Which of these states is closest to 20,000 square kilometers in area?
UPDATE: USGS has issued a statement, see below.
WUWT reader “DC” points us to this Gore-esque pronouncement from a USGS scientist about “Antarctic ice loss”.
Jane Ferrigno of the U.S. Geological Survey in a National Public Radio interview
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124178690 (Audio clip available)
Ms. FERRIGNO: The fact that the ice shelves are changing on the peninsula is a significant signal that global change, climate warming, is affecting the ice cover of Antarctica. It’s affecting first the area that’s towards the north, that’s slightly warmer, but the effect of the warming has traveled from the northern part of the peninsula to the southern part of the peninsula, where it’s colder.
…
“RAZ: Give us a sense of how much ice [on the Antarctic peninsula] has been lost over the past, say, 10 years.
Ms. FERRIGNO: I think I’ll go back 20 years, and in the last 20 years, I would say at least 20,000 square kilometers of ice has been lost, and that’s comparable to an area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska.
RAZ: So about the size of the state of Texas in terms of ice has been lost in the past 20 years. ”
It gets better.
Ms. FERRIGNO: Well, this is a fairly small amount of ice when you consider the whole Antarctic continent consists of about 13 million square kilometers of ice.
RAZ: I mean, it sounds so dramatic, the size of Texas, right?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. FERRIGNO: It is. It is very dramatic, and it is larger than the size of Texas, but when you consider the entire Antarctic ice sheet, it’s still a fairly minimal amount. But the thing that we’re really interested in seeing is that this is a sort of a red flag because if the warming continues, if the retreat continues, if the amount of ice on the continent starts to flow into the water, then there will be substantial impact to the sea level.
RAZ: That’s Jane Ferrigno. She is a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
Jane Ferrigno, thanks for coming in.
Ms. FERRIGNO: Thank you.
Ms. Ferrigno might do well to have a look at this map of the USA and Antarctica compared at Texas A&M University’s Polar Science program to get a sense of scale.
Here’s the story on all the Southern hemisphere sea ice, which includes all Antarctic sea ice, from Cryosphere today:
Maybe Ms. Ferrigno will be embarrassed enough by her geographic ineptitude and will heed Gavin Schmidt’s advice and stop trying to “persuade the public“.
======================================
UPDATE:
Statement from USGS:
The comment by Jane in the NPR interview was an honest mistake. We are sorry for the delay in responding to your email, but Jane has been out of the office. Below is an apology and clarification statement that will be posted on the NPR site soon. Jane will be in the office later today, and if you have any questions, please let me or her know.
From Jane …
I want to apologize to NPR and the listening audience for my misstatement last Sunday, February 28. During the last 20 years, an area more than 20,000 sq. km. (comparable to the size of New Jersey) has broken off the ice shelves of the Antarctic Peninsula. It is the Antarctic Peninsula, the source of the ice loss, that I meant to say was larger than the state of Texas but smaller than the state of Alaska.
Thank you,
Jessica Robertson
Public Affairs Specialist
Office of Communications
U.S. Geological Survey
(703) 648-6624
If I were a misanthropic alien, filled with hatred of the human race, I would scheme to put Ms. Ferrigno on NPR every day.
And I fear there is a misspelling: isn’t it the U.S. GeNological Survey?
Maybe she envisioned massive shrinkage of, instead of in, Texas due to this so called global warming winter of 2010.
Turboblocke (14:11:55)
She starts off talking about the ice shelves. The ice shelves are connected to the peninsula – not on top of them. Agreed, in the sentence you quoted it does seem to imply it was on top of the peninsula but that would also imply there is 20,000 km2 of bare Antarctic Peninsula with no ice on top.
Bill Marsh (10:56:36) :
Paul Daniel Ash (09:34:45) :
A complete farrago of misinformation from Ms Ferringo?
No, she blew it on the comparison, but she was correct on the number. A New Jersey of ice is quite a lot…
——————-
Actually, to put into perspective (assuming she is correct) Antarctica lost a ‘New Jersey’ of ice in 20 years, since there are approx 590 ‘New Jerseys’ of ice in Antarctica it would take roughly 12,000 years to lose all of it. To me that says a ‘New Jersey’ of ice isn’t all that much.
Actually (assuming you’re correct), they’re talking about edge ice. So, your number is off (on the small side) by a very large factor. The ice is much thicker just a little ways from the edge. So multiply your 12,000 years by a very large number to get closer to the ballpark. Being lazy and not doing the math, I’d guess many millions of years is more accurate.
snowmaneasy (14:52:48)
Gotcha ok, it’s the GRACE survey David Middleton was talking about earlier – not Ferrigno’s ice shelves. Makes sense now
3 George E. Smith (14:36:52) :
“”” Turboblocke (11:09:42) :
You do realise that she’s talking about ice on the Antarctic penisular , not sea ice.
