A new paper about to be in press, comes at the end of a flurry of papers and reports published this week that claims Antarctica was losing ice mass. Zwally says ice growth is anywhere from 50 gigatons to 200 gigatons a year.
NASA glaciologist Jay Zwally says his new study will show, once again, the eastern Antarctic ice sheet is gaining enough ice to offset losses in the west.
By Michael Bastasch
Is Antarctica melting or is it gaining ice? A recent paper claims Antarctica’s net ice loss has dramatically increased in recent years, but forthcoming research will challenge that claim.
NASA glaciologist Jay Zwally first challenged the “consensus” on Antarctica in 2015 when he published a paper showing ice sheet growth in eastern Antarctica outweighed the losses in the western ice sheet.
Zwally will again challenge the prevailing narrative of how global warming is affecting the South Pole. Zwally said his new study will show, once again, the eastern Antarctic ice sheet is gaining enough ice to offset losses in the west.
Much like in 2015, Zwally’s upcoming study will run up against the so-called “consensus,” including a paper published by a team of 80 scientists in the journal Nature on Wednesday. The paper estimates that Antarctic is losing, on net, more than 200 gigatons of ice a year, adding 0.02 inches to annual sea level rise.
“Basically, we agree about West Antarctica,” Zwally told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “East Antarctica is still gaining mass. That’s where we disagree.”
Reported ice melt mostly driven by instability in the western Antarctic ice sheet, which is being eaten away from below by warm ocean water. Scientists tend to agree ice loss has increased in western Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula has increased.
Measurements of the eastern ice sheet, however, are subject to high levels of uncertainty. That’s where disagreements are. (RELATED: Earth’s Largest Ice Sheet Was Stable For Millions Of Years During A Past Warm Period)
“In our study East Antarctic remains the least certain part of Antarctica for sure,” Andrew Shepherd, the study’s lead author and professor at the University of Leeds, told TheDCNF.
“Although there is relatively large variability over shorter periods, we don’t detect any significant long-term trend over 25 years,” Shepherd said.
However, Zwally’s working on a paper that will show the eastern ice sheet is expanding at a rate that’s enough to at least offset increased losses the west.
The ice sheets are “very close to balance right now,” Zwally said. He added that balance could change to net melting in the future with more warming.
So, why is there such a big difference between Zwally’s research and what 80 scientists recently published in the journal Nature?
There are several reasons for the disagreement, but the biggest is how researchers make what’s called a glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), which takes into account the movement of the Earth under ice sheets.
Scientists use models to measure the movement of land mass in response to changes the ice sheet sitting on top. For example, Zwally said eastern Antarctica’s land mass has been going down in response to ice sheet mass gains.
That land movement effects ice sheet data, especially in Antarctica where small errors in GIA can yield big changes ice sheet mass balance — whether ice is growing or shrinking. There are also differences in how researchers model firn compaction and snowfall accumulation.
“It needs to be known accurately,” Zwally said. “It’s an error of being able to model. These are models that estimate the motions of the Earth under the ice.”
Zwally’s 2015 study said an isostatic adjustment of 1.6 millimeters was needed to bring satellite “gravimetry and altimetry” measurements into agreement with one another.
Shepherd’s paper cites Zwally’s 2015 study several times, but only estimates eastern Antarctic mass gains to be 5 gigatons a year — yet this estimate comes with a margin of error of 46 gigatons.
Zwally, on the other hand, claims ice sheet growth is anywhere from 50 gigatons to 200 gigatons a year.
Ever notice….it’s always where you can’t see find or measure it…and have to totally make it up
Oh yeah, it’s always just beneath the surface, but it’s there, and it’s gonna getcha.
Cue Jaws music…
All the recent papers on ice loss are just paving the way for the upcoming IPCC report that we are on path for 2 degree by 2040 woah woah … you know the story … please send money.
Antarctica is apparently the big scare story because they are running out of other stories to run the polar bears weren’t cutting it.
Not only that !
ANTARCTICA HAS LOST ALL IT’S POLAR BEARS !!
So…..that HAS to be scary !
PENGUINS report that their POLAR BEAR ERADICATION SCHEME
has been JUST AS SUCCESSFUL as the RAT EXTERMINATION SCHEME
on SOUTH GEORGIA ! TOTAL !!
So…..that HAS TO BE GOOD NEWS !!
Viva the penguins and Viva South Georgia !
Where as, in the Arctic, the Polar Bears have eaten all the penguins and are now going to die!
big selling point is its really far away and hard to get to
unlike arctic where people can access it to catch em out,
turkeys ship of fools only got seen cos of getting stuck
1.5 degree c loss by 2032.
Actually, I’m wondering if they aren’t pushing the ‘Antarctica is melting’ meme because the know they WON’T be able to work the 2 degree by 2040 meme. In fact, they already dropped it in Paris, going for an easier to reach 1.5
But it doesn’t look like we’re even getting that. So what can they do next? How about ‘look at all the melting at just 1 degree above pre-industrial. Clearly it worse then we thought.’
~¿~
Global warming is hiding in the deep oceans……the bottom of the sea is sinking…..now the land under Antarctica is sinking
….always some made up crap
Am I understanding that the added weight is actually pushing the ground down? I guess 200 gigatons would do that.
Maybe they should pump in some CO2.
I never understood this carbon capture scenario anyway. Wouldnt all the CO2 eventually make its way out of the earth where it was pumped into?
Not on a human scale. The massive SACROC CO2 EOR project in West Texas has been in operation since the 1970″s. It is closely monitored for CO2 leakage and no evidence of leakage has been observed.
that one might be holding but there was at least one that did leak
i see theyre hitting em with Huuge fines if they do
Ira not necessary for the CO2 to stay down forever.
What could possibly go wrong?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jul/26/africa-lake-kivu-co2-gas
http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2013/07/26/lake_nyos_killed_1746_when_it_released_a_huge_pocket_of_co2.html
It’s called isostasy. The crust is buoyant on the mantle so changes in weight or density will cause it to sink down or float up. Regional changes also cause isostatic adjustment, i.e. an ice sheet depresses the crust under it but causes the crust around the margins to rise as a forebulge.
Zwally is going to be blackballed by NASA. Oh, the horror!
Especially since NASA has a believer at the helm, a believer nominated by a solid disbeliever.
That guy badly needs to be shown the door. He’s a total fake.
Daily Caller links? They keep hijacking the screen to force me to watch ads. Any way to tell us the names of the papers so we can search for them?
Take back control of the content you don’t want to see on your screen.
…https://noscript.net/
It does seem more likely that if you have warmer water melting some of the ice that it would also cause more snowfall.
I believe Zwally’s data more closely matches that of Frezzotti et al which is based on ice cores. You know, real measurements instead of models.
Oops…thank you WashPo and NYTimes for the last hype pieces…
I guess the science isn’t settled.
Am I the only one who finds the juxtaposition of the acronym NASA and the title glaciologist to be irreconcilable?
Satellites with ice penetrating radar altimeters are currently the best means for glaciologists to monitor ice sheets over large areas. Strange—but inevitable—bedfellows.
Then again, land surveyors have taken a real liking to GPS satellites.
That measures the tops of the ice but it does nothing to determine the bottom.
The temperature of the ice is just plain cold. The ice accumulation is on the top and the ice loss is at the edges. Ice accumulates the most in warm times when it snows more ice depletes in cold times when it snows less. Ice flows fastest when volume and weight are the most and ice flows the slowest when volume and weight are the least.
Oceans are a best indicator, when oceans are warm and thawed ice on land increases, when oceans are cold and frozen ice on land decreases. Ice Core Data does prove this to be true!
I wonder whether there has been a shift in the winds in the West Antarctic like there was in the Arctic.
Yes there has been a major shift in surface winds in that region. It started around 26 months ago, and continues currently to affect the entire southern reaches. The net result, imo, is one of continued cooling mainly of the oceans surface.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-83.23,-39.22,672/loc=-85.480,-40.647
1 out of 80?
When told of pamphlet critical of his theory of relativity entitled ‘100 Authors against Einstein’, Einstein replied: “100? Why 100? If I were wrong, one would be enough”.
1 paper for ice mass increasing and 1 paper for ice mass loss.
Even odds…. Sounds like a debate to me, not a con-sensus.
Zwally, the denier.Are you ready to denigrate?
1 vs 80 you mean?
