From the “well, if hadn’t been that it would have been global warming for sure” department:
By Lauren Lipuma, AGU
A series of unprecedented storms over the Southern Ocean likely caused the most dramatic decline in Antarctic sea ice seen to date, a new study finds.
Antarctic sea ice – frozen ocean water that rings the southernmost continent – has grown over the past few decades but declined sharply in late 2016. By March of 2017 – the end of the Southern Hemisphere’s summer – Antarctic sea ice had reached its lowest area since records began in 1978.
In a new study, scientists puzzled by the sudden ice loss matched satellite images of Antarctica with weather data from the second half of 2016 to figure out what caused so much of the ice to melt. They found that a series of remarkable storms during September, October and November brought warm air and strong winds from the north that melted 75,000 square kilometers (30,000 square miles) of ice per day. That’s like losing a South Carolina-sized chunk of ice every 24 hours.
Antarctic sea ice is relatively thin – on average only 1 meter (3 feet) thick – making it extremely vulnerable to strong winds, said John Turner, a climate scientist with the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and lead author of the new study in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
Sea ice area is an important indicator of climate change, and sea ice loss in the Arctic has been linked to increased greenhouse gas emissions. But because sea ice records go back only four decades – when the satellite era began – it’s difficult to attribute Antarctica’s sea ice loss last year to human-caused climate change, Turner said. Whaling records provide scientists with hints of Antarctica’s past sea ice extent, but it’s tough to compare that data to satellite records, he said.
“There’s no indication this is anything but just natural variability,” he said. “It highlights the fact that the climate of the Antarctic is incredibly variable.”
If greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, scientists expect there to be stronger storms in the mid-latitudes, but can’t say for sure that the deep storms of late 2016 were due to human activity, Turner said.
Up until this most recent decline, Antarctic sea ice area had increased slightly since satellite records began in the late 1970s. But that increase doesn’t mean climate change hasn’t affected Antarctica, said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who was not connected to the new study.
“This doesn’t mean that climate change isn’t happening, just that, at least through 2015 for Antarctic sea ice, the climate change signal could not be distinguished from natural variability,” he said.
More research is needed to determine exactly what caused Antarctic sea ice to grow over the past four decades amid a warming planet and if the low-ice conditions in 2016 and 2017 mark a turning point toward a decline in Antarctic sea ice because of climate change, Meier said.
“The increase definitely does not refute global warming and may even be a feature of it,” he said. “As temperatures continue to rise, the warming effect will win out and we expect Antarctic sea ice to eventually start decreasing.”
“It is tempting to think that the 2016 low ice conditions may mark this turn toward decreasing ice, but that temptation is not warranted,” Meier added. “It’s too soon to tell whether the low ice conditions are an ephemeral downturn or the start of something more long-term.”
Chris Turney needs to get back there ASAP! He’ll sort this out!
just in time to get proper stuck as it refreezes !
Now THAT was funny! Thanks for the belly laugh.
…“The increase definitely does not refute global warming and may even be a feature of it,” …
Ah. A theory which can’t be refuted! Give the man a Nobel prize…
Isn’t that the truth. It doesnt matter what the heck happens. These agenda driven people always say the humans are at fault regardless of facts!
I am becoming more convinced every day these folks are all misanthropes!
You can’t reasonably read misanthropy into that article, doing so points up huge bias on your part.
An alarmist would have pointed out that after the record low minimum, Antarctic sea ice is having a very low build-up this winter: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Hang on, that actually could be alarming!
Jack,
“Hang on, that actually could be alarming!”
Can’t argue with that logic, someone could get alarmed . . Hey, maybe an extra Clima-Change shindig this year could help calm them down . .
“This doesn’t mean that climate change isn’t happening, just that, at least through 2015 for Antarctic sea ice, the climate change signal could not be distinguished from natural variability,” he said.
so, for the first 40 or so years, natural variability ruled the sea ice, yet the last 2 years prove that there is a climate change signal in there?! the guys said ‘at least’ so this is exactly what he wanted to say.. these people are liars and creeps, they should be shown up for the charlatans they are.
Jack Davis, I might agree with you on the article. However, the reoccurring theme with the CAGW crowd is ultimately population shrikage (misanthropic thinking). That is spawned through their agenda, no matter how you think of it. Removing cheap energy from the equation, kills the poor first. There is no viable substitute for fossil fuels aside from some Nuke plants for electricity, not primary manufacturing etc., to a degree. In the end, any article that points that way by association or innuendo, is not far off from the said agenda.
I will put this up again from the IEA for perspective on global energy usage. Quite telling, no?
From this PDF https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/KeyRenewablesTrends.pdf
I would also suggest reviewing papers done on the arctic cyclones that impacted sea ice in 2007 and 2012 as an example for another example of storm impacts at the poles, if memory serves me. I don’t have those studies on my phone. Perhaps google Fram straight sea ice export or arctic cyclones. The ice didn’t melt at the North pole as is commonly assumed, much of it moved. Just sayin.
Then there is stuff like this too…..
http://beta.dmi.dk/uploads/tx_dmidatastore/webservice/b/m/s/d/e/accumulatedsmb.png
ossqss June 23, 2017 at 7:37 pm
All the record low Arctic sea ice years in NOAA’s (cooked) books had one or two August cyclones, ie 2007, 2012 and 2016. The recent normal years, ie 2013 and 2014, didn’t.
os, it can rain enough in one part of Australia to drop sea levels…
….but it can’t snow enough in Greenland to do it
/snark
…“The increase definitely does not refute global warming and may even be a feature of it,” …
That sounds like an open mind to me.
Garbage.
Sounds like someone trying to defend his own stupidity.
Come on guys – the article went out of its way to be fair and balanced. Anyone who is not paying attention to the many signs of change is being unscientific.
And Forrester Gardner, yes, in a chaotic system perturbation can cause cold conditions in unlikely places while, overall, the system is warming.
From unfinished brain surgery
it’s all in the spin Jack…
The increase definitely does not refute global warming and may “not” even be a feature of it,
“If (As) temperatures continue to rise, the warming effect will win out and we expect Antarctic sea ice to eventually start decreasing.”
Definitely only open in one direction.
Forrest – I don’t have a theory l’m just following the advice Elon Musk gave the other day about opening the eyes and reading the evidence. What I see is a great deal of evidence that Earth is well down the warming track. I guess what would prove me mistaken is if we carry on for the next couple of hundred years in the same high carbon mode we have been in for the last couple of hundred years and the planet doesn’t warm significantly. I’ll never know how that turns out. What would vindicate me is if that experiment turns out to be disastrous for the planet.
I don’t want to run that experiment.
Jack, are you aware that we have been in a long-term cooling trend over the last half of the Holocene? Are you aware that we are cooler now than the temperatures were during the Holocene Optimum, Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods?
You really should do some independent research before hyperventilating over green NGO scare tactics. Or at least get better at trolling.
And I can’t imagine where you got: “… same high carbon mode we have been in for the last couple of hundred years …” Are you really as ignorant as your risible comments make you out to be?
What I see is a big, heaping pile of lies, distortions and manipulated data masquerading as science.
Jack,
Earth has been in the lowest possible carbon mode for around three million years and still are. By geologic historic standards, we’re still scraping rock bottom. The only long interval with CO2 this low was during the Carboniferous-Permian ice age from 360 to 260 Ma.
The CACA hypothesis has been repeatedly shown false. For the first 32 years after WWII, earth cooled dramatically despite rapidly and steadily rising CO2. Then for about 20 years, still rising CO2 happened accidentally to coincide with slight warming. For the next ~20 years, GASTA remained flat. Lack of correlation implies lack of causation.
Nothing the least bit out of the ordinary is happening with earth’s climate. It is well within normal bounds. We haven’t even equaled the heat of the Medieval Warm Period yet, let alone of the more equable Roman WP, balmier Minoan WP and toastiest of all Holocene Climate Optimum. All of which weren’t nearly as hot as the Eemian, the previous interglacial.
Relax and enjoy the vital plant food in our air, so kindly and generously provided by the fossil fuel industry. Earth needs more CO2, not less. We don’t need to return to the 7000 ppm of the Cambrian, or the 4500 ppm of the Ordovician Ice Age, but 1200 ppm would be ideal for C3 plants and other living things. More than that isn’t needed.
Jack Davis June 23, 2017 at 4:53 pm
Elon Musk is a subsidy-farming con artist ripping off US taxpayers. Whom are you going to believe, a car salesman or Nobel Laureates and the most distinguished physicists in the world, such as Freeman Dyson, Richard Lindzen, Will Happer and Ivar Giaever, world renowned aeronautical engineer Burt Rutan, Father of Hurricanology Bill Gray and Father of Climatology Reid Bryson?
If appeal to authority is your only argument.
sounds like “no mind” to me, Butt carry on jacky
Jack
“I guess what would prove me mistaken is if we carry on for the next couple of hundred years in the same high carbon mode we have been in for the last couple of hundred years…”
Everyone know that it is impossible for that to happen. There isn’t enough carbon to make it possible. That is why we should stop fiddling around with ‘renewables’ as presently defined and get busy of large scale power generation.
Unfortunately too many people think we should all go camping in the woods for the rest of Sol’s lifetime after which we will die in the embrace of a swelling Red Giant.
We already know that increasing human emissions of CO2 dramatically has all but no effect on a natural system that exchanges more than 90 Gigatons of CO2 with the oceans alone each year. Mankind, as far as Gaia is concerned, is an accounting error.
What I am learning to spot and chuckle over is the inevitable “Scientists say” or “Scientists expect”, as in, “If greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, scientists expect there to be stronger storms in the mid-latitudes…”
Scientists will say anything, these days.
“Scientists for the kale foundation state kale cures cancer. Scientists for the spinach foundation state kale causes cancer.”
Honest scientists moan, as the devil claps his hands in glee.
If you take what he said in it’s entirety, he does have a somewhat open mind. But it is clear, from this and many other things he has said, that he does think global warming is occurring. One can’t argue with the fact that Arctic sea ice (yes, I know this article is about the Antarctic) has declined over the last 40 years. About 10% lower extent at winter max, 15-20% lower on average and ~33% lower at summer minimum (that’s all from memory). I think Walt tries to be open minded, he just is starting from his own (informed) beliefs as we all do (some are more informed than others). Remember too, that if one is too open minded, they will be attacked and could risk their funding. I imagine it is a tough line to hew if one is honest.
Jack doesn’t know that CO2 is the primary source of carbon….and that it’s rapidly sequestered until it becomes limiting…unless it’s replaced, we all die
Forrest Gardner – is your name an intentional reference to Forrest Gump and the Peter Sellers character ‘Gardner’ in the movie Being There?
