I don’t have much time for a detailed post, a number of people want to discuss sea ice, so here is your chance. We also need to update the ARCUS forecast for August, due Monday August 6th. Poll follows:
Bruce Cobb writes,
“Interesting, so then your cherry-picked facts and emotion-based fears for your imagined future for your kids are in fact genuine. I was wrong, my apologies.”
Another mind-reading fail. You can’t rise to the challenge of arguing with something I actually said?
On the thread’s topic of sea ice, I’ve mentioned satellite data, submarine data, historical data, proxy data, time scales from seasons to thousands of years, winters as well summers, Antarctic as well as Arctic, effects on land ice and other latitudes, differences among modelers, the perspective of field scientists, and both history and current weather in south Greenland. All of that I could back up with citations to recent, refereed science articles. To wave it off as “cherry picking” simply demonstrates that you have no concept of what the term means.
Your two posts on this thread had zero content, and were silly even as insults.
Gness
August 5, 2012 3:30 pm
Smokey writes,
“Horseapples. The planet has been considerably warmer over the past 2,000 years”
Smokey, you’re classic. This technique is called “argument by personal incredulity.”
“It is obvious to the most casual observer that Polar ice cover waxes and wanes,”
…true
“just like it is doing today.”
…false. It hasn’t waned like this in quite a while, we know at least that much.
u.k.(us)
August 5, 2012 3:31 pm
Gneiss says:
August 5, 2012 at 1:56 pm
u.k. (u.s.) writes,
“Care to back-up this statement with data ?”
Here is one place your could start. You have probably been told how wrong it is, but have you ever tried to read it yourself? http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9.html
==============
I prefer non-fiction.
Gneiss opines:
Arctic ice “hasn’t waned like this in quite a while, we know at least that much.”
We “know” nothing of the sort. There is observational evidence that the Arctic has routinely been ice-free thousands of years ago – well before anthropogenic CO2 began to rise. This geologic evidence destroys Gneiss’s hopelessly Gnaïve belief system.
Gneiss
August 5, 2012 4:18 pm
Smokey writes,
“We “know” nothing of the sort. There is observational evidence that the Arctic was ice-free thousands of years ago.”
Read your own link, Smokey, that’s not what it says. I can help:
“The climate in the northern regions has never been milder since the last Ice Age than it was about 6000-7000 years ago. We still don’t know whether the Arctic Ocean was completely ice free, but there was more open water in the area north of Greenland than there is today,” says Astrid Lyså, a geologist and researcher at the Geological Survey of Norway.”
So, 6 or 7 thousand years ago … remember that you were objecting to my comment about *your own claim* regarding the last 2 thousand years. You had to move the goalposts back 4 or 5 thousand years to save that one! And even so, Dr. Lyså specifically states they do not know whether the Arctic Ocean was completely ice free, only that there was more open water north of Greenland at that time.
“This geologic evidence destroys Gneiss’s hopelessly Gnaive belief system.”
Cute, but wrong.
Gneiss,
Thank you for quoting from the link. It supports the fact that the planet was warmer in the past, meaning the null hypothesis remains un-falsified.
And it is not my “6 or 7 thousand years ago”. That is the peer reviewed paper’s number. But your cherry-picked “last 2 thousadn years” was just to avoid the scientific evidence showing that the planet was even warmer before that point in time.
Face facts, what we are observing right now is nothing unusual. It has happened repeatedly in the past, and to a greater extent. This is simply natural variability. That’s all. No need to frighten yourself.
Gneiss
August 5, 2012 4:37 pm
Jim writes,
“2000 years? That’s not very long. The earth has been here billions of years. It’s been way hotter, and way colder before. You know what? The earth has survived each time. I, for one, am not concerned over a degree temperature rise. It’s way to frigging cold here in Minnesota 9 months of the year anyways.”
This thread is surreal. Are thinking skeptics all at the beach today?
True, the planet has survived through billions of years, asteroid impacts and all. There have been a handful of Great Extinctions along the way, one of them happening right now, but the Earth itself is still here. And will be long after we’re gone.
Here’s a better answer than I gave, addressing one part of the “So what?” question about Arctic ice. It’s a presentation (J Francis & S Vavrus) made earlier this year at the American Meteorological Society.
