Remember this Associated Press before and after image that purportedly showed the North Pole turning into a lake due to “global warming”?
This was the day Brad Johnson of “Forecast the Facts” (a political group affiliated with the Center for American Progress and paid to harass TV weathercasters and meteorologists who don’t share their melting world view) made himself look like the complete idiot we know him to be. Observe the propaganda they sent around:
Note that WUWT published on why this imagery has no scientific merit, and the principal scientist issued a statement saying that it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
Even AP saw they’d screwed up and issued a retraction:
Title : ELIMINATION North Pole Lake
Caption : EDITORS, PHOTO EDITORS, AND PHOTO LIBRARIANS – PLEASE ELIMINATE AP PHOTO NY109 THAT WAS SENT ON SATURDAY, JULY 27, 2013. THE CAPTION INACCURATELY STATED THAT ‘THE SHALLOW MELTWATER LAKE IS OCCURRING DUE TO AN UNUSUALLY WARM PERIOD.’ IN FACT, THE WATER ACCUMULATES IN THIS WAY EVERY SUMMER. IN ADDITION, THE IMAGES DO NOT NECESSARILY SHOW CONDITIONS AT THE NORTH POLE, BECAUSE THE WEATHER BUOY CARRYING THE CAMERA USED BY THE NORTH POLE ENVIRONMENTAL OBSERVATORY HAS DRIFTED HUNDREDS OF MILES FROM ITS ORIGINAL POSITION, WHICH WAS A FEW DOZEN MILES FROM THE POLE- This frame grab provided by NOAA shows images from the wide-angle camera trained on a weather buoy maintained by the North Pole Environmental Observatory at the North Pole. The top image is a June 7, 2013 frame grab. The bottom image is a July 25, 2013 frame grab. (AP Photo/NOAA)
Source: http://foto.agerpres.ro/index.php?i=7147048
Will Brad Johnson and “Forecast the Facts” issue a retraction? Doubtful, because to do so would highlight their own stupidity disguised as paid agenda.
@Larry Plume P
You seem to have missed this quote from Commander …..
“It marked a stark contrast to the enveloping pack whose pressure ridges rimming the polynya extended as much as 40 feet BENEATH THE SURFACE”
Forgive me for interrupting but does this mean that ice is formed (or accumulates) in a wave formation?
40ft at the peak and less at the nadir of the ice formation.
It makes sense. there are lateral forces (wind and wave) that push ice together and vertical forces (gravity and buoyancy) that would smooth the amplitude.
In which case you may be talking at cross-purposes and may both be right?
Richard111 says:
August 10, 2013 at 5:11 am
I think this is the site with the wonky camera.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/NPEO2013/webcams1and2.html
That “wonky” camera got turned over on its side a few days ago, and then the lens froze over, the heating presumably failed. If you look at the last picture before it was turned over you can guess what happened. There are Polar Bear tracks right in front of the camera.
“Forgive me for interrupting but does this mean that ice is formed (or accumulates) in a wave formation?”
Certainly not. Pressure ridges form when wind and/or current compress the pack. This is completely normal and the size of a pressure ridge has little relation to the thickness of the surrounding ice. It even happens on reasonably large lakes. A pressure ridge floats like all sea ica and since the ice is only slightly less dense than the water a pressure ridge 40 feet deep would only rise something like 5 feet above the surrounding ice. I’ve seen bigger ones in the Baltic.
Pressure ridges are a great problem to icebreakers, since they can be impenetrable even to large icebreakers.
There is an even worse variety “stampisvall” (I’m not sure there is an English word). This is a ridge of finely divided ice and sludge that has become compacted by wind and waves against e. g. the edge of the fast ice. It can go down for tens of meters but does not stick up at all, and can also
be quite impenetrable.
The Master of Space and Thyme either has not the slightest idea about how sea ice works or is deliberately obfuscating.
tty; To be honest, I also have not the slightest idea about how sea ice works either… but please believe I am not deliberately obfuscating.
It just seemed to me that if ridges form – then 40ft pack ice could be adjacent to ice that is only just thick enough to avoid shearing.
From the text I read, the reference to 40ft was a reference to maximum height of ice (top to bottom) not height above surface or mean height of ice.
There seemed to be the possibility that you could both be talking about the same ice formation but looking at different parts of the sinusoidal-shape ridge.
But if I was wrong then, again please “Forgive me for interrupting”.
What I know on this I have learnt here. I just hoped to move your debate beyond mere disagreement.
No, not really a “wave” as you are probably thinking.
Rather, “normal” sea ice “normally” just freezes up exactly as you would expect: First year sea ice is about 1 meter thick, 90% of it is under the water, 10% visible above the water. It is more-or-less flat. 2nd year sea ice is a little thicker: still 90% below “waterline” and 10% above the waterline.
