North Pole notes
I always find it interesting as to why some stories get traction in the mainstream media and why some don’t. In online science discussions, the fate of this years summer sea ice has been the focus of a significant betting pool, a test of expert prediction skills, and a week-by-week (almost) running commentary. However, none of these efforts made it on to the Today program. Instead, a rather casual article in the Independent showed the latest thickness data and that quoted Mark Serreze as saying that the area around the North Pole had 50/50 odds of being completely ice free this summer, has taken off across the media.
The headline on the piece “Exclusive: no ice at the North Pole” got the implied tense wrong, and I’m not sure that you can talk about a forecast as evidence (second heading), but still, the basis of the story is sound (Update: the headline was subsequently changed to the more accurate “Scientists warn that there may be no ice at North Pole this summer”). The key issue is that since last year’s dramatic summer ice anomaly, the winter ice that formed in that newly opened water is relatively thin (around 1 meter), compared to multi-year ice (3 meters or so). This new ice formed quite close to the Pole, and with the prevailing winds and currents (which push ice from Siberia towards Greenland) is now over the Pole itself. Given that only 30% of first year ice survives the summer, the chances that there will be significant open water at the pole itself is high.
The actuality will depend on the winds and the vagaries of Arctic weather - but it certainly bears watching. Ironically, you will be able to see what happens only if it doesn’t happen (from these web cams near the North Pole station).
This is very different from the notoriously over-excited story in the New York Times back in August 2000. In that case, the report was of the presence of some open water at the pole - which as the correction stated, is not that uncommon as ice floes and leads interact. What is being discussed here is large expanses of almost completely ice-free water. That would indeed be unprecedented since we’ve been tracking it.
So why do stories about an geographically special, but climatically unimportant, single point traditionally associated with a christianized pagan gift-giving festival garner more attention than long term statistics concerning ill-defined regions of the planet where very few people live?
I don’t really need to answer that, do I?
27 June 2008 at 3:11 PM
Already the denial community is giving credit for Arctic melting to the sea-bed volcanic activity (eg: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/haog-fut062508.php). It would be great to have an analysis of that idea with actual numbers and science.
[Response: That’s hilarious (if unsurprising). I’ll see what I can do… - gavin]
27 June 2008 at 3:17 PM
Ah ! Finally RC moves from atmospheric sciences to human psychology. Much deeper, impossible to know, and still interesting.
27 June 2008 at 3:19 PM
Gavin, I’ve been hoping you would do a post on Jim Hansens’ testimony before the Congressional Committee on the 20th anniversary of his appearance in 1988. Would you consider doing so? I have found it to be somewhat bizarre that there has been so little follow up in the press.
27 June 2008 at 3:19 PM
There’s a very simple answer to why this got traction: Drudgereport.com. TV producers sift it continuously, then rush coverage.
You can find out more (and see links to my earlier coverage of Arctic sea-ice trends, and what’s going on with sea ice at the other end of the planet) in my latest post on Dot Earth.
More on how the media could do much better covering climate can be found in one of my two book chapters on the media and climate, which the radio show On the Media posted online.
27 June 2008 at 3:21 PM
My bet is that this year’s Arctic Sea ice extent ice will not fall below
last year’s minimum (4.28 or 2.77), because last year’s minimum was very
low in comparison to all other years of record (1979-current).
ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Sep/N_200709_area.txt
Arctic sea ice monitoring at NSIDC
http://npat.newsvine.com/_news/2008/05/27/1514154-arctic-sea-ice-monitoring-at-nsidc
27 June 2008 at 3:31 PM
Gavin:
I hope that I will not be pilloried by the community for being a part of this story. From what I can gather, it started with a piece in “National Geographic Online”, moved to a piece in “The Independent”, another piece on CNN, and then quickly grew out of all reasonable proportion. A positive feedback process. I’ll be the first to agree that losing the ice at the north pole this summer would be purely symbolic, but symbolism can be pretty darned powerful.
[Response: As we are seeing! We should perhaps tap into it more often.
- gavin]
27 June 2008 at 3:47 PM
I have a naive question: does the AGW theory predicts that the Artic sea ice should disappear first?
