By Steve Goddard
NCEP has changed their forecast, and it now appears there will be above normal temperatures over the Beaufort Sea for the next few days.
This will cause continued melt of the low concentration ice, and a downwards drift of the extent line. Daily loss has been declining steadily over the last month, but not enough to keep extent above my 5.5 million JAXA forecast.
Looks like it will be close at the finish line between 2009 and 2010 for JAXA 15%.
The DMI 30% concentration graph looks like 2010 will probably finish ahead of 2009.
Average ice thickness is highest since 2007 and 10% higher than 2009. Hinting at a 10% increase in ice volume next spring relative to 2010.
Barring 2007 style winds, next spring should see a third straight year of recovery since the winter of 2007-2008, when much of the thick ice blew out of the Arctic and melted in the North Atlantic.
Remember the “rotten ice” in 2008, which led to Mark Serreze betting on an ice free North Pole that summer? Looks like we have come a long way since then. Here is what the North Pole looks like today :
Looks like it will be close at the finish line between 2009 and 2010
Agreed. I said on here a while back it looked like 2010 would be a rerun of 2009.
Steve,
Can you post the ice volume map again, like you did here? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/09/2007-sea-ice-post-mortem/
What the North Pole Cam looks like today won’t stay up there, and will be migrating south for the winter, as will the Sea Ice Barbarians.
Hi Steve.
Admission of the ice not being able to reach your projection this year…sounds like the hyenas are coming.
Still, statistically (from my two methods of analysis) there appears to be a better chance of coming out at 2005’s value before 2008’s, so clearly 2009 has a higher probability than either of those. I’ll give more details later (either here or at Sea Ice News #19) when I have a bit of time.
Overall, if we reach last year’s value on an El Nino year, I’ll be happy with that. No matter where we end up at this point, it looks to intermediate to be able to make claims of recovery or a death spiral either one.
-Scott
It’s difficult to predict the autumn minimum without knowing what the winds will do. And the clouds. And the oceans. And the plankton. It’s a complex system and has never been successfully modeled. And probably never will be. Models are like the Tower of Babel, just another human edifice that reveals collective ego inflation.
Steve, your straight line daily ice loss is not the correct function. It should be flattening toward and assymptote at mid Sept- hey its only a couple of weeks
Oops, I mean it should be dropping off quickly to zero.
Sorry to be a complete dunce here, but when measuring ice thickness do we measure it as above the water surface or in its entirety? EG is 2.5 meters on the scale actually 1.6 meters above sea level?
tallbloke says: “Agreed. I said on here a while back it looked like 2010 would be a rerun of 2009.”
Yup, you did:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/04/discrepancies-in-sea-ice-measurements/#comment-447879
“2010 looks like it’s going to be a rerun of 2009 from here on in to me.”
Edit, that should read 0.833 meters, 2/3 being below the surface.
Gary Pearse says:
August 24, 2010 at 8:06 am
Are you sure? I would’ve thought that after the minimum is reached the daily ice loss line would go below zero in accordance to physical reality.
-Scott
“next spring should see a third straight year of recovery since the winter of 2007-2008”
Also, fourth straight year below 2006-2007 levels would not be incorrect either. :/
Remember the “rotten ice” in 2008, which led to Mark Serreze betting on an ice free North Pole that summer? Looks like we have come a long way since then. Here is what the North Pole looks like today :
More of your nonsense Goddard, as you well know Barber was no where near the location of that image (which is not at the N Pole but actually closing on the Fram strait). The following image is in the vicinity of Barber’s location, and guess what, it still looks rotten!
http://mgds.ldeo.columbia.edu/healy/reports/aloftcon/2010/20100822-0901.jpeg
Scott,
I do competitive target shooting, and the winner is the shooter closest to the bullseye. No one expects to hit dead center.
Looks to me like 2010 will likely finish closer to 5.5 than NSIDC’s 4.74, or Lindsay and Zhang’s 3.96.
Steve, please see my post here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/22/sea-ice-news-19/#comment-465146
Input on hysteresis implications from ice experts welcomed.
Phil.
I have no idea what you are talking about. Who is Barber?
REPLY: Here’s our WUWT piece on him:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/14/a-look-at-sea-ice-compared-to-this-date-in-2007/
-Anthony
I notice that the NSIDC compare current sea ice extent to the MEDIAN of 1979-2000, yet they describe the outline as the “average”.
I’m trying to get my head around the relevance of the median. Obviously it would be difficult for them to create an outline of a mean extent.
Presumably NSIDC look at the extents on any particular date from each of the years from 1979-2000, line them up in order, and compare the current day to the median. It strikes me this could be very different to the mean. eg. the median of 3 large circles and 2 small ones would be one of the large ones.
Also, if this is what NSIDC do, then it may be helpful if they could state the year with which they are comparing current extent, eg. today the 1983 extent could be the median, yet tomorrow the extent in 1993 could be.
What conclusions can be drawn from such comparisons?
The average date of the minimum is September 12th or 20 more days to go from Aug 23rd.
The minimum has occurred anytime between 17 days before and 12 days after this date.
On average, there is 487,000 sq. kms of melt from Aug 23rd to Sept 12th. 2007 lost 653,000 kms from this date while 1980 only lost 190,000 kms (over 2 days) from this date until the minimum.
As I tend to take a longer term view of sea ice health than many commenters I can’t get too excited by what happens during just one season.
However, to use one of Steve Goddards football analogies, surely if the game lasts for 90 minutes that’s how long you play for-you don’t bail out after 60.
If extent IS lower than say 2009, but that extent was achieved early in the season and the ice then began to expand again before the official ‘full time,’ shouldn’t the extent at the end of the game be the one that counts?
tonyb
The big question is can 2010 be lower than 2009, if so then the recovery has stopped, at least for a year. It will then look more like a rebound from 2007 which was an exceptional year and simply walking back to the general decline.
I’m still not that certain what the final value will be, my 4.9 looks low though, we might get the final value splitting mine and Steve’s predictions.
Andy
” stevengoddard says:
August 24, 2010 at 8:21 am
Looks to me like 2010 will likely finish closer to 5.5 than NSIDC’s 4.74, or Lindsay and Zhang’s 3.96.”
Lets us not forget that these forcasts are for September average, not for the minimum.
Phil. says:
August 24, 2010 at 8:21 am
Remember the “rotten ice” in 2008, which led to Mark Serreze betting on an ice free North Pole that summer? Looks like we have come a long way since then. Here is what the North Pole looks like today :
More of your nonsense Goddard, as you well know Barber was no where near the location of that image (which is not at the N Pole but actually closing on the Fram strait). The following image is in the vicinity of Barber’s location, and guess what, it still looks rotten!
http://mgds.ldeo.columbia.edu/healy/reports/aloftcon/2010/20100822-0901.jpeg
———————–
Phil,
Very poor attitude, but great picture. Absolutely beautiful.
Is the poster ‘Phil’ crossing the line between debate and rudeness by addressing Steve Goddard as “Goddard”?
Steve has every right to post his thoughts and opinions and posters have every right to questions those thoughts ideas and opinions but in a civil manner.
To Phil I would say, if you cannot engage with respect then ‘realclimate’ is probably a more suitable home for you.
REPLY: Phil. is an academic at a major university, rudeness is one of his regular traits here. – Anthony
The ice is currently at 5.5 million sq-km in NSIDC’s ice extent data and I don’t believe the melt season is over quite yet.
stevengoddard says:
August 24, 2010 at 8:21 am
Absolutely, it’s closer to the Price is Right than anything. With the predictions you’re comparing to, clearly you’ll blow away Lindsay/Zhang. Somehow I don’t think that will stop the hyenas from coming in though…they love to trash sceptics while letting the warmists get away with all sorts of errors (to be fair, some sceptics are the same in reverse).
Also, there is still a decent chance of going below 5.12e6 km^2, the halfway point between you and the 4.74e6 value.
-Scott
Phil,
You can’t be serious with that last post. The image you linked is from 77N. It is almost 1000 miles from the pole.
The webcam image is this article is from the North Pole Environmental Observatory, taken from their webcam which is currently 230 miles from the Pole
“”” KPO says:
August 24, 2010 at 8:12 am
Sorry to be a complete dunce here, but when measuring ice thickness do we measure it as above the water surface or in its entirety? EG is 2.5 meters on the scale actually 1.6 meters above sea level? “””
I think thickness is usually measured from one face to the opposite face. If you measure it with a radar, how would it know where the sea level was ?
I don’t do predictions; well not until the results are in hand. But I thought 2009 was going to get beat this year; but that crummy DMI Temperature graph suddenly got stuck on warm, and refuses to go down, so maybe 2010 is going to be the third lowest ice extent in history of the post 1979 Ice Data; but I don’t expect 2008 will get challenged for the Avis slot. I could be wrong on that; I was wrong once before !
Phil,
And having a couple ships plowing a path through the ice has no impact? And if there were two ships there when this picture was taken how do we know that there hasn’t been several more recently in that area that led to the ice being broken up? I’ll go with pictures and data from areas that aren’t as disturbed like the floating buoy.
Phil certainly tends to shoot from the hip, doesn’t he!
Julienne
I agree. There appears to still be a fair amount of vulnerable ice which is probably going to melt this week.
NCEP long range temperature forecasts have been consistently too low over the last couple of weeks, but they do show cold weather for next week.
Phil. says:
August 24, 2010 at 8:21 am
More of your nonsense Goddard, as you well know Barber was no where near the location of that image (which is not at the N Pole but actually closing on the Fram strait). The following image is in the vicinity of Barber’s location, and guess what, it still looks rotten!
Looks like melting ice to me, what is this rotten concept you speak of? To me ice melts every year, so this entire “rotten” concept just stinks of some educational misfits who got too high one night and decided to come up with some excuse on why their previous charts are wrong..its not our charts that are wrong, its the ice’s fault for not melting!! Its Rotten I tell ya!
How can you tell ice is rotten by the way? Do you smell it, or do you look at it and say “the way its melting is different then other types of ice, and that means its rotten.” This ice is melting like “swiss cheese instead of like “ice”. Its not real ice, its SWISS ICE!
Speaking of rotten ice, is it like eggs that when rotten smell bad? I think I will head a study to figure this one out. I will have enough US monies through my education grant to fly us to Tahiti three times in the name of finding “rotten” ice. So if anyone is interested in studying rotten ice melt in Tahiti, please let me know.
Who knows, maybe I will run into some scientists who smell rotten…and I can do a study on them and how rotten their science is compared to mine which is based on rotten ice data in Tahiti. We all know the better rotten ice is in Tahiti, so lets go to Tahiti and study some real science folks!
Ice rot is not something to be taken lightly I tell you what!
Steve Goddard.
Dr. Barber is the originator of your “rotten ice” quote referring to 2008 and Phil is quite correct in pointing out that he was talking about ice much closer to the current location of the webcam he linked to than to the north pole.
stevengoddard says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:11 am
Phil,
You can’t be serious with that last post. The image you linked is from 77N. It is almost 1000 miles the pole.
Your repeated failure to educate yourself on the subject under discussion is perfectly illustrated by this post. Rather than take Anthony’s hint and read the article about Barber and the ‘rotten ice’ you just bluster on!
The image I showed is from the region where Barber encountered the ‘rotten ice’ he referred to, he was not talking about the N Pole or the Fram strait.
The webcam image is this article is from the North Pole Environmental Observatory, taken from their webcam which is currently 230 miles from the Pole
Indeed, but irrelevant.
REPLY: Phil. is an academic at a major university, rudeness is one of his regular traits here. – Anthony
Are Phil, Phildot and Son of Phil (or was is Father of Phil?) one and the same person? And do you mean by “academic” that he was not promoted to perfesser or something?
Scott,
Remember that NSIDC took a mulligan, changing their forecast in July. They started at 5.5 million.
I haven’t taken my mulligan yet ;^)
The prediction, based entirely on a phase plot (dA/dt vs. A), of 5,301,000 sqkm looks pretty darn good at this point.
rw says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:33 am
Like a cornered bear, he lashes out. We expect that from the FAGTs (Feeders At the Government Trough). One has to make a decent living, no?
AndyW says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:01 am
Don’t be so sure that your 4.9 will be far off…statistically you still have a decent shot of being close…4.9e6 km^2 is definitely still in the running, though at the low end.
-Scott
stevengoddard says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:46 am
Excellent point Steve. I also didn’t realize that they were forecasting September averages (at least according to Alexej Buergin, is he right?)…that totally changes the game and I see them severely undershooting the value.
-Scott
Phil. says:
August 24, 2010 at 8:21 am
“More of your nonsense Goddard, as you well know Barber was no where near the location of that image (which is not at the N Pole but actually closing on the Fram strait). ”
The webcam picture is co-located with the PAWS buoy which is presently at Lat 86.7. The Fram is at Lat 80-81. The station has drifted from the Pole but is still much closer to it than to the Strait.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/PAWS_atmos_recent.html
Interestingly, the other webcam buoy(POPS) which quit sending photos back in July has moved 2.5 degrees farther from the Pole but has been reporting temps consistently 8-10 degrees colder than the buoy closer to the Pole. I’m not sure what that means but it seems a bit counterintuitive
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/POPS13_atmos_recent.html
bubbagyro says:
August 24, 2010 at 10:01 am
rw says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:33 am
Like a cornered bear, he lashes out. We expect that from the FAGTs (Feeders At the Government Trough). One has to make a decent living, no?
Who is the FAGT you refer to?
Personally, Phil of Academia, this web site is more educationally stimulating than most academics’ present in thier Academiadomes.
Just a thought from an over educated illiterate.
I commented last week that I preferred another commentor’s honest skepticism as opposed to S Goddard’s ‘triumphalism’ about an accurate prediction and the petty yes/no posting debates he has with “Phil”. SG quickliy responded that he wasn’t being triumphant and the melt season hadn’t ended. I must say, SG has owned up quickly to his prediction ultimately not panning out…. as for Phil… well he’s still petty and rude.
Mr. Goddard I retract my criticism, you are an honest and polite man.. Phil? you’re not only wrong, you’re rude and a “denier” of the of the worst sort.
” Scott says:
August 24, 2010 at 10:10 am
Excellent point Steve. I also didn’t realize that they were forecasting September averages (at least according to Alexej Buergin, is he right?)”
I cannot remember if Steven Goddard has defined his forcast (eg as “the lowest value uf JAXA”) but for the SEARCH people it is defined thus:
http://www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/background.php
See 3)
Phil is one of the most intellectually dishonest people on this planet, and whatever tiny bit of credibility he might have had with me is now gone. IMO he depicts everything that is wrong with the global warming crowd…rude, dishonest, childish, melodramatic egomania. I’m sorry, Anthony, if I went over the top, but the lack of respect Phil shows here would get one of my kids a warm behind. For an adult to do such a thing in the context of this blog is reprehensible.
Like anyone, Phil. is wrong. Everyone who posts often makes mistakes. Phil’s problem is his inability to acknowledge when he’s wrong. Instead, he gets rude.
Can you imagine being one of his students, knowing that your prof is so insecure he can never admit he made a mistake? Phil shows why tenure should be eliminated.
It all stems from insecurity. Nero had the same psychological problem. And look what happened to him.
We were at 5.6 yesterday. It will hit 5.5 in two or three days at most.
Last year the first day of gain was September 4th. And the minimum was reached on September 13th
Between August 23rd and the minimum last year, the melt was about .5 million
So the math says that around 5.0 or 5.1 should be this year’s minimum.
Smokey says:
August 24, 2010 at 10:30 am
I don’t know anything about Phil, so I’ll leave that alone. However, your description fits with a lot of professors I’ve met (with the possible exception of the reason being insecurity…don’t know if that’s right), even my own advisor. In general, my advisor is great and I like working with him. However, many times he’s refused to back down when he’s in the wrong, and he never backs down when we’re in front of other people. We’ve argued several times during our weekly group meeting. I’ve never been wrong in these arguments (I have to be extremely confident and have overwhelming evidence in support of my argument to argue with my boss in front of the group), yet the group does not know this, as the argument ends with him pulling an argument from authority. Several times he’s admitted to me the next day that he looked it up/ran the numbers/etc and I was right, but never to the group. It really looks bad for me and has given me a bad rep in the group. From what I understand, this isn’t all that uncommon in academia and it seems rampant in some areas, especially CAGW.
