From CFACT:
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (nsidc.org), ice currently covers 6 million square miles, or one tenth the Land area on Earth, about the area of South America. Floating ice, or Sea Ice, alternately called Pack Ice at the North and South Poles covers 6% of the ocean’s surface (nsidc.org), an area similar to North America. The most important measure of ice is its thickness. The United States Geologic Survey estimates the total ice on Earth weighs 28 million Gigatons(a billion tons). Antarctica and Greenland combined represent 99% of all ice on Earth. The remaining one per cent is in glaciers, ice sheets and sea ice. Antarctica can exceed 3 miles in thickness and Greenland one mile. If they were to melt sea level would indeed rise over 200 feet, but not even the most radical alarmists suggest that possibility arising due to the use of fossil fuels. However the ice that flows off of the Antarctic and Greenland called shelf ice represents only half a percent of all the Earth’s ice and which if melted would raise sea level only 14 inches, (nsidc.com).
Although Sea Ice covers 6% of the entire oceans at an average thickness of 6 feet, were it all to melt sea level would rise only 4 inches. If we melted all 200,000 of the Earth’s temperate zone glaciers sea level would rise another two feet. So total catastrophe can only occur if we can melt the Antarctic and Greenland. But the Antarctic is the coldest place on Earth. At www.coolantarctica.com calculations show the temperature would have to rise 54 degrees Fahrenheit to start the warming of that Ice Cap.
The geologic record provides a perspective on how climate impacts the quantity of ice on Earth. They have encompassed every extreme. 800 million years ago the planet was almost entirely encased in ice (Rafferty, J.P. Cryogenics Period). Since then there have been many extended periods when there has been no ice present. As recently as 3 million years ago sea levels are believed to have been 165 feet higher than today. While ice covered a third of the entire planet during the last ice age, when sea levels were 400 feet lower, allowing ancient peoples to cross the Siberian Land Bridge to populate North America.
Al Gore predicted in 2007 that by 2013 the Arctic Ocean would be completely ice free. In the summer of 2012 ice levels did reach all time lows in the Arctic. Emboldened by this report Australian Professor Chris Turney launched an expedition in December of 2013 to prove that the Antarctic Sea Ice was also undergoing catastrophic melting only to have his ship trapped in sea ice such that it could not even be rescued by modern ice-breakers.
The Professor should have known that a more accurate estimate of sea ice can be had from satellite images taken every day at the Poles since 1981. These images show that between summer and winter, regardless of the degree of summer melting, the sea ice completely recovers to its original size the winter before for almost every year since the pictures were taken. The sea ice has been stubbornly resistant to Al Gore’s predictions. In fact the average annual coverage of sea ice has been essentially the same since satellite observations began in 1981. However that has not stopped global warming advocates and even government agencies from cherry picking the data to mislead the public.
Africa’s Mt. Kilimanjaro has been the poster child for land based melting supposed to be caused by Global Warming. It did lose half of its ice cover between 1880 and 1936 before the major use of fossil fuels and only 30% more in the past 80 years. However the temperature at its peak has not risen at any time during these years above freezing (32 degrees Fahrenheit). The melting has been due to deforestation and the dry air rising to the mountain top causing the ice to turn directly into water vapor a process called sublimation.
Melting glaciers are another topic of the warming alarmists. Indeed they can choose to point to some that are actually melting, ignoring those that are growing or remaining stable. Why the differences? They are largely dependent on whether over periods of time more snow falls than ice melts or the reverse. They are a great place to cherry pick data.
The solution to public fear about ice melting and sea level rising is simply using common sense.
The post concludes with, “The solution to public fear about ice melting and sea level rising is simply using common sense.”
That’s a realistic solution to all of the nonsense spread by alarmists, regardless of the topic. Sadly, common sense is very uncommon these days.
Regards to all,
Bob
The whole article is devoid of any data or reference thereto. You can not combat the massive influence of a complicit MSM by simple, fact-free assertion on a blog post and appeals to common sense.
Also paraphrasing Big Al without a citation to add certainty which was not there, is underhand. IIRC, he did not state that Arctic sea ice “would” be gone ( ie with certainty ). It was one of the alarmist favourite “may be” claims, which MSM then use to promote the worst possible outcome to get clicks and sell copy.
Arctic sea ice was billed as the “canary in the coal mine” so let’s take a look:
ice volume:
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/cpom_arctic_ice_vol_mths_2019-2/
date of minimum:
https://climategrog.wordpress.com/arctic_min_extent_dates/
death spiral:
https://judithcurry.com/2016/09/18/is-the-arctic-sea-ice-spiral-of-death-dead/
According to Snopes
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ice-caps-melt-gore-2014/
https://onenewsnow.com/science-tech/2018/12/14/gores-no-arctic-ice-in-5-7-yrs-prediction-a-bust
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/12/10-years-ago-today-al-gore-predicted-north-pole-would-be-completely-ice-free-in-five-years/
Al Gore says…
According to SOME of the models…the entire polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice free within the next 5 – 7 years
” could be completely ice free” , thanks, my point exactly. People misquote what he said in order to claim he was wrong.
so “according to some climate models …. could be” . Right so we already know a bunch of climate models we can stop funding and whose authors we can stop listening to.
Having rules out the more extreme claims which have been falsified we get to keep those with less sensitivity to CO2 and realise that it is NOT as problem.
