Another interesting sea ice interaction

Travis,
You ask reasonable questions. So I’ll try my best to explain the situation, beginning with statistical significance.
“You say: ‘The trend in temperature over the past 150 years is not statistically significant.’ I hope we can agree to reject that without argument.”
Sorry, it is either statistically significant or it isn’t. It’s like being pregnant; you either are or you aren’t.
Phil Jones, of the alarmist inner sanctum, admitted there was no statistically significant warming, “but only just.” That doesn’t matter. There was in fact no statistically significant warming, which blows the GCM predicitions out of the water. They were wrong as usual.
Further, Phil Jones himself provided Hadley data showing essentially exact replicas of the current temperature trend going back to 1850. Recall that the Little Ice Age began moderating about 1800.
Neither current trends nor temperatures are outside the parameters of natural variablity during the Holocene. Any so-called climate scientist who claims to have falsified the null hypothesis is lying, plain and simple. If it had been falsified, Trenberth would have been running around crowing about it, instead of trying to replace it with his own bogus, cherry-picked “null hypothesis.”
I am not claiming [and I never have] that human emissions have zero effect on temperatures. What I am stating is this: The demonization of “carbon” [by which the scientifically illiterate mean carbon dioxide, a very minor trace gas] is happening because it is extremely lucrative, and because the nerdy scientists who succumbed to the rock-star fame of being repeatedly interviewed, with the public swallowing their catstrophic prediction hook, line and sinker, never in their wildest dreams thought they would go from zero to hero simply by lying about climate data.
Based on my background and following the articles posted here and elsewhere for the past four years, and listening more closely to those scientists who are at the pinnacle of their carreers and thus have nothing to gain by lying or exaggerating [such as Dr Richard Lindzen], I think that the effect of CO2 is insignificant, on the order of a few tenths of a degree per doubling at most. There is no evidence showing otherwise. Thus, the rise in CO2 can be completely disregarded for all practical purposes.
Next, you asked for a definition of the null hypothesis: The null hypothesis is the statistical hypothesis that states that there are no differences between observed and expected data. The warming over the past century and a half is coincidental with the rise in CO2. If CO2 caused even a large part of the warming, the temperature would closely track the rise in CO2. It doesn’t.
Finally, you ask about the cause of the current warming. Once again I must explain that the question of cause is entirely separate from the null hypothesis. A reductionist fixation on mechanism can lead to the fallacy, “argumentum ignarus res” or argument in defiance of facts: so much faith is placed in a mechanism [and in the simplicity of the mechanism’s operation in the real world] that an alternative hypothesis is stubbornly believed in spite of substantial evidence to the contrary. CAGW is a prime example of this.
The null is simply a benchmark. The claim was repeatedly made that rising CO2 will cause runaway global warming [now mendaciously changed to ‘climate change’]. James Hansen has been arm-waving about this since at least 1988. As it turns out, Hansen and every other person that predicted runaway global warming was wrong.
The null hypothesis is sometimes challenged by alternative hypotheses. If the alternative hypothesis, such as CO2=CAGW is valid, then there must be an observable change from the prior climate. But there has not been any measurable change in trends, temperature, or magnitude. The current climate is completely normal. In fact, the it is is especially benign compared to the extremes of the past 10,000 years.
Those demonizing “carbon” are self-serving charlatans along with their cognitive dissonance-afflicted true believer followers. As Prof Lindzen puts it:

Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age.

So you can relax. A few tenths of a degree temperature change is completely normal and natural. It would be a different story if the temperature was inexorably rising year after year in line with CO2. But it isn't. The temperature anomaly is now exactly where it was in 1981, 30 years ago. There is simply no empirical evidence – none – that CO2 causes even minuscule warming. It may. But if so, it is insignificant.
R Gates,
As I've shown, GCMs have an abysmal prediction record. Not one of them predicted the last decade's cooling. And based on your comments you still have no understanding of the null hypothesis.
You improbably claimed that atmospheric CO2 is causing the ice caps to melt away. But plenty of glaciers are growing. I have no doubt you will use unbelievable rhetoric to explain how CO2 is causing the melting of ice in one location but not in another.
Claiming that "…in regards to the decline of the Arctic sea ice, and of global warming in general, it is beyond “known” natural variability, and your inability to understand this…" & etc. That is simply wrong. It is wishful thinking. The Arctic has been ice free many times throughout the Holocene. But we only have instrumental data from the 1950's. You are basing your entire conjecture on a few decades, and your mind is closed to the ice core evidence showing much warmer temperatures throughout the past ten millennia.
Your preposterous claim that a minor trace gas comprising only 0.00039 of the atmosphere is melting the Arctic is as silly as it sounds. Warmer water under the ice is melting the ice cap. As the great John Daly explained it, "As we can see from recent history, both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice is certainly subject to variation. But it would be a mistake to assume that a brief period during which the Arctic is in a thinning cycle is anything more than that – a cycle. We know from past history that it has been subject to earlier retreats as suggested by the opening quote from 1817." [source]
There is no empirical [real world], testable evidence showing that CO2 is the cause of changes in Arctic ice cover. There are only your baseless claims – and the always-inaccurate computer models that can’t predict their way out of a paper bag. As the great scientist Prof Freeman Dyson explains:

Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models. [source]

The disreputable alarmist crowd has lately tried to demonize Prof Dyson. Of course he did synthesize and reduce to practice the Feynman/Schwinger/Tomonaga solutions to the renormalization problems of quantum electrodynamics, and Prof Feynman stated that he deserved the Nobel prize in Physics. But it is limited to three recipients [unlike the worthless Nobel “Peace” prize], and Dyson was the fourth member of the team. I prefer to listen to true scientists without an agenda. Prof Lindzen and Prof Dyson are two of the few commenting on climate issues who haven’t sold out for money and fame. You can listen to climate charlatans like Mann, Pachauri, Gore and the rest of their clique. But the truth is not in them.