From WOODS HOLE RESEARCH CENTER and the Peter Wadhams is still wrong, no record low this year department, comes this overt hand-wringing worry over permafrost, most of which is about methane releases, which aren’t accelerating and don’t seem to be a big problem at all as seen in this IPCC chart below showing observed reality compared to model projections, and a recent examination of the real-vs-perceived issues of methane. Plus, then there’s the bugs that will appear to eat it, canceling the effect, since nature always capitalizes on a boom of nutrients.
Scientists to discuss global threats from climate change in the Arctic
Hoping for real commitments at COP 21 in December, climate experts and international policymakers gather at the Arctic Circle Conference in Iceland to discuss permafrost thaw and other Arctic challenges
Three leading Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) experts on the threats of climate change in the Arctic will urge France’s President Hollande and other political leaders to address the threat posed by thawing permafrost in the Arctic at the Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavik, Iceland on October 15. WHRC scientists Scott Goetz, Max Holmes and Susan Natali, who advised the State Department and helped to inform President Obama’s strong remarks at the GLACIER conference in Alaska last month, will present research on permafrost thaw and other serious threats caused by climate change.
“Given that permafrost contains almost twice as much carbon as the atmosphere, permafrost thaw and the subsequent loss of carbon from permafrost has the potential to throw a wrench in current policy solutions to contain global warming,” said Dr. Max Holmes, a Senior Scientist at WHRC.
The carbon released by permafrost thaw causes more warming, which in turn causes more permafrost thaw. “This potentially self-reinforcing cycle could constitute a ‘tipping point’ that would be difficult to stop once underway. But the magnitude of this feedback can be controlled–the less fossil fuels we emit, the less carbon that is released from permafrost,” said Dr. Susan Natali, an Assistant Scientist at WHRC and presenter at the Arctic Circle conference.
Despite the well-documented urgency of this problem, it has received little attention from policy makers. Unlike deforestation and fossil fuel combustion, which are under direct human control, permafrost thaw cannot be immediately turned off once begun. According to WHRC Senior Scientist Scott Goetz,
“President Obama said recently in Alaska that we cannot deny the science of climate change. While there is still much to be learned about the magnitude and timing of this threat, the message we are taking to Iceland is we must act now to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion, lest it be too little too late to avoid a runaway train of thawing permafrost.”
Arctic 21 is a network of organizations calling attention to the impacts of climate change in the Arctic and the rest of the world. For Rafe Pomerance, Chairman of Arctic 21and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment and Development,
“The Arctic is unraveling. Our hope for the Arctic Circle Conference is to raise global awareness about the realities and threats of climate change in the Arctic so that world leaders will act on the science at COP 21 in Paris.”
WHRC scientists have been a part of a series of high-level US government conversations about climate change in the Arctic beginning this past spring, leading to the technical meeting of international climate change negotiators in Bonn, Germany in June. This Arctic conference follows closely on the heels of the GLACIER Conference in Alaska in August where President Obama spoke passionately about the impacts of climate change already occurring in the Alaskan Arctic. At COP 21 in Paris this December expectations run high that the international policy community will execute real commitments to combat climate change in Paris. President Hollande’s presence in Iceland encourages optimism.
The key science points, implications and recommendations can be found in the WHRC Policy Brief, “Permafrost and Global Climate Change.” http://whrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/PB_Permafrost.pdf
###
1) The arctic isn’t warming all that much
2) Actual studies have shown that methane releases are being consumed by bacteria before they can reach the atmosphere.
3) This same permafrost survived the Medieval, Roman and Minoan warm periods that were each several degrees warmer than the present.
4) 18 years and 8 months.
Plus, the evidence that ANY of this is in any measurable way related to human activity, let alone fossil fuel consumption, is NONEXISTENT. How can so many “smart” people be so stupid for so long?
money. grant dollars are scarce in any of the sciences unless you are doing climate related work. professors gotta eat, you know….
So we have the Minoan warm period followed by the Roman warm period followed by the Medieval warm period and now we have the Minion warm period. The Mann and his Minions are wreaking havoc
Takes brains!
So how warm was it during the period when plant life thrived before it got turned into permafrost?
Besides, what’s been so permanent about permafrost in paleoclimate?
Great point!
I’ve asked the same question form the first time I saw reference to the permafrost scare/threat.
I’ve seen one statement that the methane from deep source (geologic) and is simply trapped by the permafrost. I don’t know about geology, so I don’t know if this is crap or not….
I am curious how institutes such WHRC consider their credibility. Should the time come that they are seen as supporting/promoting poor science, how would they attempt to restore their reputation?