No I don’t particularly want to try again. I’ll leave your choir singing contentedly to itself in your cozy ghetto. When the crap hits the fan, you guys will all melt away with the ice – you won’t even believe you held these views – you certainly won’t admit it.
Cheers
Jack said: “I’ll leave your choir singing contentedly to itself in your cozy ghetto. When the crap hits the fan, you guys will all melt away with the ice – you won’t even believe you held these views – you certainly won’t admit it.”
That’s exactly what will happen. Actually, there will be 3 possible outcomes:
1) WUWT skeptics will say “hey, we didn’t know with 100% certainty.” Which ignores that fact that all kinds of decisions based on scientific evidence are made without 100% certainty.
2) WUWT skeptics will melt away, not saying anything
3) WUWT skeptics will double down on natural variation
I’m just glad I won’t be on the wrong side of history.
Because you are already on the wrong side of history? Or because you will simply continue to toddle along, hands clamped over ears while loudly shouting LALALALALALA? By the end of this summer I will have two more 2 cord covered wood racks set up to deal with all this globall warmining during the winter.
Chris,
Since there have been and will be no sh!t hitting the fan, your comment will apply to the consensus charlatans. Unfortunately they will be retired on fat, tax-payer funded pensions by the time their lies are shown false to the satisfaction of all.
Higher CO2 has been and will continue to beneficial, not dangerous, to the world. Unfortunately, the highest it’s likely to get is a mere 600 ppm, after which it will drop back down to the dangerously low levels which our ice age climate system dictates.
Hi Chris – good to hear a voice of sanity in this cave of the Bear Clan. Elon Musk is a handout-taking charlatan car salesman apparently. Apparently he is not an amazing achiever who has, through government/private cooperation brought $35,000 electric cars to the masses and incredibly cheap space launch facilities to government agencies. I think that says a lot about the sauny attitudes here.
It seems we are also to accept the opinion of Freeman Dyson speaking way outside his field of quantum maths over that of James Hansen speaking squarely from his field of career expertise.
It’s okay – they’ve isolated themselves here in their little club – although maybe they’re influential in the conspiricist circles Trump inhabits. That won’t be a problem once Trump is dumped!
Yes and the sea ice loss may be a feature also, both ways!!!!
No he needs Bible B
““This doesn’t mean that climate change isn’t happening” Whew. Dodged a bullet, there.
I think we have enough statements in hand now to do an overlay of science tip toe patterns around medieval Catholic censors, Soviet censors, Chinese state censorship, and Victorian censors of evolution. I think a pattern recognition program could draw the similarities now.
You’d think.
You missed globalist progressive censors there I believe.
Resourceguy,
“… and Victorian censors of evolution.”
Got any “resources” for that? I learned a rather different story, back in the day ; )
(From the Wiki . . today ; )
“During the Victorian era, science grew into the discipline it is today. In addition to the increasing professionalism of university science, many Victorian gentlemen devoted their time to the study of natural history. This study of natural history was most powerfully advanced by Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution first published in his book On the Origin of Species in 1859.”
It seems to me the opposite occurred (and continues) in a form not dissimilar to the way CAGW-skeptic views are treated now . .
John,
When will you learn not to presume to comment on topics about which you’re so totally ignorant that you resort to Wiki, then fail to comprehend what you read there or to delve more deeply.
While evolution was rapidly accepted by many British and American scientists and citizens, the Anglican Church fought it bitterly, and the French scientific community tried to oppose it.
Are you really so ignorant of science history never to have heard of the famous 1860 Oxford debate between Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce, et al? Older scientists, including former colleagues of Darwin’s and members of the Victorian Establishment, represented by Sir Richard Owen, the odious anatomist who coined “dinosaur”, opposed his theory, Why do you suppose that Darwin, the greatest British scientist of the 19th century (despite stiff competition from the likes of Sir Humphry Davy, Faraday, Dr. Snow, Baron Lister, Lord Kelvin and Maxwell), was never knighted?
There is no scientific objection to evolution via natural selection and other processes today because it’s a trivial consequence of reproduction via genetic replication now, not the brilliant insight based upon observation of many phenomena that it was in 1837. Evolution cannot not happen.
The fact of evolution, then called “development”, was recognized for decades before Darwin and Wallace. But like continental drift in the next century, no good explanatory mechanism for “transmutation of species” had been proposed before natural selection. Once seafloor spreading was discovered, continental drift followed naturally, just as did evolution from natural selection and stochastic processes.
It’s a scientific fact of nature. Sorry. Deal with it.
Not to mention Lyell and a host of geologists and paleontologists, like the infamously eccentric Rev. William Buckland, who accompanied Aggasiz on his Highland ice age evidence exploration, Darwin’s adviser Rev. Adam Sedgwick, with whom Darwin geologized in Wales pre-Beagle, but opposed evolution, and his botany and zoology mentors. And of course among paleontologists, Mary Anning of “She sell seashells down by the seashore” fame, a better scientist than many of her learned male colleagues.
Thomas Jefferson, like many scientists, originally opposed Cuvier’s discovery of extinction on religious grounds, since God couldn’t make imperfect species, whose lose would break links in the supposed Great Chain of Being. As president, he ordered Lewis and Clark to be on the lookout for mastodons and mammoths in the American West, in order to show Cuvier wrong. But alas, he was right. At the end of his life, Jefferson came to accept extinction as part of God’s plan. Mary Anning’s clearly extinct Mesozoic sea monsters helped him embrace reality.
John,
BTW, “Darwin’s Bulldog” Huxley mopped the floor with “Soapy Sam” Wilberforce, whose presumption of capability to dispute science with a great scientist backfired spectacularly. He greatly diminished the reputation of his family name, made by his anti-slavery crusading dad, in the service of anti-science. He used the same lame arguments of today’s creationists, and was systematically destroyed by a brilliant man armed with reality.
Gabro,
I asked for a source, not an unquestioning fake scientific thinker . . but thanks ; )
John,
Are you so helplessly inept that you can’t find the original sources from all the historical fact I freely gave you? What an inept ignoramus.
By “fake scientific faker”, I assume you mean “scientist”, which is what I am. You, OTOH, are a complete, total and utter dupe of professional liars against God.
But since you are such a helpless fool, how about this? How hard would it have been for you, so enslaved to Wiki, to have found it on your own, incompetent fool?:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactions_to_On_the_Origin_of_Species
Why I help such a hopeless, helpless case, I don’t know.
The questioning scientific thinker might just realize that Evolution (the grand origins story kind, that might take three days to get Gabro to focus on ; ) requires that a whole lot of brand spanking new functional genetic coding came into existence on cue, so to speak, which gave survival advantage, over and over again, that has never actually been observed to happen once.
What has been observed in reality-land, is evolution that does not require new genetic material to come into existence, such as with plant and animal breeding. How anyone could have known a hundred and fifty years ago, or now, that what we observe in nature now (or the fossil record) is not the result of just that sort, I have never heard anyone even bother to attempt to explain.
It is interesting to see the claim of “Victorian censorship of evolution”, as that is just the sort of (to my mind) fake history one would expect to see people believing and repeating without a second thought, if the whole Evolution is “settled science” absolutism was actually just a “power play”, like (I believe) the CAGW is, by the same sort of people . . for whom who (according to Gabro, just yesterday) ;
“A new subbasement in Hell may have to be dug for the corrupt “scientists”, historians and philosophers of science who have so perverted the scientific method to promote their assault on humanity.”
We can (apparently) agree that it is happening now, but for reasons that go unmentioned, can’t agree it could have happened in the past . . Strange logic indeed . .
abro,
I asked about “Victorian censorship” . . not any old BS that happens to pop into your head . .
The world was actually created a microsecond ago. But you were created with a memory and a past.
There. That’s settled.
Actually the entire creation-argument has been boring the bleep out of me for years. I have taken to sticking up for the faithful, even though I believe in evolution, and my reason is this: The faithful have faith and tend to be nicer.
I begin my argument by asking if Adam looked one minute old when he was created. Was he naked, wauling in the dirt, with no mother to feed him? Or did he look older than he was? Then I move on to the first oak tree. Was it just an acorn? And so on and so forth. Conclusion? The first tree was created with rings, for Michael Mann to misinterpret. And the first stone was created with sedimentary levels, seams of coal, and dinosaur bones in it. Why? Heck, I can’t even figure out what I was created for.
Anyway, it’s probably better to live in the present.
I keep asking people to prove God is not using evolution to create the world right now.
Do they keep asking you to prove He is?
No. They usually either start mumbling about how its not their job to prove anything or entirely change the subject. They really get torqued off when I declare that of course evolution exists, God created it. Follow that with, “Go ahead, prove He did not.” Either way it goes I am having fun.
Caleb,
“I begin my argument by asking if Adam looked one minute old when he was created. Was he naked, wauling in the dirt, with no mother to feed him? Or did he look older than he was? Then I move on to the first oak tree. Was it just an acorn? And so on and so forth.”
If a certain Book is what I believe it is; He can do as He pleases in the time/space continuum He Created. Sort of like we can paint a man or a baby, as we chose, He can make a man or a baby as He chooses . . Sort of like we can (now) generate a simulated time/space continuum, and introduce trees that were never acorns if we wish, He can do that in the one we inhabit if He wishes.
(Yep, THAT kind of God ; )
John,
I gave you the facts, but as ever, you can’t handle the truth. What popped into my mind was the actual history of Victorian censorship, which you out of total ignorance, as always, d@nied. Just as Copernicus waited 36 years, until his death, to publish his theory contradicting Church doctrine, the Bible and Ptolemy, Darwin waited 22 years because he feared official reaction. The reception for a book published in 1844, which impressed among others Lincoln, gave him hope that with the passage of time, the public might be ready for reality, ie “transmutation” of species.
Genetic changes don’t occur “just in time”. They happen all the time, but can be negative or lethal in one environment, but adaptive under changed conditions, as with the evolution of nylon-eating bacteria. The single point mutation which changes sugar-eating bacteria into nylon-eaters must have happened repeatedly over millions of years, but was always fatal until humans injected nylon into the environment.
That new genetic coding arises is, as I keep telling you, a trivial, routine observation. It is a scientific fact, observed every day. New species can be made in the lab as well as seen in the wild, thanks to genetic innovations. The new species can be entirely novel or recreate genetic changes detected in nature. Only your profound, willful ignorance keeps you from doing the necessary reading, talking and observing to verify this fact. It is a commonplace. It’s the reason for scourges such as MRSA, ie multiple drug resistant microbial pathogens.
It’s also the reason why humans are bipedal and have big brains. Exactly the same processes.