-Scott
stevengoddard says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:46 am
Scott,
Remember that NSIDC took a mulligan, changing their forecast in July. They started at 5.5 million.
I haven’t taken my mulligan yet ;^)
——————-
Steve, really? 🙂 I think you know that the 5.5 million sq-km prediction we made based on ice survival rates was never what we actually thought was going to happen. It was purely a statistical analysis of ice age survival rates applied to the March 2010 ice age classes to see what that would give. I never thought it was realistic since the relationship is based on an assumption for age vs thickness relationship which I believe is changing as the Arctic continues to warm (and this was stated in our detailed report). It is also based on an average summer circulation pattern, and that can be very off in a given year. Statistics can be useful to highlight relationships but it’s not always valid which is the reason why it’s always good to look at the actual physical processes occurring.
I finally saw what your prediction of 5.5 million sq-km is based on (submitted to the SEARCH Outlook – I’m responsible for writing the report this month) and it was good to finally read your reasoning behind the value (which I could never quite figure out from the postings on WUWT). I’m sure your readers will be interested in reading the next SEARCH Outlook report.
I don’t know if anyone noticed the large pull back from the Siberian coast today in the AMSR-E imagery. Looks like the Northern Sea Route is likely going to be open again this year.
“REPLY: Phil. is an academic at a major university, rudeness is one of his regular traits here. – Anthony”
Mr Watts, I think that was an inappropriate remark, especially since you’re the owner here.
I understand at the moment you will be disappointed with the fact that there was no recovery of Arctic sea ice this year.
I’ve talked to and dealt with quite a few academics in my life. Your experience might have been different, but in these days a rude person will find himself of herself out of academic work in no time.
I also wonder if “phil” has given his consent to any release of his personal details?
REPLY: Oh please. Citing a “academic at a major university” is not “personal details”. Every wordpress commenter (including your comment, with IP sourced in Finland) posts an IP address with each comment. Virtually every blog is the same way. IP addresses are logged with comments, just like any visit to a web server, and any blog owner can look up the owner using a wide variety of freely available tools. And yes, I do think Phil. is often rude in his comments, some have even been snipped, and he was given a time out this past weekend for bad behavior. That isn’t necessarily a reflection of other academics, only his participation here. – Anthony
Phil: Whosoever fits the shoe…
Virveli says:
August 24, 2010 at 11:19 am
Likely a true statement, but still premature. If the Arctic loses the same amount as 2004 or 2006 from now until the minimum, 2010 will end up above 2009.
-Scott
Julienne,
I don’t see us on SEARCH. Do you have a link?
Your 5.5 forecast was also submitted to SEARCH, so I’m not sure what the difference is between that and my 5.5 SEARCH forecast ;^)
Julienne
Yes, PIPS forecast very strong winds blowing off the Siberian Coast today.
It seems to me that at this time of the year,with rapidly declining but always weak solar effect and widespread freezing temperature levels and colder.There is little actual melting going on.
It is the winds that can still reduce the ice area by packing them.Making it appear that it is melting when actually it is being packed into a smaller area.
I wonder if winds is the main cause of the irregular ice cover year to year in later summer time periods.
Julienne Stroeve says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:06 am
The ice is currently at 5.5 million sq-km in NSIDC’s ice extent data and I don’t believe the melt season is over quite yet.
______
I would very well agree with that. The melt season is certainly coming into the home stretch, but has some legs left in it. I continue to have the simple belief that Arctic SST’s (which are based on the amount of open water we’ve had during the melt season) “set the table” for this last home stretch, and that winds and currents diverge or compact the lower concentration ice as low and high pressure systems cross the Arctic in August and September. I would be interested to know if there is some general studies being done that relate more open water and warmer water temps, as we’ve seen the past few years, with the possibility of later and later dates for the final summer low? It just would seem to make osme intuitive sense, and I could even imagine some year that the low might now even be set until early October…
In looking at these images from the Icebreaker Healy, which is in the western Arctic Basin right now:
http://mgds.ldeo.columbia.edu/healy/reports/aloftcon/2010/20100824-0301.jpeg
You can well imagine the wind diverging or compacting this ice. I also can well imagine this lower concentration ice eventually freezing over in place, with nice layer of snow on top that could go on to become David Barber’s “rotten ice”, though I know this has become the subject of ridicule from some skeptics.
Julienne says:
August 24, 2010 at 11:16 am
I don’t know if anyone noticed the large pull back from the Siberian coast today in the AMSR-E imagery. Looks like the Northern Sea Route is likely going to be open again this year.
______
Noticed it right away…and so once more, you could in theory circumnavigate the Arctic sea ice (going around the southern tip of Greenland of course!). Some year soon, I’m sure someone will…just to say they were the first!
What I find interesting is the cold seen and predicted for Russia in connection with the DMI plot getting over the freezing line, and now over the average.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
Seems like the winds are playing musical chairs.
So poor old Phil dares use the word “nonesense” and refer to Steve Goddard by his surname- which for Cassandra really “crosses the line”. Then the personal attacks start flying from the ‘polite’ and well ‘mannered’ sceptic crowd. Anthony –gives a hint as to his of his identy (“an academic at a major university” shock horror) and a “rude” academic no less. J Knight calls him “intellectually dishonest” and suggests a good spanking for conduct “reprehensible”. Smokey chimes in and suggests his tensure be eliminated. We appear to be in the habit of over reacting don’t we now.
MJK
mjk,
Your reading comprehension is weak. I am opposed to tenure for anyone. Phil is just a poster boy for why it should go.
15% may a meaningful concentration for use as a navigation guide, but not necessarily for measuring “ice health.” A couple of days of warm or windy weather can have a large impact on extent.
When gauging “ice health,” it seems to me that thickness, age and area are more meaningful metrics. 30% concentration, like DMI uses, also seems like a better metric.
“REPLY: Oh please. Citing a “academic at a major university” is not “personal details”. Every wordpress commenter (including your comment, with IP sourced in Finland) posts an IP address with each comment.”
Mr Watts, thanks you for your answer! Yes, I’m aware various forum software does record IPs internally, but the point is that I have never seen a board that would actually reveal any of it back to the public, have you? Neither will they I think reverse-IP and show the geographical location either I should think.
If your site researches, and sometimes publishes, some of an anonymous poster’s personal details, which will be the actual limits to that activity on your site? I gather from your response above that at least a poster’s profession and geographic location are publishable, without a poster’s consent as well.
Read the policy page
“Noticed it right away…and so once more, you could in theory circumnavigate the Arctic sea ice (going around the southern tip of Greenland of course!). Some year soon, I’m sure someone will…just to say they were the first!”
R.Gates, in fact there are two such enterprises going on in full swing presently. One Russian and one Norwegian expedition. The Norwegian team has recently passed the iciest part of the NE passage. See http://www.ousland.no http://rusarc.ru/expedition/route/
My favorite part of the policy page:
■Anonymity is not guaranteed on this blog. Posters that use a government or publicly funded ip address that assume false identities for the purpose of hiding their source of opinion while on the taxpayers dime get preferential treatment for full disclosure.
I notice that there have been some comments on a posters rudeness, and this has provoked a flurry attacking the first group. In general, I have observed a tendency of people behaving in a way on blogs that would not be acceptable in a social context. Imagine this was a social gathering, we’re all standing around chatting, Steve Goddard says something about sea ice, and suddenly somebody shouts out, “Hey Goddard – you’re talking nonsense etc.” Wouldn’t people start commenting on that? “Who is that rude guy? Where’s he come from,” etc. I wouldn’t expect others to defend him from criticism, since that would be the same as defending his behaviour.
Seems that once people get behind the keyboard, they become a different person. Same sort of thing as when people get behind the wheel of a car, maybe.
Ben says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:38 am
Phil. says:
August 24, 2010 at 8:21 am
More of your nonsense Goddard, as you well know Barber was no where near the location of that image (which is not at the N Pole but actually closing on the Fram strait). The following image is in the vicinity of Barber’s location, and guess what, it still looks rotten!
Looks like melting ice to me, what is this rotten concept you speak of? To me ice melts every year, so this entire “rotten” concept just stinks of some educational misfits who got too high one night and decided to come up with some excuse on why their previous charts are wrong..its not our charts that are wrong, its the ice’s fault for not melting!! Its Rotten I tell ya!
How can you tell ice is rotten by the way? Do you smell it, or do you look at it and say “the way its melting is different then other types of ice, and that means its rotten.” This ice is melting like “swiss cheese instead of like “ice”. Its not real ice, its SWISS ICE!
Speaking of rotten ice, is it like eggs that when rotten smell bad? I think I will head a study to figure this one out. I will have enough US monies through my education grant to fly us to Tahiti three times in the name of finding “rotten” ice. So if anyone is interested in studying rotten ice melt in Tahiti, please let me know.
Who knows, maybe I will run into some scientists who smell rotten…and I can do a study on them and how rotten their science is compared to mine which is based on rotten ice data in Tahiti. We all know the better rotten ice is in Tahiti, so lets go to Tahiti and study some real science folks!
Ice rot is not something to be taken lightly I tell you what!
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Ben, Ben, Ben. Please calm down. You sound like some others on this site who ridicule the phrase “rotten ice”. The phrase “rotten ice” is standard ice terminology that’s been in use for at least 150 years.
Please always remember and do never forget, Google. Google is good for you. Google is your friend. When in doubt Google.
Google rotten ice,” particularly under the “Books” section, then go blush.
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/rotten+ice
http://books.google.com/books?id=IZCVPVpAhuwC&pg=PA160&dq=%22rotten+ice%22&hl=en&ei=RiN0TL39OYnUtQPMycGjCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBQ
Jeff Lowe – 1996 – 255 pages – Preview
Thick but rotten ice is often easier to deal with using two long-shafted axes. These tools give more options for … Rotten ice may be on the verge of collapsing, so beware. Class 7 he Very few pure ice climbs reach this level of …
http://books.google.com/books?id=SdYBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA33&dq=%22rotten+ice%22&hl=en&ei=RiN0TL39OYnUtQPMycGjCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CFcQ6AEwCA
<Thomas Rupert Jones, Great Britain. Admiralty – 1875 – 869 pages – Full view
“Rotten ice, means ice that is worn away whilst lying ” in situ,” generally early in spring, by certain currents of the sea (usually … This ” rotten ice ” becomes spongy and dangerous to travel over. It is very common in Smith’s Sound, …”
This misreading of Steven vs. Phil. is absurd.
1. Phil makes a valid point that Steven conflates two unrelated issues/locations.
2. Steven feigns ignorance or is ignorant concerning Phil.’s point.
3. Anthony tries to explain to Steven what Phil. is talking about, by noting an earlier thread.
4. Steven posts another irrelevant comment not understanding Phil.’s point or simply evading it.
5. Phil. again points out the irrelevancy of using the North Pole Cam to discuss the concept of “rotten ice” as discussed in earlier threads.
6. People claim Steven has bested Phil. in this contest of logic.
7. I am flabbergasted.
Phil. definitely has a history of being somewhat ungracious, but take him on directly and he almost always wins a fact-based debate. While he may hail from “the other side of the aisle” to most viewers here, he is one of the most informed commenters who visit here. His frustration with Steven has been building over time, in my opinion, for quite justifiable reasons.
mecago,
You’ve picked two bad examples of rotten ice. The first refers to rock and ice climbing techniques, and the second refers to ice “early in spring” that is caused by ocean currents.
You can do better than that, can’t you? This isn’t realclimate.
“Phil. says:
August 24, 2010 at 8:21 am
Remember the “rotten ice” in 2008, which led to Mark Serreze betting on an ice free North Pole that summer? Looks like we have come a long way since then. Here is what the North Pole looks like today :
More of your nonsense Goddard, as you well know Barber was no where near the location of that image (which is not at the N Pole but actually closing on the Fram strait).”
Phil, Steven Goddard was mocking M. Serreze’s ice free North Pole “bet” ( /prediction/) , not the “rotten ice discovery”. The picture from the North Pole is most relevant. Barber has nothing to do with ice free North Pole .
That’s a subtle topic change. Was it conscious?
mecago
The image of the North Pole Phil linked was actually taken almost 1000 miles away.
Arthur
The ice was rotten in 2008. My point is that the ice conditions at the North Pole have “improved” considerably.
The area surveyed by Barber is shown to be ice free on the PIPPS 2.o plot for August 28, 2009, the day after they left. There should not have been any ice where their coordinates put them: 71°20’N, 139°00’W, (nearly 12 miles from the pole) according to Barbers report. The weather during their survey averaged -1.2C. Not surprising what they encountered was rotten.
[snip]
Steve,
Did you see my earlier post about concerning a volume map for the melt season? I’m curious as to what that looks like at this time, as that would seem to be a good indicator of ice health.
George E. Smith says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:16 am
“”” KPO says:
August 24, 2010 at 8:12 am
Sorry to be a complete dunce here, but when measuring ice thickness do we measure it as above the water surface or in its entirety? EG is 2.5 meters on the scale actually 1.6 meters above sea level? “””
I think thickness is usually measured from one face to the opposite face. If you measure it with a radar, how would it know where the sea level was ?
If it’s fragmented ice and the echo from the surface is also present then it’s quite straightforward, some radars can also give a bottom echo as well which again is straightforward. A satellite approach where the surface can be measured with great precision then the thickness can be determined by reference to the geoid surface (ICESat)
stevengoddard says:
August 24, 2010 at 1:44 pm
mecago
The image of the North Pole Phil linked was actually taken almost 1000 miles away.
***************************************************************************
I understand that, Steve, but it was not the point I was addressing. I was addressing Ben’s ridicule of the very concept of “rotten ice”. It seems that quite a few posters here think that the term was invented a few years, ago as a rartionalization of some kind, by “warmists.”
Jumping in here briefly on the “rotten ice” issue, which I know has been widely misunderstood here. I’ve occasionally thought to try to clear up the confusion in the past, but haven’t gotten around to it. Hopefully this note will finally do so.
1. mecago is correct – “rotten ice” is an actual term to describe old (multiyear) sea ice in a very deteriorated state. It’s more common in an operational setting than a scientific setting, but is familiar to anyone who studies, works with, or lives near sea ice. For example, the Canadian Ice Service defines it here:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/glaces-ice/default.asp?lang=En&n=137BED3D-1
NSIDC doesn’t have it explicitly in its glossary, but provideds a more general term for small, broken floes, “brash ice”.
As with any technical jargon, the terminology can see odd or funny to an outsider. My personal favorites are “gaffer” and “best boy” from the movie industry.
2. I think things have largely been clarified in terms of the misunderstandings between Phil and Steve, but just in case there is still some confusion:
Phil was basically correct. Steve was conflating this year’s ice at the North Pole Env. Obs. with Dave Barber’s observations last fall about the rotten ice. The NPEO is originally set out near the pole and then drifts southward in the eastern (European side) of the Arctic towards Greenland and Fram Strait. Dave Barber was on the Canadian icebreaker in the Beaufort Sea, in the western (Alaskan/Canadian side) of the Arctic (see peer-reviewed reference below). These two locations are hundreds of kilometers apart. It is in the Beaufort where we’ve seen large losses of multiyear ice in recent years and large areas of small broken floes. Ice in the high Arctic and on the Atlantic side has so far remained more consolidated.
I don’t know if Dave Barber will be out in the Beaufort again this year, but if he is I suspect he will again encounter a fair amount of rotten ice, based on visible imagery from MODIS.
walt
Barber, D. G., R. Galley, M. G. Asplin, R. De Abreu, K.-A. Warner, M. Pućko, M. Gupta, S. Prinsenberg, and S. Julien (2009), Perennial pack ice in the southern Beaufort Sea was not as it appeared in the summer of 2009, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L24501, doi:10.1029/2009GL041434.
glacierman says:
August 24, 2010 at 12:57 pm
My favorite part of the policy page:
■Anonymity is not guaranteed on this blog. Posters that use a government or publicly funded ip address that assume false identities for the purpose of hiding their source of opinion while on the taxpayers dime get preferential treatment for full disclosure.