Perhaps it’s time to assess the state of disarray on this site first? 😉 “””
Starting with the meaning of the adjective “peninsular”.”Big deal, I made a typo… or was I doing it to sow confusion?
Interestingly, I’ve been corrected about “my mistake”. The majority of the Antarctic Peninsula ice is on land and much of the “sea ice” in the link Nick B gave is/was grounded, so comparing it to a plot of “sea ice anomaly” is not really relevent.
Paul Daniel Ash (11:24:56) :
First, who said anything about all the ice in Antarctica? That’s just gross goalpost-moving… twenty thousand square kilometers of ice is twenty thousand square kilometers of ice. A New Jersey, six Big Bends… that’s a buttload of ice.
If you really believe that I would suggest you need to get some bran muffins into your diet. A quick eyeball survey of the graphs over at CT indicates that the average annual flux of sea ice area in the Antarctic is somewhere north of 13Millionkm2. The Arctic number, being more unstable, is a little harder to estimate by eye, but I’d say a conservative number would be >10Millionkm2. By my arithmetic that puts the total area of sea ice lost and recreated annually at +/- 3X the area of the Lower 48 states. As the map included in the post amply illustrates, relative to the area of the country, NJ is mostly analogous to a wart on the behind of an elephant.
The implicit assumption that is almost always overlooked in these tete a tetes about what precisely is occurring with planetary ice levels is that we really need to be obsessed with them in the first place. Personally I’ve never come across a clear and cogent discussion of what exact quality or character the ice possesses that requires us to be greatly alarmed by whatever it is doing. Even at the supposedly disastrous levels the alarmists are hyping, the change in sea levels amounts to 4 inches per century. During the previous century sea levels supposedly rose about 8 inches. If we didn’t have measurements to point this fact out to us, do you think anyone would have noticed?
oops again, should have been the increase in sea levels amounts to 4″, not change.
{JinOH (08:53:08) :
Is there anyone left out there that still takes these people seriously?}
Hi JinOH – unfortunately there is.
I attended a small investment analysis group last night and presented my latest analysis on AWG.
I was met with astonishment, although I had given them a very “persuasive” report some months before.
But what of urban smog?
We must live more simple lives (I was in a house with a hugh TV screen and FWD).
But the government is taking action ……. they must know more than you
And so it went.
I find it very hard to keep my cool.
Intelligent people think that science is just too hard and that we must trust what the experts and the government tell us.
This really brought me back to the ground.
The way things are developing so fast, it looks as though AWG is on its last legs.
But the Australian public seem not to notice.
Almost exactly the same claim was made on TVNZ’s “Sunday” documentary on 3 May 2009. See:
NARRATOR: “…on the Antarctic Peninsula, ten massive ice shelves, some as big as Texas, have broken off”
It provoked discussion on the website Hot-Topic where even the warmists admitted it was garbage.
http://hot-topic.co.nz/morning-morgantown/
And yet, like some mutant chain letter, this claim get recycled through the warmist backchannels. This is the sort of “evidence” which is supposed to stampede us into global energy rationing? Pathetic.
in the last 20 years, I would say at least 20,000 square kilometers of ice has been lost, and that’s comparable to an area somewhere between the state of Texas and the state of Alaska.
Besides not having a clue about the sizes of the states of Texas or Alaska, has anyone checked on her claim that 20,000 Km2 have been lost in the last 20 years? Where does she get the figure from?
As far as I can make out about 6,000 sq kms have been losy from the Wilkins Ice Shelf from 1947 to 2009, that is in 52 years. 4,000 since 1998
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100222120137.htm
Regarding Ms. Ferrigno’s difficulties in mentally conceptualizing the relative size of things, there is an old and terribly crude and sexist joke on this subject.
Why are women such poor judges of size and distance?
Because men have been lying to them for centuries about what six inches looks like.
This will probably be snipped in moderation, but people need a good laugh once in a while and if you can’t laugh at this nonsense all that’s left is to weep.
OK Anthony, I had enough of these ginned up, created from whole cloth stories making fun of hard working government employees. Don’t think we are not on to you and your growing staff of morphological hucksters impersonating NPR journalists! It’s all a shameful plot to make scientists look stupid! An outrageous lie bigger than the Texas and Alaskan continents!
A lot of the problem for the pro-AGW ‘scientists’ is that when they are put in the public eye they come across as really dumb guys when they actually have to explain anything. Admittedly it takes a knowledgeable listener to spot the errors, and sites like this to bring it to a wider audience!
When I was working I was unhappy with the number of management layers, and above a certain level they seemed to be ineffective – I referred to them as the ‘fantasy management layers’, nothing they did made any difference.
We seem to have a ‘fantasy climate science’. Now they are being asked to PROVE IT for real, not just have their claims accepted as gospel. First they need to understand what ‘science’ is and what constitutes ‘proof’, and also to understand the concept of a ‘healthy scientific debate’.