How can natural selection not happen? When the climate got colder in the Pleistocene, those steppe mammoth living in northern latitudes with longer fur enjoyed a higher relative reproduction rate than those less hairy. Same goes for other adaptations which led to the woolly mammoth.
Caleb,
I’m happy that the creationist you’ve run across have been nice. That hasn’t been my experience at all. Those I encountered at the Dover trial were vile, vicious and hateful as individuals and even worse in groups. They were as far as possible from good Christians. They didn’t even understand the theology of the theologian to whose imagined doctrines they claimed to adhere, Calvin. To them, Calvinism meant creationism, which it most certainly did not to John Calvin, who recognized that Genesis 1 and 2 could not possibly be literally true. He supposed that the authors of those chapters simplified things for the simple people for whom they made up the stories. He was a geocentrist, as were most educated men of his day, but there were Calvinist Copernicans in the Low Countries.
“Victorian censorship”, lightweight . . that’s what was claimed, and what I asked about.
You stand there, covered in bloody chunks of dead horse, swinging away with gay abandon. I had thought you were just clowning, now it occurs to me you really ARE this stupid. So, I will pose the question to you. Can you prove God is not using evolution to create the world right now, this very minute?
PS~ “That new genetic coding arises is, as I keep telling you, a trivial, routine observation.”
In your imagination, I’m convinced ; ) . . but I really and truly don’t give a rodent’s rear-end about the stuff you can imagine. (And, yes, I noticed how you “regressed” to the mere generation of “new coding”, which of course can mean any sort mangled junk that does not provide survival advantage . . )
John,
Last time I try to educate you about the genetic code, which is so easily subject to mutation and other alterations. Here are some of the ways that it changes and new coding for proteins and epigenetic control switches arise, all of which have been observed on a daily basis.
1) Base pair deletions, as with the nylon-eating bacteria. Very common, thanks to cosmic rays and other mutagenic agents.
2) Base pair substitutions.
3) Base pair duplications.
4) Gene duplications, as happened in the evolution of the larger human brain.
5) Whole or partial genome duplications, as in the common speciation process of polyploidy, and has happened at least twice in human evolution.
6) Gross chromosomal changes, as with human chromosome #2, the result of fusing two smaller, standard great ape chromosome, associated with the evolution of bipedalism.
7) Incorporation of viral or bacterial genomes, a form of horizontal gene transfer in eukaryotes.
Every human is born with an average of four mutations, and we accumulate more as we age. Those in our sex cells are passed on, which is why old fathers are important to evolution.
A well known mutation in simian primates results in the inability to make vitamin C, a derived trait shared by tarsiers, monkeys and apes, to include humans. Our vitamin C gene however is broken in different places from the genes of the South American rodent guinea pigs and their capybara kin, and in yet another sequence in bats. Primates however have evolved ways of making better use of dietary vitamin C than in those of our mammalian relatives who can still produce their own internally.
Now please explain why you imagine that new genetic coding and noncoding information cannot happen? Creationists used to believe that species were immutable, which obviously they aren’t. Now the new lie is that genomes can’t change, but they do, every day and in every generation of every organism on the planet.
Natural selection, ie directional evolution, is the opposite of random. In stable environments, evolution can work to keep organisms the same, or can change them when conditions change, thanks to natural selection. New species can also arise simply from reproductive isolation, via genetic drift and other stochastic processes.
Please read some of the excellent books and texts on the fact of evolution which have been recommended for you here. Ignorant, presumptuous and willfully incorrect is no way to go through life, unless that’s where you find your bliss. Pride in your ignorance is a double sin. Triple with blasphemy thrown in, since you suppose God to be deceitful, incompetent and cruel, and worship a book rather than His works.
John,
New genetic material is not what I imagine. It’s what every life scientist, medical researcher and hospital worker sees every day in every way, all around us.
Open your eyes and your mind. You are blinded by faith in a false, demonic belief.
New genetic material cannot not happen. Its formation in inherent in the structure of nucleic acids and the replication process. Nature is filled with mutagenic agents and with other organisms able to share their genomes with us.
Mods,
I find it remarkable that this blog bans Sl@yers, who argue against the GHE, with probably wrong but at least scientific arguments, while permitting such a blatant lie as that genomes can’t and don’t change. Propagation of such rank lunacy must bring the whole site under suspicion.
Genetic modification is so easy and useful that whole industries are based upon it. Natural selection has also of course created one of the greatest threats to humanity, drug resistance, and another, pest resistance to pesticides. Only a certifiably crazy person could d@ny that genetic material changes all the time.
John,
Have you really never heard of the phenomenon of resistance, due to the evolution of new genetic material by pathogens and pests, or of GMO organisms and crops created by artificial evolution?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering
Today the best method of obtaining new drugs and many other useful chemicals and organisms is via directed evolution, for which machines are now widely available.
You exist in an alternative fantasy world of your own imagination, supported by nothing but blind faith is a false, antihuman religion.
You’re not getting it, Gabro . . You say things, and apparently expect me to simply accept them as absolute truth (like CAGW promoters do ; )
You can SAY nylon eating bacteria are an example of “brand spanking new” functional genetic material coming into existence, and then act like it’s up to me to somehow prove it’s not a good example (like CAGW promoters do ; ) . . but when I’ve looked into the matter in the past, I did not see more than a small (degenerative) change of the sort that’s not indicative of a gain in genetic information. (We’ve got to go from none at all, to a staggering variety, please don’t “forget” ; )
Essentially, there is a hidden assumption type claim involved, as I see it, which “states” that Gd would never make a bacterium that reproduces in such a way as to allow some minor rearrangement of it’s genetic information occasionally. Why this fanciful “Law” seems rational to anyone, I have no idea . . it’s just a handy unspoken assumption that suits the assumption that all that existent coding came into existence by happenstance, as far as I can tell . .
I for one am glad that there is a prize-winning science blog where I’m free to defend my belief in Biblical science without humiliation or retribution.
Nowhere else will permit me to defend the Biblical truth of the flat earth, earth-centered universe and Man-centered Creation.
Deluding people into believing that DNA can mutate is the Devil’s work. God made everything exactly as it is in 4004 BC, as all Bible-based scientists know. Nothing has changed since then, nor can it.
Forever and ever, Amen. So there!
John,
You can’t get reality because you don’t want to.
My long reply explaining genetic changes to you is still in moderation.
But clearly you have never studied the nylon-eating bacteria (there are more than one, including those made in the lab with different sugar-eating microbes than the one in Japan).
The ability to metabolize nylon evolves as the simplest possible mutation, a single point mutation in one base pair. This is not degeneration but a common occurrence. Deletions are often deleterious, but not in this case and many others.
At the opposite end of the mutation spectrum is whole genome duplication (or multiplication). This is usually beneficial, as nothing is lost and the organism now has twice as much genetic material, half of which is free to undergo evolution without any deleterious effect. Probably most plants species have evolved from such polyploid events. It’s also important in animal evolution, to include humans.
You don’t have to take my word for it. Please read a book or talk to a medical researcher in genetic diseases or fighting microbial antibacterial drug resistance. As I keep telling you, genetic change cannot help but happen. Depending upon an organism’s environment, the changes can be negative, positive or neutral.
The mutations which led to bipedalism and brain growth in chimp-like human ancestors were beneficial, allowing their descendants eventurally to leave Africa and conquer the world.
Gabro
“But clearly you have never studied the nylon-eating bacteria (there are more than one, including those made in the lab with different sugar-eating microbes than the one in Japan).”
Clear as bell . . in your imagination ; )
“The ability to metabolize nylon evolves as the simplest possible mutation, a single point mutation in one base pair. This is not degeneration but a common occurrence. Deletions are often deleterious, but not in this case and many others.”
THAT’S MY POINT, sir . . I’m saying that just as we can see dogs “evolve into Chihuahuas, Saint Bernards, whippets, and toy poodles, without (apparently) any new genetic coding coming into existence, there’s a great deal of evolution potential already in living creatures, without the need for timely happenstance coming into being of brand spanking new coding.
How, I ask, can it be true beyond doubt that what we see in nature (including fossils) is not the result of that sort of “fragmental” evolution? Not the additive/cumulative sort, but the subtractive/selective sort, such as we observe with dogs?
That many experts feel it’s so, is no different than CAGW logic to me . .
John,
The fact of innovations in genetic material isn’t anything at all like CACA. It’s a scientific fact, visible to everyone who has ever bothered to look. Genetic innovations are made in labs every day, along with of course occurring continuously in nature.
It’s not just some experts. It’s every single molecular biologist or worker in related fields in the world. As noted, whole industries wouldn’t exist without genetic innovation, let alone all the evolution which has happened over the past four billion years.
Even Behe, who hatched the phony Intelligent Design scheme, was forced to admit in court that evolution occurs, to include the continuous evolution of new genetic material. As I keep telling you, it cannot not happen that genetic sequences will change and new ones arise. It has been ongoing for four billion years.
The fact that dogs have a lot of genetic variability in no way excludes the fact of creating new genetic material in the lab or its happening in the wild. The evolution of polar bears from grizzly bears via natural selection is similar to the artificial creation of dog breeds, but it has also included quite a bit of genetic innovation.
Indeed, getting back to CACA, the discovery through advanced molecular genetics that polar bears are a much more ancient species than previously estimated is important ammunition against the falsified hypothesis of dangerous man-made warming.
You blind faith in obviously false, imaginary garbage is what’s akin to CACA, not the real science of constant genetic change, which has produced all the living things on earth.
Gee, I naively hoped Gabro might actually try to answer my question . . but instead I get the Mr. Mann treatment;
“It’s a scientific fact, visible to everyone who has ever bothered to look.” . . and then the grand argument from authority routine . .
This is why the CAGW clan thought they could bluster their way through to absolutist “settled science” status, I suggest,. They saw it done before . .
John,
I did answer your question. You’re simply too ignorant of the most elementary biology to understand it. I guess I need to make it simpler and spell it out for you.
Every molecular biologist knows that genomes change because they look at them every day, see them doing it and make changes to genomes themselves. Again, whole industries are based upon doing exactly that. You might as well d@ny that the earth goes around the sun as d@ny that genomes are subject to change and innovation. It’s a literally every day observation. You can’t be a molecular biologist and not observe this fact in your work.
Hence, this observation of fact is nothing at all like the CACA hypothesis, which has not been observed.
Studying geonmic innovations in polar bear evolution is helping scientists learn about human obesity and metabolism issues:
http://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(14)00488-7?_returnURL=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867414004887%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
Sir, if you cannot acknowledge that your own previous example is not a demonstration of new genetic coding coming into existence (which was my stated interest/perspective from the beginning), I see no reason to follow you through your next rabbit hole. It doesn’t seem to matter to you what we might find, it amounts to (as I see it); If there is the possibility that new coding coming into existence is what we are observing, it becomes an absolute fact that it happened . . Just as the mere possibility that a bit of CO2 will send the world into a catastrophic meltdown, according to the CAGW zealots, is enough to make it “settled science” that it will.
