Back on April 2nd, it looked like Arctic Sea ice extent at NSIDC would cross the “normal” line. See: Arctic Sea Ice Extent Update: still growing
The image then looked like this:
Now before anyone starts trotting out claims of “adjustments”, I’ll point out that the independent JAXA data set, done with a different satellite and the AMSR-E sensor shows the same thing:
Note the area I’ve highlighted inside the box. Here is that area magnified below:
The NSIDC presentation is zoomed to show the current period of interest, whereas the JAXA presentation shows the entire annual cycle. So we notice small changes in NSIDC more often. Also, the NSIDC presentation is a running 5 day average according to Dr. Walt Meier.
Of course whether you are scientist, scholar, layman, casual observer, or zealot, nature never gives a care as to what we might expect it to do.
So worry not, no skullduggery is afoot. Nature is just laughing at all of us.
Looks to me like someone is trying to “hide the incline”! I saw that myself and did a double-take.
How do many thousands of square miles of new ice suddenly change their mind and decide not to exist?
I’ve often wondered about the impartiality of the NSIDC site, thanks for posting this, Anthony! I’m still waiting for their narrative to be posted for all of March, 2010….I bet it will be full of spin.
Happy Easter to those who observe the holiday!
REPLY: JAXA says the same thing, and they don’t make monthly editorials on Arctic Sea ice like NSIDC does and use a completely different satellite, sensor, and methodology. While I often don’t agree with what NSIDC says, particularly when the director makes wild claims that are unsupportable, I see no evidence that anyone is trying to hide anything here. – Anthony
Typical, they just can’t leave anything “unadjusted”.
Still well within +/- 2 SD of normal; i.e.:
Still well within real-world normal; i.e.:
Contrary to Gore & Co., actual data continues to show that artic sea-ice ain’t going away any time soon.
One more imaginary limit to be crossed over,
One more climate myth to be debunked.
This is ICE-GATE!
I love the anthropomorphism…”nature is laughing at us…”
But don’t give up you who are AGW sceptics, it may still cross that barrier. 🙂
As I said yesterday, we saw our maximum arctic sea ice extent for 2010 (based on IJIS data) on March 31 at 14,407,344 sq. km. This despite the fact that on his April 2nd radio show, Rush Limbaugh reported that “arctic sea ice is still growing” later in the year than it normally does.
Really though, we’ve seen a long term downward trend in year-to-year arctic sea ice, and to expect that suddenly, in one magical month, that such a trend would suddenly reverse itself (without any record cold in the arctic even) is not realistic. Even if it did pop into the positive anomaly range for a brief visit, though the event would be much celebrated by AGW sceptics, I would guess it would quickly reverse and continue in the negative anomaly range it has been in.
With the negative AO of this winter, we’ve had warmth and high pressure parked over N. Canada and Greenland for much of the season (though fading now), and we’ve also had some warm Atlantic water near Greenland. Yes, we had less flushing of older ice, but I still maintain that the net effect of all the warmth this winter in parts of the arctic will be too see ice melt faster in these areas and I hold firmly to my 4.5 million sq. km. guess (based on IJIS data) for the summer low sea ice extent in Sept.
Given the degree of axial tilt, it would be indeed unusual and even miraculous that the downturn would still be ahead of us. I also see no attempt to hide anything at all here.
Anthony, thanks for bringing this up. It’s thesort of thing that makes this site so special. You would never get something equivalent flagged up at Realclimate or any of the pro AGW sites for that matter
But its flippy floppy water instead of ice.
Maybe it’s just reached the point at which it’s starting to become rotten ice.
Or flippy-floppy ice, or ooshy-gooshy ice, or whatever the post-modern scienteriffic term is…
Well, this 15% ice coverage must be a good measure if you are in a boat trying to navigate safely. If there are strong winds the changes seen are probably nothing more than pile up, reducing the area. A wind gauge, so to speak.
One more variable misused from its original purpose.
Hey, lets not get too excited… after all, if the Arctic sea ice gets too big our poles may flip over!!! 😉 Actually, my comment is a sarcastic jab at Rep. Hank Johnson. Can anyone believe how dumb this guy is???
It was overdue to start heading down so no real surprises there. A shame though. Ice extent above average would have finally driven a stake through the heart of the drowning polar bear story and I am so – so sick of hearing about the poor cute drowning polar bears.
If NSIDC is a running 5 day average, that means that on April 01 the ice extent has probably been above the 1979-2000 average. Because the day value of that date has been averaged with the lower values of the four previous dates.
I also noticed this this morning and overlayed the April 3rd plot on top of the April 1st plot in photoshop. This is just another reason not to trust the data on global warming.
There must be some kind of MA filter on that data. The animated like comes very close to the average, almost no gap, then at the end, there is a clearly visible gap. Was past data updated?
R. Gates (09:38:16) :
I love the anthropomorphism…”nature is laughing at us…”
But don’t give up you who are AGW sceptics, it may still cross that barrier. 🙂
(…)
Even if it did pop into the positive anomaly range for a brief visit, though the event would be much celebrated by AGW sceptics,…
——————-
Reply:
Perhaps, but not by Climate Realists. We’re not the celebratory type.
The warmist looks at the glass of water and, gleefully, says it’s half full (and probably caused by CO2); the skeptic looks at the same glass of water and dejectedly says it is half empty (and no way was it caused by CO2). The realist looks at the glass of water, considers it for a while, and says “That glass is twice as big as it needs to be. Now, what materials and expertise do I need to make a glass that fits the circumstances? (And did you notice all that CO2 is making my garden grow better?)”
It will almost certainly cross the NSIDC median line over the next few days, because the Newfoundland median line is pulling back quickly this time of year, and because of very cold air over the Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent.png
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/ANIM/sfctmpmer_01a.fnl.30.gif
One positive note for you AGW sceptics…the antarctic sea ice continues to creep closer to being normal (though still showing a negative anomaly):
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
But alas, global sea ice extent continues below normal (due to the current refusal of arctic sea ice to cross that invisible barrier no doubt).
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
I will be watching the Global Sea Ice anomaly chart very closely the next few years. Since 2004, global sea ice has spent far more time in the negative range than the positive, and this chart, more than any other, give one a quick sense for the overall status of the earth’s cryopshere. If AGWT is correct, this chart will become nearly constantly negative in the coming years…
I thought the interesting thing was that it only took 2 months to go from an end of the world scenario to a normal/average situation.
Quite a late peak this year on JAXA. I tend to look at the equinox as the theoretical peak date, and that would have been 20 March.
On JAXA, I recall watching for the summer trough last year. JAXA seems to estimate very recent days, and last summer there was a regular downward correction to my recollection. Not saying that’s skullduggery, but could be more to do with caution.
The recovery has made it into the UK Sunday Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7086746.ece
(Sarc On)
I’m most curious about “How” they* plan on getting down to sub-normal levels in the next 5 months. Will it be a precipitous or gradual drop. Someone has really put the world in a pickle.
* – whoever ‘they’ are
The most likely explainations are that the code was glitched by a gremlin and/or one of the key sensors took a gigawatt hit from an unfortunate lazerlike GRB from the deepest depths of the cosmos. Probably a high dark energy non-photonic anti-light what’ya’ma’call’it.
I’m sure the “peer reviewed” correction will show no such rise ever occured and that the ice curve is actually, and consistantly has been, lower by 3.76589 million square kilometers during the entire 2009-2010 timeframe.
Don’t be surprised, either, if Congress and Parlement don’t have a Joint Committee Investigation into how this ‘hacker-thing’ happened, OR –here’s the real kick in the teeth– if everyone who has ever posted a comment on WUWT ends up in a Canadian Arctic Concentration Camp for the rest of their lives.
(If they can’t ‘convince’ us that AGW is real, they’ll make us pray it was.)
(Sarc Off)
The JAXA digital data shows that starting on April 2, 2010 Arctic sea ice extent reached 14,379,531 square kilometers versus the prior high for that date of 14,335,781 square kilometers on April 2, 2003. This trend continues for April 3, 2010 with 14,328,438 square kilometers versus 14,250,469 square kilometers on April 3, 2003. Thus the state of Arctic sea ice extent is now higher than it has been for the last seven years. This is remarkable given that all IPCC Arctic sea ice extent models predict only declines in sea ice extent from 2007. Once again the IPCC climate prediction models have been proven wrong.
R. Gates (09:57:13) :
Arctic, Antarctic and global will likely be all positive in a few days. Interesting death spiral.
>>”Jerry (09:54:02) said :
There must be some kind of MA filter on that data. The animated like comes very close to the average, almost no gap, then at the end, there is a clearly visible gap. Was past data updated?”<<
That is what it ;looks like to me, even if the 5 day average plot point for April 3rd is correct, the April 1st point should still be the same but it is not, it is lower now.
Steve Goddard said:
It will almost certainly cross the NSIDC median line over the next few days, because the Newfoundland median line is pulling back quickly this time of year, and because of very cold air over the Bering Sea and Sea of Okhotsk.
____________
Pretty strong words…”almost certainly”. But it could happen I suppose. But how long will it stay, and what will the ice look like in September? Both far more important longer term events I would say…
A great deal of March’s “bump” award has been in the Bering Sea, where persistant low pressure has cold air across the current ice pack and created new ice, (very thin new ice, 4 to 12 in. thick) on the SW side of the Bering Sea ice pack. The sea of Okhotsk is running about normal, and the Atlantic side, New Foundland etc. and Hudson Bay, running below normal. Watch for rapid melt in these areas, and also in the Greenland sea area and over to Siberia.
I see no conspiracy there. THe sudden change matches the late turning of the season from extra-cold to normal in my distant North Carolina perspective.
Stuff like that just happens.
The key here is that if different observation platforms come up with the same information, and those observations can be relied upon with a high level of confidence, that those results be reported as observations.
This is what Anthony has done.
This is what the AGW hypothesis crowd, The Team in particular, would not do.
The integrity contrast is not only of interest, but integral for making progress on the questions about climate change.
R. Gates
Actually the number should be more negative regardless of AGWT since there is another theory… One that involves natural cycles.
Now, it may well be that we are entering a new downturn in temperature over the next decade or so, however temperatures have been warmer at times in the last several thousand years so I would expect in general we are still coming out of the last big cold spell we had ( the little ice age ) where temperatures dropped significantly from the MWP ( Medieval Warm Period )
These temperatures have been steadily growing and I bet if you were to look at the warming rationally you would notice no exponential growth in the warming ( as seems to be shown in most models ) However there is warming. Now some of that warming may be attributed to shoddy work in trying to compensate for UHI,
Regardless while AGWT does explain a reduction in ice, so do any number of other competing theories. Do not latch onto only one explanation. It may well be that CO2 is the primary cause of the warming. It may also not be.
Now if the trend continues up does that discount AGWT??? To be honest what the people who believe in it will do is say, “oops, we made a miscalculation… It is still occurring but the melt will not be one of the side effects until such and such a date”
So even IF the chart does not go negative an explanation will arise to keep the theory alive.
Again I am not saying AGWT is wrong, but it is simply a theory and people revise theories all the time as new evidence forces them to analyze the theory. Please just consider that AGWT is not the only ‘theory’ as to what is occurring.
personally, I am not at all concerned with the way arctic ice extent is going : the JAXA chart shows it right at the top for this time of year (since 2003). like many others here, I will be watching to see how low it goes in september ; unlike mr. Gates, I don’t think it will go as low as 4.5 million sq. km. I see it being somewhere between 5 and 6 million sq. km. but what I will also be watching for, with great interest, is to see where the 2010 line (JAXA) goes in may and november. if like 2009, it goes to the top in may and the bottom in november, indicating a slower decline in the spring and a slower increase in the fall, this will support Svenmark’s theory about cosmic rays and cloud formation. this looks to be a very interesting year.
R. Gates (09:57:13) :
But alas, global sea ice extent continues below normal (due to the current refusal of arctic sea ice to cross that invisible barrier no doubt).
Normal in this context, sometimes it’s above and sometimes it’s below? Or does normal mean something else here?
Sea ice extent and area is closely monitored for navigation purposes and the last thing you want to do is adjust/homogenize/sanitize/treering it for one of those ships starting out to sea. Lives are at stake, business dollars are at stake, and expensive ships are at stake, not grant dollars. Because of these cross-check entities, I don’t think we have much to worry about regarding “single adjusted data set” issues.
In Spring the ice stops growing and the grass starts growing…
In Autumn the ice starts growing and the grass stops growing…
They’re almost a mirror of each other… Twas ever thus… When that changes – WORRY!
Yes, I’ve been following Arctic ice for a few months. It’s definitely interesting.
In similar years of winter/spring weather patterns, ice growth within each Arctic zone, and ice flow, summer flush was less than in other years under flush conducive parameters. This year stacks up with lower ice flush and melt for the summer. R Gates, what is your opinion about statistical models of ice flush?
When i look at the animation where the blue line appears to be touching the long term average and in the next phase of the animation seems to back away from it i have the feeling that this “backing off” seems to be about 1 pixel,
so the visual effect could just be an effect of rounding off a scaled measurement value to a screen coordinate.
You really can’t make out such fine details from such a screen grafic, it has a coarse reolution. It would help to have an interactive zoomable grafics widget. It would also be useful to have the real measurement points marked as dots to differentiate from the linear interpolation by the line drawing algorithm.
Steve Goddard said:
“Arctic, Antarctic and global will likely be all positive in a few days. Interesting death spiral…”
———-
Now Steve, really. If you know anything, you know that a spiral means subject to natural variability (like this winter’s extreme negative AO). On a longer term basis (longer than one winter), Global Sea ice has spent more time since 2004 in the negative anomaly range than the positve, and this longer term perspective is all that matters. In a “death spiral” you’d expect it to recover, pludge, recover, pludge, with each pludge (over a period of decades) to be lower, and each recovery to be not quite as great, when looked at from a long term perspective.
This months “re-growth” of the arctic sea ice to almost normal (which is nearly all in the Bering sea in March’s bump upward) is certainly related to the negative AO index.
An honest scientist wlll look at the longest trend of reliable data, and so March’s little bump upward, while interesting as an effect of the negative AO index of one winter, means very little to me unless it persists in the longer term…
What does the acronym “AGWT” mean?
What ? There’s earthworms tunneling in the rotten ice ?
R. Gates (10:29:54) :
OK I get it now. Arctic ice is almost all gone, and is also above normal.
REPLY: Note the label in the graph: “The latest date in 2010 is 03/30”. Once they get it updated I think it will look much like NSIDC. – Anthony
Smokey (10:31:28) :
What does the acronym “AGWT” mean?
REPLY: I believe it is for “Anthropogenic Global Warming Theory.”
As far as I’m concerned, theory it remains. The science remains far from settled from all appearances.
AGW proponents would really benefit from toning down the hysteria…vast segments of the world’s population (lately, the Germans!) are checking out on the “commonly held beliefs” including permanent ice-free polar regions, melting glaciers etc.
Also, keep an eye on Mr. Sun (Ms. Sun?) as it appears to be slipping back into a comfortable minimum state once again:
http://www.spaceweather.com/images2010/04apr10/midi512_blank.gif?PHPSESSID=bskm9n0gojo6prs85ivcmrlmf3
Nansen (Arctic-ROOS) is back online, their curve still goes up, but they have not reached April yet.
Anthony & Pamela Gray (09:38:42) :
What do you mean they are not trying to hide anything, the values from the previous days have been adjusted down. Do they do that on their own then?
Or are you saying they made mistake which they have now corrected?
R. Gates – pludge ? I am unable to find this word in either the oxford or webster’s dictionary ; surely you mean plunge.
R. Gates (10:10:22) :
I make predictions for a few days, weeks or months. If I am wrong, you can call me on it in the near future.
Some climate people make their predictions for 100 years out, knowing that they can inflate their numbers to whatever value they want, and never be held responsible.
http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/news_repository/will-oceans-surge-59-centimetres-this-century-or-25-metres
A C Osborn (10:47:38) :
Ice extent varies a lot from day to day because of wind and the way that extent is calculated. Ice area is less volatile and is above normal.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
Smokey’s right.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
Importantly they say we are above the 1979-2006 average.
Anthony this happened everytime ice went up before and the changes are documented at this site.
http://mikelm.blogspot.com/2007/09/left-image-was-downloaded-from.html
However, in this case I suspect no fowl play as the ice is in fact staying “normal: and follows DMI closely. It is precisely because people have taken notice of past changes that these sites may be quite careful about what they are doing these days with the graphs re adjustments etc…
Check back in about thirty years, when the priests … I mean scientists … after studying the entrails … I mean data … discover that there’s been a nice upward trend in sea ice extent and will require more funding to figure out what’s been happening and, after another couple decades, will discover that the ice extent is cyclical in nature.
The report I am waiting for is the NSIDC one, early this week; Monday or Tuesday most likely. So far as I can see, Mark Serreze has nailed his colors to the mast in predicting that Arctic sea ice will disappear in the summer in the near future. Now that idea seems to be in jeopardy. I suspect he has two alternatives. He can gamble that he will be shown to be right in the end, and continue with the line that Arctic sea ice is still on track for an ice free summer in the near future. Or he can start hedging his bets, and realize that he might just be wrong. We will see, very shortly.
I’m going to lock myself in to a 5.9 million sq. km. prediction for this summer- the attraction of extrapolating a short linear trend is too great 😉 – also, I’m an optimist.
Of course, anything could happen- look at the huge variation between summer 2006 and 2007! Proof that the Arctic is capable of losing a hell of a lot of ice over a very short time. Still, we seem to be steadily climbing back to fairly ‘normal’ levels- and comparing the latest satellite images to early 80’s ones, the ice looks in much better shape all round (nice and purple). That’s my very non complex assessment of things anyway.
Who’d have imagined 20 years ago that a large portion of the general public would become so interested in tracking sea ice extent?
A digital look at the JAXA data:
03,25,2003,14800781 – 03,25,2010,14282344 – 518437
03,26,2003,14771094 – 03,26,2010,14264688 – 506406
03,27,2003,14755781 – 03,27,2010,14256719 – 499062
03,28,2003,14718594 – 03,28,2010,14299219 – 419375
03,29,2003,14647031 – 03,29,2010,14363438 – 283593
03,30,2003,14533906 – 03,30,2010,14405781 – 128125
03,31,2003,14428281 – 03,31,2010,14407344 – 20937
04,01,2003,14409219 – 04,01,2010,14395000 – 14219
04,02,2003,14335781 – 04,02,2010,14379531 – -43750
04,03,2003,14250469 – 04,03,2010,14328438 – -77969
10 days ago, 2010 was a half million sq km behind the Arctic of 2003.
Today, it is 77,000 sq km ahead.
That’s quite a change.
CRS, Dr.P.H. (10:46:38) :
Smokey (10:31:28) :
What does the acronym “AGWT” mean?
REPLY: I believe it is for “Anthropogenic Global Warming Theory.”
As far as I’m concerned, theory it remains. The science remains far from settled from all appearances.
How about a new word for it? Hypreposterothesis.
A flat running average will stay flat as long as the running data are flat. A rising set of 5-day data will average up. A falling set of 5-day data will continue its downward slope. Doing a mind experiment, what do you think a turn will look like, all the way through the turn, using 5-day data sets that have a mix of rising, flat, and falling sets?
R. Gates (10:29:54) :
I like your explanation for “death spiral”.
One would expect a longish time scale.
Why have there been claims the Arctic will be “ice free” by 2013?
R. Gates said:
Global Sea ice has spent more time since 2004 in the negative anomaly range than the positve, and this longer term perspective is all that matters.
———
Hmmm… I look at the data and it shows a bouncing decline from 2004 to 2007 (3 years), and a recovery from 2007 to 2010 (3 years). Pretty much equivalent, but I admit that it depends on what happens in September 2010. Overall, very little trend that I can see. Probably ought to get data for 30 more years to have any real understanding. All the data collected so far (since 1979) argues strongly for natural variation and “the usual noise”.
“This months “re-growth” of the arctic sea ice to almost normal (which is nearly all in the Bering sea in March’s bump upward) is certainly related to the negative AO index. ”
Anybody else notice how statistical certainty standards change according to one’s perspective?
This years min will be greater than last years’. Why? La Niña !! No El Niño.
Incidently, the french academie de science will be holding a ‘debat’ this october on AGW. M. Allegre and M. Courtillot will be there. Why them. Well, M.Courtillot was the scientist/mathemeticien who asked for the british and american unadjusted data, Mr Gates? and was refused. So he painstakingly picked all the raw data from every reporting weather station in europe and plotted over time. Guess what? He found no hockey stick, he found no exceptional warming.
The big difference here in france is that there isn’t the old boys club tie of the UK. There are however a lot of state funded scientists who don’t want the debate. With the la niña in place and the ice extent min at its max it should be très intérèssante
ScottR (11:07:49)
and if you go back to the 1930’s it becomes ever more clear that its natural variation. Submarines at the north pole, on the surface, in march.
Hockeystickler (10:48:25) :
“R. Gates – pludge ? I am unable to find this word in either the oxford or webster’s dictionary ; surely you mean plunge.”
I like the word ‘pludge’! It’s what climate ‘scientists’ do. They ‘pludge’.
The true believers will explain it all as part of the AGW climate crisis, no matter the evidence, or lack of evidence.
It’s CYrosphere!!
(for crying out loud)
Forgot to add — my guesstimate for Arctic sea ice minimum extent this September is approx. 5.95 m km²; not quite ready to call it for 6 m km².
It’s actually not that surprising, when you think that this year the ice has continued increasing two or three weeks longer than the norm.
It has to turn the corner sometime, just so happens that it happened just before the extent crossed the ‘normal’ line.
Is does, though, suggest a significant increase again at ice minimum this September, barring strange incidents.
It will be interesting for scientists and others to see how many more years the increase goes on. Perhaps from that we will start to understand decadal and multidecadal oscillations in arctic sea ice extent??
[snip – off topic, even if it is Easter]
Wind shifts, ice drifts, extents come and go,
it’s been cold I know, more ice and snow,
Spring has sprung, the bouquets been flung,
AGW is married to arctic ice extent it seems,
the sun has gone back to sleep and dreams.
At 70N, the sun is now almost 25 degrees above the horizon. In June it will be almost 45 degrees above the horizon. Ice is going to start melting quickly.
The global seaice anomaly at cyrosphere today shows:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/sea.ice.anomaly.timeseries.jpg
A roll down at 2007/8 that is on the upswing returning to normal.
That’s not a straight line, and neither is the big roll in Sunspot/10.7cm flux, or anything else nature does. Probably because we live on a squashed sphere and run in an elliptical orbit around another squashed sphere. Nothing in nature or in or Solar System or Galaxy or Galaxy Cluster runs in perfectly straight lines.
Why should we all succumb to computer modeled pencil line fever?
Funny how readily the warming proponents accept that the increase in ice now is due to a negative AO even though that allows warmer air into the most poleward areas as the cold air sinks more frequently into the mid latitudes in winter.
But wait a mo, didn’t we have 30 years of largely positive AO resulting in the eventual ice minimum of 2007 ?
Does logic work in only one direction for them ?
SandyInDerby (09:59:49) : “The recovery has made it into the UK Sunday Times”
Thanks for the link Sandy. It gave me a good laugh.
Scientists emphasise that the regrowth of ice in the Arctic and the fierce US blizzards are natural variations in weather which have little relevance for long-term climate change.
We can therefore conclude that “scientists” were wrong when they took earlier episodes of ice loss and warm winters as indicators of long-term climate change.
“Records kept by Nasa show that in January and February global average temperatures were actually well above the long-term average by around 0.7C,” Serreze said.
But “scientists” dismiss individual months as meaningless weather fluctuations. So what is the point of mentioning these particular months?
In retrospect, the reactions to the 2007 melt were overstated. The lesson is that we must be more careful in not reading too much into one event,” Serreze said.
The “reactions” to the 2007 melt placed too much emphasis on insignificant data. That was wrong, and ultimately damaging.
Scientists have made mistakes over other short-term trends such as increases in tropical storms. In 2004-5 an increase in the number and severity of storms, including Hurricane Katrina, prompted some researchers to suggest a link with global warming — but this was then followed by a decline in storms.
Other “scientists” who read too much into insignificant events, and it was wrong to do so.
Similar fears were raised in 2005 when scientists at Southampton University published research showing that some deep Atlantic Ocean currents, linked to the Gulf Stream, had slowed by a third. They issued a press release entitled “Could the Atlantic current switch off?” which suggested that circulation in the ocean, which gives Europe its temperate climate, might shut down. But more recent studies have shown that such currents slow down and speed up naturally, so short-term changes cannot be seen as evidence of global warming.
More people who like to call themselves “scientists”, and making exactly the same mistake.
“The reality is that greenhouse gases are making the world warmer, but it is a mistake to see short-term changes in weather, currents or Arctic ice cover as evidence of this,” Pope said.
Err, a tad late, but thanks for the dash of common sense Vicky. I suppose that’s why the MET Office stopped its seasonal forecasts which had factored-in global warming trends. They also fell victim to the same affliction.
Now, according to the article, Vicky Pope is saying “On current trends it will still become ice-free in summer by around 2060.”
That places her forecast into my “insignificant basket”.
I always said that it would only take one or two bad winters to bring some sanity back into the discussion. And it did!
Jimmy Haigh – perhaps R. Gates has invented a new word – pludge- climate scientists fudge when they show a plunge : therefore they pludge !
Everyone is trotting out the words “average” and ‘normal”. I will once again remind everyone that the “averge” and “normal” is simply based on an arbitrary baseline period from 1979 -2000. Nothing more, nothing less.
R. Gates (09:57:13) :
I will be watching the Global Sea Ice anomaly chart very closely the next few years.
REPLY:
You aren’t the only one who will be watching with bated breath! R. Gates, this one’s for you!
BTW, we welcome your input to the discussion, thanks for contributing!
Stephen Wilde (11:52:25) :
AGW logic is based on the idea that trace amounts of CO2 controls the universe.
S. Gates:
“One positive note for you AGW sceptics…the antarctic sea ice continues to creep closer to being normal (though still showing a negative anomaly):”
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png
Given the fact that the anomaly was positive for the bulk of the 2-year period in the graph, and previously recovered from any negative period (except for the slight one now), what does this graph do to support AGWT? I thought the whole world was warming, ice shelves were breaking off Antactica, and there was not return.
I guess I’m just not smart enough to get it?
R. Gates,
Thinking sceptics (TS) accept that there has been a degree or maybe two increase in earth temps since the 1850s, what one would expect climbing out of the Little Ice Age. Your estimate could be right on and it wouldn’t bother most of us one bit. Our objections have been to the egregious erasure of the MWP and earlier warm periods, reduction in the drop of the LIA temps, depressing of the 20Century record highs, choice of a cold period for the 30 year base for claiming the hottest days on record, and the numerous deliberate statistical gamesmanship maneuvers with tree rings, raw temp data….etc. etc. Of course NSIDC has been trying spin results for many years and they would have had us already surveying beach front properties in Greenland and Antarctica, but I see there is some moving away from their earlier outrageous prognostications and insulting remarks about the people who turned out to be right.
You’ve been coming here long enough to not categorize sceptics into a monolithic lump . We can’t help being joined by bandwagon sceptics (BS) like Limbaugh or anyone else who has nothing to offer to the debate. You have seen the fine work done here by TS. Surely, you rejoice that real scientific sceptics put a stop to the unholy alliance of politicized, the-science-is-settled, the-world-is-spiraling-into-disaster, fraudulent scientists, environmental organizations, 19th Century marxist iconoclasts and politicians, and they did it by application of science, not money and advertizing. I think you’ve found that there is a core classy bunch here who, unlike the other half of the blogosphere, accept your thoughtful offerings whether one agrees with you or not.
S. Gates:
Regarding the recent buildup in the Bering Strait, can you please point to documentation on what the Bering Strait was like during the 1979-2000 period, and, if possible, what it looked like from, say, 1000-1978?
Without this data, why specify a buildup that you consider unusual?
Richard111 (11:07:20) :
R. Gates (10:29:54) :
I like your explanation for “death spiral”.
One would expect a longish time scale.
Why have there been claims the Arctic will be “ice free” by 2013?
In part because of data (incl. submarine) from the likes of Maslowski such as shown here:
http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/Maslowski_Page_16.jpg
ICESAT data since then has shown a continued decline in thickness at a slightly slightly faster rate since 2004. So despite hedging of bets etc. the data still points to around that time. With the declining thickness the rate of drift would tend to increase too.