Another puzzling observation, If we look at the global sea ice extent, there is no long term trend:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
thanks
[Response: Yes. Arctic regions are expected to warm faster than the global mean. Global values are not particularly useful since they conflate the two disparate and out of phase seasonal cycles. Antarctic sea ice has both a larger seasonality and bigger year to year variability and so dominates the much more significant Arctic changes. - gavin]
27 June 2008 at 3:53 PM
Partly, all the attention is the result of some conflation. People have been hearing recently about the disappearance of summer sea ice at some point between 2010 and the end of the century. When they hear ‘North Pole might melt this year’ they might think the former predictions are being dramatically revised.
The symbolism is also important. Hopefully, this will help to discredit some of those who argue that anthropogenic climate change doesn’t exist, or that its impacts will be minimal.
27 June 2008 at 3:56 PM
Pat:
Many people betting on the arctic sea ice are using statistical analysis of the recent history. If, and this is THE big IF, we have finally passed one of the climate tipping points, then all past statistics are of no value in predicting the new dynamics of ice extent in the arctic.
27 June 2008 at 4:08 PM
The headline on the piece is probably why it gained so much traction. The very thought of Santa, his elves, Mrs. Claus, and rudolph’s home being submerged must be too much for Matt Drudge to take.
27 June 2008 at 4:09 PM
Andy Gates writes:
The mean global sunlight absorbed by the climate system is about 237 watts per square meter.
The mean global geothermal flux is about 0.087 watts per square meter.
Divide A by B. Discuss.
27 June 2008 at 4:15 PM
Khebab wrote 27 June 2008, 1547:
re sea ice: Mr. Revkin posted a link
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050630064726.htm
to a study on antarctic sea ice on the dotearth blog.
sidd
27 June 2008 at 4:21 PM
Hi Gavin,
I’m just trying to figure out how to spin the jolly bearded fellow if my children hear there is no ice at the North Pole this summer. Maybe he summer vacations in Antarctica?
By the way, with so much open water attracting heat in the summer, won’t this have a detrimental affect on Greenland and the northern permafrost?
27 June 2008 at 4:25 PM
RE: #1 Undersea Arctic Volcanism
Yep, I heard it today on Rush Limbaugh’s show (I don’t know where Rush got his degree in Climatology, but he must have one since when he talks about it he holds himself up as an expert). Something about a volcano as big as Vesuvius - and if it could bury Pompei it certainly could melt all that ice. He went on to imply that scientists were ignoring this because of their hidden agenda. Who needs numbers when you have detailed analysis like this?
Seriously, you have a great site and I would like to also encourage a “Real Climate” analysis of this red herring. If only the “denial community” would study it instead of looking for slick sound-bite retorts.
27 June 2008 at 4:31 PM
Has anyone considered, or studied the possible outcome of moving all of that mass (ice) and distributing it around the world? I know that there are predictions of sea levels increasing, but how will it affect the tilt and rotation of earth?
27 June 2008 at 4:52 PM
[Response: As we are seeing! We should perhaps tap into it more often.
- gavin]
I dunno. I’d feel, if this were tapped into, to be “not doing it right”. Using the same tricks as the denialists feels rather like a descent into their madness.
Then again, I’m weird.
[Response: The point I was making is that using themes and ideas that resonate might get us further than not. - gavin]
27 June 2008 at 4:55 PM
“Something about a volcano as big as Vesuvius - and if it could bury Pompei it certainly could melt all that ice. He went on to imply that scientists were ignoring this because of their hidden agenda. Who needs numbers when you have detailed analysis like this?”
Well, why is this volcano only having an effect now? Why is it erupting. And, to hoist them with their own claptrap, if this huge new volcano erupts, what chance for us, what with a volcano producing more pollution than humans have ever done over their history (which is wrong because that’s conflating ancient [100million year] volcano eruptions with eruptions today, just for those new here).
27 June 2008 at 5:04 PM
The story is featured in the Daily Telegraph, too:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5jz9fq
And brings out a few denialists in comments.
27 June 2008 at 5:13 PM
Regarding global trends in sea ice, I wrote this for “another site,” but no one found it interesting.