Smokey says:
August 5, 2012 at 3:43 pm
” There is observational evidence that the Arctic has routinely been ice-free thousands of years ago”
———————
This is from your link.
“However, the scientists are very careful about drawing parallels with the present-day trend in the Arctic Ocean where the cover of sea ice seems to be decreasing.
“Changes that took place 6000-7000 years ago were controlled by other climatic forces than those which seem to dominate today,”
That was at the peak of the Milankovich warming for this cycle.
We are now in the cooling phase of this interglacial. Based on your earlier graph linking temperature, CO2 and Milankovich cycles we should be seeing decreasing CO2, a temperature decline of 0.3C per milennium, and increasing ice cover.
Smokey wrote,
““Horseapples. The planet has been considerably warmer over the past 2,000 years.”
When I challenged Smokey’s claim he cited a paper that said the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland had less ice 6,000 or 7,000> years ago. But when I pointed out this was 4,000 or 5,000 years earlier than the period he or I had written about, Smokey wrote
“And it is not my “6 or 7 thousand years ago”. That is the peer reviewed paper’s number. But your cherry-picked “last 2 thousadn years” was just to avoid the scientific evidence showing that the planet was even warmer before that point in time.”
Very confusing!. But false besides. I had mentioned 2,000 in the first place because I was citing a paper by Spielhagen that said 2,000, no cherry picking involved. It’s what they found.
Have there been warmer and colder eras farther back in time? Of course there have, no scientist anywhere has ever denied that, so far as I know. Can conditions unseen for at least 2,000 years still be called exceptional, by human standards if not those of real gneiss? I think so. And all the more notable because global systems today are changing so fast.
+++++
Bill Illis wrote,
“First day of sea ice extent increase this season at the NSIDC. Only 60 km2 but a positive number nonetheless.
Perhaps they are only correcting the extra melt they have been throwing in over the last few weeks.”
If you have been watching the ice changes that closely, perhaps you can think of another hypothesis that’s more reality-based? Other people have, the discussion is all over the internets. Although oddly, nowhere on this Sea Ice News thread.
Smokey says:
August 5, 2012 at 3:06 pm
The planet has been considerably warmer over the past 2,000 years, and warmer still over the Holocene — well before CO2 began to rise.
I like the bit where you conflate a tiny bit of the planet for the whole planet.
John F. Hultquist
August 5, 2012 5:16 pm
Bruce Cobb says:
August 5, 2012 at 10:10 am
“After all, if the Arctic sea-ice were to all melt, that would prove your CAGW religion was based on fact . . . ”
I, for one, object to the above statement. The appropriate concept is that of a non sequitur. Melting of the floating sea ice will not prove CAGW to be true – one does not follow the other.
barry
August 5, 2012 5:17 pm
“Interestingly, the DMI temperature profile has been consistently below normal during the current melt season while there has been a rapid loss of ice.”
DMI is a poor metric to match surface temps and melt, as explained by people working there quite a few tmes at this and other blogs. I emailed them two years ago on the matter and got this reply:
1) The surface in the +80N area is more or less fully snow and ice covered all year, so the temperature is strongly controlled by the melting temperature of the surface. I.e. the +80N temperature is bound to be very close to the melt point of the surface snow and ice (273K) and the variability is therefore very small, less than 0.5K. I am sure you will find a much clearer warming trend in the same analysis applied to the winter period. The winter period is more crucial for the state of the Arctic sea ice, as this is the period where the ice is produced and the colder the winter the thicker and more robust the sea ice will become.
(Indeed, there is a clear warming trend in the cooler part of the year over the decades.)
barry
August 5, 2012 5:46 pm
“All of the changes are due to natural variability. Proof: it has all happened repeatedly before the industrial revolution”
All forest fires are naturally occuring. Proof: there were forest fires before humans even existed.
u.k.(us)
August 5, 2012 6:07 pm
Kevin MacDonald says:
August 5, 2012 at 5:10 pm
“I like the bit where you conflate a tiny bit of the planet for the whole planet.”