Doesn’t matter, once it breaks the plane of the normal it’s a score . . . Realists 6, Warmists 0.
Richard111 asked:
“Why have there been claims the Arctic will be “ice free” by 2013?”
—————–
I think to understand this prediction in context, you should read this BBC article from 2007:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm
The 2013 prediction was not made by a large group of scientists, but a single scientist. Prior to the record low of 2007, the consensus had been that the sea ice would be gone by 2100. Even after 2007, the consensus was not 2013 (that was just one scientist), but more in the range of 2030 for the arctic to be ice free at the summer low. I believe the date of approximately 2030 for an ice free summer arctic remains the consensus, and nothing seen so far in 2010 would change that.
Speling haz neber bin my stronge sute…
And many thanks to the excellent editors I’ve had over the years!
Stephen Wilde (11:52:25) :
Does logic work in only one direction for them ?
A neurological diode is indicated, and thier trendline theory operates in a physical vacuum in which Newton’s 1st Law of Motion does not apply.
In that computer-generated world, the primary force is Carbon Dioxide, and all others are either subjugated or void.
ScottR said (regarding global sea ice):
“I look at the data and it shows a bouncing decline…”
———–
Hmmm…what would another phrase for “bouncing decline” be….just on the tip of my tongue now, oops, now I’ve lost it, okay, now it’s back, now I’ve lost it again, only worse this time…okay, now back again, but not quite as strong…oh, darn, now lost it again, really far down this time…oh well…sorry.
(guess I’ll just go read about death spirals instead…)
looks like the sea ice is trying to match up with the “average”. Just under reached its goal. It may be thinking 2003 was an outlier and shouldn’t be considered part of the average. In which case it has done a magnificent job. Well done arctic sea ice.
Don’t worry folks! Ms. Pope at the Met Office says all this so-called new ice is all just a pause in the Earth’s upward temperature trajectory:
“The reality is that greenhouse gases are making the world warmer, but it is a mistake to see short-term changes in weather, currents or Arctic ice cover as evidence of this,” Pope said.
“Instead you have to look at long-term trends. These show that Arctic summer sea ice is decreasing by 232,000 square miles a decade, nearly 2.5 times the area of Great Britain.
“On current trends it will still become ice-free in summer by around 2060.”
Get that? “Ice-free” in 2060; long after she’s gone, and been forgotten.
Does she think the more she repeats it the more likely we are to believe it? Even Phil Jones from CRU was forced to publicly admit that there has been no warming for the past 15 years.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stephen Wilde (11:52:25) :
“Does logic work in only one direction for them?”
…Yes, it does. When the weather is hot (like in Summer) they all start screaming and wailing that it’s “proof of man-made global warming”. But when half the World seems to be under ice and there are record low temperatures and 130,000 Americans are dying of cold-related ailments, they declare that “weather is not climate”.
Weather is only climate when it’s hot.
When it’s cold, it’s just weather.
There was a demonstration of this very thing today on the BBC’s “Broadcasting House” program. They had AGW fanatic Nobel Laureate Professor Sir Martin Evans reviewing the papers, and he declared the past winter was “a little bit colder” and the CRU emails were “this silly little email thing” which doesn’t alter the fact that “global warming is going on because burning fossil fuels throws carbon up in the air”, etc.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00rqkr3
If the NSIDC graph is using a 5-day running average, then they have a problem to reconcile data latency with data creep. I assume the average looks ahead 2 days and back 2 days. Therefore their final figure will be 2 days late, so each datum “creeps” for 2 days. They have the alternative of not displaying a datum until 2 days later, but then everyone would look elsewhere for the latest update. So they accept the data creep, and this is what we see here.
Steve Goddard (11:42:21) : “At 70N, the sun is now almost 25 degrees above the horizon.”
At it’s daily high point. Midpoint (of the day) more like 13 degrees above the horizon.
The story as I hear it from the within the gov is that the sea ice is just thin and spread out. Sea ice extent is, as per NSIDC definition, at least 15% to count. So, as the wind causes the ice to be more spread out it is also thinner (wind more easily pushes thin ice around) and less concentrated ~~ therefore it is more susceptible to melting.
SO…most people who are fully bought into the Climate Change “system” expect this thinner and more spread out sea ice to melt quickly and continue the death spiral… That’s the story and you’ll hear it again! Mark my words!
The interesting aspect is that this scenario could go either way given he uncertainty associated with the current understanding of what drives Arctic sea ice formation and melt. Most research states the mechanisms for influencing sea ice formation are poorly understood…at least the connections and dynamics are…
Any way the more ice (even if it’s spread out) increases albedo and decreases sea surface absorption, which leads to more ice over time, BUT if we’ve crossed the tipping point it’s too late anyway and it will just melt and continue down the death spiral… There you have it, The executive summary of “The Party Line.”
The Wild card in all of this, and the one that happens to be the one that is the most poorly understood in all of this is THE WIND!!!
CRS, Dr.P.H. (10:46:38) :
Thank you for your response. Actually, I was hoping R. Gates would answer, because he sneaks the “T” in at the end of AGW all the time without explanation, even though I’ve asked before. I knew it had to mean either theory or thermogeddon.
Catastrophic AGW [and AGW] are not theories and never were, as desperate as Gates is to label them theories.
AGW doesn’t even matter at this point. Few people on either side of the debate say there is no effect at all from human activity [although there is zero empirical evidence that human emissions of CO2 have any measurable effect on the global temperature]. Here’s the problem with plain old AGW:
If the tiny fraction of human CO2 emissions [click] causes any global warming at all, the effect is so small and insignificant that it can be completely disregarded. The human component on temperature is certainly too small to be measured, despite the one-third increase in CO2. And that is assuming that CO2 caused all or most of the 0.6° warming over the past 150 years — a big assumption.
So the climate alarmists have painted themselves into a corner with their scary CO2=CAGW hypothesis: the trace gas carbon dioxide must cause catastrophic global warming. Otherwise, there’s no sense in throwing good money after bad, when so many other areas of science are in need of the immense funding being sucked up every year by the climate science clique.
So they are forced to speculate on imagined “tipping points,” and blame sea level rises, ocean acidification, frog extinctions, changes in sea ice, receding glaciers, increasing hurricanes, and anything else that comes to mind on a harmless and beneficial trace gas that has been many times higher in the past without causing runaway global warming.
But CO2 causes none of those things, because on all time scales, changes in CO2 follow changes in temperature; effect cannot precede cause.
There is a specific meaning to a scientific theory. The hierarchy is: Conjecture, Hypothesis, Theory and Law. Only Theory and Law are widely accepted as science [although nothing is entirely safe from falsification, as Einstein repeatedly stated regarding his Theories of Relativity].
CO2=CAGW is not even a true hypothesis, because much of the raw data, code and methodologies purporting to support it are either missing, or kept secret. That makes it simply a baseless conjecture. I’m being polite when I refer to AGW and CAGW as hypotheses. They are not, really.
For a scientific explanation of what constitutes a Theory vs a Conjecture, see here: click
Oh, good grief… graph… very good graphs!
This one at Illinois Arctic Climate Research Center shows we just had a 5 year Arctic ice area record…
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.arctic.png
But due to the error range in projections we can have more ice for, say, 20 years or so before we are outside error margins. The AGW bAndWaGon will “confidently” refer to this graph:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_54-lzQmrpB4/SrSZdKWIFQI/AAAAAAAAAFs/nuOIEWti6S4/s1600/icemin2009.JPG
R. Gates (12:15:38)
Phil. (12:10:15)
Will you two please get your stories straight? You’re scaring the horses.
NZ Willy (12:43:30) :
The formula for midsummer noon solar elevation above the horizon = 90 – latitude + 23.5 degrees.
At 70N that is 43.5 degrees above the horizon. At 90 degrees it is 23.5 degrees above the horizon. At the Tropic of Cancer, it is 90 degrees above the horizon.
If it’s a 5-day trailing average, then the present can affect the past plotted positions. They should borrow one of Dr Hansen’s computer models; then they could have a 5-day leading average.
I spotted the same thing, the NSIDC curve really almost hit the average gray line, and now as of 4th of April it is clearly ADJUSTED . downward.
sorry chaps, but we from Holland like to say it as it is. (my grandmother even spotted this one 😐 )
One thing that keeps cropping up on thread about arctic sea ice, especially by AGW skeptics is “the wind”. It’s really important to keep in mind that AGW
AGW is all about energy…energy flows, energy balance, etc. and energy on earth shows up in many different ways, and one of them is…WIND. If, as AGWT would posit, there is more net energy in the oceans, atmosphere etc. it would certainly stand to reason that one of the ways that energy would show up would be wind. Whenever there was wind, there was heating of the earth somewhere, and of course, all that energy came from the sun initially. In short, saying the ‘wind’ did it, does not in any many disassociate the wind from warming (for we know warming caused the wind initially) nor by extention, disassociate it from AGW.
“If it’s a 5-day trailing average”
It looks more like a 5-point typical median filter function that generally doesn’t affect the last 2 points. So any given value should change 2 days later and then remain stable.
Someone is responsible for this. That person is a propagandist. That was a deliberate act.
Who did this? What is his name?
Magnus A (12:56:18)
Just put “ant” in front of “arctic” in the address bar, and you get the Cryosphere chart of the Antarctic: click
Not nearly so alarming, is it?
Here’s Cryosphere’s global ice extent: click
Reverting to the mean: natural variability.
CO2≠CAGW
of course, the current increases make “experts” like serezze, loudspeakers like gore or spamposters like gates look stupid. they will look even more stupid in the future as they still deny the existence of the upwards leg before 1979 due to ocean current cycles. sea ice today may be not much different from the 1930s or 1940s and in 1957 projections were then, that it would have disappeared by 2000.
http://i680.photobucket.com/albums/vv161/Radiant_2009/popularmechanics1957-2.jpg
(though in 1957 scientists knew, that even temperatures with ice free arctic would have been still lower than 2000 years ago.)
however, any projection for next september is nothing but a wild guess, as nobody knows what the dominant factors – wind and ocean currents – will do this year.
looks like just another “see, I was right” chance, for those who were wrong in general and particularly for the last 2 years and those who made already disproven doomsday predictions in the past.
Being an objective scientist, or for most of us, being an objective scientific observer, means, first, acknowledging the existence of evidence, second, considering the evidence by applying reasonable skepticism and an open-mind to the evidence at hand.
Failure to acknowledge and consider evidence plays into the hands of those that may foist faulty evidence, or even valid evidence, but which is not relevant to the proposition the evidence is purported to support, or does not support the proposition as strongly as its proponents claim.
And, yes, scientific evidence may emerge that goes against previously held understadnings. How we react to evidence adverse to our previous understadings is the test of objective scientific observers.
Hiding from evidence does not help anybody’s cause.
In Science “truth for its own sake” is the aspiration. Correct understanding of physical relationships is the goal.
Thanks, Anthony, for bringing this to the readers attention.
Nah, it’s just tipping over and ready to capsize from so many people looking at it.
Smokey (12:51:09) is right. AGW is not a theory, because climate models are unphysical. They are untestable in the scientific sense because the change in any climate observable in the last 130 years is smaller than their uncertainty limits.
AGW rests entirely on false precision; not only in climate model output but also in proxy thermometry and in the surface temperature record. No professional has seen fit to honestly propagate the errors in any of these fields. The whole business is the most shameful display of willful scientific negligence ever.
Always with the statistics, damned lies and statistics. A five day running average – sheesh who needs that and why? I gather that I’ll have to plot my own without statistics assuming the data file they let you download hasn’t been polluted by their math. I want RAW DATA please. Sigh.
I clicked on the Meg Witman ad. Maybe there is a future for California.
Manfred,
I have admitted several times that I am only 75% convinced that AGWT is correct. I may appear as “spamster” because I certainly am among the minority here on WUWT, and so I have lots of gist to respond to. I will stay right here, and watch the trends of the arctic sea ice this year (and the next, and the next…) right along with the rest of you. If some long term positive arctic sea ice anomaly starts to emerge over a period of years, not days or months, then I’ve already admitted that I’ll begin to question the validiity of AGWT and models.
I should think that all the AGW sceptics here find my posts of service, in the same way that honest climate researchers should appreciate honest sceptics making them prove what they say. I think there is a lot of nonsense on this site that passes for science fact, and I think it is healthy to be sceptical about the facts that sceptics put forth.
I also, don’t have much of a life…but I consider being called a “spammer” as quite rude as well as wrong. I do tend to post more when the thread is about sea ice as it is my ‘acid test’ for my overall belief in the validity of AGWT. I could generally care less about the political and other social commentary that goes on here, and I would think a “spammer” would really care about that sort of rot…
It would be hard for NSIDC to get away with some monkey business in the graph because so many people are watching Arctic (North Pole) Ice and they have other graphs to compare theirs to and keep them honest. So the data (in this case anyway) has to be accurate.
But how the data is spun, well, that’s another story.
………………………………………………………………………………………………
Thanks Anthony Scalzi for the neat-o animation! 🙂
It’s not that it’s necessarily not a good idea to make calculations on the data, that is needed for various analysis of course. However, to not give up the RAW DATA and to not clearly spell out ALL THE MATH used in the construction of a particular visual representation is a form of at least deceit by omission – even if unintentional, fabrication of data is fabrication of data, statistics mess up the data.
Please scientists stop presenting statistical analysis as if it’s real. It’s not, it’s abstract. Running averages alter the graph. Stop it. USE THE REAL DATA. At least present TWO GRAPHS, one with the RAW DATA plotted unadjusted in any way and one with the lies, damned lies and your pet that obeys your bais, statistics.
If you can’t see the raw data next to the analysis you can’t see how the analysis distorts reality. Analysis is supposed to show you aspects of the data that might otherwise not pop out, to use it as if it’s what is really happening is fraud, intentional or otherwise. Provide and plot the REAL RAW UNADJUSTED DATA please as the FIRST PRIORITY for HONESTY and INTEGRITY and AUTHENTICITY. If it’s not raw, they don’t pretend that it is. Tell it like it is and as a scientist you’ll at least have integrity even if your analysis method is bunk.
Please inform people that they are only seeing an analysis, one possible visual representation of the data adjusted by statistical means (spelling those out in detail with all source codes and raw data so we can run the program to verify it for ourselves or make changes to the program to validate or improve the representation).
Thanks.
R. Gates-
“With the negative AO of this winter, we’ve had warmth and high pressure parked over N. Canada and Greenland…”
“..we’ve also had some warm Atlantic water near Greenland.”
“..the net effect of all the warmth this winter in parts of the arctic..”
With all that “warmth” in the arctic the Inuit will be cutting their lawns much sooner this year…
R. Gates (13:13:27) :
In short, saying the ‘wind’ did it, does not in any many disassociate the wind from warming (for we know warming caused the wind initially) nor by extention, disassociate it from AGW.
Do you consider the Earth and corresponding atmosphere
spinning at over a 1000 MPH; wind? Or is it relative, and is
the moon raising the oceans energy, or is everything caused
by my SUV?
R. Gates (13:38:43)
that posting is appreciated. replace spam with frequent.
R. Gates (13:38:43) :
Manfred,
I should think that all the AGW sceptics here find my posts of service, in the same way that honest climate researchers should appreciate honest sceptics making them prove what they say.
Your explanation of the way modelling works *was* of service. It took a bit of cogitation to follow you through unfamiliar territory, but at the end, I understood both methods you addressed.
Thanks.
boing!
R. Gates (13:13:27) :
AGW as the ‘irresistable force’ that cannot be acted upon externally, continues to circulate with ever-increasing amounts of energy, melting everything in it’s path but never using a drop of it’s energy?
Sounds like a death sentence for civilization.
Seems to me that the AGW Energy is getting rather exhausted or unplugged from it’s infinite power source.
AGW-alarmists will change their story:
No more “Arctic will lose all of its ice next summer” but “Record low ice conditions off the Canadian east coast” (http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html).
Seems to be easy: Just take the right part of the whole and you see what you want to see:
“… average ice conditions off the east coast of Canada were at record lows during the first three weeks of February. Sea ice charts prepared by the Canadian Ice Service show that ice coverage in the Labrador Sea and Gulf of St. Lawrence was the lowest for that time period since analysts started charting the region in 1969.”
Probably no more ice bears at the east coast of Canada …
Anthony says:
“REPLY: Note the label in the graph: “The latest date in 2010 is 03/30″. Once they get it updated I think it will look much like NSIDC. – Anthony”
I think you’re missing something important. Smokey posted a graph of Sea Ice Area. That’s the relevant distinction, not that the area data covers only up to 3/30; therefore the answers won’t look similar for the reason you suggest. The big story here is not the sea ice extent right now. Sure, that’s mostly due to fringe issues.
The big story is that the ice remains very densely packed in the Beaufort Sea. Ice concentration is very high, which is why the sea ice area is now well above the median. This is true throughout the arctic basin and nearly all of the surrounding seas.
I had hoped, when I predicted this, that people would not make wild accusations. See:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/31/arctic-sea-ice-about-to-hit-normal-what-will-the-news-say/#comments
4/1/10 at 09:15
Unfortunate.
R. Gates (13:38:43):
Since you deliberately ignore the fact that AGW is not a scientific Theory, then as Manfred points out, you are just spamming the thread for your own amusement.
It is no different than if you constantly insisted that the study of stars and galaxies was astrology, or that science is based on Scientology.
This is the internet’s “Best Science” site. Astrology, chemtrails, HAARP, etc., are not acceptable. Improperly mislabeling AGW as a Theory, when it is not, is just as inappropriate. Further, it is dishonest. You have repeatedly been given the correct definitions of scientific Theory, Hypothesis, Conjecture, and Law, but you continue to misuse the terms.
Words have meaning. Deliberately misrepresenting the meaning of a scientific Theory is pseudo-science. It doesn’t belong here.
If you refuse to use the correct terminology, you are simply trolling. That may work at realclimate, climate progress, tamino, etc. But they are unconcerned with scientific accuracy because they are alarmist propaganda blogs. That’s why they have the same small group of posters, and why their traffic numbers are so low.
Go back to one of them if you insist on deliberately misusing the proper terms. Here, it is simple courtesy to use correct scientific terms.
Smokey:
Our little shack in the Internet does not have the privilege of stifling debate with semantics. If the rest of the world considers AGW a theory, then there is nothing wrong with someone coming here and expressing that opinion or working from that premise. This does not meant that that opinion cannot be challenged or debated, but to dismiss based on “Does it meet the definition of a Theory”, while setting the terms for that definition in a potentially straw man manner is not really what we should be discussing here.
Theories may be falsified, but it is silly to debate whether it is a theory or not.
Oops. “If it’s not raw, they don’t pretend that it is.” is supposed to say “If it’s not raw, THEN don’t pretend that it is.”
jeez-
I provided a link to support my position.
If there is a credible alternate definition of a scientific Theory, which can be based on secret data and methods, please post the link.
But it sounds like a conjecture to me.
If i’m not mistaken, most commenters on this site disagree with the “catastrophic” part of AGW.
IMO, the word “catastrophic” should always be used (and spelled out), in the discussion.
I’m pretty sure the “catastrophic” part, has been invalidated.
Smokey (14:21:20) : “Here, it is simple courtesy to use correct scientific terms.”
With the ice doing much better than expected and dashing the hopes of warmers to celebrate, does the term “awsheet” count?
OT:
In France, the “climatecensorship” discipline has been added to the wide array of climate science disciplines linked to the IPCC.
There is nothing wrong with your computer. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to… The Barrier Limits.
Craig Moore (14:36:42),
Since it’s not a recognized term in science, it doesn’t seem discourteous to me. More like something a warmist would mumble when he sees this graph: click
u.k.(us) –
u make a point that concerns me most. aren’t there any avenues that can prevent the media from using generic ‘climate change’ or ‘global warming’ as synonyms for CAGW? it is the same as ‘misleading advertising’ and leads to madness such as der spiegel’s claim recently that: ““(Steve)McIntyre asserts that he believes in Climate Change” to suggest this means he believes in CAGW!
somehow the media must be stopped.
Al Gore knows how to control the message, AP assists!
WRAL: AP: Gore gets camera-shy for N.C. speech, limits media
PIC CAPTION: Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore holds his medal and diploma at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo, Norway on Dec. 10. Gore was awarded the prize for sounding the alarm over global warming and spreading awareness on how to counteract it. (AP Photo/Odd Andersen)
A Gore aide said Tuesday that media members will only be allowed to record video and audio of the first five minutes of Gore’s talk at Duke University on April 8. Photography will also be limited. Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider said the restrictions are standard for his talks but she wouldn’t say why they are in place..
Duke spokeswoman Scottee Cantrell said Gore will speak for about 45 minutes and take questions collected from students.
Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his advocacy of environmental issues, particularly his push to highlight global warming.
http://www.wral.com/news/state/story/7330903/
Baghdad Bob? Is that you? Have you found a new venue?
re: R. Gates (13:38:43)
To All:
R. Gates is just trying to be helpful,
and now your uncooperative bickering
has gotten her all upset.
You should be ashamed of yourselves!
/dr.bill
While sea ice extent is higher than usual, ice VOLUME is not; and that’s the relevant factor as far as warming goes.
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2010/04/animation-of-decreasing-arctic-ice.html
Isn’t a ‘death spiral’ one of the moves from the Will Ferrell comedy Blades of Glory?
R Gates, you have just stretched beyond the theory you agree with. Global warming has caused an increase in wind in the Arctic? Not based on the historical record. You haven’t even come with a good mechanism for this connection.
But let me guess. You appear to postulate that increased warming at the Equator oceans caused by longwave radiation due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere which has then moved this warming to the Poles resulted in increased wind there. I can’t even begin to tear apart your theory because it is wrong in so many areas and at all levels.
For the record I don’t consider you to be a spammer at all. But I question your understanding of Earth’s dynamic atmosphere very much.
R. Gates (10:29:54) : “Now Steve, really. If you know anything, you know that a spiral means subject to natural variability…”
RG, I’ve checked the origin and definition of “death spiral,” the term Steve Goddard used in his comment. There are several definitions, all derived from the same aviation origin. None of them say anything about “subject to natural variability.” Those are your words and yours alone. Here is the true definition:
“graveyard spiral: n. originally, an inescapable winding descent of an airplane that leads to a crash; (hence), the rapid decline or devaluation of something, such as a career, a company, etc. Subjects: English, Aviation, Slang. Editorial Note: Synonyms are dead man’s spiral and the far more common death spiral.”
In other words, a death spiral is a one way plunge. Or pludge, if you prefer. Nothing to do with variability.
http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/dictionary/graveyard_spiral/
Has someone the datas of the 1979 – 2000 average or an idea where to find them ?
David Appell (14:58:02) : “While sea ice extent is higher than usual, ice VOLUME is not; and that’s the relevant factor as far as warming goes.”
Nope. Warmists made the claim that reduced ice area would lower the net albedo of the Earth and create a tipping point. They said it, and they’re stuck with it.
dr.bill (14:57:26)
My apologies if I upset Ms Gates. But by not using accurate scientific terms that are understood by everyone to mean the same thing, where does that lead?
It leads here —> click
David,
I’ll go along with you et al if you agree that this decade’s ice extent and volume is no worse than the 1920’s.
There are many references to this report in November, 1922 – here’s one.
http://olehgirl.com/?p=2860
Of course you can dismiss it like you do with the MWP.
Now look at the most recent sea ice extent. Might not reach that magic average level.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
“David Appell (14:58:02) :
While sea ice extent is higher than usual, ice VOLUME is not; and that’s the relevant factor as far as warming goes.
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2010/04/animation-of-decreasing-arctic-ice.html
”
Nice giant cockroaches there. And more assorted drivel. Amonst others the video says that a decline of sea ice area is relevant due to that albedo stuff. Are you sure the video says what you wanted it to say?
Since you deliberately ignore the fact that AGW is not a scientific Theory, then as Manfred points out, you are just spamming the thread for your own amusement.
This sort of trolling in reverse is entirely unnecessary.
R. Gates is allowed to post here. He is polite. He offers reasoned argument. He does not flame. Really your only problem can be that he doesn’t agree with you.
If only the rest of the AGW crowd were like him.
There are plenty of “sceptics” here who are far less reasoned. Some verging on loopy. Have a crack at them instead, as they do the sceptic cause no end of damage with their ravings.
From the NIC IMS Homepage, the animation for the last 30 days of the sea ice extent for the Arctic Ocean and Bering Sea areas north and west of Alaska
David Appell (14:58:02) :
Yes, and pay attention to where that Red Ice is going….out along the East Greenland Coast mixing with the warm current.
And what happens when that body of warm water cools off, as it has now, flipping state?
The ice grows faster, longer, and the melt season is shorter, like it was last year.
The Global Sea-Ice anomaly takes a curvaceous dip and swings through it’s low point and proceeds to rise right back where it came from.
Go ahead, make the day, FREEZE that trend right where it currently points, up, and by 2013 we’ll have the Ice Cap all the way down to N.Y.
And that might just be as ridiculous as Mr. Serreze’s assumption.
Hey, let’s do something really scary: 750 yrs. ago, Johannes Freide said this:
When nights will be filled with more intensive cold and days with heat, a new life will begin in nature. The heat means radiation from the earth, the cold the waning light of the sun. Only a few years more and you will become aware that sunlight has grown perceptibly weaker. When even your artificial light will cease to give service, the great event in the heavens will be near.
Is that what we are doing here? Substituting predictions for prophecy?
Smokey (15:08:00)
LMAO
I see what you mean. I had to watch it three times
before I got it. But then again, I understand AGWT.
R. Gates (12:29:58) :
ScottR said (regarding global sea ice):
“I look at the data and it shows a bouncing decline…”
———–
Hmmm…what would another phrase for “bouncing decline” be…
First you trot out a quote from Limbaugh to demonstrate the absurdity of the skeptic position, then you dismiss an ice free arctic by 2013 as the opinion of one scientist when Mark Serreze has warned of an ice free north pole as well. Yes I understand the difference between just the north pole and the arctic as a whole but Serreze has certainly made some spectacular non-predictions along with your “lone” scientist.
But now you’re just being disingenuous. You took a partial quote from Scott out of context to support your point. His entire sentence was:
Hmmm… I look at the data and it shows a bouncing decline from 2004 to 2007 (3 years), and a recovery from 2007 to 2010 (3 years).
The reason the phrase kept escaping you was that death spiral doesn’t describe a multi-year recovery.
Steve Goddard (13:03:24) :
Steve Goddard (13:03:24) : “The formula for midsummer noon solar elevation above the horizon = 90 – latitude + 23.5 degrees.”
Yes, but you said “now”, not “midsummer”.
scrap that last post – not enough coffee error, I think – you are correct, sorry.
James F. Evans (13:23:27) wrote: “Being an objective scientist, or for most of us, being an objective scientific observer, means, first, acknowledging the existence of evidence, second, considering the evidence by applying reasonable skepticism and an open-mind to the evidence at hand…”
I failed to include the third step: Response.
After careful consideration a response is in order. Silence acts as an implicit admission that the evidence for the proposition was “unanswerable”, or, in other words, the evidence supported the proposition the proponent offered the evidence in affirmation of and the opponents had no arguments to counter it. If such should be the case, the better more forthright alternative to silence (ignoring the evidence) is to state what weight, if any, the evidence should be given.
But I see that other readers did not, as R. Gates has been responded to a plenty.
My response is that it is too early to tell as ice extent was a minor deviation from normal.
This graph is interesting.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi_ice.png
Climate Quiz
What is the relationship between this, and the quote by Dr. Brooks in Climate Through the Ages (1950) pp. 286-287?
The weather of one year differs from that of another year, the weather of one decade from that of another decade ; why should not the climate of one century differ from that of another century ?
jorgekafkazar wrote:
> Warmists made the claim that reduced ice area would lower
> the net albedo of the Earth and create a tipping point. They said it,
> and they’re stuck with it.
Obviously reduced ice area decreases albedo. It might create a tipping point or it might not — the science of tipping points is not yet that rigorous, and no scientist is making hard claims about them.
In any case, your comment is irrelevant to the discussion at hand, which is: is the Arctic ocean warming or not? If you want to measure that via ice, you need to consider the total volume of ice, not just its surface area. It’s very relevant that the yearly ice is getting younger, ie thinner.
If you want to drive across a lake, do you care only if there is ice on the surface. Or do you also care about how thick it is?