Lest anyone should make the same mistake as Smokey has in the past none of the above applies to me.
Earlier post should have read – 1200 miles, not 12.
Alexej Buergin says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:43 am
Are Phil, Phildot and Son of Phil (or was is Father of Phil?) one and the same person?
I only use ‘Phil.’ when posting here, it is a contraction of my name and is what most people call me. The others also post here from time to time.
I finally saw what your prediction of 5.5 million sq-km is based on (submitted to the SEARCH Outlook – I’m responsible for writing the report this month)
Steven Goddard, is it true that you have submitted your prediction to SEARCH? If you did, I applaud you and am also very eager to see what it is based on.
Walt
I wasn’t talking about Barber and was not aware of his comment.
Rather I was referring to the fact that the ice was thin at the North Pole in 2008, and is looking much better this year. NSIDC used the term “rotten ice” several times in 2008.
I meant exactly what I said and was very surprised by Phil’s seemingly off-topic comment.
Matt,
I have changed my region of measurement and image size since the original volume graph, but here is the current graph.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BARZhZg9k1s]
Günther
I can’t find it on SEARCH, but Julienne seems to have. If anyone can find a link, please post it.
Steven Goddard, I was surprised to read that you of all people, who study the Arctic sea ice on a daily basis, had never heard of David Barber. Especially as he has often been referred to in comments following previous SIN articles.
Günther
I’ve heard of David Barber.
I just couldn’t figure out what Phil was talking about wrt to “Barber” as it seemed irrelevant to the article.
mecago,
I said you’ve picked two bad examples of rotten ice; you did. You’re just backing and filling now, but they were still two bad examples.
Rotten ice — a term we are very familiar with here at WUWT despite the preaching — as quoted in your posted link, occurs “early in spring.” This is late in Summer. Bad example, no?
The whole Arctic ice debate is a tempest in a teacup, and will remain that way unless the warmist contingent is able to falsify the hypothesis that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability. So far, they have failed.
I note that those arm-waving over the “rotten ice” strawman never seem to mention the rapidly growing Antarctic ice. Pointing to the Arctic is typical alarmist misdirection: ‘Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.’
Steven, I just used Google to search as thoroughly as I could the NSIDC.org website for the term rotten ice.
I found no press releases or articles in 2008 or 2007 linking the arctic death spiral comment from Serreze to rotten ice or any other mentions of rotten ice. I found technical descriptions and reports of observations in earlier years. There are many mentions in 2010 since the Barber story was published in late 2009. Google may be fallible here, but probably not.
I find it very hard to believe you missed a prominent story on WUWT concerning Sea Ice or all the mentions of Barber in various Sea Ice News comment threads.
Your feigned ignorance at this point is stretching credibility.
You were wrong. Your original point was a non sequitor. You now bob and weave and point to Hally’s comet to avoid admitting your error.
stevengoddard says:
August 24, 2010 at 1:57 pm
Arthur
The ice was rotten in 2008.
In the Beaufort Sea!
My point is that the ice conditions at the North Pole have “improved” considerably.
By referencing ice conditions a 1000 miles away? Surely that point would be better addressed by showing an image from that year’s webcam at a similar location and time?
Phil.
It’s weird to be on your side two years later.
The bobbing and weaving continues
Steve,
I think you may have years and locations confused. You said:
“Remember the “rotten ice” in 2008, which led to Mark Serreze betting on an ice free North Pole that summer? Looks like we have come a long way since then. Here is what the North Pole looks like today :”
I don’t think NSIDC used the term “rotten ice” in 2008, certainly not in regards to ice at or near the North Pole as you implied in your post. I’ve quickly glanced through our analyses post and I don’t see any use of the term there in 2008; in fact, I don’t think we mention it until our first post this year in January when we mentioned the Barber paper. It’s possible one of us may have used it in an interview before then. I don’t recall that, but if you have a record of it, please correct me.
We did discuss the fact that the North Pole was covered by mostly first-year ice, a situation that we’ve never seen before and likely hadn’t happened in many years. To my memory, rotten ice didn’t really come up until Dave Barber’s report last fall about the Beaufort. I suspect you may have conflated the two in your memory.
In any event, Phil responded (rather harshly) based on what he perceived to be an attempt by you to willfully twist the facts, but what I suspect was simply a mistaken memory.
Coincidentally, I just came across “rotten ice” in an old NSIDC report from 1978 that I was looking at. See the diagram on Page 2 and Page 19 here:
http://nsidc.org/pubs/gd/GD-2_web.pdf
See, we’re not just making up new terminology! 🙂
walt
The air temperature part of the Arctic melt season
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
is essentially over. And it was the weakest air temperature-induced melt season since 1958.
It’s all about winds blowing sea ice to where it can melt, El Nino heated remnant waters and ablation.
So much for relentless global warming vanishing the Arctic Sea ice.
It would be of far more benefit to understanding if more time were spent figuring out how Ice Ages get started, and why they grow 4 times longer than interglacials do. Sort of like how long it took for the Arctic Sea Ice to get to it’s big low in 2007 vs how long it will take to regain all the ground lost.
Try to understand the Ice Age/Interglacial process….without going off the deep end in fits of defeatism, as the last 2 episodes of climate change have driven the wild-eyed.
Dr. Meier,
Two more recent mentions:
http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g02159_ponds/index.html
http://nsidc.org/noaa/iicwg/IICWG_2009/Ice_Objects_Catalogue_V4-0.pdf
and it’s in your glossary:
http://nsidc.org/cgi-bin/words/letter.pl?R
None of this supports Steven.
Smokey says:
August 24, 2010 at 10:30 am
Like anyone, Phil. is wrong. Everyone who posts often makes mistakes. Phil’s problem is his inability to acknowledge when he’s wrong. Instead, he gets rude.
You appear to be confusing me with Goddard, as here he will desperately twist and turn to avoid admitting error. When I make a mistake I admit it.
Can you imagine being one of his students, knowing that your prof is so insecure he can never admit he made a mistake?
If I make a mistake I address it, my students give me high grades in the evaluations so they don’t appear to have any problems with me (except perhaps that I grade too tough).
Phil. says:
August 24, 2010 at 2:15 pm [ … ]
Since just about every university takes handouts of public money, yes, Phil, that part of the Policy does apply to you.
Walt Meier said:
“I don’t know if Dave Barber will be out in the Beaufort again this year, but if he is I suspect he will again encounter a fair amount of rotten ice, based on visible imagery from MODIS.”
______
And if he is out on the Beaufort, (or even extreme western Arctic Basin), this is the exact kind of ice (taken from the Healy in the region just yesterday) that can become “rotten ice” if it gets a layer of new ice and snow frozen on top:
http://mgds.ldeo.columbia.edu/healy/reports/aloftcon/2010/20100822-2301.jpeg
Bits of old MY ice, with new layers of ice on top and in between…quite “rotten”.
rbateman wrote:
And it was the weakest air temperature-induced melt season since 1958.
It’s all about winds blowing sea ice to where it can melt, El Nino heated remnant waters and ablation.
So despite low temperatures, six weeks of cloudiness and stalling of the Beaufort Gyre and Transpolar Drift Stream at the most important period of the melting season (when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky and melting rates are the highest of the season), there is still the possibility that 2010 will reach a minimum extent below 5 million square km?
What if we hadn’t had six weeks of cloudiness and stalling of the Beaufort Gyre and Transpolar Drift Stream, but just 3 weeks, or 0 weeks like in 2007? Where is the thick ice? How is that multi-year ice in the Beaufort and East Siberian Seas – that the negative AO pushed out there last winter – holding out? How much muti-year ice is being flushed through Nares Strait and the Queen Elizabeth Islands in these last weeks?
In short: Where is the recovery?
Correction to my comment at 2:40. The pdf I just linked to is dated 2007, but it is just a technical list of descriptors and does not count as NSIDC “using the term” so much as defining the term.
Virveli says:
August 24, 2010 at 12:34 pm
“Noticed it right away…and so once more, you could in theory circumnavigate the Arctic sea ice (going around the southern tip of Greenland of course!). Some year soon, I’m sure someone will…just to say they were the first!”
R.Gates, in fact there are two such enterprises going on in full swing presently. One Russian and one Norwegian expedition. The Norwegian team has recently passed the iciest part of the NE passage. See http://www.ousland.no http://rusarc.ru/expedition/route/
______
Thanks. Looks like they’re getting to it sooner than I thought. And here I was hoping I would be part of the first expedition to do it!
Still looks like the total antarctic + arctic ice is pretty close to the long-term means……
Since Barber coined the term and since we have widely discussed the matter and since even someone like me who doesnt run for the ice, INSTANTLY saw the disconnect between the picture of the North Pole and the mention of “rotten” ice, my reaction was like Phil.
If the picture was photoshopped polar bear on an iceberg, I think we would hold the folks to a different standard. I’ll suggest the same standard for all. Do a correction, in as much as rotten ice is a term of art now, and since Serreze cannot be QUOTED
using that term in 2008..
“Remember the “rotten ice” in 2008, which led to Mark Serreze betting on an ice free North Pole that summer? Looks like we have come a long way since then. Here is what the North Pole looks like today :”
This is misleading and wrong. Own the error,Correct the error. spare us the explanation of how it was gotten wrong, promise to quote accurately in the future.
Simple.
Reply: It’s more like Barber recently popularized the term. It’s been around for awhile. ~ ctm
R. Gates says:
August 24, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Thanks. Looks like they’re getting to it sooner than I thought. And here I was hoping I would be part of the first expedition to do it!
One yacht (Scandinavian) had a good shot at it last year but having reached the Bering strait were escorted to port by the Russian navy to deal with problems regarding their paperwork!
Reply: One a very tangential note, I did witness the Loca Lola navigating around the Antarctic peninsula in 1993. ~ ctm
Smokey:
“The whole Arctic ice debate is a tempest in a teacup, and will remain that way unless the warmist contingent is able to falsify the hypothesis that the observed temperature changes are a consequence of natural variability. So far, they have failed.”
natural variability is not a cause. It is an observation in search of a cause. Until you specify a null correctly ( as you have failed to do so) you dont have a Null to “falisfy.” Further, no null is falsified. they are rejected with a certain confidence level. Not falsified. but rejected. “we reject the Null with 95% confidence” . Not falsified. A rejected Null may very well be true, as chance would have things, by definition.
And further, rejecting a NULL does not make its opposite true. That is a type two error.
Günther Kirschbaum says:
August 24, 2010 at 3:15 pm
What if we hadn’t had six weeks of cloudiness and stalling of the Beaufort Gyre and Transpolar Drift Stream, but just 3 weeks, or 0 weeks like in 2007?
What if an asteroid hits Greenland? Hasn’t happened this year.
In short: Where is the recovery?
Probably the same reason Ice Ages take so long to reach bottom, and Interglacials run up so fast.
Macrocosm/microcosm.
Now, what if every 100,000 yrs an enormous Ice Comet drapes Earth in Ice & Dust but doesn’t slam into it?
We understand not the mechanisms for Ice Age/Interglacials nor the Polar Cycles (North taking a viscious hit & South spouting ice like an Eskimo Candle) .
[snip]
Ilulíssat Glacier, Greenland IceCam
http://sermitsiaq.ag/icecam/
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Ilul%C3%ADssat,+Greenland&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=18.860836,39.067383&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Ilulissat,+Kitaa,+Greenland&ll=69.209404,-51.064453&spn=0.705861,2.441711&t=h&z=9
Well, as I said recently. . . “revenge of the establishment consensus” (Mark S. is not part of that consensus, no matter how establishment he is).
Also revenge of “if it hasn’t happened 3 times in a row in the last 30 years, don’t expect it to this time either”.
I did, obviously, think that the recovery from 2007 would get us that 3rd year of min extent growth, because I considered 2007 enough of an outlier to do that. I was wrong.
But next year is still important. “3 years out of 4” would still be a trend upwards in my book (if it is a signficant increase anyway). If not, then we may just be returning to the pre-2006 downward trend line. Which isn’t the “worse than we thought it was” meme the AGWers are so fond of, but is still not good. . .
Perhaps “Phil” is using Steve’s surname as thats what most boys do at school. The thing is most people who leave school and grow up realise its incredibly rude.
Too many years in education can lead to an institutionalised outlook evidently.
Roll on Cryosat2 so you can all stop this ludicrous childishness.
On “rotten” ice:
So “rotten” ice is moth-eaten old ice. And “rotten” ice is small chunks of old ice glued together by thin layers of new ice.
For such a well-known term among those working with sea ice, you’d think there’d be better agreement as to exactly what is this well-known type of ice.
To lighten the mood, jeez’ “Baby Ice” is now going to make it through the terrible twos and will be a rotten adolescent soon.
Meanwhile Fellas…..Long range Model still showing Cooldown by the beginning of Sept & even showing some more premature early snow showing up on russian (land) side with higher elev of alaska getting white also…cannot see much melt after the 6th & hoping for that rapid ice over to make most minimum extent arguments mute…Stay tuned!
The conversation here is once again turning quite amazing, with the usual cast of characters.
In 2008, NSIDC discussed the “rotten ice” as an indication of a record low forecast minimum. Mark Serreze based his ice free North Pole bet on the thin first year ice.
That is exactly what I said in the article. I can’t (and don’t have any interest) in reading Phil, Mosher, or anybody else’s mind.
Steven,
Demonstrated to be untrue, incorrect, not factual, perhaps one might even say, in error.
Kinda sorta, not related to first sentence.
Your unwillingness to admit error, to continue to evade, bob, and weave has been made quite clear on this thread. If you could man up and own your errors you would gain a little credibility, albeit not much at this point, but instead you behave as we complain The Hockey Team does, no error must ever be admitted to to the public. This is my last comment in this thread, I expect you to accuse of some ad homs or a vendetta or something as you get in the last word.
geo says:
August 24, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Yet another comment throwing in the towel.
The ice has NOT yet gone below the 2009 minimum. If the rest of the year’s melt follows 2004 or 2006, then it’ll stay above it. This may be a small probability, but it’s still quite possible!
-Scott
Steve, if you have a link that says Mark Serreze talked about rotten ice in 2008 I hope you can share that with us. Mark was talking about the first-year ice at the pole that year and the possibility that the first-year ice could melt out.
Günther Kirschbaum says:
August 24, 2010 at 3:15 pm
“Where is the recovery?”
_____
It will be a “recovery spiral”, taking many centuries and even millenia to fully spiral up, (at least until such time as the next glacial period gets going) and interrupted by many years of a seasonally ice free summer Arctic.
This is a question I’ve been wanting to ask for a while, and it’s not just relevant to the Arctic sea ice discussions but to climate change in general: What would it take for you to believe that human activities are influencing the climate system and components of it such as the Arctic sea ice cover?
geo says:
August 24, 2010 at 3:37 pm
“But next year is still important. “3 years out of 4″ would still be a trend upwards in my book . . .”
****************************************************************************
It may be so “in [your] book”, geo, but not in the book that scientists use.
Also, the “worse than we thought it was” phrase, was not conjured up with the last 3 years of Arctic ice melt in mind. It is, instead, a retroactive look at the predictions that were being made about “ice free summers in the Arctic by 2050 or 2040. As soon as they saw the massive and accelerating loss in <b.VOLUME they realized that the situation was indeed worse than they thought.
Even in the 2007-2008 expansion of surface area composed of pathetically thin 1st year ice; the multi-year ice was shrink, shrink, shrinking; and more importantly, thin, thin, thinning. So what exactly do you mean by “recovery”?
Please look at the ice thickness images below. Yes I know Steve, you favor PIPS so here they are:
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/retrievepic.html?filetype=Thickness&year=2007&month=9&day=12
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/retrievepic.html?filetype=Thickness&year=2008&month=9&day=12
http://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/pips2/archive/retrievepic.html?filetype=Thickness&year=2009&month=9&day=12
Counting from 9-12 to 9-12 I find a pathetic increase from 2008-2009. By the way, it pays to wrench one’s head out of charts every once in a while and check up on more concrete matters. Like the fact that 2008-2009 were La Nina years, which helped chill out things a little.
So tell me? Are you going to rely on La Ninas and other transient situations, like our late spring melt forever?