The only one working with ICESAT data. Which are fairly immune to GIA errors. The others use GRACE data. Which are not significantly different from zero, so you get to chose your own result depending on what GIA adjustment you use.
“So, why is there such a big difference between Zwally’s research and what 80 scientists recently published in the journal Nature?”
Because Jay Zwally has integrity?
Because Jay Zwally is a real scientist?
The weight of the 80 scientists affected the isostatic adjustment during their summer junkets. See? May I now have a grant?
Dr. Zwally has an impressive resume (https://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/sed/bio/h.j.zwally ) and has been at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center since 1974. With such tenure (and over 130 research publications in glaciology, climate and ice science, and physics), he likely is not very concerned about job security.
Conversely, it’s not hard to imagine that more than a few (most?) of the “80 scientists” who submitted the group paper to Nature are looking for continuing or even increased job funding.
The old adage stays true: “Follow the money.”
In order to get the quantity of names, which they believe will give it credence, there will be brand new entrants from the NCAR, Potsdam and UEA Climate Scientist greenhouses.
the 80 scientists should be censored for their collusion in agreeing to publish incomplete statistics in order to support the AGW hoax.
Different methods. ICESAT vs GRACE. Actually GRACE data are probably more precise, but they are completely dependent on GIA, which is almost pure guesswork.
“Actually GRACE data are probably more precise, but they are completely dependent on GIA [Glacial Isostatic Adjustment], which is almost pure guesswork.”
Giving Climate Charlatans discretion = CAGW
Thanks for pointing out that important distinction between using ICESAT and GRACE. 🙂
In some cases GIA is supported by GPS data. However, it’s still dependent on assumptions about the deglaciation history and the rheology of the crust and upper mantle. It may not be pure guesswork… but it’s close… Definitely a SWAG.
Ultimately, the assertions of Antarctic glacial mass balance gains and/or losses are minuscule compared to the mass and volume of the ice sheet and well within a reasonable margin of error.
The problem in Antarctica is that GPS data is scarce, and that none of the GIA models fit the data there is. The models with the least ice-loss tend to have the best fit.
And in particular there are no GPS data for inland East Antarctica – there is no exposed bedrock.
Even if the GPS coverage was “rock solid,” there would still be this issues of deglaciation history and rheology,,, Both of which are less constrained in Anarctica than they are in the Northern Hemisphere. That’s why I call it a SWAG, particularly in Antarctica.
With “rock-solid” GPS data you wouldn’t have to worry about history and rheology, since you would know the current GIA, never mind why it is what it is. However it can never be “rock-solid” for an ice-cap, since there is by definition no exposed bedrock.
When 80 scientists publish something, that is not 80 opinions that agree, that is One or a Few that call on the rest for their consensus rubber stamp. They get kicked out of the consensus if they do not sign, they don’t need to read it even, they all already know the consensus position. I have seen the inside of some of those groups, only a very few even care what they are agreeing to.
Cool …. but let’s hope it’s not a symptom of global cooling onset.
Advancing mile high glaciers are unhealthy for children and other living things.
Men missing at the glacier – women and children hardest hit.
Ice growth in East Antarctica is actually a sign of warming climate, as empirical based research has shown that the EAIS is out of phase with the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets.
However ice ages are synchronous between the hemispheres.
Points to Zwally for having guts to publish something that contrarian.
It takes time to reach a consensus, though. How much this affects on the closure problem?
Is it hammer down, or hammer down the water well?
If you read the AMRC “On the Ice” blog, the team from McMurdo spend their Summer campaign digging up power packs and adding 4, 7 or 10 feet to various AWS towers in West Antarctica. This would seem to be fairly persuasive anecdotal evidence of ice gain in a region widely claimed to no losing ice.
Quote: “This would seem to be fairly persuasive anecdotal evidence of ice gain in a region widely claimed to no losing ice.”
The only persuasion given here is that you misses glaciology 100 when they talked about SMB vs Mass balance or the location “ELA” of the shelf ice.
This won’t be reported by the BBC.
No. They are far too professional to publish this sort of doubt-mongering.
You’re right – the Beeb are professional Climate propagandists. They’ve been doing it for years.
Only someone as credulous as Zazove believes the Beeb.
Egads, how dare the scoundrels spread doubt in the one true religion?
So this scientist and his study is out to lunch? Ok then, I guess we can all go home and cower in our closed rooms. Fool.
“…doubt-mongering…” which boldly proclaims that for you this is 100% political and the science be damned.
We’ll see when the paper comes out! The BBC has reported on some of Zwally’s previous work: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4790238.stm
Hang on – I thought NASA was corrupt and their research not to be trusted? That’s what I’ve read here when other research from NASA scientists was published.
You are correct. Their research about the future (projections) is not to be trusted. Funny thing though, like the Apollo lunar missions, surface temperature records of the past vs. balloon data sets of the past vs satellite temperature records of the past can be cross-checked and verified.
Note the difference between verifiable past and the fraud against the future.
Nope, incorrect. When NASA papers that involve models – whether present day or future forecasting – are mentioned here, there are two reactions. If it is one like the one mentioned here, it is welcome. If it is like the recent one that showed a decline in Antarctic ice, it is criticized. Neither of these papers involve future predictions.
Well I’ll be, a substantive remark! I think lumping all into one group is not good analysis. Some here will respond as you say, but others (many others) explain what’s wrong with the 80 authors at Nature. The Nature article gets noisy press coverage, more coverage than the less-alarming Zwally. Zazy thinks that’s good, the rubes might just believe Zwally’s stuff (but doesn’t tell us what’s wrong wih it). Why not point out that Zazy is what’s wrong with the site? I don’t recall ever seeing this sort of balance from you or the other self-appointed site moderators.
Some comments explain why Zwally’s work is higher quality, some point to the uncertainty and lack of observational data. Plenty of substantive comments up and down that would cause an open-minded warmista to cogitate, even question his settled conclusions. Why not you?
paul courtney, you posted: “. . . to cogitate, even question his settled conclusions.”
So, do you have a pre-print of Zwally’s yet-to-be-published research paper—the subject of this WUWT article—that you can share with the rest of us?
I am not dismissing Zwally’s paper, not at all. It could well be the more accurate one. It takes time to deep dive the papers and compare the two. I am referring to the general tone here. When a paper that supports AGW and its impacts is posted, it is criticized even if it is paywalled and thus not even visible to most. And the converse for one like this, even if it is paywalled it is welcomed as evidence that we should not be concerned about AGW. To me, a better approach is to withhold judgement – either way – until the papers are read and analyzed in depth. But posted articles have a active comment shelf life of about 3 days on this or any other blog site, so that will not happen.
No matter the paper, do you seriously, I mean SERIOUSLY think we need to institute some govt directive to attempt to expand ICE WORLD-WIDE? Why? (tsk tsk tsk..)
Hey Tom, there is something between losing ice and expanding it. It’s called maintaining present ice levels.
You are quite right Chris. Many of the skeptics here do display a certain lack of objectivity when something like this post appears. You can’t really blame us; we are celebrating the fact that there are (at last) a few published pieces that provide evidence or interpretations which give a small counterweight to the relentless torrent of alarmist propaganda that dominates the mainstream media and the cybersphere – most of which is quite shamelessly tendentious – and much of which even takes liberties with IPCC5.
We also as a group (apologies for calling us a group – a group of skeptics is more like a herd of cats) tend to make the assumption that anyone getting something published that goes against the CAGW story must be very sure of his or her science and stand ready to defend it rigorously. Especially when the author works for a government agency or university that is dominated by alarmist managers, politicians or administrators.
You also need to appreciate that many of us are scientists, or scientifically literate amateurs, and many of our criticisms of published articles are based on substantive analysis of the contents of those articles, when they venture into our own areas of expertise.
“skeptics… tend to make the assumption that anyone getting something published that goes against the CAGW story must be very sure of his or her science and stand ready to defend it rigorously.”
Sorry but this is oxymoronic. You cannot be skeptical AND willing to laud at face-value something that confirms your bias.
One trait that no troll has, is self awareness.
Smart Rock, being skeptic is fine, but the readers here really seem to be AGW skeptics. I don’t see articles here about, say, a new cancer treatment, and then comments about whether the supporting research seems valid or not. And I’m not sure how an AGW skeptic can say they are more open minded than warmists, as you call them, given my comments above.
Then you aren’t looking at the right website.
