ANOTHER BOLD PREDICTION OF AN ICE-FREE ARCTIC
Guest post by Mark Johnson
Al Gore trumpets the latest conclusions of Climate Change Advocate David Barber. “Sea ice in Canada’s fragile Arctic is melting more quickly than anyone expected,” says University of Manitoba Prof. David Barber, the lead investigator of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System study released Friday. Barber is the lead investigator in the largest climate change study done in Canada. Barber said before the expedition, scientists were working under the theory that climate change would happen much more slowly.
It was assumed the Arctic would be ice-free in the winter by 2100. “We expect it will happen much faster than that, much earlier than that, somewhere between 2013 and 2030 are our estimates right now. So it’s much faster than what we would expect to happen. That can be said for southern climates as well.” “We’re seeing it happen more quickly than what our models thought would happen,” Barber said.
When you read the article, notice a few things:
1) The conclusions are ALL Based on CLIMATE MODELS.
2) Canada Government paid $156-million to Barber et al for the study.
3) The Inuit population are starting to chase the cash cow as well: “There’s also the need for economic development,” Hmmmmmm.
We have finally heard from the Great Climate Change Advocate Al Gore. On his obscure blog, Al says “Its worse than we thought.” Are you kidding me?
=====================
Obscure blog? Let’s look at the numbers for Al Gore -vs- WUWT and find out.
Yup.
In fact, WUWT does pretty well when you look at the entire family of web offering by Gore’s enterprises:
Keep those hits and links coming folks. Thanks – Anthony
NOTE: In the Alexa generated graphs above, the lower number the better for traffic rank. For example in the top graph, WUWT is around the top 10,000 trafficked sites on the web while alogore.com is in the top 100,000 trafficked sites on the web. It’s RANK not HITS.
Since some commenters are confused, here is the description from Alexa:
What is Traffic Rank?
The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for all sites on the Web on a daily basis. The main Alexa traffic rank is based on a value derived from these two quantities averaged over time (so that the rank of a site reflects both the number of users who visit that site as well as the number of pages on the site viewed by those users). The three-month change is determined by comparing the site’s current rank with its rank from three months ago. For example, on July 1, the three-month change would show the difference between the rank based on traffic during the first quarter of the year and the rank based on traffic during the second quarter.
How Are Traffic Trend Graphs Calculated?
The Trend graph shows you the site’s daily traffic rank, charted over time. The daily traffic rank reflects the traffic to the site based on data for a single day. In contrast, the main traffic rank shown in the Alexa Toolbar and elsewhere in the service is calculated from three months of aggregate traffic data.
Daily traffic rankings will sometimes benefit sites with sporadically high traffic, while the three-month traffic ranking benefits sites with consistent traffic over time. Since we feel that consistent traffic is a better indication of a site’s value, we’ve chosen to use the three-month traffic rank to represent the site’s overall popularity. We use the daily traffic rank in the Trend graphs because it allows you to see short-term fluctuations in traffic much more clearly.
It is possible for a site’s three-month traffic rank to be higher than any single daily rank shown in the Trend graph. On any given day there may be many sites that temporarily shoot up in the rankings. But if a site has consistent traffic performance, it may end up with the best ranking when the traffic data are aggregated into the three-month average. A good analogy is a four-day golf tournament: if a different player comes in first at each match, but you come in second at all four matches, you can end up winning the tournament.
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Is ice “rotten-ness” something that has been or even can be measured? If so what is the degree of rot historically?
Surely we cannot say the Arctic is more or less rotten now than it has been in history if it has not been measured and recorded through history.
If ice “rotten-ness” can be quantified (?) what is the current level of rot? Barber must be implying with his anecdotal comment that 2010 minimum sea ice extent will be less than 2009 due to the ice quality?
If Barber is wrong about arctic mimimum sea ice extent trends is he obliged to return the money? Since 2007 the trend is increasing minimum sea ice extent but it has a long way to go to get back to the late 70s. I think we need to see a 40% increase to get back to late 70s minimum sea ice extent. ARGO data suggests the upper 700m of ocean is cooling slowly – that should help as should a slowly cooling atmosphere as long as the cooling trends continue.
Actually, -30C is liveable… I remember January ’96 we had over 30 days in a row where the high never exceeded -30C. At first it was horrid, but then we got used to it. In fact, I moved into a new apartment during that cold.