One big problem. Provide a list of climate modelers that have been de-funded. The only way for these climate clowns to advance their scare tactics and whip up the hysteria over CAGW is with modifiers: probably, likely, could be….it is a very long list but it is deceitful as they have absolutely no science based evidence to whip the public into a state of fear.
The worst part is they insert their modified science into the media echo chamber and let it bounce around for a few months, and snow become Snowpocolypses brought on by Global Warming (wtf?). Next the alarmist gives big campaign style speeches in front of large crowds where they infer it IS going to happen by conveniently dropping the modifier and suggesting that the “survey says…” based upon the model.
The effect on the subconscious mind for the passive listener is the same “We ARE doomed.” Truth and facts are irrelevant for the propagandists and once they work their magic truth and facts become flash points for the indoctrinated who feel their job is to defend the planet against the sinful “Deniers” We are indeed doomed but by evil doers with junk science not the climate.
+42^42
“Nonsense spread by alarmists”, how ironic.
“Summit ice cover (areal extent) decreased ≈1% per year from 1912 to 1953 and ≈2.5% per year from 1989 to 2007. Of the ice cover present in 1912, 85% has disappeared and 26% of that present in 2000 is now gone.”
https://www.pnas.org/content/106/47/19770
Glaciers elswhere falling of a cliff.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-glacier-mass-balance
Seaice falling of a cliff.
Memo to self don’t believe anything from CFACT.
Ever wonder why that first reference stopped in 2007?
Answer: the Arctic sea-ice area has been stable since then.
Bingo arctic sea ice area in 2017,2018 was essentially the same as it was in 2007 when IPCC had everyone crapping their pants about catastrophic run-away melting.
How could Sea Ice be falling off a cliff, I thought the Flat Earth model had a Wall of Ice surrounding everything…No Cliffs
perhaps I missed the Cliff Notes
Perhaps I should just look for a copy of “Flat Earth for Dummies”??
So where is the increase in the rate of SLR? BTW we’re in an interglacial Epoch.
Its deceitful to show Arctic ice starting in 1978, when the PDO/AMO cycle was at it’s nadir. There are proxies that show the oscillation of Arctic ice going back a 100 years. This oscillation explains why Canada could send a ship round trip through the NW Passage in the early 1940’s. In addition Amundsen states in his diary that the NW passage was open when he was doing his preparation for trekking to the North Pole in the early 20th century.
It also explains why the Arctic Ice has been constant/growing since 2007 and why we don’t have regular shipping through the NW Passage.
SMS,
I blame those deceitful people at NSIDC who deliberately launched a satellite in 1978
just at the moment of the maximum sea ice extend. Clearly they should have launched one
back in the 40’s so that they could show the increase as well…
There were satellite measures of sea ice prior to that but strangely they aren’t shown. Whereas global temperatures anomalies to hundredths of a degree are shown despite the comparator periods having a marked paucity of thermometer observations particularly in the southern hemisphere. It seems to depend on the confirmation bias.
Izaak, Maybe you didn’t read my posting carefully. There are proxies showing the history of Arctic sea ice going back to the early 20th century. I did not mention satellites. Please read carefully before responding.
We’ve been down this road before
https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/AlpineGlaciersDisappearing_shadow
Freak outs about Greenland are nothing new.
Drilling 237 mt. through the GREENland ice hmmm, up comes greens (grass, tree leaves etc, )
Interesting how you are only interested in the glaciers that are losing mass, but ignore the larger number that are staying same and even growing?
As to Kilimanjaro, I notice that you have completely ignored the fact that the summit hasn’t warmed. The loss of ice is caused by deforestation, not warming.
Note to self: Loydo has once again decided that propaganda beats facts.
MarkW
“Interesting how you are only interested in the glaciers that are losing mass, but ignore the larger number that are staying same and even growing?”
So MarkW you are saying the ice mass balance for glaciers over the whole planet is positive…. really? Reference please…. I call that BS.
That’s not what I said, however anyone who thinks Wikipedia is a reliable source for anything climate related, clearly isn’t interested in reality in the first place.
Check WGMS ETH Zurich, similar results confirming “call this BS”.
MarkW
…. so find us a link that backs up your statement that there is a “larger number that are staying same and even growing?”
I look forward to it.
Some advice for you Simon, do not hold your breath waiting for MarkW to post a link, or provide any citation.
Simon, MarkW doesn’t do links. He just asserts things without providing supporting evidence.
Good point, MarkW.
To me, Kilimanjaro glaciers are retreating from the top at the summit due to a combination of volcanic heat and sublimation, which exceeds the rate of replenishment from a decreasing precipitation. As summit temperatures over the past 50 years remained below zero degrees C with no significant trend, any increase in global temperatures plays little direct part in this retreat.
Hurrah…. Kilimanjaro isn’t melting, that must mean the rest of the planet is fine. Let’s forget the majority that are receding.
Except they aren’t. But who cares about facts when you have a planet to save.
MarkW
Nice to see you back. Got my link yet? Thought not. All mouth no facts.
Simon
Kilimanjaro ice not melting…?
Your logic escapes me as does the rest of your sentence- heat is well known to melt ice.
Ian Youles
I couldn’t give a monkeys about Kilimanjaro. I want a link from Markw that says more glaciers are growing than shrinking.
Simon
There are a few monkeys about Kilimanjaro – ignorance is bliss…
What, no nifty graphs of the addition of Antarctic ice? No associated articles linking all the carnage caused so far by all the sea level rise? (uh, none) No Greenland ice melt data showing it has lost .00005% of its mass? No graph of one bristlecone pine tree ring data point?