=====================
OK, now follow the cash outflows, and tell me about “tiny bits”.
barry
August 5, 2012 6:28 pm
Smokey – “The climate alarmist crowd is asserting the conjecture that Arctic ice variability is caused by humans”
Nope. ‘Variability’ usually refers to weather-like phenomenon, such as the year to year variations in winds, pressure, temps, ocean/atmosphere systems (multi-year) that fluctuate and influence sea ice melt and growth. You introduced the term upthread, seemingly referring to long-term effects. It is the long-term decline, not the interannual variability, that is attributed to AGW.
No one denies that many factors influence sea ice cover and composition year to year. The ‘warmist’ researchers examine these influences extensively, and talk about them publicly. This allows skeptics to cite them when they speak exclusively about weather influence and then argue that therefore they do not believe AGW has an influence. I’m sure there is a name for that logical fallacy…
My prediction for this year’s September average is 4.25 million sq/km.
First time I’ve predicted a record-breaker, and I notice that at the moment it is the most favoured estimate on the poll here. I’ve based my prediction on the June difference beteen area and extent, the trend over the last 3 decades, and some wild guesswork.
barry
August 5, 2012 6:38 pm
“First day of sea ice extent increase this season at the NSIDC. Only 60 km2 but a positive number nonetheless.”
Bill, IIRC, the NSIDC figures for the most recent few days are estimates that usually are amended a few days later after more data comes in. IOW, the most recent few days have huge error bars.
Smokey provided a graph upthread showing a changing tail over three days (but he attributed it to deliberate deception rather than improved estimates).
barry
August 5, 2012 6:50 pm
Smokey wrote:
“Thank you for quoting from the link. It supports the fact that the planet was warmer in the past”
But the quoted excerpt says:
“The climate in the northern regions has never been milder since the last Ice Age than it was about 6000-7000 years ago.”
“Northern Regions” = “Planet” ???
Why do so many ‘skeptics’ have difficulty with the notion of regional climate change and global climate change being different things? Such is readily demonstrated just by paying attention to the timing of the seasons in each hemisphere. And you can see it over the long term in millenial reconstructions, where some parts of the globe are warming while others are cooling over the same centennial time frame. Easily seen in this chart of milennial temp reconstructions made by skeptics. http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod.html
barry says:
August 5, 2012 at 6:28 pm (Edit)
Smokey – “The climate alarmist crowd is asserting the conjecture that Arctic ice variability is caused by humans”
Nope. ‘Variability’ usually refers to weather-like phenomenon, such as the year to year variations in winds, pressure, temps, ocean/atmosphere systems (multi-year) that fluctuate and influence sea ice melt and growth.
Wrong, barry. Variability is not quite what your off-the-cuff, made up on the spur of the moment definition says. The term “variability” has been around for a long time. Here is M.I.T.’s Prof Richard Lindzen’s reference from about five years ago:
The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. The fact that the developed world went into hysterics over changes in global mean temperature anomaly of a few tenths of a degree will astound future generations. Such hysteria simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth, and the exploitation of these weaknesses by politicians, environmental promoters, and, after 20 years of media drum beating, many others as well. Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a 100-thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th Century these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat… For small changes in climate associated with tenths of a degree, there is no need for any external cause. The earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century. [my emphasis]
Natural variability is sufficient to explain all changes since the 1800’s. Occam’s Razor says go with the simplest explanation. There is no reason to add an extraneous variable like CO2 to a simple explanation. And barry can believe that the global temperature is identical everywhere, but it varies. But overall the interactive map that barry linked to [and which I have used extensiviely] shows that generally the entire planet was affected by the MWP and the LIA.
Finally, barry can be an apologist for NSIDC’s “adjustments” of the record. But since 99% of all adjustments by government climate agencies show either a lowering of the past temperature record [thus making for a scary-looking rise], or higher current temperatures, maybe barry will understand that their motive might have something to do with their budget.
Bill Illis
August 5, 2012 7:15 pm
barry says:
August 5, 2012 at 6:38 pm
“First day of sea ice extent increase this season at the NSIDC. Only 60 km2 but a positive number nonetheless.”
Bill, IIRC, the NSIDC figures for the most recent few days are estimates that usually are amended a few days later after more data comes in. IOW, the most recent few days have huge error bars.
——————-
Sorry, Mr. barry, you don’t know what you are talking about.