DirkH wrote:
> Amonst others the video says that a decline of sea ice area is
> relevant due to that albedo stuff.
Of course it’s relevant with respect to the albedo. But that is a _feedback_ effect. The direct effects shows that, overall, the Arctic continues to melt. A few years of increased Arctic albedo is hardly enough of a forcing to overcome all the other existing anthropogenic forcings that exist.
Let’s say you freeze a glass of water. Now take it out of the freezer. If all the ice melts except for a thin surface piece, would you conclude that overall the room is warmer or cooler than the freezer?
David Appell (15:33:14):
“It’s very relevant that the yearly ice is getting younger, ie thinner.”
Do you have a credible source for that? Because it appears that Arctic ice is growing substantially, as pwl posted above:
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi_ice.png
…the Catlin crew’s assertions notwithstanding.
Invariant wrote:
> What is the relationship between this, and the quote by Dr. Brooks in
> Climate Through the Ages (1950) pp. 286-287?
>
> The weather of one year differs from that of another year, the
> weather of one decade from that of another decade ; why should
> not the climate of one century differ from that of another century ?
Of course the climate varies naturally. No climate scientist has ever said it does not. (Indeed, they are the ones who has discovered and detailed this.
But the relevant question is: what happens when _new_, nonnatural forcings enter the picture? What is the cumulative effect of NATURAL + MANMADE forcings?
Left alone, a child on a moving swing will eventually come to rest. But a swing that also receives pushes from the child’s father will not necessarily come to rest.
David Appell (15:33:14) : “…the science of tipping points is not yet that rigorous, and no scientist is making hard claims about them.”
Yes they have.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,686697-8,00.html
Smokey wrote:
>> “It’s very relevant that the yearly ice is getting younger, ie thinner.”
> Do you have a credible source for that?
See the sources in the animation given at
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2010/04/animation-of-decreasing-arctic-ice.html
> Because it appears that
> Arctic ice is growing substantially, as pwl posted above:
No, it does not. It appears that the _area_ of the sea ice is growing in the last year or two. It does not say anything about the volume.
Also, be sure to read this paper:
Kwok, R., G. F. Cunningham, M. Wensnahan, I. Rigor, H. J. Zwally, and D. Yi (2009), Thinning and volume loss of the Arctic Ocean sea ice cover: 2003–2008, J. Geophys. Res., 114, C07005, doi:10.1029/2009JC005312.
It’s abstract is given here:
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2009/07/arctic-sea-ice-decreasing-in-volume.html
Love that one too. 🙂 All my students get a copy of it in their “deprogramming package”.
/dr.bill
I see David Appell is commenting; I recognize the name as he’s from my neck of the woods.
Apparently, the turn of public opinion has had an effect as he seems less conclusionary than when I read his comments in the past.
Welcome aboard.
Steve Goddard (13:03:24) :
NZ Willy (12:43:30) :
A simple geology lesson on the sun and the seasons:
Amino Acids in Meteorites (16:03:03) :
opps…
geography, not geology
Submarines at the North Pole in March, 1959 and again in 1963 show varying conditions from patchy open water to a couple of feet.
So, no, I don’t see anything going on right now that is really catastrophic with ice thickness.
This is a stupid metric to be concerned about. Sea ice already crossed into the “normal” zone at the beginning of March. This AGW icon has fallen. End of discussion.
I guess it depends on how you look at it.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100303_Figure3.png
Of course the main measure of interest in ice mass.
Phil. (12:10:15) :
In part because of data (incl. submarine) from the likes of Maslowski such as shown here:
http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/Maslowski_Page_16.jpg
ICESAT data since then has shown a continued decline in thickness at a slightly slightly faster rate since 2004. So despite hedging of bets etc. the data still points to around that time. With the declining thickness the rate of drift would tend to increase too.
Phil, is there a spreadsheet of this data? The seasonality of the sea ice thickness measure looks different at the end of the chart than at the beginning. In 1985 and 1986 for example, the ice thickness increases during the year to nearly 2.7 metres at the ice minimum in September. There is a mistake in this model.
R. Gates (09:38:16) : Funny, I seem to recall that advocates made rather a big fuss over the 2007 minimum. That too was a “blip” not a trend, it should be clear by now. So why exactly is it that you think such sanctimony is justified? It seems to me that noting that Arctic ice is not going away quite so quickly as some suggested it would is worthwhile.
Not to mention that, unless my eyes deceive me, we hit maximum pretty late in the year, so I don’t exactly see how, by parsing over a handful of days, you think that Rush was wrong.
Oh, I forgot, the left hates him so much that even if he was accurate to within 1.0*10^-99 , he’d still be “wrong”.
Anthony.
“Nature is just laughing at all of us.”.
Yep! Sun’s up!
Best regards, suricat.
As springtime goes on…IPCC, Al “Baby”(aka “ElGordo”), JH “Coal trains”, CRU aka “Climate Gate” Jones, XXX novels writer “Patchy”(aka “Train engineer”), et al. should be preparing all their paraphernalia to scare to death innocent people of the whole world, next summer, in their final attack before Mexico´s next jamboree, so beware!
The funding for NSIDC and JAXA come from the same place, national governments of developed countries who put global interests (control) ahead of national interests (ie, the citizens, not the national elite who have global interests) .
Satellite measurements are all converted to data using algorithms that can be tweaked for good reasons, or not so good reasons.
“Japan’s Cabinet has endorsed a climate-protection draft law today (march 12)that would cap industrial emissions and thrust the second-biggest economy into the $125 billion market for trading carbon credits.”
1+1 +1= 3
This AGW fraud is global in scope. Think big, they do.
The absence of direct evidence is not disproof of a plausible hypothesis.
Of course, all these old records will soon be meaningless.
In the continuing effort to save the dangerously endangered polar bears and stave off the great calamitously catastrophic permafrost melting, they are about to deploy the massive steel cables across the straits alongside Greenland that will catch the ice before winds blow it out of the Arctic waters. The expected massive ice buildup is also expected to stop and possibly reverse the Greenland glacier ice melt, thus saving the Maldives from drowning in devastatingly sudden sea level rises.
So soon they will have to start constructing a brand new dataset that documents the new precipitous decline in line with the climate models.
Quite a bargain too on that project, will only cost $349.68 billion of someone else’s money…
Apparently in climate circles “average” doesn’t mean what it does everywhere else. If it was “average”, each year’s extent would be folded into the “average” line. Using an arbitrarily chosen “baseline” is ridiculous, no matter what it shows.
The assumption seems to be that they are showing changes caused by AGW. The reality is not even close. What they are showing is that the last few years are the trough and their cherry picked baseline was a peak. I’m pretty sure they’ll change the methodology once we have a few years that match or exceed the baseline.
It’s a “clever trick” by nature.
David Appell (15:47:50) : Of course the climate varies naturally.
You did not answer the quiz, you gave a good answer to another question!
In all probability, the severe fluctuations in the area of sea ice in all the graph lines are the result of measurement error.
CodeTech (17:03:35),
Exactly right. As David Appell’s abstract shows, the paper is, in it’s own words, simply an estimate. Coming from GISS, the paper in question should probably be taken with a grain of salt:
“We present our best estimate of the thickness and volume of the Arctic Ocean ice cover…”
In addition, that paper is getting old. It recounts 2005 – 2009 ice extent. We are discussing 2010 events here, which show a large recovery in Arctic ice.
Bill Illis (16:32:08) : “In 1985 and 1986 for example, the ice thickness increases during the year to nearly 2.7 metres at the ice minimum in September. There is a mistake in this model.”
Intuitively it makes sense. At the ice minimum, only the thicker multiyear ice should remain, so with good average thickness. Between seasons, the average thickness is lower because of large areas covered by thin ice. Intuitively speaking.
Is this NSIDC graph using a running average and not plotting actual daily figures?
If so, why does it not state that on their graph?
And why on earth use a running average? Please would everybody stop manipulating data if at all possible. I want to see actual figures that don’t change in a few days, as these ones have just done.
Amino Acids in Meteorites (16:03:03) :
Mr Amino, thanks for the repetition!
It is indeed a very nice representation. Ah, youtube is great.
Jees R Gates, Why’d ya have to go and spoil it? I was starting to like ya:
I could generally care less about the political and other social commentary that goes on here, and I would think a “spammer” would really care about that sort of rot…
Rot? There is a very significant political and social dimension to all of this. You do realise that, yeah?
Rot indeed!
I think we shouldn’t get excited. Remember that our averages are very short-term. If we had a 100 or 200 year average, it would be a little more valuable. But since we don’t, it doesn’t mean much if the arctic ice area and arctic ice extent pass some imaginary “normal” line.
We have no reliable data that shows where the ice was 100, 200, and 500 years ago. Without that data, we can easily obsess over perceived abnormal levels that could be a return to longer-term norms.
Yes indeed, nature is laughing at us. Most people, especially the AGW alarmists can’t see the wood from the trees. If one stands back a little and looks at the history of climate change for our planet, one can only come to the conclusion that climate does indeed change and the current changes are nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, compared to many historical periods, current changes are far more lethargic. Exaggerations by AGW alarmists in particular are so full of themselves. They really should be made either to prove their case beyond any reasonable doubt (which they haven’t as yet) or shut up. If they continue to spread their exaggerations they then should be charged with at least disturbing the peace, probably charged with fraud, and possibly put behind bars.
NZ Willy (15:26:29) :
What I said is the text below, which is correct.
Yeah…That’s definitely censored. Do y’all really think that the NSIDC which is a huge enforcer of Glo-bull warming is going to show an above average ice extent on their graphs? They wouldn’t dare! Lol.
Mooloo (15:11:29) :
Since you deliberately ignore the fact that AGW is not a scientific Theory, then as Manfred points out, you are just spamming the thread for your own amusement.
This sort of trolling in reverse is entirely unnecessary.
R. Gates is allowed to post here. He is polite. He offers reasoned argument. He does not flame. Really your only problem can be that he doesn’t agree with you.
If only the rest of the AGW crowd were like him.
There are plenty of “sceptics” here who are far less reasoned. Some verging on loopy. Have a crack at them instead, as they do the sceptic cause no end of damage with their ravings.
—————————————
Some verging on loopy?
Is that ‘polite’, to say that?
Words like ‘rot’ and ‘loopy’ are not helpful, or welcome, in my view.
jaymam (17:19:47) :
Is this NSIDC graph using a running average and not plotting actual daily figures?
If so, why does it not state that on their graph?
And why on earth use a running average? Please would everybody stop manipulating data if at all possible. I want to see actual figures that don’t change in a few days, as these ones have just done.
–
REPLY: Thanks for bringing this up! I’ve also wondered why the sea ice extent map shows the “Median,” rather than the “Mean”:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_daily_extent_hires.png
Wouldn’t it be more accurate to compare extent to the historical mean, as the graph shows?
Peter of Sydney wrote:
> If one stands back a little and looks at the history of climate
> change for our planet, one can only come to the conclusion
> that climate does indeed change and the current changes
> are nothing out of the ordinary
a) today’s climate changes _are_ out of the ordinary, in that the natural factors present in recent decades cannot explain them. No calculation or model ever proposed by “skeptics” explains them. Climate models explain them when anthropogenic factors are taken into account. (This is shown in detail in the IPCC 4AR WG1 Ch 9 FAQ 9.2 Fig 1, p. 703 (bottom three graphs), http://tinyurl.com/27ocvp ).
b) It’s not today’s changes that are really the problem. It’s the projected changes that might well come from the GHGs we have already committed to the atmosphere, and from the fact that we are doing essentially nothing to combat the problem, or plan to combat it.
Don’t worry AGW alarmists, the Times has it covered in their article (as previously referenced by contributor SandyinDerby).
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7086746.ece
“Scientists emphasise that the regrowth of ice in the Arctic and the fierce US blizzards are natural variations in weather which have little relevance for long-term climate change.”
Steve Goddard (17:47:19) : “What I said is the text below, which is correct. … ‘At 70N, the sun is now almost 25 degrees above the horizon.’ ”
25 degrees is its current daily high point, so daily mid-height is about 13 degrees. My point is, the Sun is not yet making a big impact, especially when overcast (as our Catlin friends said, “glorious sun”, when at last they got some).
Peter, your glib statements about putting scientists “behind bars” is just whistling past the graveyard on your part. If you want a glimpse of what’s in store for fossil-fueled disinformation lackeys, check out what happened during the liberation of Paris in the heat of August 1944.
For those who don’t know the history, many Nazi collaborators were dragged out into the streets and publicly humiliated … or worse.
Shorn Women of the 1944 Liberation
The lucky [snip] will expire of natural causes before the day of reckoning arrives. I’m only stating the obvious.
.
[Posted for entertainment value. ~dbs]
Craig Moore wrote:
>> David Appell (15:33:14) : “…the science of tipping points is
>> not yet that rigorous, and no scientist is making hard claims about them.”
> Yes they have.
> http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,686697-8,00.html
No, they haven’t.
First of all, the 2C target is not based strictly on concerns about tipping points. Nor it is a scientific target. It’s more a target based on a vast assay of the situation, the projected future, technology, and politics. There is nothing very “scientific” about it.
Mother Nature says, “April Fools!”
Not really on topic but I’ve lost the tips bar so I’ll say it here
I’d like to introduce the skeptics here to John O’Sullivan (just to quote from his bio the first para)
John O’Sullivan was born in 1961 in Berkshire, England, of immigrant Irish parents. As an accredited academic, John taught and lectured for over twenty years at schools and colleges in the east of England before moving to the United States. As an analytical commentator, O’Sullivan has published over 100 major articles worldwide. In the U.S. his work features in the ‘National Review,’ America’s most popular and influential magazine for Republican/conservative news, commentary and opinion
John has a legal background and used to write interesting articles for Climategate.com. He is a skeptic. He has an easy to understand style and adds humour when appropriate. He is currently writing for suite101.com. and relies on hits to keep him going. I urge the skeptics here to add his space on their favourites bar so you can check on his latest; here’s the link http://international-environmental-affairs.suite101.com/article.cfm/acid-oceans-due-undersea-volcanoes-not-humans
you can get access to all his articles from his bio
Ah, I did not realize that NSIDC is a five day average. Handy info to have. I imagine we’ll get their April report now next week.
David Appell: “While sea ice extent is higher than usual, ice VOLUME is not; and that’s the relevant factor as far as warming goes.”
REALLY? So if IR downwell from Co2 was causing melting, would we expect the ice to shrink and melt at the top or from underneath where you claim it is important to look? Hint: How far can IR radiation penetrate water or ice?
If IR radiation downwell was relevant here, why is the ice cover growing rapidly near the surface?
Chuck Wiese
Winds are driven by pressure differentials, temperatures can be one of the drivers that change pressures, but it is not a one edged sword. That delta T could be due to cooling, causing a differential in temperature and pressure.
Cooling due to evaporation (and resulting density changes) is the driver of out flow winds from thunderstorms, and heating due to release or latent heat of condensation and freezing drive the up drafts.
Wind can be caused by either heating or cooling, it is the change in relative air density, and pressure between two points that drive the winds.
You have to allow for the possibility that those winds are driven by cooling as well as heating.
Larry
Smokey, I love your posts (and your vast library of clickable charts), but it is really picayune to hector R. Gates because he dignifies AGW as a ‘theory’, rather than an ‘hypothesis’ or a ‘conjecture’, or for that matter, a ‘wild-eyed fantasy’. There really are no understandings of these terms that are both (a) hard-and-fast and (b) universally accepted.
It doesn’t matter whether AGW is a ‘theory’ or a ‘conjecture’, or some collation of propositions that partake of both. What matters is whether AGW best explains the facts on the ground (and in the air, and in the sea) as we learn them, according to time-tested methods of science.
As far as I can see, it fails miserably. Whether that makes it a lousy conjecture or a worse theory is really immaterial. What matters is that it is wrong.
/Mr Lynn
AGW theories total collapse!
The gulf stream were slowing down……WRONG!
Antarctic ice melting…………………………WRONG!
Arctic ice in a “death spiral…………………WRONG!
The earth is warming…………………………WRONG!
More severe storms and hurricanes……..WRONG!
More flooding…………………………………..WRONG!
The sealevels are raisng more rapidly…WRONG!
Glaciers melting faster than previous….WRONG!
Amazonas……………………………………….WRONG!
Kilimanjaro………………………………………WRONG!
Dutch area under water……………………..WRONG!
Scientific consensus about global W/co2…Thats more a joke??? WRONG!
Winter snow a thing of he past…. another joke!!! WRONG!
“Barbecue summer” …………………………another joke!!! WRONG!
There will be a hotspot in the atmospfere…………………………….WRONG!
When co2 inreases warming accours…. WRONG!
African harvests………………………………………………………………..WRONG!
Polarbears dying by global warming……a pure lie by WWF………WRONG!
Low summer ice extent arctic 2007 =global warming……………..WRONG!
Mediaval coooler than today ……oh yeah? say that to the vikings and the 400 published papers on the matter……an embarrasing intellectual insult..WRONG!
The hockeystick…….falsification in its bluntest form………………..WRONG!!!
How can anybody still belive in this crapscience??? On drugs???
R.Gates (and anyone else so inclined) please stop throwing out the word ‘consensus’ without defining who the consenting group is. That word has been so often used and misused in all things related to global warming that it’s meaningless. I speak for myself but undoubtedly there are others who see the word ‘consensus’ and automatically conclude the speaker is trying to shore up a weak argument. We’re well aware of the type of consensus coming from the climate scientists working for the IPCC.: they had a consensus to actively silence any voices that questioned AGW.
I’d like to point out that the animation used in this post is Dave Beal’s, not mine.
As to the subject of this post, I’m glad that there’s a reasonable explanation for the apparent adjustments.
There are no measurements of average sea ice thickness for the whole Arctic,–especially going back to the start of the satellite data for sea ice surface. However that may be, there certainly must be a direct relation between total ice cover and total ice *volume*, I should think. The more ice cover there is, the more ice volume there is. Unless you believe that an increase in ice cover causes the older ice to get thinner as well.
The “thinner ice” argument seems to be brought up only when ice cover goes up. I suggest that the “thicker ice” argument be brought up when ice cover goes down, since the remaining ice must be thicker on average, it being concentrated on higher latitudes.
In any case, since no real data exists for average ice thickness that is not heavily dependent on modeling games, the argument is clearly a fall back safety net. The next step in this fall back process is “ocean acidification,” which is even harder to measure with any historical depth than ice thickness.
Global sea ice is virtually unchanged since measurements began in 1979, and attributing the insignificant changes to any particular cause is a guessing game not worth paying the slightest attention to.
Did this really happen? “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! /He chortled in his joy.” But alas, I fear we should not yet chortle. Even as we speak the heads of finance in the Western World are meeting in London, planning resurrect in Bonn this summer the faltering financial scams based on apocalyptic ‘global warming’.
The skeptics have won a battle or two, but the alarmists have vast resources and large armies at their command. It won’t be over until they admit defeat, or (more likely) are driven from power by an outraged and overtaxed public. Where’s our vorpal blade?
/Mr Lynn
.
R. Gates (13:38:43) :
>>I have admitted several times that I am only 75% convinced that AGWT is correct.
If you are only 75% certain then you are by definition skeptical. All you are arguing over is a matter of degrees. I’m only 2% certain that AGWT is correct but whether you like it or not you are closer to me than to Phil Jones who is 100% certain and admits to no chance of being wrong.
Perhaps you should stop addressing others as skeptics and start with something like “We skeptics…”. Embrace your skepticism.
>>I could generally care less about the political and other social commentary that goes on here,
That’s a shame. If you had been following this theory since it’s inception you would know that at the core it has always been more about politics and social commentary than science. I would have thought that obvious when the emails were exposed and the raw manipulation of the peer review process was exposed. Without political support, this theory would never have gotten off the ground and would have gone the way of the dodo years ago.
I’m enjoying watching honest scientists who have been slimed and muzzled for years batter the consensus of AGW but truthfully it really doesn’t need some of the complexity that people are using to destroy it. Once the curtain was pulled back on the methods and shoddy science behind this scam, much like the Wizard of Oz, the game was over. AGW supporters have not responded with calm, logical presentations of their data and methods but just the opposite, more hiding, more shrillness, more relying on their political masters who believe that islands can capsize for cover. The only death spiral we are witnessing is the slow but inexorable decline in the belief of AGW. Unlike sea ice, it is unlikely to rebound.
You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.
Mr Lynn (18:37:07),
You’re right, I over reacted. Not everyone thinks words are important. Next time I’ll try to be nicer to Ms Gates. Thanks to you & Mooloo for the feedback.
Plenty of shakin’ going on is So. Calif/Baja Calif.
The fact is, as Dendro Ed Cook so eloquently pointed out in the UEA Emails, we know virtually nothing with any certainty of climate variablility >100 years. So there’s no way anyone can say that modern climate is out of the ordinary (and you’d have to define “ordinary” in any case). And the point of Climate Audit’s findings largely shows that the proxies for past temperatures are wildly inconsistent. One has to do some extreme cherry-picking to get what you want.
Slightly OT however, I was fortunate to have a chat with a young man last night while at some friends celebrating Easter who was convinced Arctic/Antarctic ice was melthing and that AGW was as real as his soccer desires. He kept using the word “believe” when talking about “global warming” and “climate change”, which to me implies factless faith, and was all due to C02 emissions etc (We both agreed that “cleaning up” consumption was a good thing). I asked where he was getting his “information”. School was the answer. Just out of interest I then asked him how much CO2 he thought was in the air. He said about 40%, according to his teachers. That worried me a bit, but was not a surprise really. He was quite shocked when I said the actual concentration of CO2 was only 0.0385%, or as we say here in Aus, 9 10ths of bugger all!
This is what is being taught in schools in Aus.
David Appell (18:17:44)
I agree, except those claims about the 2C degrees were made by scientists as their official offering of their professional craft. You correctly state such claims were bogus, however that did not stop those scientists from delivering the expected answer for the politicians. As the article I quoted stated: “To avoid even greater damage to human beings and nature, the scientists warned, the temperature on Earth could not be more than two degrees Celsius higher than it was before the beginning of industrialization.”
That is capturing the essence of a tipping point. Therefore, I cannot accept you original statement (“…the science of tipping points is
not yet that rigorous, and no scientist is making hard claims about them”) being valid.
note to moderators: Is there a way to have a review feature added before posting a comment? I didn’t mean to bold the last paragraph.
[Reply: Fixed. Sorry, but WordPress does not provide a preview function. ~dbs, mod.]
“Back on April 2nd, it looked like Arctic Sea ice would cross the “normal” line.”
Depends which normal you normaly use!
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
Jeff Alberts (19:07:47) :
I agree that station records < 130 years are insufficient to show what is really going on with climate, local, regional or otherwise.
However, there are a fair number of such station records, and they need to be kept up. Also, there are plenty of stations nearing 90 years that need to be looked after, and in some case, put back on line. You don't want to be saying 40 years from now how much we regretted not staying with it.
In the current situation, with stations of record being shut down or moved too far, the institutions are heading in the wrong direction 3/4 through the race.
This is no time for quitting.
David Appell: “I don’t know of anyone who is claiming that ice is being melted directly by infrared radiation, but by warmer air and ocean water.”
This demonstrates a lack of understanding radiation basics. IR transfer by CO2 at LTE does not warm the atmosphere, infact the upper troposphere is cooled by the 15 micron emission reaching a peak at upper tropospheric and stratospheric temperatures. Kirchhoff’s law holds in the troposphere and what is absorbed by Co2 becomes the IR downwell to the surface. Theoretically, it is the downwell that reduces surface cooling and allows the SURFACE to warm. ( although I seriously question the importance of this with the window and the bulk of H20 absorption being at shorter
wavelengths ) The only way the troposphere is warmed is by dry and moist convection from water vapor, as well as conduction from the surface, although that is a minor process.
If Co2 radiation is contributing to arctic melting, then it makes no sense that ice growth as we are seeing would be possible as CO2 continues to increase in the atmosphere.
Why is this Appell guy trotting out all this old nonsense.
“No calculation or model ever proposed by “skeptics” explains them. [Only]Climate models explain them when anthropogenic factors are taken into account.”
The so called “explanation” is nothing but therorizing in an environment of vast unknowns and many errors and does nothing to provided evidence of AGW.
Yet Appell appears thoroughly convinced of all things AGW.
I see he also picks and chooses what to respond to. Leaving the more cogent and debunking responses to his claims unanswered.
Apparently he reads what he wants to read.
His preference for truncating a conversation when it becomes problematic for his case is common practice among the more aggresive and fanatic warmers.
Every time I look at the animated chart above with the frisky blue line, the imagine of nurse Ratched threatening with a cold spoon comes to mind.
David Appell (18:17:44) : “First of all, the 2C target is not based strictly on concerns about tipping points. Nor it is a scientific target. It’s more a target based on a vast assay of the situation…”
More accurately yet, it’s based on a half-vast assay of the situation from Herr Dr. Schnellhubris.
David Appell (15:33:14) : “In any case, your comment is irrelevant to the discussion at hand, which is: is the Arctic ocean warming or not? If you want to measure that via ice, you need to consider the total volume of ice, not just its surface area. It’s very relevant that the yearly ice is getting younger, ie thinner.
No, the discussion at hand is the Arctic ice extent.
“If you want to drive across a lake, do you care only if there is ice on the surface. Or do you also care about how thick it is?”
A false analogy. Nor is the thinner ice established as factual.
R. Gates (09:38:16) : I love the anthropomorphism…”nature is laughing at us…”
Maybe the formal reference is from Einstein – “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.”
Steve Oregon (20:13:28) :
I guess he doesn’t know this about climate models:
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
On the credibility of climate predictions (peer-reviewed)
Abstract
“Geographically distributed predictions of future climate, obtained through climate models, are widely used in hydrology and many other disciplines, typically without assessing their reliability. Here we compare the output of various models to temperature and precipitation observations from eight stations with long (over 100 years) records from around the globe. The results show that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible, whereas a common argument that models can perform better at larger spatial scales is unsupported.”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/4364173/On-the-credibility-of-climate-predictions
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
and I guess he doesn’t know about this:
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions (peer-reviewed)
Abstract
“We examine tropospheric temperature trends of 67 runs from 22 Climate of the 20th Century model simulations and try to reconcile them with the best available updated observations (in the tropics during the satellite era). Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs. These conclusions contrast strongly with those of recent publications based on essentially the same data. Copyright © 2007 Royal Meteorological Society”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/904914/A-comparison-of-tropical-temperature-trends-with-model-predictions
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
and, he doesn’t know about this, I guess:
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations (peer-reviewed)
The warm/rainy phase of a composited average of fifteen oscillations is accompanied by a net reduction in radiative input into the ocean-atmosphere system, with longwave heating anomalies transitioning to longwave cooling during the rainy phase. The increase in longwave cooling is traced to decreasing coverage by ice clouds, potentially supporting Lindzen’s ‘‘infrared iris’’ hypothesis of climate stabilization. (i.e., clouds have a negative feedback)
http://blog.acton.org/uploads/Spencer_07GRL.pdf
According to Accuweather, and Eurekalert, Danish scientists claim that algae and plants play a critical role in creating clouds.
“The reason for the lack of clouds back in earth’s childhood can be explained by the process by which clouds form. This process requires chemical substances that are produced by algae and plants, which did not exist at the time.
The Danish scientists were trying to explain why the Earth was not covered by ice around 4 million years ago, when the Sun was 25-30% fainter than it is now. Their explanation is that the lack of algae and plants, prior to the origin of life on Earth, reduced cloud formation and therefore allowed the faint Sunlight to reach the surface and warm the Earth.
Prior to this new theory, scientists had explained the lack of ice as due to CO2 concentrations as high as 30%. New data indicates CO2 was less than 0.1%, only three or four times current levels.
I think this finding is important in the global warming debate. Greater cloud cover has a net cooling effect. Chemical substances released by the Biosphere have a positive effect on the formation of clouds. Therefore, warming of the surface that increased algae and plants would release more of these chemical substances and create more cloud cover, thereby moderating the warming. (The Biosphere effect would be in addition to the increased water vaporization due to warmer surface temperatures which would also increase cloud cover.)
Has the Biosphere has evolved to self-regulate and stabilize surface temperatures by modulating cloud cover? If so, this would explain a rational, science-based “Gaia” effect.
[Reply: Fixed. Sorry, but WordPress does not provide a preview function. ~dbs, mod.]