Memo to self — don’t believe anything from the lame-stream media and/or Loydo.
I see a red flag every time a claim is expressed in percentages. If I have a pie with 10 slices, and somebody eats a slice once per hour, the pie is disappearing at 10% per hour. But an alarmist will come along after 8 hours, and seeing someone grab the ninth slice, will proclaim loudly that 50% of the remaining pie has disappeared in a single hour!
How many people are still unaware that the 97% originally was calculated from only 75 out of 77 actual, carefully selected, people? To paraphrase Patrick Henry, “Give me numbers, or give me a break!”
Unfortunately, common sense as well as critical thinking are in short supply. Probably due to global warming caused by Trump.
Of any concern at all is glacier ice, land based ice. Sea ice is already accounted for as its mass is displacing water. Were it to melt, sea level wouldn’t rise at all.
If sea ice melted, then the sea level would be lower. The volume of frozen water exceeds that of the equivalent mass as liquid.
Good morning,
Regarding your article about polar ice , I have the following question :
I am ready to believe that there is more ice than the green crowd would like us to believe.
However : how is it possible that north of Siberia ships can sail and not in the past because of the ice ?
Thnx !
Eric Fasbender
eric@familiefasbender.nl
Hi Eric, although Arctic ice is currently at a relative low (in contrast with Antarctica) the Russian north sea route requires icebreakers to keep it open all year. Russia is building a fleet of a dozen or so, most of which are/will be nuclear powered. An example is the Ural which is reputed to be capable of 10 knots through six feet of ice, a remarkable performance if true and incredibly large quantities of marine diesel would be consumed, hence the move to nuclear propulsion.
The consensus (if you’ll pardon the expression) on these pages seems to be that Arctic ice will increase in thickness and extent in the near future, whether the icebreakers will succeed in keeping the route open remains to be seen, but the massive investment by Russia is an indication of the importance they attach to having an overwhelming strategic presence in the Arctic.
“These images show that between summer and winter, regardless of the degree of summer melting, the sea ice completely recovers to its original size the winter before for almost every year since the pictures were taken. ”
No doubt that winter is the bane of alarmists.
That claim that the winter maximum is unchanged is also untrue.
According to:
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
the maximum ice extend has declined from just over 16 million square kilometres to just over 14 million since 1981. There has also been a significant decline in ice thickness over the same time period.
Parkinson, et al, in J. Geophys Res. published on Arctic sea ice extent from 1972 (yes there were satellite measurements then). The 2019 maximum extent was actually greater than 1974’s.
Hi,
I am not sure which article you are referring to. I can find two that might be
relevant:
“Arctic sea ice variability and trends, 1979–2006” published in July 2008 which
states in the abstract “The 28‐year trends in ice areas for the Northern Hemisphere total are also statistically significant and negative in each season, each month, and for the yearly averages.”
or there is;
“Accelerated decline in the Arctic sea ice cover” published in January 2008 which also states in the abstract “Acceleration in the decline is evident as the extent and area trends of the entire ice cover (seasonal and perennial ice) have shifted from about −2.2 and −3.0% per decade in 1979–1996 to about −10.1 and −10.7% per decade in the last 10 years. ”
More recently she has published “New visualizations highlight new information on the contrasting Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice trends since the late 1970s” in 2016 which states for example that “Arctic sea-ice extents logged 75 monthly record lows since 1986, zero record highs.” and “The Arctic decreases are so definitive that there has not been a monthly record high in Arctic sea-ice extents in any month since 1986, a time period during which there have been 75 monthly record lows.”
To have a ‘record low’ there must be a higher value, even if only the initial value that all of the record lows are calculated from.
There has to be at least one ‘record high’
Hi John,
The paper looks at trends since 1986 whereas the records start in the late 70’s.
Hence there can be zero records high over the time period studied.
ARCTIC SEA ICE 1973-1987: SEASONAL, REGIONAL, AND INTERANNUAL VARIABILITY
Parkinson and Cavalieri, JGR, Vol 94, p14,499…, 1989
“Hi John,
The paper looks at trends since 1986 whereas the records start in the late 70’s.
Hence there can be zero records high over the time period studied.”
So how does that compare to say 600AD, or 1000ad, or 4000ad? Let’s not think short term.
Hi,
Looking at the earlier paper by Parkinson published in 1989 compared to the more
recent measurements there appears to be some significant differences. The 1989
paper states that the maximum sea ice extent in that period was 15 million square
kilometres. The
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
gives a value of just over 16 million square kilometres for that same time period.
So I don’t think it is useful to compare a value from Parkinson’s 1989 paper with one
from elsewhere unless you can say why the values are so different. It could be as simple
as a different measurement area or different satellites.
So what. A record of ice coverage spanning a few of decades that happens to be coincident with a small decrease in total ice is meaningless. The uncertainty in the total ice will be at least +/- 10%, which means that the decadal trend is only on the order of the uncertainty. Meanwhile, the data was not collected by a single method or satellite and likely subject to many dubious ‘adjustments’ and cherry picked endpoints, further increasing the uncertainty surrounding projected trends.
When I examine the data from 1983-2008 and if 1986 was the last record high, 1993, 1998 and 2003 were so close to 1986, that for all intents and purposes those years were statistical ties for max ice. Furthermore, the decrease in ice is far from monotonic in either the seasonal max or min coverage. For example, there were large local minimums in both the min and max in 2007, but by 2008, the maximum extent had nearly reached the 1985 record and the minimum recovered as well.