****
The longest analysis of satellite sea ice data is the Goddard Space Flight Center sea ice extent series, starting in 1972 for the Arctic and 1973 for the Antarctic. For a period in 1977 and 1978, there is a gap in the satellite data, and the National Ice Center (NIC) data fills in, which is also used to match up the different satellite sensors.
This is documented here:
http://www.atmos.umd.edu/~kostya/Pdf/Seaice.30yrs.GRL.pdf
The data is here:
http://polynya.gsfc.nasa.gov/seaice_datasets.html
Their most recent analysis ends in 2006, and must be combined with their previous analysis which includes the pre-1978 data (the differences between the two series during the period of overlap are miniscule). To extend it to the present, I used the NSIDC sea ice extent. I matched it to the GSFC data by comparing the period of overlap between 1988 and 2006 (which is the most recent/best “SSMI” data). To adjust the NSIDC data to match GSFC, multiply by these values for each month:
Month NH SH
Jan 97% 96%
Feb 98% 100%
Mar 98% 90%
April 98% 92%
May 99% 93%
June 98% 95%
July 97% 96%
Aug 99% 97%
Sept 99% 98%
Oct 93% 98%
Nov 97% 96%
Dec 97% 91%
If you calculate the anomaly based on the 1979-2000 averages, you get this (with moving 12 month average).
http://cce.890m.com/nh-sh-extent-1972-2008.jpg
There is a trend in global sea ice and it is down.
27 June 2008 at 5:44 PM
“Where does father Christmas live?”
“At the North Pole with his Elves”
Child of 1950: satisfied
Child of 2050: “Where do they live in Summer?”
Child of 2150: “He lives on a boat?”
27 June 2008 at 7:02 PM
Idea: volcano heated ocean to increase melt of artic ice:
Volume of water in artic (about 1% of world’s ocean vol.): that is, 0.0013 billion km3. If molten stone is at about 2000 C, and the heat capacity is about 0.2, than you would need 32,500 km3 to provide the required heating. However, to melt ice, you need far more heat so this number is very low.
In any case, just using this very low value, a cube of molten stone that is about 32 km x 32 km x 32 km would need to be released.
So, if each underwater artic volcano emitted 1 km3 a week (a rather large average flow) and did it for a year (about 52 weeks) you would need about 620 very active and extremely powerful volcanoes in order to warm the artic ocean by just 1 C (and that ignores surface cooling, in/out water flows and time rates that would require even more volcanoes.)
(Did math fast, so check)
27 June 2008 at 7:43 PM
Somewhere I saw a picture of three submarines parked at the north pole amongst loose pack ice. I assume this was at mid-summer.
27 June 2008 at 8:04 PM
That is a very interesting graphic on Dot Earth. It looks like almost all the old ice escapes through a narrow (about 200km) passage between Greenland and Svalbard.
I wonder if a surface barrier would be effective in keeping ice in the artic? That might be some low cost geo-engineering.
27 June 2008 at 8:14 PM
When I first started talking about polar cities as an adaptaion strategy for future global warming problems in the far distant future, say 2500, nobody would listen to me here or anywhere else. Now a few people are listening. But most people are still not listening. Can you hear the Arctic sea ice melting yet? Listen…
27 June 2008 at 8:43 PM
The basic reason I bet with stoat is that sea ice levels have a large amount of hysteresis, and 2007 guaranteed that any ice which formed would be relatively thin. Note that this works both ways.
27 June 2008 at 8:48 PM
I’m more worried about native populations of the Arctic like the Inuit, and how they can continue their customary lifestyles, than about jolly Santa. After all if he knows when you’re sleeping and he knows when you’re awake, he ought to know whether or not the toy shop is gonna sink into Davy Jones locker. For all its glorification the pole itself is less important than the entire NH region, close to and above the arctic circle.
27 June 2008 at 9:55 PM
re: #1
Although it’s not exactly the same, the “undersea vents near greenland” thing cam up a while ago. This nice, short discussion talks about temperature measurement techniques, and how hard it is to actually measure temperature rises from vents anyway, i.e., the ocean is BIG.
“Boiling the ocean” is hard work, whether as aa marketing strategy or in real life.