I’ve authored many posts expressing skeptical views of hypotheses/theories regarding bolides/impacts, abiotic crude oil, human migration into the Americas, megafauna extinctions, etc… As have many of the other guest authors.
That said, most of the posts not directly related to AGW (or the lack thereof), are related to Earth, Space, Ocean and Atmospheric sciences (AKA Earth Science)… because Anthony and most of the guest authors have backgrounds and/or strong interests in various aspects of Earth Science. There isn’t much of an oncology cadre here.
What’s the percentage, David? 5% at best?
I haven’t counted them. With my posts… It’s probably 25-50% that deal with topics other than AGW.
Blind pigs can still find acorns.
You’re displaying a type of sophistry all too common in the world today, you’re anthropomorphizing an organization and throwing around blanket statements as if the organization is a single cognitive entity.
NASA IS an agency, it doesn’t HAVE agency. You can’t ask a NASA for their opinion on anything and a NASA doesn’t do science or write articles, people that work at NASA do those things and each one is an individual that is accountable for their own research and public statements.
That’s why more enlightened people aren’t impressed or persuaded when they hear things like “NOAA’s opinion is this” or “NASA’s stance is that”, because we are fully aware that those are organizations made up of people with an array of opinions and beliefs and that when such statements are made, it is really an administrator –probably the least knowledgeable person in the agency about the subject matter– giving their opinion. And many of us have personal experience with this, belonging to an organization and witnessing that organization releasing public statements aimed at giving the impression that all their members are in concurrence like their some sort of hive-mind.
So Robert, we can safely ignore position statements from any scientific organization.
I am skeptical of them all.
Whining about a lack of consensus in the skeptic camp seems to be all Chris has left.
Another logically incoherent post from MarkW. I’m calling out the hypocrisy here, a site that calls itself populated with open minded skeptics, but is nothing of the kind. You’re a classic example.
Fascinating, pointing out that Chris lies about what others have been saying somehow offends him.
You make the claim that lots of people here say something. I demonstrate that this isn’t the case, and from this little Chris concludes that I’m closed minded.
Then again, Chris has demonstrated time and again that he isn’t capable of saying anything intelligent, which is why he’s been reduced to random bouts of insults.
You better go get in your safe space before those antarctic ice chunks come flingin’ your way. It’s much worse than we thought. Turn off all power sources now, or else you are nothing but a hypocrite, alarmist, shill, dum dum.
“only estimates eastern Antarctic mass gains to be 5 gigatons a year — yet this estimate comes with a margin of error of 46 gigatons”
A classic case of the error bars crossing zero. Interpretation – we have no idea if its going up or down. But lets put out a scary headline about 3 trillion tons of ice melting anyway
Particularly when the GIA is larger than any assertion of ice mass gain or loss.
Errr…
“Reported ice melt mostly driven by instability in the western Antarctic ice sheet, which is being eaten away from below by warm ocean water.”
If the ice is underwater and being ‘eaten away’ surely there won’t be ANY increase in water levels as ice is less dense?
That IS how Ice Ages begin. Poles slowly add to Ice Mass Balance.
And this is how they end.
zazove
What if that Greenland mass loss also turns out to be an artefact of consensus among activists? Just like at Antarctica?
Or what if the 80 are correct and Zwally is not?
Still doesn’t change anything- West Antarctica has the world’s highest concentration of volcanoes, and they aren’t finished counting yet. So we could stop civilization tomorrow, doom billions to a cold death in the dark, and West Antarctica will still be melting.
Chris and Z are convinced that not only is science conducted by a vote, but it’s a good thing to make sure that those who don’t agree with you aren’t permitted to vote.
MarkW said: “Chris and Z are convinced that not only is science conducted by a vote, but it’s a good thing to make sure that those who don’t agree with you aren’t permitted to vote.”
MarkW is convinced that good science is only done when 100% of scientists or members agree on it. He thinks consensus = 100% buy in, which is not true. So, applying Mark’s logic, since we don’t have consensus on vaccines for children, best not to issue any guidance and just let all parents figure it out for themselves.
Have you turned off all of your fossil fuel generate energy yet? Why not? Fool.
I need it to reply to morons like you, tom.
As always, Chris can’t win an argument so he’s reduced to flinging poo.
As always, the only thing Chris has is lies. I’ve never said anything remotely close to Chris’s recent post.
You implied it. Tell us how my example is so much different. In both cases the majority of researchers believe in one position. In both cases there is a small number of skeptics, who disagree with the mainstream position.
Science isn’t done via voting Chris.
Being in the mainstream often means nothing more than you agree with the group that has bought the most scientists.
Good one. Do you want to buy this nice bridge I have out back? Only one careful owner.
Like all the astronomers who believed in epicycles for a thousand years? Or the robust US-led consensus that held out against Wegener’s continental drift for half a century?
Zwally is not alone as you were trying to imply. Frezzotti et al data agrees with Zwally. Based on real measurements.
https://flore.unifi.it/retrieve/handle/2158/1067243/192354/Frezzotti%20et%20al-2013.pdf
“Our SMB reconstructions indicate that the SMB changes over most of Antarctica are statistically negligible”
Or what if some of us are scientifically literate enough to be able to rebuke the Nature article on scientific grounds before the Zwally article was ever even brought to light? And consequently the disagreement is for the exact same reasons that Zwally gives. It’s almost as if some people can discern whether papers have merit by understanding their methods instead of just employing blind faith or blind rejection.
Get into your safe space now, turn off all fossil fuel generated power and whither away you pseudo scientific fool.
The mass of the Greenland ice sheet is in the neighborhood of 2,437,500 gigatonnes (2,600,000 km^3 volume).
Whatever your opinions on this, the above graph is simply a straw-man argument. People aren’t currently much concerned about how much ice remains – they’re concerned about sea level rise, directly related to the amount lost.
Then people don’t need to be concerned. Greenland’s contribution to Gorebal sea level rise is too small to graph… It ranges from 0.005 to 0.021 mm/yr.
https://www.nap.edu/read/13389/chapter/5
If the entire Greenland ice sheet melted, sea level would only rise by 6.5 m.
However, there hasn’t been a significant reduction in the Greenland ice sheet, relative to today’s volume since the Eemian interglacial, when Arctic temperatures were >5 °C warmer than the warmest part of the Holocene, 7,000 yrs ago.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/03/22/a-geological-perspective-of-the-greenland-ice-sheet/
…Except ee have been told by the “climate change experts ” that Greenland is melting dramatically.
And it takes dramatic melting to raise sea levels.
So dismissing the evidence that Greenland is not melting dramatically shows you to be just another “climate change” fanatic rejecting things you don’t like and unable to think rstionally or critically.
Putting things into proper context is a strawman argument – “What are things a cultist would say?”
Keeping a sense of perspective is what intelligent people do. Only those who are determined to create panics hide perspective.
So how come they often talk in gigatons and zetajoules rathers than annual SLR or change in temperature of the oceans as a whole.
@ B Turner …where is the acceleration in slr then?
I don’t know! I come here to try to learn, not argue (although that’s looking like a mistake). But when I see straw-man arguments cropping up, that’s a negative sign.
As near as I can tell, you define a strawman as any argument you can’t refute.
No one who has a clue is worried about sea level rise. It is a empty rattling vessel. The ‘big scare’ is ‘flooded cities’ as if buildings last literally forever and people forgot how to move a km inland.
Flooding New Yawk! OMG. NYC sits a lot higher than it did 200 years ago. All the south end was a swamp. Now it is well above sea level. Seattle: the main downtown used to be four ft above sea level. Now it is 20. Does anyone actually check these things?
It is a lot cheaper to truck in some dirt like NYC did than relocating 100 billion $ worth of buildings. Honestly, I am so fed up with yelling about sea level and ‘the collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet’. What BS. Let the temperature rise if it wants. Call me in 50,000 years to see how much of Antarctica is bare. Venus de Milo can walk faster than is needed to out-run global warming.
We don’t have any runaway warming, we have runaway warning, each day a new baseless, screaming fit about a thermodynamically impossible future. It is the true definition of ‘vain imaginings’.
How do these people manage to get their hands on so much money?
How much sea level rise would a 1% loss cause?
6.5 m × 0.01 = 0.065 m = 65 mm = 2.55 in
And you must consider sea level is not like water level in your bathtub, unless your bathtub’s floor rises and lowers, the edges move in and out, and the shell is capable of absorbing or discharging water.
