Guest essay by Eric Worrall
In the real world, Antarctic ice is growing at a ferocious rate, hitting a new record extent every other year. But on planet Green, Antarctic ice is melting at a dangerous rate.
According to MensJournal;
“Global Warming Opens Up Antarctic Waterways – On February 13, a yachting crew from Poland sailed its 67-foot sloop, Selma, to a latitude in Antarctica’s Bay of Whales that’s traditionally frozen solid, and only navigable by icebreaker. It was a hundred miles farther south than anyone had ever taken a sailboat. Temperatures hovered around zero degrees Fahrenheit (it’s the height of summer in the south pole) as the crew took turns hacking a heavy layer of frost that coated the ship’s deck and rails. A storm briefly sent twenty-foot waves in their path, but the surface was calm when Selma finally ran out of sea. “We touched the ice of the Antarctic,” skipper Piotr Kuniar told Radio Poland. “We cannot sail any further.”
A pair of recent studies helps explain why there is more sea around Antarctica than ever before.
http://www.mensjournal.com/adventure/outdoor/global-warming-opens-up-antarctica-waterways-20150319
The sad thing about this kind of hysterical group think, is that every so often a group of greens become so convinced the ice has melted away, that they sail down to the Antarctic to take a look, without proper preparation. A few of them get lucky – but in at least some cases, ordinary people have to risk their lives and disrupt fragile scientific schedules, to rescue groups of idiots who think it is sensible to sail to Antarctica without proper preparation and equipment.
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Has it occurred to anyone that Flashgun might be a bot?
The multiple self-contradictions – the slightly irrelevant responses, the stubborn repetitions of myths when presented with facts widely acknowledged by universally respected sources…
Maybe they’re ‘tuning’ him, by pitching him up against the creme of the ‘Denialists’ right here at WUWT.
It’s a thought though.
An interesting thought. Could it be that entire publications like the Men’s Journal are also pasted together by robots without much human intervention?
If Sir Harry Flashman is a bot, that would mean that all the other posters in this thread are stupider than a bot because he is the only one making any sense and backing it up with evidence.
WHAT “evidence”??
So far, all I’ve read are his assertions.
If you have evidence to support Flash’s view, post it. You will be the first.
I post links constantly, you just ignore them. I can only speculate why that is.
The most common English nickname for Harry is HAL . Sound familiar?
I have read over a month of the reports from this group and there is absolutely no indication of what this magazine claims. They did come into the Bay of Whales at 78 degrees 25 minutes south but they claim no record at all and it is near a whaling station that was visited many times in the past…
Is that the furthest south? More data less hyperbole..
After checking Wikipedia you immediately find out that the claim in the magazine is horse manure. There have been several ships that were not ice breakers further south than the 78 degrees 42 minutes (the Polish report was 78.25 south) claimed in the a Yachting world magazine article.
http://www.yachtingworld.com/blogs/elaine-bunting/polish-crew-sets-record-for-sailing-furthest-south-in-the-antarctic-62710
The Yachting world article has hyperbole in it as well.
Good lord people!
Setting a ”furthest south” record for ships must be done in the Ross sea, since this is the southernmost ocean existing.
How far south and exactly where this “southernmost point” is will vary from year to year. The Ross Shelf ice moves slowly northwards and from time to time large areas of ice break off it and drift away. Setting a “south record” involves finding a place where this happened recently and then sailing as close to the ice barrier as you dare. This is not a safe proposition. Smaller ice-bergs calve unpredictably from the barrier and if you are too close when this happens your craft can be crushed or swamped.
Actually voyaging in Antarctic waters, and the Southern Ocean generally is never risk-free. It is a notoriously stormy area, and there is always a risk to collide with a growler. Rescue facilities are virtually non-existent. The waters around the Peninsula are reasonably safe in summer since there are a fair number of bases and resupply and cruise ships around. The Ross Sea is much less frequented, though there is a major base at McMurdo and at least a few cruise ships each year.
Graph shows that the strong solar wind causes a drop in temperature in the stratosphere. above the polar circle.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_JFM_NH_2015.gif
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_JFM_SH_2015.gif
Other items in “Men’s”; “The best headphones for every activity” and “The top 10 sex mistakes men should avoid”. I wonder if the latter should include the former.
You beat me to it, Ed. The Men’s Journal page also tells us about the “10 Worst Things You Can Say To A Flight Attendant” and this:
I think I’d put inertia, gravity, and heat transference at the top of my list. In any case, I learned the dangers of each at a very early age and still have the scars to prove it. 😉
That’s a good list. I would only add the biochemical effects of ethanol.