More to the point, the concept of statistical significance depends on the bias of whoever writes the paper and what they are trying to show. In this case, Parkinson works at GISS, which is a red flag for alarmist bias. There are many examples of this kind of bias in papers being amplified in IPCC reports and by the media.
For example, they claim an ECS with +/- 50% uncertainty meaning that the statistically significant range spans a factor of 4 which is about as far away from settled than you can get. At the same time, they call the ECS and its mean value a ‘very high confidence’ metric leading to its ‘settled’ status, even as the low end of their range exceeds the theoretical maximum emissions sensitivity of 2 W/m^2 of surface emissions per W/m^2 of forcing.
They also claim that a change to the energy budget of less than 1% since the end of the Industrial Revolution, that just happens to be coincident with the end if the LIA, is a substantial change that we should be very concerned about, moreover; all of that change is considered to be caused by man even as we should expect warming and CO2 increases to occur naturally as the planet recovered from the LIA. Of course, the reason they have this so wrong is because of their wildly inflated climate sensitivity and the attribution of all change to mankinds CO2 emissions.
The logical failure of alarmism that led to a plethora of errors is considering that CO2 drives the temperature, while the ice cores make it undeniably clear that temperatures drives CO2 levels and whatever forward effect CO2 has on the temperature is completely overwhelmed by the effect temperature has on CO2 levels. Ironically, it was misinterpreting the ice cores that led to the formation of the IPCC and UNFCCC and once formed, even as the result of errors, massive bureaucracies are hard to reign in, much less get rid of, especially when trillions of dollars are at stake.
Climate Alarmists are flat Earthers
And I mean that quite literally, as you will see from the energy budget cartoons.
The geometry of the planet acts akin to a negative feedback, which means that solar irradiance at the poles always wanes, once the summer solstice is passed, allowing the ice to recover. This is why their predictions of no sea ice is always wrong.
Further, as sea ice dimineshes, there is more evaporation from the open ocean, producing more cloudiness, and this increase in cloudiness also acts akin to a negative feedback, by blocking out incoming solar irradiance.
“The solution to public fear about ice melting and sea level rising is simply using common sense.”
What we need is a whole lot MORE ‘common sense’ and a whole lot LESS “public fear.”
What is common sense and can it be taught? What events lead to more common sense and what events lead to less common sense?
I have my ideas but they are not set in stone.
Yes, much of it can be taught.
Even a modest education in mathematics will allow most people to do the back-of-an-envelope calculations needed to reject most such artifices. Similarly, a reasonable grasp of language will help rid us of many other verbal/written tricks.
But natural human suspicion, curiosity, and rebelliousness are the last ingredients. Fortunately, these need very little teaching. Every generation has these characteristics and they are clearly manifested in almost every young human adult.
So, it’s just Maths and English. Same as when I first went to school.
common sense is not based on basic numeracy. It means “gut feeling” ie experience. If you can taint the common experience ( like hyping AGW from kindergarten upwards ) then you change the results of “common sense”. It is now “common sense” that we are causing AGW and destroying the environment.
What is common sense for the old white males on this blog is not the same as common sense for FB addicted millennials.
Calling them stupid because they do share your self-satisfied level of maths ability is not going to sway anyone to agreeing with you. That should be obvious: it’s just common sense.
The army recruits young people, because they lack the common sense to know they are about to be cannon fodder.
“The army recruits young people, because they lack the common sense to know they are about to be cannon fodder.”
Did you happen to read the US Army recruiting tweet that asked everyone to post what being in army had done for them? It was absolutely brutal.
Actually, the army recruits young people because old people ( – with certain very rare exceptions – ) can’t do the job. Also, old people usually have jobs already and don’t need to work for the army, nor are they willing to put-up with the army’s famous Bravo Sierra.
I certainly wouldn’t.
Y.knott- that’s secondary to the original point. They are young and stupid, filled with testosterone and are very useful idiots.
If only we could force all millennials and gen z to serve, we’d have a bunch less
Matthew Drobnick, that likely is beside the point, and I realise I’m being a pedantic PITA, but “the Army recruits young people because…” just begs somebody to come-up and explain why the Army actually recruits young people. Oh and – for somebody to take a liking to the life (“There’s No Life Like It”) enough to excel at it and rise through numerous steps in rank to where he can lead the Army, requires a young start.
For this service, there is no charge – happy to help! 😉
If you can’t do simple math, you are stupid, regardless of the level of your intelligence.
BTW, I just love how Greg assumes that if you are capable of doing math, you must be an old white male.
PS: Is this the same Greg who’s always whining when people don’t use words the way he thinks they should be used?
Common sense requires critical thinking and that is what they aren’t teaching.
Fear like this?
http://news.trust.org/item/20190524104353-h2njj/
Which includes teenage poetry about the pole turning blue.
I hope someday that these kids will find out what suckers they were played for and become angry activists against these people. However, the cynic in me thinks they will become like most adults who refuse to admit truths that show themselves to be fallible.
Case in point. Look at how many people still believe the Trump collusion lie.
Heck, just look at how many people think that “we did not find incontrovertible proof he never done nuthin'”, actually means “We know he dun it and y’all need to impeach him, pronto!”
IAM – Common Sense and knowing what the numbers mean.
Although Sea Ice covers 6% of the entire oceans at an average thickness of 6 feet, were it all to melt sea level would rise only 4 inches.
Uh, NO. Since that time Archimedes found out the principle behind the law of buoyancy, it should be known Melting Sea Ice does not raise Sea Level.