WHRC gets its fake credibility by being a chameleon. It uses the ‘Woods Hole’ name just like the legitimate WHOI. But the W.H. ‘Research Center’ is an eco-alarmist group of climate propagandists. They are not the original, highly respected W.H. Oceanographic Institute.
Sort of like the old Soviets recruiting American boys to fight in the “Abraham Lincoln Brigade” for the commies during the Spansh Civil war in the 1930’s.
Wow, thanks for making that distinction. I fell for the trick, associating the name without listening closely, and not doing research.
Here is the nugget…
“They are not the original, highly respected W.H. Oceanographic Institute.”
That’s the association I and probably a lot of others made.
Those boys, men and women comrades “For Whom The Bell Tolls”…
Dbstealy
Thanks for calling out the name distinction. I was ready to write off whoi which was disappointing because I liked a lot of bob ballards work. Haven’t heard much from bob lately. Has he retired ?
Similar to the Berkley name used by Muller and co.
Just more Crap On Parade 21 nonsense…….
This is another misleading article
Woods Hole’s leading role in an entirely new concept of what ‘science’ is can be found here. http://ma-marine-ed.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/mme_fj_vol44no1_screen1OPT.pdf
Current and tied to the Next Generation Sciences Standards financed by the Gates Foundation for all K-12. Complete with graphics.
I looked at that pdf, and I don’t see any direct link to “Wood’s Hole.”
It’s probably time for a reminder:
WHOI is the Wood Hole Oceanographic Institute. They do good work, in general, though that press release today over hypes the study. The first three authors are from WHOI, the paper’s title is the much milder Divergent trajectories of Antarctic surface melt under two twenty-first-century climate scenarios.
This post is about hand wringing from WHRC, the Woods Hole Research Center, which is also located at Wood’s Hole but is a warmist/activist site. The less written about them the better.
The Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment is not at Woods Hole, but Stanford University (i.e. the Stanford Woods). Infamous Stephen Schneider was there, as in infamous warmist Noah Diffenbaugh. They’re smarter than the folks at WHRC but equally deluded.
Robin’s link to a newsletter from Massachusetts Marine Educators (MME) is odd in that the organization has a contact point at the Boston Aquarium and has no real linkage to the town of Woods Hole or the organizations there. MME is “a dynamic, grass roots organization of teachers, informal educators, students, educational institutions, and others.”
Woods Hole is also home to the Marine Biological Lab, my sister was there when the amateur marine biologist Emperor Hirohito of Japan (yes, of WWII fame) visited, and the National Fisheries.
Woods Hole to me goes back to the Woods Hole Conference that redirected the nature of curriculum that we are still living with today. I will agree I do not designate the different entities. I do track the conferences and their links to NSF’s curriculum work now. This is on point to how historic Woods Hole, period, is to any education researcher. http://www.amscied.net/Publications_files/2002-Rudolph%20TCR.pdf Page 228 starts the most pertinent discussion.
I know about all this not because I am a science geek, but because I have tracked everything Jerome Bruner wrote. It matters because ‘science’ becomes dominated by the behavioral and social sciences without being kind enough to give us a head up in the change of the meaning of science.
That version of science is what drives every UN initiative.
You might want to take a look at this grant WHOI is a partner to. http://news.neaq.org/2012/08/55-million-grant-for-climate-change.html And NSF and Boston Aquarium.
Now another partner the Frameworks Institute gets us into the Earth Institute at Columbia University and I have put those links up before at WUWT. The whole point is to use the media and education to simply change what people believe.
Robin says:
The whole point is to use the media and education to simply change what people believe.
That’s the reason that WHRC is piggybacking on WHOI. This has been written about here before. WHRC pretends to be the legit research center, when in relaity they’re impostors using the Woods Hole name to promote enviro-activism. The media plays along, rarely if ever making the distinction.
Thanks to Ric Werme for the reminder. If it weren’t for that devious tactic, the climate scare alarmists would have one less way to fool the public.
http://judithcurry.com/2015/10/04/why-is-the-arctic-climate-and-ice-cover-so-variable/
This is the true picture of why the Arctic is in a period of warmth which will not last and which is just part of natural variability.
“The Arctic is unraveling”.
No, but Climate Alarmism is.
What an ugly choice of words, “unravelling”. What is the arctic in their minds, a big knitted sweater?
And yeah, you’re right – the word is far more suited to the description of the slow unravelling of all the now disproven spaghetti graph model predictions and crappy reconstructions.
So let’s not freak out. Change is not always a terrible thing. Sometime stuff unravels. Especially old sweaters. And failed models. That’s entropy in action.