Bill Nye and science have long since parted ways…
I’ve been bailed after my arrest for drink-driving on the internet highway.
My premise is tho’ there is not accidental evolution. There is individual evolution where in an individual’s ( collection of living bits ) own lifetime it can change it’s own physique and metabolism to improve chances of survival and if you accept that you might accept that a society might make the individuals that it wants ( in dreams ) and if you accept that you might think that there is an underlying template ( of how things can be ) that a living thing can be aware of and if you accept that then you might think that there is an underlying template to everything of how things can be and that not only living things but everything can choose which way it wants to go.
this asks ” Do bees dream? “. If consciousness can be shared could the planet Earth be self aware ?
Hey guys Im as sceptical as the next guy but I’m with Flashman .They got lucky and had a ride and a half -whats not to like
Having attended George Macdonald Fraser’s sadly final book launch (got his autograph, such a nice man) I’m reminded that his multi-adventured Sir Harry Flashman charged with his Regiment at Balaclava – Lord Cardigan’s ‘CHERRYPICKERS’ as they were known because of their red trousers. Wot does this say about DATA MANAGEMENT?
By the way, let’s not descend to Wot’s Up etc website levels of personal abuse. So undignified.
Agreed. Whatever your views I cannot but respect a man who met Mr. Fraser, to my mind one of the great writers of the English language.
So much troll.
I know I am a bit late to this, but I am surprised that no one challenged Sir Harry Flashman about his assertion: “However, I also know that Antarctic land ice, which is what really matters in terms of sea level rise, is melting at a rather astonishing rate in both West and East Antarctica.”
My understanding is that Antarctic Land Ice is actually growing as well (or at least is reasonably stable), and is projected not to be a contributor to sea level rise for the next 100-200 years. Here are a couple of supporting articles:
NASA ICESat data indicates that land ice is increasing in Antarctica:
http://www.ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20120013495
Consolidation studies (which use multiple measurement techniques) indicate that Antarctic melting is at best only a minor contributor to sea level rise, and that increased snowfall in Antarctica may cause it to *lower* sea level during the next 100-200 years:
http://dro.dur.ac.uk/10898/1/10898.pdf?DDD14+dgl1p… (see bottom of page 14)
udcme,
You are right, the entire Antarctic is cooling [except for the small peninsula to the north west]. That means, ipso facto that there will be more ice. In fact, last year set a new record.
But people like Sir Harry Flashman throw out so much misinformation that it’s hard to keep up. That’s probably why no one addressed that particular point.
That is true. It does not negate what I wrote.
There is substantial melting occurring in East Antarctica as well: http://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2388.epdf?referrer_access_token=1iycSaHzBwo4_dw9hdQawNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0M6FkI2Id53a8a4YoVhkHdRvu5zQo6dS9Bd2iL29-XkpMtohsm7Q6K5gtTkrT668ijlq1NwADjpZP4PkmHzuTjD6cLvt7iGpgc5eiJQyf1AuTegdWHwKgYOdtxe5HtSzCaAGnVKS8QKbIwghZeq16vOnXq74Po1RJmpFExNNrhKCw%3D%3D&tracking_referrer=boingboing.net
I took a look at your link and here is what I find. One glacier with melting in a cavity in winter and summer, warmer water below cold surface water modulated by polynya activity involved. Please tell me what this tells me about global warming? Do you know what a polynya is? Why do you think this is substantial melting? In 2013 the coldest record broken was in East Antarctica.
Here is a wider picture of temperature in Antarctica.
[RSS Southern Polar Temperature Lower Troposphere (TLT) – 1979 to Present]
ftp://ftp.ssmi.com/msu/graphics/tlt/plots/rss_ts_channel_tlt_southern%20polar_land_and_sea_v03_3.png
From the NASA report:
“During 2003 to 2008, the mass gain of the Antarctic ice sheet from snow accumulation exceeded the mass loss from ice discharge by 49 Gt/yr (2.5% of input), as derived from ICESat laser measurements of elevation change.”
A five year period only…hardly long enough to make the claims above by udcme.
“A slow increase in snowfall with climate warming, consistent with model predictions, may be offsetting increased dynamic losses.”
Ah yes, models hmmm…and the word “may”.
And look, it’s warming in the Antarctic according to the NASA report!
From the second study posted by udcme:
“The contribution of Antarctica to SLR is predicted to increase logarithmically with rising global temperatures (as positive feedbacks become increasingly apparent later) but with little change, and even perhaps a negative contribution, in the next 100-200 years.”