Everyone else should make note of this.
barry
August 5, 2012 7:32 pm
In the context of declining sea ice, “variability” refers to short-term effects, while “trend” refers to long-term effects. This is also how the terminology is applied in statistics, BTW. The WMO distinguishes climate variability and change this way:
4. What is the difference between climate change and climate variability?
Climate variability is the term used to describe a range of weather conditions that, averaged together, describe the “climate” of a region. In some parts of the world, or in any region for certain time periods or parts of the year, this variability can be weak, i.e. there is not much difference in the conditions within that time period. However, in other places or time periods, conditions can swing across a large range, from freezing to very warm, or from very wet to very dry, thereby exhibiting strong variability…
For the scientific community to recognize a change in climate, a shift has to occur, and persist for quite a long time.
If you want to posit some natural mechanism/s that accounts for the decline in sea ice of the last 30 – 50 years, then you need to be a lot more specific than pointing out that climates changes. Assertions so obvious might seem like evidence, but it’s just rhetoric. (As is Lindzen’s utterly fatuous implication that the climate research community thinks that Earth’s climate has been stable until the holocene. Puhhleease!)
One paper has already been offered in this thread, attributing less than 5% of recent sea ice decline to natural causes. So, what are the natural causes of the 30% reduction in sea ice cover in the Arctic over the last ~30 years? Could you cite a detailed analysis (and not some graph of temps in central England/Greenland/Antarctica/Wazawoo)?
I didn’t think so. 🙂
barry says:
“…Lindzen’s utterly fatuous implication that the climate research community thinks that Earth’s climate has been stable until the holocene.”
Wrong. Prof Lindzen said just the opposite; that in the past there were alligators in Spitzbergen, etc. Lindzen cited 100-thousand year cycles over the past 700 thousand years. But when someone like barry is ruled by confirmation bias and incurably affected by cognitive dissonance, he becomes ruled by and captive to a belief system, no matter what the planet is telling him. http://icecap.us/images/uploads/8YearTemps.jpg
kadaka (KD Knoebel)
August 5, 2012 8:04 pm
From barry on August 5, 2012 at 6:28 pm:
My prediction for this year’s September average is 4.25 million sq/km.
First time I’ve predicted a record-breaker, and I notice that at the moment it is the most favoured estimate on the poll here.
Vote leader is 4.5*10^6 km^2, been that way for over an hour now, I checked right after your post showed up.
After last month’s voting, ARCUS rounded the WUWT submission to the hundred-thousand mark (from 4.55*10^6 to 4.6*10^6) so splitting it to the five-ten-thousands mark doesn’t work, go with the vote leader.
Just checked again, 4.5*10^6 km^2 still leading.
Your observation skills are hereby noted.
Bruce Cobb writes,
“Interesting, so then your cherry-picked facts and emotion-based fears for your imagined future for your kids are in fact genuine. I was wrong, my apologies.”
Another mind-reading fail. You can’t rise to the challenge of arguing with something I actually said?
On the thread’s topic of sea ice, I’ve mentioned satellite data, submarine data, historical data, proxy data, time scales from seasons to thousands of years, winters as well summers, Antarctic as well as Arctic, effects on land ice and other latitudes, differences among modelers, the perspective of field scientists, and both history and current weather in south Greenland. All of that I could back up with citations to recent, refereed science articles. To wave it off as “cherry picking” simply demonstrates that you have no concept of what the term means.
Your two posts on this thread had zero content, and were silly even as insults.
Smokey writes,
“Horseapples. The planet has been considerably warmer over the past 2,000 years”
Smokey, you’re classic. This technique is called “argument by personal incredulity.”
“It is obvious to the most casual observer that Polar ice cover waxes and wanes,”
…true
“just like it is doing today.”
…false. It hasn’t waned like this in quite a while, we know at least that much.
Gneiss says:
August 5, 2012 at 1:56 pm
u.k. (u.s.) writes,
“Care to back-up this statement with data ?”
Here is one place your could start. You have probably been told how wrong it is, but have you ever tried to read it yourself?
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9.html
==============
I prefer non-fiction.
Gneiss opines:
Arctic ice “hasn’t waned like this in quite a while, we know at least that much.”
