USGS: Arctic sea too warm for sea ice 3 million years ago

rbateman (23:24:49) : And just how do you propose to fight the ice?
rb, I am very glad you asked. Up until now nobody bothered to. They thought the suggestion outlandish. Everybody is more concerned about how we can freeze the planet solid and wipe out the human race. It’s too warm for the Power Elite and their guilt-ridden sheeple, who wish to sacrifice all humanity to Gaia, that evil, humanity-hating bride of Pluto.
But you and I are not among them. We realize that a warmer planet is more consistent with Life, since Life has mostly known warmer times. We realize that warmer means longer growing seasons, more rain, more bio-productivity, more bio-diversity, ease, comfort, joy to man and beast, and other good stuff.
So how do we get there? Burn more fossil fuel for one. Generate more CO2. Of course, that may not work, since the temp forcing effects of CO2 are weak. Just burning scads of coal may not stave off the coming Ice Age Glaciation.
The real problem is Antarctica, that polar impediment to healthy ocean circulation. Too much ice builds up there, throwing the entire global climate into the ice box. So the best idea would be to tow Antarctica away from the South Pole — but of course that cannot be done. Mankind may be clever, but we haven’t figured out how to tow continents around.
The next best thing would be to tow Antarctic ice to equatorial waters, thereby artificially helping the oceans to circulate heat as they are supposed to do. I mean a lot of ice, whole ice shelves, which we could break off with nuclear missiles. It would be a handy and practical application of an otherwise useless and dangerous arsenal, and as a side benefit the bergs could be towed to parched regions that could use some fresh water.
Outlandish? No more than the schemes of super-fascist Alarmists. My plan involves no personal sacrifice, no phony markets, no huddling in the cold and dark, no pruning of the human population, no death and misery, no new taxes, no corruption of science. Just some missiles and tugboats, and an occasional iceberg in Acapulco Bay.
Warmer Is Better. Fight the Ice.

I have other ideas as well. Sooting Antartica to change the albedo might help. Dump coal ash from strato-bombers over the likeliest regions to induce melting. Again, a win-win-win-win scenario.

While I work at the USGS in a neutral position with no political motives in particular (collecting water quantity and water quality data), I have a job because funding comes from outside sources as well as from the federal government. The government does not pay for all the data collected by paid employees. The need for my particular job is that water distribution authorities need neutrally obtained cubic feet/second daily mean discharge of their local rivers for planning water management so they pay the USGS to operate stream gaging stations.
There is therefore no guilt by association when outside funding is for a practical purpose. But arguably, funding of other science employees’ salaries who are not in a position as practical to the public as a water-measurer may be a temptation to toe the line (the old “follow the money” problem). In my opinion, while not speaking for the USGS, is is certain that the study of the physical world is being funded by parties interested in the future global management of CO2 levels along with the management of other natural resources. For that reason, in my opinion, the USGS should remain disinterested, so that its reports are based on unbiased findings, and not presented in such a way to show favor to the source of funding.
When climate researchers from other agencies or in employ outside of the US Government present valid data and interpretive reports that open a debate in the role of CO2 in climate change, I do not favor USGS data over other data as a rule. Strict accuracy requirements for streamflow data makes USGS an agency that is known for good reliability in water data collection but in this forum, certain USGS climate change data reports might elicit a whistleblower’s observation and response.
There is not a lot of dialog and interaction coming from my scientist co-workers with this humble water-measurer about climate change topics (although what does this technician know, huh? -not a doctor of science with a specific discipline of expertise).
Finally, consider that there is danger in a blind loyalty to logic. The reason is this – the practice of logic, like the practice of Law, can be reduced to a theory of winning a case. This results in behavior that ignores the data that is opposite to its own “smooth fit”. Who declared, with sufficient Authority, that the Universe is “logical”? We have not see the whole picture yet, so the limited logic of man pertaining to climate change research is a futile argument to stand on.
It would be wise for all of you who are responsible for the integrity of the data you collect as an individual, to have skeptical loyalism to your groups and agencies, and that all of us stop coming to premature (or immature!)conclusions about things, based only on selective sensory instrumentation and hearsay. The wonder of the universe we live in is that, in time, the wise will be confounded by some foolish discovery made that changes the picture, and science textbooks will have to be rewritten yet again.

@ur momisugly Roger Knights (03:09:40) :
(Honest – a true story. A good friend, but not the sharpest tool in the shed some times. I’d said fire didn’t belong in some places but he “just had to know if it was true.” It is. Some experiments never ever ought to be repeated. Scientific method or no…)
According to John Cheever’s book, The Wapshot Chronicle, the safe way to test that rumor is in a bathtub. (Maybe the BBC can run a demo.)”
Or maybe the guys from MythBusters can tackle it. That’s right up their alley.

There’s a couple of things that’s very interesting when projecting a time frame in the millions of years back. 1. Every one seem to disregard the tectonic dance, which pretty much impact and decide the circulation in the oceans, and 2. every one seem to disregard the impact of not knowing the earths path around the sun hence a linear history so to speak.
In linear sense on the low end of the average of 0.6 cm movement per year for 3 million years, it computes to 180 km. On the high end of the average it comes out to 18 000 km. That’s a heck of a lot of shifting and drifting of what holds the water. Looking at it another way, the Sahara desert wasn’t located where it is now, and worst case on the high average it was located half away around the world.
When it comes to our location in relation to the sun, we know it changes over the years, and we know more locally that even a in comparison to the rest of the solar system, a small change in its tilt have a vast impact on our climate and weather. For instance way back when, the years were longer by todays calendar even, the days shorter, and the why is also a part of the climate why back then. We know a lot of this today, in linear terms. We even know the moon is receding as well, and we know its impact today everyday every year, just like we do that at tiny -ss axial tilt gives us northerner or southerner summer and winter, a shifting of several tens of degrees in just a few month’ time. So imagine the whole earth being nearer or farther away from the sun by just as little as an “earth tilt” in length of distance for thousands of years in length of time.

I am just curious, and this is the best place to put this, is there an analysis of the ‘vast body of climate science’ that is out there? How many of them are fluff like this study? How many of them are actually dealing with CO2 and man made climate change? Does anyone know of such an analysis? If there is one, where is it? If not, what journals would I look to in order to do such an analysis myself?

I’ll be satisfied just to keep the ice in my drink from melting.