Then why do other wordpress blogs have it?
Example is JoNova’s blog
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/04/greenpeace-are-coming-we-know-where-you-live/#comments
You can ask her about Steve LeMaster who fixed it up for her.He used to be the owner of the forum I now own.
REPLY: If you operate a blog on your own server, you can add such plugins. WUWT operates on wordpress.com as does climateaudit.org. They don’t allow the preview plugin for some reason. – Anthony
[revised to change “million” to “billion”] According to Accuweather, and Eurekalert, Danish scientists claim that algae and plants play a critical role in creating clouds.
“The reason for the lack of clouds back in earth’s childhood can be explained by the process by which clouds form. This process requires chemical substances that are produced by algae and plants, which did not exist at the time.
The Danish scientists were trying to explain why the Earth was not covered by ice around 4 billion years ago, when the Sun was 25-30% fainter than it is now. Their explanation is that the lack of algae and plants, prior to the origin of life on Earth, reduced cloud formation and therefore allowed the faint Sunlight to reach the surface and warm the Earth.
Prior to this new theory, scientists had explained the lack of ice as due to CO2 concentrations as high as 30%. New data indicates CO2 was less than 0.1%, only three or four times current levels.
I think this finding is important in the global warming debate. Greater cloud cover has a net cooling effect. Chemical substances released by the Biosphere have a positive effect on the formation of clouds. Therefore, warming of the surface that increased algae and plants would release more of these chemical substances and create more cloud cover, thereby moderating the warming. (The Biosphere effect would be in addition to the increased water vaporization due to warmer surface temperatures which would also increase cloud cover.)
Has the Biosphere has evolved to self-regulate and stabilize surface temperatures by modulating cloud cover? If so, this would explain a rational, science-based “Gaia” effect.
R Gates: What exactly, is the “normal” global sea ice average extent?
Or do you think that a 21 year average from 1979-2000 on a planet that is approx. 5.5 billion years old is a large enough sample?
21/5500000000…. Think about it.
In response to many posts:
Sorry if the use of the word “rot” has insulted some, regarding my own lack of caring about the political side of the AGW debate. It simply does not interest me in this particular venue. Trust me, in my work-a-day life, I get plenty of politics, and you’d probably be surprised where I stand on issues. Be that as it my, I come here for the scientific discussions, really want and need to get a break from the politics, and simply was responding to the suggestion that I am a “spammer”.
And Smokey, I’m here for the long haul. I won’t go away just because you think I should, and I’ll keep calling AGW a theory in the general sense of the word, and I think the meaning is quite clear. You can give me all the reasons you want for me not using the word, but I think you are splitting hairs and simply don’t like the fact that I’m one of the few AGW “warmists” who won’t go away when challenged with what I consider nonsense.
Ice! Ice! My kingdom for some ice!
For a movement hellbent on change (the progressives), they sure don’t walk the talk when it comes to the Earth. They are so sure of what the Earth’s climate should be (though none will tell us), that it can not “change”. They want to look at a piece of ice and proclaim that if anything happens to that ice, we are all going to perish.
Here is what I say. Find and use all of the energy possible to help make life work for your nation. Allow prosperity and intellect within the society. Have faith that a new energy source will be discovered before society folds. If you worry; do not have children. We (people) have as much right to this planet as Ebola, AIDS, or bubonic have. But stop herding the people. Leave that for cattle and sheep. We are, after all, smarter then they are.
Thanks for bringing this to Anthony’s attention in Tips & Notes, Dave.
It has produced a very interesting thread.
(Tips & Notes. Dave Beal (07:45:06) 🙂
R. Gates – continue to post on on this site ; I find your comments to be an interesting challenge to my beliefs. I do not consider you to be a spammer, but someone who, like the rest of us, is looking for the truth. I may not agree with your views, but I am willing to hear them. cheers.
Climate “averages” are usually based on some 30 year period.
Now that the sea ice data started with satellite observations in 1979 have a 30 year dataset, some sites are starting to use those averages:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
You’re right, in some sense this “average” is arbitrary.
But in another sense, non-cyclic climate trends are significant, especially if they were forecast as the early stages of a dangerous century-scale planetary climate change. Since the average human life expectancy is 67.2 years these days, climate change on time scales of 50,000 years, or 50 million, will not get much attention or worry. But for people with children and grandchildren, or corporations and countries looking ahead to the 22nd century, time scales of 100 years is serious.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20091005_Figure3.png
People can explain a 30 year trend like this differently (part of a 60 year ocean cycle ? An unusual statistical fluke ? Measurement/analysis errors ? Changes in wind patterns because of deforestation ? Who cares ? ), but it was one of the early (1980’s) climatologist predictions as to what would happen because of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. They don’t get $billions in funding to study this stuff because of their good looks.
If the trendline were to reverse, that would be a big surprise to many climatologists. Some say they expect the trendline to nosedive down (nonlinear), because of endgame effects in the Arctic (ice thinning, faster summer heating with low albedo water vs. high albedo ice/snow , methane outgassing from permafrost melting, whatever). That’s the basis for those “ice free in the Arctic summers by 2013” predictions.
Could it drop 3 million sq km of sea ice area lower than summer 2007 that quickly ?
Very few scientists say yes.
I am not convinced that there is no fudging here. On the amplified animated gif, which you see by clicking on the gif, if you put the point of your cursor on the end point on March 31, then on April 1, the line has dropped by one pixel. Okay, let’s assume some kind of rounding error is to blame. But then, on April 2, it drops by yet another pixel. No kind of rounding error can take you from N to N-2. If the graph is done automatically by computer, this just cannot happen (assuming there is a data point each day, which there is). So no, I cannot agree that this has not been fudged, unless someone can explain clearly a mathematical mechanism – any mechanism – that results in rounding skipping an integer.
The same pattern repeats for the pixel appearing on April 1. The April 2 pixel is the maximum point of the graph – on April 2. But on April 3 the point has dropped below March 31, which now becomes the (lower than it was on March 31!) maximum. The curve resembles most a piece of rope being pushed forwards and flopping over, it doesn’t have any hallmarks of a record of fixed historical events at all.
I have prepared a modified graphic showing all four curves for easy comparison:
http://peacelegacy.org/articles/was-data-manipulated
To me this has fraud written all over it. BTW, if anyone thinks WUWT is just a “shill for Big Oil” or some such, Anthony’s reticence to point the finger at this strange sequence of graphics should change their minds.
What we really need is the actual data – no, not as it can be downloaded today, but as it was on the server at the same time each plot was put up. But unless someone has done this, I don’t see how we can trust NSIDC.
R. Gates (09:38:16) :
I love the anthropomorphism…”nature is laughing at us…”
But don’t give up you who are AGW sceptics, it may still cross that barrier. 🙂
REPLY: Actually, the 2009-2010 line is well within one standard deviation of the 1979-2000 average, so for all practical purposes, it has crossed the barrier. 😉
Anthony, considering all the publicity that the NSIDC graphs have had over the past few days, don’t you think they might try to dress up their upcoming report for damage control? The Telegraph story was a killer, and there are tons more online.
We shall see!
Amino Acids in Meteorites (20:54:46) :
“Steve Oregon (20:13:28) :
I guess he doesn’t know this about climate models”
I predict Appell will not reply to your post.
They have declassified US Navy submarine sonar measurements of ice thickness over 38% of the Arctic from about 1975-2000, and ICESat satellite laser altimeter measurements of ice thickness for 2004 to 2009 over 100% of the Arctic (minus the Pole Hole, which is not observable because of the details of the polar orbit).
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/seaice.html
Recent estimates of Arctic Ocean sea ice thickness from satellite altimetry show a remarkable overall thinning of ~0.6 m in ice thickness between 2004 and 2008 (Figure. S4a).
The last ICESat laser failed on 11 October 2009, and the satellite was retired in Feb 2010. The US has plans to launch an ICESat II perhaps in 2015. Europe has plans to launch a similar CryoSat this week (April 8).
Yes, climatologists are very interested in the thickness of ice – too bad the data is relatively recent, or only part of the Arctic. That’s the problem with continual improvements in monitoring the planet’s climate – the best data is the most recent.
Like the article above says, and which is explained here:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/about_images.html
the graph of Arctic sea ice extent is a 5 day moving average.
Daily Sea Ice Extent Graphs
Craig Moore (19:46:44) : note to moderators: Is there a way to have a review feature…
Greasemonkey will add this feature to WUWT if you run Firefox, Craig.
Anthony: This ap takes over the comments box on WUWT and makes it into a fully fledged preview panel.
R Gates,
Could you repost the link you gave to the article about how indigenous tribes have been affected by climate change? I’ve been trying to find where you gave it in a past WUWT posts, and can’t locate it.
I was interested in the third culture it mentioned, which was down in southern Mexico and affected by “unseasonable frosts” or “untimely frosts.”
I was also interested in the Inuit culture mentioned, as I enjoy studying how peoples (such as the Greenland Vikings) have adjusted to changes in the climate.
One thing that has become obvious to me is that “indigenous tribes” tended to live very “close to the edge,” and had a sort of love-hate relationship with nature. A single “bad year,” in terms of weather (or insects or blight,) could reduce the population by more than half, and at times could inspire an entire population to pack up and move.
Until quite recently there was no rescue from outside, or helicopters dropping food. No welfare. No checks in the mail. No UN. No one to blame, unless you were in the mood to blame a neighbor for offending the gods.
Once you start looking at things in terms of hundreds of years, rather than decades, it becomes fairly obvious that “indigenous tribes” don’t remain “indigenous” forever. If nature doesn’t evict them, another tribe comes along and evicts them. The people get told to “move along; nothing to see here,” and become “indigenous” to a new area.
One interesting people to follow are the Goths. They started out around the Baltic, but were driven south to the Caspian, where they formed Caspian Kingdoms which lasted over two hundred years, (as long as the USA has existed.) The Romans warred with them from the west, and unnamed peoples warred with them from the east. Eventually they packed up, likely due to climate change as well as pressure from the east, and headed west, sacking Rome and other European cities, with the Visigoths (West Goths) heading all the way to Spain, and then across the Straits of Gibraltar to Morocco and heading back east nearly to Egypt. In other words, a people “indigenous” to the Baltic wound up “indigenous” to the Sahara.
Sadly, when looking at these mass migrations it is not possible to blame nature alone. Man’s inhumanity to man often plays a large part. It appears in the Cherokee “Trail of Tears” and in Scotland’s “Highland Clearances.” It appears in the Navaho “Long March” and in the “Irish Potato Famine.” It appears in Hitler’s, Stalin’s and Mao’s ways of “relocating” people.
When one has an awareness of how some can dress-up the forced relocation of thousands and even millions in sweet-talk, it is impossible to accept Cap and Trade without a deep sense of unease. After all, I have known environmentalists who strongly believe reducing the worlds population by a couple billion is not only necessary, but urgent.
What is most amazing to me is to hear such people speak with deep concern about “indigenous tribes” one moment, and then of a “population reduction” of two billion the next.
Craig Moore (19:44:10) :
David Appell (18:17:44)
I agree, except those claims about the 2C degrees were made by scientists as their official offering of their professional craft. You correctly state such claims were bogus, however that did not stop those scientists from delivering the expected answer for the politicians. As the article I quoted stated: “To avoid even greater damage to human beings and nature, the scientists warned, the temperature on Earth could not be more than two degrees Celsius higher than it was before the beginning of industrialization.”
The Holocene Optimum and the Eemian interglacial were both before the beginning of industialisation. It would be a big job to get warmer than those times.
Preview panel: Read about it here.
It appears to have been made for Climate Audit, but works fawlessly on WUWT
What would happen when the “normal average” would include the whole time of satellite measurements? My guess is that we would be save in average territory??
Regrards from the Swiss mountains where it is still snowing??
The comment on the standard deviation in above reply, AGAIN show many people do not understnad statistics. Let me EXPLAIN:
the standard deviation is the variability of the population of data points, i.e. it shows the variability of the measurement sequence, which is from 1979 to 2000 . A mere 20 year period!
The thus established shown standard deviation does say nothing, but absolutely NOTHING about the varibaility in ice extent over 100 or even 1000’s of years, hence it is meaninless when used in variability type claims.
NB What’s happend with school levels in the US.. Damn some of you’re guys are stupid.
Caleb (01:16:21) :
What is most amazing to me is to hear such people speak with deep concern about “indigenous tribes” one moment, and then of a “population reduction” of two billion the next.
Welcome to the Court of the Green Queen, where it is mandatory to believe ten contradictory things before breakfast, and words only mean what Her Extremeness says they mean. But don’t bother memorizing the definitions — they’ll have changed before suppertime.
Re: sunsettommy (Apr 4 21:15),
There exists a plug in for Firefox that works and give a preview function to this board. It was developed for Climate Audit and it works here and at Lucia’s.
Go to http://climateaudit.org/ca-assistant/
and follow instructions.
What this provides today:
– Comment ‘Tag’ buttons above the Reply box
– Comment preview (click to toggle between preview/edit modes)
– Replies include thread links; “Paste Link” feature also provided for referencing multiple comments
– Comment sorting and thread enable/disable – new comments always collected together, even if nested!
– Color-coding of newer comments, and/or hiding old comments
– Ability to update to new CA Assistant version within the script (see the Settings popup)
– Works on all Open Science Web Ring blogs
– (new!) Reorganizes “Recent Comments” list to more easily see which topics have been updated
– (new!) Lucia’s blog has faster/better support
– (new!) Hides old comments while retaining their (author/date) context (on RomanM and Lucia’s blogs)
It works.
Reply: It works really well. I strongly recommend it birthday buddy. ~ ctm
Jordan (11:58:08) :
You quoted Vicky Pope of the Met Office:
“The reality is that greenhouse gases are making the world warmer, but it is a mistake to see short-term changes in weather, currents or Arctic ice cover as evidence of this,” Pope said.
Well, that’s a bit rich. I heard her on the BBC Today program about a year ago. She was asked what was the proof of AGW. And her answer was the heat wave in France! Perhaps she should listen to her own advice.
About the ice graph:
I think some people may have missed the real point. It was not curious that the trend might start to flatten or even go down. What was curious was the way this flattening trend seemed to have gone backwards in time.
It’s obvious that if the line went through the long-term trend then it would be of great political significance as well as a victory for the sceptics. The temptation to ‘adjust’ the trend downwards would be enormous.
But I’m not saying that’s what happened. There’s an obvious question: do these backward adjustments occur all the time? It would be really great to see a similar animated graph over a few months. Is that possible? Then it would be easier to judge whether a suspicious and unusual adjustment had occurred just before the line broke through the barrier.
Chris
Seems the NSIDC are still struggling to find words to express how scary a return to normal ice levels could be, or maybe delaying their report a few days in the hope that there will be a sudden melt to save their blushes
David S,
Uh it’s still Easter Sunday Weekend here in the US. Have a little patience. I’m sure the doublespeak will emerge soon enough.
sorry to ask such a silly question:
– most of the images I’ve seen refer to sea ice in terms of concentration or extent. Are the two terms intended to mean the same thing and do either account for concentration in terms of ice depth?
Nansen ice area and ice extent was off line for several days but they still come up now with a major rise above the long term average – and Norwegians invented the arctic didn’t they?
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
4 April 2010
From what I can see the sea ice extent for this time of the year is ahead of all the years since 2002.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Sea ice area seems ‘normal.’
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/ice-area-and-extent-in-arctic
Craig Moore wrote:
> As the article I quoted stated: “To avoid even greater damage to
> human beings and nature, the scientists warned, the temperature
> on Earth could not be more than two degrees Celsius higher than
> it was before the beginning of industrialization. ”
>
> That is capturing the essence of a tipping point.
No, it is not.
A “tipping point” is the point at which a physical system needs no further input to continue to change.
You can rock a canoe back and forth, but as long as it is below some critical angle the canoe won’t tip over. But if the rocking canoe passes a certain angle, it will flip over, regardless of whether you instantly cease your rocking motion or not.
Your quoted statement says nothing about any tipping points. It speculates about risk and damage. It’s like saying we really ought not tip this canoe past 10 degrees, because someone might hit their head on the gunwale or fall out or it will scare the children. That’s very different from saying you should not rock the canoe past some critical angle because the whole thing will tip over.
NZ Willy (18:12:00) :
Arctic ice always starts a rapid decline this time of year, because the sun is getting up high in the sky and is warming temperatures.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
“Long-time baseline”. 21 yrs. Yawn. Worse, so far they have made a conscious decision to not increase the baseline to 2009 and get a 30 year baseline, which they admit is a standard thing to do as 30 years is one of those baseline periods that has traditional useage in science. They claim to be afraid of “confusion” if they change the baseline. Well, it’s pretty clear what “confusion” they are afraid of –for them, “confusion” means “if the comparisons look better, we’ll confuse our message of trying to scare people”. Here we are arguing about whether it is important to be above that line –if it was a 30 yr baseline, it’d already be significantly above that line.
The other reason this is so objectionable, is there is significant reason to think there is a real natural variability cycle of two 30 yr 1/2 cycles making a full 60 yr cycle, and that the start of the satellite age is roughly analgous with the start of the warmer 1/2 of that cycle.
We know there’s some lag in the reaction of the ice pack to changes in climate. It doesn’t happen overnight, it takes years –decades even.
Look at that submarine ice thickness data from the mid 70s to the early 80’s, at the tail end of the last 30 year cool period transitioning into the early part of the warm cycle. You’ll see that it is ramping upwards quickly at that point. Extend the trend it shows backwards and I wonder what you’d get around 1945? Maybe something that looks a lot like 2007? Could be.
But anyway, there are multiple credible reasons why NSIDC should be using a 30 year baseline instead of their “musn’t give skeptics any ammo” decision to stick with the 21 year baseline. Tho they are probably feeling pretty good about their decision right now –because here we are arguing about whether it has any meaning that we are dancing around the higher one they have artificially chosen to stick with, even when they admit the decsion was political rather than scientific.
According to the comments on CA, the plugin doesn’t work with Safari. Do you know if it will work with Camino, which is also a Mozilla product, and which I prefer to Firefox on the Mac?
/Mr Lynn
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/news.aspx?newsId=40
So the catlin picnic
uses a “cool box” which is of course
a heated hot box
to keep samples from freezing–
and they expect the heated samples will
not show any increase in
biological or chemical activity from
the heat–
and they boast about heating the
samples -seeking praise for
imbecility.
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/news.aspx?newsId=40
Anu (22:40:37) : “But in another sense, non-cyclic climate trends are significant especially if they were forecast as the early stages of a dangerous century-scale planetary climate change”
How would one know when the baseline is only 21 years? If one were to project this information onto a graph covering the last 12,000 years how would it look? Not so dramatic? Not so scary? So why is it done this way? See below.
“They don’t get $billions in funding to study this stuff because of their good looks”
They get funding because their published results agree with and help promote the political positions of the fundor.
Thanks Gary Pearse (05:15:43) :
The link explained area, extent, and concentration.
How does a 5-day moving average change this? If they are putting up data for yesterday, then either the five days must be trailing days, because tomorrow hasn’t happened yet and today isn’t complete, or the last few plotted points are not five day averages.
If the data averages five days ending on the day plotted (trailing), then future data can not change the plotted point for a past day, and the graphs shown are fudged. If the last few points are not five day averages, then their description which you quote is incorrect. Either way there’s something amiss.
So let’s look at the paper reference above
> On the credibility of climate predictions (peer-reviewed)
> … Thus local model projections cannot be credible, whereas
> a common argument that models can perform better at larger
> spatial scales is unsupported.”
>
> http://www.scribd.com/doc/4364173/On-the-credibility-of-climate-
> predictions
No climate scientist I know has claimed that today’s climate models work on regional or local scales — indeed, I see this goal as on their To Do list for this coming decade. So the Koutsoyiannis paper (hereafter “Kout”) seems to be a lot of words and charts about something that was not claimed in the first place.
It’s silly to compare models of water resources engineering to global climate models. The former will obviously be much, much simpler than the latter. Climate is an enormously complex phenomenon, and modeling it, with the state of today’s technology, is very very difficult. It is not expected to be accurate on small spatial scales. For example, Kout Table 1 looks at Albany NY, while climate models have a resolution (Kout Table 2) of about 2.5 deg x 2.5 deg. 2.5 degrees on the globe is about 173 miles, so the grid goes from about the NY/Vermont-Canadian border to central NJ. And from Rochester, NY to Boston. 30,000 sq miles. And they choose one station (Albany) as representative?
Likewise, looking at 30-yr averages of one solitary point (Albany) for a grid this large proves nothing.
On the other hand, the long-term, global accuracy of GCMs is discussed in great detail in the IPCC 4AR. Even Hansen’s 1989 climate model for BAU was not that far off, when projected to today. And that was a model run 20 yrs ago on vastly smaller computers with much less climate knowledge.
This is getting afield, anyway. The concern over AGW is that, based on fundamental physics, GHGs warm planets. Climate models concur (as they must), and as far as I know no calculation or model has ever shown anything different. THAT’s what all the big fuss is about, not whether 20-yr old climate models correctly predict the decade-to-decade conditions in Albany NY. Will global temperatures be 2 C in 2100, or 6 C? No ones knows (and, you’ll notice, IPCC composite models have rather large error bands that far out, and the scientists have never claimed otherwise). Could it be 2 C? Perhaps. It could equally well be 6 C. It could be higher. Do you want to just wait and find out? We can’t afford that. 2 C (4 F) would be bad enough. 6 C could well be devastating.
At some point (and we’ve passed this point) this ceases to be a scientific problem and becomes an environmental problem. That is, there is only so much science can currently predict (and this may not necessarily change in the future due to the underlying dynamics of complex PDE equations), and while research certainly needs to be done in that area, we need to accept that there will _always_ be uncertainties with things we don’t know or cannot project. SO WHAT?” GHGs warm planets. We keep emitting GHGs. And, to no one’s surprise, the planet is warming.
-=-=-
The Douglass et al paper was shown to be wrong by Santer et al. This has been discussed all over the Web and you can look this up for yourself:
“Consistency of modelled and observed temperature trends in the tropical troposphere,” International Journal of Climatology,
Volume 28, Issue 13, Date: 15 November 2008, Pages: 1703-1722
B. D. Santer et al.
Besides, Douglass’s strong ideological bent (as evidenced by his op-eds) concerns me.
Slabadang (18:42:24) :
I agree with your list except I think this
The earth is warming…………………………WRONG!
Should have been
The earth is showing Unprecedented warming……WRONG!
Also you missed –
Coral dying from Heat – (actually dying from cold) …..WRONG!
More Animals dying from Heat – (actually dying from cold) …..WRONG!
More Collateral Damage from weather extremes………..WRONG!
US Lakes Drying up…………………………WRONG!
Spring Coming earlier…………………………WRONG!
More Humans dying from Heat – (actually dying from cold) …..WRONG!
Frogs extinct fro AGW – (actually a virus) …..WRONG!
Steve Oregon (23:01:35) :
Amino Acids in Meteorites (20:54:46) :
“Steve Oregon (20:13:28) :
I guess he doesn’t know this about climate models”
I predict Appell will not reply to your post.
Is that a 5 year forecast? Will he still be ‘reply free’ in 5 years? 50? 100? And has that been peer-reviewed?
David Appell (06:36:03) :
The Douglass et al paper was shown to be wrong by Santer
Did he find it in a dark alley?
David Appell (06:36:03) :
Dave, it’s good that you have long comments so we can see how much you know.
David Appell (05:27:14)
The German scientists don’t agree with you. Nor does Dr. Hansen. SeeThe Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/oct/18/bookextracts.books
====================
Now if that is not what those scientists intended, why have they sat silently for over 10 years regarding the 2C tipping point?
A C Osborn (06:44:27) :
The long list of ‘wrong’ won’t phase the believers or those with ulterior motives. Heck, look at Dave Appell; nothing is phasing him.
It was noted in one post that new sea ice in the Bering Sea was 4 to 12 inches, not considered a great thickness, but there, nevertheless. Now, as some of you will know from living in northern climates where you have plenty of snow and ice (though, after this winter, I could almost add Texas to the list), you know of the practice of salting the sidewalk, driveway, even the roads. This is because adding any particulate or object, be it salt, CO2, or the latest cd from Scorpions will “lower” the freezing temperature of the medium, namely water. Actually, what is happening is not that the freezing temp of 32 F has magically been lowered, but the presence of a physical body interferes with the freezing process. But the effect is less than a 2 degree difference. Sea water is salt water, simplistically, though there are many other compounds in their, as well. It is thought that lesser winds in the Bering Sea are allowing the ice to pile up. So, it is wind that is helping to determine the ice cover, as well. But the temps are still cold enough to freeze sea water, which is my point.
Further I would propose that CO2 amounts do not drive the winds, specifically the jet stream. I would also propose that CO2 is incapable of re-emitting it’s absorbed radiation in one direction only, name toward the troposphere. Also, in the process of convection, which is how an air conditioner works, a heated object will not release heat to an object the same temperature or higher than itself but will release to a cooler region or object. This is why a hot air balloon works. The ouput of a burner on a balloon is CO2 and it should be more properly called a hot CO2 balloon. The heated gas causes the balloon to rise until it meets a cooler layer of atmosphere and then it begins to transfer heat, hindered only by the material of the balloon. In fact, you get the balloon to descend by allowing it to cool, with intermittent heating to keep it from cooling too fast.
Couple that with the limited response range for CO2 per density, and there could be no more than a degree or two of warming at its theoretical limits. Most of the calculated warming of CO2 is in the first approx 50 ppm. The calculated load in the atmosphere before the industrial revolution was around 280 ppm, if I remember correctly. Which means that the largest part of the warming is in the natural signal, with or without Man’s output. Any increase is logarithmically smaller and smaller, as in fairly indetectable.
CO2 total load is .038 percent of the total atmosphere. Man’s contribution is, on average, .03 percent of the total carbon load. Which makes Man’s contribution .00113 percent of the total atmosphere. And that .00113 percent is supposed to cause a 10 to 15 F rise?
All a gas does is vary the heat exchange rate until the system reaches equilibrium. This is why a pot of water boils. The water temp is truly controlled by the heat of an external source, such as a stovetop burner. That is analgous to the Sun warming the planet. Or, more accurately, how much other additional radiation reaches the Earth pass the magnetic field provided by the Sun, which varies by the strength of solar flare activity. That is, other sources outside the planet turn the heat up and down, not the gases in our fluid atmosphere.
My bad. I should also add that an air conditioner works by using the Ideal Gas Law. Namely, changing pressure. Gas is pressurized from the compressor and goes to the evaporator coils in the central air handler. Warm air drawn in through the return air plenum is pulled across the cooled evaporator and heat moves from hot to cold. Now, the heated refrigerant gas is pushed along to the outside unit that has condenser coils. The condenser coils are lower in pressure and a gas that goes through a drop in pressure readily gives away its heat as the molecules are now allowed to escape from each other. This heat is transferred to the condenser coils and that blower motor out there (called a condenser motor by HVAC techs) pulls the air that has been heated by the condenser coil giving away its heat away and out to other cooler regions of air. Technically, any air conditioner system is a “heat pump” as all you are ever doing is allowing heat to pass from hot to cold (the law of thermodynamics.)
David Appell (06:36:03) :
Dave,
you did know that Santer is one of the ClimateGate scientists, didn’t you?
David Appell (06:36:03)
Hmmm… on the one hand we have David Appell saying…
“No climate scientist I know has claimed that todays climate models work on regional or local scales indeed, I see this goal as on their To Do list for this coming decade…”
…and on the other we have esteemed climate scientist Heidi Cullen with…
http://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/maps/the_future_of_freezing
???
David Appell, thanks for posting here. The skills needed are really those of a junior high science teacher, since the regulars on this blog do not even know the basics, but you have shown much needed patience and perserverance.
Most won’t listen, since they are mostly older white men, who get their information from Fox, and whose views are set in concrete, but a few will. That makes it worthwhile.
REPLY: Mr Roddy demonstrates the face of environmentalism today, dealing in stereotypes he holds dear and applying it to others he disagrees with. Since he labels WUWT readers as “mostly older white men” I felt it valuable that our readers get a perspective on Mr. Roddy’s claim. Here’s a publicly available photo from another blog of him:
“older white men”, heh.
The blog post that accompanies the photo says:
Climate activist Mike Roddy of Yucca Valley, California, sets sights on powerful global warming movie set in year 2112 A.D.
…
He plans to call the movie “2112”. And he’s very serious and determined.