Well, here is a quote from CNN in 2008 from Mark Serreze that doesn’t use the word rotten, but is even more direct in describing what Steve was first taking about at the top of this post; the status of the ice at the north pole:
“We kind of have an informal betting pool going around in our center and that betting pool is ‘does the North Pole melt out this summer?’ and it may well,” said the center’s senior research scientist, Mark Serreze.
It’s a 50-50 bet that the thin Arctic sea ice, which was frozen in autumn, will completely melt away at the geographic North Pole, Serreze said.
Find it here: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/weather/06/27/north.pole.melting/
blackswhitewash.com says:
August 24, 2010 at 3:51 pm
Perhaps “Phil” is using Steve’s surname as thats what most boys do at school. The thing is most people who leave school and grow up realise its incredibly rude.
Too many years in education can lead to an institutionalised outlook evidently.
***************************************************************************
It’s a military tradition as well. I’ve seen former military persons both use their last names as their preferred name as well as refer to people by their last names in a formal job situation (working security).
Julienne Stroeve said on August 24, 2010 at 4:34 pm:
Doesn’t Hansen have out a recent paper attributing a sizable portion of Arctic melt to soot? I’ve read mention here before of papers showing glacier melt attributable to soot, aka “black carbon,” as well as nearby land use changes.
Voila! Human activities, changes to climate systems including Arctic sea ice cover. What’s so hard to accept about human-generated soot getting warm in sunlight and melting the ice it is laying on?
mecago says:
August 24, 2010 at 4:38 pm
++++
Thank you for telling me what scientists don’t say. Are you willing to also tell us what they do say? If 3 out of 4 isn’t “recovering” than would “4 out of 5” qualify? If not, tell us what the minimum standard you’d accept would qualify for speaking of “recovering” rather than “recovered”?
Perhaps Cryosat 2 will help us, over time, credibly convert to using volume as a standard. Until the reliability and granularity of volume data gets a whole lot better than it is, then extent is what we have with any length of record, granularity, and reliability to perform (still too short, but vastly better than volume) historical comparisons.
I’m aware of the limitations of using extent. But volume data quite simply sucks at the current time. Would that it were better, more granular, and longer. We all look forward to the day.
jeez
Please cut the mindless personal attacks. You are desperate to discredit me and are not thinking clearly. I wrote this article in 2008 satirizing the “rotten ice.”
“Arctic ice refuses to melt as ordered
There’s something rotten north of Denmark”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/15/goddard_arctic_ice_mystery/
That was more than a year before the Barber piece some of you are obsessed with.
Maybe it wasn’t in an NSIDC publication. It might have been a personal conversation with Walt Meier or Ted Scambos. I don’t remember and don’t really care.
I’m sure you remember this 2007 article, since you are so familiar with the topic.
September 24th, 2007
Rotten ice over pole
http://www.farnorthscience.com/2007/09/
“We were seeing unusually thin, rotten ice, all the way to 79 degrees north,”
Julienne Stroeve says:
August 24, 2010 at 4:34 pm
This is a question I’ve been wanting to ask for a while, and it’s not just relevant to the Arctic sea ice discussions but to climate change in general: What would it take for you to believe that human activities are influencing the climate system and components of it such as the Arctic sea ice cover?
_______
Excellent question Julienne, and I shall be interested to see how the hardcore (and quite educated) WUWT skeptics respond. I find them to be the most interesting group to converse with, and I’ve learned a great deal by being here.
As a “75% warmist” I’m pretty much already there in terms of believe that AGW is likely happening, as you can probably gather from my posts, but I do hold out the remote possibility that there might be some longer term solar or ocean cycle that we don’t fully know about. I especially look at the climate shift of 1976, when the big run up in late 20th century warming got started and wonder if some longer term PDO, or other natural ocean cycle might not have helped pushed that warming. But then, I consider the distinct possibility that AGW could already be affecting these natural ocean cycles, and so we might never know what the planet would be doing without any human interventions. But really, I’m just stubborn enough that I would never want to be 100% certain of anything, as it would mean that I might close my mind to other possibilities. After all, what if Einstein was 100% certain that Newton was correct in all cases?
I stated for a long time that the Arctic is my watershed case, and even though I’m aware of ocean acidification, permafrost melt, and stratospheric cooling, etc. I look to the Arctic as being that final test case, that either takes me from 75% certain to 99.9%, and I expect this to happen within a few years. I do expect a new record low by 2015, and also do strongly feel that the long and deep solar minimum of 2008-2009, combined with the last La Nina, gave AGW skeptics a bit of breathing room to promote their skepticism to those not looking a the bigger and longer term picture.
Thanks Kadaka for your comment. It reminds me I should have been more specific as to what evidence would convince you. You are right that soot increases snow and ice melt and certainly it would be hard to argue that isn’t a direct result of human activities.
stevengoddard says at 4:07 pm:
“The conversation here is once again turning quite amazing…”
Yes! You’re getting close to Monckton territory! ☺
[snip]
In reverse chronological order, here are my weekly Monday estimates (JAXA 2003-2010 inclusive) for Arctic sea ice extent (date, extent (km^2), standard deviation (km^2));
8/23/2010,4.90E6,0.15E6
8/16/2010,4.84E6.0.22E6
8/9/2010,4.81E6,0.27E6
8/2/2010,4.68E6,0.33E6
7/26/2010,4.59E6.0.36E6
7/19/2010,4.49E6,0.42E6
7/12/2010,4.27E5,0.48E6
7/5/2010,3.97E6,0.53E6
Date of minima is the same for all estimates 9/19/2010.
Chance of 2010 Arctic sea ice extent minima exceeding 5.5E6 < 0.00010% (based off of 8/23/2010 estimate).
While I know the rotten ice issue is contentious, I’ll point out that in this WUWT article where Barber popularized it:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/14/a-look-at-sea-ice-compared-to-this-date-in-2007/
Steve Goddard is not anywhere in the 309 comments that I can find. So it is quite plausible he missed this post altogether.
mecago says:
August 24, 2010 at 3:31 pm
Smokey says:
August 24, 2010 at 2:39 pm
mecago,
I said you’ve picked two bad examples of rotten ice; you did. You’re just backing and filling now, but they’re still two bad examples.
Sigh, I was making a very sarcastic post, I thought that since I made it so obvious… IE: Studying ice melt in Tahiti which makes no sense that it would be apperant. I do realize the term exists, I was just poking fun at the term and at climate scientists. Please forgive me for forgetting the /sarc flags.
I often find terms like this and like to argue why we use them. “Rotten” ice to me as a term (yes I know it exists) is kind of a weird term to use in the first place. I was just poking fun at the word itself…please do not take offense. I was also poking fun at all the huge “tax-payer” funded trips to Tahiti by climate scientists to study “global warming”.
So for my first post, assume its entirely sarcastic…
Phil
You posted a photo from 77 57.1 N and that’s your rotted ice? Do you have a comparison to 2007? To the 20’s, and the 50’s when there was talk of alarming ice loss? To Arctic ice during the Medieval Warm Period?
Alarmism over the Arctic is nothing new. Same alarmism, different faces.
Julienne Stroeve says:
August 24, 2010 at 4:34 pm
This is a question I’ve been wanting to ask for a while, and it’s not just relevant to the Arctic sea ice discussions but to climate change in general: What would it take for you to believe that human activities are influencing the climate system and components of it such as the Arctic sea ice cover?”
Well lets start with being able to properly identify the impact of human activities within natural climate cycles. This requires accurate temperature measurements of those climate cycles over more than one full cycle. As their are full cycles such as the PDO which last for 60 years or more we don’t even come close to meeting this criteria.
The satellite temp record only goes back 30 years and temperature data and reconstructions prior to this are demonstrably unreliable enough to be unable to draw definitive conclusions. Give me another 30 years of satellite data and we’ll be taking a step in the right direction but even then were only measuring one full PDO cycle. Whose to say that the current cycle represents the norm. The current cycle may just be an outlier.
In short, I don’t believe there is any possible way of currently accurately isolating the anthropogenic signal in climate variation. Therefore you cannot measure its impact on the ice. We dont even know what is the norm for the ice pack beyond about 30 years other than anecdotal evidence.
Julienne Stroeve says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:06 am
The ice is currently at 5.5 million sq-km in NSIDC’s ice extent data and I don’t believe the melt season is over quite yet.
I think that was already noted. But thanks for the kind reminder.
macago,
I just read kadaka’s 3:58 pm post that you commented on. You are misrepresenting what he said by picking one sentence out of the context of the post. Then you set up your google strawman and knocked it right down, you brave strawman killer. You are a true internet warrior. I mean that sincerely.
stevengoddard says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:11 am
Phil,
You can’t be serious with that last post. The image you linked is from 77N. It is almost 1000 miles from the pole.
Now that I read through the comments I see you pointed that out too.
Note to readers: Just wanted to head off any possible sarcastic replies, so, my comment about the latitude of Phil’s photo was not a copy of this one above.
Apparently I made a mistake attributing the “rotten ice” term to an NSIDC publication. It was actually a University of Alaska Geophysical Institute publication from 2007, which referenced William Chapman at Cryosphere Today.
September 19, 2007
“Unusually thin, rotten ice” north of Alaska
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF18/1873.html
I satirized this with a double entendre in a 2008 piece at The Register
Arctic ice refuses to melt as ordered
There’s something rotten north of Denmark
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/15/goddard_arctic_ice_mystery/
I have been using the term “rotten ice” and discussing it with NSIDC personnel for several years – long before the Barber piece.
I apologize if I got the reference wrong in the comments section (not the article),but that certainly does not give any the right to call me a liar. The term was in wide use before 2008 and I was quite familiar with it.
From: mecago on August 24, 2010 at 5:11 pm
My Google search terms: national snow ice data center “rotten ice”
The search URL:
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=national+snow+ice+data+center+%22rotten+ice%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=77270c398242f538
My post above:
Using last result on first page (result #10)
You:
Obnoxiously condescending.
Julienne,
It wouldn’t take much to convince me (someone who believes human influence is basically negligible compared to nature)
1) A totally open and transparent process
If someone is going to try and convince me that I need to drastically change my life, then they need to release everything. I understand the need for proprietary code and such, but you can’t keep highly relevant information private and tell me the sky is falling. I just won’t buy into that.
2) Scientists who stay out of the politics and the media.
They can say they are just getting the word out and educating the public, but the “work” would speak for itself if it was that convincing.
3) If most other planets in the solar system were going the opposite direction.
This is highly complex with many factors involved, but it would be convincing.
4) If the temperatures in the 1800’s would just stay the same.
They keep getting cooler and I think any reasonable person would conclude that is impossible.
5) If there was evidence in the earth’s history that too much Co2 was a bad thing.
I just don’t see that.
So that is just a start of what would move me. I don’t think I am being unreasonable.
Mark Serreze said it right here on WUWT:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/08/15/arctic-ice-extent-discrepancy-nsidc-versus-cryosphere-today/#comment-32714
Julienne Stroeve says:
August 24, 2010 at 4:34 pm
I already do, I just don’t believe the catastrophic predictions or the blaming of pretty much everything on AGW coming from some people. Nor do I believe that the vast majority of the warming is due to CO2 emissions and that the only way to save humanity is to cut them at all costs. If that was the case, wouldn’t the warmists be drinking only water (no coffee or alcohol), eating only vegetables (locally grown), biking to anything within a 30 mile radius and taking public transportation elsewhere? Oh, and all their conferences would be teleconferences and they’d be willing to seriously debate instead of labeling their opponents and attacking with ad hominems. Nor would they use as their primary argument very uncertain (at best) science like the hockey stick.
-Scott
In short, I don’t believe there is any possible way of currently accurately isolating the anthropogenic signal in climate variation.
But will you ever? And what will it take? Is “isolating the anthropogenic signal in climate variation” the only indicator of the influence of human activities on the energy balance of the system of atmosphere and oceans?
Julienne is asking a very good question: What would it take for you to believe that human activities are influencing the climate system and components of it such as the Arctic sea ice cover?
Would an ice-free Arctic somewhere during summer do it? Would another once-a-1000-years heat wave in Russia within the next 10 years do it? Would an accelerating rate of sea level rise do it? What would it take?
I wouldn’t be surprised if a large part of the WUWT readership can simply not be convinced. Not by anything. Some rationalization or other – probably prompted and served on a silver plate by one of the WUWT authors – will always be found.
Julienne says:
August 24, 2010 at 11:16 am
I don’t know if anyone noticed the large pull back from the Siberian coast today in the AMSR-E imagery. Looks like the Northern Sea Route is likely going to be open again this year.
Thanks for another shot of alarmism.
If you wanted to you could make a case on how Arctic ice is in a growing trend by looking at what has happened since 2007. Instead you imply alarmism because of your talk about trend over the last 30 years, which I have seen in more than one of your comments in other threads. 2007 to 2010 is too short a time frame? Using 1979 to 2007 is any better?
As a scientist you should already know 30 years is an unacceptable time frame for evaluating something like Arctic ice. The time frame is profoundly short and has lead to unscientific conclusions in so many areas of global warming.
This morning at 5 am it was 55 F. At 1pm it was 102F. Going by what my 8 hour trend shows it’s going to be 149F at 9 pm. Any computer model made from my 5 am to 1 pm trend has been showing similar results. So now it’s not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’….this is so alarming.
Virveli says:
August 24, 2010 at 11:19 am
I understand at the moment you will be disappointed with the fact that there was no recovery of Arctic sea ice this year.
This isn’t true since average thickness of ice is greater than last year. The recovery from the 2007 minimum continues.
David W, R Gates and mcates, thank you for your thoughtful responses.
mcates I agree that the scientific process needs to be open and transparent, and I’m grateful that I work for an institution that does make the data and the codes used in processing the data available. As for your point #2, I agree we need to stay out of politics, but I also believe we need to communicate our findings not just to each other at scientific conferences but also to the general public. Most of the general public do not attend scientific meetings nor do they read the peer-reviewed literature.
I don’t quite understand point 3.
I can sympathize with your point #4. I’m not a paleoclimatologist and the reconstruction of temperatures from various climate indicators seems not to be an easy task. I would expect revisions to temperature reconstructions to occur as more understanding of relationships between tree rings and temperatures for example is gained. Trying to understand temperatures and climate impacts of more CO2 from proxy data is daunting indeed.
I’ve never seen so many men contemplating the size of a gnat’s ass. So much so that I am beginning to “wonder” about you guys.
The Antarctic Sea Ice is increasing (it flirted with the 2007 all-time record just a few weeks ago – interesting that 2007 was the all-time record). Now there are lots of different theories for why it is not responding to GHG temperature increases.
And there are also solid theories about what influences the Arctic sea ice as well.
There are dozens of more papers on this topic (some of you may recognize the names) and dozens more yet that are related to this topic.
http://seaice.apl.washington.edu/Papers/RigorEtal2002.pdf
http://www.lanl.gov/source/orgs/ees/ees14/pdfs/09Chlylek.pdf
http://www.liberterre.fr/gaiasophia/gaia-climats/dioxyde-carbone/z-pdf-carbone/polyakov.etal.2004.pdf
Note that the AMO was quite low at the start of the year (zero in January) but it has spiked to near-record numbers (April May June July) in response to the El Nino (which it lags behind when it responds to the ENSO although it doesn’t always do so). This is similar to what happened to the 2010 Arctic sea ice trend.
1996 was one of the last years of high Arctic sea ice numbers (2nd highest in fact) and that was also the last time the AMO was really low (below zero) for a sustained period of time. It was also low (in response to the La Nina in 2008 and 2009) and this may have contributed to the recovery in those years.
The correlation over time is pretty solid but it not perfect. Ice declining, AMO rising from 1920 to 1945: Ice increasing from 1945 to 1976, AMO declining: Ice declining, AMO rising from 1980 to 1995, 1998 to 2007, 2010.
geo says:
August 24, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Thank you for telling me what scientists don’t say. Are you willing to also tell us what they do say? If 3 out of 4 isn’t “recovering” than would “4 out of 5″ qualify? If not, tell us what the minimum standard you’d accept would qualify for speaking of “recovering” rather than “recovered”?