And using NASA’s calculations what would be the effect on Melting Land Ice?
“(4) Calculate the sea-level-rise answers by dividing the water volumes determined in #3 by the global surface-water area determined in #1, thereby spreading the effect of the ice sheet’s water throughout the expanse of the Earth’s surface-water area. The answers are:
(a) (2,343,728 cubic kilometers)/(361,132,000 square kilometers) = 0.0065 kilometers = 6.5 meters for the Greenland ice sheet;
(b) (26,384,368 cubic kilometers)/(361,132,000 square kilometers) = 0.0731 kilometers = 73.1 meters for the Antarctic ice sheet;
(c) 6.5 meters + 73.1 meters = 79.6 meters for Greenland and Antarctica together.” 79.6m = 261.1549 Ft
http://pumas.jpl.nasa.gov/files/02_10_97_1.pdf
So by NASA reasoning we will get meters of sea level rise, but still have the same sized ocean (361,132 Km^2). No place gets drowned by the new rise, so why worry.
You need to account for the fact that most of the ice that melts is freshwater ice floating in seawater.
“Although Sea Ice covers 6% of the entire oceans at an average thickness of 6 feet, were it all to melt sea level would rise only 4 inches.” No. When floating ice melts, it actually lowers the level of the water it’s floating in. Prove this for yourself. Put a couple of ice cubes in a glass of water, then fix a thin rubber band around the glass. When the ice melts, the water lever will be slightly lower than the rubber band, not higher. Melting sea ice will not raise sea levels.
Put a couple of ice cubes in SALT water and let them melt.
yes!
Put a couple ice cubes in a glass of whiskey, then note the liquid level.
It will go down.
Ok, Ok, so I drank it, but still..
Correct – water expands when it freezes, which nearly everyone should already know. And, the weight of the ice is already in the water, so melting it won’t add any weight, thus no increase in sea level. But the volume of water will be smaller than the volume of ice was, so sea level would be slightly lower.
No John. The volume of the ice being larger than water makes no difference, only mass. However, if the ice were in salt water, the difference in density of salt and pure water would make a small difference, as the mix would then be lower salt content.
wrong. The only effect would be to slightly decrease salinity, thus slightly increase volume a very small amount.
As you say, what you are doing is slightly altering the density. The question here, is by how much, especialy considering that the Arctic ocean has the lowest salinity of the 5 ocean basins?
As per wiki:
The article does not provide enough information to assess whether the 4 inch total increase in sea level is correct or not, but in any event 4 inches can be regarded as de minimis. On a practical level, it is not worth the argument.
But some volume of the sea ice is above sea level, but the whole volume of sea ice turned to water will be below the changed sea level!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes%27_principle
I think she is including shelf ice that piles up in this estimate. Near coasts or in shallows the ice is thick enough to rest on land and pile up beyond the point of buoyancy.
She must have had some quantitative logic for her “…sea rise 4 inches …” statement, but at face value, it just doesn’t pass the laugh test:
The article states:
o Antarctica & Greenland represent 99% of all ice on earth
o If 100% of ice melted, sea level would rise 200 feet
o If 100% of sea ice melts, sea level would rise 4 inches
4 inches of sea level rise represents 1/600th of all the ice in Antarctica & Greenland; it’s just hard to accept there is that much shelf ice piled up in polar regions.
You might want to try adding some salt to your glass of water and then adding enough ice so that not all of it is completely floating. Now tell us what happens to your water level.
This is only true if the average temperature of the water is lowered by melting. If it is all near freezing, there will be no difference for fresh water.
Thanks Jolyon.
Sheri. Salt water makes no difference.
Her arithmetic is simple (six feet spread over the whole ocean: 72″times .06=4.32″), and simply wrong. The 6 feet of “sea ice” is not independent of the current sea level, shelf ice, salt water, or not.
> “The solution to public fear about ice melting and sea level rising is simply using common sense.
No money in that. What’s the alternative? I know hyperbole and induced panic. Now, that’s where the big money lies.
The tools of politicians bent on swaying the crowd “hyperbole and induced panic”. Unfortunately, the world has all too many of those types in place right now.
I’m mystified by this sentence: “Although Sea Ice covers 6% of the entire oceans at an average thickness of 6 feet, were it all to melt sea level would rise only 4 inches”.
If the ice is floating, by Archimedes’ Principle sea level will not rise, even by a millimeter.
I’ve no idea whether the calculation is correct, but, as was suggested above, the ice is displaying it’s own weight in _salt_ water. The volume of that denser salt water will be slightly less than the volume of the fresh water that the ice will become. Therefore there will be some increase in volume.
Displacing not displaying. Sorry. Autocorrect strikes again!
Did you consider where the ice came from and what freezing did to the sea level?
No, because (while obvious) it’s irrelevant to the subject under discussion, which is what happens when the currently existing ice melts.
Me too!
Phase transition alone won’t change sea level but there are several modifiers. Temperature expands, salinity changes density, etc.
“Temperature expands”
Ah, neat thing about h20… Water is most dense around 4 C or so, so temperature increase of the meltwater decreases its volume… What a crazy molecule…
When we see statements such as:
‘Sea Ice covers 6% of the entire oceans at an average thickness of 6 feet, were it all to melt sea level would rise only 4 inches’
confidence in the article’s credibility declines sharply.
Presumably the author included ice shelves that are grounded, but the casual assertion of nonsense does not help.