We “know” nothing of the sort. There is observational evidence that the Arctic has routinely been ice-free thousands of years ago – well before anthropogenic CO2 began to rise. This geologic evidence destroys Gneiss’s hopelessly Gnaïve belief system.
Smokey writes,
“We “know” nothing of the sort. There is observational evidence that the Arctic was ice-free thousands of years ago.”
Read your own link, Smokey, that’s not what it says. I can help:
“The climate in the northern regions has never been milder since the last Ice Age than it was about 6000-7000 years ago. We still don’t know whether the Arctic Ocean was completely ice free, but there was more open water in the area north of Greenland than there is today,” says Astrid Lyså, a geologist and researcher at the Geological Survey of Norway.”
So, 6 or 7 thousand years ago … remember that you were objecting to my comment about *your own claim* regarding the last 2 thousand years. You had to move the goalposts back 4 or 5 thousand years to save that one! And even so, Dr. Lyså specifically states they do not know whether the Arctic Ocean was completely ice free, only that there was more open water north of Greenland at that time.
“This geologic evidence destroys Gneiss’s hopelessly Gnaive belief system.”
Cute, but wrong.
Gneiss,
Thank you for quoting from the link. It supports the fact that the planet was warmer in the past, meaning the null hypothesis remains un-falsified.
And it is not my “6 or 7 thousand years ago”. That is the peer reviewed paper’s number. But your cherry-picked “last 2 thousadn years” was just to avoid the scientific evidence showing that the planet was even warmer before that point in time.
Face facts, what we are observing right now is nothing unusual. It has happened repeatedly in the past, and to a greater extent. This is simply natural variability. That’s all. No need to frighten yourself.
Jim writes,
“2000 years? That’s not very long. The earth has been here billions of years. It’s been way hotter, and way colder before. You know what? The earth has survived each time. I, for one, am not concerned over a degree temperature rise. It’s way to frigging cold here in Minnesota 9 months of the year anyways.”
This thread is surreal. Are thinking skeptics all at the beach today?
True, the planet has survived through billions of years, asteroid impacts and all. There have been a handful of Great Extinctions along the way, one of them happening right now, but the Earth itself is still here. And will be long after we’re gone.
Here’s a better answer than I gave, addressing one part of the “So what?” question about Arctic ice. It’s a presentation (J Francis & S Vavrus) made earlier this year at the American Meteorological Society.
Gneiss says:
August 5, 2012 at 1:35 pm
………………
Take a good read from many papers about the Medieval Warm Period being a global phenomenon.
http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
Greenland MWP
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V13/N16/C2.php
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V4/N48/C2.php
Greenland Temperature History
http://www.co2science.org/subject/g/greenland.php
Smokey says:
August 5, 2012 at 3:43 pm
” There is observational evidence that the Arctic has routinely been ice-free thousands of years ago”
———————
This is from your link.
“However, the scientists are very careful about drawing parallels with the present-day trend in the Arctic Ocean where the cover of sea ice seems to be decreasing.
“Changes that took place 6000-7000 years ago were controlled by other climatic forces than those which seem to dominate today,”
That was at the peak of the Milankovich warming for this cycle.
We are now in the cooling phase of this interglacial. Based on your earlier graph linking temperature, CO2 and Milankovich cycles we should be seeing decreasing CO2, a temperature decline of 0.3C per milennium, and increasing ice cover.
Hi, Entropic.
Have you seen the photo of The Skate from the North Pole in 1958?
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQWt6vCq4PwLuKw3Y1IvYfF4eZ39QDCD-q8YB7Wgzf4q7fW3rQoyg
Smokey wrote,
““Horseapples. The planet has been considerably warmer over the past 2,000 years.”
When I challenged Smokey’s claim he cited a paper that said the Arctic Ocean north of Greenland had less ice 6,000 or 7,000> years ago. But when I pointed out this was 4,000 or 5,000 years earlier than the period he or I had written about, Smokey wrote
“And it is not my “6 or 7 thousand years ago”. That is the peer reviewed paper’s number. But your cherry-picked “last 2 thousadn years” was just to avoid the scientific evidence showing that the planet was even warmer before that point in time.”
Very confusing!. But false besides. I had mentioned 2,000 in the first place because I was citing a paper by Spielhagen that said 2,000, no cherry picking involved. It’s what they found.