– Anthony
sustantia8, thanks for the film clip.
Most of the contrarians will be dead or forgotten by the time the everyday evidence of global warming becomes so obvious that it will make their notions sound like comedy pieces. Oops, maybe they already are (google my [snip]). Or, they could be so old that shaving their heads could cause injury. I suggest public dunce caps instead, required to be worn for 30 days.
Anthony, I hope you’ll have a sense of humor about your upcoming appearance in the sequel. I’ll tone down the comeuppances next time.
The graph shows the ice extent right now is well within the normal range for this time of year. But if I want to be a nitpicker I’d have to point out that during the animation the 2010 graph touched the average line somewhere around April 2 to 4, but then pulls away. In other words the ice extent on that data touched the average but a few days later the ice extent on that same day was less by a tiny amount. So they are changing history …again!
Mike (16:21:46) :
Of course the main measure of interest in ice mass.
I’m not 100% sure of that. Clearly it is important but I think another important factor that is often ignored is ice concentration. If the ice is not well concentrated the warmer water can come into contact with more ice surface and lead to increased melting.
It looks like “the last few plotted points are not five day averages” (the two most recent). I imagine some people demanded that the most recent data be displayed (people are impatient), along with the 5-day moving average (leading, non-smooted data). Otherwise, the April 5 graph would not be showing data from April 4:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
it would be showing the last 5-day averaged datapoint for April 2 (while not reporting known data points from April 3 and April 4).
I’m not sure if they explain all that somewhere in here:
http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g02135_seaice_index/
http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g02135_seaice_index/interpretation.html
I think these graphs have been around for a long time, so I’m sure someone has noticed this before, so maybe it’s in some linked FAQ. They have contact information for NSIDC people, so maybe someone at WUWT is interested in confirming this.
When something in the data doesn’t make sense to me, my first instinct is that I don’t understand it fully, and should dig into this if it is interesting. Not that some scientist is fudging his data to trick the public. There are actually Universities where you can study this stuff full time, for years – you can learn a lot from public websites, but to really put it all together and make sense of it, nothing beats learning from Professors that understand it all. Self-teaching takes a lot of work, digging and discipline, and there are always nagging questions that cannot be resolved without finding someone who knows the answer. Some of the people on this site, non-professionals apparently, have built up an impressive knowledge of climatology and really know their way around public websites. Such a thing would not have been possible even 20 years ago – the Internet is truly a revolutionary tool, perhaps as much as printing was.
“David Appell (06:36:03) :
[…]
project. SO WHAT?” GHGs warm planets. We keep emitting GHGs. And, to no one’s surprise, the planet is warming.”
David, if you boil it down to such a blunt statement, i feel the need to point out that H2O is a far more potent and far more ubiquitious GHG than CO2.
So reducing CO2 emissions will probably not have a measurable effect.
To your “GHGs warm planets”. Well. Mars has an atmosphere made of 95% CO2 but it’s not warm. It has no H2O in the atmosphere.
Obviously, H2O is the thing that’s important here, not CO2.
I know what comes next, the alleged H2O feedback through CO2 enrichment.
This is obvious bunkum. Otherwise H2O itself would lead to H2O feedback as it is the more potent GHG. This is not observed.
The positive feedback “tipping point” mechanism posited by the AGWer’s is therefore obviously false.
Some comments re Arctic ice from Oleg Pokrovsky in his Clivar July 2009 paper about the 60 year-cycle of arctic ice fluctuations.
My mind wonders. Sea ice thickness, when it grows and when it thins, could well be a function of AO oscillations. In its negative phase, ice builds up along the Pacific side. Jammed up ice gets VERY thick and tangled together. In its positive phase, ice does not build up as much and spreads out towards the Atlantic. When melt season comes along, this relatively flat ice breaks away and rides the Fram Strait. But the ice jammed up and intertwined along the Pacific side does not break up as easily. This thick ice, given the right conditions, again gets jammed up along the Pacific side. Eventually the end of the jam edge moves further and further towards the Atlantic side if the AO continues to be neutral/negative. Once it is close enough to be flushed out Fram Strait, it does not easily disentangle and flush.
What we could be seeing is an occasional natural concurrent oscillation that flushes out the Arctic ice pack to near open water conditions during the summer, and then slowly builds up again through this jamming process as the AO returns to neutral/negative territory, which could be its normal phase interspersed by these anomalous positive AO flushes that occur over a 5-8 year period.
Comments?
Anu (08:36:47) :
Mark Serreze is a “Professors that understand it all.” He said that the Arctic is in a death spiral and the North Pole will probably be ice free by the summer of 2008.
Using your criteria, his predictions must be true, and WUWT’s predictions of increasing ice over the last three years must be wrong.
Ron House (06:22:32) :
Anu (00:00:24): Like the article above says, and which is explained here:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/about_images.html
the graph of Arctic sea ice extent is a 5 day moving average.
How does a 5-day moving average change this? If they are putting up data for yesterday, then either the five days must be trailing days, because tomorrow hasn’t happened yet and today isn’t complete, or the last few plotted points are not five day averages.
If the data averages five days ending on the day plotted (trailing), then future data can not change the plotted point for a past day, and the graphs shown are fudged. If the last few points are not five day averages, then their description which you quote is incorrect. Either way there’s something amiss.
Yes describing their smoothing algorithm as a 5-day moving average is clearly an oversimplification. However, if you watch their plot “evolve” for a long time you’ll see that this algorithm works the same as always. I can’t say what it is but here’s my guess.
It’s a 5 day moving average for all days more than 3 days old but for yesterday and the day before they just use that day’s number. That’s close — but only a guess. Things do get revised retroactively but after one revision, they’re fixed.
It is unfortunate that people think this is fishy. The NSIDC does a wonderful job of producing raw data. Raw data is always messy and the NSIDC data is MUCH better than most. (You should see what military logistics data looks like!) They may be the ultimate source of the data that kills CAGW once and for all. They have earned my trust over the years.
From Holland (02:45:10) :
The comment on the standard deviation in above reply, AGAIN show many people do not understnad statistics. Let me EXPLAIN:
the standard deviation is the variability of the population of data points, i.e. it shows the variability of the measurement sequence, which is from 1979 to 2000 . A mere 20 year period!
The thus established shown standard deviation does say nothing, but absolutely NOTHING about the varibaility in ice extent over 100 or even 1000’s of years, hence it is meaninless when used in variability type claims.
NB What’s happend with school levels in the US.. Damn some of you’re guys are stupid.
——
REPLY: I’m a doctorate epidemiologist who specializes in biostatistics, Hans. Standard deviation applies to either the population data set, or the sample taken from the population data setc.
I stand by my assertion that, as graphically represented and reported, the line for 2009-2010 is so close to the mean that, considering all the variability in the calculations, data collection etc., the fact that the two lines haven’t actually intersected it meaningless.
If NSDIC would provide more data, we could analyze this further. I like how AGW types twist their statistics, tag regressors onto regression curves and do other things that guys like MacIntyre can disassemble!
Pamela Gray (08:53:15),
Comments?
As I stated earlier I think you are on to something. This also agrees with the paper (lost the reference) tying Arctic sea ice to the AO.
This summer should be a good test.
Average CO2 in the atmosphere is currently at 390 ppm, whereas H2O concentrations average around 10,000 ppm (~1%). Even if they had equal impact, the ratio of the two gasses is 25.6:1 in favor of H20. Or put another way, CO2 is just 0.039 (3.9%) as prevalent as water vapor; hence water vapor far outweighs CO2 as a greenhouse gas. When water vapor’s superior characteristics compared to CO2 are considered, the impact of water vapor is even higher. Yet even with water vapor’s greater concentration and superior thermal characteristics, it isn’t considered properly in equations that quantify thermal characteristics of the atmosphere by the AGW crowd. No wonder there’s such a divergence between thermal characteristics of the globe and the steady increase in CO2.
Some AGW proponents say the short residence time of water in the atmosphere offsets any influence compared to CO2 which has a much longer residence time, but that is complete bunk–what matters is the instantaneous concentration of the two gasses, since neither has a memory.
R. Gates: “Global Sea ice has spent more time since 2004 in the negative anomaly range than the positve, and this longer term perspective is all that matters.”
R. Gates, since you are courteous in your postings, I hesitate to add a comment that might appear to be “piling on.” However, it would be good for you to know that anomalies here are derived from a base for years which may contain abnormally large extent and area. To compare anomalies to such a base is quite unscientific — although it is tempting to do so given those are the years for which we have some sort of scientific measurements. Even so, there is little justification for stopping the base in 2000, and not all scientists do.
Re: CRS, Dr.P.H. (Apr 5 09:09)
“…If NSDIC would provide more data, we could analyze this further. I like how AGW types twist their statistics, tag regressors onto regression curves and do other things that guys like MacIntyre can disassemble!”
I’m surprised that NSDIC don’t provide a link to the raw data and methodology used to adjust it for graphing as a matter of course. Good science depends on transparency and repeatability, attributes which NSDIC apparently feel have little or no importance?
Clarity of information would have prevented any doubts about NSDIC’s motives, which have been expressed on this thread. Perhaps little wonder that many sceptics have little trust in climate scientists?
Can you spot the irony here:
“Damn some of you’re guys are stupid.”
—–
To the more important point on sea ice statistics– it really doesn’t matter whether or not the current arctic sea ice crossed that running mean line or not. More important to the scientific types would be that it came close in March 2010, which would lead the curious to wonder as to the causes. Perhaps more important is what it will continue doing over the next few years. If we don’t see a new arctic summer sea ice minimum set by 2015, my own personal faith in AGWT would be diminished. AGW is about the longer trends, and this little “bump” upward over one month, is really insignificant, as it whether or not that bump crossed or didn’t cross the 30 year line…
mike roddy (08:03:05),
Your post contains the typical science-free juvenile schoolyard taunts regularly seen on realclimate, tamino, climate progress, etc.
That’s why the traffic is so much higher here on WUWT than at the alarmists’ echo chambers, where most of the traffic comes from a handful of runaway global warming true believers like yourself.
Now that Anthony has pointed out your hypocrisy, will you stick around and actually discuss the evidence-free claims of catastrophic AGW? Or will you put your tail between your legs and hide out, showing at least some shame for the fact that you’ve been caught red-handed, spouting a mendacious accusation based on your own psychological projection?
Re: Mr Lynn (Apr 5 05:53),
No idea, mr Lynn. I am a Windows XP user. Maybe you could ask over at CA?Re: <a
Re: Pamela Gray (Apr 5 08:53),
Sounds reasonable.
mike roddy (07:56:55) :
David Appell, thanks for posting here. The skills needed are really those of a junior high science teacher, since the regulars on this blog do not even know the basics, but you have shown much needed patience and perserverance.
Most won’t listen, since they are mostly older white men, who get their information from Fox, and whose views are set in concrete, but a few will. That makes it worthwhile.
————————
Reply:
That’s interesting, Mr. Roddy…
First, your accuasation that most who post here get their information from Fox News may have merit–I watch Fox as well as the other stations and the ONLY one that carries substantive information regarding both sides of the argument is Fox; the others have their heads in the sands of AGW.
Second, most of the AGWers will be dead or forgotten by the time the everyday evidence of the next Ice Age becomes so obvious that they will be scorned as the agenda-driven, non-scientists that they were.
You can cast dispersions on people who are not kool-aide drinkers of an agenda that is far more political than scientific, based on such thin evidence that the crimes of fudging and homogenization are obviously transparent now. But far more than public dunce caps, these villains should be stripped of all funds made by distorting and hiding the truth about the climate, and penal sentences of 30 years should be a minimum.
For mine is not a sense of humor to see the poor throughout the world starving because of your demented drive to prevent the use of fossil fuels when additional CO2 in the atmosphere is actually beneficial to mankind. But as the public moves from indoctrination to an educated position, it will be you who will be eating global warming crow.
Comeuppances, indeed!
David Appell:
“. . .today’s climate changes _are_ out of the ordinary, in that the natural factors present in recent decades cannot explain them. No calculation or model ever proposed by “skeptics” explains them. Climate models explain them when anthropogenic factors are taken into account. (This is shown in detail in the IPCC 4AR WG1 Ch 9 FAQ 9.2 Fig 1, p. 703 (bottom three graphs), http://tinyurl.com/27ocvp ).”
Climate models are successful only when they use arbitrary and convenient #s for aerosols. Otherwise, their modeled output would not match historic observations. Moreover, although I understand the attraction of GMT as a bogey for global climate, there are fundamental issues with the concept and the accuracy of its measurement is questionable. If we looked at other climatic phenomena such as glacier extent or sea level, we would find that extrapolation over time works just as well as climate models studied by IPCC. Glaciers expanded and sea levels retreated during the LIA, and we have observed reverse trends ever since. Your claim that skeptics lack models or calculations doesn’t make sense.
ron from Texas wrote:
> CO2 total load is .038 percent of the total atmosphere. Man’s
> contribution is, on average, .03 percent of the total carbon load. Which
> makes Man’s contribution .00113 percent of the total atmosphere.
> And that .00113 percent is supposed to cause a 10 to 15 F rise?
No.
That, plus other emitted GHGs (especially CH4 and N2O), plus land use changes, plus feedback effects, plus economic projections of population and future fossil fuel use, are projected to increase global temperatures by about 2-4 C (4-8 F) by 2100, as well as potentially cause a host of other pejorative effects.
“”” Steve Goddard (10:05:59) :
R. Gates (09:57:13) :
Arctic, Antarctic and global will likely be all positive in a few days. Interesting death spiral. “””
Well you see Steve, the point you are missing, is that in order to get into a death spiral you have to point the nose up more until it stalls, and in that process, it will go a little higher before crashing. We’ll alert you when the crash starts; just in case you miss it.
Rather funny, isn’t it, that “what is normal” is a warning of dire straits ahead; well until we actually hit “what is normal”, and then it is no big deal.
I’ll take the JAXA crossing as sufficient evidence that we hit the jackpot; after all; why would we put more faith in the previous lower values; than we put in the newer cross the line value.
It seems to me Steve, that the promoters of the “we are doomed” prognostications; seem to get uncomfortable; when the evidence seems to say; everything is just normal variability; and no doom in sight.
George
Amino Acids in Meteorites wrote:
> you did know that Santer is one of the ClimateGate scientists, didn’t you?
I know that some of his emails were among those pilfered from CRU. So what?
Santer is a very experienced, highly accomplished scientists who had been doing great science for decades, and has enormous respect from his colleagues.
R. Gates (09:40:15) :
Can you spot the irony here:
“Damn some of you’re guys are stupid.”
—–
To the more important point on sea ice statistics– it really doesn’t matter whether or not the current arctic sea ice crossed that running mean line or not. More important to the scientific types would be that it came close in March 2010, which would lead the curious to wonder as to the causes. Perhaps more important is what it will continue doing over the next few years. If we don’t see a new arctic summer sea ice minimum set by 2015, my own personal faith in AGWT would be diminished. AGW is about the longer trends, and this little “bump” upward over one month, is really insignificant, as it whether or not that bump crossed or didn’t cross the 30 year line…
——-
RG, what is truly significant is public policy and perception, vs. day-by-day analysis of ice extent!
I agree with you about longer-term trends, we as planetary citizens must get off of this “there is an immediate global warming crisis that will kill us in 5 years!” nonsense and re-boot the scientific process. Up to now, the climatology community has obfuscated, ignored vast areas of science (astrophysics especially) and committed a mortal sin for scientist = blurred the boundaries between investigator and advocate.
Let the science show what the truth is without manipulation, if we plunge the world’s economy into severe shock for no good reason, we only set back everyone’s agendas. We have time to resolve this, and I’m not even sure mankind should attempt to tamper with climate engineering in any form. Look at the damage we’ve done by “harnessing the power of rivers” with hydroelectric dams.
There is no climate emergency.
RockyRoad wrote:
> Yet even with water vapor’s greater concentration and superior
> thermal characteristics, it isn’t considered properly in equations
> that quantify thermal characteristics of the atmosphere by the AGW crowd.
How so?
What equations do they use?
And in what way are they wrong?
DirkH wrote:
> David, if you boil it down to such a blunt statement, i feel the
> need to point out that H2O is a far more potent and far more
> ubiquitious GHG than CO2.
Of course. Scientists have known this for about 2 centuries, at least, as they were the ones who discovered it. Water vapor is included at the most elementary physics level in all climate calculations and models, and always has been. In fact, as early as 1965 climate models were able to simulate the movement of water vapor through the atmosphere.
See:
“The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart
General Circulation Models of Climate
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/GCM.htm
It’s important to note that water vapor is, overall, a feedback and not a forcing, as its abundance in the atmosphere is a function of temperature (the Clausius-Claperyon equation).
However, water vapor is a very important positive feedback — and climate models take this into account too (and have, for decades).
“”” RockyRoad (09:30:22) :
…….
Some AGW proponents say the short residence time of water in the atmosphere offsets any influence compared to CO2 which has a much longer residence time, but that is complete bunk–what matters is the instantaneous concentration of the two gasses, since neither has a memory…..
Well RockyRoad, didn’t you know that water molecules each have a serial number; so you can look in the atmosphere at any time and see who is playing, and who is sitting on the bench.
They only play five molecules at a time in the NBA or the NCAA; but they have 30 more sitting down just waiting to get sent into the game.
I’m with you; this notion of “residence time” is just another one of the silly tenets of “climate science” that put it in the category of “ancient astrology”; with apologies to ancient astrologers.
Water is a PERMANENT part of the earth’s atmosphere; and for most of the atmosphere most of the time, H2O abundance always exceeds CO2 abundance; even over the most arid desert regions. And for the portion of the atmosphere where CO2 finally exceeds H2O (high altitudes), neither one of them has a great deal of effect on the surface temperatures on earth.
The removal of H2O vapor from the atmosphere by formation of water droplets, or ice crystals, in clouds, also deposits huge amount of latent heat (of evaporation and melting) , something like 660 Calories per gram, into that upper atmosphere, ready for thermal radiation to carry (some of) it off into space.
R. Gates (09:40:15) :
Objects in motion. Trajectory is curved.
Shouldn’t the highest probability lie on the opposite side of the ‘mean’ line from 2007 ??
The Arctic sea ice uncertainty will cause the
Bipolar bears to experience mood swings between euphoria and severe depression.
Have we discovered psychotropical drug antidotes for it?
DirkH wrote:
> To your “GHGs warm planets”. Well. Mars has an atmosphere
> made of 95% CO2 but it’s not warm. It has no H2O in the atmosphere.
Mars is “warm” in that it’s on the boundary of the ability to support life as we know it.
But the relevant question is: how much warmer is the Martian atmosphere with its CO2 than without it?
For that matter, how much warmer is the Earth’s atmosphere for its mere 280 ppm CO2?
“David Appell (10:18:12) :
[…]
It’s important to note that water vapor is, overall, a feedback and not a forcing,”
When people start talking like that you know you lost them.
mike roddy (07:56:55) :
“Most won’t listen, since they are mostly older white men, who get their information from Fox, and whose views are set in concrete…”
Hey, does anyone know when the next [snip – we won’t discuss that topic here – Anthony]
Great piece of information on the link between AO and sea ice cover cycles available for free here:-
Data Analysis of Recent Warming Pattern in the Arctic
http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/sola/6A/SpecialEdition/1/_pdf
The main conclusions are:
(1) The most dominant trend in observation for 1950-1999 shows an AO pattern (natural variability), while the most dominant trend in the IPCC models shows an ice-albedo feedback pattern (anthropogenic forcing).
(2) In the observations, the AO pattern appears as the EOF-1. However, in the IPCC 10 model mean, the ice-albedo pattern appears as EOF-1 (which is not seen in the observation), and the AO pattern appears as EOF-2.
(3) In the EOF analysis, the ratio of variance for the ice-albedo and AO patterns are 5:2. Since the AO is a realization of a stochastic process, the variance of the AO pattern in the observations dominates the ice-albedo pattern (5:20 in theory).
(4) Multi-decadal trends of surface air temperatures [SAT] indicates that the AO was negative for 1950-1969, the AO was positive for 1969-1989, and the AO was negative for 1989-2008 (2010 is the extreme value). Those are realized as the natural variability superimposed on the general trend of global warming.
D. King (10:53:45) :
[snip – we won’t discuss that topic here – Anthony]
Understood…and sorry. I’m just tired of subtle racist
statements like “Most won’t listen, since they are mostly
older white men..”.
Anthony-
Thanks for the pub! Now, if only someone would buy my script…
I’m selling it cheap.
REPLY: Try Comedy Central, it is perfect for that network – A
David Appell (10:18:12) :
However, water vapor is a very important positive feedback — and climate models take this into account too (and have, for decades).
Positive?
How so?
What equations do they use?
Steve Goddard bets again in 2010 the NSIDC ice extent will hit the 1979 to 2000 average, lets see if it will be true this time compared to 2009 when the bet failed.
Andy
The Crugate files show evidence of bodged global temperature data that is the basis of AGW, vertually all rural temperature measururing stations show little or NO warming, only urban sites show any increase. How the hell can CO2 be blamed for a temperature increase that probably does not exist beyond the bounds of natural variability.
David Appell,
“Santer is a very experienced, highly accomplished scientists who had been doing great science for decades, and has enormous respect from his colleagues.”
Is that the same Ben Santer who was conspiring to commit an act of extreme violence upon the person of mild mannered Pat Michaels? Yes, I see why he would be respected among THAT ilke.
DirkH wrote:
> It’s important to note that water vapor is, overall, a feedback and
> not a forcing,”
> When people start talking like that you know you lost them.
Actually, you never had me in the first place, as what you’ve written about water vapor isn’t convincing.
With what part(s) of the treatment of water vapor in the GCMs do you disagree? In particular? NASA GISS publishes all the details of their “E” model (I think it is) on their site. Why don’t you tell us what in their theory and code is wrong with respect to water vapor, and you would do it instead.
On other threads on WUWT in the last years, on the topic of Arctic sea ice extent, several points have been made that bear repeating:
1. The 1979-2000 period for establishing a norm is too short, and particularly suspect. It had been cold the prior 3o years, so ice may havrfe been accumulating.
2. For spotting trends, a moving multi-year avg might be more helpful, with 2010 compared with the most recent 20 years (1990-2009), rather than the fixed norm of 1979-2000.
3. Talking about the Arctic changes without including the Antarctic is suspicious as an agenda-driven discussion (I am not counting here those scientists who are genuinely interested in the unique interactions of wind, currents, and temperature in understanding the ice in the Arctic).
My understanding is that by volume, 90% or more of polar ice is in the South. Only the melting of land-covering ice is relevant to sea level changes (melting of floating ice does not change the sea level). If one is concerned about small islands disappearing and flooding of NYC, one ought to be focused on the Antarctic.
mike roddy (07:56:55) :
David Appell, thanks for posting here. The skills needed are really those of a junior high science teacher, since the regulars on this blog do not even know the basics…
First time here, eh, mike?
George E. Smith wrote:
> Some AGW proponents say the short residence time of
> water in the atmosphere offsets any influence compared to CO2
Who argues this? I have never heard anyone do so. Nor have I ever heard any climate scientist claim that water vapor is not the dominant GHG in the atmosphere.
mike roddy spends much of his day making long, hysterical and abusive ad hom attacks on Revkin’s blog. One of his trademarks is that he rarely, if ever, discusses science.
REPLY: Mr Roddy demonstrates the face of environmentalism today, dealing in stereotypes he holds dear and applying it to others he disagrees with…And he’s very serious and determined.
– Anthony
Yes, indeed he is, as evidenced by the serious and determined “Eye-contact of Seriousness and Determination”™ he evinces. But it’s still a better look than the “Head-Tilt of Compassion”™ supercilious twits usually use.
David Appell (14:58:02) :
Since most of the multi-year ice blew out into the Atlantic and melted a few years ago, it will obviously take a few years for it to build back up.
In order to increase ice volume, you of course have to start by increasing area – which is what we are seeing.
Steve Goddard (08:55:12) :
Mark Serreze is a “Professors that understand it all.” He said that the Arctic is in a death spiral and the North Pole will probably be ice free by the summer of 2008.
Using your criteria, his predictions must be true, and WUWT’s predictions of increasing ice over the last three years must be wrong.
Of course, not everyone is cut out for the careful reading, and disciplined thinking, and years of hard work in a University degree program…
Saying something is possible is not the same as a “prediction”.
And note that he was talking about the North Pole “point”, not the entire Arctic.
Reading comprehension is usually not taught in a PhD program – you have to know that before you arrive.
Rob wrote:
> The Crugate files show evidence of bodged global temperature
> data that is the basis of AGW
Where — specifically — do the files show this, and how?
AndyW (11:33:35) :
I don’t believe that I made any prediction last year of NSIDC extent crossing the mean. However, area did cross the mean in both of the last two years.
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
NSIDC extent came very close last year, but never quite made it.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/nsidc_extent_n_timeseries_050109.png
I did forecast that it will cross this year.
Anu (12:38:44) :
Mark Serreze posted his ice free North Pole bet on WUWT in 2008.
David Appell (05:27:14) :
Craig Moore wrote:
> As the article I quoted stated: “To avoid even greater damage to
> human beings and nature, the scientists warned, the temperature
> on Earth could not be more than two degrees Celsius higher than
> it was before the beginning of industrialization. ”
>
> That is capturing the essence of a tipping point.
No, it is not.
A “tipping point” is the point at which a physical system needs no further input to continue to change.
(…)
———————
Reply:
So tell me, Mr. Appell, where or to what is this earth tipping to? What are the physical characteristics you have identified as the final destination of being tipped?
And do you have any evidence that it has done so in the past?
If so, what caused the untipping (otherwise a past tipping hadn’t achieved maximum entropy)?
Are you talking about a climate perpetual motion machine of some kind?
Or is it some base state that hasn’t been achieved yet, from which there is no return?
And what law of thermodynamics is the earth disobeying by having not passed through this tipping point?
It generally takes a lot more energy to untip and empty out a canoe than to tip it in the first place. And given earth’s 4.5 billion year age, all the canoes tipped over long ago, never to return to their semi-stable condition naturally.
Could it be caused by higher CO2 concentrations than earth has experienced in the past? No… that’s not reality.
So just what is this tipping point phenomena that you’re expecting? Is it real, or is it fanciful?
And if it is real, please describe it succinctly–how does it apply to climate?
Vincent wrote:
> Is that the same Ben Santer who was conspiring to commit
> an act of extreme violence upon the person of mild
> mannered Pat Michaels?
Conspiring? You have evidence of such a conspiracy? Because if not and I were Ben Santer, I would seriously consider suing your libel for such a claim, even though you are the type of man to make scurrilous and false attacks on other’s while hiding behind anonymity and your mother’s skirt. Why are you afraid to sign your real name to your accusations?
I presume you’re referring to this email stolen from CRU:
—
From: Ben Santer
To: P.Jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Re: CEI formal petition to derail EPA GHG endangerment finding with charge that destruction of CRU raw data undermines integrity of global temperature record
Date: Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:07:56 -0700
Reply-to: santer1@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Dear Phil,
I’ve known Rick Piltz for many years. He’s a good guy. I believe he used
to work with Mike MacCracken at the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
I’m really sorry that you have to go through all this stuff, Phil. Next
time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I’ll be tempted to beat
the crap out of him. Very tempted.
—
Have you, “Vincent,” ever said you wanted to do such-and-such to so-and-so? I certainly have. It’s a stress reliever. Yet I’ve never followed it up with action. Have you?
And for this you want to accuse Santer? Shameful.
PS: I have seen P Michaels in lectures and even spoken to him once or twice. He struck me as anything but “mild-mannered.” When did you meet him?
Steve Goddard wrote:
> Since most of the multi-year ice blew out into the Atlantic and
> melted a few years ago, it will obviously take a few years for it to
> build back up.
In other words: the fact that ice has melted is evidence that… it will be increasing.
You mean this as a joke, right?
Perhaps you could point out a science, any science, that routinely provides all of its “raw data and methodology” on the Internet “as a matter of course” so that the amateur, untrained public can ‘transparently” learn and understand exactly what they are doing, every day, day in and day out. And repeat their experiments at home.
You know, one of the “trusted” sciences.
I look forward to your reply – maybe I can skip sending my kids to college.
Anu,
“Saying something is possible is not the same as a “prediction”.
Of course, now that the “prediction” has failed, it has been downgraded to a mere possibility. It may also be a possibility that Serreze doesn’t know what he’s talking about – but that’s not a prediction.