I’ll just leave this here…
?w=720
Mike,
Really? That’s all you’ve got? We are talking about long term climatic trends and you point to a single day? Not only is that meaningless in the current context, but it is laughable. Go away troll.
Paul Penrose
Look at the date of the photo. Try surfacing three SSNs in open water last May.
Climate changes, one year the ice is 10-15 feet thick over the Pole, tens years prior or later just the opposite. The photo shows that.
michael
Paul, what about this? August 23, 1962 NY Times:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C07E3DC173CE53BBC4B51DFBE668389679EDE
What? No soviet subs?
“RoHa October 13, 2015 at 5:29 pm
What? No soviet subs?”
Well, who do you think took the photo?
(Grin)
michael
A graphic suffices on my thoughts on the usefulness of discussing wanting to stop a natural event that they openly admit couldn’t be stopped in warming slightly warmer world:
http://cdn.funnyisms.com/cdb55d31-ad11-4436-aa5e-fea10ae92cfe.jpg
The Arctic has warmed due to heat ventilating from the ocean. Sea ice is gaining in volume and as it increasingly insulates the Arctic temperatures will decline as has been witnessed by the Arctic Iris effect. http://landscapesandcycles.net/arctic-iris-effect-and-dansgaard-oeschger-event.html
I was going to say “1500 petagrams”? Is that all? My dog got more than that when he was sick”.
But I think I’ll bite on this one. Virtually all northern (Arctic) settlements are wholly dependent on fossil fuels. Let’s start there. No more quad-runners or snow mobiles. No more diesel electricity or propane heaters.
Let the climate scientists start there.
Yet another article that says carbon. Not carbon-dioxide. So all carbon is bad. Wow.
But especially our 4% contribution. That’s the part that’s to blame. It’s all our fault….*sarcasm* 🙂
Something else from the article – I don’t know where she’s from, but Dr. Susan Natali says we “emit fossil fuels” which is a new one on me: “the magnitude of this feedback can be controlled–the less fossil fuels we emit….”
She may emit fossil fuels but I don’t, especially in polite company.
Yeah, I got hung up on the fact that the summary talks about methane, but the press release only mentions “carbon.” Until I realized the authors of the press release probably used the word to refer to either CH4 and C02. Very lazy, and misleading.
This is the second shoe to drop next to W.E’s post on cow methane. This is the real boogyman…REAL? Boogyman? I mean this is the big lie in reference to methane poisoning of the planet. Gad!
I note that the CH4 concentration models all outpace the observed measurements. In particular, there is no model or observation of an instantaneous CH4 release as the doomsday prognosticators prognosticated.
Can I say how heartily fed up I am with the 2 degrees threshold c**p of the first picture. Why do we have to put up with this, why is preindustrial mini ice age the most benevolent of temperatures, what is wrong with the present temperature – as far as trends and paleoclimate records go isnt today a better zero or even a +1 degrees from now zero. There never seems to be an explanation of the zero or of the 2 degree threshold – why 2 degrees – cant we have the scientific reasoning rather than this pathetic blindfold finger pointing at a temperature chart to suit the argument
What do we want? 2degrees warming.
When do we want it? 2100.
Come on, let’s organize protests.
Where is the warming that we are constantly been promised.
My stove is out of action and I’m currently wearing three pairs of leggings.
2 degrees threshold used to bother me too but I’ve re thought it a little. I’d love to see the 2c in reality or even better in tampered data. And look nothing happened. Another stake in the heart but this vampire has survived many previous stakes. Oh wait. We meant 2.5c
The MacDonald et al study shows much warmer temps in Nth Russia during the Hol climate Opt. Here’s a summary and the study link. http://epic.awi.de/4164/1/Mac2000c.pdf
Received March 9, 1999
Radiocarbon-dated macrofossils are used to document Holocene
treeline history across northern Russia (including Siberia). Boreal
forest development in this region commenced by 10,000 yr B.P.
Over most of Russia, forest advanced to or near the current arctic
coastline between 9000 and 7000 yr B.P. and retreated to its
present position by between 4000 and 3000 yr B.P. Forest establishment
and retreat was roughly synchronous across most of
northern Russia. Treeline advance on the Kola Peninsula, however,
appears to have occurred later than in other regions. During
the period of maximum forest extension, the mean July temperatures
along the northern coastline of Russia may have been 2.5° to
7.0°C warmer than modern. The development of forest and expansion
of treeline likely reflects a number of complimentary
environmental conditions, including heightened summer insolation,
the demise of Eurasian ice sheets, reduced sea-ice cover,
greater continentality with eustatically lower sea level, and extreme
Arctic penetration of warm North Atlantic waters. The late
Holocene retreat of Eurasian treeline coincides with declining
summer insolation, cooling arctic waters, and neoglaciation.