*************************************************************************
30 years is the minimum that I’ve heard mentioned, by Climatologists and Arctic scientists, for a trend to just start becoming discernible. Since the Arctic has been losing ice for at least that long it will take the same amount of time of greatly reduced temperatures to “recover” it to the same extent and thickness.
Regardless what the difficulties are in measuring volume, you have to ask yourself, Why is it steadily going down? Furthermore there are other ways of noting the great loss of ice. They don’t have to be accurate to correctly measure gross changes over the decades. It’s like a very nearsighted person being able to see and recognize a bear at ten feet.
Submarines, surface ships and people walking the ice can tell if there are gross changes as they occur. It’s like discerning the poleward and upward (Mountains) migration of animals and plants. You don’t need hyper precision.
As far as Cryosat is concerned, I know that as soon as it gives information that goes against those who don’t believe in AGW, they will be crying foul. Then the issue will be moot because the official belief will become Natural Global Warming. As far as the Arctic is concerned this site, as it already had begun to do not so very long ago, will begin to use the “shoulder shrug technique” by saying that it’s been open before, so what?
What we should be doing while the navel lint grows in our belly buttons till the second week in September is discussing my stupendously good venison soup and the fact that I don’t know exactly how I made it. Especially since I was both sauced and marinated WHILE I made it (hey, I cook with a lot of beer, wine and sherry, so sue me).
We’re using the JAXA figure as our reference here.
I’d have to trust the climatological establishment, which will never occur. They’re bad to the bone. Everything they say is a lie, even the and and the the.
Phil, Jeez..
Since you introduced Dr Barber into the discussion.
This is what Dr Barber said in Sept 2009 (Greenbang 30 Nov 2009)
“Ship navigation across the pole is imminent as the type of ice which resides there is no longer a barrier to ships in the late summer and fall,” Barber said.
You argue that there was no implication that rotten ice existed at the pole (by arguing that the picture taken by Dr Barber was a thousand miles away from the pole), please explain the comment made by Dr Barber before you lambast Steve Goddard in your particularly rude manner.
jeez,
there was a time period for some months last year when Steven Goddard didn’t post here. I think he resumed here in January of this year. The post about David Barber is from one month earlier, December 2009. So in fairness you could take that into account. It very well could be he wasn’t aware of that particular post. It’s easy to miss individual post. I was away for three days last July and was not aware of the Buzz Aldrin post that came during that time. So, I commented in ‘Tips & Notes’ about it Buzz Aldrin. Someone (rudely, and his name still stands out to me sometimes when I see it in comments, ‘oh ya, that guy’) informed me it was already a post. Things like that happen.
Amino acids, really? have you become that sensitive that if someone says the Northern Sea Route will be open again this year (which is simply an observation) that you automatically jump to alarmism? It is simply a statement that 3 years in a row the NSR is open.
Roger, that is sad to hear that you believe all climate scientists and their institutions are bad to the bone. I wonder do you believe Drs Spencer, Lindzen, Singer and many others also lie? They too are climate scientists who have worked or are still working in a climatological establishment.
Phil. says:
August 24, 2010 at 3:03 pm
Instead, he gets rude…..You appear to be confusing me with Goddard
Back to that I’m rubber you’re glue thing you do.
Bill Illis says:
August 24, 2010 at 4:00 pm
To lighten the mood, jeez’ “Baby Ice” is now going to make it through the terrible twos and will be a rotten adolescent soon.
So 3 is like 14 in human years? 😉
stevengoddard says:
August 24, 2010 at 4:07 pm
That is exactly what I said in the article. I can’t (and don’t have any interest) in reading Phil, Mosher, or anybody else’s mind.
But it seems they feel they’re reading your mind.
hmmm. From the posts, it appears to be less than 1 mm but more than a micrometer. Which is a rather large difference in meter-speak. Carry on.
Julienne Stroeve says:
August 24, 2010 at 4:34 pm
What would it take for you to believe that human activities are influencing the climate system and components of it such as the Arctic sea ice cover?
My o my, there’s a whole lot of scientists you could ask that of.
Roger Knights, I envy you. I wish I had such strong beliefs. It must be comforting.
“Pamela Gray says:
August 24, 2010 at 6:05 pm
What we should be doing while the navel lint grows in our belly buttons till the second week in September is discussing my stupendously good venison soup and the fact that I don’t know exactly how I made it. Especially since I was both sauced and marinated WHILE I made it (hey, I cook with a lot of beer, wine and sherry, so sue me).
“
I agree, but I think the best method is to really get “sauced and marinated” again and try again!.
I think all along arctic ice is a red herring. we discuss this as “climate change” when antarctica is colder then a witch’s … um well you know… And we ignore a hemisphere when it suits our purposes, but what the heck? Lets argue for evidence in climate change on one aspect out of 50 that MIGHT show difference…and the fact that it can be argued just points to how bad of a thing this is to use as the posterchild of Alarmism.
I am all for predicting this, and the discussion is fun and all, but I think we all agree the best comparisons are from low to low or wave to wave…so the only measurement so to speak is the max/min. Not that I do not enjoy the back and forthness, you guys are really something researching so much..just remember to keep it civil, once it gets uncivil we start to lose focus that this is just a discussion…and we should discuss the weather more
Oh wait, we are lol…maybe we should discuss soup recipes while sauced instead!
Pamela Gray said on August 24, 2010 at 6:05 pm:
Delicious.
The only reason 5.5 is out now is because of the 300,000 km2 loss last week that was caused by winds. And Steven Goddard has said all along that winds could make 5.5 not happen.
But wait, I already know some of you will say the 300,000 km2 loss happened because the ice is rotted and alarmingly thin. And you base that theory on data from 1979 to 2007. I already know that. So no need to tell me again about your wonderful time period that all other time periods in the history of the world are judged by.
Julienne,
In point three I was referring to our lack of understanding regarding the Sun’s relationship and the temperature of our planet.
We know it is not zero and we know it isn’t 100%. So exactly how much does solar activity affect the plannet’s temperature?
There has been much discussion involving the slight warming of other planets.
I can sympathize with your point #4. I’m not a paleoclimatologist and the reconstruction of temperatures from various climate indicators” seems not to be an easy task. I would expect revisions to temperature reconstructions
But would you expect them to always cool the past and warm the present? That seems odd to me.
And I don’t think that is actually the stated reason for the consistent cooling of the past.
I would add another point… when someone can prove to me what causes an ice age. This would be a person who has my full attention.
I would like someone to also show that the wobble of the earth has no impact on the planet’s temperature.
And I think Roger was referring to the “establishment”.
Meanwhile in other news, the “Great Summer of 2010” on the US East Coast now appears to have been “The Great Early Indian Summer Block of 2010.” Now the early fall pattern is obvious. Same deal in Europe. And on the West Coast … our year without a Summer is fait accompli. We’re having our normal Fall offshore wind event(s) now, and by the weekend, -15C aloft will assert itself and that’s all she wrote.
stevengoddard says:
August 24, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Apparently I made a mistake attributing the “rotten ice” term to an NSIDC publication.
I have to hand it to you Steven, you come out quickly and don’t obfuscate. Not only with saying that but this post was a quick admittance that 5.5 isn’t going to happen.
I can see that the possibility of the ice flattening like it did in 2006 could make you wait until the last moment to say 5.5 is out. These comments about you dancing around, and making excuses, things seem to be coming from the emotions of the commenters making them.
5.5 is out, and you’re not making excuses.
Good on ya man!
The only reason 5.5 is out now is because of the 300,000 km2 loss last week that was caused by winds.
The only reason 3.5 is out now is because of the meagre decline rates in July and the first weeks of August that were caused by a sudden switch to low-pressure areas dominating the Arctic, causing cloudiness, low temperatures and the reversing of the Beaufort Gyre and the Transpolar Drift Stream.
mjk,
Check my comment again, please. I said I would warm my children’s behinds, not Phils, for lack of respect. As for Phil, I’ve lost all respect for him, and though I have in the past supported the AGW theory, the behavior of Phil and several others in the AGW movement have pretty much driven me off.
Whether you, Mr. Gates, Julienne, mecago or others who support AGW admit it or not, the bad manners, lack of respect, hidden data, massaged data, and dirty tricks of some in the AGW movement have turned many people off. Frankly, I can hardly stand to even read your comments any more. That is how disgusting I find the AGW crowd these days. Reprehensible IS the word.
Julienne Stroeve says:
August 24, 2010 at 6:18 pm
Amino acids, really? have you become that sensitive that if someone says the Northern Sea Route will be open again this year (which is simply an observation) that you automatically jump to alarmism? It is simply a statement that 3 years in a row the NSR is open.
Ok, so then what was the reason?
Julienne,
you say you are not an alarmist but you also say this:
It is the data that has slowly convinced me over the last decade that human activities are affecting our climate, not the climate models. And I do not consider myself an alarmist because I think human activities play a role….And it doesn’t matter so much to me if you believe that our activities can affect our climate. There are so many reasons to move away from our dependence on fossil fuels
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/18/arctic-toolbox-did-300000-km2-of-ice-suddenly-melt/#more-23608
Why would you say humankind needs to change if nothing alarming is going to happen if we don’t. Could I categorize you as passive aggressive about global warming alarm?
J.Knight
Hear hear.
Pamela Gray says:
August 24, 2010 at 5:57 pm
You make a point there.
While whistling away over a whittled model of a microcosm, the big picture of Glacial/Interglacial is not well understood.
Reminds me a lot of the paint-peeling predictions prior to SC24.
Nature will eventually let us know how important the gnats ass was.
storm in a teacup. nsidc used the term rotten ice here-
http://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g02159_ponds/index.html
its a 8/2008 document, but revised in 2009, so who knows.
the behavior of Phil and several others in the AGW movement have pretty much driven me off.
I have never really looked at the science, you know, but I’ve noticed skeptics smell from their armpits, and that’s why I’ve decided that AGW will be catastrophic.
The bad smell that emanates from skeptic armpits have turned many people off. They are now all rabid alarmists.
There’s no amount of deodorant that will make me change my mind. AGW will kill the planet. My reasoning is just as sound, balanced and logical as that of Knight and Knights.
Would you say a fair amount of vulnerable ice melting at the margins of the Arctic Basin would be “significant” ?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/15/sea-ice-news-18/#comment-458209
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/15/sea-ice-news-18/#comment-458222
How about after the JAXA extent drops below your 5.5 million sq km prediction, and keeps on dropping below 2009’s 5,249,844 sq km, making your prediction wrong?
Would you call such melt “significant” then ?
Günther says: “I have never really looked at the science, you know…”
I am convinced of that, Günther. We’re on the same page in that regard.
So Günther’s mind is made up, and by his own admission it can never be changed, no matter what.
mcates says: August 24, 2010 at 7:01 pm
when someone can prove to me what causes an ice age. This would be a person who has my full attention.
Hi mcates. Ice ages are caused by changes in the Earth’s orbit. Try for a starter. Take care though – I am firmly in the AGW camp 🙂
and regularly misuse HTML tags…
So Günther’s mind is made up, and by his own admission it can never be changed, no matter what.
No matter how much deodorant you use, Smokey, whether it be roll-on or spray. You have disgusted me so much that AGW is certain to be catastrophic.
Mr. Kirschbaum,
In the world I live in, the real world, not the academic world, hiding data, refusing to release data funded by the taxpayer, refusing to release code, dirty tricks, messaging data, and many other reprehensible acts leads me to believe that perhaps the AGW theory might just be flawed. Or why would its proponents behave in such a way?
The behavior of most of those who would promote AGW theory is not the behavior of rational people who are content in their knowledge, but is more in line with the silly comment you just made. Or worse, much more like the disrespectful, and in some cases, vile behavior of people like Phil.
Günther
You make an excellent case for the idea that the ice is controlled by weather, rather than climate.
Julienne Stroeve says:
August 24, 2010 at 4:34 pm
What would it take for you to believe that human activities are influencing the climate system and components of it such as the Arctic sea ice cover?
—…—…—
Let me ask that question a different way:
How many hundred million real, living, breathing, thinking humans do you want dead – or living in poverty, filth, and hunger, dying early of disease and malnutrition – based on the bad science, lies, and religious zealotry of the CAGW community? There is no harm – none, not any, of any kind – and only good from increases in CO2 and increasing temperatures (of up to 2-4 degrees).
So justify YOUR assumptions, your conclusions.
You “claim” that temperature changes of less than 1/2 of one degree between 1975 and 2000 are to blame for ALL of the so-called symptoms of Mann-made climate change (ice extents changes (that have only been observed since 1970), mountain-side, Andes and Alpine glacier losses (losses that started in 1850, losses that reveal trees and graves PREVIOUSLY exposed to the sun and people’s hands in the Middle Ages), ocean level rises (that have risen ever the last Ice Age), increasing Greenland ice thicknesses in the interior (oops – doesn’t match your theory), steadily decreasing summer Arctic temperatures since 1958 (oops – doesn’t match your theory), Medieval temperatures that exceed those found today (oops – doesn’t match your theory), increasing temperatures through the solar system (oops – doesn’t match your theory), rainfall changes and droughts changes (that actually match all earlier patterns), increasing hurricane strength and frequency (that actually isn’t occurring), actual rural temperature records that show NO incerae in temperature (except where manipulated by “climate scientists” out to make tens of billions of bucks …..)
So please. What exactly is your case for condemning these hundreds of millions to increasing energy prices, starvation, death, and illness? YOU are the one who wish their death. I am the one trying to feed them. To get them clean water. Reliable power. Oil and gas to ship their products, and to receive the goods and food and fertilizer they need.
Make your case that 1/2 of one degree change in 25 years is sufficient to yield all the symptoms you describe. Make your case that (unknown, unmeasured, unrecorded, un-cited) “changes” in soot levels between 1940 and 1975 were actually present to cause the decrease in world temperature necessary in “calibrating” the one-ssided climate models that you cite now. But that are so badly off in ten years they can’t even be plotted.
Does anyone know where I can find a freely downloadable copy of this paper please?
Nonlinear threshold behavior during the loss of Arctic sea ice. (PMID:19109440)
Eisenman I, Wettlaufer JS
PNAS [2009, 106(1):28-32]
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0806887106
All I can get to is the abstract which, as usual with pay-walled publically funded science, tells me absolutely nothing of value.
As for Julienne’s comment earlier, since I have been suitably induced by yet another pay-wall, here is an answer from a member of the great unwashed who [un]fortunately doesn’t inhabit some veritable ivory tower somewhere in the parallel universe she obviously finds herself.
How on earth do you expect anyone to accept a premise with such immense social and economic implications while denied the opportunity to freely examine the detail? And no, where I live public libraries are not an option. I have to fill out a form modelled on the Spanish Inquisition, complete with inside leg measurement and a written justification of why I should even be granted sight of the thing from 100 feet, to even begin the process. The whole journal, peer review system, etc. is an utter inbred scam. I will make my own mind up thank you, based on the actual evidence set forth. Not the ‘persuasion’ of some paraphrased abstract or the alarmist journalism that flows directly (and often deliberately) from it. Nor from some equally loaded ‘sceptic blog’ input. If I cannot rationalise the arguments advanced against my perception of the way the world works, however simplistic or incorrect you may imagine that to be, I will not accept it – period.
In general I find that science needs to clean up its act by learning to write concise, properly structured documents free from trite, arcane academic constructs. An ‘abstract’, jumble in the middle and ‘conclusion’ is hardly a model of clarity, we no longer live in the nineteenth century. The system of citation and cross-reference is even worse. “The Literature” as it stands today is little more than an inaccessible seething mass of ineptitude for which there is little excuse. If you wish to persuade, learn to communicate properly! Using the media, political lobbying and the type of confusion put out by the NASA PR bilge pump as a substitute is lazy, ineffective and frankly naive.
Who knew that the Internet would allow so many “Silver Back’s” to bark at the moon in self important anger… myself included of course… what I find interesting is that we have signs of an extremely long cold winter coming and everyone is arguing about the meaning of rotten, and when rotten first became known as rotten…
J. Knight,
I recommend that you always assume that your opponents have the best of motives and interpret their actions in the best possible light – even to the point of operating from the position that if someone is appearing to engage in dirty tricks then it might not actually be the case, but instead be a misunderstanding. I have certainly found that hyperbole plays a huge role here – your use of the word ‘vile’ to apparently describe rude posting on a message board is an example of this, I suspect.