Possible is all you are even speaking of here, but you act like that’s the same as proof that it must have happened, and I just don’t care about such (to me) illogical zealotry. I’ve never taken such a position, and speak of what seems possible as possible . .
John,
Please cite to which example you refer. Every instance I’ve given has been of new genetic info being created. As I said, it’s done all the time.
Scientists have even gone far beyond transferring info from one organism to another via snippets of DNA and beyond creating their own new DNA sequences to insert in genomes. Over three years ago, they even inserted a sequence encoded in a newly invented genetic alphabet to create a new organism, a strain of E. coli with “alien” nucleobases:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v509/n7500/full/nature13314.html#figures
A semi-synthetic organism with an expanded genetic alphabet
Give up your hopeless struggle of false and falling on its face blind faith against reality. It wins. You lose. Resistance is useless.
John,
It occurs to me that you might not appreciate the significance of the 2014 Scripps result I reported above, since you might not know what a nucleobase is.
Nucleic acids, the repository of genetic information in living things on earth, consist of three parts: a nitrogenous nucleobase, a five-carbon carbohydrate (sugar), and a phosphate group to act as the backbone of the assembled acid. A nucleobase attaches to the sugar, forming a nucleoside, which when attached to a phosphate group becomes a nucleotide. A polymer string of monomer nucleotides forms the nucleic acid molecule. In nature these are either RNA or DNA.
In DNA the sugar is deoxyribose and the nucleobases are the purines adenine (A) and guanine (G) and the pyrimidines cytosine (C) and thymine (T). In RNA the sugar is ribose and uracil replaces T. A pairs with T or U and G with C to form a “base pair”. Deoxyribose lacks just one oxygem atom, as its name suggests, which allows it to form a double helix, making it a more stable repository of information than RNA.
A gene is a sequence of base pairs coding for a protein. Proteins are polymers of amino acids, ie polypeptides. A peptide is an oligomer of amino acids, ie a few of them linked together, shorter than a polypeptide.
What the Scripps researchers did was to invent their own genetic code, using nucleobases not used in nature, arrange them in a sequence and insert that sequence into the DNA of a bacterium, which then divided and carried this new genetic information into subsequent generations.
What more evidence do you need that genomes are enormously malleable, hence can and do change, with the greatest of ease? In fact, they cannot not do so.
And true Biblical Flood Geology, not Satan’s Godless geology!
No wonder atheist “petroleum geologists” can’t find oil. The devil has tricked them into imagining that untold trillions of supposed extinct “microbes”, which aren’t in the Bible and can’t even be seen!, magically turned into oil over 100s of millions of nonexistent years also not in the Bible, which teaches that on one of the Days of Creation God put all the oil, coal and gas in the ground at once for godly righteous men to find.
He put those “fossils” in coal mines just to test faith of men.
So there, godless heathens sure to roast in Hell!
Gabro . . to me, you really seem insane at times . .
“Scientists have even gone far beyond transferring info from one organism to another via snippets of DNA and beyond creating their own new DNA sequences to insert in genomes…”
I never said word one about people not being able to mess with genetic coding . . or posited any sort of prohibition on genomes being “malleable” in various ways . . I said they ARE in effect . . The point of contention I have raised, is about the (to me) magical ability you seem to think you have, to know beyond a doubt that what we can see (living or in fossil remains) absolutely cannot be the result of the sort of evolution we can actually observe in some “domestic” creatures which does not depend on new functional coding coming into existence.
All this other stuff is irreverent (to that potential), as far as I’m concerned. You can pretend you somehow know for a fact that God (or super advanced little green men ; ) did not generate a variety of critters which we now see the descendants of, but you haven’t presented any rationale for that absolute certainty, amounting to anything beyond an article of faith . . it seems to me . .
John,
No surprise you keep changing what you claim to believe. The insanity is all yours, for not recognizing reality despite its being repeatedly shoved under your nose. All I do is try to teach you the discoveries of science during the past 500 years, all of which contradict the Bible. What is nuts is that you keep retreating back to positions already shown totally indefensible, when yet again defeated in a new redoubt of blinkered blind faith.
I’ve shown you that, contrary to your baseless assertions, that genomes are subject to change, have changed and do constantly change, to include the evolution of new information. So that refuge of the creationist scoundrel is shut down.
The fact that new species arise from existing species and genera is also a trivial observation. We see it all the time in nature and can reproduce those evolutionary events in the lab.
So what is it that you finally won’t accept? The fact that in the past new families, orders, classes and phyla have evolved? Science makes inferences from the evidence, then tests those conclusions over and over. To any rational, sane person, all the evidence in the world leads to the conclusion that the same processes which cause changes in genomes observable today, which cause the speciation events observable today, caused the often minor changes necessary for sponges to evolve from unicellular, colonial choanoflagellates, tetrapods to evolve from lobe-finned fish, birds from therapod dinosaurs, whales from terrestrial artiodactyls, humans from African apes, etc. No other naturalistic, ie scientific, explanation is possible, given the overwhelming evidence.
It’s pointless for me to try to educate a person totally unwilling to face reality, same as every other scientists here has concluded in your hopelessly deluded case.
John,
And you still haven’t answered any of the many questions which scientists here have put to you about evolution. Please do so now, with these few:
1) Why do you suppose that human and other mammalian gonads arise in the chest, in the same position as in fish, whence they must migrate to the abdomen and, in males, outside the body, leaving behind holes subject to herniation? Why would an Intelligent Designer not have gonads originate in the abdomen for females and outside the body for males in warm-blooded species?
2) Why do humans and our closest primate kin, ie monkeys and other apes, still have muscles to move our ears, when we can’t move them, as can tarsiers, lemurs, lorises and non-primate mammals? Why would an Intelligent Designer saddle us with unusable tissue?
3) Why would an Intelligent Designer afflict the odd assemblage of humans, apes, monkeys and tarsiers with a vitamin C gene broken in one place, guinea pigs and their cousins capybaras with one broken in a different place and bats with the gene broken in yet another way, but leave all other mammals with an intact gene? Is this ID a sadistic practical joker? Why does this odd assortment of mammals have to suffer the scourge of scurvy?
4) Why do flightless beetles have wings under carapaces which can’t be opened? Only an Idiotic Designer would do that. What a waste of energy and food to make useless structures.
Only a willfully blind fool can d@ny the reality of evolution.
“No surprise you keep changing what you claim to believe.”
Nope, I did no such thing, that’s just what you imagined, I say. (And that’s why there’s no quotes with that accusation, demonstrating I changed what I claim to believe)
I have been discussing POSSIBILITIES . . (you fragile SJW precursor ; )
“1) Why do you suppose that human and other mammalian gonads arise in the chest, in the same position as in fish, whence they must migrate to the abdomen and, in males, outside the body, leaving behind holes subject to herniation? Why would an Intelligent Designer not have gonads originate in the abdomen for females and outside the body for males in warm-blooded species?”
Sir, it’s NOT RELEVANT what I suppose about such things . . I’m just a man, not a God . . But, according to that Book, we are in a fallen state, which involves death, and so “ecosystems” and the like, which it seems to me requires imperfect critters all ’round. Everything has got to be flawed, period. (I can quote Scripture aplenty if you want me to, that makes it perfectly clear that we are in a fallen world, including nature, if you need me to . . and who knows what little green men might do ; )
But, I can ask in return, on Evolution; Why do you suppose that arrangement didn’t change in many millions of years, if genomes are ever so “malleable” and that arrangement is a serious net negative? On Evolution, I suspect there are some advantages we have not yet come to grasp, personally.
I see no point in playing this sort of game, and suggest you simply acknowledge that you can’t actually know with anything resembling scientific certainty that some form of “seeding” of life has not occurred here. It’s really kinda silly to pretend you could actually know such a “negative” with certainty, it seems to me . .
John,
The fact is that I can and do know with great precision the changes that have occurred at each stage in the evolution of prokaryotes to eukaryotes, of unicellular, motile heterotrophs to animals, of asymmetric animals to radially symmetric animals of radially symmetric animals to bilaterally symmetric animals, of bilaterians whose mouths develop after their anuses from those in which the process is reversted, etc. It’s all there in the “fossils” of our genomes, which correspond to the actual physical fossils.
Please educate yourself.
But I’m glad at least that now you have accepted the reality of the fact that genomes are highly malleable, which fact you previously repeatedly d@nied out of total, complete and utter ignorance. I’m also glad that I and other scientists have been able to educate you that it’s a commonplace for new species and genera to arise from preexisting ones, a fact observed over and over and over again.
That leaves you only with the antiscientific, religious, faith-based belief that, despite all this evolution, sponges couldn’t have evolved from the colonial unicells which are identical to their feeding cells and that birds could not have evolved from reptiles, despite all the evidence from every possible line of inquiry to that effect, etc.
To all rational, disinterested observers here, your religious garbage has been thoroughly defeated in detail by science. Yet, pathetically, you still refuse to recognize reality. Sad.
Happily, willful ignoramuses like you aren’t in power, but sane people are.
“The fact is that I can and do know with great precision the changes that have occurred at each stage in the evolution of prokaryotes to eukaryotes, of unicellular, motile heterotrophs to animals, of asymmetric animals to radially symmetric animals of radially symmetric animals to bilaterally symmetric animals, of bilaterians whose mouths develop after their anuses from those in which the process is reversted, etc. It’s all there in the “fossils” of our genomes, which correspond to the actual physical fossils.”
Utterly ridiculous bullshit to me. sir. Just the arrogant ravings of a person who cannot grasp that what appears in their mind might not be absolute truth,. I will under no circumstances treat some stuff some experts imagine as scientific fact, and frankly, it’s weird as hell to me, to be discussing the need for skepticism in science on this site . . and it’s people like YOU who have allowed the CAGW clan to play out their version of what you just did there, in my opinion. Without such arrogant self worshipers inhabiting the realm, they couldn’t have gotten away with it, it seems almost laughably (or cryably ; ) obvious to me . .
(And, you didn’t answer my return question. I say, it’s utterly irrational to think that fishes went through a radical transformation in how their body develops in the earliest stages, in evolving into other forms of creature, yet retained a then harmful aspect of the fish body design, for millions of years no less. For a biology guy, you don’t seem to have much depth of understanding of these matters, I must say . . )
Jun-yuan Chen, Professor of Palaeontology, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and author of ‘The Origins of Animal Body Plans and Their Fossil Records’, said something that seems apropos here (in an interview I saw online) ;
““In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government; in America, you can criticize the government, but not Darwin!” ; )
“sea ice loss in the Arctic has been linked to increased greenhouse gas emissions”
That sounds definitive, I’m curious what those “links” look like. Was the ice teetering on a 1 degree C increase in atmospheric temperature?