To those who prefer to get in a debate about climate related scientific issues with me, there are two reasons why I decline: you, and me.
I know some climate scientists personally, but none who contribute to blogs like this one, so can safely assume that the commenters here are not trained in climate science. It may have been an exaggeration to assume that your typical scientific education level is junior high school. I would guess that most posters here have degrees in fields such as Business, Economics, and pre law, which is slightly better than a junior high education.
I am also unqualified for most detailed evaluations, though I do have a decent academic record in other fields and have published articles for magazines and professional journals- including one on CO2 and the terrestrial carbon cycle. I have also read IPCC IV, which is a good start.
To those who wish to engage in debates about specific scientific evidence of climate change, I recommend Realclimate or Rabettrun.
My style on Dot Earth and elsewhere is not to engage in ad hominem attacks, but to point out the lack of qualifications and the distortion of evidence from those who question these assumptions: it’s getting substantially warmer, human emitted CO2 is the main cause, and the probability of major hazards in the future is high. The number of people who are well qualified to evaluate these issues who dispute these three conclusions is extremely small.
There is not a cabal fighting for research grants, or scheming to form a world government to transfer wealth to them, either.
Goddard, I may as well come here instead of Dot Earth, since contrarians have succeeded in hijacking that blog. So I am here in enemy territory, and will visit for a while if I am allowed to do so. Take your best shots, I’ve got a thick skin.
BTW, I’m an older white guy, too, as Anthony pointed out with the photo. We finally have an area of agreement.
Mr Wiese wrote:
> If Co2 radiation is contributing to arctic melting
Mr Wiese, melting is a local phenomenon. No one has ever claimed that it is the very same IR photons redirected immediately from CO2 scattering that is melting arctic ice. That’s being done by the warmer air and water immediately surrounding the ice.
[stopping flame war ~ ctm]
I’ve seen you make too many bone-headed mistakes to take your claims on face value, especially your claim (that you copied from the National Post) that a 6th order polynomial fit to recent temperature data predicts a drastic and clownish drop in temperatures. You remember; see
http://is.gd/bg0uI
By the way, how did that prediction work out??
Steve Goddard (13:23:05) :
Anu (12:38:44) :
Mark Serreze posted his ice free North Pole bet on WUWT in 2008.
I read about that “widely quoted prediction” here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/26/bad-news-from-nsidc/
It referenced his comments in the ABC News/Technology article I cited.
Do you have a better link ?
David Appell (13:32:35) :
It takes five years for ice to become five years old. First year ice from 2008 can’t become fifth year ice until 2012.
It is not really that complicated, for most people who have reached the age of five.
To R.Gates
You have mentioned that you are particularly interested in the changes in Arctic Ice cover in connection with AGW(T?). I take it that your reasoning can only be as follows (and in the given order!!):
1.If the ice the Arctic recedes over a long period, that can only happen because the whole earth is warming;
2. the whole earth can only be warming because of the increase of CO2;
3. CO2 can only increase because humans are emitting it.
Could you please explain why other explanations of
a) point 1 are impossible
b) point 2 are impossible
c) point 3 are impossible
David Appell
“Why so serious?”
All of your complaining is not going to change what is happening in the Arctic. You might want to save your breath.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
Anu wrote:
> Perhaps you could point out a science, any science, that routinely provides
> all of its “raw data and methodology” on the Internet “as a matter of course”
> so that the amateur, untrained public can ‘transparently” learn and
> understand exactly what they are doing, every day, day in and day out.
> And repeat their experiments at home.
Anu is right. Everyone is still getting used to this Web thing, and archiving all data is new to everyone. Frankly, I’m amazed at how much raw climate and weather data is already on the Web. It’s evolved tremendously in just the last 5 years. No other science is at this level, except for maybe genomics, whose data requires specialized understanding anyway.
But, keep clamoring for such data, and even more — it’s a useful impetus to both journals and scientists to make it available. We live in a very interesting time.
Steve Goddard: “In other words: the fact that ice has melted is evidence that… it will be increasing.”
David Appell (13:32:35) : “In other words: the fact that ice has melted is evidence that… it will be increasing.
You mean this as a joke, right?”
Jeez you are deceitful little …… aren’t you? Steve’s entire quote “Since most of the multi-year ice blew out into the Atlantic and melted a few years ago, it will obviously take a few years for it to build back up.
In order to increase ice volume, you of course have to start by increasing area – which is what we are seeing.”
Wow just wow. I’ll pretty much dismiss anything else you add to the conversation due to this obvious deceit.
RockyRoad wrote:
> So tell me, Mr. Appell, where or to what is this earth tipping to?
I don’t know. I’m a science journalist, and as far as I can ascertain the science of tipping points is just not that rigorous yet.
> And do you have any evidence that it has done so in the past?
Some think the Younger Dryas is an example of such.
> Are you talking about a climate perpetual motion machine of some kind?
I have no idea what this means. And anyway, you should be smart enough to know that “perpetual motion machines” do not exist. Nor could climate serve as one.
> Could it be caused by higher CO2 concentrations than earth has
> experienced in the past?
It could be, yes, and that’s a very interesting idea. On the other hand, we now have new, additional climate forcings that did not exist prior to about 200 yrs ago. (A few think 10,000 yrs ago.) These change the ball game.
“”” David Appell (12:26:42) :
George E. Smith wrote:
> Some AGW proponents say the short residence time of
> water in the atmosphere offsets any influence compared to CO2
Who argues this? I have never heard anyone do so. Nor have I ever heard any climate scientist claim that water vapor is not the dominant GHG in the atmosphere. “””
Totally amazing ! I reread my post just to make sure. So perhaps David Apell, you can point to exactly where it was that I made these statements:-
“”” George E. Smith wrote:
> Some AGW proponents say the short residence time of
> water in the atmosphere offsets any influence compared to CO2 “””
David, if you have ever read ANY of my posts in which I excerpted what somebody else had posted; you would know that I invariably use the following delimiters to designate such a citation:-
“”” somebody else said this. “””
No it isn’t in ANY book on English Gramamr or anywhere else; it’s a simple “Signature” usage of my own.
Three double quotes, followed by three spaces, followed by a cut and paste from SOMEBODY ELSE, then three more spaces, and three closing double quotes.
If it’s inside those delimiters; I did NOT say it; and if it purports to be a post from me; and it “quotes somebody else, but does NOT use that set of delimiters, THEN IT IS NOT MY POST.
So no; I did not say those things you allege I said.
I don’t blame Santer for feeling that he wanted to beat the crap out of Michaels. That sort of private expression is completely normal among human beings. I think plenty of us have said privately
“If so-and-so opens his mouth one more time, I’m going to punch them in the face.”
or “What X needs is a good kick in the bum”
or even “I’m going to kill so-and-so” on discovering a family member left the tap on and flooded the kitchen.
The problem is when people carry that steam-letting into public. The HadleyCRU emails show that the scientists involved were treating their email exchanges as a private conversation, when they should have known that the emails were subject to FOI requests. So Santer’s remark was extremely embarassing, but it’s a stretch to call it a threat of violence.
Anu (13:37:36) :
Tenuc (09:39:31) :
Re: CRS, Dr.P.H. (Apr 5 09:09)
Perhaps you could point out a science, any science, that routinely provides all of its “raw data and methodology” on the Internet “as a matter of course” so that the amateur, untrained public can ‘transparently” learn and understand exactly what they are doing, every day, day in and day out. And repeat their experiments at home.
You know, one of the “trusted” sciences.
I look forward to your reply – maybe I can skip sending my kids to college.
—
REPLY: We do this all the time in public health. Population demographics, incidence/prevalence of disease, risk factors etc. This is available for analysis and discussion amongst scientists, policy-makers, politicians, advocates etc.
Here, help yourself: http://app.idph.state.il.us/
BTW, don’t send your kids to University of Illinois, I doubt they’d cut it.
David Appell (13:32:35) :
I understand that arrogance, censorship, selective editing, and quoting out of context are standard tools of AGW bloggers.
Doesn’t it concern you that you feel the need to resort to these tactics? I’m sorry that nature refuses to cooperate with your belief system. That must really stink for you.
Use of the term “Normal” related to climate seemed odd until I read this on Climate4you. Some great articles on Urban Heat Zones as well.
Normal climate and normal period
source: http://www.climate4you.com/
The need of updated climatologically 30-year statistics was obvious already before the end on 20th century. However, the former period 1961-1990 still remain the official normal period defined by the Worlds Meteorological Organisation (WMO). This is unfortunate; both for reasons stated above, but also because the period 1961-1990 globally is very much influenced by the mid 20th century cold period, not entirely typical for the 20th century. However, several nations follow WMO and still use the old 1950-1990 period as the normal reference period.”
The next official WMO normal period is 1991-2020, but before then we probably will see many countries publishing statistics for the periods 1971-2000 and 1981-2010.”
The WMO normal period – or any other normal period adopted – is just a reference time period choosen for administrative purposes, and the term ‘normal’ does not indicate that climate in this period was more ‘normal’ than in any other time period.”
Once again NSIDC has clearly manipulated the data … compare today with the chart shown http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
The graph is now nowhere near touching the average line.
“”” David Appell (10:18:12) :
DirkH wrote:
> David, if you boil it down to such a blunt statement, i feel the
> need to point out that H2O is a far more potent and far more
> ubiquitious GHG than CO2.
Of course. Scientists have known this for about 2 centuries, at least, as they were the ones who discovered it. Water vapor is included at the most elementary physics level in all climate calculations and models, and always has been. In fact, as early as 1965 climate models were able to simulate the movement of water vapor through the atmosphere.
See:
“The Discovery of Global Warming” by Spencer Weart
General Circulation Models of Climate
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/GCM.htm
It’s important to note that water vapor is, overall, a feedback and not a forcing, as its abundance in the atmosphere is a function of temperature (the Clausius-Claperyon equation).
However, water vapor is a very important positive feedback — and climate models take this into account too (and have, for decades). “””
David, the entirety of the above, sans the triple delimiters is a direct cut and paste from presumably your post as time stamped.
So I tkae it that the Clausius-Clapeyron equations does NOT apply to CO2, since you mentioned it with regard to water vapor, but not with regard to CO2.
Also I take it that CO2 in the atmosphere is NOT a function of temperature, since you mentioned that with respect to H2O but not with respect to CO2.
Both CO2 and H2O are emitted to the atmosphere in copius quantities as a result of human activities, mostly burning fossil fuels and other fuels, which contain primarily Carbon and Hydrogen.
Both CO2 and H2O are known to absorb surface emitted LWIR thermal radiation, with the H2O molecule absorbing substantially more such energy that the CO2 molecule does, and also being in much greater abundance than CO2 is in the atmosphere. So both exhibit a warming “forcing” with H2O being far more important than CO2.
Teh both H2O and CO2 also absorb some incoming solar radiation energy, in the long visible and near IR regions out to a few (3-4 microns); so in that sense, both serve to reduce gound level solar insolation and thereby result in ground level cooling; which is a cooling effect, rather than a warming effect. Once again H2O molecules act more strongly in this regard than do CO2 molecules.
So far, I have not discerned any significant difference (other than in degree) between CO2 and H2O; and certainly nothing that would lead one to describer CO2 as a “forcing” effect, while H2O is a “feedback” effect.
In either case, an increase in H2O vapor, or CO2 vapor, leads to atmospheric warming; which may subsequently result in surfgace warming, and regardless of the source of the atmospheric warming, the net effect of the surface warming is quite the same; regardless of whether CO2 or H2O caused the atmospheric warming.
So H2O is perfectly capable of instigating a warming feedback cycle that increases water vapor, or increases CO2 (from ocean outgassing); and likewise increasing atmospheric CO2 can do exactly the same.
It is a quite arbitrary choice of modellers to consider cO2 as a forcing, and H2O as a feedback; they both are doing exactly the same thing.
Well I forgot; they are not quite doing exactly the same thing. CO2 exists in earth’s atmosphere swolely in the gas or vapor phase; so it cannot form visible clouds. H2O on the other hand is a permanent long term component of the atmosphere existing permanently in all three phases; vapor, liquid, and solid, and in those latter two phases, H2O is just about uinique on earth in that it forms visible clouds, which can block sunlight from reaching the surface, and thereby reduce ground level insolation resulting in a strong, and overpowering negative feedback cooling effect.
CO2 cannot do that.
The comfortable temperature range on earth that has perisisted for hundreds of millions fo life exploding years; is cloded loop regulated by primarily the physical and chemical properties of the H2O molecule in all it’s three phases.
CO2 is merely a bit player; with very little scientific influence; other than helping to sustain life on earth.
Dr A Burns (14:24:23) :
Once again NSIDC has clearly manipulated the data … compare today with the chart shown http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
The graph is now nowhere near touching the average line.
—-
REPLY: Dr. B, I tend to agree with you! I think that all the attention this graph has received forced the NSIDC folks to “hide the incline,” although Anthony doesn’t think so.
This commonly happens in public health, where statistics are “cooked” in order to justify funding requests for maternal/child health care or other interventions. I was at a UI seminar on this just before Climategate, and when Climategate occurred, I used this as an example of the outcry that is possible when the investigators are caught manipulating data for policy reasons.
I’m still waiting for their April update, let’s keep an eye on this site and compare data to other satellite sources as Anthony recommends!
O/T of sorts – Thickness
With the current Arctic ice trend, I believe for some time focus will shift to ice thickness. But I can’t find any place with updated and somewhat readable data (I spent most of today searching). I understand Arctic ice thickness can have tactical value for subs.
So presently I’m mostly uneducated on Arctica ice thickness trends. Can anyone direct me to reliable, up to date data on it that won’t take much processing on my side?
Living_Right_in_CA wrote:
> In order to increase ice volume, you of course have to start by increasing
> area – which is what we are seeing.”
Area cannot increase without volume increasing. Volume is currently decreasing.
In any case, the relevant measure here is volume, not area. A warming pond can have a lot of ice on its surface, but that does not matter — it is still warming.
Dr A Burns (14:24:23) :
CRS, Dr.P.H. (14:34:20) :
Take a closer look, they just zoomed in by deleting a month (December).
Josualdo (14:39:08) :
I have also been looking without any luck related to the interesting idea posed by Pamela Gray (08:53:15) :
Anu,
The story goes that Mark Serreze made a bet in the office after laying down odds, and he appears to have confirmed it on WUWT.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/08/15/arctic-ice-extent-discrepancy-nsidc-versus-cryosphere-today/
“safely assume that the commenters here are not trained in climate science … lack of qualifications and the distortion of evidence …”
[snip] Pretty insulting, and of no scientific value.
“”” mike roddy (13:42:11) :
…..
I know some climate scientists personally, but none who contribute to blogs like this one, so can safely assume that the commenters here are not trained in climate science. It may have been an exaggeration to assume that your typical scientific education level is junior high school. I would guess that most posters here have degrees in fields such as Business, Economics, and pre law, which is slightly better than a junior high education.
I am also unqualified for most detailed evaluations, though I do have a decent academic record in other fields and have published articles for magazines and professional journals- including one on CO2 and the terrestrial carbon cycle. I have also read IPCC IV, which is a good start.
…….
My style on Dot Earth and elsewhere is not to engage in ad hominem attacks, but to point out the lack of qualifications and the distortion of evidence from those who question these assumptions: “””
An amazing set of critical parameters there Mike.
You don’t engage in ad hominen attacks; but point out the (assumed by you)lack of qualifications… That is hardly a debate of science but of personalities; aka ad hominem.
“”” I am also unqualified for most detailed evaluations, though I do have a decent academic record in other fields…. “””
So you are not comfortable enough in your climate science academic background to reveal it here; so we are to be satisfied with “other fields” while you denigrate the academic credentials of people you don’t even know. Oh but you do know some climate scientists, so that qualifies you to judge who is or is not qualified to coment on climate science.
Well I can’t say, I ever took a formal course or attended a lecture on “climate science”.
But I do have a degree in Pure Physics; and in Pure& Applied Mathematics, and in Radiophysics (you know; all about the ionosphere, and electromagnetic propagation, in the atmospherte and the stratosphere; and I nearly forgot the Mathematical Physics also; couldn’t make up my mind which science degree to major in so I majored in all four. Almost finished a post grad degree; but opted to spend 50 years as a practicing Physicist in Industry instead; which is more real world than academia.
But no I can’t say I have any degrees in Business or Economics or Pre-law; but I did manage to graduate from Junior High and also from High school. I actually have all my high school exam reports if you would like to have a copy of them; well and my University course exams too.
I’m not quite sure what use Physics and Mathematics might be to “climate science”; no I never heard a word in class about “forcings” or “anomalies” or “Climate sensitivity” or GCMs; in my Physics classes, we actually paid attention to models of actual real world things; you know the seort of things that Gaia models so perfectly.
Well I only minored in chemistry so perhaps that is where my weakness lies, in not understanding climate science.
I’m happy to see participation here from any quarter; the more the merrier (the numbers do seem to be on the increase); but if you come in here wielding a machette, to cut down all the sappling, you might find a good number of them may spring back and take a swat at you.
But stick around; with those degrees of yours “in other fields” you might find some amazing sources of knowledge here, just as I have.
David Appell (14:48:21) :
You seem to be unfamiliar with how multi-year ice forms.
Year one – first year ice.
Year two – second year ice – thicker
Year three – third year ice – thicker
Year four – fourth year ice – thicker
Year five – fifth year ice – thicker
Your parents probably kept a chart of your height when you were a kid, showing how much you grew each year. Ice is sort of like that, but doesn’t grow up with such poor manners.
David Appell said “Area cannot increase without volume increasing. Volume is currently decreasing. ”
So the volume decreased between March 1 and March 31?
So volume increases every October?
You do know that sea ice area has nothing to do with thickness?
Your statement is false.
mike roddy (13:42:11) :
This is a science blog. Anyone here would be happy to discuss science with you. The ad hom attacks only make you look bad though, and do nothing for your crusade.
Living_Right_in_CA wrote:
> So the volume decreased between March 1 and March 31?
Volume is decreasing on the multi-year/decadal level, which is the time scale of importance here. See:
Kwok, R., G. F. Cunningham, M. Wensnahan, I. Rigor, H. J. Zwally, and D. Yi (2009), Thinning and volume loss of the Arctic Ocean sea ice cover: 2003–2008, J. Geophys. Res., 114, C07005, doi:10.1029/2009JC005312
at
http://davidappell.blogspot.com/2009/07/arctic-sea-ice-decreasing-in-volume.html
arguing about whether sea ice extent is increasing this year or last month is useless and a complete waste of time. It proves absolutely nothing about climate — a long-term phenomenon. Like all the other jags skeptics get on (sunspots, temps from 1998, for example), it’s just your latest cause of the moment with no substance to it. [stopping flame war ~ ctm]
David Appell (15:46:31) : “Like all the other jags skeptics get on (sunspots, temps from 1998, for example), it’s just your latest cause of the moment with no substance to it. You will forget it in another week and be on to what you think is the next flotsam of evidence for your denial.”
Speaking of forgetful you failed to respond to my last comment above. Craig Moore (07:20:47)
Now why the insults?
David Appell (15:46:31) :
That was not what you were talking about when you snipped half of Steve’s statement then tried to make a joke about it. Steve made a point that volume cannot recover without area recovering first. You then said “Area cannot increase without volume increasing.” No one was talking about the long term trends at that point in time. We all are quite aware of the CURRENT long term trends what was being a point of thought was can the Artic recover its past losses.
You also said ‘arguing about whether sea ice extent is increasing this year or last month is useless and a complete waste of time.” Then by all means leave and post nothing more.
David Appell: “Mars is “warm” in that it’s on the boundary of the ability to support life as we know it.
But the relevant question is: how much warmer is the Martian atmosphere with its CO2 than without it?
For that matter, how much warmer is the Earth’s atmosphere for its mere 280 ppm CO2?”
————————————————————-
From the Stefan Boltzman law, without an atmosphere, the mean surface temperature from the solar constant would be -52degC. ( warmer on the sun side and colder at night )
The answer to the question, David, is obviously not much. Mars has a rotaion rate nearly the same as earth, and we find with a CO2 atmosphere that the night temperatures drops to near – 80 deg C, very near the emission temperature of the 15 micron maximum wavelength of emission from the surface. The nocturnal temperature seems to like stabilizing here as that radiates directly into the 15 micron absorbing wavelength of Co2.
The properties of Co2 are no different on earth, and its obvious that if you removed the effects of water vapor, nocturnal temperatures would certainly reach those values constantly at the poles and drop frequently below zero F at mid latitude at all seasons except summer. It would be difficult to survive in such conditions, and there is no CO2 concentration earthly possible that you could come up with that would make up the difference in IR loss.
This is why your statements that CO2 is a “forcing agent” and water vapor a “feedback” are the biggest bunch of BS and malarchy ever stated by these people who call themselves “climate scientists”. Get real, David, and quit misleading people here, like you try and do everywhere else. CO2 is a GHG of only secondary importance in the earth atmospheric system and it DOES NOT modify the earth IR flux to space in the presence of water vapor and clouds.
David Appell (14:58:02) :
While sea ice extent is higher than usual, ice VOLUME is not; and that’s the relevant factor as far as warming goes.
——
REPLY: *sigh* The albedo of the ice surface is the same regardless of thickness. Albedo is the relevant factor as far as warming goes.
Take a deep breath and repeat after me….”There is no global climate emergency.”
Thanks for the link to the slow, toy site concerned with some “Project for Local Assessment of Needs”. Oh look, last updated May 22, 2009 – I’m sure it has provided some useful information for a few PTA members here and there.
http://search.state.il.us/search97cgi/s97is.dll
Search Results
Your keyword(s), autoimmune, appeared on the following pages:
Sorry, no pages were found with your keyword(s).
Does this site run on some old PC in your office ? .dll ?
What if someone in Illinois were interested in the autoimmune epidemic going on (diseases like lupus, autism, psoriasis, diabetes – type 1, juvenile arthritis and multiple sclerosis) and were worried that their children might be exposed to unusually high levels of autogens in the vicinity of their neighborhood, schools and typical weekend trips. Let’s see the “public health science” website that would allow them to pull up maps of the incident levels of lupus at 10 miles, 20 miles and 50 miles from their house, and overlay that with maps of Federal and State tracked hazardous waste sites. Let’s see the top 10 immunologists who are consulted yearly by the Illinois Department of Public Health, and get their raw data and methodology for the last 20 years.
I’m just one person spending 5 minutes on this.
Imagine a few dozen websites hosting thousands of angry parents hectoring the Public Health “scientists” who should have been working on cleaning this stuff up, and educating the public on what toxins businesses had leaked into the State since 1990. I bet just one dozen parents of autistic children could tie up a publicly employed MD all year on FOI requests.
But thanks for attempting a reply.
BTW, don’t send your kids to University of Illinois, I doubt they’d cut it.
We’re expecting they will go to better schools, like their parents did.
But there are certainly worse schools than U of I out there.
David Appell (15:46:31),
The “jags” you refer to are always instigated by warmists. Always, no exceptions.
A formal hypothesis has been put forth stating that an increase in anthropogenic CO2 will cause catastrophic runaway global warming [CO2=CAGW; CAGW; AGW].
Various scenarios are cited by those supporting that hypothesis as evidence of validation. When skeptics refute those claims, the believers in the hypothesis move on to another claim purporting to show that catastrophic AGW is happening.
Scientific skeptics of the CO2=CAGW hypothesis have nothing to prove. According to the Scientific Method, it is the duty of scientists to attempt to falsify every Hypothesis, Theory and Law. To this day, scientists are still trying to falsify Einstein’s theories of relativity. Even Newton’s Laws of Motion have been tested on a cosmological scale.
Falsification is the accepted method of getting to the scientific truth of the matter. Obviously, falsification requires access to all raw data, code, methodology, and anything else that is required to test, and to falsify if possible, a hypothesis.
Only those hypotheses that successfully resist all attempts at falsification are accepted as scientifically valid, and are on their way to becoming scientific theories.
So to repeat: skeptics have nothing to prove. When skeptical scientists [the only honest kind of scientist] discuss flaws that show a hypothesis to be false, they are not creating a new hypothesis. They are simply pointing out reasons that the formal hypothesis is false. That is their job, and if the promoters of the new hypothesis cannot successfully refute the criticism, the hypothesis fails, and it is relegated to the dumpster of numerous other failed hypotheses, such as astrology, bloodletting, the racial basis for intelligence, phrenology, etc.
Since every scenario put forth by those promoting CO2=CAGW has been fatally deconstructed, it is apparent that only large infusions of money are keeping the CAGW hypothesis on life support.
A fine example is in your linked paper, which begins: “We present our best estimate of the thickness and volume of the Arctic Ocean ice cover…”
Note that the paper came via GISS, which has a vested financial interest in alarming people regarding the climate, and that it states that it is an estimate, and that there is no comprehensive, verifiable ice thickness measurement for the years cited [2005 – 2008]. Note also that 2009 – 2010 shows a rapid increase in Arctic ice cover.
Your psychological projection is apparent when you state that “arguing about whether sea ice extent is increasing this year or last month is useless and a complete waste of time. It proves absolutely nothing about climate — a long-term phenomenon. Like all the other jags skeptics get on (sunspots, temps from 1998, for example), it’s just your latest cause of the moment with no substance to it. You will forget it in another week and be on to what you think is the next flotsam of evidence for your denial.”
Of course, you have it entirely backward. It is the climate alarmist crowd that points to the latest cause of the moment [coral bleaching, increasing hurricanes, frog extinction, etc.] as proof of CAGW. In fact, the climate is within the same parameters it has maintained for thousands of years, regardless of CO2 levels — which follow changes in temperature on all time scales.
You can get away with projecting your faults onto skeptics at alarmist blogs like realclimate. But not here at the “Best Science” site, where you are called on that kind of duplicity.
Chuck Wiese wrote:
> This is why your statements that CO2 is a “forcing agent”
> and water vapor a “feedback” are the biggest bunch of BS and
> malarchy ever stated by these people who call themselves
> “climate scientists”.
Mr Wiese, this is fascinating supposition. Where has it been published? I’d love to read its details.
[stopping flame war ~ ctm]
Craig Moore wrote:
> Speaking of forgetful you failed to respond to my last comment
> above. Craig Moore (07:20:47)
Unfortunately I don’t have time to respond to everything, and your comments didn’t seem to me to be very important. Anyway, your quote is not from Hansen. No scientist in the world would claim that there is a tipping point directly at 2C, nor has anyone ever done a calculation to show as much. It’s just a number based on experience, feelings, beliefs, politics, and intuition. Is the world doomed if we have a 2.2 C increase but not if we have a 1.8 C increase. Of course not.
There is currently no rigorous theory of climate tipping points.
[this flame war stops now. ~ctm]
David Appell-
You continue avoiding our issue. See above. As to your sophistry, no matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.
PS: Paul Brown isn’t a climate scientist, but a former Guardian environment correspondent. He doesn’t appear to be very rigorous on this topic.
David Appell-
One more thing. Don’t join dangerous warmist cults; practice safe sects!
I would imagine that a photon really doesn’t care if the molecule it collides with is named “forcing” or “feedback” by some academic. Nature doesn’t care about climate models or about the substance or polarity of the current climate panic du jour. And blogging has no impact on the climate.
David Appell (17:20:08) :
You say that tipping point theory is partly based on “experience.”
The only tipping point actually witnessed by any climatologists has to do with the declination of their beer bottle.
Most of geologic history has seen much higher CO2 levels than at present, and yet the planet has not turned in to Venus. Quite the opposite.
For Charles, the angry moderator, I heard your rubber band pistol was confiscated from algebra class because it was a weapon of math disruption.
Reply: Heh! ~ ctam
Steve Goddard wrote:
> You seem to be unfamiliar with how multi-year ice forms.
>
> Year one – first year ice.
> Year two – second year ice – thicker
> Year three – third year ice – thicker
> Year four – fourth year ice – thicker
> Year five – fifth year ice – thicker
N year ice does not necessarily turn into N+1 yr ice. In fact, lately the ice is just melting.
Here’s part (just part) of what is wrong with your argument: Look at Figure 3 on http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ .
By the simplistic arguments presented here, you would have claimed that the 1986 extent data showed that the ice was recovering and that global warming was over. You would have been wrong.
You would have done the same in 1998. You would have been wrong.
What is now so different from those (temporary ) increases? What is different now from those situations?