Yep… 2.55 inches of SLR over 120 years would tend to fall into the noise level, if the ocean has tides and waves.
How dare you try to impose perspective on this discussion.
Don’t you know that only data that supports the alarmist position qualifies as science.
Notice the end date. The Greenland Ice Sheet grew in 2017….
zazove, that graph of mass loss in Greenland’s ice sheet has a very strange and distinct slope change from 2010 to 2013.
Did the Norse gods protecting Greenland decide to turn on the AC for the planet at that time, at the expense of additional ice melting? Or is there a more reasonable explanation for this anomaly (e.g., “Karlization”)?
And thank GOD they end!!
I love the way trolls cherry pick the time frames in order to hide what is really happening.
At that rate the ice will be gone in 93,750 years. The sea will be lapping at the door steps of the 93,840 year old Empire State Building.
I don’t think you realize how small…those big scary numbers really are
That would involve perspective, something that Bob says no scientist should dabble in.
Even if the East somehow “balances” the West, so what? Antarctica is a big place. If the West continues to melt at an accelerating rate, what makes anyone think the East will keep up. And the west is the concern because of the ice that sits on bedrock below sea level.
Because the West is very, very tiny compared to the East.
All of the West Antarctic ice sheet could melt, and only a few penguins would notice.
Better get in your safe space. What are you doing to make the planet colder and less habitable today? Fool.
https://phys.org/news/2018-06-antarctica-lost-trillion-tonnes-ice.html?utm_source=menu&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=item-menu
“The ice sheet mass balance inter-comparison exercise (IMBIE) is an international effort: a team of 84 polar scientists from 44 organisations, including both of us, working together to provide a single, global record of ice loss from Earth’s polar ice sheets. In our latest assessment, published in Nature, we used 11 different satellite missions to track Antarctica’s sea level contribution since the early 1990s.”
“In 2014 the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) published its fifth assessment report, which includes modelled projections of Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise over the century. By mapping our measured sea level contribution on top of these projections, we found that our previous assessment of Antarctic sea level contribution, which measured ice loss until 2012, was tracking the IPCC’s lowest projection. In light of the acceleration in ice loss we have observed over the past five years, we now find sea level rise from Antarctica to be tracking the IPCC’s highest projection. This amounts to an additional 15cm in global sea level rise from Antarctica alone by 2100.”
So what?
It would still require a physically impossible acceleration of Gorebal SLR to reach the upper end of the IPCC fiction…
And sea level isn’t doing anything today that it wasn’t doing already.
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/
Love that ruler! And all your other graphics. 🙂
Sea level rise and global ice volume. Neither can be measured to the degree of accuracy that would be required to end the debate. This simple fact explains why there is a debate in the first place, and why the debate is meaningless in the second place.
It is the practice of modern science to make bold and authoritative statements with every publication no matter how flimsy and uncertain the evidence, and then defend yourself with the statement that the evidence was the ‘best available’. If a scientists wishes to receive future financial support, they must produce definitive conclusions. “I don’t know” is not an acceptable statement following a period of expensive research.
Anthony Banton, the quote beneath the figure labeled Antarctic Ice Contribution to Global Seal Level invites the following question:
When accounting for the ice “melt”, did they discern between ice that was floating and ice that was partially or fully supported by underlaying land. If so, using what means?
Can you say “confirmation bias”?
I knew you could.
I can see a hockey stick with smoothing, without error estimates nor uncertainties, with badly marked x-axis but with a very artistic background.
I’m sure the Carteret islands have now sunken and surely are not inhabiting more people than ever before, right?
Who cares what their projections say? Especially when their projections are refuted by actual data.
So what’s your plan to make the earth colder and grow ice on continents dum dum?
Why did it need 80 scientists to come up with their conclusions?
The quality of any scientific research is inversely proportional to the square of the number of contributors. 1 / 80^2 = 0% quality
In lay terms, they’re trying to bluff with a bunch of doctorates.
Just like when good German scientists wrote joint papers condemning Jewish science, these good “climate change scientists” prefer to eork in gangs.
Think of Mann and his gang atracking Crockford.
Bad scientists love company.
There is no”i” in “team”.
TEAM: The Enemies Assisting Me
Little fish swim in big schools to spread out the personal risk, big fish swim in small packs to get things done.
“Zwally says ice growth is anywhere from 50 gigatons to 200 gigatons a year.”
How many minus Manhattans is this?
Would that be with or without the maraschino cherry or lemon peel?
So … the world is gaining ice. Why is the sea level still increasing? Is the sea level still increasing? If so, is the sea level increase accelerating?
I’ve always accepted that the glaciers have been decreasing for the last hundred and fifty years. It also seems obvious to me that the alarmists are exaggerating the amount of sea level rise and, therefore, the glacier melt that causes it.
Zwally’s announcement is wonderful news. I somehow don’t think it’s the last word though. Surely the alarmists will try to refute or suppress his upcoming paper.
We’re working at the edge of instrumental accuracy. The error bars are bigger than most researchers will admit. There are still unknown unknowns that can’t be accounted for. I’m skeptical of everything, even the good news.
So a thoroughly skeptical.
This is not the first time that NASA says the Antarctic wins ice in the plus-minus business.
Actually, this has been a consensus among NASA scientists since 2015. However, it will take some time before this ice gain affects the sea level. Because while the loss flows directly into the sea, the profit from the atmosphere is achieved. A different process on different time scales.
In the end, however, good news, because the Antarctic ice is basically land ice and if it grows again in the forecasted extent, it can only be good for the sea level in the long run.
When I posted I probably had this WUWT story in mind.
Groundwater is a known unknown as is subsidence. There will be unknown unknowns. The only question is how much they matter.
“a team of 80 scientists”
This is supposed to make it a better study?
We need quality not quantity.
Zwally’s paper will not make into the headlines as the Shepherd + 79 did.
Because the “headlines” of Soros and his brothers are dominated in spirit and in the dollar.
But truth has a quality like water, it finds its way through the finest cracks.
Otherwise the lie would have long been the sole standard in the world.
To make things clear, Jay Zwally is a consensus scientist except in a particular specific point. He is having a scientific debate on East Antarctica Ice Sheet melting. On everything else he is not only consensus, but actually alarmist.
As an example here is his prediction from 2007 that the Arctic was going to be ice-free by 2012.
2007 NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally predicted that the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012.
National Geographic. December 12, 2007
Al Gore withdrew the conclusion “Greenland will be ice free in five years”, after receiving the Nobel Prize — became very rich. Before that IPCC withdrew the conclusion “Himalayas will be melting by 2035”.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
When did Gore say Greenland will be ice free in 5 years?
Good point. It’s not clear exactly what the moron was actually predicting in his Nobel Prize speech.
10 December 2007…
https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/gore-lecture_en.html
Al either predicted that the “North Polar ice cap” would be gone by 2014, or he’s too stupid to comprehend what he read and doesn’t know what an “ice cap” is…
https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/glaciers/gallery/icecaps.html
If he wasn’t so brain-damaged, I would assume he was referring to summer sea ice… which is not even close to being an ice cap. Many people incorrectly refer to the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets as ice caps… and the Greenland ice sheet is in the North Polar region of Earth, but I don’t think Al Gore is that fracking stupid.
Just hearing ALGORE’s name makes me *shudder*, ick.
Blind pigs still find acorns.
Then super kudos to Dr. Zwally for having the personal integrity to change his stated position based on the most recent scientific data. N.B.: 2007 was more than a decade ago.
And yes, I’m aware that you are pointing to his 2007 position on the Arctic versus his 2015-current position on the Antarctic. But we’re talking about “global warming”, aren’t we?
Yes, he no longer thinks the Arctic melted by 2012, and unlike Peter Waldhams, he is no longer making predictions about that.
if he worked at JCU hed be on notice and be accused of uncollegiality
wonder what nasa will do?
would bet that not ONE aus msms site will mention, let alone run this item
oh Bolt might
and create a frenzy again;-)
“6 feet of snow in Labrador ‘unprecedented’ this late in June”
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/labrador-lodge-snow-june-6-foot-snow-banks-unprecedented-june-2018-atlantic-canada-newfoundland/104706/
Bet they wish “Global Warming” was real !!
All the scientists in ConsensusLand reported breathlessly of strange creatures in a faraway land all wearing tuxedos. The newspapers dutifuly reported it in blazing headlines. But then, one scientist took a closer look, and realized that the Emperor Penguins truly wore no clothes.