Climate scientists and their critics are all humans. While this means that they will all do the bad things that we associate with human behaviour, it also means that they will do the good things and the things that are neither good nor bad. A balanced view is the best one to take.
I should note that I often fail in this regard, unfortunately.
mecago,
you remind me a lot of villabollo. Your style is the same. Are you villabollo? A leopard can’t change its spots can it?
Günther Kirschbaum says:
August 24, 2010 at 7:11 pm
I thought the melt was dominated by water temperatures and not air temperatures? That’s what I’ve been hearing time and again in comments. Thus, why should the clouds and low temps matter?
-Scott
Julienne Stroeve says:
August 24, 2010 at 4:34 pm
What would it take for you to believe that human activities are influencing the climate system and components of it such as the Arctic sea ice cover?
For the scientists who claim CAGW provide the tests that would falsify their results. For the same group to have some skepticism themselves. For both poles to be “losing” ice. There is no global temperature why do we keep saying there is? If CO2 is well mixed, increasing in concentration every year how can Southern California have such a cool summer? Did CO2 stop trapping heat over LA this year? Why did the Southern Hemispere have some record early snowfalls? It’s GLOBAL warming right?
Before you dismiss my above paragraph as weather events, why did so many CAGW blogs argue that the heat in Moscow this summer is from CO2 while ignoring some record cool spots in the same country? Remember well-mixed gas…
Sure there is evidence for warming events across the globe and for the past 30 years. Is it possible to be within the bounds of natural variability? The CO2 claim is not compelling to me.
I did buy a VW Jetta TDI, sorry though it was for personal economic reasons. It’s quiet, smooth, big trunk and first 150 miles averaging 46.2mpg!
Lessw than two months ago :
Romm:
I guess PIOMAS is wrong
Julienne :
Apparently the old ice has survived.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/06/27/arctic-sea-ice-extent-volume-record-nsidc-volume/
Günther Kirschbaum says:
August 24, 2010 at 5:50 pm
“In short, I don’t believe there is any possible way of currently accurately isolating the anthropogenic signal in climate variation.
But will you ever? And what will it take?
……..
Would an ice-free Arctic somewhere during summer do it? Would another once-a-1000-years heat wave in Russia within the next 10 years do it? Would an accelerating rate of sea level rise do it? What would it take?”
All these things are evidence of climate change. That part of the equation is not the problem. The question is what role human activities had in causing that climate change, specifically in this instance, our increased emissions of CO2. This was the question Julienne was asking.
The question can’t be answered until you understand the full range of our natural cycles. And “Yes” there is nothing you can say at this point in time to convince me we have data of a sufficient quality and length to say that we do.
The temperature variations observed during the satellite era are not earth shattering nor are the severe events and other changes that have accompanied them. Do we even know what the normal range of temperature variation is for the PDO cycle say over a 500 year time span? I highly doubt it!!.
We may see dramatic changes but we really don’t know what constitutes the long term natural range of conditions for many of our ecosystems. As for a “once in a thousand year” event in Russia, well show me the 1,000 years of reliable temperature data in that location before you try and sell that one to me.
We have absolutely no sure way of knowing how the data from the satellite era compares with the data of the pre-satellite era. The pre-satellite data is simply too unreliable. At best we have only 30 years of reasonably solid climate data from satellite measurements, the surfacestation data is far too questionable.
Glaciers melting, coral bleaching, rising sea levels, heatwaves, droughts, floods? They are all part of our natural climate cycles. Prove that what we are seeing now is not. You simply can’t do this with the data currently available.
Mr. Gould,
Good advice. And I wasn’t referring to Phil’s disrespectful behavior on this thread as vile, but more of his aggregate behavior both on and off this blog over a period of time. I’m sorry if that offended anyone, but it was an observation, and my personal opinion.
All this is completely off topic, and I apologize to Steve and Anthony for hijacking this thread. Now let me return to being a good lurker and learner, and less a commenter.
RACookPE1978,
From my perspective, the reason that I am an alarmist is that I am alarmed. I think that humankind is facing serious problems, including threats to many millions of lives, due to global warming.
From your question, I think that you and I share a joint wish not to see harm to humankind – we just disagree on what the threats are. I suspect that Julienne does not wish for the deaths of others, as you uncharitably accuse her of wishing; if the threat from global warming is real and is as bad as I believe, can I justify accusing *you* of wishing millions dead? Of course not. So my advice is to think a little bit before you post. If we want to understand one another and promote communication I think we need to be a little kinder to one another.
“Rotten ice” is a venerable old Scandinavian word. Please see this 1999 document, it’s on the 1st page. We Finns call it “puikkojää” (= ‘stick ice’), the Swedes “rutten is” or “rutten drivis” (=’drift ice’).
https://www.ltu.se/webbarkiv/SHB/ice/databas/LOLEIF_1999/Ice_conditions/Ice_charts/ice990512.pdf
I’m a sick person. I found the this thread one of the most entertaining events of my day. Thanks to everyone for some very interesting observations and discussions.
In terms of the next few days and weeks ahead in the Arctic Sea Ice extent, here are some highlights of events to be on the look out for.
1) The extent will fall below Steve’s 5.5 million sq. km. forecast.
2) The extent will fall below Sept. 22, 2005’s low of 5,315, 156 sq. km.
3) The extent will fall below Sept. 13, 2009’s low of 5,249,844 sq. km.
4) The extent will begin to approach 5,000,000 sq. km. as we get into early September (causing Steve to perhaps get a bit nervous, as it is a statistical point of interest for him I should think).
5) The expression “recovery spiral” begins to be used in a pejorative way.
6) Someone from Norway or Russia may become the first modern group to successfully circumnavigate the Arctic sea ice by ship. (some might claim the Vikings did this during the MWP, so I use the term “modern” only out of courtesy for those who hold this view, though I don’t happen to.)
7) And most importantly, we get closer to the day when the CryoSat 2 data is finally released to the “rest of us” and we can finally put poor old PIPS 2.0 to a much deserved final rest and give PIOMAS a much needed boost of actual data.
PIOMAS prediction of arctic ice extent in June: 4.7 million
Steve’s prediction 5.5 million
If sea ice 5.5 then Steve is closer.
Projection of final ice extent if the rest of the season loses the same as the average for 2002-2009 – 5.081.
Assuming there is a little rotten ice somewhere (but not at the north pole obviously), then it seems reasonable to expect final extent a bit lower than this. Synoptic conditions seem to be persisting in a pattern reasonably favourable for high reduction in extent.
However the 6 weeks or so of cool and cloudy conditions covers what I would guess would be the peak period of solar energy absorption in the ocean. Although June would have slightly higher solar radiation than July, July has much more open ocean, so normally more opportunity to absorb this radiation. As far as I can tell ocean temperatures are pretty much the same as same time 2008/2009, and noticeably cooler than 2007, so perhaps little difference due to this factor.
Amino Acids in Meteorites said:
August 24, 2010 at 6:52 pm
The only reason 5.5 is out now is because of the 300,000 km2 loss last week that was caused by winds. And Steven Goddard has said all along that winds could make 5.5 not happen.
____________________________________
It was 350 000 km2 andSteve said extent loss would decrease by the weekend ( which you said would be right because Steve is good at predicting) but the biggest loss was 80 000 and it was at that same weekend. It was not all caused by winds and Steve has not said all along that 5.5 cannot happen.
Apart from those minor trivia your two sentences are spot on. I think Tamino was once described as Gavin’s pitbull. You seem to be Steve’s lap poodle :p
50k loss today.
Andy
Pamela Gray says:
August 24, 2010 at 6:05 pm
What we should be doing while the navel lint grows in our belly buttons till the second week in September is discussing my stupendously good venison soup and the fact that I don’t know exactly how I made it. Especially since I was both sauced and marinated WHILE I made it (hey, I cook with a lot of beer, wine and sherry, so sue me).
You need to get in touch with this fellow http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/executive-lifestyle/engineer-devises-a-short-cut-to-culinary-excellence/story-e6frg8jo-1225909848919.
David Gould says:
August 24, 2010 at 10:10 pm
RACookPE1978,
From my perspective, the reason that I am an alarmist is that I am alarmed. I think that humankind is facing serious problems, including threats to many millions of lives, due to global warming.
From your question, I think that you and I share a joint wish not to see harm to humankind – we just disagree on what the threats are.
—…—…—
And I repeat – What is the “threat” from increased CO2? What are you alarmed about? Are you worried about increased food production from more CO2? More fodder for animals? More feed? Longer growing seasons? More fuel? Higher drought tolerance? More phytoplankton? More life on earth for all?
Summer Arctic temperatures are cooling, antarctic ice extents are increasing. What do you fear? Your “so-called” theories of solar feedback in the arctic are proved wrong: look at the increase in extents between 2007 – 2008 – 2009 – 2010. You talk about “feedback” but can’t show any locations where it has occurred: the winter arctic ice can expand little (the ocean is bounded by land you know) and the summer is growing colder: Do today’s real-world colder temperatures mean the next ice age is here?
Hansen’s GISS temperatures extrapolations and NSIDC’s hysterical extremism is wrong. And all the while, summer temperatures are decreasing. Show any evidence that your so-called experts are right about ANY prediction they have made.
There is no harm – of any kind, of any magnitude – and only benefits from today’s increases in CO2, and today’s 1/2 of one degree (possibly!) increases in temperature. There is no harm from any temperature increase up to (approximately) 3-4 degrees – and NO evidence or consistent theory that show even a 2.5 degree increase is possible by burning all the available fossil fuels. There IS substantial evidence – which you fear and distort and lie about – that shows such temperatures occurred before naturally. And will quite likely occur again. Naturally.
Yet you demand the absolute and permanent and lasting harm to hundreds of millions of innocents to prevent a non-existent theoretical threat – that cannot be substantiated nor even measured – from potentially occurring hundreds of years from now. Why?
Julienne Stroeve says:
August 24, 2010 at 4:34 pm
What would it take for you to believe that human activities are influencing the climate system and components of it such as the Arctic sea ice cover?
Like many WUWT readers (I suspect) I have always been of the opinion that human activities on the scale they have been in recent times (ie with several billion humans) must have some impact on the climate. However, the extent of that impact so far, and how much impact we will have in the future, are completely unknown. Despite the hubris of the modelers, we know next to nothing about how the climate system works.
Understanding weather is an absurdly easy task by comparison, but it is only in the last couple of decades that we have properly understood many of the influences on it. I predict we will not really understand climate for at least a century, if ever.
Well, not YOU. I find your comments here excellent–grown-up and scientifically-spirited–and hope you continue to post. Also, we agree approximately on the likely JAXA ice-extent minimum this year (5.1 million I’m guessing, although I hope it will be above the 5.25 or so set last year).
As a poster above mentioned, I wasn’t talking about each and every climatologist in every instance, but about the establishment, as exemplified by the IPCC. Control of its commanding heights was seized by politically astute activists long ago, and its assessments are untrustworthy. (E.g., to give but one example, its use of a dodgy Hong Kong data point to increase sea level rise.)
More generally I have in mind “the consensus.” E.g., “The (hockey) Team” is similarly untrustworthy. Ditto consensus-science websites, whitewashing investigatory bodies, temperature-fiddling weather services, ARGO-data-hiding agencies, partisan journal-editor gatekeepers and their pet reviewers, dissent-suppressing EPA apparatchiks, debate-dodging establishmentarians, hear-no-evil trend-followers (e.g., those who’ve determinedly ignored Spencer’s paper about how climatology has mixed up forcings and feedbacks and confused cause and effect, and who’ve ignored many other inconvenient findings), etc.
The field has the distinct of institutionalized faddishness and “advocacy research.” As is common in such cases, most workers in the field don’t swallow the entire alarmist case, but they go along with it because they are sympathetic to what the activists are trying to accomplish. (E.g., transition away from fossil fuels, more energy efficiency, and a move toward a more sustainable economy.) Or they are insensibly so biased by “present-mindedness” and the coincidence of rising manmade CO2 that they can’t avoid attributing causation to the latter. There is a Judith-Curry-shaped hole in climatology — a lack of a self-correcting force. There’s no mass conspiracy to push an agenda, but there’s an effective collusion by all to give alarmism free rein. This collusion is why I consider the establishment and its conventional wisdom, considered as a whole, “bad to the bone.”
(I’m guilty of go-along behavior myself sometimes. For instance, I don’t think that “casual” or intermittent second-hand smoke is a danger, but I mostly support laws against it, because I think it’s a Good Thing to discourage smoking. (Actually, my ideal solution would be to exempt electronic cigarettes, which are (?) virtually harmless–and perhaps even to give them away.))
PS: To add one specific response (I could give lots more, but the posters above have mostly beat me to it) to the question about what it would take for me to believe that mankind is heating up the climate, I’d say that I suspect that that we may have done so already with CFCs, but that now that effect is fading:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/22/study-shows-cfcs-cosmic-rays-major-culprits-for-global-warming/
Normally I’m one of the moderates here, but I’m in an irritable mood at the moment as a result of a couple of despicable warmist articles in the latest Wired. (These are probably the result of high-level interference by the magazine’s parent, Condé-Nast, which is associated with a collective journalistic effort under the direction of someone from the Atlantic to conduct a warmist-biased educational campaign.)
Cassandra King says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:04 am (Edit)
Is the poster ‘Phil’ crossing the line between debate and rudeness by addressing Steve Goddard as “Goddard”?
Steve has every right to post his thoughts and opinions and posters have every right to questions those thoughts ideas and opinions but in a civil manner.
To Phil I would say, if you cannot engage with respect then ‘realclimate’ is probably a more suitable home for you.
REPLY: Phil. is an academic at a major university, rudeness is one of his regular traits here. – Anthony
#########################################################
stevengoddard says:
August 24, 2010 at 4:07 pm (Edit)
The conversation here is once again turning quite amazing, with the usual cast of characters.
In 2008, NSIDC discussed the “rotten ice” as an indication of a record low forecast minimum. Mark Serreze based his ice free North Pole bet on the thin first year ice.
That is exactly what I said in the article. I can’t (and don’t have any interest) in reading Phil, Mosher, or anybody else’s mind.
###############################################
At least Phil. comes by his rudeness honestly.
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
August 24, 2010 at 6:52 pm
The only reason 5.5 is out now is because of the 300,000 km2 loss last week that was caused by winds. And Steven Goddard has said all along that winds could make 5.5 not happen.
But wait, I already know some of you will say the 300,000 km2 loss happened because the ice is rotted and alarmingly thin. And you base that theory on data from 1979 to 2007. I already know that. So no need to tell me again about your wonderful time period that all other time periods in the history of the world are judged by.
*************************************************************************
Hmmmmm, ahhhhhh! Yes!
Man Made Global Warming = warmer oceans = thinning ice=>
* * =>LIGHTER ICE
Man Made Global Warming = more ponding = rotting ice===>
LIGHTER ICE = EASIER TO PUSH BY THE WINDS ICE!!!
Danger, danger, Will Robinson! We’ve been told not to remind Amino Acid of this complex chain of communistic deductive reasoning!
[ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG0ochx16Dg&feature=related ]
RACookPE1978 says: August 24, 2010 at 11:20 pm
“There is no harm from any temperature increase up to (approximately) 3-4 degrees”
Please read Mark Lynas “Six Degrees”. It is very entertaining and thought provoking. To give one example, at +3C there is evidence that the vegetation holding the dune fields of the Kalahari desert in place will fail and Botswana will be unable to support cattle. (From first hand experience, it is already barely able to support anything else.) Should this come to pass how will this country fair? Perhaps the “no harm” portion of your statement could do with qualificiation.
I continue to urge readers of WUWT to practice informed skepticism. Follow up on Lynas’ book. Follow its references to the source. Judge for yourselves, but judge the information on its merits after reading it.
Julienne Stroeve says:
August 24, 2010 at 4:34 pm (Edit)
This is a question I’ve been wanting to ask for a while, and it’s not just relevant to the Arctic sea ice discussions but to climate change in general: What would it take for you to believe that human activities are influencing the climate system and components of it such as the Arctic sea ice cover?