Interesting. Thanks for the link, I hadn’t seen that article/thread before.
I guess identities aren’t “verified” at WUWT, but that certainly sounds like Mark C. Serreze.
Still, a scientist making a bet with 50-50 odds is not really a “scientific prediction” in the formal sense. Einstein predicting that the Sun’s gravity would bend starlight, and working out by exactly how much (which, when observed during a total eclipse, “proved” the General Theory of Relativity) – that is a formal scientific prediction. Einstein betting a friend that quantum physics would one day be proven to be the probabilistic description of an underlying, more fundamental deterministic physics is not – just a gut instinct, or hope.
By the way, that Mark C. Serreze comment you pointed out answers the “5 day moving average” mystery perfectly. Again, thanks.
David Appell (17:32:19)-
Paul Brown mere takes note of what scientists, like the Germans, were saying.
Even Dr. Hansen warns of the “tipping points.”
David Appell (17:54:42) :
Your straw man arguments are highly entertaining.
Not all first year ice turns into second year ice and not all fourth year ice turns into fifth year ice. Much gets flushed out in the North Atlantic. Nevertheless, all fifth year ice is five years old.
And I’m not talking about 1986, I am talking about 2010. The deeply negative AO has caused a lot more multi-year ice to be retained this year, so not only is the ice getting more extensive, it is also getting thicker.
Instead of blasting over here with your astonishingly arrogant tone, how about engaging in civil conversation and serious scientific discussion? (If you think you can handle it.) Your assumption that skeptics are stupid is not very bright.
mike roddy (11:24:34) :
Anthony-
Thanks for the pub! Now, if only someone would buy my script…
I’m selling it cheap.
REPLY: Try Comedy Central, it is perfect for that network – A
South Park might have some fun with it.
Anu (17:59:54) :
There is an interesting by-line to the Serreze story. His theory was that “crusty” first year ice would melt at the North Pole. But it didn’t. That might mean it is impossible to have an ice-free Arctic under current climatic conditions.
Steve Goddard (13:20:51) :
AndyW (11:33:35) :
……lets see if it will be true this time compared to 2009 when the bet failed.
I don’t believe that I made any prediction last year of NSIDC extent crossing the mean…..
While reading that comment from AndyW I didn’t remember you making any bet last year. Did you make that same bet last year?
David Appell: “Mr Wiese, this is fascinating supposition. Where has it been published? I’d love to read its details.”
David; These are not suppositions. They were peer reviewed and published in every dynamic meteorology textbook printed through the 1970’s. What has changed is that your “climate scientists” supplanted this work with their own unprovable and incorrect assertions that they currently tout as fact. This is not how science works, and it is not following the scientific method.
Thanks — it’s been fun. But I am unable to keep up with the comments here and still get my work done.
Perhaps I’ll be back.
— David
Amino Acids in Meteorites (18:29:45) :
I wrote a piece last year which observed that the trajectory was headed towards an intersection with the mean on May 1, but I didn’t make any prediction. This year convergence is happening a month earlier and I believe is going to intersect.
mike roddy (13:42:11) :
I know some climate scientists personally, but none who contribute to blogs like this one, so can safely assume that the commenters here are not trained in climate science.
So I’m supposed to trust the ‘science’ of the ClimateGate scientists? I know you’ll be concsending in a reply to this, if you do reply at all.
But people are smarter than you are giving them credit for. In thinking that people are supposed to overlook the conniving of the ClimateGate scientists and still think they are the ones we are supposed to trust you are showing, unknowingly, that the average person is smarter than you.
Anu (16:54:42) :
CRS, Dr.P.H. (14:12:25) :
REPLY: We do this all the time in public health. Population demographics, incidence/prevalence of disease, risk factors etc. This is available for analysis and discussion amongst scientists, policy-makers, politicians, advocates etc.
Here, help yourself: http://app.idph.state.il.us/
Thanks for the link to the slow, toy site concerned with some “Project for Local Assessment of Needs”. Oh look, last updated May 22, 2009 – I’m sure it has provided some useful information for a few PTA members here and there.
http://search.state.il.us/search97cgi/s97is.dll
Search Results
Your keyword(s), autoimmune, appeared on the following pages:
Sorry, no pages were found with your keyword(s).
Does this site run on some old PC in your office ? .dll ?
What if someone in Illinois were interested in the autoimmune epidemic going on (diseases like lupus, autism, psoriasis, diabetes – type 1, juvenile arthritis and multiple sclerosis) and were worried that their children might be exposed to unusually high levels of autogens in the vicinity of their neighborhood, schools and typical weekend trips. Let’s see the “public health science” website that would allow them to pull up maps of the incident levels of lupus at 10 miles, 20 miles and 50 miles from their house, and overlay that with maps of Federal and State tracked hazardous waste sites. Let’s see the top 10 immunologists who are consulted yearly by the Illinois Department of Public Health, and get their raw data and methodology for the last 20 years.
I’m just one person spending 5 minutes on this.
Imagine a few dozen websites hosting thousands of angry parents hectoring the Public Health “scientists” who should have been working on cleaning this stuff up, and educating the public on what toxins businesses had leaked into the State since 1990. I bet just one dozen parents of autistic children could tie up a publicly employed MD all year on FOI requests.
But thanks for attempting a reply.
BTW, don’t send your kids to University of Illinois, I doubt they’d cut it.
We’re expecting they will go to better schools, like their parents did.
But there are certainly worse schools than U of I out there.
——
REPLY: You wanted an example, and I provided one. I’m also frustrated with the slowness of the IPLAN data set, but it is much harder to collect human health data than temperature readings from sondes.
The data you mentioned above (regarding location of hazardous materials etc.) is widely available via state and federal EPA databases, it is called the Toxic Release Inventory. See: http://www.epa.gov/tri/
The point is, compare the openness of these data sets and regulatory agencies to the closed-mouth, wrapped-in-an-enigma world of the climatology community. Briffa, with his single ancient pine tree, Jones with his messy office full of misplaced notes that cannot be found even under subpoena etc.etc.
Learn something and then come back to discuss.
This is interesting.
I am being reminded just WHY I was able to see through the warmists. It’s the entire combination of arrogance, condescension, manipulation and deceit that has been so amply demonstrated in this thread.
But hey, nobody’s buying.
I sent this link to an acquaintance who has not been following, and his comment back was “right. who are these [snip]s and why are they so full of [snip]?”
I don’t think I have to name names…
David Appell (18:37:42) :
[stopping flame war ~ ctm]
We’ve been talking about forcing/feedback CO2/H2O …
I found an interesting writeup here:
http://www.john-daly.com/forcing/forcing.htm
Richard North gives Mark Serreze’s predictions and pronouncements a working over here:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/04/death-spiral-for-warmists.html
Steve Goddard (18:54:22) :
Thanks for the reply.
AndyW had said you lost a bet last year:
……………………………………………………………………………………………………..
AndyW (11:33:35) :
Steve Goddard bets again in 2010 the NSIDC ice extent will hit the 1979 to 2000 average, lets see if it will be true this time compared to 2009 when the bet failed.
Andy
………………………………………………………………………………………………………
So, he is wrong.
DirkH: “We’ve been talking about forcing/feedback CO2/H2O …
I found an interesting writeup here:
http://www.john-daly.com/forcing/forcing.htm”
While Peter Dietz does a good straight forward write up on the doubling of Co2, what is always conspicuously missing is the fact that ALL of the calculations are done in steady state conditions, with either no water vapor or a fixed amount, and also a “profile” atmosphere such as the Satandard 76 US atmosphere. This is also “clear sky radiation”.
A couple of things about the figures. The perceived “forcing” does not calculate atmospheric emission change due to flux divergence or advective changes in vapor concentration, all of which affect the answers.
In the case of CO2, increasing quantity will increase emission in the upper troposphere and limit the optical depth of water vapor, thus reversing the effects of the perceived “forcing”. This is discussed thuroughly in Ferenc Miskolczi’s paper:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/25071132/The-Saturated-Greenhouse-Effect-Theory-of-Ferenc-Miskolczi.
Richard Lindzen from MIT also talks about this process as the “Iris” effect of water vapor and cloud.
It is also incorrect to calculate a “sensitivity factor ” to Co2 by using the Stefan Boltzman law by assuming that if surface emission is blocked by inceasing CO2 and making a specific wavenumber more opaque to the atmosphere, that the response from the surface is to emit the IR back to space over ALL wavelengths. The atmosphere is a colored absorber and emitter with respect to the surface, and as such, the integration constant, sigma, is inappropriate for use here in that equation, but is used by “cliamte scientists” unscrupulously regardless.
Steve Goddard (12:33:30) :
David Appell (14:58:02) :
Since most of the multi-year ice blew out into the Atlantic and melted a few years ago, it will obviously take a few years for it to build back up.
In order to increase ice volume, you of course have to start by increasing area – which is what we are seeing.
But currently the area is decreasing (since March 7th) and the ice is blowing out.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/20100325-20100331.jpg
mike roddy (13:42:11) :
To those who prefer to get in a debate about climate related scientific issues with me, there are two reasons why I decline: you, and me.
Reply: And yet you continue with the debate. How inconsistent of you.
MR: I know some climate scientists personally, but none who contribute to blogs like this one, so can safely assume that the commenters here are not trained in climate science. It may have been an exaggeration to assume that your typical scientific education level is junior high school. I would guess that most posters here have degrees in fields such as Business, Economics, and pre law, which is slightly better than a junior high education.
Reply: Denigrate others and affirm next you have “a decent academic record in other fields”. Pray tell, what in; be specific! Me? I’m one of those hated geologists (BS, MS) along with bachelors and masters in mining engineering. I can smell a compromised climate scientist or stock promoter a mile away, having worked with many such people in the past. They have a certain “air” about them; a certain mindset; a specific certainty about their special theories that do not survive discussion, criticism, or reality. I think it’s a mental disorder, to be quite candid.
MR: I am also unqualified for most detailed evaluations, though I do have a decent academic record in other fields and have published articles for magazines and professional journals- including one on CO2 and the terrestrial carbon cycle. I have also read IPCC IV, which is a good start.
Reply: The most arrogant, yet least logical people on the earth are those who call themselves “climate scientists”. Did you know there is no accredited university on earth that offers a PhD in the field, and there are very few that offer even an MS? Most such studies are grouped with Geography departments, and for good reason.
MR: To those who wish to engage in debates about specific scientific evidence of climate change, I recommend Realclimate or Rabettrun.
Reply: Ah, the pirated term “climate change”! That’s something as a geologist I can assure you has been around since the earth formed and will be around long after man is gone. Climate scientists didn’t invent it, they merely hijacked it for their own utilization and deception. I’m sure what you really mean is “anthropogenic global warming”; the acronym is AGW. And I’ve read through the slanted and hypocritical banter that goes on at Realclimate. Now there’s a contradiction in terms. If you want to see some leading edge science, consider the YouTube series The Cloud Mystery. There are hundreds of peer-reviewed articles that have been blackballed by the Hockey Team because to them, the slightest amount of dissent is tantamount to treason to their cause.
MR: My style on Dot Earth and elsewhere is not to engage in ad hominem attacks, but to point out the lack of qualifications and the distortion of evidence from those who question these assumptions: it’s getting substantially warmer, human emitted CO2 is the main cause, and the probability of major hazards in the future is high. The number of people who are well qualified to evaluate these issues who dispute these three conclusions is extremely small.
Reply: If you’re counting on any of the corrupted databases to confirm this “substantial warming”, you’re chasing step-wise homogenization factors applied in a methodology that’s all hidden or lost; if you believe human-emitted CO2 is the main cause of this warming you know nothing about cause and effect during geologic history; and if you consider the benefits of warmer temperatures and higher levels of CO2 contributing to the expansion of civilization (and feeding of same) then you’re on the wrong side of the “major hazards” issue. Besides, you apparently failed arithmetic when counting scientists that support AGW and those that don’t.
MR: There is not a cabal fighting for research grants, or scheming to form a world government to transfer wealth to them, either.
Reply: No cabal fighting for research grants? Where have you been? Regarding world government, have you not looked into the forces and wording behind Copenhagen and all previous Kyoto-styled agreements? Wealth transfer was and is a major point, and world government is spelled out. Do some research in this area and you’ll find it.
MR: Goddard, I may as well come here instead of Dot Earth, since contrarians have succeeded in hijacking that blog. So I am here in enemy territory, and will visit for a while if I am allowed to do so. Take your best shots, I’ve got a thick skin.
Reply: We are not your enemy, you have decided to make an enemy of mankind. Look in the mirror and figure that one out.
MR: BTW, I’m an older white guy, too, as Anthony pointed out with the photo. We finally have an area of agreement.
Reply: I suppose that’s as good a place to start as any.
George E. Smith (14:31:54) :
So I tkae it that the Clausius-Clapeyron equations does NOT apply to CO2, since you mentioned it with regard to water vapor, but not with regard to CO2.
Right George, C-C requires two phases to be present so it applies to H2O on earth and to CO2 on Mars
Also I take it that CO2 in the atmosphere is NOT a function of temperature, since you mentioned that with respect to H2O but not with respect to CO2.
Yes you see an example of C-C when you see steam condense for example.
Both CO2 and H2O are emitted to the atmosphere in copius quantities as a result of human activities, mostly burning fossil fuels and other fuels, which contain primarily Carbon and Hydrogen.
Right but the H2O will condense and the gas phase concentration will drop to a value determined by the local temperature. This doesn’t happen with CO2 which mixes throughout the atmosphere (it does on Mars though).
David Appell (14:03:05) :
RockyRoad wrote:
> So tell me, Mr. Appell, where or to what is this earth tipping to?
I don’t know. I’m a science journalist, and as far as I can ascertain the science of tipping points is just not that rigorous yet.
Reply: So in your own words, you don’t know. You go on and on about a “tipping point” and don’t know what you’re talking about? That’s all I wanted you to acknowledge. Thank you.
> And do you have any evidence that it has done so in the past?
Some think the Younger Dryas is an example of such.
Reply: This is a reverse of your prior statement (not knowing what a “tipping point” is but then seeing it as less than a rigorous science but then giving an example), but what is it about the Younger Dryas that makes you (or anybody) believe it is a “tipping point”—could it have been some volcanic eruption or asteroid strike that caused the planet to suddenly go cold—is that your “tipping point”, because there have been five major life-decimating events over geologic history that correspond to asteroid strikes, and many more downturns to a colder climate corresponding to major volcanic eruptions, yet not one of these was caused by humans. And do you believe suddenly going into the Younger Dryas is an example of a “tipping point”, or suddenly coming out of it?
> Are you talking about a climate perpetual motion machine of some kind?
I have no idea what this means. And anyway, you should be smart enough to know that “perpetual motion machines” do not exist. Nor could climate serve as one.
Reply: You state you have no idea what that means, yet you can determine I’m smart enough to know it doesn’t exist. If such a thing as a “tipping point” existed, climate would be the OBJECT of this “tipping point”, not the “tipping point” itself. But this discussion is less than academic. I believe at this point you’re a science journalist who throws around talking points you’re heard in your work but who has no ability to connect them together properly. But I accept your response—I’m as convinced about these “tipping points” and “forcings” of yours as I am about perpetual motion machines.
> Could it be caused by higher CO2 concentrations than earth has
> experienced in the past?
It could be, yes, and that’s a very interesting idea. On the other hand, we now have new, additional climate forcings that did not exist prior to about 200 yrs ago. (A few think 10,000 yrs ago.) These change the ball game.
Reply: And how do you know conditions on the earth are such that we have additional “climate forcings” that didn’t exist before? (and what are the original “forcings”?) What comparison would you make to earth’s past climate that had CO2 levels five times the current amount? Would that not have already caused one of these “tipping points” you refer to?
I’m afraid I detect a lot of echos from your “climate scientists” that postulate “tipping points” and “forcings” without evidence of such. The earth is playing the same ball game it has for millions, nay billions of years, and indeed we are now between innings. And man’s ability to alter that reality is woefully lacking. How can man control something he can’t adequately explain?
I respectfully suggest you go back to school. Start with the ice ages and work back from there.
CRS, Dr.P.H. (14:34:20) :
Dr A Burns (14:24:23) :
Once again NSIDC has clearly manipulated the data … compare today with the chart shown http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
The graph is now nowhere near touching the average line.
—-
REPLY: Dr. B, I tend to agree with you! I think that all the attention this graph has received forced the NSIDC folks to “hide the incline,” although Anthony doesn’t think so.
This commonly happens in public health, where statistics are “cooked” in order to justify funding requests for maternal/child health care or other interventions. I was at a UI seminar on this just before Climategate, and when Climategate occurred, I used this as an example of the outcry that is possible when the investigators are caught manipulating data for policy reasons.
I’m still waiting for their April update, let’s keep an eye on this site and compare data to other satellite sources as Anthony recommends!
I tried to prevent this hytseria with my post at 9:15:47 04/01/2010 here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/31/arctic-sea-ice-about-to-hit-normal-what-will-the-news-say/#comments
This kind of revision happens all the time, both up and down. Minimums sometimes get revised upwards.
There’s a better explanation upthread here at 17:59:54 on 05/04/2010.
The NSIDC is legit and posting wild fantasies about their methods disgraces this blog.
Phil. (20:16:34) :
“But currently the area is decreasing (since March 7th) and the ice is blowing out.”
i don’t know what the source was for the sea ice drift map you linked, but the DMI has daily drift maps that don’t seem to indicate anything quite so dramatic
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icedrift/index.uk.php
Admittedly they haven’t updated for almost 3 days which, if past history is any precedent, indicates they are probably experiencing instrumental or system difficulties. But since they all seem to use the same AMSR-E data that would suggest caution regarding all of these computer generated fantasies regarding what is happening in the Arctic at the present moment.
Personally I can’t find much to get very excited about in any of these developments in the Arctic, either short or long term. For those who think I’m wrong I’d like to suggest a little thought experiment. Suppose none of these lovely satellite graphics ever existed, that all information about the state of the Arctic for the last 30 years had been successfully embargoed from publication or dissemination to the world. What phenomena in your local environment, or in the rest of the world outside the Arctic for that matter, would allow you to accurately approximate what has occurred with sea ice in the Arctic over that time span?
Frederick Michael (21:32:04) :
The NSIDC is legit and posting wild fantasies about their methods disgraces this blog.
————–
Pardon my skepticism! I’ve seen this type of thing done before to justify continuation of funding streams, that’s all.
The arctic ice cap recovery seems to be Ground Zero in the ongoing battle between advocates of, and critics of, AGWT. This is in the international press, so the pressure on the NSIDC reporting and analytical groups must be profound. This has all happened in a matter of weeks.
Statistically speaking, the sea ice extent is essentially at normal, so the graphic is not all that relevant. However, we have been sold so many bills of goods in many areas (WMD, bird flu, climate, etc.) that we scientists have every right to harbor doubts. It is the professional thing to do.
Nice article by Dr. Lindzen:
http://www.modbee.com/2010/04/04/1114073_p2/climate-change-is-simply-natural.html
Anu (23:11:52) – Thanks.
The military buoys send in some measurements, but most seem not to be working decently as to what regards ice thickness.
David Appell (14:48:21) :
“Area cannot increase without volume increasing. Volume is currently decreasing. ”
Ergo, area is decreasing? Are we looking at the same data?
I know there are other considerations, such as multi-year ice, but using fourth or fifth grade geometry only, you can decrease volume and increase area (2 dimensions) provided you decrease the third dimension (be it height, which will be thickness on this subject).
RockyRoad (21:16:15) :
Nice one, I think that is called “Being put in one’s place”.
CRS, Dr.P.H. (23:13:51) :
The arctic ice cap recovery seems to be Ground Zero in the ongoing battle between advocates of, and critics of, AGWT.
This is a very important point. The sea ice data from all these different sources agrees quite well and is beyond argument. This is in strong contrast to the surface temperature data. With the Polar bears now on some kind of silly death watch, the arctic sea ice extent has become “the canary in the coal mine.”
The sea ice data will be the death of CAGW.
That said, we must not forget that the recovery from the little ice age has not ended. The skeptics position is that we are not hitting some tipping point but rather that a gradual warming is not a bad thing. We must avoid claiming that it’s getting cooler; that sets us up.
As the poor skeptic from Colorado who posted the original curiosity about the display of data, I’m mildly amused at the little flame war that’s ensued over it all. I was curious about this, and was mildly disappointed when the “daily” plot didn’t cross the “normal” line, although statistically, we’re well within the normal range. I’m not one of the educated elite. Just curious – but I believe I brought up the possibility in my first post about the subject that the data was being smoothed by a boxcar average of some sort.
I was hoping somebody here had evidence from previous minima and maxima that demonstrated the same shift in previous days’ data, but that seems irrelevant, at this point.
What is relevant is this: Whether you’re one of the elitists who think education is bottled and sold at only the finest institutions, or a pragmatist who simply wants to simply make educated decisions about how to live life and how to vote, keeping an eye on these things is a worthwhile endeavor. Personally, I prefer to hear from kids like Kristen Byrnes on these things than anybody more politically “entrenched”. At least whatever axe she was grinding in high school when she wrote “Ponder the Maunder” was likely more related to boys than funding. I’ve worked with those folks at NSIDC (NOAA) in spectroradiometric analysis; and ten years ago, they would chuckle into the backs of their hands about climate change. Today, I think they’re rewarded only for “certain” results, and sent back to the fields for others.
This was no big deal. Even without previous evidence of smoothing, I’m satisfied that this is a totally legitimate presentation of NSIDC data. But I won’t stop watching their work, and involving myself in the discussions that lead to gigantic energy grabs and decisions that ultimately affect us all.
I bet if you did a daily anomaly, instead of a five day average, one of the days might have been above the ’79-’00 average. Someone should do the calculation! If it did it must be the first time in a long time.
Frederick Michael (07:06:32),
Polar bears are so in danger of going extinct that 500 a year are deliberately killed: click
NSIDC finally published their March 2010 report, it is quite balanced and low-key:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
At American Thinker today, Randall Hoven asks the following question:
Was the Arctic Ice Cap “ADJUSTED”!
Read here why he thinks this could be the case!
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/was_the_arctic_ice_cap_adjuste.html
R. de Haan (10:57:45) :
At American Thinker today, Randall Hoven asks the following question:
Was the Arctic Ice Cap “ADJUSTED”!
Read here why he thinks this could be the case!
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/04/was_the_arctic
Unfortunately what he thinks isn’t worth much, he appears to think that the difference between ‘area’ and ‘extent’ is the size of the polar hole. All his analysis rests on that erroneous point.
Larry Hamlin (10:04:26) :
Thus the state of Arctic sea ice extent is now higher than it has been for the last seven years. This is remarkable given that all IPCC Arctic sea ice extent models predict only declines in sea ice extent from 2007. Once again the IPCC climate prediction models have been proven wrong.
Apart from the fact that they’re not IPCC models, none of them predict a monotonic decline as you claim. Check this out:
http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/Maslowski_Page_02.jpg
Clearly you’re talking nonsense.
JAXA shows that 2010 has, indeed, crossed over the 2003 line.
to David Appell 10:01:56
Thanks for correcting me. I’ve found a few different sources on percentages and was hoping that I hit an average. I also misplaced a decimal point. But, aside from that, I am stating a limit to the effect of CO2 on the atmosphere. An effect that is nowhere near catastrophic and in most ways, is beneficial and in any case, is not causing “climate change.”
And I can’t believe you are trying to justify Santer’s email about beating the crap out of someone. Whether it was just venting some steam, as we all do, though I don’t make threats, I make promises, is that a hill you want to die on? Really? Or is Santer just so perfect? You can’t accept that some of the people in the AGW “a-team” are human and make bad mistakes, either in analysis or casual conversation?
By the way, I still haven’t seen scientific proof of how CO2 is going to drastically warm up or how it affects the water vapor cycle ( I don’t think that it does and I haven’t seen proof that it does) or how the laws of thermodynamics or even the directionally random nature of particle radiation are suspended just for bad little ole’ CO2.
What I do know is that CO2 was given bigger weight in the GCMs not because of empirical or experimental evidence but “just because.” It’s akin to saying that Nike shoes can make one fit. The reality is that a number of trained, professional athletes wear Nikes, a coincidence, with no specific causality between the shoe and one’s muscle-fat ratio. Yeah, I get it, the globe warmed from 1979 to 1995. And then no more, in fact it has cooled. Even Latif at the IPCC says it’s cooling. Even Phil Jones has stated that he can find no statistical warming since 1995. At the same time, human CO2 output increased. But one didn’t necessarily cause the other and computer games at East Anglia don’t make it so. I’m still waiting for the actual scientific explanation, complete with repeatable labs, to show how this effect is happening.
Also, no one has proven that clouds and water vapor are not negative feedback. And simply stating that they are positive feedback doesn’t make it so. It has to be proven by data from repeatable experiments. That’s called science and I learned that method in 8th grade. Of course, that was back when they taught science and not politics. Our overhead projector was hand shadows on the cave wall in front of the fire.
Smokey (14:21:20) :
replying to R. Gates (13:38:43):
You said that AGW is not a theory. That statement confuses me quite a bit.
As such, I think you are riding R. Gates pretty hard here. S/He (I haven’t followed closely enough or simply don’t consider gender when reading, usually) has at a minimum been respectful, and states here position with a considerable amount of humility. S/he has put up with a lot of abuse from people who don’t seem to return the favor, and is one of the few AGW proponents who admits to the fallibility of the theory. Most just defer with something like ‘even if it’s wrong, conservation is still a good idea’, which is true but still a b/s retort in the debate. So, in short, at least treat her with with the level of tolerance she has shown to all of us, who are still rather outnumbered among those who truly count in this debate (I am speaking of academics and legislators).
Now; if AGW is not a theory, what in bloody ‘ell is it then?
Here is an analysis of the NSIDC report for March 2010 as well as comparisons with reports of the past and the sensational headlines. There is also a plea for rational humility, which I think is a cry into the darkness.
http://symonsez.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/arctic-sea-ice-shows-extensive-growth-in-march-2010/
Bob Kutz (15:07:02),
You obviously haven’t seen the background to this. Gates has moderated his comments quite a bit lately, as you will see if you go through the archives.
A while ago I provided him with a comprehensive definition of the differences between a Conjecture, Hypothesis, Theory and Law, as they are applied in science [as opposed to a casual comment such as, “My theory is that toads cause warts,” or “My theory is that the moon is made of green cheese.”]
Following my posting of that link, Mr Gates used the acronym “AGWT.” So I re-posted the link. From then on, Gates began using AGWT all the time. He was needling me, and I was responding by holding his feet to the fire regarding the proper scientific definitions.
This didn’t just start in this thread, and I take some of the credit for the improvement in Gates’ willingness to at least say, if not really believe, that he is 25% skeptic [either you’re a scientific skeptic or you aren’t. Skeptics can always be convinced. But it takes falsifiable and testable evidence, something the AGW crowd lacks.]
Words matter, especially in science. I recommend Dr Glassman’s paper showing the differences between the hierarchy of scientific proof to everyone. Once it is clear that AGW is not a Theory [in part because the raw data, code and methodologies presumably supporting it are kept secret from the hated skeptics], then we can deal with it properly: as something between a hypothesis and a conjecture. When it’s called a theory, we’re being sold a bill of goods.
Has everybody stopped hyperventilating and claiming that sea ice is recovering?
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100406_Figure3.png
Chris Noble (18:30:19),
You’re the one who’s hyperventilating and misrepresenting by citing “sea ice.”
What you’re showing a Arctic sea ice, and conveniently omitting the other half of the globe.
Since global ice cover is what matters in global warming/cooling, shall we look at the Antarctic?
OK, if you insist: click
AndrewP (10:00:38) :
I bet if you did a daily anomaly, instead of a five day average, one of the days might have been above the ‘79-’00 average. Someone should do the calculation! If it did it must be the first time in a long time.
The same thing probably happened last year:
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20090603_Figure2.png
Late April, early May was even closer, for a longer period of time, than this March’s little blip towards the 1979-2000 average.
This year will probably have less summer ice than last summer – it has an extra month to fall from “almost normal”.
I think that most of the posters here are wrong about ice volume being related to year. Sea ice volume is more than likely a function of wind pile-up in the context of a negative AO (IE less flush).
Ever been on the shores of the Great Lakes after wind caused a pile up of lake ice that destroyed your nice over-the-water deck? If there were no wind we would be able to fairly accurately calculate ice depth. Why can’t we? Why doesn’t that simple math equation work? The wind gets in there and mucks things up.