Sea ice is fresh water ice, the salt is displaced as the sea freezes. So yes, it does cause a slight sea level rise when it melts. This often causes confusion. You can deduce the reason with a very basic understanding of science, or use google if that’s too much effort!
MrGrimNasty May 28, 2019 at 11:37 am
Sea ice is fresh water ice, blah …blah …blah …
Six feet of sea ice on 6% of the ocean isn’t going to raise sea level 4 inches when it melts. Besides that, the displaced salt doesn’t disappear. If a volume of ocean water forms a skin of ice, and that ice then melts, the volume of the ocean water won’t change. If you think it does, then you believe in the miraculous creation of matter.
Like I said, it causes confusion, back to school for you!
Yes, but the change would be measured in single digit mm.
The 4″ claimed in the article shows a complete lack of understanding of basic science, because that is about what you get if you take 6% of 6ft.
Although Sea Ice covers 6% of the entire oceans at an average thickness of 6 feet, were it all to melt sea level would rise only 4 inches.
Huh? Sea ice is already floating! Were it all to melt sea level would rise exactly zero inches.
That was a head-scratching moment for me too, because ice floating in water, when melted, does NOT increase the water level at all. I was beginning to worry that my childhood knowledge was corrupt. (^_^)
Mr. Case, please revisit Archimedes’ and give it a rest.
https://nsidc.org/news/newsroom/20050801_floatingice.html
“In a paper titled “The Melting of Floating Ice will Raise the Ocean Level” submitted to Geophysical Journal International, Noerdlinger demonstrates that melt water from sea ice and floating ice shelves could add 2.6% more water to the ocean than the water displaced by the ice, or the equivalent of approximately 4 centimeters (1.57 inches) of sea-level rise.
The common misconception that floating ice won’t increase sea level when it melts occurs because the difference in density between fresh water and salt water is not taken into consideration. Archimedes’ Principle states that an object immersed in a fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces. However, Noerdlinger notes that because freshwater is not as dense as saltwater, freshwater actually has greater volume than an equivalent weight of saltwater. Thus, when freshwater ice melts in the ocean, it contributes a greater volume of melt water than it originally displaced.”
Anthony Banton
Sea ice starts out as salty sea water so making an experiment that starts out with fresh water ice is disingenuous and not good science. If salt moves out of salty sea water as it’s freezing into the unfrozen sea water making that denser, then the salt will also mix back into the melting fresh water sea ice when it re-melts. The starting point for this experiment is unfrozen sea water and not sea water with fresh water ice added.
Polar warming amplification, mainly due to water vapour from warming cyclic ocean behaviour, contributes to ice melt during summer months and the Arctic has above normal temperatures for most of the time. But during winter months when the amplification effects are weakest temperatures return to normal and ice returns. What will be interesting is when the ocean cold phases return (according to some experts this is happening already) – then the ice will thicken and last longer during summer. As for the Antarctic landmass – well that has different dynamics in play and has always been in good health despite all the alarmism. (Assuming good health = lots of ice!)
“lose” not “loose.”
Glad it wasn’t just me.
While we’re on the topic of glaciers melting advancing receding etc. one of the big lies in the world of “Climate Change” is the meme that when a glacier disappears, the river in the valley where it had been will dry up causing all sorts human misery. And that’s bullshit, it will still rain and snow, and the snow melt and rain water will still flow in the river. Here’s a recent headline & link from a well known activist web site:
As Glacier-Fed Rivers Disappear, One-Sixth of Global Population Is at Risk
Steve — actually, there is a problem in that valley. Just not the problem that is assumed. That glacier is indeed being “mined” for water. And someday the mine will play out. The folks in the valley quite likely do need a plan for the day when water runs short. Very much the same problem as using water from an aquifer faster than the aquifer is being refreshed.
HOWEVER, if the world builds a zillion windmills or half a zillion nuclear power plants and stops “climate change” in its tracks The glacier will presumably start to rebuild and water flow to the valley will be impeded NOW, rather than at some undefined future time. Best have a plan to deal with THAT before setting out to save the world then discovering once again that actions have consequences.
Nice!
And National Geographic took Al’s prediction as gospel, as evidenced by their 2015 production of a wall atlas map which has Antarctica as an ice-covered continent, but Antarctica shows NO ICE AT ALL.
https://s7d9.scene7.com/is/image/NationalGeographic/1020324
Antarctica #2 – – did you mean to write Arctic Ocean?
Correction –
the ARCTIC shows no ice at all.
I think that Al Gore’s sentence started with an “if”…
No, he didn’t say “if”. I remember seeing it. It was a bad video taken by someone in a crowd with Al Gore, in Germany, I believe. He’s been pretty successful at getting it scrubbed from the web.
It’s going to take the replacement of another satellite with differently tuned sensors for sea ice ‘measurement’ to decrease from its current extent, just like the last time a stepwise decrease in sea ice ‘measurement’ occurred just a few years ago.
Wow, this article has some serious nonsense in it. Apparently written by anonymous “Guest Blogger”.
Let me guess, Greta Thunberg’s mom is now in charge of WUWT and is making you look bad.
…Examples ?
Albert- If the “Guest Blogger”outside prediction is a 4” sea level rise, then is it safe for me to tell my brother not to sell his beachfront condo in Jacksonville? What other nonsense? 3 miles of ice..oh wait only 2.95? Elucidate, please be specific.