###################
AJ Ayers would appreciate this question.
But aren’t temperatures in the tropics expected to rise the least in a GW regime (and in the Arctic the most)?
[snip]
RE: “Günther Kirschbaum says:
August 24, 2010 at 5:50 pm
….I wouldn’t be surprised if a large part of the WUWT readership can simply not be convinced. Not by anything. Some rationalization or other – probably prompted and served on a silver plate by one of the WUWT authors – will always be found.”
I have a longer memory than some who post here. And the simple fact is that I WAS convinced, until 2007.
I was actually making plans to put an orchard of peach trees in, on my small farm in southern New Hampshire, in order to be the first in the market fresh peaches as the climate warmed. (There is no comparison between fresh peaches and the tasteless, unripe things sold at super markets.) A harsh winter can kill peach trees, this far north, but I was thinking of betting on a gamble that such winters were a thing of the past.
The only doubt I had, concerning climate-science, was due to the fact I love reading of Vikings, and for over fifty years had been studying tales of their adventures. The attempt to erase the MWP grated harshly with the history I had learned. However, if you love history, you have to constantly face revisionists, and I was trying to keep an open mind about the idea that the MWP only occurred in Greenland.
I had no access to Climate Audit or WUWT, and only read what was in the papers.
In 2007 the Alarmist hysteria was at flood tide, and was successfully alarming me, however some of my alarm was due to the strident nature of the Alarmists. I never like to be pushed into buying anything. When salesmen try to rush me, I dig in my heels. Before I planted my orchard of peaches I figured it would be wise to do some research, using the new fangled thing I had discovered called “the web.”
Just over three years ago an article in the Toronto Star alerted me to the existence of Climate Audit, and I glanced over “A New Leader Board At The US Open.” I was utterly amazed that temperature data was being manipulated in the manner Hansen was “adjusting” it. Call me naive if you will, but I felt I’d been a sucker and a chump, and became far more skeptical and even cynical. It was like scales fell from my eyes.
That was before the big uproar about the ice melt in September, 2007. However I studied all the views about that ice melt even as the ice melt happened. I have a very clear memory of the sensationalism, and the way the main stream media took the story and ran with it, (though they ran with it a bit like a gerbil in a wheel.)
It is a bit absurd, at this late date, to pounce on Mr. Goddard for associating the words “rotten ice” with Mr. Serreze, when Mr. Serreze may have actually used the word “thin ice.” Anyone who was there recalls how the media bandied about the word “rotten,” and how Mr. Serreze lapped up all the attention like a cat does cream. I challenge anyone to find a quote indicating Mr. Serreze objected to the words “rotten ice.” Anyway, does this trivia matter? The absurdity of this fuss over tiny details is wonderfully encapsulated by Pamela Gray’s statement, ” I’ve never seen so many men contemplating the size of a gnat’s ass.”
Those of us who were alive back in 2007 recall all the media hoop-la. The arctic was suppose to be ice-free by 2010. Is it?
And don’t give me all the guff about how Alarmists said, “maybe,” might” and “could.” The hoop-la was what it was, and said what it said.
We were being rushed into buying a car, and were told we need not look under the hood. However we have looked under the hood, and what we have discovered is a bunch of gerbils running in a wheel.
” Julienne says:
August 24, 2010 at 11:13 am
I think you know that the 5.5 million sq-km prediction we made based on ice survival rates was never what we actually thought was going to happen.”
That may be the trouble with climatology. They make predictions they know are not going to happen.
People at SEARCH are allowed to make their last prediction in August (for September of the SAME year), and they are allowed a great big Standard Deviation (which defines the interval that covers the correct value with a probability of about 2/3). Anybody except Wilson can get that right.
So Steven Goddard’s prediction of 5.5 from a few month ago just means “a bit more than last year”. And my prediction of 5 means “a bit less than last year” (which was the reasoning, since ice never grew 3 years in a row before).
We were being rushed into buying a car, and were told we need not look under the hood. However we have looked under the hood, and what we have discovered is a bunch of gerbils running in a wheel.
That sounds like it’s CO2-neutral. You’ll be saving tons of money. 😛
Ammonite,
I am familiar with articles such as that. And as one reads it we can see it starts off with the words “Milankovitch Theory”
And like you I think this is a viable theory. Now just prove to me that he is correct in his theory.
Perhaps you could accurately predict the next ice age?
Julienne,
One other thing that would help me increase my conecern regarding man-made global warming is for someone to show me that the fate of man-kind hinges moreso on that than getting struck my a large meteor.
And I want to second this comment by Alex as my stated position also:
mecago,
C’mon? Isn’t this kind of talk part of the problem? “Withouth making the slightest effort? You can’t possibly know that.
Just cause someone doesn’t agree with one of these Climatologists doesn’t mean they didn’t read what they have to say.
Granted, you may have a point about “not listening to us”. I think most people have a natural filter for exaggeration. This isn’t intented to be rude, just to weed out comments like the one above.
Many have made comments about how they could be convinced of the seriuousness of AGW. I think it would be a good exercise for the pro-AGW crowd to list which requests were unreasonable.
If you can stand one more citation on “rotten ice”, that term is used on the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office Ship Ice Log form H.O. Misc. 15584 (Revised 1-55) under Table 5.” Puddling”, which has 10 different descriptive variations of puddling.
So rotten ice is indeed U.S. Navy bureaucracy approved since at least 1955.
Steven Mosher,
I m going to ask you politely to stop libeling me. Your accusations incorrect, rude, without base, and unacceptable.
I wrote :
This was in reference to Mark Serreze who said :
There was extensive discussion in late 2007 and early 2008 about thin, “rotten” ice in the Arctic.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43803
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF18/1873.html
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j5pc5zD_AGm2eKbIuBAEGV5W0pqg
Julienne Stroeve says:
August 24, 2010 at 4:34 pm
What would it take for you to believe that human activities are influencing the climate system and components of it such as the Arctic sea ice cover?
———-
Julienne,
One thing I would like to know is what is the amount of additional energy that is being held in the earth’s climate system due to the increase in CO2?
I’d like to see both the theoretical number based on the physics and the supporting data from real world measurements.
If this was expressed in joules per year that would be great.
Thanks,
-Jeff
@stevegoddard
Julienne :
The thing to look for right now is persistence of the Arctic Dipole we’ve seen this June. If that continues all summer like it did in 2007 then I think we’ll be close to 2007 values by September. There are strong meridional winds pushing ice away from the coast of Siberia at the moment (like what happened in 2007). Also Nares Strait is open like it was in 2007 which can help to remove more of the old ice in that location.
Very interesting quote – so we have very similar conditions to 2007 but an ice extent that will never get anywhere close. So will Julienne et al. take the logical and honest conclusion that the ice volume has increased since then – like snip they will!
Excerpts from: Ammonite on August 25, 2010 at 12:29 am
About that book…
Compare this to the National Geographic write-up of the book, as found packaged with the online accompaniment to their TV series “Six Degrees: Could Change The World”:
Nat Geo: “…would be enough to destroy much of life…” Compare to first source.
BTW, it’s been thrashed out before on this site how Kilimanjaro is a land use issue (deforestation), here’s a Nov 2, 2009 sample. And how the “atoll nations of the Pacific” are not disappearing inch by inch under the waves.
Anyone know anything about those “massive boulders on the Matterhorn”?
AJB says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:23 pm
Does anyone know where I can find a freely downloadable copy of this paper please?
Try here.
http://pantheon.yale.edu/%7Ejw378/articles/E&W_Bif_PNAS.pdf
Alexej Buergin
NCEP has changed their forecast again, and it now looks like strong, southerly winds will continue for at least a week. Yesterday they were forecasting extensive cold by the end of the month.
You may well be correct with your 5.0 forecast.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HTJ7SWeC0g]
In France, where knowing how to live is an art, they call it “savoir vivre”:
—- If you think somebody is a complete idiot, go out of your way to be extremely polite to him —-
People read WUWT for the information provided; rudeness is a hindrance (is that the purpose?). It should be censored, as should be too many comments by one person, and too long ones.
Cassandra King says:
August 24, 2010 at 9:04 am
Is the poster ‘Phil’ crossing the line between debate and rudeness by addressing Steve Goddard as “Goddard”?
I don’t believe that I did and I addressed your remarks in a post yesterday which appears have been ‘lost’, perhaps the moderators can fish it out of the spam?
I would point out that US modes of address/familiarity are not universal.
Mosher has never told me that I should address him as ‘Steve’ rather than ‘Mosher’ for example.
Vince Causey says:
August 24, 2010 at 1:09 pm
I notice that there have been some comments on a posters rudeness, and this has provoked a flurry attacking the first group. In general, I have observed a tendency of people behaving in a way on blogs that would not be acceptable in a social context. Imagine this was a social gathering, we’re all standing around chatting, Steve Goddard says something about sea ice, and suddenly somebody shouts out, “Hey Goddard – you’re talking nonsense etc.” Wouldn’t people start commenting on that? “Who is that rude guy? Where’s he come from,”
But that is not the correct context, this is a ‘Science blog’ after all.
The correct context would be someone making a presentation and then the session is opened to questions from the floor. That’s something I have a lot of experience of from both sides. In that context it might be appropriate to use a title but what title do you use with a pseudonym? Someone standing up and saying “Goddard your comment about ‘rotten ice’ at the pole is nonsense…….” would be quite normal.
Julienne,
It is clear that wind determines the summer extent numbers.
Is there any reason to believe that the behaviour of wind in the Arctic is related to atmospheric CO2?
R. Gates says:
August 24, 2010 at 10:28 pm
In terms of the next few days and weeks ahead in the Arctic Sea Ice extent, here are some highlights of events to be on the look out for…….6) Someone from Norway or Russia may become the first modern group to successfully circumnavigate the Arctic sea ice by ship…some might claim the Vikings did this during the MWP, so I use the term “modern”
I don’t think anyone is claiming the Vikings circumnavigated Arctic ice. I have never heard that. But they would claim Vikings sailed along the northern shore of Greenland. This “modern group” sailed south of Greenland. You can see that in page 1 of their PDF.
And you should have read up on what they did before commenting on them. They did not stay in water for the entire route. From page 2 of their PDF:
“Circumnavigating the Earth on the Arctic Ocean in a single summer is an impossible challenge – if you try to do it the traditional way. It would simply take too
long. Instead of using a heavy, deep-draught steel vessel, like previous expeditions,
we have chosen a light and lithe trimaran. Having a draught of only 40 cm, this
three-hulled sailboat can attain a speed of 20 knots, and can easily be pulled onto
the shore to avoid pack ice.”
link to PDF
http://www.corsairmarine.com/UserFiles/Image/The%20North%20Pole%20Passage_Ousland%281%29.pdf
In case it was not noticed, they did not stay in the Arctic Ocean. Going south of Iceland and Greenland put them in the Atlantic Ocean.
page 2 of their PDF
“Circumnavigating the Earth on the Arctic Ocean…”
They went into the Atlantic Ocean for part of the journey.
Alex Heyworth said:
“Despite the hubris of the modelers, we know next to nothing about how the climate system works.
Understanding weather is an absurdly easy task by comparison.”
_________
I would disagree. I think we know quite a bit about both, but knowing and predicting a system that has chaotic elements are two different things. If it begins to rain, trying predicting exactly where each raindrop will fall on your windshield (that is like predicting the weather), but you can predict that the your windshield will be wet.
Joe Bastardi said “2 steps forward 1 step” back in his Arctic ice prediction for this year. 2 steps forward since 2007, that is, 2008 was higher than 2007, and 2009 was higher than 2008. 1 step back meant 2010 would be lower than 2009. He pointed to the warmth in the Atlantic left there from the El Nino that ended in May. But then he continued by saying there would be a dramatic increase over 2010 in 2011. He may be right. He’s much smarter than the YouTube documentary gave him credit for!
phlogiston says:
August 25, 2010 at 6:05 am
Please note the entire quote…and the fact that the Dipole Anomaly pattern did not continue for the entire summer as it did in 2007.
I do believe ice volume in spring 2010 was likely greater than in spring 2008. Radar altimetry data shows at least for the regions imaged that the thickness was greater. I am looking forward to seeing Cryosat results from this summer to further investigate the thickness.
Thank you everyone who has responded to my question, I appreciate you taking the time to answer. I don’t have time right now to address some of the responses/questions but I hope to be able to do that later today.
Caleb
You would be adsvised to read the Weather diary of such as Thomas Jefferson before investing too much in fruits that are unnatural to your region.
“A change in our climate however is taking place very sensibly. Both heats and colds are become much more moderate within the memory even of the middle-aged. Snows are less frequent and less deep. They do not often lie, below the mountains, more than one, two, or three days, and very rarely a week. They are remembered to have been formerly frequent, deep, and of long continuance. The elderly inform me the earth used to be covered with snow about three months in every year. The rivers, which then seldom failed to freeze over in the course of the winter, scarcely ever do so now. ”
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/JEFFERSON/ch07.html
As he-and many others knew 250 years ago climate fluctuates and you are taking a gamble in anything requiring a long time climate change.
Tonyb
“Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
August 25, 2010 at 7:25 am
Joe Bastardi said “2 steps forward 1 step” back in his Arctic ice prediction for this year. 2 steps forward since 2007, that is, 2008 was higher than 2007, and 2009 was higher than 2008. 1 step back meant 2010 would be lower than 2009. But then he continued by saying there would be a dramatic increase over 2010 in 2011.”
Damn. I was going to say that. The world is cooling a bit and the ice is thicker than last year, so we might have 5.8 next year. But I suggest that Steven Goddard first defines for WUWT what the rules are (and how does one take into consideration how far in advance a forecast was made).
Phil. says:
August 25, 2010 at 6:11 am
Thank you kind Sir, you are a scholar and a gentleman!
From: Phil. on August 25, 2010 at 6:46 am
Small problem with that, namely that a WUWT regular such as yourself should be well acquainted with how the moderators regularly check the spam filter. Thus while there is a remote, minuscule, microscopic possibility that said post was sent by you and subsequently lost, after all computers are involved and we all know how fallible they are, it “appears” that claiming such a post was lost, possibly among the spam, lacks credibility.
BTW, implying the moderators are being lax in their spam-filter checking duties, as in your post may have been lost in there since yesterday? Bad form, old chap.
kadaka,
In Phil.’s defense, I should point out that there are indeed several posts missing from yesterday. I’ve gotten several e-mails from this thread of ‘approved’ comments that no longer are showing up. Not sure if the spam filter is applied after the comment e-mails go out, or if the mods did a little house cleaning.
REPLY: Yes some comments that don’t meet the site policy have been removed. Everybody could do well to review it so that we don’t have to make judgment calls. I’ll point out the both comments from Steve Goddard and Phil. failed in this regard, equal opportunity snips. I’m pretty well tired of the petty arguments over he said/he said. There’s errors on both sides. – Anthony
Alexej Buergin
I don’t know what the “rules” are for extent, but hopefully by the close examination we have taken we are understanding the Arctic better.
When the winds are from the north or calm, ice extent loss is minimal. When they blow from the south, ice is lost more rapidly, as we saw in June and since mid-August.
Probably the best measure is volume, but there doesn’t seem to be much consensus on that. PIOMAS has claimed record low volumes all year, while Julienne (NSIDC) seems to disagree.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/24/sewa-ice-news-arctic-mid-week-update/#comment-466360
PIPS also shows late summer volume gain since 2008.
Everyone involved in this discussion seems to agree that the wind is the key factor. So what controls the wind? Is it global warming?
”
Steven
There was extensive discussion in late 2007 and early 2008 about thin, “rotten” ice in the Arctic.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43803
Now even where there the Arctic ice looks largely intact, this thick multi-year ice is rotten inside,
#################################################
full quote:
“Warmer winter temperatures are driving the decline. The average winter temperature is now 5 degrees C higher than it was 40 years ago. Permanent ice needs long periods of intense cold below 40 degrees C but that doesn’t happen anymore, he said.