Now, -40C is where it starts to freeze up electronics, Automotive spec’d electronics are good from -40C to +85C. Dip below -40C and you start having really bad problems. Get below -50C and you find yourself doing weird things like lighting wood fires under your vehicle to keep the fuel liquid.
At -30C, batteries are a real issue. And solar panels don’t do much in a polar winter. And you can’t use solar panels to charge batteries that freeze. We need more portable nuclear power supplies.
Al Gore belongs to the political part of the debate. So this important post by Richard North is not OT:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/02/diminishing-returns.html
I don’t see how it’s possible to argue with a person that has at least 3 30″ monitors.
RE: Al’s Office,
For a minute there I thought Al was perusing a large printout of the Jo Nova/Mohib Ebrahim Climategate timeline, but it’s three large iMacs next to each other isn’t it?
While testifying before a US Senate committee in late 2008 or early 2009, Gore was asked when he thought the Arctic would be ice-free. He replied, “In five years.” I think that’s were people are getting the 2013 figure for Gore. Begs the question why the Senators thought his opinion relevant in the first place. However, he said five years again when at Copenhagen, in December, but later retracted the statement when questioned more closely.
b.poli (00:57:23) :
Al Gore belongs to the political part of the debate. So this important post by Richard North is not OT:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/02/diminishing-returns.html
Al Gore represents no electorate. He belongs to the advocacy part of the debate.
Unlike “Chance The Gardener” in the movie “Being There”, many people understand where former VP Al Gore’s statements on climate come from.
Sorry Anthony couldn’t work out how to let you know about this one from today’s Daily Mail in the UK. Scary stuff when the Govt is giving grants for “attitude modification” for those not buying the Climate Change line – not to mention the utter waste of £9million.
Our old friends at the CRU were beneficiaries of this too. We only noticed o a news bulletin the other night that the Dept of Energy’s name has been renamed the Deaprtment of Energy and Climate Change (more cost for logos, staionery etc).
George Orwell was out by approximately 20 years with his 1984 claims.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1251881/Ministers-lavished-9m-climate-change-stunts–public-opinion-left-cold-global-warming-propaganda.html
Interestingly the Conservatives latest pamphlet does not even give a mention to Climate Change – I wonder if an embarrassed but silent retreat is under way. We have a General Election looming and I somehow think this nonsense ain’t a vote winner.
I just noticed the category, where this article falls 😀
http://iowntheworld.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/igloo.jpg
The Daily Mail newspaper article commenting on the waste of public money advertising the evils of AGW reveals the knowledge of the political class. £40,000 spent on dvds in which school children warn that, in the future, people will have to wear sun glasses all the time because the sun will be shinning more. This pesky CO2 is either a cloud destroyer or sure has a long reach.
There has to be a mistake somewhere.
there is no way the fairly responsible and fairly conservatine Canadian government would pay 156 million dollars for this stuff – 156 thousand maybe.
Of course, I the grants were made before 2004, the figure is not so implausible.
Scientist compares reality with computer model. Finds a discrepancy. Cries wolf: “It’s worse than we thought” (because reality and model are not in sync).
I would conclude: Yes. Your computer model is even crappier than you thought. And you should really really really through it away now.
Me: “And you should really really really through it away now.”
Make that a “throw”. 😉
“Robert (21:02:31) :
[…]
Which part of it would you like evidence for:
a) Increased CO2 causes warming”
Not so fast, Robert, you do know that that’s a string assertion, do you, implying causality here? When there’s not even a correlation over the last decade.
“Not so fast, Robert, you do know that that’s a string assertion, ”
a STRONG assertion… i quit posting now… It’s no use, it’s no use…
Robert:”Which part of it would you like evidence for:
a) Increased CO2 causes warming
b) The observed increase in CO2 is anthropogenic in orgin
You also seem to doubt warming has occurred. That’s three things. What’s your #1 priority?”
That’s a good starting point to decide that CO2 coiuld be causing the warming, in fact it probably is causing some warming, but it’s still only an assertion:
1. More people get cold and flu in the winter than in the summer;
2. The winter is cold;
3. Cold must cause colds and flu.
They’re called false correlations and they abound. For there to be any evidence that CO2 density in the atmosphere is the sole/most important driver of global temperatures it needs either of two things:
1. A defined relationship between CO2 and temperature that allows for predictions, which are subsequently observed to be accurate;
2. Historical records that support temperature being driven by CO2 densities.
Clearly the first is a none starte as we’ve just had 15 years of statistically insignificant warming while CO2 has risen steadily;
There is no historical relationship between CO2 and temperature in the ice-core records. Moreover, we had a Mediaeval Warm Period and a Little Ice age in the last thousand years. Clearly the climate has it’s own agenda.