27 June 2008 at 10:18 PM
Whether the area around the North Pole is free of sea-ice at the end of this year’s melt season is not the important problem. The trend over the past couple of decades points toward a continuing decline in extent in the near future. Some analysts have suggested that all the sea-ice will melt within a decade, perhaps by 2013. The larger issues are: how much longer will it be before the Arctic Ocean is essentially free of sea-ice, and, once the sea-ice is gone, what will be the climate impact?
To put those questions into perspective, the U.S. CCSP claims “According to paleoclimatic records, there is no evidence of an ice-free summer Arctic during the last 800 millennia…”
Once the sea-ice is gone, there will no longer be a “plug” of multi-year sea-ice, which now limits the exiting flow of both sea-ice and water from the Arctic. When the plug is gone, there is little prospect of it re-forming, due to the positive feedback due to the albedo difference between the ocean and sea-ice. The resulting increase in low salinity water moving into areas which now exhibit THC sinking may be expected to weaken or halt this major component of ocean circulation.
My question for the model builders is, do your models produce a rapid decline in sea-ice such as we are seeing and what happens to the climate as a result?
E. S.
27 June 2008 at 11:05 PM
The comments regarding volcanoes in the Arctic probably relate to the Gakkel Ridge, where volcanic activity was discovered in 2001. It is worth keeping in mind that this is a slow-moving mid-oceanic ridge, and that it is under 3-5 km of water. The following short articles should provide some background on this issue.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/01/03/gakkel.html
http://polardiscovery.whoi.edu/expedition2/index.html
From the second article:
“Much to their surprise, scientists aboard the 2001 cruise dredged up rocks from the Gakkel Ridge that appear to have been chemically transformed by hydrothermal venting. Sensors on their dredging lines also detected whispers of warmer water, chemicals, and particles that are present in plumes of vent fluids that billow out from small vents (the emphasis is mine).”
If the Arctic ice sheet is to feel the effects of effusive volcanism from a depth of 3-5 km, it is not just a fairy tale . . . it is straight out of The Princess and the Pea.
28 June 2008 at 12:08 AM
Pat, you may be off by 1 million square kilometers or 2.
There is no sign of a summer cooling switchover http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/rnl/sfctmpmer_07b.rnl.html, although there has been a Low pressure where there usually is a High pressure system, at the same area where the ice melted last year mainly North of the Yukon and Alaska. The Independent story headline is a small gamble, there can be massive cloud coverage (occurring as I write) continuing from the usual great snow and ice Arctic summer melt, but I am quite sure the ice extent may be equal or less than last year come September 20. The biggest non story of the melt of summer 2007, is that there was a wide new area of ocean, seen from space, but never reported by any film crew in person, it was the most disgraceful, or biggest environmental press blunder in my memory. However, the North Pole
has world wide magnetic attraction, is a much more powerful media savvy area, than that huge area
of forgotten Arctic Ocean open water, I don’t need to hope about someone out there who will explore what its like when nothing but water is seen at the Pole. Reality is often forgotten at the altar of fame, albeit geographical…….
28 June 2008 at 12:27 AM
You say that what would be different would be the presence of large expanses of ice-free water. What’s a large expanse? 100 square metres? 100 square km?
[Response: The latter and larger. Leads of 10’s of meters open up relatively frequently. - gavin]
28 June 2008 at 12:42 AM
#11 Barton Paul Levenson
I don’t think the mean global geothermal flux can be a relevant measure when discusssing a volcano can it?
28 June 2008 at 12:59 AM
Why not listen to the pundits? I mean after all, conservative authorities like Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Beck, Malkin and others know far more about climate science than….say climate scientists.
28 June 2008 at 1:26 AM
While we are on the subject of the cryosphere (or at least the North Pole sea ice), I thought people might like to know that there is a new rag out:
The Cryosphere (TC)
An Interactive Open Access Journal of the European Geosciences Union
Co-Editors-in-Chief: Jonathan L. Bamber, Jon Ove Hagen, Peter Lemke, John Pomeroy & Michiel Van den Broeke
http://www.the-cryosphere.net/
First published in 2007. Currently two volumes.
28 June 2008 at 1:27 AM
PeterB (#10) wrote:
Be careful what you say about Drudge — this year at least.
