balance is increasing in Greenland. We do not know why.
We also know that the lifetime of bulk CO2 in the atmosphere is about five years and that that which is not taken up by plants ends up dissolved in the oceans.
We also know the mean level of CO2 in the global atmosphere is controlled by the temperature of the oceans and fossil fuel emissions cannot have affected the reported rise in this level over the last few decades by more than between one to two percent.
And we also know the oceans are buffered by carbonates and so have an almost infinite capacity to adsorb CO2 without any change in their PH: that is alkalinity.
In short human fossil fuel use is insignificant so why would you want to take the CO2 out of the air? Apart from the fact that nothing you or humanity can do to change CO2 levels in the atmosphere Increased levels of it are highly beneficial to agriculture and plant growth.
As is global warming if it is actually happening, but at the moment our methods of measurement are so limited we cannot be sure that is the case.
It is to be hoped that it is because of the great wealth it would create by opening up vast tracts of land now under permafrost: but it probably isn’t.
But once again if you believe that with a wave of your hand you can control the levels of CO2 and the temperature of the planet pray do so.
And please don’t go on about methane, it is quite stable thank you very much, please check the levels, and it is abundant and very useful as cheap fuel. Humans have no effect on the atmospheric levels despite all those farting cows, again it’s atmospheric level is controlled by natural forces on a scale we barely comprehend.
Me I don’t believe in MAGICK.
But I do believe in good science done by the scientific method.
And not in Charlatans and Mountebanks who claim to have found the Philosopher’s stone and have some pseudo scientific quackery that is supposed to prove it to the credulous.
Of which you must be one, because you say you are not a troll.
I give you the benefit of the doubt, but if you want to learn about the real world and not about mystical shamans who wave their fetish sticks and incant their magic words that so impress you with their supposed power over Nature, and also collect your money from you for their arcane wisdom too, may I suggest you learn some basic science.
Otherwise pray consult a Horoscope. You will find it much cheaper and probably rather better at predicting the future than the sources that you like to quote. Indeed you might find your horosope, or perhaps the Tarot cards, much more reassuring as well.
Beause I assure you the END OF DAYS is not upon us, it never is. So please do not fret about it.
And that, Mr. Leland Palmer, is all I am going to say so please don’t bother to address any posts to me. I will not reply.
Kindest Regards
Excellent post, a jones. And I see that I’m not the only one here who understands what Leland Palmer is: the 2009 equivalent of a 1930’s Brownshirt:
“I advocate seizing the coal fired power plants and forcing… climate criminals…”, and blah, blah, etc., etc. Is krystallnacht next? I note again that Palmer gives his usual free pass to the Chinese, the Indians, the Russians, etc. He saves his venom for the world’s cleanest country. I wonder why?
Leland’s wacko methane doomsday conjecture is only being pushed by lunatics on the fringe, or by a few rent-seeking grant hogs hoping the methane popgun silliness gets legs so they can personally cash in. It is so far out of the mainstream it’s a joke.
So the guy who refuses to give up his fossil fuel burning cars wants to forcibly confiscate the property legally held by others, based on his personal belief that they’re “carbon criminals.” Who needs laws? Leland has the answer: steal their property!
[snip…..SSMMOOKEEYYY! ~ ctm]
Does anyone have an online reference to an authentic plot for the absorption spectrum of carbon-dioxide gas in the atmosphere? There is a Wikipedia article on CO2 but it has no plots of actual absorption spectra.
David Archibald’s exposition suggests that we are already seeing most of the greenhouse effect from this gas that we will ever get, no matter what the concentration.
It seems reasonable to presume increasing concentrations of this gas can block no more than 100% of the radiant energy flowing back into outer-space at those absorption bands characteristic for CO2. (Neglecting minor band-edge widening effects)
On the other hand, I believe the progressive thermal release of the vast amount of carbon-dioxide now trapped in the ocean will only stop after the ocean has been heated to the boiling point at every depth. We should not need to worry about that happening until the sun goes into its “end of days” expansion mode some billions of years from now.
Yes, not quite clear what you mean except I do not expect the oceans to boil any time shortly.
But as aforesaid the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are controlled by the temperature of the oceans: human activity has nothing to do with this, since the oceans can adsorb any amount of CO2 and then deposit it as carbonates.
As they cleary have done in the past. The white cliffs of Dover anybody?
As for any change in the radiative balance of the Earth with changing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere there is no very good data except that we know it to be very, very small. How small, compared say to the loss of hydrogen and helium to space, or geothermal energy, or possibly gremlins and stokers in the Infernal Regions, it is difficult to say.
And what that means over centuries and millenia we do not know.
Which is why you cannot find any useful data on the subject. There is not any. Only unfounded speculation, and much of that very wide of the mark.
Kindest Regards.
Hi a jones:
Wow, the Pine Island glacier is pretty big, something like 50 km wide.
Must be a big volcano.
Interestingly enough, the Pine Island glacier was hypothesized to be the “weak underbelly” of West Antarctic ice sheets in 1981:
Funny, the coincidence in time.
Just as you might expect an increase in the flow velocity of the Pine Island Glacier due to global warming, perhaps indirectly from warming of the ocean currents, or perhaps just changes in the ocean currents, this darn volcano just happens to cause an exponential increase in velocity of the “weak underbelly” of the Antarctic.
Funny coincidence, huh?
Wow, It’s really accelerating, isn’t it:
Lets hope this volcanic activity doesn’t get any worse! 🙂
Funny, you might expect that this exponential increase in velocity might be due to undermining of the glacier by the sea, and the downward inland slope of the topography of the underlying ground, after a threshold has been passed by the sea.
I’m really relieved that it’s just increased heat flow from a volcano.
About your other talking points, well it’s 10 PM, and time for me to go to bed.
We’ll see what can be done about those tomorrow. 🙂
[snip – enough on fascism, we won’t have that discussion here, take a time out, other posters also – Anthony]
I was only referring to the fact that some have claimed that past records seem to indicate that carbon-dioxide concentration in the atmosphere appear to be an 800-year lagging response to similar changes in temperature. This is attributed to CO2 being forced out of the ocean because the solubility of that gas in sea-water is reduced by increasing temperature.
Some have claimed that these records show minor external heating events have caused greatly magnified global warming cycles as a dangerous positive feed-back effect caused an ever increasing greenhouse effect as ever more carbon-dioxide was released from the ocean. This seems to be based on an unstated and unproved assumption that the greenhouse effect of carbon-dioxide continues to increase without limit as its concentration in the atmosphere increases.
I am surprised that I cannot readily find good unbiased academic data online showing the exact effect of carbon-dioxide on the transmittance of the atmosphere. We should not be making important decisions by guess and by gosh.
My impression is that carbon-dioxide prevents transmission at specific molecular mechanical resonant frequencies by converting photons to heat at these frequencies or their equivalent wavelengths.
To me, it would seem reasonable to presume that there might be a law of diminishing carbon-dioxide greenhouse effect as the concentration of this gas reaches the level where CO2 absorption-frequency transmission through the atmosphere is completely blocked. According to David Archibald’s presentation, this would seem to be occurring at less than one third of our current CO2 concentration level, thus breaking the link for further dangerous greenhouse feedback.