But, after it freezes, it is a solid (obviously!) as so it can get blown over, tipped over, or crashed by the storms and wind into piles and “cracked together” masses of ice. If two long plates crash together, the resulting ridge (just like mountains are created when two continental plates are pushed together by tectonic forces) both pushed up into 50 -60 ft high visible ridges, and also and below into (invisibly) deep ridges just as deep. But, because these ridges are compressed together – the ice right at the ridge should be considered independently floating anymore: Rather the whole wide combined area of the two plates helps to “float” the thin ridge squished between the flat areas, and so the ridge isn’t statically “buoyant” with 90% below/10% above. (An iceberg, of course, IS independently floating, and so it will have 90% below/10% above all of the time. Still, after melting irregularly, you can find online movies of icebergs “rolling” over as they get top-heavy.)
The sub’s under-ice sonar looks “vertically” up from the conning tower to track those deep ridges and the flat spaces between them. Hopefully, the flat spot will be less than 1 meter thick ice, and can be broken through by the conning tower’s upper plates without causing damage. 2 meters? Rather more iffy about whether or not damage will occur.
RACookPE1978 says August 10, 2013 at 2:29 pm…
Thank you for the detail. I kind of wish I had never tried to play bridge-builder in ignorance now. Insert your own joke, privately, if you wish.
But, although I knew (know?) nothing of sea-ice formation or structure, re-reading the comments above doesn’t lead to conflict.
The historical source could be interpreted to refer to both tty and Master-Space-Time’s viewpoint.
The historical source (the sub commander) is vague enough to not be definitive.
Perhaps I am too sceptical. Good bye from me to this this thread (I am not helping the debate).
RACookPE1978
Sorry, but you don’t know what you are talking about. The ice in a pressure ridge is floating like any other sea ice. When two ice fields get crushed together the forces are horizontal. Just how do you think they get turned through 90 degrees to float your pressure ridge?
IMPORTANT : Go to The Huffpo Facebook photo : “Now THIS is a wakeup call!”
.. and screenshot the hysterical warmist comments
– “this won’t be enough for the deniers !” 674 likes
– “you’re right, they will say it was photoshopped or something”
stewgreen says:
August 10, 2013 at 3:36 pm
Hilarious!
Nincompoops still don’t know it was a hoax.
tty says:
August 10, 2013 at 2:10 pm
As you know, much of English ice, glacial & Arctic feature vocabulary consists of loan words from other languages. I’ve seen “stampisvall” translated as “dike” to distinguish it from “normal” pressure ridges, but this doesn’t really do the phenomenon justice, IMO.
Wiki has a perhaps surprisingly good tutorial on sea ice, for anyone wanting to learn more, or start to learn:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_ice
The NSIDC site has this on its formation.
http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/characteristics/formation.html
Speaking of linguistic loans, “frazil” is a Quebecois word, from French “fraisil”, which means coal cinders.
Literal translation perhaps “jammed ice wall”?
” tty says:
August 10, 2013 at 1:48 pm
Richard111 says:
August 10, 2013 at 5:11 am
I think this is the site with the wonky camera.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/NPEO2013/webcams1and2.html
That “wonky” camera got turned over on its side a few days ago, and then the lens froze over, the heating presumably failed. If you look at the last picture before it was turned over you can guess what happened. There are Polar Bear tracks right in front of the camera.”
It appears polar bears don’t like paparazzi either. That or Sean Penn was up north.
P.S. Still diggin’ the preview button.
Lars P. says:
August 10, 2013 at 11:26 am
This is a rather controversial photo, it may be from August 1958.
See http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/03/17/submarines-in-the-winter-twilight/ for part of the discussion/controversy about it.
The site http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08578.htm seems to be the clearing house for the Skate’s photos, it has a photo that it attributes to 17 March 1959, I didn’t know about that photo (or at least, that date), when I wrote the post. See http://navsource.org/archives/08/575/0857824.jpg . I’m not entirely convinced things have settled, see this account and photo from the actual ceremony to scatter “the mortal remains of the legendary Australian explorer Sir George Hubert Wilkins.” http://www.vintagehikingdepot.com/tag/uss-skate/ – note the sub is much lower in the water/ice. It may be that it surfaced elsewhere too or got more aggressive after the storm (read account) wound down, as the former photo shows milder and lighter conditions.
Oh – another thing see my just posted comment. http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08578.htm has the same photo twice (once in color, once in B&W) The first has the description “Three crew-members of the Skate (SSN-578) checking the ice on deck while above the Arctic Circle in 1959,” the second says “On 17 March 1959, Skate (SSN-578) surfaced at the North Pole to commit the ashes of the famed explorer Sir Hubert Wilkins to the Arctic waste.” I suppose that description doesn’t explicitly say it was from the surfacing for the ceremony….