28 June 2008 at 2:19 AM
“The mean global sunlight absorbed by the climate system is about 237 watts per square meter.
“The mean global geothermal flux is about 0.087 watts per square meter.
Divide A by B. Discuss.”
Well, thanks for the invitation.
Volcanoes are very localized. Sunlight is not. Average volcanic heat over the globe could be a very small number, much smaller than the average value for global sunlight, as it is, but this would not mean the inhabitants of Pompeii would be wise to conclude that a local volcano would be less dangerous than the sun.
Yes, volcanic activity will not by way of direct heat warm the planet much by comparison with the sun. However, as the Pompeians found out, large enough explosions can have huge local effects. Including, they could melt ice at the Pole, if they were big enough. I have no idea whether these particular explosions are big enough, and suspect BPL doesn’t either. But the comparison to sunlight across the planet is irrelevant.
There are other phenomena which are similar. Mortar fire, for instance, is on average, across a position, over an hour, fairly low in power. But within a couple of feet, it has rather unfortunate effects on bystanders.
28 June 2008 at 4:28 AM
The Telegraph also covered the issue under its earth section.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/06/27/eaice127.xml
They may have reported it first. Prof Peter Wadhams is even quoted, the bloke from Fred Pearces “with speed and violence” book fame.
28 June 2008 at 4:42 AM
The three regions with a most notorious sea ice area reduction in the summer last year were the East Siberian Sea Ice Area, the Chukchi Sea Ice Area and the Arctic Basin Sea Ice Area. It’s now June the 28th and the three above mentioned areas show the following INCREASES OF SEA ICE AREA compared to last year:
East Siberian: +0.18M km2 (+20% increase in its sea ice area)
Chukchi: +0.1M km2 (+30% increase in its sea ice area)
Arctic Basin: +0.2M km2 (+5% increase in its sea ice area).
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.9.html
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.10.html
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/recent365.anom.region.1.html
The article in The Independent makes its predictions based on the increased speed of reduction of the Sea Ice Area compared to last year. But this increase is due to the fact that THERE IS MORE SEA ICE than last year. And all the extra ice has to be in lower latitudes, where it is hotter. Therefore, it has to melt faster. No surprise, really.
Regards.
28 June 2008 at 4:44 AM
#8 The symbolism is also important. Hopefully, this will help to discredit some of those who argue that anthropogenic climate change doesn’t exist, or that its impacts will be minimal.
I think the effect is the opposite. Media says that there is no «ice this summer» and after the summer come the debunkers saying that there is more ice than last year (something we can expect this year). So who wins with this type of news? Only deniers!
Apologize for my bad English.
28 June 2008 at 4:57 AM
#17 Mark
Keeping true to what the scientific evidence shows is essential, breaching that rule would mean descending into the denialist’s mire. However for anyone involved in persuading the public, using examples the public can connect to emotionally is a technique that is more likely to work than any number of pages of dry scientific text.
Those volcanoes are not going to matter much in terms of the Arctic ice melt.
In addition to what you say:
The area is well away from the seat of action in the Arctic (Chucki/Beaufort Sea) where the melting last year was due to ice-albedo feedback: Perovitch “Sunlight, water, and ice: Extreme Arctic sea ice melt during the summer of 2007″ abstract: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL034007.shtml
There’s an ocean net heat flux of 3.8T Watt through the Fram Strait (between Iceland and Greenland) with 2.3T Watt through the Bering Strait, both into the Arctic.
See slide 8 of this 3.91Mb pdf http://www.ametsoc.org/atmospolicy/documents/May032006_Dr.WieslawMaslowski.pdf 2006 presentation by Maslowki re Arctic Basin heat fluxes.
28 June 2008 at 5:42 AM
With regards denialist insinuation that an ice-free Arctic is not unusual, thereby implying that the current events are not unusual.
From my reading such claims are not supported by evidence.
Scientific Evidence.
From Overpeck 2005 “Arctic System on Trajectory to New, Seasonally Ice-Free State” http://paos.colorado.edu/~dcn/reprints/Overpeck_etal_EOS2005.pdf
also
It may in fact turn out to be much longer that 800,000 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_shrinkage#Dating_Arctic_ice
According to Clark:
Historical Evidence.