The link used to be six degrees, but now it’s down to four degrees of separation. The key link is funding.
Thanks Bruce … the funding link makes more sense.
I remember standing on a glacier in Alaska on a 60 degree summer day and there really wasn’t much melting going on.
Whenever you see that word “linked” in a sentence like this, you can be pretty sure that what they have is a weak correlation and pure speculation as to the cause. In other words, junk (fake) science.
Ah, no! Looking for correlations is what good science does. Speculations being tested? That’s good science too.
Yes Jack.. it is.
http://notrickszone.com/2017/06/23/arctic-warming-reverse-new-study-says-winter-arctic-sea-ice-to-increase-towards-2020/#sthash.NHliWhz8.dpbs
Well, at least he admits that a 1 year change isn’t a trend.
Despite how “tempting” that claim is. Doomsday gravy-train grants are indeed tempting.
“Doomsday gravy-train grants are indeed tempting”
I like that, well said RWT, for so few words it explains very much the existence of the man-made global warming paradigm.
Tempting “to think” is a dead giveaway. It shows clearly that he is predisposed to an acceptance of AGW and is “pulling” for it to be true.
Lack of surrounding sea ice just means that the continent will be gaining more ice, as storms surrounding the Antarctic will just have land upon which to deposit their snow. With a large “ice doughnut” surrounding Antarctica in previous years, much snow was taken up by the sea ice, and then eventually ended up back in the ocean.
A slight dip in sea-levels should result!
tomwys1 – please enlighten us – by what mechanism does an ocean storm deposit its snow only on land or ice, but not on open water?
It can snow on open water all it wants. Any snow that hits open water melts. The heat that the water loses melting the snow may hasten the formation of ice but then you won’t have open water any more.
Well I have a explanation. At the edge of an ice sheet, you have sinking air over the ice (high pressure) and rising air over the water (low pressure). The storms form in the rising air over the water bringing in the cold air over the ice. Snow forms and falls. Also the colder section of the storm will be on the land side.
The closer the edge of the ice sheet is to land, the closer the low forms to land and more of the storm is over land. Hence you get more snow over land than if the edge of the ice sheet was 50 miles offshore, where if this is the case most of the precipitation would fall away from the land over the ice sheet.
Just watch low pressure systems coming across the US in fall and winter move offshore at Cape Hatteras and blow up. Much more energy involved but the same mechanism.
I think it has something to do with the lapse rate…
The use of the term “unprecedented” is the code for “caused by AGW”, in the Sherlockian sense that, if you’ve exhausted all other possible explanations, then it’s “proof” of AGW.
There’s not much rigor in that kind of “proof”, but it has served well as the meme for “proof of AGW” in the mass media.
So, any precedent event, prior to the mid 20th century, would tend to nullify that argument.
Unprecedented and “records going back to 1978” were what stood out to me. How do we know these storms were unprecedented when we have only been exploring Antartica for about a century? Forty years of sea ice records are hardly anything to go on as well. Wake me up when you have about a millennium of actual data (not proxy) and then we can talk about unprecedented.
They have no idea if the storms are unprecedented or not. Perhaps they are in the VERY short time we’ve been able to monitor them. But that’s like saying today’s rain storm is unprecedented because it didn’t rain yesterday.
Idiotic.
Hilarious!
Yeah, Use of the term “unprecedented” is the code for “we know diddley squat about the history of this.”
Actually, the fact that this kind of storms have only been seen last year pretty much nullifies the argument. Why do those storms started forming last year? CAGW is supposed to be older than that.
Besides, 2014 still holds the historical sea ice extension record maximum, which nullifies CAGW.
The effects of the 2016 storms are obvious in NOAA’s Antarctic sea ice graph:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
But even with them, last year’s maximum was still close to the median, and above it at the time the first storm hit. So far this year, Antarctic sea ice extent has been lower than normal, but not by much, so is recovering. It’s similar at this point to years like 1980, 1983 and 2002. Where it maxes out will again depend on WX in September.
Gabro: Ok, it is a graph of the Antarctic sea ice during (part) the year-long constant -2 std deviation running Antarctic sea ice anomaly. From 1988 through 2015, Antarctic sea was near-steadily growing, then, right about Sept-2015 – that growth stopped. Stopped dead, dropped to -2 std low, and has stayed right under -2 std low through the entire next 18 month (now) cycle. Now, confounding the situation, the satellite sensor “failed” and we have NO consistent sea ice area records from a consistent lab processed consistently to compare. Coincidence? I cannot tell. It is convenient though.
But, to make sense of the graph, to make their hypothesis of “storms around Antarctica to work, they MUST superimpose the storms cycle on the March 2015-June 2017 chart with every “Storm” they claim is impacting the sea ice extents/area down there. Then, they must show the “storm location and track” across the Antarctic’s entire coastline to show which area increased (blew sea ice “out and away” (to melt in the warmer waters further north) or “in and compressed” to cause lower sea ice area radar reflections to the satellite sensors.
Rather, should one not speculate on which of the following is the cause, and the effect?
Months-long records of lower Antarctic sea ice (below average sea ice anomalies) around Antarctica in late 2015 allowed much higher-than-usual solar heating of the southern ocean waters, which then flowed north along the Chilean coast to cause/start/increase the 2015-2016 El Nino warming pattern already in progress off of Peru.
Warmer Peruvian/Ecuadorean coastal water flowed westward across the Pacific (or began in the southern Pacific ocean ) and flowed south the southern ocean around Antarctica, which melted more of the Antarctic sea ice and then flowed north to continue the 2015-2016 super El Nino we still see today.
How can these storms suddenly be caused by AGW when we have had no warming in 18 years?
RA,
Your comments are trenchant, and there is the convenient satellite issue, but the dates of big storms in 2015 and especially 2016 do correspond with the dips in NOAA’s admittedly suspect graph.
CACA adherents have struggled to explain growing Antarctic sea ice in the satellite era while the Arctic declined, so I like you am naturally suspicious, but there were indeed storms. Which were WX, not “climate change” events.
Well the positive AAO anomalies in March, June, and September 2016 correspond to the larger relative losses of Antarctic sea ice through 2016, so did storms occur during these very positive AAO periods?
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/aao/monthly.aao.index.b79.current.ascii.table
“Extraordinary storms”…Did it “melt it” or move it?
If the storms moved much of that ice northward, it should cool off oceans north of the Antarctic. Any data on that?
Imo, that is exactly what happened. It looked to me, as I save the daily sst/a pics, that surface movements of the waters to the west of Drake’s Passage changed as a consequence of the rapid melting of the well above average sea ice extent. That started in July of 2015. By September of that year waters flowing through Drake’s Passage turned cool. That led to cooler waters moving up the east side of lower South America. The normal warmer water flow stayed to the west of SA and moved north up the coast. Then the waters around Antarctica also cooled down as compared to the previous 3 years. It looked to me as if that was the cause for the start of the cooling in the South Atlantic.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2017/anomnight.6.22.2017.gif
just a picture
It highlights the fact that the climate of the Antarctic is incredibly variable. A several month event is now climate, got it.
Steve, let’s see if I can get this straight: Climate change is everything bad; climate is whatever has been going on over time in a particular area. Am I getting the current memes right?
I will state this categorically: Baring some minor warming since the end of the Little Ice Age, global climate has not been changing. Anybody saying they can detect AGW in current weather patterns is either ignorant or a shill.
Anybody saying that the global climate will worsen in the future due to increasing CO2 is either ignorant or a shill. IPCC climate models are bunk.
Agreed! In my neck of the woods, today’s weather is indistinguishable from the mid-70’s. I see nothing very different anywhere in the world except perhaps the Arctic, where some evidence seems to show that it was similar in the 1920’s. If that is the Biblical disaster we have been told is unfolding, I am unimpressed!
Well I’ve been reading for years that increasing antarctic sea ice really means that the World is Warming. So does decreasing sea ice mean the world is cooling?
Oh wait, let me guess, this is yet another case that proves No Matter What, it Proves the World is Warming.
Absolutely – this is dead proof that AGW/ACC caused the massive extraordinary storms.
And next year AGW/ACC will cause an absolutely massive and extraordinary mass of exceptionally cold and calm air to settle over the continent of Antarctica, and the sea ice will expand exponentially until the southern tips of Africa and South America are encased under ice.
AGW is magic!
That would be bad news for the burgeoning fleet of container freighters built larger than panamax spec.
Here is a thought on the question which you pose. As the Antarctic sea ice extent crashed in mid 2015, the Greenland yearly smb started to rise above average with each following year showing a greater rise than the year before. Antarctic sea ice extent had done similar over a period of 3 years. Greenland smb during this last winter and continuing to the present is running way above average even with the melt season being underway. If the Greenland smb holds above average through the entire melt season, then what is going to happen as the next cycle of gain starts later on this year?
Is that massive above average smb going to affect winter temps in Europe, and maybe for the NH later this year?
Yes.
Yeah, I’ve come to the conclusion that many climastrologists simply aren’t smart.
Sure they are. They know that half the population has below average IQs, and that they’ll believe almost anything.
Jeff, one should always wonder on which side of the line they reside.
Jeff
While I agree that half the population has an above average intelligence too, there is no clear cause-effect relationship between intelligence and believing a hundred impossible things before breakfast.
I just arrived in Ulaanbaatar and saw a big billboard with two dinosaurs on it (the Gobi Desert is a major source for new extinct species these days). I was thinking about what the atmosphere was like when the vast, thick layers of coal were laid down in Mongolia. What was the CO2 level in those days? Ten times the current level? Maybe.
Suppose it was only five times. There is zero danger to life on this planet from a couple of doublings of the concentration from its current near historic low.
How intelligent does one have to be to understand this simple historical fact about the atmosphere? CAGW is proof that the relationship between believing impossible and ridiculous things has been decoupled from standard assessments of intelligence.
They are smart enough to keep funding and paychecks and promotions on track. That requires careful editing and proofing, not just boilerplate language.
Successful con artists usually are fairly smart. It’s their morals that are questionable.
Beneath the area where the melt has occurred lies an active tectonic Ridge/Rift, with mount Eribus at one end and Deception Island at the other.
I have no information on the current volcanic activity in this area; but suggest this could well provide an explanation.
Does anyone have any information on this aspect?
Eribus currently erupting
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/erebus.html
25 volcanos of Antarctica,
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/antarctica.html
Last update per that link about Erebus was in 2014.