” Newfoundland’s spectacular icebergs are M.I.A this year ! ”
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/iceberg-season-newfoundland-and-labrador-trinity-bay-eco-tours-ocean-quest-tours-tourism-canada/102711/
…and not from a lack of ice.
Someone could write a thesis titled, “The Rhetorical Method of WUWT”. The important aspect of this method are:
1. If nine scientists out of ten find additional evidence that the burning of fossil fuels is leading to global warming, which is leading to climate change — give space to the 1 scientist who does not support this finding.
2. Claim that the findings of the one scientist conclusively refute the findings of the nine.
3. Or, if uncertainty cannot be dismissed, claim that the uncertainty is all in favor of dismissing the concerns about man made climate change.
4. Claim that errors made by climate scientists are proof that they are never right, or almost never.
5. Claim that the fact that climate scientists don’t know everything is as good as saying that they know nothing.
6. Point to fatuous or ill-informed statements about climate change by someone on the “alarmist” side as being representative of all people who are concerned about climate change, regardless of their scientific credentials.
7. Claim that the views of climate change skeptics are suppressed, even though the media, always anxious to avoid the charge of bias, bends over to give space to the views of skeptics, with or with scientific credentials.
8. Ignore the totality of the changes that are happening. Dismiss each separate extreme weather event as a fluke, which, considered individually, it may well be. Never commit the mistake of trying to argue that the totality of extreme weather events is a fluke.
9. Because it is not.
See my comments above !!
“7. Claim that the views of climate change skeptics are suppressed, even though the media, always anxious to avoid the charge of bias, bends over to give space to the views of skeptics, with or with scientific credentials.”
Surely you jest. Skeptic views are suppressed.
You are correct that the media is anxious to avoid the charge of bias, but that doesn’t mean they are not biased because they are. Liars are anxious to avoid the charge of lying, but they are still liars.
Someone could also write a thesis on The Use by Climate Believers of Logical Fallacies Including Straw Man, Consensus, and Argument from Authority.
Hi Jesse
Chopping it up into 9 pieces looks very much like the “Gish Gallop”
And not surprisingly, since your warmist position is similar to that of the 6-day creationists. That the fossil record can’t be trusted and the earth isn’t that old.
The geological record thoroughly refutes CAGW many times over, principally by showing no correlation whatsoever between CO2 levels and temperature. And also by showing a global ecosystem in vibrant health with CO2 in the thousands ppm, too recently (e.g. Jurassic, Cretaceous) for the “dim sun” to be a factor. No sign of any of the warming tribulation prophesied by CAGW.
What is your CAGW strategy in response to geology? Simple – ignore it. Take advantage of the ignorance and apathy toward geology and deep time in the general public. Or like Michael Mann, who says that no palaeo data can be trusted prior to 40k years ago. No ice ages, no dinosaurs for him – just a 280 ppm garden of Eden from creation all the way till the industrial revolution.
At least Christian creationists give the earth an age of 6000 years. For the church of AGW, the earth was created in 1850.
So hallelujah Jesse! Preach it, sister!
Point 1.
Even if Zwally was just 1 scientist, Jesse Fell should read up the history of lone scientists battling to get their views accepted before dismissing his views. For example:
“Press Release
5 October 2011
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2011 to
Dan Shechtman
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
“for the discovery of quasicrystals”
A remarkable mosaic of atoms
In quasicrystals, we find the fascinating mosaics of the Arabic world reproduced at the level of atoms: regular patterns that never repeat themselves. However, the configuration found in quasicrystals was considered impossible, and Dan Shechtman had to fight a fierce battle against established science. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2011 has fundamentally altered how chemists conceive of solid matter.”
Shechman was one scientist who went against not nine but ninety-nine or more, including a man who had won two Nobel prizes and who said of Shechtman’s discovery “There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists.”
The evidence shows that there are so many quasi-scientists amongst the majority publishing in climate science that real scientists often have their discoveries dismissed.
It’s hardly surprising if the incentives are right.
If you only reward claims of “it’s worse than we thought” with further research grants – guess what sort of papers will dominate?
If you find an area of the planet’s biosphere that isn’t “worse than expected” do you think publication will bring you fame and further research support?
The way incentives work at the moment is enough to explain the imbalance that you claim as proof.
So instead of weighing research papers, like you seem to prefer, try actually reading them and weighing the evidence, the approach, the estimates and the conclusions – that’s how real science is judged.
And someone could respond:
“1. If nine scientists out of ten find additional evidence that the burning of fossil fuels is leading to global warming, which is leading to climate change — give space to the 1 scientist who does not support this finding.”
When you find that “additional evidence” over and above what you have now, please let us know?
“2. Claim that the findings of the one scientist conclusively refute the findings of the nine.”
As men finally did Galileo, for example?
“3. Or, if uncertainty cannot be dismissed, claim that the uncertainty is all in favor of dismissing the concerns about man made climate change.”
Why is your faith more rational than mine?
“4. Claim that errors made by climate scientists are proof that they are never right, or almost never.”
When by the very nature of the task you cannot demonstrate you’re right, if it then becomes demonstrable that you’re wrong what else would you have me do? See #3 above.
“5. Claim that the fact that climate scientists don’t know everything is as good as saying that they know nothing.”
Taking action based upon that which one cannot know would be foolishness if doing so destroys that which one does.
“6. Point to fatuous or ill-informed statements about climate change by someone on the ‘alarmist’ side as being representative of all people who are concerned about climate change, regardless of their scientific credentials.”
Hypocrisy – your entire argument does this in reverse.
“7. Claim that the views of climate change skeptics are suppressed, even though the media, always anxious to avoid the charge of bias, bends over to give space to the views of skeptics, with or with scientific credentials.”
As in this example of one of the largest (if not the largest) media companies on the planet?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/22/caught-red-handed-google-search-suppresses-climate-realism/
“8. Ignore the totality of the changes that are happening. Dismiss each separate extreme weather event as a fluke, which, considered individually, it may well be. Never commit the mistake of trying to argue that the totality of extreme weather events is a fluke.”
What changes?
“…each separate extreme weather event…”
or the,
“…totality of extreme weather events…”?
Because in the absence of anything other than ill-informed, speculatory modeling, why is it not more rational to conclude that this is nothing more than weather?
9 out of 10 psychiatrists 80 years ago might have agreed that you need a lobotomy.
I always say… “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.”
Jesse Fell, yes, someone could write such a thesis and might even get it “published” given today’s standards, but if they did I assure you that the staff of WUWT and numerous commenters to the site would eviscerate it with calm, reasoned logic and reference to the scientific method where needed.
It certainly appears you haven’t spent much time reading at the WUWT website.
Jesse, spot on. That is a great list, and exactly what is happening on this site.
#3 uncertainty: there is this science-ignorant habit of assuming that any uncertainty means the viewer can look at the 90% uncertainly range, high or low, that comforts them. If successive record years were 0.05°C above each previous year for a decade, the trend is up, and no scientists doubts it.
This site points to the fact that we may not be able to know if 2014 was truly warmer than 2013, and a small group of people applaud because they think we may not be warming. Even when 2015 trounced 2014, they pretended that scientists were uncertain.
” If successive record years were 0.05°C above each previous year for a decade, the trend is up, and no scientists doubts it.”
Assuming you’re talking about the non-existent “global temperature”, the instruments don’t have anywhere near that kind of accuracy. Do you really believe such a trend, if it actually existed, would go on forever?
I see. So you believe that for the past five decades, each decade is not warmer than the last.
I guess satellites are out for you as well. What about global ice melt, earlier blooms, migration patterns, permafrost thaw?
5 decades is about 10 decades to short to declare a definitive trend.
Especially since the Earth is still warming up out of the Little Ice Age.
At 0.05C per decade, it will take another 20 decades for the Earth to reach the warmth it enjoyed during the Medieval Warm Period, and 60 to 100 decades to reach the warmth it enjoyed during the Holocene Optimum.
SO THE “F” WHAT? Good god I detest your ilk.
“If successive record years were 0.05°C above each previous year for a decade, the trend is up, and no scientists doubts it.”
Assuming such were demonstrably true, neither would I, who am not a scientist, doubt it. Nevertheless, absent other evidence besides a gradual, decade long temperature change, it’s only by faith that I would believe I had anything to do with it.
You don’t need to have faith in what an atmosphere is and how it makes each planet have a different climate. You also don’t need faith but reasoning that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. There are very few people claiming to be scientists who doubt the basics at this point.