1) Chinese Navy and the ice free pole.
This claim was based upon the book “1421″ by Gavin Menzies:
http://www.1421exposed.com/html/won_t_sail.html
As Tim Lambert notes with regards this claim: “if you are going to ignore the consensus view of scientists, you might as well ignore the consensus view of historians.”
2) Amundsen’s 1903-1906 navigation of the Northwest Passage was not done in an ice free NW passage.
http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/northwest-passage/amundsen.htm
British Library feature on the Search for the NW Passage:
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/northwpass/intro.html
Princeton University feature on the Search for the NW passage.
http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/northwest-passage/titlepage.htm
28 June 2008 at 5:54 AM
Re #19
The longest analysis of satellite sea ice data is the Goddard Space Flight Center sea ice extent series, starting in 1972 for the Arctic and 1973 for the Antarctic
So the longest analysis of sea ice starts just at the end of a 30 year period during which Arctic temperarues fell by almost 1 deg C. I take it this doesn’t bother you at all?
Trying googling William Scoresby. WS noted ” … a remarkable dimunition of polar ice” in … wait for it …1817.
[Response: Scoresby was referring to the single anomalous years - mainly in the Archipelago, where interannual variability is (or at least used to be) very large. Read the history of the Franklin expeditions and subsequent explorers (The Arctic Grail by Pierre Breton is very good) to find dozens of stories of random straits opening or not in summer. Variability is not the issue. Trends are. - gavin]
28 June 2008 at 5:58 AM
Off-topic but currently topical: I’ve posted a new web page to my climatology site:
http://members.aol.com/bpl1960/Miskolczi.html
It takes apart Ferenc Miskolczi’s pseudoscientific paper which is getting so much play from the denialists lately. I think I nailed his major errors, but I’d be grateful for any input by folks who really know this stuff. Thanks.
28 June 2008 at 6:00 AM
Gavin,
It is headlines that sell papers, and papers (or the media) that convinces people. Without catchy headlines, the scientific facts will not be read, even if the editor agrees to publish them. Because scientists, unlike the sceptics, have required that the headlines are 100% scientifically provable their message has been lost.
For instance, take what you refer to as “the notoriously over-excited story in the New York Times back in August 2000.” In it Dr McCarthy reported that there was no ice at the North pole in 2000. That report was true. But Drs. Mark Serreze and Claire Parkinson lined up to debunk it in “the correction” implying that open water at the pole was not unusual. Perhaps someone should have told Robert Peary that!
In that “correction”, McCarthy explained that the ice was much thinner during the journey to the pole, with open ocean there, not a large lead. However, Dr Mark Serreze stated “But there’s nothing to be necessarily alarmed about.” He doesn’t seem to be saying that now
The point I am trying to make is that by trying to be scientifically accurate Mark and Claire were actually misleading, if not down right untruthful. There was something to be alarmed about!
Worse, there is something even more alarming happening now. Whether the North Pole itself is free of ice again this summer is not important. That may be bad for Santa Clause and for polar bears, but if there is a large increase in the loss of sea ice then the global albedo will be affected, and inevitably the global climate will be affected too. How will the 6.5 billion people on this planet cope with Peak Oil and a climate catastrophe at the same time?
Cheers, Alastair.
28 June 2008 at 6:07 AM
In a recent article in GRL it was noted. “Arctic sea ice in 2007 was preconditioned to radical changes after years of shrinking and thinning in a warm climate. ”
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL034005.shtml There is that refrain again preconditioned after years of warmth. We just read about this with respect to the loss of ice shelves in Antarctica. This same quote could be applied to the loss of some glaciers as well.
28 June 2008 at 6:11 AM
Isn’t one reason why the story has ‘legs’ simply that a lot of people are vaguely aware of the North West Passage? At least one news item has touted this as an economic benefit from global warming. Any volunteers for the first cruise liner?
28 June 2008 at 6:44 AM
Actually, if your story makes the top of The Drudge Report, than media pickup is assured. Frankly, you guys should be pitching your stuff to Drudge. He’s not bad on the issue, although he tends to balance off the real science with the BS in the name of balance.