Have there been warmer and colder eras farther back in time? Of course there have, no scientist anywhere has ever denied that, so far as I know. Can conditions unseen for at least 2,000 years still be called exceptional, by human standards if not those of real gneiss? I think so. And all the more notable because global systems today are changing so fast.
+++++
Bill Illis wrote,
“First day of sea ice extent increase this season at the NSIDC. Only 60 km2 but a positive number nonetheless.
Perhaps they are only correcting the extra melt they have been throwing in over the last few weeks.”
If you have been watching the ice changes that closely, perhaps you can think of another hypothesis that’s more reality-based? Other people have, the discussion is all over the internets. Although oddly, nowhere on this Sea Ice News thread.
Gneiss says:
August 5, 2012 at 4:31 am
………………
I’m sure you are fully aware of the following papers (abstracts) which show evidence of an ice-free central Arctic Ocean during some of the Holocene summers.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2010.08.016
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUFMPP11A0203F
http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/21/3/227
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/10/30/new-peer-reviewed-paper-says-there-appear-to-have-been-periods-of-ice-free-summers-in-the-central-arctic-ocean/
With regards to recent (1920s / 1930s) comparisons it’s very difficult because the Arctic satellite record I recall started in 1979. If there is no scientific basis for such claims then please, please tell the IPCC to stop using grey literature which they still use today. This practice is very dangerous and can mislead policy makers just as Pachauri once tried to mislead people over peer review and the IPCC. Read it from his own mouth below.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/01/21/grey-literature-ipcc-insiders-speak-candidly/
http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/Comments.pdf [678-page PDF]
Pachauri and fairy tales.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/11/22/pachauris-rhetoric-vs-reality/
I like the bit where you conflate a tiny bit of the planet for the whole planet.
Bruce Cobb says:
August 5, 2012 at 10:10 am
“After all, if the Arctic sea-ice were to all melt, that would prove your CAGW religion was based on fact . . . ”
I, for one, object to the above statement. The appropriate concept is that of a non sequitur. Melting of the floating sea ice will not prove CAGW to be true – one does not follow the other.
“Interestingly, the DMI temperature profile has been consistently below normal during the current melt season while there has been a rapid loss of ice.”
DMI is a poor metric to match surface temps and melt, as explained by people working there quite a few tmes at this and other blogs. I emailed them two years ago on the matter and got this reply:
(Indeed, there is a clear warming trend in the cooler part of the year over the decades.)
“All of the changes are due to natural variability. Proof: it has all happened repeatedly before the industrial revolution”
All forest fires are naturally occuring. Proof: there were forest fires before humans even existed.
Kevin MacDonald says:
August 5, 2012 at 5:10 pm
“I like the bit where you conflate a tiny bit of the planet for the whole planet.”
=====================
OK, now follow the cash outflows, and tell me about “tiny bits”.
Smokey – “The climate alarmist crowd is asserting the conjecture that Arctic ice variability is caused by humans”
Nope. ‘Variability’ usually refers to weather-like phenomenon, such as the year to year variations in winds, pressure, temps, ocean/atmosphere systems (multi-year) that fluctuate and influence sea ice melt and growth. You introduced the term upthread, seemingly referring to long-term effects. It is the long-term decline, not the interannual variability, that is attributed to AGW.
No one denies that many factors influence sea ice cover and composition year to year. The ‘warmist’ researchers examine these influences extensively, and talk about them publicly. This allows skeptics to cite them when they speak exclusively about weather influence and then argue that therefore they do not believe AGW has an influence. I’m sure there is a name for that logical fallacy…
My prediction for this year’s September average is 4.25 million sq/km.
First time I’ve predicted a record-breaker, and I notice that at the moment it is the most favoured estimate on the poll here. I’ve based my prediction on the June difference beteen area and extent, the trend over the last 3 decades, and some wild guesswork.
“First day of sea ice extent increase this season at the NSIDC. Only 60 km2 but a positive number nonetheless.”
Bill, IIRC, the NSIDC figures for the most recent few days are estimates that usually are amended a few days later after more data comes in. IOW, the most recent few days have huge error bars.
Smokey provided a graph upthread showing a changing tail over three days (but he attributed it to deliberate deception rather than improved estimates).