“There are very few people claiming to be scientists who doubt the basics at this point.”
But there are none that understand more than those basics, else, there’d be no more talk of unreliable models, for example.
Therefore, you have no other option than to believe by faith when you believe that AGW is real.
Even the IPCC admits as much (emphasis added):
“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles will require the dedication of greatly increased computer resources and the application of new methods of model diagnosis. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential.”
http://ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/505.htm
I see. So the last five decades have not been shown to be successively warm.
I guess having the past few years smack dab in the middle of the IPCC forecasts is not enough for some people.
I give. You’re correct. CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, and the earth is not warming. So what is really happening then?
What is really happening, Alley, is the temperatures get warmer and then they get cooler in a periodic manner.
The temperatures warmed from about 1910 to 1940, then the temperatures cooled from 1940 to 1980, and then the temperatures warmed up again from 1980 to the present.
The warming from 1910 to 1940 is equal to the warming from 1980 to the present. The earlier warming period took place when the IPCC says CO2 had little effect while the IPCC claims the warming from 1980 to present is driven by CO2.
Two equal periods of warming. One supposedly not related to CO2 and one supposedly related to CO2.
But you have to ask the question: If CO2 did not influence the earlier warming, then why should we assume CO2 influences the current warming when both warmings are of equal magnitude?
Hansen shows 1934 as being 0.5C warmer than 1998, which makes 1934 0.4C warmer than 2016, which means we have been in a temperature downtrend since 1934. The current warming trend did not break through the high of 1934 so far, and is currently cooling so the downtrend continues.
That’s what is really happening.
“I see. So the last five decades have not been shown to be successively warm.”
The question isn’t whether any certain time period has been shown to be successively warmer than another. The question is, if it has, why has it?
“I guess having the past few years smack dab in the middle of the IPCC forecasts is not enough for some people.”
What’s enough for this thinking man is that the IPCC argues in its own documentation that “we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
Do you believe the consensus scientific opinion at the IPCC is wrong on this point? If you do, why do you believe them on any other point?
“I give. You’re correct. CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, and the earth is not warming. So what is really happening then?”
I’ve neither argued that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas nor that the earth is not warming. Rather, I’ve argued that blaming CO2 for any such warming is at best premature, and at worst a textbook case of fallacious reasoning.
If Jimmy isn’t at school today, is it rational to believe that he cannot be anywhere else but on a family trip?
As to what’s really happening, I would argue the evidence currently available to us suggests Tom’s answer is the more likely one.
Explain the cooling of the 60’s and 70’s.
Explain the near 20 year pause that will soon be resuming?
First of all I believe none of the ‘global sfc temp data’. 2nd of all, is the earth’s temperature (puke metric) supposed to be static? Why, when it never has been? TO YOUR SAFE SPACE, AND TURN OFF ALL FOSSIL FUEL ENERGY SOURCES, NOW!!
We are still waiting for the Earth to get back to the temperatures of the 1930’s.
*buzz* Argument from Authority! Did you see how she snuck that in, implying “scientists” say so, so it doesn’t matter what you think. Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, without it in our atmosphere this Earth would be X degrees colder (not to mention lifeless), but so freakin what? Even after the inordinate attention given to Global Warming(TM) for 30 years, we can clearly see that the so-called Global Average Temperature remained steady or even declined for 18 years while CO2 atmospheric concentration continued to increase at the same pace it has increased throughout the recorded measurements, so CO2 is clearly not the global thermostat you’re looking for (but I’m not looking for, the temperature will be what it will be). Drop it already and let’s direct research $ to someplace it will do some good!!!
Fascinating how the trolls have to cheer each other on.
I also love the way the latest troll just ignores all of the refutations of Jesse’s screed in order to cheer him on.
Oh we have some new trolls.
Ten out of ten believe increasing CO2 causes SOME global warming, including Zwally. But we were not talking about burning of fossil fuels, but Antarctic ice. Attributing the effects to fossils is considerably difficult when measuring the change is already almost impossible.
And you didn’t get the memo? Zwally wasn’t very happy with his results, and he can’t be counted as a skeptic. That he did not get a consensus result, was not because of lack of trying. And he ain’t actually stupid. The results also show that he appears to put science first, and not politics. His results are, to put it mildly, regarded as poisoning the message.
Now, you can of course say that this is one scientist against the 80 others that got with different methods a different result. And you can claim that the 80 must be right because they’re so many. But the fact is, a considerable controversy in the literature exists, and that is because it is freaking difficult to nail ice gain and melt rates that are smaller than 200 km³/yr over the whole continent, that happens to have temperatures around -20C during summer, and a kilometre-thick layer of ice. A Three Mile Island here or there doesn’t make an effing difference there.
In fact, 200km³ ice gain doesn’t make any difference. It doesn’t matter! Whoever told you Antarctica should be in a perfect balance in the first place?
I say all this knowing that Zwally may retract whatever he wrote on grounds he finds it seriously flawed. I don’t think the results make a lot of friends or funding.
I believe we have been assigned as a high school class project.
For an ‘A’ bring proof of how you lectured to the climate deniers.
And for an A+, define the term “climate denier”.
Is it anyone who thinks there is no such thing as climate on Earth (the literal interpretation)? Is it someone who thinks that climate can change without effects from human civilization? Is it anyone that thinks global climates (sic) may eventually become colder when they are now growing hotter. Is it anyone that thinks there may be causes other than human-originated atmospheric CO2, including natural causes, for Earth’s temperature increase over the last 200 years?
“If you can’t define something you have no formal rational way of knowing that it exists. Neither can you really tell anyone else what it is. There is, in fact, no formal difference between inability to define and stupidity.” — Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Someone could write a thesis titled, “The Rhetorical Method of WUWT”. The important aspect of this method are:
Someone could also write a thesis titled, “The Misguided Whining of Jesse Fell
1. If nine scientists out of ten find additional evidence that the burning of fossil fuels is leading to global warming, which is leading to climate change — give space to the 1 scientist who does not support this finding.
… because that one scientist is probably NOT parroting the other nine, who, oh by the way, are pals and have collaborated for years, sharing and re-enforcing the same errors over and over again.
2. Claim that the findings of the one scientist conclusively refute the findings of the nine.
That’s an overstatement. A more appropriate phrasing might be, “strongly bring into question the findings of the other nine”, ESPECIALLY if the findings of the one scientist were based on sound scientific methodology and use of real data.
3. Or, if uncertainty cannot be dismissed, claim that the uncertainty is all in favor of dismissing the concerns about man made climate change.
When is uncertainty EVER transparently revealed by your fantasized nine scientists? The one scientist has to dredge it out of them to even bring it to the table for a rationale discussion, while the other nine consider their faith as the overriding force of reason that should guide economic policy.
4. Claim that errors made by climate scientists are proof that they are never right, or almost never.
Again, … an overstatement. Or better still, … a completely false characterization.
5. Claim that the fact that climate scientists don’t know everything is as good as saying that they know nothing.
See response under #4. That’s three overstatements now, which reveal your drama-queen tendencies.
6. Point to fatuous or ill-informed statements about climate change by someone on the “alarmist” side as being representative of all people who are concerned about climate change, regardless of their scientific credentials.
Do you even know what “fatuous” means? If you did, then you’d realize how fatuous your statement #6 is.
7. Claim that the views of climate change skeptics are suppressed, even though the media, always anxious to avoid the charge of bias, bends over to give space to the views of skeptics, with or with scientific credentials.
All I can say to that is “ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!” — yes, maniacal laughter of disbelief that you could really entertain such a wild falsehood. Wake up, you’re dreaming !
8. Ignore the totality of the changes that are happening. Dismiss each separate extreme weather event as a fluke, which, considered individually, it may well be. Never commit the mistake of trying to argue that the totality of extreme weather events is a fluke.
It’s NOT a question of IGNORING changes, but rather a question of ACCEPTING changes and NOT trying to ATTRIBUTE changes to the WRONG causes. You fail to view the TOTALITY of the pattern that you accuse WUWT of doing. It is YOU who treat each separate extreme weather event as a component of a larger pattern of extreme weather events that DOES NOT EXIST. What totality? The totality of weather events is nothing out of the ordinary. What IS out of the ordinary is human interest to recognnize extreme events, to hype extreme events, to mass communicate extreme events at a pace and production clarity that has never existed before.