Now even where there the Arctic ice looks largely intact, this thick multi-year ice is rotten inside, and much more likely to crack and break. “It might look okay, but its not,” Copland explained. ”
Simple fact: You showed a picture of the pole. you drew attention to the lack of “rotten” ice. You claimed that “rotten” ice lead Serreze to make his comment:
“Remember the “rotten ice” in 2008, which led to Mark Serreze betting on an ice free North Pole that summer? Looks like we have come a long way since then. Here is what the North Pole looks like today :”
But the discussion you cite does not site serreze or his reasoning. If you want to prove yourself correct, you need to find text where serreze says these things. Your claim is that ‘rotten’ ice LEAD serreze to make the claim. Well the ice they ( Copeland) is discussing is not ice at the pole. So why show a picture at the pole to debunk what Copeland was talking about Who is copeland?
“Some of those chunks of ice will be ice islands 50 km sq and 10 stories high just like the ones that broke off from Ellesmere Island’s ice shelves this summer, said Luke Copland, an ice expert at Canada’s University of Ottawa. ”
sept 5, 2008. AFTER SERREZE made his comment. Kinda odd to throw this out there as support of what lead serreze to make his comments. A comment made by someone else, about something else, after Serreze talked about something different.?
NEXT:
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF18/1873.html
“Unusually thin, rotten ice” north of Alaska.
Who said that?
“Satellite measurements aren’t perfect, and Hutchings noticed that some areas the satellites revealed as ice-free were instead ice, with water ponded on top. But for the most part, she noticed an ice mass in bad shape.
“We were seeing unusually thin, rotten ice, all the way to 79 degrees north,” Hutchings said. “That’s where you would expect some of the heaviest ice, and we were having no trouble at all getting through.”
Not Serreze. And it wasnt said about the pole. So again, you show a picture of the pole. You claim that “rotten” ice lead serreze to make the claim that the artic would be ice free, and then you show a picture of the pole.
And Now you quote OTHER PEOPLE talking about Ice in other places and argue that what??? That because a person named hutchins taked about ice in alaska, That your claim about Serreze’s beliefs are justified?
Google is NOT your friend. The argument is not ” did somebody else refer to rotten ice” Your argument was this: Rotten ice LEAD SERREZE to make his comment. You then show a picture of the pole. Nobody has ever talked about rotten ice at the pole. Its like you showed a picture of ice in a cocktail glass and argued that it somehow contradicted what Serreze never said. Non sequitor maximus. It’s not libel to point out that your argument and now your defense makes no sense. If you want to talk about Serreze and what HE THOUGHT, and LEAD HIM to make certain statements, then quoting other people talking about different things is an amusing exercise.
NEXT:
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j5pc5zD_AGm2eKbIuBAEGV5W0pqg
“It could be compared to a building in a movie: it looks OK, you see a building, but in fact it’s a set, and behind the facade there is nothing,” said Walter Meier, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
“In February, there was a slight recovery, surface area of ice was slightly higher than in the recent years, because of a colder than average winter, but ice area is only one parameter,” he told a joint press conference with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) researchers.
“It is seasonal ice, thin, vulnerable which could melt very easily,” Meier added.
“huh?” Serreze and his rationale is NOWHERE in sight.
So did he talk about rotten ice at the pole? Did he use that word? about that place?
“”There is this thin first-year ice even at the North Pole at the moment,” says Serreze. “This raises the spectre – the possibility that you could become ice free at the North Pole this year.”
Despite its news value in the media, the North Pole being ice free is not in itself significant. To scientists, Serreze points out, “this is just another point on the globe”. What is worrying, though, is the fact that multi-year ice – the stuff that doesn’t melt in the summer – is not piling up as fast as Arctic ice generally is melting.”
Rotten ice, As serreze would know, is not thin first year ice at the pole. ESPECIALLY if Serreze read the articles you cite. You got him wrong. THAT DOESNT MAKE HIM RIGHT. that makes you, inaccurate in your attribution of beliefs to him. It’s easy to be wrong about what someone thought and why they thought it. Strawman arguments. Happens all the time.
And what drives him to his conclusion:
His words are probably best:
“Serreze: The downward trend in September sea ice extent seems to be accerating. That reflects the combination of three things:
Spring is increasingly dominated by thin, first-year ice prone to melting out in summer;
As the thin ice now starts to melt out earlier in summer, the albedo feedback is stronger meaning even more summer melt;
Arctic is warming in all seasons, meaning that recovery through a series of cold years is becoming less and les likely. Take these three together, and you are probably looking at ice-fee summers by 2030. I’d call that a death sprital.”
By the time we are done we actually may discuss what serreze actually said and why he said it.
THEN, people can attack the argument he actually made. In the end steven THAT is what this is ALL ABOUT for me. Accurately reprsenting what was said by whom, when they said it, and what they meant. You cannot disprove an argument WITHOUT proper explication FIRST. if you get the explication wrong, you are on thin.. nay rotten.. ice.
peace out.
To be clear,
When criticizing a SPECIFIC scientist about his views AND what LEAD HIM to hold those views it is vital to:
1. Quote what he actually said.
2. practice some measure of constraint in attributing mental states to them..
When you don’t, expect people who are sticklers for this kind of accuracy to take some notice. When I don’t see actual quotes, its like the raw data being missing. Homogenization of peoples words is right up there with homogenizing data. and cherry picking proxies. When we are criticizing the practices of others, it’s best to use best practices ourselves.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 25, 2010 at 8:36 am
From: Phil. on August 25, 2010 at 6:46 am
“I don’t believe that I did and I addressed your remarks in a post yesterday which appears have been ‘lost’, perhaps the moderators can fish it out of the spam?”
Small problem with that, namely that a WUWT regular such as yourself should be well acquainted with how the moderators regularly check the spam filter. Thus while there is a remote, minuscule, microscopic possibility that said post was sent by you and subsequently lost, after all computers are involved and we all know how fallible they are, it “appears” that claiming such a post was lost, possibly among the spam, lacks credibility.
Yes I am a regular here but one who is subject to additional moderating, apparently my posts are automatically sent to the spam folder for later scrutiny. As a result there is often a significant delay in my posts showing up, and frequently they don’t show up at all. All my posts except that one from yesterday showed up with various delays.
BTW, implying the moderators are being lax in their spam-filter checking duties, as in your post may have been lost in there since yesterday? Bad form, old chap.
Why, my posts go in the spam folder and have to be fished out, sometimes they’re delayed.
REPLY: Because you have resorted to name calling, been given time outs for it on more than one occasion, most recently a 24 hour one this weekend. Your posts merit special attention to ensure this doesn’t continue to happen. Clean up your act, stop name calling and other policy violations, and it won’t be a problem. Or, continue on your current path and go for the outright ban, I don’t care, but do stop wasting my time. – Anthony
Anyone who lives near a seasonally frozen body of water understands that the ice becomes rotten before it melts out completely. Ice that is not rotten will not melt out.
Why are we having this reprehensible discussion?
OK everybody, the “rotten ice” he said/he said discussion is OVER. Tired of the moderation load. Put it behind us and move on. – Anthony
I for one would like to thank Steven Goddard for the amazing amount of time he has spent compiling the Sea Ice News reports. It puts anything that NSIDC have put out to shame, and hopefully as a result, we’ll see more focus on the science than all the disasterbating we’ve seen to date in the future.
Other than his taste in football clubs (ex-Leeds United supporter here, when they used to be a team) :-)), I don’t think he has any lessons to learn from people who just six months ago, wouldn’t be seen dead on this site.
As Professor Easterbrook points out in his paper (http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/research/global/glopubs.htm)
Arctic temperatures have been decreasing since 2005, and the polar ice will recover over the next 20 or 30 years.
I would strongly recommend anyone who is interested in climate change and effects on the arctic, and antarctic ice sheets to read his papers.
They are quite fascinating and are soundly based on scientific measuements taken from ice samples for example in Greenland.
Steve Goddard,
“Everyone involved in this discussion seems to agree that the wind is the key factor. So what controls the wind? Is it global warming?”
I don’t think everyone agrees wind is “the key factor”, which I would interpret as implying that there are no other factors of comparable importance. I’d say everyone agrees the winds are a key factor in how a given melt season proceeds, particularly in the short term. I don’t think there’s any consensus that changes in wind patterns explain the trend of decreasing northern hemisphere sea ice in the satellite record. I’m not even aware of anyone having advanced such a theory, but will, of course, be interested if anyone can point me to relevant research.
Djon
Julienne has spoken repeatedly about winds driving Arctic ice loss, and we have seen the same thing. On days when the wind blows from the south, extent goes down. On days when it doesn’t blow, extent remains more constant.
There is no question that winds are the key factor.
I live near a lake which freezes in the winter. It remained frozen solid until late March this year, and then two days of wind completely removed the ice. Same thing happens every year.
Alexej Buergin says:
August 25, 2010 at 8:25 am
“The world is cooling a bit…”
_____
? Compared to what and duirng what time period? 2010 will be either the #1 or #2
warmest year on instrument record. What data set are you looking at?
REPLY: Because you have resorted to name calling, been given time outs for it on more than one occasion, most recently a 24 hour one this weekend. Your posts merit special attention to ensure this doesn’t continue to happen. Clean up your act, stop name calling and other policy violations, and it won’t be a problem. Or, continue on your current path and go for the outright ban, I don’t care, but do stop wasting my time. – Anthony
Actually you told me it was because I have an ‘.edu’ name. I wasn’t complaining just explaining to the poster what the situation is, although it is frustrating to have posts disappear without any reason. Yesterday’s post was explaining why I didn’t consider using a surname was rude, I didn’t do any name-calling, it never showed up. I haven’t ‘resorted to name calling’ although I have on occasion out of frustration, whereas I am frequently called names without any action being taken against those posters. I’ve been called ‘vile’ and ‘intellectually dishonest’ in this post and am frequently called a ‘liar’.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/24/sewa-ice-news-arctic-mid-week-update/#comment-466027
What are the ‘other policy violations’ you refer to, I don’t recall being informed of any, is it like ‘double secret probation’?
REPLY: Phil, there’s lots of people that post here with a .edu email address, you aren’t special in that regard, except that you spend a lot of your work time here posting with what I consider boorish and condescending behavior. In the case of this thread, you started the fight with this comment:
Now if you’d phrased that differently, instead of calling it nonsense and raising hackles, choosing your words differently, it might have gone a lot different for you here. This weekend, you called Goddard “stupid”, directly. I snipped your entire post and gave you a time out, as you’ve been warned and given time outs before. I didn’t see yesterday’s post you mention, but it likely got deleted with other spam. If you want respect, earn it with respectful behavior. Otherwise you are just setting yourself up as another anonymous troll. We have plenty of those, so if you want to rise above that crowd, change something.
If you think that using surnames is OK, and doesn’t irritate the person, then I’ll start addressing you by yours. We’ll see how that goes if you want to press the issue. That being said, I think this entire argument has had mistakes on both sides, and I’m quite tired of playing referee to this gotcha match, so I’m closing the thread. – Anthony
Also, see TonyB’s reply below. It isn’t just me that sees your behaviour as problematic, but like him I welcome your technical input. – Anthony
R Gates,
Over the last week, UAH ch05 temperatures have been dropping at a rate of 1,200 degrees / century. I’m guessing that will not continue indefinitely. ;^)
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/data/amsu_daily_85N85S_ch05.r002.txt
stevengoddard says:
August 25, 2010 at 11:39 am
“There is no question that winds are the key factor.”
________
Winds are a key factor in causing ice to melt, move around, be diverged, be compacted, etc. but hardly THE key factor in terms of overall changes in the Arctic sea ice over the past decade or so. The stage has to be set with warmer air temps, warmer water temps, thinner ice, currents, etc. as well. Wind is only one of many key factors that all need to be considered as dynamical system. It hard, for example, to compact multi-year ice that is 3m thick to any great degree by wind alone. If the permafrost all around the Arctic wasn’t melting as well, I might be inclined to put more stock in your notions that wind alone was THE key factor in the region, but wind doesn’t blow undergound and move the permafrost around. The changes in the Arctic are system wide, and to put it all on the wind simply serves to further your AGW skeptical viewpoint.
Steve Goddard said:
“stevengoddard says:
August 25, 2010 at 11:39 am
Djon
Julienne has spoken repeatedly about winds driving Arctic ice loss, and we have seen the same thing.”
_____
Not sure which quote from Julienne you’re referring to, but I still think you either intentionally or by mistake interchange the notions of melt, ice loss, and extent loss. Wind can change extent very rapidly by compacting or diverging the ice. This however, has nothing to do necessarily with melting or ice loss. Melting is the physical change of state from solid to liquid. Ice loss on the other hand, could be melting, but it also could mean flushing out of the Arctic through the Fram Strait etc. I think as we get real thickness data from CryoSat 2, we can simply talk about total ice volume in the Arctic, and then we can hope to have more clarity on our terms.
R. Gates:
In terms of the next few days and weeks ahead in the Arctic Sea Ice extent, here are some highlights of events to be on the look out for.
. . .
4) The extent will begin to approach 5,000,000 sq. km. as we get into early September (causing Steve to perhaps get a bit nervous, as it is a statistical point of interest for him I should think).
Wishful thinking on Gates part. Either that or he’s terrible at math. If you extropolate the shrinkage rate for the last week forward 2 weeks taking you to the start of the second week of September (his reference point), you’d just reach the 5,000,000 mark Of course that totally ignores the fact that in all other years the shrinkage rate flattens out considerably over that 2 week time span. Gates must enjoy the taste of crow!
Phil
Can I give you a bit of friendly advice. I always enjoy your posts and will follow any links you give. You are obviously knowlegable and I for one think it is a thoroughly good thing to have people such as yourself and R Gates to put an alternative view. I miss Joel Shore and have corresponded personally with Scott Mandia so as far as I am concened all four of you are very welcome- although I rarely agree with any of your comments 🙂
However, with respect, your posts over the last few months have become more savage and unpleasant and this dilutes your interesting messages.
I think all that Anthony is asking is that you cut the sharp tone and name calling which is not conducive to an informed discussion on a medium such as this, that is not conducted in real time.
Sorry, didnt mean to lecture, but it would be a big loss to this blog if you were banned.
Tonyb
Back to discussing the ice, JAXA had the extent dropping 50000 km^2 when yesterday’s extent was posted, well above the average. It’s looking more and more likely that we’ll see a minimum in the 4.9-5.2e6 km^2 range. However, yesterday did transition 2010 to being closer to 2009 than 2008. With 2008 averaging >100000 km^2 loss the next two days, it’s doubtful that this year will switch back to being closer to 2008 anytime soon, if at all. However, 2009 doesn’t have any remaining days of even 50000 km^2 loss, so it will be very hard for 2010 to close in on it either.
-Scott
I Ck my Weather Stations that circumvent The Arctic at an ave Latitude of 77 north between 330 & 530 Pm Eastern time every day & the ave temp was 39 3 days ago & today they are at 36 degrees..What Temp at this latitude would the temps have to drop to to get the ice to quit melting?…Maybe I can get one of you to help me with that Question?…I’m just a small mind in a small town trying to get a Big Answer!
“2010 will be either the #1 or #2 warmest year on instrument record.”
lol of course it is…
fishnski says:
August 25, 2010 at 12:50 pm
Well I’d assume that the ice at 77 N has the same melting point as elsewhere in the world. 🙂
I believe ocean water freezes at 28.9F. Fresh water is obviously 32 F. Now, most of the melting probably happens due to differences in water temps, and you’re looking at air temps. Presumably the ice is mostly fresh water, so the melt happening on top will stop at 32F, but if the water is warm enough to melt the ice…
Now if you’re asking how cool it has to be at 77N to stop the melt at other latitudes…there are two philosphies: (1) those temperatures correlate all that well or (2) you can extrapolate very far (i.e. GISS).
-Scott
Can people please tone it down? I am so tired of these accusations.
Wind pushes the ice around, wind melts the ice, wind transfers energy to the ice very efficiently. I am not misrepresenting or interchanging anything.
fishnski
You can’t compare land based temperatures with those out on the pack ice.
Is the temperature in Palm Desert the same as Catalina Island? They are at the same latitude and elevation.
Thread closed
I’m tired of moderating this argument over rotten ice he said/he said between Phil. and Steve etc. Maybe we’ll all have a better discussion next time.