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.
“”” 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]