New under ice eruption discovered by seismic studies by Washington State U researchers in W Antarctica and numerous sea floor volcs around it all. This is an active volcanic hot spot that never gets mentioned by the global BBQ signtists.
https://www.livescience.com/41262-west-antarctica-new-volcano-discovered.html
Shhhh! The Church of Human Caused Globall Warmining does not believe in the existence of your so-called “volcanoes” and will become quite cross with you if you keep using that dirty word.
This isn’t right “..Antarctic sea ice – frozen ocean water that rings the southernmost continent – has grown over the past few decades but declined sharply in late 2016. ..”.
The rapid decline in sea ice took plane in mid 2015. The sea ice extent down there has remained below average ever since then. …http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
So when the ice fully recovers to previous levels. will this be reported as the largest seasonal growth ever recorded? It seems we just went through a decade of record extent of Antarctic sea ice, so this all seems well within natural variability.
Largest growth??
Of course not!
It is fascinating that non-physicists and non-modelers, including Arctic and Antarctic ice types, blindly accept that CO2 is driving global warming. They keep throwing it into their papers without giving sources. And they are so sure that the world will continue to warm dangerously, driven by CO2.
I can’t begin to describe how irritated I get every time read Meiers comments. If ice is increasing it’s Climate Change, if it’s decreasing it’s Climate Change of cause! My a**…
The swing in ice coverage from some 2 standard deviations above to about the same below the norm was remarkable. It was preceded by a number of what appeared to be bad data hits. Then no postings for a while. It all seemed too much to be explained–even by the exceptional El Nino.
Have “they” been rigging the record?
Bob Hoye
I wouldn’t be the slightest bit surprised, you never see any Aerial Photos of Sea Ice to confirm or deny where it actually is.
It certainly has nothing to do with high temperatures and at the moment according to Nuschool Earth it is very cold all around the Antarctic.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=1.78,-78.06,329/loc=54.074,-81.717
The climate of Antarctica doesn’t seem particularily variable, at least regards temperature. HADCRUT, RSS and UAH all agree that the temperature south of 60S has not changed as far back as their records go; 1955 for HADCRUT. I guess that’s why the cry is now climate change instead of global warming. Temperature just doesn’t want to cooperate.
Ooh, this has got hurt…but hilarious….IF you like British humor…
https://www.facebook.com/HeartlandInstitute/videos/vb.16775672689/10154970019067690/?type=2&theater¬if_t=notify_me_page¬if_id=1498072918310919
I DO love Brit humor; and this fast paced dialogue comedy skewers everything silly on AGW and human foibles we hear mouthed daily!! Brilliant!
Brilliant. Unfortunately, BBC and the viewers thought it was pure satire, rather than the documentary it actually was.
Well Done!
Very good video. I looked for it on YOUTUBE but no luck. I would like to find it there so I could show it to others on my tv. Any suggestions.
I did find many of the Mr Prime Minister shows which I plan on watching.
The episode is posted in two parts on Vimeo, this is part 1:
I get this message:-
“Video Unavailable
Sorry, this video could not be played.”
These links to Yes Prime Minister Global Warming etc Part 1 & Part 2 were posted on JoNova:-
After I showed it here , it got deleted !!! WUWT ?
Thanks for that video, Butch! Hilarious indeed. The Churchill quotes in an almost perfect Churchill impersonation slipped into the PM dialogue a couple times were beyond brilliant! Left me ROFL!
A series of unprecedented storms <– there's that global warming trigger word again
Yes, the rest of us are numb and don’t even catch the headline-editor word choices like this any more. It’s the climate science equivalent to the word “awesome.”
The main thing is we need to remember is whatever happens anywhere in the world , no matter if it’s hotter, colder, wetter, dryer, windier, calmer, sunnier or cloudier, It’s due to climate change and all climate change is due to the extra trace gas CO2 contributed to the atmosphere. Which has risen from 350 to 400 parts per million due to YOU and ME! That’s an extra 50 parts per million .0050/million is basically the driving force for climate, and is the thermostat for the entire earth! Sounds crazy you say? Aren’t there other factors you say? Nope, It’s settled all the smart people agree, It’s us! We’re running the climate show! Much like the gnat on the elephant’s ass running the circus! Don’t tell the gnat he’s not , all the smart gnats agree he is!
Really cold water down there right now…
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/ocean/surface/currents/overlay=sea_surface_temp/orthographic=-83.81,-92.96,422/loc=-63.743,-58.585
From the article: “Sea ice area is an important indicator of climate change, and sea ice loss in the Arctic has been linked to increased greenhouse gas emissions.”
How so? What link?
Linked = We don’t have any real proof of causation, we just assert the claim and hope you don’t notice.
So if all of the ice has to be melted, is that what causes La Nina?
Every dang climate science article includes/must include boil plate CAGW propaganda and must filter out or hide information that disproves CAGW and AGW.
In this case, the sciency article did not show the simple by year graph of Antarctic sea ice data which unequivocally shows a remarkable and unexplained increase in sea ice.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
I predicted a recovery. Note that there are 5yr cycles between highs and lows going all the way back to the beginning. Odd but nobody seems to wonder why (or know about it).
“This doesn’t mean that climate change isn’t happening, just that, at least through 2015 for Antarctic sea ice, the climate change signal could not be distinguished from natural variability,” he said.
====
LOL this is a hoot..because the “climate change signal” was going in the wrong direction
But,
it would be unprecedented if the ‘unprecedented storms’ weren’t caused by unprecedented global warming thus causing an unprecedented loss of ice….
I do wish 97% of you chaps would sick with the program;
you very nearly had me thinking nature was in charge of climate
I thought global warming CAUSED record sea ice? So collapse of the ice would indicate ABSENCE of warming wouldn’t it?
the climate change signal could not be distinguished from natural variability
A tacit admission that they cannot detect the signal, and that if we have anything to fear, it is from natural variability itself. For 30 years they have been claiming that GHG warming would swamp natural variability and they are no closer now to detecting it than they were 30 years ago.
Over and over with the same thing. Yet the public stumbles along on the assumption that something bad lurks just over the horizon if we don’t “do something” when all they need so to reassure themselves is read the actual science. You don’t need a degree in physics to understand that this paper, like many others, syas plain and simple that natural variability is so much higher than the GHG warming signal that the signal doesn’t matter.
The exact same line that I picked : “the climate change signal could not be distinguished from natural variability”. The topic in this paper was Antarctic sea ice, but if you check the literature, the exact same line applies to every single facet of climate – there is not a single part of climate where any change could be distinguished from natural variability. One very obvious possible reason is that all climate change is natural variability. It seems pretty strange that so many scientists are so resolutely refusing to even consider this as a possibility.
“One very obvious possible reason is that all climate change is natural variability. It seems pretty strange that so many scientists are so resolutely refusing to even consider this as a possibility.”
They should assume natural variablity until proven otherwise. Assuming CO2 is causing the Earth’s climate to change is assuming way too much. There is certainly no proof for it.
That’s why studies like this on are so irritating because they assume facts not in evidence and then extrapolate from there. They are depending on dishonest climate scientists to give them the facts and they are not getting the facts from them, they are getting fake horror stories of gloom and doom instead.
People get angry when they find out they have been fooled, especially when it comes from scientists who are supposed to be beyond reproach, but unfortunately, they are not.
Surely this was a big test of their Global Warming Theory.
Something BIG happened.
So, where are the failed crops, the floods, the droughts, the hurricanes & tornadoes etc etc?
Where are they, apart from business as usual in that department?
There are refugees and dead bodies but they are entirely self inflicted as in Grenfell Tower.
That one just lurches from bad to worse, as in every Government scheme.
Manslaughter charges are to be brought (oh goody, the crony lawyers win win yet again), loads of other towers and properties are to be expensively refurbished because they are now not safe – and just after they were expensively furbished entirely because of this global warming fandango.
And the architects of this craziness, Mann, Hansen & Gore? Spitting out childish snark, 140 bytes at a time, on titter and the like. As though its just some sort of school playground game.
And these lot are just the same. Like children, they’ve found something (to them) interesting, like a pretty coloured snail under a rock by example.
Yes that’s very lovely but in the great scheme of the rest of the population of the planet, it makes diddly squat difference.
And for comic relief to those who know, From Global National TV in TORONTO, Canada. Hey, Toronto is the place we westerners love to make fun of.
Bolding is mine. Guess they never learned about displacement.
Watch the video. Oh noes!!! Melting of floating ice is going to cause sea level rise. The media is sooo informed.
http://globalnews.ca/video/3546882/unprecedented-ice-melt-in-antarctica
We should make tactical gear and helmets woven from CAGW…it’s bulletproof.
The winter peak in 2015 was similar to 2016 (at least in terms of losing ground to the norm). Was there a storm then too?
To see this go here, click on Antarctic and then add 2015 & 2016.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
Yes.
http://unofficialnetworks.com/2015/01/22/antarctic-storm-video-from-utsteinen-station-1-17-15/
Those two lower years followed record year after record year. Click on 2014, 2013 and 2012. Antarctic sea ice has grown since 1979, while Arctic has declined, showing that more CO2 in the air can’t be responsible for Arctic decline. The past two years on lower Antarctic ice resulted from the super El Nino and late winter storms. The lowest Arctic years have also been due to August and September cyclones.
And so once again we have a demonstration that weather driving wave and wind action has a greater short term effect on sea ice in every metric on sea ice than warming of air or water or changes in salinity. WHY do we not laugh at the premise that any measurement of sea ice is a viable proxy for warming? Why do we play their game and not just blow it out of the water?
Extraordinary as in it could not be inferred from a sub-Nyquist rate sample of the past.
So, the ice broke up, floated around a bit, and then refroze. Okey dokey, then.
Let me get this straight.
You put ice in your drink to cool it down…correct?
So, effectively all that ice which was clinging to the continent of Antarctica is now cooling the ocean?
So what we observed was in fact a major ‘cooling event’.
Just like the ‘exceptional warmth’ over Greenland last winter which in fact resulted in exceptional surface ice mass gain.
I guess you can spin these events any way you like.
Not really that big a deal. Most Antarctic sea ice melts every SH summer no matter what.