Here is a mind experiment. Consider warmer temps. But with wind blowing towards anything other than an Arctic escape hatch. We could have thicker ice this year with warmer temps than we did last year with colder temps. Why? Because the wind kept compacting and ice jamming the sea ice into thicker jumbles. You must take into account wind when considering ice volume. Temperature alone cannot predict ice thickness.
The only convenient omission is that despite the occasional short period of time when the Arctic sea ice extent approaches the 1979-2000 average the overall trend is down.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100406_Figure3.png
Seriously, how can anyone look at the above graph and claim that Arctic sea ice is recovering?
Nobody is ignoring Antarctic sea ice. This thread is quite clearly about Arctic sea ice.
Pamela Gray (19:15:56) :
Here is a mind experiment. Consider warmer temps. But with wind blowing towards anything other than an Arctic escape hatch. We could have thicker ice this year with warmer temps than we did last year with colder temps. Why? Because the wind kept compacting and ice jamming the sea ice into thicker jumbles. You must take into account wind when considering ice volume. Temperature alone cannot predict ice thickness.
But consider what’s happening this year when the thick multi-year ice is being blown away from the Canadian shore and the transpolar drift out into the Atlantic. Taking that into account we would expect thinner ice this year (coupled with the thinner ice in the archipelago this winter).
http://i302.photobucket.com/albums/nn107/Sprintstar400/20100325-20100331.jpg
Odd how some people have become expert on what Arctic Ice will and will not do, what co2 will and will not do to climate, and exactly where climate is going.
So easy to them. Oh snap! Who knew?
Chris Noble (20:16:06),
How often will you post that Arctic graph, without posting the Antarctic graph that negates it?
Until you convince someone here that CO2 is gonna getcha?
Let us know when you find your first skeptical convert.
Chris Noble (20:16:06) :
The only convenient omission is that despite the occasional short period of time when the Arctic sea ice extent approaches the 1979-2000 average the overall trend is down.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20100406_Figure3.png
Seriously, how can anyone look at the above graph and claim that Arctic sea ice is recovering?
That’s just one graph.
How about these ?
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.jpg
http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/image5.jpg
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20091005_Figure3.png
Not so easy to explain those away, is it ?
Anu (00:03:41):
“Not so easy to explain those away, is it?”
Easiest thing in the world, when we’re dealing with cherry-pickers like you and Chris Noble. Tell us, why do you pick only the Arctic? Global totals are what matters.
OK, on to the deconstruction:
You both keep showing the same NSIDC chart of the Arctic, and ignore the corresponding NSIDC Antarctic chart: click. Why is that?
Polar ice is currently a big deal to climate alarmists because they can point to natural changes in the Arctic and say, “Ah-HA! Told ya so! The Arctic proves that catastrophic AGW is finally happening!”
But global ice cover is what matters when discussing global warming. Doesn’t it? From NASA: click
Now that your three charts have been easily explained away, how do you explain your Arctic-only cherry-picking? Why doesn’t the Antarctic data get equal billing? click
Nothing is happening that is not completely explained by natural climate variation.
Further, there’s a lot of “adjusting” being done by various government agencies that rely on alarmism to keep their funding at current levels. Look at this blink gif showing a typical adjustment: click. As soon as the 30 year average was hit, the chart was re-adjusted to show that the average trend line wasn’t really hit.
The same kind of adjustment was done by the NSIDC: click. Note that these “adjustments” are always in the more scary direction.
Your scary charts are contradicted by these un-scary graphs of the Arctic: click1, click2, click3
Nothing is happening that is not explained by normal fluctuations within long term parameters: click.
The planet is not static and never has been. Imputing normal climate variations to changes in a minor trace gas by pointing to only one hemisphere loses the debate. But when temporarily declining Arctic ice is all you’ve got, you’re forced to ignore both the Antarctic, and global totals. That selective cherry-picking debunks your argument.
The Arctic will be ice-free in the summer way before Antarctica – the climate models predict that. Once the albedo changes, the ocean heating and northern permafrost melting will speed up. All part of the unfolding 21st century climate change.
It sounds like you didn’t bother to read how NSIDC calculates the 5 day moving average – search above.
I realize you’re upset that the “normal” line wasn’t reached. Hey -that’s how it goes.
“temporarily declining” – you sound hopeful, almost desperate.
Too bad the climate doesn’t care what you hope.
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20091005_Figure3.png
It will continue “normally fluctuating” downwards, until the death spiral of ice-free summers.
Then you can move on and turn your attention to the next “normal climate variation”, like the steady temperature increase for the planet, or the inexorable ocean warming. There’s many years of opportunity for misunderstanding the data and/or hoping these are just “temporary”, even though it unfolds exactly as predicted.
Oh look, Prof. Jones is still getting the same salary, for much less work – that will teach him to, uh, do science.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/
If that multi-million pound book deal comes through, people like you will get what they want – Prof. Jones dropping out of science.
Yay.
Oh wait, Is Dr. Phil the Director again ?
http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/people/facstaff/jonesp
I wonder if he will put photovoltaics on his new country mansion, after the book advance…
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/06/23/article-1028758-030884970000044D-612_468x311.jpg
Smokey, while many of the posters here are still denying the blatantly obvious downward trend in Arctic sea ice there is very little chance that I or anyone else will be able to convince them about anything. This is the difference between a skeptic and a denialist.
This whole post is about a small bump in the March Arctic sea ice extent where it came close to touching the 1979-200 average. The same thing happened last year when various bloggers started hyperventilating and predicting a recovery or claiming that briefly reaching the 1979-200 average Arctic sea ice extent somehow refutes AGW. However, when the same downward trend seen from 1979 continues there is a deafening silence or a range of deflections such as yours about Antarctic sea ice.
Anu (14:16:59) :
The Arctic will be ice-free in the summer way before Antarctica – the climate models predict that. Once the albedo changes, the ocean heating and northern permafrost melting will speed up. All part of the unfolding 21st century climate change.
Even though the Antarctic has a 1.5 million km^2 headstart you’re probably right! Of course there’s very little multiyear sea ice there so it has an advantage, which is rapidly diminishing however.
Anu (14:16:59) :
Chris Noble (16:19:16) :
Phil. (17:43:10) :
I had some choice responses, but I’m sure they would be snipped. So, let me just say, keep watching those trends, guys, and be prepared for the inevitable.
6th April was a hit at the “normal” ice extent measurement by the Norwegians:
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
and a barrier breach at the ice “area” measurement:
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
Pete (06:26:15)
What’s your point ?
That the summer melt ice area and extent might be somewhat above the 3 lowest of the satellite era (2007, 2008, 2009) ?
We’ll know by October.
Chris Noble (16:19:16) :
First, you don’t get to re-define scientific skepticism. That definition has been long established, and is a central requirement of the scientific method. And you’re lucky you didn’t get snipped for repeatedly using the d-word.
Scientific skeptics, who comprise most commenters and readers of this “Best Science” site, can easily be convinced of any scientific hypothesis. All it requires is empirical, testable evidence that human produced CO2 is the primary cause of global warming. [Keep in mind that computer models, besides being usually wrong in their predictions, are not evidence.]
Because no empirical evidence has been produced, the CO2=CAGW hypothesis has no valid real world basis in fact, and your complaint that you can’t “convince” skeptics of that failed hypothesis is simply a complaint that you have to abide by the scientific method in order to be convincing.
Also, “blatantly obvious” is in the eye of the beholder, not in the data, since you give no time frame. For example, here is a cooling trend. And it’s a nice long time frame. If you want to see shorter time frames showing the same thing, just ask and I’ll provide them.
Anu (14:16:59),
You win the smokey award for successfully avoiding the reality that global ice extent is all that matters; regional fluctuations are just that, regional. The Arctic is a region. To signify that you are the recipient of the award, you may append an “s” to your name.
By focusing exclusively on the Arctic, believers in the conjecture that human CO2 emissions cause any measurable global warming are tacitly admitting that their catastrophic CO2 conjecture is debunked: click
By ignoring my links and hoping they will go away, I understand that you’re incapable of adequately answering them, and ignoring them is the least painful option.
Finally, you’re getting Phil all excited when you speculate that…
“The Arctic will be ice-free in the summer way before Antarctica – the climate models predict that.”
“…the climate models predict…” heh! Thanks for making me snicker: click
So, care to put a specific date on that prediction? One year? Five years? Maybe an AlGorithm of 4 years? Or a time frame so far in the future that it can never be verified that your prediction is wrong?
[Before making your WAG [wild-ass guess], note that Arctic summer sea ice doesn’t seem to be declining at all: click. Who are you gonna believe, NSIDC? or your lyin’ eyes?]
Since you will have to pick something like A or B [or your prediction is unverifiable and therefore completely worthless], look at this handy Vostok chart again, showing the long-term global cooling trend: click. Note that there are warm spikes. But the long term trend is clearly negative.
Finally, to you I sound ‘desperate.’ That’s called “psychological projection,” and the alarmist crowd is generally afflicted with it from top to bottom. A couple of fine examples of appearing desperate are your strange assertions: “the steady temperature increase for the planet, or the inexorable ocean warming…”.
Show us your ‘steady temperature increase’ here: click. Hey! Where’d it go? And the ARGO deep sea array does show ‘inexorable’… whoops… cooling: click. Seems you’re wrong about most everything.
When the Antarctic starts emulating the Arctic, wake me. Because citing only the Arctic is typical alarmist cherry-picking.
Anu (17:59:54)
Mark C. Serreze said: “we do a modified 5-day mean by projecting values forward by 1 or 2 day based on the slope over the past few days” “it was a decision based on simply trying to improve presentation of the results”
I’m quite happy to have a jagged graph of the actual daily results, without any averaging. Unnecessary data manipulation should be avoided, or it makes people suspicious of the figures when they change retrospectively. If the NSIDC just plotted the actual figures we would not be discussing the odd behaviour of their graph here on WUWT.
jaymam (20:49:31) :
I’m quite happy to have a jagged graph of the actual daily results, without any averaging. Unnecessary data manipulation should be avoided, or it makes people suspicious of the figures when they change retrospectively. If the NSIDC just plotted the actual figures we would not be discussing the odd behaviour of their graph here on WUWT.
I agree.
Far too much time is spent arguing about trivialities like you mentioned.
This could all be avoided if NSIDC, and the other sites, had better presentation graphics, maybe a nice web interface to “build your own” graphs.
Show me the data without smoothing.
With smoothing.
Show me the 1979-2000 average.
OK, now with the 1979-2008 average.
Overlay the 1 std dev gray area on the average line.
OK, now 2 std dev. 3 std dev.
This could all be done pretty easily, but it might take some programmers a few weeks, or months, whatever.
I think the problem is just funding – 20 years ago, there was no need to put data up on the web. Even 10 years ago, there was probably not much “public” interest in this data. As the internet gets faster, as the PC’s get much more powerful, and as certain sciences become “public interest”, existing public websites are revealed to be inadequate.
They aren’t going to spend $50,000 making the Web interface to permafrost data more flexible, if only 400 people in the world are even looking at that data on the web…
I wonder if hundreds of “scientific” sites could make their data available in some kind of standard XML format, and let the interested citizen buy some PC program that lets them slice/dice the data however they want. Because whatever they made available on the website, some people would push the envelope and demand more. Or just not like what is available, for some reason.
@Smokey (10:25:20) :
Thanks for giving me an award, but I prefer my trophies, medals and cash – maybe one day you’ll win an award, too. You seem like an optimist.
If you get liver cancer, will you brag about how healthy your heart is ? Systemic problems usually start in one “region”. Once the Arctic is ice free in the summer, the planet’s albedo will have changed, and the ocean warming will speed up. Things don’t happen all at once – that’s why there’s such a thing as “time”.
Perhaps in your amateur “studies”, nobody has told you that the Arctic summer minimum is in September, not June:
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20091005_Figure3.png
Try to figure out the trend in this graph. Note that once the “death spiral” starts, the linear trend will no longer apply.
I’m glad Vostok data suggests one part of Antarctica might get 0.001° C cooler during the next century of global warming – that should help the global temperature, although insignificantly. But you seem fond of insignificant data, so enjoy.
I’m glad you’re aware of the concept of psychological disorders. This might prove useful to you in the years ahead, when the Arctic becomes ice free in the summer – some people are going to have severe cognitive dissonance and other afflictions, and not even be aware what is happening.
If your busy “amateur studies” schedule allows some time for finding out what is happening with the Argo buoys, read this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/20/the-current-el-nino-still-hanging-on/#comment-349454
I know you’re fond of your little “friendsofscience” unlabeled, uncredited graph, but you might want to find out what’s really going on.
Maybe it’s time for you to admit your high school teachers were right, and you have no aptitude for science. Just accept it, and move on – don’t waste your time trying to prove real scientists wrong. I have little aptitude for music – I’m not wasting my time recording songs in my garage and complaining about how real musicians don’t know what they’re doing.
jaymam (20:49:31)
Right as usual. NSIDC won’t “open the books” regarding their raw-to-adjusted data methodology, and since their funding depends in part on keeping the AGW scare alive, it’s best to not accept their charts without question.
Anu obviously accepts their version of reality without question, although he lacks the empirical evidence to back up his assertions. This is his retort to me when I ask for evidence: “Maybe it’s time for you to admit your high school teachers were right, and you have no aptitude for science.”
Funny, that. Can I play too? OK:
Anu is so easy to debunk because he is a true believer. How do we know that? Because he states, with absolute assurance, his unequivocal prediction about an ice-free Arctic that he knows is fast approaching. But he won’t give a time frame when that will supposedly occur.
Instead, Anu rationalizes: “Things don’t happen all at once – that’s why there’s such a thing as ‘time’.”
Yes, let’s discuss the time question. In my post above, I challenged him: So, care to put a specific date on that [ice free Arctic] prediction? One year? Five years? Maybe an AlGorithm of 4 years? Or a time frame so far in the future that it can never be verified that your prediction is wrong? I couldn’t hear his answer over the sound of the crickets.
But he still won’t give his time frame. Anu needs the courage to put a date on his ice-free Arctic prediction. Al Gore isn’t afraid to say we have four years until the Arctic is ice free. Why is Anu afraid to predict the date? As Dan Rather used to say: “Courage.”
And regarding that repeatedly posted chart of the Arctic: every time someone posts that same chart, I post 4 or 5 or different charts refuting it, including the graph of the Antarctic, which is practically its mirror image: as the Arctic loses ice, the Antarctic gains ice. Where’s the global warming? Hiding in an invisible pipeline? And to refute Anu’s misrepresentation about the ARGO buoys: they don’t just take the temperature at 6500 feet, they take it from the surface all the way down. The 3,351 ARGO buoys show that the oceans are cooling.
I posted seven charts in my last comment, and others posted theirs, too. But like any blinkered alarmist, Anu ignores all contrary evidence, and instead engages in psychological projection by accusing skeptics of cognitive dissonance. He apparently missed the discussion here where it was pointed out that skeptics are immune from CD, being the opposite of true believers. Skeptics need evidence; true believers have faith – and if the flying saucers don’t arrive on the predicted date, the CD afflicted simply re-set the date of arrival. Because they have faith in their belief.
Next, the University of Bremen chart showing increasing Arctic ice was for June of 2007, 08 & 09. Sorry I don’t have the September pics [Anu thinks September isn’t Summer; three-quarters of it is]. My reason for posting that ice extent map was to show that maybe the NSIDC chart might be a little less credible than people think.
NSIDC routinely re-adjusts its numbers [and always in a way to show alarming warming]. Their chart should be taken with a grain of salt. The U of Bremen chart is based on physically measured ice cover, pictured on a map — much more credible, no?
I don’t mind Anu disparaging my education [I’m certainly not a climatologist, my degree is in electronics. But I worked thirty years in a metrology [no, Anu, not meteorology] lab, designing, testing, calibrating and maintaining weather related instruments such as dew/frost point instruments, R.H. meters, gas sniffers, temp recorders, etc.]. I’m not ashamed that I don’t have an advanced degree. But in a move worthy of the most self-absorbed alarmist, Anu cites his own self as his authority in his link.
Inquiring minds would like to see Anu’s C.V., since he writes so condescendingly about another poster’s “amateur” studies. So how about it, Anu? What’s your specific expertise? We wouldn’t want to think we’re dealing with an amateur here.
I don’t like to waste time posting when only Smokey will read my work, but I have 8 minutes to spare.
Al Gore isn’t afraid to say we have four years until the Arctic is ice free.
You realize this is a lie, right ?
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2009/12/15/inconvenient-truth-gore-claims-dont-add/
Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.
In his speech, Gore told the conference: “These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr. [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.”
However, the climatologist whose work Gore was relying upon dropped the former vice president in the water with an icy blast.
“It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,” Dr. Maslowski said. “I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.”
Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 percent figure was one used by Dr. Maslowski as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Gore.
could be
75% chance by summer 2014 or 2016
Try to stick to facts. And while you’re at it, try to find graphs that are labelled.
I did read some about that Long Bets site you mentioned once, that looks interesting. I usually like to win bets within a year or so, but I’ll keep it in mind. I saw Ted Danson won a bet there.
It doesn’t matter when I predict the Arctic to be ice free – I would just do it to win money, not as a formal scientific prediction. There’s a big difference, as I pointed out on another thread.
Will you make a prediction on minimum sea ice area in the Arctic ? Your take on things is “natural variability” or “cooling”, right ? So what is your prediction of minimum ? Never below summer 2007 for another 1000 years ? Now that’s something that could be a good bet in a decent timeframe…
No, the Argo buoys show the ocean is warming. Yes, they profile the temperatures from the surface down to 2000 meters. Your plot is for only the top 700 meters. Read my link again – not because I’m an “authority”, but because I am organized and have the comment # and don’t want to type it all out again:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/20/the-current-el-nino-still-hanging-on/#comment-349454
If you saved your comment #’s you could do the same.
And I said when the Arctic becomes ice free in the summer – some people are going to have severe cognitive dissonance and other afflictions. Not “now”. Try to follow the details.
the Arctic summer minimum is in September, not June
Clear enough.
And yes, NSIDC gets data in image form as well:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_bm_conc.png
I don’t want to get into details of radar imaging and sea ice algorithms here – go search the actual science website. Read about the satellites used. Dig into it, rather than use innuendo to imply NSIDC is lying.
I didn’t disparage your education, but your aptitude for science. It shows in most of your comments.
You’ve just admitted you’re an “amateur” in climate science, so why is it condescending when I say it? Some of the amateurs here are rather impressive with their interest and knowledge in the details of climate science – you are not.
I didn’t say I was an expert in climate science, but yes, my aptitude for science is larger than yours – I started my MIT studies in physics, as a sophomore, when I was 16. A long time ago. Even my less able classmates who flunked out and had to go to weaker schools had stronger minds than you. As for CV, I prefer to remain anonymous, for the benefit of my company. Honesty makes many enemies.
[snip]
Now I see you are average for this crowd.
[snip]
Anu (08:17:39) :
I was just sharing information on some observational data.
But since you asked I might have a point: from the looks of it year 2010 seems to become the third year in a row with increasing arctic ice extent, are we looking at a new trend?
In the end of October we’ll only know a slightly more but most likely it will be truly inconvenient for the AGW alarmists among us.
Yeah, mine’s bigger, too. When I was 10, I was given books on electronics, including the latest (then) stuff on solid state, and the newest developements from the space program, VLSI. When I was 11, I was learning single-variable differential and integral calculus and the rudiments of quadratic equations. I still like Heinlein’s idea of requiring a voter to solve a root of a quadratic before being able to vote. Also, when I was 11, I was given a high school level primer book on Einstein’s theories of Relativity, Special and General. But cursed be my step-grandfather for teaching me that stuff in a way that can’t be documented or proven.
Sorry, Anu, I’m afraid it sounded a bit condescending when you mentioned your age while attending MIT. Well, I was 18 in 1982, attending UT @ Arlington, Texas, considered to have an engineering department on par with MIT. The Aerospace Engineeering program there had their own wind tunnel.
In the end, it won’t matter where we got our education and whether it was accredited or not. Results matter. Creds don’t make good science. Sticking to the scientific method makes good science.
Anu (22:30:23) :
“No, the Argo buoys show the ocean is warming. “
Actually, that is not what the most recent data show at all. Initial data from Argo showed a distinct cooling. This was ascribed to errors in pressure sensors, and the data were “corrected” to show an increase in ocean heat. But, in recent years, even the corrected measurements show a distinct downward trend.
Such corrections illustrate one of the ways in which confirmation bias plays such a heavy role in AGW research. The data disagreed with their assumptions, so they sought out what they considered to be a plausible mechanism for a cold bias. But, had the data been hot biased, they would not have questioned it at all. Whether the “corrections” are valid or not in this instance, applying the same type of confirmation bias to all incoming data inevitably skews the big picture to the side of the predetermined verdict.
“Even my less able classmates who flunked out and had to go to weaker schools had stronger minds than you.”
And, you believe this nonsense adds to your credibility, do you? Color me unimpressed.
Bart (01:11:22) :
Such corrections illustrate one of the ways in which confirmation bias plays such a heavy role in AGW research. The data disagreed with their assumptions, so they sought out what they considered to be a plausible mechanism for a cold bias. But, had the data been hot biased, they would not have questioned it at all. Whether the “corrections” are valid or not in this instance, applying the same type of confirmation bias to all incoming data inevitably skews the big picture to the side of the predetermined verdict.
A bit like Spencer and Christy who were quite happy that their UAH MSU data showed a negative trend and were very reluctant to admit their errors. However, they all turned out to be real and led to a positive trends, sometimes ‘corrections’ really are corrections!
Bart (01:11:22) :
Actually, that is not what the most recent data show at all. Initial data from Argo showed a distinct cooling. This was ascribed to errors in pressure sensors, and the data were “corrected” to show an increase in ocean heat. But, in recent years, even the corrected measurements show a distinct downward trend.
Like Smokey, you failed to read the link I provided, and thus miss the crucial point.
The famous graph you linked to only shows OHC for the upper 700 meters of the oceans. The Argo floats measure down to 2000m. This is the data that shows the oceans to be warming.
The complicated currents within the ocean slosh the heat around, in 2D, and 3D.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/ocean-heat-2000m.gif
This graph is from:
http://www.euro-argo.eu/content/download/49437/368494/file/VonSchukmann_et_al_2009_inpress.pdf
http://www.mercator.eu.org/documents/lettre/lettre_33_en.pdf#page=3
Such corrections illustrate one of the ways in which confirmation bias plays such a heavy role in AGW research. The data disagreed with their assumptions, so they sought out what they considered to be a plausible mechanism for a cold bias. But, had the data been hot biased, they would not have questioned it at all. Whether the “corrections” are valid or not in this instance, applying the same type of confirmation bias to all incoming data inevitably skews the big picture to the side of the predetermined verdict.
No, the data disagreed with other data. Discrepancies had to eventually be explained:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page1.php
“Even my less able classmates who flunked out and had to go to weaker schools had stronger minds than you.”
And, you believe this nonsense adds to your credibility, do you? Color me unimpressed.
I color you unprepared and unimpressive, so far.
Do some more reading, and maybe you will surpass Smokey in your understanding of ocean heat content.
In fact, just read this:
http://w3.jcommops.org/FTPRoot/Argo/Doc/Argo_new_brochure.pdf
and you’ll surpass Smokey.
Phil. (10:27:19) :
“… sometimes ‘corrections’ really are corrections!
And, when they are not, if they are more likely to go one way than the other, the accumulation of bias can be (indeed, has been) enormous.
Anu (16:52:29) :
“Like Smokey, you failed to read the link I provided, and thus miss the crucial point.”
Trust me, I saw the point quite plainly. The ancients might have had time to contemplate how many angels could dance on your head. I don’t.
“The famous graph you linked to only shows OHC for the upper 700 meters of the oceans. The Argo floats measure down to 2000m. [These are] the data [which show] the oceans to be warming.”
So, you get to pick and choose which data prove your point, and disregard those which do not? Sweet.
“No, the data disagreed with other data. Discrepancies had to eventually be explained:”
Apparently, my point is beyond your capacity. Never mind.
For the benefit of Phil and Anu, let me try to elucidate a bit more what is probably obvious to everyone else. Whether a correction is “right” or not is only a part of the problem with confirmation bias. The nub of the issue is that, once a “correction” has been found which renders the desired verdict, there investigation stops.
There may be, indeed generally likely will be, other, equally valid, “corrections” to be applied which could flip the result back the other way. But, these corrections are never sought to begin with and, once the desired verdict is reached, any slight chance that they would have been discovered is foreclosed for all time.
I will assume all are sufficiently familiar with Richard Feynman’s admonition about fooling oneself that I need not repeat the quote.
One more item: One of these guys might protest,”but, but, [this or that quantity] agrees now with the projection from the models and so offers independent confirmation.” No, it doesn’t, not when the data are massaged to provide the foreordained conclusion. At that point, it just becomes another way of expressing or illustrating the conclusion. But, it is not an independent verification.
Climate Science is rife with this kind of muddled thinking. The practitioners actually believe they are the standard bearers of “Science”, when they are actually its worst enemies.
Bart (21:15:30) :
For the benefit of Phil and Anu, let me try to elucidate a bit more what is probably obvious to everyone else.
This should be amusing.
Whether a correction is “right” or not is only a part of the problem with confirmation bias. The nub of the issue is that, once a “correction” has been found which renders the desired verdict, there investigation stops.
“The desired verdict” – that sounds simplistic.
I see why you like the phrase.
Takmeng Wong and his colleagues at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia had , since the 1980s, studied the most fundamental climate variable of all: the net flux of energy at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere—how much solar energy is coming in minus how much the Earth reflects and radiates as heat.
“Our team has been involved for many years in constructing time series of net flux from satellite data, going back to the 1980s,” says Wong. The observations started with a satellite mission called the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment and today are being made with Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) sensors on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites.
Wong and his teammates’ record of net flux measured by NASA satellites shows that between the mid-1980s and the end of 1990s, the amount of incoming and outgoing energy at the top of the atmosphere crept out of balance. By the end of the period, about 1.4 watts per square meter more energy was entering the Earth system than leaving it.
Stitching the observations from multiple sensors into a coherent long-term record is complicated. Scientists are always looking for ways to check the accuracy of these pieced-together climate records. Since the ocean is the planet’s single biggest reservoir for surplus energy, the energy imbalance Wong and his colleagues detected in net flux observations ought to be detectable in ocean heat content, too. The connection between these two related, but independently measured vital signs of Earth’s climate brought Wong and Willis into collaboration in 2006.
“When Josh Willis published his first global estimates of ocean heat storage, we saw it as a chance to verify the accuracy of our energy balance time series against a completely independent set of measurements. Josh gave us data on ocean heat storage through 2002, and we compared it to our net flux estimates. There was good agreement, and so we published a paper on that together.”
“We continued to update our net flux time series each year, and we concluded that the positive energy imbalance that we detected previously remained the same,” says Wong. So he was surprised, even a little alarmed, when Lyman and Willis’ reached the opposite conclusion in 2006, saying that the ocean had cooled.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page2.php
Measurements did not match.
Nothing to do with climate models, Skippy.
There may be, indeed generally likely will be, other, equally valid, “corrections” to be applied which could flip the result back the other way.
Gee, if only there were scientists looking for these other “flips”. Too bad every single one of them stopped questioning Argo float data as soon as Dr. Willis got what he wanted…
Do you have any idea how Science works ?
But, these corrections are never sought to begin with and, once the desired verdict is reached, any slight chance that they would have been discovered is foreclosed for all time.
Ah yes, back to “the desired verdict”.
If only there were scientists who do not lie and cheat to advance AGW … someone like Dr. Lindzen, or Dr. Svensmark, or Dr. Spencer, or Dr. Christy, or Dr. Pielke, or Dr. Baliunas, or Dr. Soon, or Dr. Choi – anyone – who could look into this Internationally available, totally transparent Argo platform and find those “flips” that would make the upper 2000m of the ocean cool again…
But that slight chance has been foreclosed for all time, because of the mighty Dr. Willis and his unforgiving wrath:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/images/josh_willis.jpg
Where are you getting all your pearls of wisdom from ?
http://tinyurl.com/ybuxw8t
Anu (22:21:14) :
I see you still do not conprehend. Oh, well. This thread is growing stale. Better luck next time.