© 2000 University of Washington.
“Mike,
Really? That’s all you’ve got? We are talking about long term climatic trends and you point to a single day? Not only is that meaningless in the current context, but it is laughable. Go away troll.”
Paul, I took Mike’s statement differently – 1987, open water, 28 years ago.
The 2010 Miller et al study sums up the much warmer Arctic temps during the Eemian interglacial and the warmer temps of the Holocene climate optimum. Here’s the abstract and full study.——————
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock/MillerArctic.pdf
a b s t r a c t
As the planet cooled from peak warmth in the early Cenozoic, extensive Northern Hemisphere ice sheets
developed by 2.6 Ma ago, leading to changes in the circulation of both the atmosphere and oceans. From
w2.6 to w1.0 Ma ago, ice sheets came and went about every 41 ka, in pace with cycles in the tilt of
Earth’s axis, but for the past 700 ka, glacial cycles have been longer, lasting w100 ka, separated by brief,
warm interglaciations, when sea level and ice volumes were close to present. The cause of the shift from
41 ka to 100 ka glacial cycles is still debated. During the penultimate interglaciation, w130 to w120 ka
ago, solar energy in summer in the Arctic was greater than at any time subsequently. As a consequence,
Arctic summers werew5 C warmer than at present, and almost all glaciers melted completely except for
the Greenland Ice Sheet, and even it was reduced in size substantially from its present extent. With the
loss of land ice, sea level was about 5 m higher than present, with the extra melt coming from both
Greenland and Antarctica as well as small glaciers. The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) peaked w21 ka ago,
when mean annual temperatures over parts of the Arctic were as much as 20 C lower than at present.
Ice recession was well underway 16 ka ago, and most of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets had melted
by 6 ka ago. Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) w11 ka ago and has
been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy
elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic 1e3 C above 20th century averages,
enough to completely melt many small glaciers throughout the Arctic, although the Greenland Ice
Sheet was only slightly smaller than at present. Early Holocene summer sea ice limits were substantially
smaller than their 20th century average, and the flow of Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean was
substantially greater. As summer solar energy decreased in the second half of the Holocene, glaciers reestablished
or advanced, sea ice expanded, and the flow of warm Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean
Sigh. Learn to remove the hard line breaks before pasting and posting.
As the planet cooled from peak warmth in the early Cenozoic, extensive Northern Hemisphere ice sheets developed by 2.6 Ma ago, leading to changes in the circulation of both the atmosphere and oceans. From w2.6 to w1.0 Ma ago, ice sheets came and went about every 41 ka, in pace with cycles in the tilt of Earth’s axis, but for the past 700 ka, glacial cycles have been longer, lasting w100 ka, separated by brief, warm interglaciations, when sea level and ice volumes were close to present. The cause of the shift from 41 ka to 100 ka glacial cycles is still debated. During the penultimate interglaciation, w130 to w120 ka ago, solar energy in summer in the Arctic was greater than at any time subsequently. As a consequence, Arctic summers werew5 C warmer than at present, and almost all glaciers melted completely except for the Greenland Ice Sheet, and even it was reduced in size substantially from its present extent. With the loss of land ice, sea level was about 5 m higher than present, with the extra melt coming from both Greenland and Antarctica as well as small glaciers. The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) peaked w21 ka ago, when mean annual temperatures over parts of the Arctic were as much as 20 C lower than at present. Ice recession was well underway 16 ka ago, and most of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets had melted by 6 ka ago. Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) w11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic 1e3 C above 20th century averages, enough to completely melt many small glaciers throughout the Arctic, although the Greenland Ice Sheet was only slightly smaller than at present. Early Holocene summer sea ice limits were substantially smaller than their 20th century average, and the flow of Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean was substantially greater. As summer solar energy decreased in the second half of the Holocene, glaciers reestablished or advanced, sea ice expanded, and the flow of warm Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean
Please explain?
Thanks Neville, a nice abstract.
Thanks Michael, for the easier read!
Neville, sometimes (especially from pdfs) copying also takes across the line break symbols. If you first copy/paste into MS Word (or similar), you may note that the text does not reformat to the page size. Turn on line break markings and you can see them. A find/replace (usually find ^p and replace with a space) will sort it out, but you may need a few manual edits.
You can write a simple Word macro (I have) that will replace paragraph markers with spaces in highlighted text. It’s much more foolproof and faster than doing it by hand. But you should apply it to paragraphs individually, or you will have to replace some spaces with paragraph markers.
PS: This macro is something that WordPress should incorporate. (But won’t, you can be sure.)