We had a big El Nino in 2015/16 and these highly paid guys didn’t even mention the possibility of of this causing the “storms”. It is also stupid to say storms and the warm air is doing something. Hell big storms will break the ice up and it will float away and melt in the ocean without alarming warming. We seem to forget that sailing around Cape Horn was sailor’s nightmare. The US Navy historically used to give a gold (left) ear ring to sailors as a mark of respect and accomplishment for this dangerous journey. They discontinued the practice in modern times but I met the last sailor to get one! He was a bartender in Switzerland (Leysin, Canton Vaud – Club Vagabond) in the early 1960s. Apparently the rule was still on the ‘books’ and he sued for his ring. He got one and they formally removed this rule from the olden days, apparently telling him to keep quiet! It was a pretty substantial piece of gold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Horn#.27Rounding_the_Horn.27
Scroll down to Trade route 2.2, 4th para “Traditionally, a sailor who had rounded the Horn was entitled to wear a gold loop earring — in the left ear, the one which had faced the Horn in a typical eastbound passage — and to dine with one foot on the table”
Even school kids used to know it was the stormiest place on earth.
I think a way to remove all the trash from the literature when the Big Reckoning comes is to use the search word “unprecedented”. This should get most of them. Any other words we should use to clean out the chaff?
“Robust”.
The phrase “is consistent with”. The most deceptive three words I know.
Include:
“has been linked”
“Model”
noaaprogrammer, please do not curse on this family Thread.
I’m still waiting on the NIMBUS satellite film to be digitized and released. I seem to remember they said that the sea ice went from what appears to be the MOST sea ice ever seen to the least in just one year. Are they hiding the NIMBUS data? Inquiring minds want to know. Release the tapes! Get Congress involved.
Better be careful! There may be an 18 minute gap, they are proven to be quite adept at such shenanigans.
Folks this is not fair, with the Mann paper and now this, Skeptical Science must be in Defcon 1 damage limitation mode.
Our local NZ warmist shill ‘scientists’ were very glad to see the drop, and note it was wind patterns. So they could claim the rise was also just wind patterns.. No realisation that it marked the change to the ‘Quiet Sun’ wikd jetstream regime affecting both poles and the termperate zones, Winds are blowing more north/south, causing greater extremes.
This shows in the southern and northern ice becoming piled up and thicker, which the shills do not mention. At the other end, English winemakers are now wondering if they made a mistake planting vines because their yield is wiped out. They are right, it is like in the LIA. This is the real climate shift, and we wish we are wrong, but not so far…..
The Bottom Line
https://youtu.be/7gH78lUc94Y
https://youtu.be/7gH78lUc94Y?t=8
“Sea ice area is an important indicator of climate change, and sea ice loss in the Arctic has been linked to increased greenhouse gas emissions.”
Linked in any real sense of cause-effect or just claimed and hoped-for? Is this from the ‘we make up stuff to be later proven correct’ department?
With that much ice cover gone, the loss of energy to space will be massive before it freezes over this winter. Ice insulates the ocean around the coast. There will be a large drop on total ocean heat content because of this event.
The strong El Niño has the same effect. It dumps heat much faster than normal. A few summers like this will only make the net effect stronger.
“But that increase doesn’t mean climate change hasn’t affected Antarctica, said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA” Nor does it mean it has affected the Antarctica. I was going to ask how much the sea levels have risen as a result of all the surface melting but then I saw the average thickness is on a meter thick. No affect on sea lever with that little volume melted.
Certainly that which is floating won’t add any increase in sea level rise.
With the rapid increase of open water, the the Southern Ocean how has increased surface area to release heat sorted in Antarctic oceans, which should have a net cooling effect.
I expect that Antarctic sea ice will rapidly recover, especially when both the PDO and AMO are in their 30-yrear cool cycles from 2019, and the weakest solar cycle since 1790 starts in 2021.
We’ll see soon enough.
Geoff certainly has it right, “more research is needed.” I have been reading research papers and reports and articles for 50 years and they all end with “more research is needed”. In other words I will be asking for a few million more in research dollars soon. I don’t mean to demean this very interesting report and the excellent comments I have read with interest. I simply had to laugh when I saw that line and loved it when Geoff posted the videos.
Hi Geoff,
You are not the Geoff in Geoff Sherrington – that is me from Melbourne AUST who has blogged on WUWT from about 2007.
Often, I sign off with a ‘Geoff’, but now there are 2 of us we need to identify better to avoid confusion. What if we both add an initial, so I am GeoffS and you are GeoffA or B or C or whatever applies?
Cheers
GeoffS
“This doesn’t mean that climate change isn’t happening, just that, at least through 2015 for Antarctic sea ice, the climate change signal could not be distinguished from natural variability,” he said.
So no reason to assume anything but natural variability.
“The increase definitely does not refute global warming and may even be a feature of it,”
Global warming brings more ice. Sounds convincing.
“As temperatures continue to rise, the warming effect will win out and we expect Antarctic sea ice to eventually start decreasing.”
Sure. When?
“It is tempting to think that the 2016 low ice conditions may mark this turn toward decreasing ice, but that temptation is not warranted,” Meier added. “It’s too soon to tell whether the low ice conditions are an ephemeral downturn or the start of something more long-term.”
Ah! Not before the current researchers have retired, and perhaps not in our lifetimes.
“More research is needed”
Naturally. Keep the grant money coming.
Very strong positive AAO anomalies occurred through 2016 following the El Nino, and also through 2010 and 1998 following major El Nino episodes.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/aao/monthly.aao.index.b79.current.ascii.table
The months of March, June, and September 2016 had the strongest positive AAO anomalies, which were the months when the greatest relative loss of sea ice occurred.
(select Antarctic):
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
“The increase definitely does not refute global warming and may even be a feature of it,” he said. “As temperatures continue to rise, the warming effect will win out and we expect Antarctic sea ice to eventually start decreasing.”
That statement only shows that they definitely don’t understand the trends. Antarctic sea ice extent increased since 1995 due to a net decline in climate forcing, the same reason for the warming of the AMO and Arctic since 1995.
Well here we are again arguing and discussing sea ice as if it is a valuable proxy of global temperatures. I just don’t get it! Time and again the major factor that effects all the metrics of sea ice at either pole are storms, wave and wind action just as the paper above is showing. This should make it clear that in the shorter term sea ice is a very poor metric for global temperature and yet people, many very well informed, argue about extent, area, volume and multi year ice day after day after day as if such day to day, week to week, month to month measurements are a holy grail of what the earths temps are doing.
“If greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, scientists expect there to be stronger storms in the mid-latitudes,”
Not scientists with any sort of clue. The misconception is that reducing the pole ward temperature gradient allows the mid latitude jet to slacken and loop. The opposite is closer to the truth. (As usual)
Always scream out: Name the scientists!
Figure 1.5 from Klyastorin (2007). ACI is a Russian index that measures “zonality” vs “meridionality”. The zonal and meridional components are mirror opposites and the zonal component is shown here. It can be seen that the tendency for zonal flow increases with increasing Arctic temperature, and decreases (meaning the jet stream gets more loopy) with decreasing Arctic temperature.
Looks good to me, gymnosperm.
“The increase definitely does not refute global warming and may even be a feature of it,” he said. “As temperatures continue to rise, the warming effect will win out and we expect Antarctic sea ice to eventually start decreasing.”
So in other worlds they don’t have any idea what the mechanism actually is.
Were I to propose such shite as an engineer, I’d be laughed out of the room.
Again, always scream out: Give us the proof of your statement “As temperatures continue to rise” in specific terms!
“They found that a series of remarkable storms during September, October and November brought warm air and strong winds from the north that melted 75,000 square kilometers of ice per day. That’s like losing a South Carolina-sized chunk of ice every 24 hours.”
That’s chickenshit you Chicken Little. The sea ice grows back 17,000,000 sq. km. every winter. 1 meter thick sea ice is chickenshit compared to 2,160 meters thick Antarctic ice sheet. How can you melt that when the ave. temperature is some -50 C. From the last 420,000 years, this interglacial may warm 2 or 3 C. Still 47 C colder than melting point. And the latent heat needed to melt the ice sheet is over 3 times more than to warm it by 50 C. We’re still in an ice age folks! We have been for the past 2.58 million years. So keep dreaming global warming but the 2 km thick ice sheet is here to stay!
http://www.meteoclub.gr/images/stories/zeus/Temperature_Interglacials.jpg
We’ve been in an ice age for 34 million years, when the East Antarctic Ice Sheet formed, under CO2 levels two to five times higher than now. But ice sheets didn’t form in the Northern Hemisphere until 2.6 Ma, after the formation of the Isthmus of Panama.
I think it is worth noting that when you read the comments section of WUWT, you will see post after post of people demanding proof of CAGW assertions, and you would think that if the CAGW promoters actually had a scientific case to make, that they would jump on these demands with both feet and blow away their skeptic opposition with the facts.
But what do we get? Almost dead silence. No offers of evidence. Some alarmists check in to voice their opinions, but again, no evidence of any consequence.
It’s obvious they don’t have a case to make. That’s why they are absent from WUWT. Or at least silent. They probably do spend some of their time on WUWT. They would be crazy not to, since this is where the serious challenge to their faith is located. Here, and in the White House, I guess I should add.
+10…some of them may be secretly trying to educate themselves.
If someone has evidence supporting AGW (or CAGW, if you prefer) should they present it at WUWT or, I don’t know, some scientific peer reviewed journal?
“Peer review” is the FIRST refuge of the scoundrel.
Were any climate journal reviews made of McIntyre’s destruction of Mann’s Hockey Stick? Mann is still a darling of government and academia! Along with all the other Climategate heroes.
Go stuff your noble climate scientist meme, DWR54. What is your name, anyway?
Dave Fair
Perhaps that tells us something about the value of that critique. By the way, since when has it become a requirement to provide one’s proper name at this site? Presumably you have made or will be making the same request of ferdberple, Latitude, goldminor…. et al?
“Peer review” is the FIRST refuge of the scoundrel.”
What a laughable comment. The medical field relies on peer reviewed articles in journals, same for engineering, same for oceanography, etc. What is your proposed alternative? Put it up on a blog site, and then folks can make comments? And if 1000 people make comments – without giving any indication of their qualifications or knowledge – then the author must sift through all of those, deciding which have merit and which do not.
You miss the point, Chris. This is about climate commentators and their hiding behind “peer review” to avoid citing facts supporting CO2-driven CAGW. Climategate, anyone? Additionally, have you read anything about the scandals surrounding journal article replication in the various scientific and pseudo-scientific fields?
And what is wrong with a serious researcher reviewing 1,000 comments? When helping write Federal Environmental Impact Statements, I reviewed and responded to many more cogent and not-so-cogent comments.
And yet “climate scientists” use peer review as their good old boys network to spew lies and sh*t. And you think that is just peachy.
Chris,
Peer review has failed miserably in every field, but especially medicine.
http://www.allianceforpatientsafety.org/redding-failure.pdf
That’s even without its total corruption into pal review in the case of climate “research”.