9. Because it is not.
No one here is arguing what you have just claimed. No one here is arguing that the totality of extreme weather events is a fluke. The PATTERN of extreme weather events is NOT a fluke. Look at the pattern, NOT the totality. Your view of TOTALITY blinds you to the actual PATTERN, which is nothing out of the ordinary. You exist in an information age that is hyper-aware and hyper-communicative about things that many people have never experienced. More people are in existence. More people live to see storms. More people build more structures that they can witness storms destroy. It’s NOT more storms — it’s more people and more of their stuff getting in the way of storms that have always occurred in a very similar pattern.
I might have added point 10. Think like a lawyer, not like a scientist. The point of this site is advocacy — to advance a particular point of view, and not to weigh ALL the evidence dispassionately, in order to point the way to truth. So use all the lawyer’s tricks — present only the evidence that appears favorable to your client, impugn the character of opposing witnesses, call to the witness stand an “expert” to refute expert testimony, and so on. Challenge the motives of anyone who claims to be motivated by simple curiosity — because we aren’t so motivated, so how could anyone else be?
“I might have added point 10. Think like a lawyer, not like a scientist.”
Because scientists shouldn’t employ the rules of evidence and logic in their analysis of the world?
“…and not to weigh ALL the evidence dispassionately, in order to point the way to truth.”
“ALL” the evidence your side can offer are models of possible future climate states, Jesse. If you have something besides the models, please advise?
If you disagree with the following statement by the consensus of scientists at the IPCC, why do you?
“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles will require the dedication of greatly increased computer resources and the application of new methods of model diagnosis. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential.”
http://ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/505.htm
Anthony frequently posts articles by warmists and has invited others to participate as well.
Like most trolls, you think proper debates consists of two advocates arguing over how fast CO2 is going to kill us. Even allowing other opinions is just proof of how biased you are.
It really is fascinating how hard the trolls cling to the belief that all of the real scientists agree with them, so they don’t even need to look at anything that they might disagree with.
If the nine are wrong, it only takes one scientist to disprove it. That’s how science works. Something you would know if actually knew something about science.
If we aren’t certain that CO2 is going to kill us? Why do something about it? We have proof that CO2 levels of over 5000ppm did not harm. So why all the caterwauling about 500ppm?
If the climate scientists made mistakes, then they aren’t right. By definition.
If they don’t know everything, then they don’t know enough to claim that CO2 is going to kill us.
Pointing out fatuous statements by major players in the climate wars is legitimate.
That skeptic views are routines suppressed is proven. Things like major newspapers having open policies to not print letters from those who don’t agree with the consensus.
Another troll who doesn’t want to know the difference between weather and climate.
BTW, the statistics show that there is no increase in extreme weather.
It’s just morons like you trying to claim that things that have happened before are all “unprecedented”.
“It really is fascinating how hard the trolls cling to the belief that all of the real scientists agree with them”
They fool themselves into thinking they are on the right side of the issue and don’t have to give the details much thought because the “experts” have already done that for them. That’s why you hear the “97 percent” argument all the time: It’s real easy to do and doesn’t take much thought.
In Alaska, boreal forests are being destroyed by warm weather pests. The trees in the forests have no natural defenses against these pests, because the trees evolved into their present form in a climate that was too cold for these pests. Evolution takes a long time — thousands of years. So, it is reasonable to assume that the parts of Alaska that are now welcoming these warm weather pests were cold for many thousands of years.
So why the change now? Increased atmospheric CO2 owing to the burning of fossil fuels is a reasonable explanation, and there is no other explanation that is at all reasonable.
And so with many other changes that we are seeing: warmer nights, loss of old ice in the arctic, shrinking of glaciers world wide, wildfires are higher altitudes that ever known before, etc. The warming behind all this could be the result of something natural — but what is this natural thing? The only comprehensive, scientifically grounded explanation is the increase in atmospheric CO2 resulting from the burning of fossil fuels.
“So why the change now? Increased atmospheric CO2 owing to the burning of fossil fuels is a reasonable explanation, and there is no other explanation that is at all reasonable.”
Except that what you’ve done here is presuppose your conclusion in your premise. This can’t be a reasonable argument because it is fallacious reasoning:
http://www.txstate.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/Begging-the-Question.html
“The warming behind all this could be the result of something natural — but what is this natural thing?”
Glad to hear your at least willing to entertain the possibility. We just don’t know yet, because we just don’t know enough about the climate system. Was past warming due to CO2 as well?
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/global-warming/mid-holocene-warm-period
I’ll ask you again. Will you ignore the question again, as all of those who believe you like you have so far?
If you disagree with the following statement by the consensus of scientists at the IPCC, why do you?
“In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles will require the dedication of greatly increased computer resources and the application of new methods of model diagnosis. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential.”
http://ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/505.htm
I was not writing about modeling, but about the changes that we are already seeing, such as the destruction of boreal forests in Alaska.
To say that such changes are most plausibly attributed to the increase in atmospheric CO2, etc. is not an example of “petitio principii”, as you charge. It is to say that the AGW thesis is supported by solid physics and atmospheric science, whereas the invocation of cycles of nature or something else, anything else, is guesswork.
Man, I’d hate to be you. You must never enjoy anything. Do you wear a grey hair suit by chance?
Actual measurements of actual temperatures show that the amount of warming is minor.
Regardless, you haven’t shown that even this tiny amount of warming was caused by CO2.
Abject nonsense.
Alaska’s boreal forest covers most of NOAA NCDC’s three interior climate divisions and part of the North Slope division…
Boldt et al., 2015 discussed a Holocene summer temperature reconstruction from Lake Kurupu, which lies on the boundary of the North Slope and Central Interior divisions.
Boldt et al., found that the period from 3.0–2.9 ka BP was 3.0 °C warmer than the reference period (1961-1990)…
http://www.glyfac.buffalo.edu/Faculty/briner/buf/pubs/Boldt_et_al_2015.pdf
Summer temperature anomalies (3-yr avg) for the North Slope and Central Interior divisions…
The Central Interior has been generally near the 1961-1990 mean (+/-1 °C).
North Slope and Central Interior anomalies plotted at same scale (inside red oval) and resolution as Holocene reconstruction…
The climate of Alaska’s boreal forest isn’t behaving any differently now than it has for the past 5,000 years.
Wow nice, thanks for your time and effort!
TO THE SAFE ROOM WITH YOU. TURN OFF ALL FOSSIL FUELED ENERGY SOURCES AND STOP USING, CONSUMING ANYTHING REMOTELY ASSOCIATED. WE MUST DRIVE THE PLANET COLDER AND GROW CONTINENTAL ICE SHEETS FOR THE GOOD OF….
Hypocrite.
I believe Jesse Fell off the banana boat yesterday.
Stick around. You won’t find a consensus here!
A timely update in view of recent alarms.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2018/06/14/blinded-by-antarctica-reports/
I wish someone would investigate and publish the financial incentives of every alarmist pushing fake data and every big business & NGO promoting AGW. Big oil, for instance – the ‘useful idiots’ I know have [had] no clue beyond the Koch Bros.
It’s gaining sea ice but losing land ice. That’s what causes sea level rise and that’s what’s important.
Nope, no gain in land ice. Hence, no rise in sea level. Sea ice is irrelevant to sea level changes.
I don’t care a wit about it. It’s meaningless in my life and yours. Fool
“So what?”
Just that this article appears to be about one man’s take on the science.
I posted an alternative that is the product of 84.
That’s what.
Claiming it is one person is just another lie. Why do people continue to ignore Frezzotti et al?
“Our SMB reconstructions indicate that the SMB changes over most of Antarctica are statistically negligible”
Pretty much exactly what Zwally is seeing.
“Claiming it is one person is just another lie. ”
What I said ….
“Just that THIS ARTICLE appears to be about one man’s take on the science.”
So, are you saying that scientific fact is established based on polling/voting numbers . . . basically, whatever theory has the largest consensus?
I guess I missed that being a keystone of the scientific method.
Alarmists are pseudo in their science, so that’s the reason.
These guys can make an estimate of any damn thing they want (Glacial Isostatic Adjustment) but the fact is, they DO NOT KNOW, and they HAVE NOT MEASURED. When the human signal for climate change equals the human adjustment signal, which I think is very much the case today, then the human climate scientists have lost the script. They should try to be productive by getting new jobs in the private sector, making widgets
“… they HAVE NOT MEASURED”
“Satellites launched by the European Space Agency and NASA allow scientists to monitor changes in ice height, ice velocity and ice mass through changes in Earth’s gravity field. Each of these satellites provide an independent way to measure Antarctica’s past contribution to sea level rise.”