Here’s another one more recent and from less of an activist site:
Europe’s Most Important River Is Running Dry as Glaciers Shrink
The opposite is true, when the glacier recedes or shrinks. The flow in the river will represent precipitation plus the melt water from the glacier. The lies, misdirection and bullshit from the Climate Mob are never ending.
Interesting, my 2nd post never showed up. I love WUWT but waiting the better part of an hour for your post to show up is not fun.
(It was resting in the trash bin, approved now) SUNMOD
Ha, mine take 5 hours (after 3 years I’m still in the “penalty box”…lol
[For some reason, WordPress flags your replies, and sends them to Trash. A moderator needs to pull it out and approve. FWIW, you are not the only one. Something we need to address with WordPress. Mod]
Yes .What is going on ?
Something is seriously wrong .
Is this like shadow banning ?
Makes visiting WUWT a lot less pleasant ….
Maybe that’s their plan ?
(There are no “shadow banning” actions going on, sometimes good comments goes to the wrong place) SUNMOD
A lot of my comments don’t show up and nearly all of them take the better part of an hour to appear.
Nearly every comment I make takes between a few minutes and half an hour or more to appear.
This started may moons ago, and is only getting worse.
I am sure it is not any sort of shadow banning, I think it is a word press problem.
Same thing happens at other blog sites.
I still enjoy the site, and reading through the comments, but it has made conversations pretty much a thing of the past.
Another problem that hinders communication is the inability to post graphs and picture that show up as such.
The site is greatly diminished, that is for sure.
Not complaining, after all it is free and I for one would not know how to fix any of this, plus I seem to recall it started with a hack of the site that occurred a while back, and all sorts of functionality was lost, such as the like buttons etc, that had at the time only recently been added.
Nope: glaciers are acting as buffers, providing additional water during melt season. As their area shrinks, there might be a little more water during shrinking. With the lower glacier area in the years after the shrinking, the additional water from the glacier buffer is missing. And that’s what the linked article is describing.
Bullshit.
Glaciers are ice andby definition do not melt in Summer.
When they are growing, and is being taken away from productive use, and water is being locked upand made useless.
When glaciers are shrinking, it may be from any of several factors changing, such as rate of snowfall in the accumulation zones diminishing, increased sunlight shining on the glacier, or changes in humidity above the ice, either of which can cause sublimation to increase.
Glaciers are complicated, although they do tend to grow when it is getting colder and shrink when it is getting warmer, although this warming may be all at night, in Winter, etc. IOW it may not be hotter, just less cold.
When glaciers are melting, we are getting water back that has been useless for a long time, many years and possibly centuries or millennia.
And we are getting land back.
Another fact you are overlooking is that without glaciers soil forms, and holds water which is released over time.
Also, in places like the Sierra melt water adds to stream flow over a long period of time. These are not glaciers where this happens (Rockies too, and Cascades), but snow fields.
There is nothing good about permanent ice and frozen wastelands, no matter what you delusions tell you.
In many places there is neither snow nor glaciers, and the streams and rivers do just fine, plus there is habitat instead of dead zones.
You really have to have blinders on, or have your head in a dark airless place to repeat warmista propaganda.
You have to be a jackass to spout that crap to people who know better, and who know more than you.
Most people on this site have forgoten more that you have ever learned.
The article is drivel, and you are just plain wrong.
This year’s temperature trend in my Southern California neighborhood is alarming. In January the average high was 66F. April was 73F. Extrapolating this data indicates July high temps will be 82F, close to the NWS average of 83F. My alarm is that this trend suggests the world will not end in twelve years, rather in two, as the average high temp in my neighborhood will be138F in July 2021.
A.: Peter Wadhams has reset the goal about the Arctic Ocean ice.
Al Gore, from who knows where, made the claim for “completely ice free.”
In recent years skeptics have been having fun with the term “1 Wadhams” – meaning 1 million sq. km.
Apparently, suspecting ocean sea ice would not totally disappear, and not wanting to look too foolish, Peter made up the new metric.
B.: “ cross the Siberian Land Bridge ”
I think we need a new phrase, rather than the SLB.
While not important to this post, there is increasing evidence that people (also, or mostly ??) followed the coast. With sea level much lower, there was a coastal plain, of sorts, that provided abundant food (not found in the interior area between the ice sheets). With the coastal route those ancient folks could move south much faster than with the suspected land routes.
The size of Egypt……1 million sq km
ref “the Siberian Land Bridge” momentum continues to build for the hypothesis that humans crossed from Asia to North America before the Clovis, possibly bypassing the ice barrier in boats. The number of artefacts being found on the continent which appear to predate the arrival of the Clovis people continues to grow.
This link is to a folksy article, but it does contain links to the Science material etc:
https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/official-first-americans-werent-clovis-people-after-all/
Pre-Clovis by a thousand or two years doesn’t present much of a problem.
Claims that there were humans in the Americas 130,000 years ago are fanciful.
It would mean the first humans into the Americas were Denisovans… not a lot of proof about for that suggestion.
Yes, agree with your comment on the 130,000ya ref, but I’m still remaining to be convinced on the Clovis first theory. I’ve tried to find info both on the possible speed of advance of humans moving southwards through the Americas and the accuracy of dating of artifacts found on the southern continent. The combined errors on the “thousand or two years” as you put it might make the new thinking irrelevant, or it could be conclusive positive proof. This is by no means within my sphere of knowledge – are there any anthropologists out there willing to join in?
I am not sure why a land bridge is considered necessary.
People can walk across sea ice, or even raft on ice floes.
This may be dangerous and less likely that walking across land, but it is hardly impossible.