Various fixes have been proposed, but blog review is surely one of them. If you’re worried about qualifications, review sites can impose them. But usually only experts are going to want to read scientific papers, and reviewers who aren’t might still make valid comments. I doubt that any scientific paper would attract thousands of reviewers.
Chris,
In your opinion, was any valid science published before 1967, when the journal Nature initiated a peer review process?
http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2014/06/04/even_einstein_hated_peer_review_108687.html
“If someone has evidence supporting AGW (or CAGW, if you prefer) should they present it at WUWT or, I don’t know, some scientific peer reviewed journal?”
How about both? If they do it that way, we know their work will get a thorough examination in at least one of those places.
@ DWR54…I mentioned my name several times some years back. It would not mean anything to anyone here as I am just an interested amateur. One who was willing to spend the last 9 years of my life looking into this discussion. I am hooked.
RE: “But what do we get? Almost dead silence.”
Silence and a seemingly endless parade of appeals to authority; “97%”, “Hottest evah”, “Mann says…” etc. Unrefuted evidence, not so much.
There is no viable substitute for fossil fuels
===========
A gallon of gasoline is 33 kWh of energy. A standard 100w solar panel needs 55 days of sunlight to produce the same amount of power.
There you go again, dropping facts about like poodle bombs on the white carpet in the foyer of the Grand Cathedral of Human Caused Globall Warmining. So naughty of you!
There is no viable substitute for fossil fuels
===========
A gallon of gasoline is 33 kWh of energy. A standard 100w solar panel needs 55 days of sunlight to produce the same amount of power.
A standard roof can support more than 50 100watt panels.
And still can’t equal a gallon of gasoline.
At what real cost per kWh, Michael.
And I have wonderfully subsidized panels on my roof!
A Nissian Leaf will go 107 miles on a 30 Kwh charge.
And how much coal does it take to get that 30Kwh charge?
At what real life-cycle cost per mile, Michael?
Manufacture of the battery of a Tesla produces the amount of CO2 equivalent to 9 years of driving a car.
Here’s the link:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/20/tesla-car-battery-production-releases-as-much-co2-as-8-years-of-gasoline-driving/
And how many of those batteries have been produced to date? A little math the Human Caused Globall Warmining church REALLY does not want the average person to do.
““The increase definitely does no refute global warming and may even be a feature of it,” he said.”
You just can’t win with warmists.
The persistent strong cold SST anomaly all around Antarctica has been there continuously for at least a decade – why is this hardly ever discussed?
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
The idiot paper discussing recent changes in Antarctic sea ice of course completely ignored/hids the SUPER BIG observational paradox:
It is a proxy fact, that the Southern ocean about Antarctic has cyclically warmed and cooled, 342 times in the last 240,000 years.
The periodicity of the past Southern hemisphere temperature changes is the same periodicity (a cycle of 1470 years with a beat frequency of plus/minus 400 years), as the periodicity of the past Northern hemisphere cyclic temperature changes in the proxy record.
The logical paradox, is there are no earth drivers/internal mechanisms that can warm and cool both hemispheres of the earth cyclically.
There is an interesting additional observational paradox fact concerning the periodicity of cyclic climate changers.
Mixed in with the Medieval warming and Little Ice Age, medium magnitude cyclic climate changes, are the super large in magnitude, super abrupt cooling events, the Younger Dryas type abrupt cooling events, in the proxy record that have a periodicity of roughly every 10,000 years and that occur at the time of the 1370 year event, indicate what causes the small, medium, and super large climate forcing events is the same and is modulate in strength by another factor (hint the other factor is orbital configuration).
William: The above referenced paper was accepted for publication and then the assisting editor that recommended accepting the paper for publication was fired, fired for recommending a scientific valid, but non party line paper.
Science is a puzzle to be solved not an argument to be won.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/davis-and-taylor-wuwt-submission.pdf
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003GL017115.shtml
Yes – there’s always the sun..
Arctic sea ice extent has bunched up, as the years do in early summer, but 2017 is still holding its own. By small amounts, it remains higher now than at this point in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2016, but lower than 2013, 2014 and 2015. Its September minimum will still depend upon how stormy August is or isn’t.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
As an engineer, I have tended to rely on testing to specific criterion, and analysis of results, while politicians and special interests take a conclusion first and find support later. The warmer air and currents of 2016 was due to all the hot air being channeled by politicians in the Northern Hemisphere. Oh, sorry, that was conclusion. Now i have to find corroborative data…
In my post in moderation I failed to include the sentence that the anomaly measured by climate research is the steady, 30 year half cycle oscillation around zero the planet goes through, from about .5 cooler than the International Standard Temperature, to about .5 degrees warmer. That takes out a lot of the absolutes in the first sentence.
The entire Sea Ice Reference page currently comes back as “not found”… someone running the site might want to look into that.
[works fine for me https://wattsupwiththat.com/?page_id=22084 -mod]
Nope still comes back as “not found” but it was working several days ago and so there is some new problem that only seems to happen to some of us. Good old computer bugs 🙁
Same here “…Oops! That page can’t be found.
It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try one of the links below or a search?…”
The paper is written with too many “if”s, “likely” and unsupported superlatives as “unprecedented”.
In particular the “likely” pertains to the presumption of southern ocean hemispheric wide storms that are not represented in the DMSP records for 2016 and not much by way of commercial ocean traffic reports (they were staying far from the “ice-edge” anyway to avoid bergs).
That being, the “unprecedented” storms did not exist nor have!
From the retrieval record the “drop” in the area-extent started on 30 August from the previous day (the record high for 2016) and continued through 3 September, then increase from 4 September through 8 September, then continued to “drop” through 14 September, then proceeded to increase through 1 October, and finally returned to “dropping” on 6 October with small day-by-day variations.
Gabro tell us all about how man has created synthetic organisms that reproduce themselves,
and then act shocked when we remind you that – man created those. LoL.
When I say that ”since we’re not, that fact doesn’t exist either” Gabro what I mean is that – the chemistry of everything is examined by interested chemists, because once you are a chemist, nothing’s secret to you if you have a wide chemistry background. Biological chemistry, natural chemistry, water-related vs hydrocarbon related – solid state incompressible chemistry, the chemistry of compressible matter – once someone unlocks general chemistry it’s not possible to keep big secrets.
If men had discovered the evidence that plugs all the holes in evolution, everyone on earth would know about them simply because it’s such an interesting subject.
Like taxation. The reason everyone is interested in climate is because people made claims about chemistry that said everyone must be taxed. People were going to take what they owned and give it to their own kids because their work, saving the planet, was too important.
The origins of life and evolution are similar simply because so many people are interested from both a philosophical but also a legal point of view where laws might need to be made protecting certain things.
So I’m saying I’m an atheist – I don’t believe in that creationist garbage about an angry sky daddy. It’s too preposterous to consider realistic: if this was some sort of cosmic simulator, nobody would be playing because everyone was afraid of daddy.
On the other hand I’m a confident student of not just chemistry but biological chemistry and also the studies regarding the origins of life.
And if all your claims of everything being settled, were real – I’d know, because real chemists, would be telling people outside their specialty, ”hey look at this: this is solved!”
That’s what I meant by ”we’d all know.” I didn’t say anything about everyone acknowledging whatever issues in question were settled or even right.
But if there were satisfying answers to evolution, pure scientists, who study things simply to see how many answers are uncovered before they died, would be talking about it all the time. And we’re not.
Because word gets around,
when the secrets of the origins of life become plumbed by real sciences.
There’s no secret lab, or elite group of guys and gals in white coats, knowing too much for the little people.
I don’t know what holes you imagine exist in evolution, which is a scientific fact. There are surely issues in evolutionary theory, just as there are, and much more seriously, in gravitational theory. But that evolution has been going on here for around four billion years isn’t in doubt.
So I assume you’re referring to holes in origin of life research, which is not the same as biological evolution once life developed via chemical evolution. I’ve never claimed, as you seem incorrectly to think, that all the problems are solved. Quite the opposite. Please read my lists of the main outstanding issues. That’s why there is still research. But every year more of them are solved.
Szotak might be optimistic, but he has forecast self-replicating protocells within five years. He knows a lot more about it than, I obviously, but when I look at the problems once thought insurmountable which have been solved, I get more optimistic, too.
If not in five years, then possibly in ten and probably within 20 years there will be man-made, artificial life in the lab. As noted, three years ago, Scripps scientists inserted a whole new genetic alphabet into a strain of E. coli, creating a partially synthetic organism.
I think the chemistry of the origin of life is an interesting subject that I like to discuss as a scientist. I hope what I’m saying isn’t taken as trying to be trolling or confrontational I really mean what I say, and since I’m one of the people who has to go around and discuss evolution with people I don’t like it when people who claim to be representing me – scientists – try to make it seem like there’s an elite group of special people who know secrets nobody else, can bear to know. The real truth’s there, it’s just only 5 guys are smart enough to know it.
That’s simply never – not ever true. It’s the claim about climate alarm, that ”We know, but since we’re scientists we’re just not very good at getting the word out.”
That’s just not possible, it’s not true, evolutionary sciences are too universally enthralling for anything very secret to last very long.
Where did you all get the crazy idea that I said that all the issues had been resolved and were being kept secret?
Please read what I actually said. I listed the major still unresolved issues, and the approaches being taken to address them.
Since at least two readers here must have missed my prior comments regarding remaining problems in origin of life research, I’ll state two main issues yet again, limiting myself to RNA World research, rather than including “Metabolism First” work.
1) While short RNA sequences form spontaneously, forming longer ones today requires protein enzymes. Getting RNA chains long enough to serve as repositories of genetic information and to act as enzymes themselves (ribozymes) without protein enzymes is thus an issue. Two important approaches are a) using physical catalysts to synthesize polymers of nucleotides, such as clay or ice, and b) investigating amino acid sequences shorter than proteins (peptide oligomers rather than polypeptide polymers) or other simple chemical compounds, such as PAHs and RNA itself.
2) Getting long chains of RNA to separate without enzymes is another issue. One approach is using higher temperatures, supposing that prebiotic RNA chains formed under cooler conditions, then migrated to warmer areas of their watery environment. Another, yet a further discovery of the Szostak lab, is that substituting a different nucleobase for one of RNA’s makes a more rickety chain, more easily separated at lower temperature. The same nucleobase is still used in nucleic acids today, in a specialized application.
The RNA precursor molecule could then have been replaced via natural selection by the more stable modern RNA once enzymes developed.
There are other issues, but as I said, great progress is being made, thanks in part to more funding becoming available in this century.
Nobel Laureate Jack Szostak recently:
“A lot of failure goes into success.”
He should know.
WAPO just doubled down and put up Antarctic is doomed article as damage limitation against the AGU BAS paper