How can satellites “measure Antarctica’s PAST contribution to sea level rise.” ?
They don’t.
The ice cores, however, can allow for reconstruction of ice accumulation for the past 800,000 years. The ice cores inconveniently show that the EAIS has grown since the last glacial maximum, and is typically out of phase with the northern ice sheets in general. That’s why they base their work on purely modeled fantasy instead, like this study that modeled the EAIS to simply grow or recede based on a surface temperature inflection point (fig 3 B)
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/313/5786/492.full
Of course they assume that every difference they measure, must be caused by changes in the ice.
Earth warming, sea levels rising, warm records outpacing cold records by more than 2:1, CO2 rising, sea levels rising…
And here we are discussing the possibility that one pole may or may not be losing total ice because of one study. Possible, and let’s assume this one report is true, because it could be. That’s fine.
So what? We are still left with a warming planet and an overall loss of global ice. We are left with rising sea levels. And we are clearly setting global warming records, whether you look at all records, El Nino year records, La Nina year records, rural areas, urban areas, the very best ground stations, satellite data, etc.
Where does your post prove that it is caused by Humans ??
Are you seriously thinking that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, or that we are not responsible for the increase?
CO2 in the past has been over 6.000 PPM and no “catastrophe” happened !! Explain that little Grasshopper !!! What you fail to understand is that most comments here
reflect the knowledge that CAGW does not exist !! The world will not end tomorrow…or next year..or the next century due to Humans driving SUV’s !!
Since man has been on earth, what is the highest concentration of CO2?
I’m not concerned about billions of years when 100,000s of years will suffice. The planet will survive, we will survive, it’s just going to be really expensive to move cities and farmland.
I just love it when trolls proclaim that CO2 behaves differently now compared to the past, because mankind exists now.
If 6000ppm did not cause the catastrophes that keep your panties in such a twist, why do you believe that 500ppm is going to?
Duh, because solar irradiance was lower then.
Chris, only by a few tenths of a percent, if that much.
Do you really believe that the human race could exist with 6000 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere? It wasn’t around the last time when the CO2 was anyway near that high.
Could we survive with 6000ppm? Easily. In fact survival would be even easier than now.
Why does it matter how long ago it was. It happened, and life thrived. That’s all that matters.
“Could we survive at 6000ppm? Easily”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
“There are few studies of the health effects of long-term continuous CO2 exposure on humans and animals at levels below 1%. Occupational CO2 exposure limits have been set in the United States at 0.5% (5000 ppm) for an eight-hour period.At this CO2 concentration, International Space Station crew experienced headaches, lethargy, mental slowness, emotional irritation, and sleep disruption. Studies in animals at 0.5% CO2 have demonstrated kidney calcification and bone loss after eight weeks of exposure. A study of humans exposed in 2.5 hour sessions demonstrated significant effects on cognitive abilities at concentrations as low as 0.1% (1000ppm) CO2 likely due to CO2 induced increases in cerebral blood flow. Another study observed a decline in basic activity level and information usage at 1000 ppm, when compared to 500 ppm.”
When it comes to anything related to CO2, Wiki is not to be trusted.
Beyond that, there’s not enough coal, oil, nat gas in the ground to get the CO2 levels much above 1000ppm, even if we burned it all over the next couple of years.
The carbon dioxide levels on submarines are kept around 8000 ppm. Few adverse effects are found at even higher levels, so, yes, the human race could exist at 6000 ppm levels, as long as that increase does not come by reducing oxygen levels, which is the primary limiting factor.
Marcus, ever heard of feeding the troll? Yes, me neither.
In your pathetic little excuse for a mind, the only possible source of warming must be CO2.
How do you explain the fact that during the last 10000 years, the earth has been warmer than it is today 5 times, and none of those warm periods were caused by CO2?
Some of us don’t need to rely on assumptions whether we accept a study or not. And some of us have at least a college level of philosophy, so things like more heat records than cold records relative to a 180 year average do not mean much to us.
Some of us have a math degree, and know that a 2:1 ratio of warming to cooling only happens in a dynamic systems when the system is warming on average.
Relative to 180 years means a LOT! In the first year all sites have records. In the second year half of the sites, on average, will have new records (picking warm or cold only.) Each year it becomes hard to reach a new record.
In a relatively stable climate, you would expect fewer warm and fewer cold records, but always in equal ratios. In a warming climate you expect more warm records. Philosophy has nothing to do with this.
Simple question…When has the climate NOT been changing ?? Tell me the year please !! The Earth is Approximately 4.5 billion years old so you have a lot to choose from !!
Some of us have enough intelligence to know how short a record mankind has when it comes to these temperature records.
That’s cute, let’s put the 180 years into perspective. 180:4,500,000,000 = 0.000004% of Earth history. Now let’s say you have a 1 mile long roller coaster that represents Earth History. The 180 year temperature record would represent a section of track 0.25 inches in length. Chicken Little might cry if the track is descending or ascending over this 0.25 inches and claim it’s significant and unprecedented, but those that have studied the history of the track realize that the track is always ascending or descending and has done so at much steeper gradients.
Fool. Icky stinky fool.
Alley
WE are setting global warming records? how do you know that > what about previous interglacials?
In the interglacial periods temperatures were occasionally higher than they are at present, resulting in the melting of the ice sheets (mostly Antarctica/Greenland), and a sea level much higher than today. Around the Cape here (South Africa) you can see the places when the water was in fact 30 meters higher than today and in those days the Cape Peninsula was just a string of islands.
Of course we cannot blame man for this …….., can we? For the past 10000 years (Holocene) sea levels have remained more or less constant and this is the period when man showed up on earth….. The recent increase observed in melting of ice in the Antarctic, IF TRUE, could simply be due to increased volcanic activity in that area. It makes sense to believe this if we notice what happens around the world with volcanoes on land?
Apparently, nothing that happened before man learned to walk upright matters, because the world works differently now.
Alley, you know what?
I think you’re in a wrong place. I’m here to smile on funny things, like a NASA scientist who gets a politically wrong result but is incapable of shutting up, or 80 scientists which get politically correct result and claim a doom to come.
Some humourless people like you telling that SEA LEVELS ARE RISING… that is not funny. We know sea levels are rising. You can hold the ruler in many ways and publish different numbers. The fact is, the sea level as I feel in my rubber boots, is actually falling here. Some people say it will stop falling any time now. My toes don’t see that. But even if it would, then where’s the reason to panic? People can adapt. People will adapt.
Last summer was cold. Last winter was partly mild, partly cold. This summer has been very warm, along the two warmest during my lifetime. But this may change any day. Next week will be rainy.
And I’m enjoying. Thanks to carbon (and hydro and nuclear), I have a working A/C. Be sure, that given right, I will vote for the people who make sure the price of energy does not rise.
I’m sure you would most certainly vote for rising the price, if it were possible. That’s the sad part with you.
Correlation is not causation?
What caused all the warming prior to the increase in CO2?
Crickets….
Wow, convincing. I better turn off my lights. Thanks.
And then there are the 91 volcanoes beneath the western portion of Antarctica. Co2 not needed here.
And they are indeed correct that much of West Antarctica is isostatically rebounding. This actually accelerates glacier flow, not to mention helps those volcanic necks grow and increase the heat gradient underneath the region.
This is exactly what I said about the Nature paper. When you start with a conclusion — that the icecap MUST be melting — and then make assumptions to fit that conclusion, it isn’t science. This is exactly what the Nature paper and their predecessors did. They give the wrong sign to GIA for East Antarctica, leading to wildly erroneous conclusions.
There is empirical evidence that East Antarctica gains ice when the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets contract, and vice versa, due to changes in snowfall. If the EAIS has grown since the LGM then the continent is being isostatically depressed, and there is ample evidence that this growth has accelerated in the past 2,000 years due to relatively high snowfall rates. If you assume that the continent is rebounding instead, based on laughable models that literally assume warm global climate equals melting ice sheets and cold global climate equals growing ice sheets irrespective of regional temperatures or precipitation rates, then of course your research is going to be wrong — grossly wrong.
Kudos to Zwally and his team for letting the data and evidence guide them to their results, despite being an alarmist himself.