Too bad we can’t just pile all this ice on Washington, D.C.
For her sake, I hope this Ferrigno woman does not work with explosives.
It is fairly obvious that none of these AGW types attended lecture 4a in precision speaking.
In replay to: JP Miller (09:44:08) :
I sent an email to Dr. Ferrigno and her apparent supervisor at USGS, Dr. R.S. Williams, using their email addresses at the USGS website, asking if they would care to comment on the WUWT blog. Both bounced back saying the addresses were not valid.
I thought the USGS might like to know what their “scientists” are saying. Guess not.
I sent an email to ‘jferrign@usgs.gov’ and it has not bounced after over 1 1/2 hours. I have asked her for an explanation and a public apology for her alarmist comparisons of area. Time will tell if she responds; I’m not expecting much but live in hope.
George E. Smith (14:36:52) :
“”” Turboblocke (11:09:42) :
You do realise that she’s talking about ice on the Antarctic penisular , not sea ice.
Perhaps it’s time to assess the state of disarray on this site first? 😉 “””
Starting with the meaning of the adjective “peninsular”.
=====
I think the whole thing is amusing. Her error prompts errors by people poking fun at her error. It’s good comedy.
Ms. FERRIGNO: Well, this (20,000 square kms) is a fairly small amount of ice when you consider the whole Antarctic continent consists of about 13 million square kilometers of ice.
Right. Its also a fairly small amount if you consider the total area of the ice shelves – about 1,145,000 square kms. and the ice on the antarctic continent is about 13.7 million square kms
This is not a defense of the person, nor of the agency. One person does not make up USGS, The USGS is not a consensus. There are truths and there are estimates about the amount of ice on the Antarctic continent. There are truths and there are estimates on the amount of sea ice in the Antarctic.
Because the facts about the amount of ice loss from the continent have not been determined in this blog exchange, from anyone that has posted here, is is not a scientific discussion, is it? I work at the USGS; I do not believe every statement made by every USGS scientist is a fact, but it can be an estimation, and an estimation can be argued about. I remain anonymous
I wonder why we argue without facts here. Write your estimates at the end of this blog concerning what happened to the Antartic continent’s ice over the past 20 years.
Now focus – only on the ice, not on the scientist, let us hear your estimates…
Did continental ice grow in mass because of snowfall? Yes
When?
Did continental ice lose mass because of summer warming? Yes
When?
Did continental ice lose mass due to calving because of glacier movement? Yes
How much?
Did continental ice overall in the past 20 years lose or gain mass?
That is still the question
The answer is an estimate. The person you are discussing has not determined the exact answer, only an estimate.
What is the exact answer?
– – – – –
Note that the USGS is still back in DOS mode. Email addresses are clipped at eight characters, thus no “o” in jferrign@ur momisugly.
I sent the following (with no bounce-back):
cheers
fact check (17:26:40) :
“That is still the question
The answer is an estimate. The person you are discussing has not determined the exact answer, only an estimate.
What is the exact answer?”
The problem highlighted in the post is not the accuracy of the estimate, but that the person pushing the estimate seemed to believe that it fell between the size of Texas and the size of Alaska. The estimates of climate science are always uncertain. The size of the various States of our nation, not so much so.
Back on 3 December 2008 on the ‘Tonight Show’ they had one of the battles of the “Jaywalk All Stars.” I don’t remember the question but it led to the 3 young folks (Paige, Zach, and Natalie) expressing the belief that Alaska is an island. Leno was astonished. I sent him a couple of links to maps showing Alaska as an island – one by the U.S. Mint is now gone. Alaska was off the coast of S. Calif. But it must be floating. In this one it is south of Big Bend, TX – and it is smaller than Texas. Look for yourself. Moving, shrinking, floating – Earth is strange indeed.
http://www.infoplease.com/states.html
Pete Barnum (16:01:11)
“…………..An outrageous lie bigger than the Texas and Alaskan continents!”
Did anybody notice that as of Mar 03, 2010 we have two more continents
20,000 square kilometers?
As a complete side-liner, I’ve been watch and recording the daily numbers for Northern Hemisphere Sea Ice: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
Data provided by NSIDC: NASA SMMR and SSMI
There hasn’t been a single day over the last 2 weeks that we haven’t gained or lost more then this value.
Or this for a cooling figure 😉
022110: -.597 (92,000 sq. km increase in the past 2 days |
This one was pretty warming for a 1 day figure 😉
022210: -.684 (87,000 sq. km decrease since yesterday)
Turboblocke,
I hope I didn’t come across as harsh – this isn’t about scoring points against people you don’t know and in all likelihood are very nice and well meaning people.
For me at least, the point is to try and understand what the heck is going on with this immensely complex world of ours. So with that in mind, in case it hasn’t been said, welcome and by all means challenge orthodox thinking (on either side)
Best Regards