“Two models produce ice-sheet thickening over East Antarctica and increased ice flux at the grounding line due to higher snowfall. However, both studies fail to account for processes at the ice-sheet – ice shelf – ocean interface, such as grounding-line retreat or loss of buttressing.”
“An alternative method based on probabilistic extrapolation of sustained glacier retreat from such numerical model output leads to a SLR contribution of 130 mm by 2100”
Ah so the claim that there might perhaps be a negative contribution, in the next 100-200 years is on shaky ground and there might in fact be a sea level rise contribution from Antarctica of 130 mm in the next 85 years instead!
And instead of just looking at a short time frame of 5 years by NASA, what’s been happening in the past 20 years?
From the second study posted by udcme:
“During the last 20 years, the AIS as a whole (East, West, and Antarctic Peninsula) has been losing mass.”
Reblogged this on Norah4you's Weblog and commented:
This is what a scholar of mine taught us at Linköping’s University and what I have used illustrating facts about our Earth ever since:
Earth diameter Earth’s diameter is 12,756 km at the equator. (Earth’s radius is half of that)
Maximum height and maximum depth
Earth’s highest mountain, Mount Everest is ; 8848 meters high .( In other words, 8 km 848 m)
The Earth’s deep Challangerdjupet in Mariner grave, Pacific Ocean, 11034 meter deep. (In other words 11 km 34 meter)
If you on a model of Earth use 10 km = 1 mm then you will have this figure…
Man has made it to the moon is about 384,392 km (average distance) away. Few research projects have been able to get down to that depth. The reason is that the pressure increases with depth.
More info on: Fakta om Jorden
Brandon Gates
March 22, 2015 at 2:59 am
You’re a smart guy, and I admire that you present the CAGW case in a readable and complete sense on each topic – references, discussion, caveats, too. It is rare to see. Paradoxically, it is almost impossible to get a debate out of the best known scientists persuaded that a CAGW juggernaut is pressing down upon us and only a killing cure is at hand. They let psychologists, sociologists, philosophers, political scientists, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers do the heavy lifting in the debate – which is mainly to label adversaries at the lowest of levels. Kudos to you. However, I sense that you imagine yourself among Luddites who just don’t get or have an ‘agenda’ or are perhaps in the pay of scurrilous hydrocarbon mongers. Do I need to say that you are among smart guys too, that differ with the experts and are without ties to the hydrocarbon agenda. In this day and age on the internet, you of course get everybody but it’s axiomatic that it is foolish to be so dismissive of clearly those YOU can recognize as smart guys who believe what they say.
Re: losses of ice in the Antarctic: you yourself must recognize the need for skeptics in a debate where everything is presented as anomalies and models and interpretations on limited and uncertain data. For example, loss of a hundred gigatons of ice over a half a dozen years sounds like a lot to the uninitiated person. When you measure it up against 28 million gigatons of ice that remains, you can see that it would take 280,000 yrs for it to melt if their half a dozen years can be argued to be a trend. Also, a reasonable person could agree that the accuracy of measurements and calculations that 100/28,000,000 or 0.0000036 marginal loss of ice must have error bars that bury this tiny figure into meaninglessness.
Let’s see why. I’m not sure that anyone is sure what the average annual snowfall is on Antarctica. Its about 8 inches (20cm) in coastal regions and much lower in the interior. Would you go for 10cm (0.1m which is 0.01m of water) average for simplicity of calculation? This equates to (14M sq km size) 140,000 giga-metric tons of snowfall a year on the continent, which is 1400 times the “measured” loss per annum according to Gracey.
Let’s let Murphy be your friend and have half this snow disappear through sublimation so there is 700 times as much added as taken away. To talk about 100 gigatons net loss is simply ingenuous and egregious.
Gary Pearse,
Opposition against anomalies makes zero sense to me. Interpretation of limited and uncertain data is what science is all about, and yes, that often means doing modelling work. One should always be skeptical in the face of evident uncertainty. These points are academic.
The amount of ice left is not a quantity important to me. If an 18 year pause in surface warming is good enough to declare AGW dead, 18 years of ice sheet mass estimates ought to be a good enough rebuttal: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011GL046583/abstract
In 2006, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets experienced a combined mass loss of 475 ± 158 Gt/yr, equivalent to 1.3 ± 0.4 mm/yr sea level rise. Notably, the acceleration in ice sheet loss over the last 18 years was 21.9 ± 1 Gt/yr^2 for Greenland and 14.5 ± 2 Gt/yr^2 for Antarctica, for a combined total of 36.3 ± 2 Gt/yr^2 . This acceleration is 3 times larger than for mountain glaciers and ice caps (12 ± 6 Gt/yr^2).