Smokey wrote:
“Thank you for quoting from the link. It supports the fact that the planet was warmer in the past”
But the quoted excerpt says:
“The climate in the northern regions has never been milder since the last Ice Age than it was about 6000-7000 years ago.”
“Northern Regions” = “Planet” ???
Why do so many ‘skeptics’ have difficulty with the notion of regional climate change and global climate change being different things? Such is readily demonstrated just by paying attention to the timing of the seasons in each hemisphere. And you can see it over the long term in millenial reconstructions, where some parts of the globe are warming while others are cooling over the same centennial time frame. Easily seen in this chart of milennial temp reconstructions made by skeptics.
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod.html
barry says:
August 5, 2012 at 6:28 pm (Edit)
Smokey – “The climate alarmist crowd is asserting the conjecture that Arctic ice variability is caused by humans”
Nope. ‘Variability’ usually refers to weather-like phenomenon, such as the year to year variations in winds, pressure, temps, ocean/atmosphere systems (multi-year) that fluctuate and influence sea ice melt and growth.
Wrong, barry. Variability is not quite what your off-the-cuff, made up on the spur of the moment definition says. The term “variability” has been around for a long time. Here is M.I.T.’s Prof Richard Lindzen’s reference from about five years ago:
Natural variability is sufficient to explain all changes since the 1800’s. Occam’s Razor says go with the simplest explanation. There is no reason to add an extraneous variable like CO2 to a simple explanation. And barry can believe that the global temperature is identical everywhere, but it varies. But overall the interactive map that barry linked to [and which I have used extensiviely] shows that generally the entire planet was affected by the MWP and the LIA.
Finally, barry can be an apologist for NSIDC’s “adjustments” of the record. But since 99% of all adjustments by government climate agencies show either a lowering of the past temperature record [thus making for a scary-looking rise], or higher current temperatures, maybe barry will understand that their motive might have something to do with their budget.
barry says:
August 5, 2012 at 6:38 pm
“First day of sea ice extent increase this season at the NSIDC. Only 60 km2 but a positive number nonetheless.”
Bill, IIRC, the NSIDC figures for the most recent few days are estimates that usually are amended a few days later after more data comes in. IOW, the most recent few days have huge error bars.
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Sorry, Mr. barry, you don’t know what you are talking about.
Everyone else should make note of this.
In the context of declining sea ice, “variability” refers to short-term effects, while “trend” refers to long-term effects. This is also how the terminology is applied in statistics, BTW. The WMO distinguishes climate variability and change this way:
If you want to posit some natural mechanism/s that accounts for the decline in sea ice of the last 30 – 50 years, then you need to be a lot more specific than pointing out that climates changes. Assertions so obvious might seem like evidence, but it’s just rhetoric. (As is Lindzen’s utterly fatuous implication that the climate research community thinks that Earth’s climate has been stable until the holocene. Puhhleease!)
One paper has already been offered in this thread, attributing less than 5% of recent sea ice decline to natural causes. So, what are the natural causes of the 30% reduction in sea ice cover in the Arctic over the last ~30 years? Could you cite a detailed analysis (and not some graph of temps in central England/Greenland/Antarctica/Wazawoo)?
I didn’t think so. 🙂
barry says:
“…Lindzen’s utterly fatuous implication that the climate research community thinks that Earth’s climate has been stable until the holocene.”
Wrong. Prof Lindzen said just the opposite; that in the past there were alligators in Spitzbergen, etc. Lindzen cited 100-thousand year cycles over the past 700 thousand years. But when someone like barry is ruled by confirmation bias and incurably affected by cognitive dissonance, he becomes ruled by and captive to a belief system, no matter what the planet is telling him.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/8YearTemps.jpg
From barry on August 5, 2012 at 6:28 pm:
Vote leader is 4.5*10^6 km^2, been that way for over an hour now, I checked right after your post showed up.
After last month’s voting, ARCUS rounded the WUWT submission to the hundred-thousand mark (from 4.55*10^6 to 4.6*10^6) so splitting it to the five-ten-thousands mark doesn’t work, go with the vote leader.
Just checked again, 4.5*10^6 km^2 still leading.
Your observation skills are hereby noted.