28 June 2008 at 7:15 AM
Perhaps loss of the Artic Ice is AGWs “ozone hole”. The history of CFCs and the ozone hole may be instructive.
In the CFC story there was a significant time lag between scientists sounding the first warnings (Molina & Rowland 1974) about potential damage to the ozone layer from CFCs and the ultimately unstoppable political momentum to get rid of CFCs (Montreal 1987, London 1990, etc.).
There were early bans on CFC aerosol propellants and actions by environmentalists, together with the predictable opposition of vested interests; but the “tipping point” was the discovery by British Antarctic survey scientists of an “ozone hole” over Antartica in October 1984.
This dramaticic realisation of scientists’ warnings - in a way scientists had not predicted - made it absolutely clear to the vast majority of thinking people that CFCs were a problem.
From that time on, sceptics and vested interest were seen for what they were. For example in 1987, the Reagan administration Interior Secretary Donald Hodel suggested that that the US government should encourage encourage the use of sunglasses and sunscreen, rather than violating the administration’s philosophy of minimal government regulation. The simple point that “fish don’t wear sunglasses”, made it clear that the issue went well beyond skin cancer.
There are many parallels with AGW. Scientisfic warnings - in this case much older - taken up by environmentalists. Vested interests, procrastination by governments, counterclaims by skeptics.
But now something dramatic is happening at one of the poles, and much sooner than scientists had (until recently) predicted. Once the arctic ice is gone the skeptics (undersea volcanism!) will look like fools to almost everyone.
True the politics are much more fraught, our economies are much more carbon dependent than they were ever CFC dependent, and much more damage is in the pipeline, but the dangers of not tackling AGW head on will be self-evident.
28 June 2008 at 7:34 AM
Here is a comment that I just posted over at http://www.desmogblog.com
When the Arctic ice melts, the sunlight goes into the exposed ocean waters and can be used by alga. Since the water is still fairly cold, there is lots of CO2 available for them to use for photosynthesis. As the alga grow the CO2 concentration drops but it is replenished by CO2 from the air. More exposed cold ocean water, the more CO2 sucked out of the air.
The alga are the base of the food chain and are eaten by zooplankton and other small animals such as baby fish. Thus, if the ice melts away early, more food will eventually become available for the entire ecosystem.
The seals will be happy because there will be more fish to eat. The polar bears will be quite happy for there will be more seals to eat. The Inuit hunters will be happiest of all because there will be more seals and polar bears.
For sure the Arctic will freeze over when winter comes, and the heat of fusion will be eventually be lost to outer space. So why is everbody worrying about the ice melting? Melting ice helps in keeping the planet cool.
[Response: All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds… - gavin]
28 June 2008 at 8:04 AM
The North Pole is one of the fabled “Ends of the Earth”. It is a place ‘with-out man’, wild and in a natural state. If AGW is changed the North Pole, then it surely is affecting us.
These symbolic locales cut through the noise of the weather and provide the evidence of human effects. Sort of like a picture of empty beer cans on top on Mt Everest. (Not that I’ve seen such a picture; I’m just saying.)
28 June 2008 at 8:22 AM
Why do you keep on telling your kids funny stories about father Christmas living at North Pole? Everyone should know that he lives in Finnish Lapland. What on earth would his reindeer eat at North Pole. Ice?
28 June 2008 at 8:42 AM
Gavin,
While RC readers are of course aware of the reality, wouldn’t it make sense, in the interests of science education and integrity, to highlight a simple disclaimer in sea/polar ice postings that:
========================
* There are only ~100 years of anecdotal sea ice observations.
* There are only ~30 years of comprehensive sea ice observations.
* Therefore, readers should be cautious about making, or listening to, statements about “recorded history” with respect to polar ice.
========================
Even if the ice isn’t always solid, let’s stick to cold hard reality in our statements. No need to feed the tabloids.
[Response: “recorded history” is obviously only the history that has been recorded (as you say, that goes back about 100 years - but in some places much longer). If I meant to say “in all of history” or “thousands of years” I would have. - gavin]
28 June 2008 at 8:59 AM
I think it is pretty clear that most members of the public only know two things about the Arctic ocean, polar bears, and the north pole. They also think of the NP as the coldest point on earth. So if they hear NP is icefree, that will be conflated with “all the arctic ice has melted”, which I suspect is conflated with GIS has melted. And you can bet the main stream media, will all have a special, showing the open water. PR wise, if it happens it could be a psychological tipping point.