I suspect a lot of the problem may be from dodgy record keeping and not keeping track of the various surfacings and dates during a long deployment. When I was a photographer for the college newspaper I often wrote on paper or blackboard the date and subject, then took a photo of that before (or after- better late than never) of various shoots. I’m sure the photographer, Jack Treutle, never thought they’d be part of a future climate debate.
“Forecast the Facts is dedicated to ensuring that Americans hear the truth about climate change: that temperatures are increasing, human activity is largely responsible, and that our world is already experiencing the effects. We do this by empowering everyday people to speak out in the face of misinformation and hold accountable those who mislead the public.”
———–
Talk about the knife that cuts both ways.
I am a ‘non expert’ observer with limited info, however it seems clearer to me daily that these people are not idiots or morons. Rather, they are evil.
I think it’s time to drop the stupid and complete idiot labels, and call them what they are. Driven by personal reputation, political agenda and threats from the ‘establishment’ they distort and suppress the truth, and coerce and threaten dissenters.
Let me add another truth. The largest part of the blame lies at the feet of Charles Darwin. As we are merely advanced animals, this behavior is the natural end of Godless Darwinism and their is no basis to call it wrong. In fact it is the survival of the fittest, the strong crush the weak and there is nothing unnatural about it. I however am certain that lying is wrong and evil. It is one thing to switch from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’ to ‘weird weather’. It is another to fabricate ‘proof’.
Interestingly enough here is an article about the first round trip from Murmansk in 1977 by a Russian ice breaker. It took 13 days with a 15 hour layover at the pole.
The latest rescue was not much faster….
http://books.google.com/books?id=tkGDkpkQh-sC&pg=PA327&lpg=PA327&dq=arktika+trip+to+the+north+pole&source=bl&ots=fuK5qVummJ&sig=0CPLYkd88NDbXVyHyufvEQTR-6E&hl=en&sa=X&ei=im67Uc7pO-G8yAGCyoGgDg&ved=0CF4Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=arktika%20trip%20to%20the%20north%20pole&f=false
Re: Shrnfr at 6:55AM –
For the location of camera v. a v. the north pole, see this map:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/np_buoy_drift_map_annotated.png?w=640&h=365
(on this thread: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/29/al-gores-reality-minions-think-the-north-pole-is-melting-except-thats-not-a-photo-of-the-north-pole/)
Most Arctic ice maps underreport the ice — the microwave satellites miss a lot. The most reliable Arctic ice maps are the ones made for boaties, because safety is paramount. Those ice charts do not miss the ice! However, those charts are strangely missing from most compilations, maybe because the user has to click a box to get them. Here are three rarely-seen ice charts which are the best:
(1) USA National Ice Center:
http://www.natice.noaa.gov/ps/ProductViewer/ProductViewer_Low.htm
These guys do not miss any ice!
(2) Russian State Research Center — Arctic and Antarctic: http://www.aari.ru/main.php?lg=1
Click on “Operational data” at left, then “Arctic Ocean ice charts”. You will then see a dead-cert accurate ice map of the Siberian waters. Weekly chart only, though, but that’s good enough.
(3) Anchorage Forecast Office Ice Desk: http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/ice.php?img=ice
Bering Sea & Chukchi Sea & Beaufort Sea ice in the greatest detail. No missing the ice here.
Oh, on (1) above, USA National Ice Center, make sure the box at upper left corner says “Arctic Daily”, otherwise you’ll need to select it.
‘Pascal Lamy and ‘Crispin Tickell’. Did they pull these names from the Upperclass Twit Race, or what?
“milodonharlani says:
August 10, 2013 at 4:59 pm
Literal translation perhaps “jammed ice wall”?”
Not quite, “vall” translates more like ‘bank’ or ‘mound’. Dike isn’t bad at all since like a dike a “stampisvall” goes down but not up. “jammed ice dike” more or less describes it.
It got down to 26.2 at the “North Pole Camera” yesterday. Hard to watch ice melt when the darn stuff won’t thaw. However the big storm towards the pole is finally shoving the ice down towards Fram Strait. It ought pass 84 degrees latitude today, at long last. Hopefully it will melt before it gets to Bermuda, but I’m not all that sure that will happen. It’s downright chilly, for August, here in New Hampshire.
(I’m suppose to be taking time off camping, but had to zip home to tend to goats, and I find I have to also check WUWT to see if there’s any news from the north pole.)
Ric Werme says:
August 10, 2013 at 6:31 pm
This is a rather controversial photo, it may be from August 1958.
I see, thanks!