“Arctic summers were 5 C warmer than at present, and almost all glaciers melted completely except for
the Greenland Ice Sheet, and even it was reduced in size substantially from its present extent … although the Greenland Ice
Sheet was only slightly smaller than at present …”.
=================
Nu poți împăca și capra și varza ( You can’t reconcile the goat and the cabbage ).
Real scientists doing real field work have clearly shown that, in MELTING PERMAFROST, the life in it wakes up and QUICKLY BECOMES A CARBON SINK, THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF THE ALARMIST CLAIMS.
I’m no chemist, but isn’t IR absorbed by molecular bonds, not “carbon,” as Dr. Naftali asserts in this garbled statement – “the less fossil fuels we emit, the less carbon that is released from permafrost”? So for example, the bonds in H2O, N-O, N-H, N=N=N and numerous other chemical species also absorb IR and presumably contribute to “climate change” despite being free of carbon. And “less” should be fewer, or “fuels” should be fuel if she insists on saying less. (Can she really have a PhD?) More importantly, isn’t the bigger problem for warmists burning fossil fuels rather than emitting them? Fuel seems an odd word choice combined with emit. Methane emitted by permafrost isn’t used as a fuel. Or maybe she means natural gas escaping from drilling operations or gasoline spills at the gas station, or pipeline leaks.
All she cared about was getting the words ” climate change” or ” global warming ” in there so she could get more grant money !!!!
So again, other than road cuts, excavations, open pit mines, site grading operations, trenching and other disturbances, where is this melting permafrost? Let’s see some science demonstrating mass permafrost loss in non-disturbed areas.
Oh dear.
That graph is just all wrong.
WHOI once upon a time studied oceanography things like the Atlantic Ocean.
I suppost that since the “We’ve hit a critical de-salinatization point” was a failure they will try “We’ve hit a critical carbonization point”. After COP21 fails they might just go back to oceanography. Let’s hope.
Ha ha
PS Funny in the LA Times on the El Nino that is “too big to fail”.
http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-84657283/
That’s like someone from WHOI saying, “my chance of breaking the bank is too big to fail”. Casino’s love people this these, and for good reason.
Ja ja
“That graph is just all wrong.”
It’s one of the world’s most valuable graphs.
It’s a visual representation of hubris and failure to learn from and adapt to new evidence.
As Keynes once said, “when the fact’s chance, I change my mind”.
Not these people. They just kept on making the same daft failed prediction, even in light of repeated failure.
Imagine if this had been a trend in currency or stock value, and they had been an analyst working for an investment firm.
I think that we can safely say that they would have been out of a job.
Not in climate science modelling.
Where being wrong all of the time has become perfectly acceptable.
And where the output of models is so respected for it’s veracity that it is known as “data” and other such “data” is “checked” against it. Thus creating a world where illusions are conformed to other illusions.
In the minds of the obsessive doom-mongers, their predictions have a more concrete reality in their minds than the reality which they presume to predict.
Hence, they are still discussing their anticipated methane explosion, even though reality has concertedly refused play along.
Reality is just another annoyance, like skeptics.
Maybe it should be investigated or prosecuted under RICO.
“Not these people. They just kept on making the same daft prediction, even in light of repeated failure……..
Where being wrong all of the time has become perfectly acceptable.”
Was it Einstein who described this state as being INSANE?
Before this is over there will be models that show arctic conditions are becoming unlivable for tundra unicorns.
On my recent trip I found that unicorn numbers had already dwindled significantly.
After several days of “research” we did successfully capture a unicorn like creature, but on closer inspection it was discovered that some joker had strapped the tusk off a narwhal onto a shetland pony, as a prank, to wind us up. And one of our researchers was severely gored in the process.
I suppose that this is the price that we pay for doing real “science” in the field.
“I suppose that this is the price that we pay for doing real “science” in the field.”
It would have been far easier and much safer to just model the habitats of the unicorn, and project the population contraction, Field work all fun and games until someone loses an eye.
Add to that, the fact that the Arctic was basically ice free in summer for a substantial part of the first 3/4 of the Holocene,…
.. and guess what…. all that permafrost methane had NO EFFECT WHATSOEVER….
In fact…….The Earth got COLDER. !!
But it will be completely different with anthropogenic global warming. In that case the methane will bubble up.
Besides, the holocenic warm Arctic was only a local phenomena and it will be much worser now. Actually there never was no warm period. Mann said he removed the blip. WMO will publish the updated graph with instrumental temps grafted on in a jiffy./sarc
And the use of areas graphed by radius ratios is just outright PROPAGANDA TRASH worthy only of a low end junior high student.
Arctic 21. Agenda 21. What’s the difference?