None of this means that it won’t be prudent to develop renewable energy sources, or reduce waste of energy. What it does mean is that we don’t need to start taxing our citizens to give money to third world dictators and third rate bureaucrats to tell us how to live our lives.
Van Grungy (19:02:22) :
Gore doesn’t even have a comment section…
Watts the point of visiting Al’s Journal?
Good point. Wouldn’t it be fun if somebody mirrored his site. And allowed comments!!!!
“Yvo de Boer, the UN’s top climate change official, says he will resign after nearly four years in the post.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8521821.stm
I hope those people who say Al Gore invented the internet have their /Sarc switched on?
Sir Tim Berners-Lee has a sort of prior claim!
Wow! $156million? For that sort of money you can get whatever answers you want.
I was thinking the £23million Phil Jones has aggregated in grants was going some, and look what he is alleged to have done in pursuit of that.
By the way, in the lead article, AL Gore talks about 100,000 jobs in the Midwest and how many billions will be invested in the economy (and I’d guess from what is said about his potential to be the first carbon billionaire that he will get a slice of the action)?
Put it another way, who is providing the money? the tax payer.
What does he get?
Higher energy bills.
Is there any other benefit? No.
And, what are these 100,000 jobs?
Job creation is a common claim.
Gordon Brown is not above this sort of claim either. But as often as not some of the jobs replace other jobs in the energy sector and, in the case of the UK’s windfarms, it seems that while the jobs lost in the rest of the energy centre will be UK jobs, most of the jobs created will be in China with some in Holland(or is it Denmark?).
China does very well out of this AGW scam, they are net beneficiaries of Carbon Credits and they get the manufacturing jobs. They get to buld economic coal fired power stations, they get to undercut the ROW industry and they get to acquire the technology through technology transfer just as is the case with Vesta.
Vesta, who are supplying turbines for one of the UK’s largest offshore wind farm, closed its two UK factories on the Isle of White and in Southampton so these wind turbines are not made in the UK.
In fact, despite its championing of the wind industry, all those (Dutch/Danish?) subsidies will not ultimately or fully benefit (Denmark/Holland) either.
The wind turbines are now manufactured in China. When a shipment arrived in Holland (it seems these wind turbines never actually see the UK, they get loaded up in Holland onto the ships and planted at sea) and welding was found to be substandard they sent home the UK welders brought out to fix the problem and flew in Chinese welders.
So, where are these 100,000 jobs Al Gore says are being created, and to do what? what jobs are they? are they jobs created in the midwest or in China?
By the way, Al Gore isn’t strong on references. I read the article and clicked the link and gained another short paragraph for my trouble. He doesn’t have an obvious link to the research he refers to. This is probably deliberate because a link is too easy to follow, to have to Google and wade through all the subscription links that will turn up si not something a lot of people will do. So much easier to believe what that nice Mr Gore tells you.
Is there a link here on WUWT? I must now have a look.
Mr W
I wouldn’t use the argument ‘we get more traffic so we must be right!’ if I were you. Three years ago, you’d be a sitting duck to the warmistas.
You built your traffic by sticking to science and scientific arguments.
Don’t start descending into political mud-slinging at just that moment when the momentum is in your direction.
Friend.
Oh, and by the way, the article starts out by looking at what Al Gore Says and it says the conclusions are all based on compute models but instead of analysing the data/ the models etc to see what value we can put on David Barber’s work, what we actually get is a P***ssing contest about web site traffic….. who cares?
It would be nice to look at the science.
And just to put things into perspective.
Lowest point summer sea ice extent is up every year since 2007
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
29 April 2009
“All in all, the ice was somewhat thicker than during the last years in the same regions, which leads to the conclusion that Arctic ice cover recovers temporarily.”
http://www.awi.de/en/news/press_releases/detail/item/research_aircraft_polar_5_finishes_arctic_expedition_unique_measurement_flights_in_the_central_arc/?cHash=e36036fcb4
NASA says at least 45% of melting since 1976 is due to aerosols
(they used models too :o)
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming_aerosols_prt.htm