It may not even be particularly unlikely.
And people might have even made rafts or boats of some sort before it is recognized as being the case. Fossil record/buried artifact discoveries are not very comprehensive as a record of past events and possibilities.
John “cross the Siberian land bridge”. The paleoarcheologists use the word Beringia.
Not a “coastal plain”. Rather a series of islands and ice free peninsulas separated by straits and glaciers, rather like e. g. the east coast of Greenland today. The fiords in British Columbia are much too deep to have ever been dry land even at glacial maximum.
tty,
Note, I did write “of sorts.”
Seeing land from a site, across water, and then crossing is a path of movement. When there is no land in sight, the probability of crossing is lower, but not impossible.
Of interest:
getting to Australia
You don’t know but it is known. He got it from Prof. Wieslaw Maslowski from Dept. Oceanography of the US Navy, who predicted an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer by 2013, and said the prediction was conservative.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7139797.stm”
The BBC. December 12, 2007
He also published an article about it in 2012:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/234145875
Maslowski, W., Clement Kinney, J., Higgins, M. and Roberts, A., 2012. The future of Arctic sea ice. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 40, pp.625-654.
A complete failure already. That’s the problem with alarmist science. It is essentially all wrong.
Good find!
If common sense was an animal it would be the Giant Panda – it is an endangered species !
I thought it would be the Tasmanian Tiger, thought to not exist for the last 80 years or so but for some questionable recent footage
Do you know who Milankovitch and Eddy were, because if not then you should read this: The Truth about Global Warming – http://ibdst.blogspot.com/2019/04/fact-check-truth-about-global-warming.html
Response to several comments above. Ice melt and sea level
This is from 2005. Perhaps the numbers have been refined.
https://nsidc.org/news/newsroom/20050801_floatingice.html
In a paper titled “The Melting of Floating Ice will Raise the Ocean Level” submitted to Geophysical Journal International, Noerdlinger demonstrates that melt water from sea ice and floating ice shelves could add 2.6% more water to the ocean than . . .
JFH,
Submitted in 2005, and then…
Andrew
And then accepted and published:
https://academic.oup.com/gji/article-pdf/170/1/145/5920279/170-1-145.pdf
We are talking about a small increase (4 cm) and after melting all sea-ice which ain’t going to happen.
That paper is very dubious. The experiment he illustrates is completely misleading. He melts a large chunk of fresh-water ice in a small beaker of salt water. Result: the salt water is diluted (=becomes less dense) and increases in volume.
For sea-ice into the World Ocean this effect would be minute (particularly as sea-ice does contain a certain amount of salt). 4 cm is probably orders of magnitude too much.
Common sense excludes other viewpoints, thereby making it a form of prejudice.
Common sense is boring, therefore, not stylish, upbeat, spiffy, or interesting enough to excite.
Common sense is too practical, too mundane, too conservative — it does not go well with piercings, tats, and sexual fluidity.
To make the best fashion statement, therefore, avoid using common sense at all costs.
“Kernodler” !! — where did that spelling of my last name come from? I must have a screwed-up version of it in the drop down menu that comes up, when submitting a comment, … and no way to delete that version (oh, unless maybe I clear the cache and loose my cookies).
My last name is K_e_r_n_o_d_l_e
… although “Kernodler” is a funny alternative that could be put to some use ridiculing me
Please don’t “loose the cookies”! For the sake of the children, please!
Lol, that’s funny.
Robert, you asked for it:
https://www.google.com/search?q=kernodle+etymology&oq=kernodle+etymology&aqs=chrome.
I’ve been wondering why the 15% sea ice concentration threshold arose. Marine travel, perhaps?
A result is when we look at the Arctic Sea Ice data available at nsidc.org, their charts include areas like the North Pacific [south of the Bering Strait] and the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
For the purpose of monitoring trends I would have greater confidence in a metric with hard boundaries for Arctic sea ice in a region limited to, say… the Arctic Ocean.
Would anyone calculate an average winter temperature for Canada using an elastic boundary that extends into Colorado and New York just because “cold air from Canada” can reach that far south?
The 15 % treshold was introduced when satellite measurements started. It is quite odd, because traditionally ice has always been measured in 10% increments (the “Ball Scale” which is still used for maritime purposes), with less than 10% regarded as ice free. This traditional 10% treshold was logical because sailing ships cannot penetrate ice denser than about 10%.
One effect (perhaps intended?) of this 15% treshold is that it is not possible to compare pre- and post-satellite ice records, since post-satellite ice areas will be systematically smaller.
An example of a current canadian ice chart using the Ball Scale:
https://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/prods/WIS26CT/20190528180000_WIS26CT_0010601336.pdf
The solution to public fear about ice melting and sea level rising is simply using common sense.
Sadly, common sense is neither.
wow, so we are winning the Cold War again! (its a joke; laugh)
instead of bankrupting the Soviets by massive defense spending, Mother Nature is bankrupting Russia – and China close behind? – after they spent all those rubles on 50 ice breakers (China just launched a new one, and its HUGE). And Russia is re-opening military bases on the Siberian coast, and both Russia and China (and soon the US of A) are drilling test wells in the Arctic seas.
All a giant waste of money, ’cause Al Gore was wrong 20 years ago. well, I feel better now.
Roy Spencer: Why so many tornadoes this year? It’s not what AOC, Bernie Sanders (or maybe even you) think
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/roy-spencer-tornadoes-ohio-ocasio-cortez-sanders