One relevant quantity here is 365 Gt ice for 1 mm of sea level. The other is the acceleration in rate of melt. The body of the paper puts things in context in the paragraph just prior to the conclusion:
[19] If the acceleration in ice sheet loss of 36.3 ± 2 Gt/yr 2 continues for the next decades, the cumulative ice sheet loss would raise global sea level by 15 ± 2 cm in year 2050 compared to 2009/2010. The GIC would contribute a sea level rise of 8 ± 4 cm, and thermal expansion of the ocean would add another 9 ± 3 cm based on the average of scenarios A1B, A2 and B1 [Meehl et al., 2007], for a total rise of 32 ± 5 cm. At the current rate of acceleration in ice sheet loss, starting at 500 Gt/yr in 2008 and increasing at 36.5 Gt/yr^2, the contribution of ice sheets alone scales up to 56 cm by 2100. While this value may not be used as a projection given the considerable uncertainty in future acceleration of ice sheet mass loss, it provides one indication of the potential contribution of ice sheets to sea level in the coming century if the present trends continue.
Noting the final caveat there, if one does assume that the current rates of acceleration continue to hold true; starting in 2006, using 2,565,000 Gt for Greenland and 23,850,000 Gt for Antarctica, Greenland would fully melt by 2475 and Antarctica by 3815.
I don’t think making inferences about error by only considering the 0.0000036 fractional loss necessarily follows. But I can generate some ridiculously small numbers too. Recalling that this discussion started with discussions about Antarctic sea ice extent, and noting that nobody here seems to be disputing those observations: from 1979 through 2014 the rate of increase is 0.0216088 million km^2/year. The maximum extent in Sep. 2014 was 20.1 km^2. The annual trend is 0.0010751 of that, or 0.0000424 of the entire surface of the planet. Sooooo …
a) What’s all the fuss about?
b) How in the heck are they getting such unbelievable precision?
In cases such as these, I look to see whether multiple lines of evidence converge on a similar answer. The charge carried by a single electron comes to mind. Ya’ dig?
I’d consult literature and see what people who do this kind of thing for a living have to say about it.
Your argument rests on numbers pulled out of a hat AFTER having said you’re not sure anyone knows what the average annual snowfall is. Does it not occur to you that this is a bit inconsistent on your part?
I indeed concede your point about the shortness of the pause (a mere 17 years ~ as long as the warming we were to be so concerned about) and and the small numbers. Another example is the 2011 paper you quote:
” If the acceleration in ice sheet loss of 36.3 ± 2 Gt/yr 2 continues for the next decades, the cumulative ice sheet loss would raise global sea level by 15 ± 2 cm in year 2050 compared to 2009/2010.”
You probably already know that ice balance is climbing again on Greenland already (trend up above the baseline average this season) so that paper on small numbers is already heading for the trash bin.
http://beta.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
I think you will now better understand my point about small numbers being the main point that skeptics raise about the whole CAGW storm in a tea cup. These reversals are nothing to what has been happening for eons. I’m a geologist and myself and colleagues have been the putting ointment on the CAGW burns for a few decades. Ice Ages, the dried up bed of the Mediterranean, the continents drifting around, dinosaur fossils in Antarctica, hippopotamus bones in UK, crocodiles in Svalbard, tropical tree fossils in coal in Greenland, corals that grew at the rate of the 120m sea level rise since the glacial maximum, river deltas that did the same thing because they are formed when river sediment settles with river flow slowed by the sea. The reversal when sea level falls – waves break up the coral and the deltas and keep them near sea level……It’s a wonderful perspective to look out on and explains why we tend to be a quieter, peaceful lot.
I’ve got a friend was in the british navy since a lad he says to me ” never, under any circumstances, go on the water “
All this arguing over whether the current Artic ice is 2 standard deviations above or below normal. Considering that for most of the last million years or so, the northern hemisphere is in an Ice Age 80-90 percent of the time with ice extending down to the Chesapeake Bay and over to Indiana, isn’t the current status off by a few hundred deviations? Why do we argue with alarmists about the current climate status relative to the last 10, 30 or 150 years when it is on a millennial time scale that is pertinent?
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JG
Well, why do you believe that a 7% loss of Arctic sea ice is a catastrophic problem, when there is a 34% INCREASE in the Antarctic sea ice during a period when the Antarctic continental air temperatures have steadily decreased over a 38 year period, and most areas of the Antarctic land ice are increasing in depth and weight?