(7) Gavin neglected to also point out, that the arctic is more sensitive than the antarctic because the land based ice in the antarctic is very stable, so the land ice albedo positive feedback is not operating very strongly there. In the NH a lot of land surrounding the arctic ocean is subject to the combination of decrease in seasonal snow cover (with climate warming), and decreasing albedo due to vegetation feedbacks. Both these factors (as well as sea ice albedo feedbacks, give the arctic region very strong positive feedback which regionally amplify the GW signal.
28 June 2008 at 9:28 AM
…associated only in America. In Denmark, said child-loving gentleman is a native to Greenland; in Finland, his domicile is an Eastern-border hilltop called Korvatunturi; in the Netherlands, the Christian-pagan conflation did not take place and the gift-bringer, long-dead but historical bishop Nikolaus of Myra, Asia Minor, arrives from Spain on his gift-packed steam ship on December 5 — nothing to do with Christmas!
28 June 2008 at 9:34 AM
Regarding the undersea volcansim:
Has anyone calculated the heat that the undersea volcano would need to emit to melt all that ice? And whether that result is consistent with temperature changes in the Arctic Ocean?
Seems like a useful mathematical exercise for some geologist/oceanographer (not me).
Once could note that despite all the volcanoes, Iceland is still covered with ice.
This article has a few reference to under-ice volcanoes:
http://masonmade.com/natgeonews/subglacial_antarctic_volcano.html
28 June 2008 at 9:56 AM
#15 HarryA:
First off, the effect of melting sea ice would be close to nil, as it floats and displaces an equal amount (mass) of sea water. If it melts, also the displacement effect goes away.
As for melting continental ice sheets, yes, that would increase the Earth’s moment of inertia about its axis of rotation, leading to a slight increase in length of day. Also the position of the pole (relative to the Earth’s solid body or crust) would change (but not by much). The position of the Earth axis relative to the ecliptic (the well known 23 degs responsible for the seasons) would not change due to this. (But it does vary over time as modelled by celestial mechanics.)
The change in Earth’s moment of inertia, a quantity called J2-dot, due to the ongoing isostatic rebound in Canada after the last ice age, has been well observed by satellite orbit monitoring, e.g., of the Lageos laser reflecting satellites.
28 June 2008 at 10:20 AM
So. How do things look down in Antarctica?
28 June 2008 at 10:57 AM
Re: #4 Andy Revkin
Thanks for the note the other day. But that post never made it in to your blog with the ipcc links. I read your piece
http://www.onthemedia.org/episodes/2006/12/08/chapter.html
and enjoyed your perspectives.
FYI I’m developing a movie script dedicated to the science of understanding this global warming event.
Trailer http://youtube.com/uscentrist
The script is in development and some fine scientists are helping. Getting it right is one thing, getting it illustrated so non-scientists understand it is the hard part.
Re: #13 PeterW
I’m recommending the Bahamas at least for now.
Re: #16 Mark/Gavin
I agree with Gavin, “themes and ideas that resonate” reach people. In my own (previously denialist family) I told them a couple years ago, how are you going to explain to your kids where Santa lives when the arctic ice is gone? That made them pause.
Illustrative themes help, as long as they are not using the denialist tactics of fabrication out of context. I believe Gavin has this in the right context.
28 June 2008 at 10:59 AM
The media interest about an ice-free north pole prompted me to look at climate model output from CCSM3. CCSM3 is one of only two IPCC models that can keep up with the sea ice decline in the satellite record. It has excursions as big as September 2007 about 1% of the time in the early 21st century.
The model estimates odds of an ice-free north pole in September are about 1 in 70 for the decade starting in 2008. The north pole is ice-free more frequently in the upcoming decades and it is virtually always ice-free by 2040.
The model almost certainly does not have perfect natural variability or sensitivity to anthropogenic forcing. I think it is probably better than our guesses though!
28 June 2008 at 11:17 AM
re 33 (Sorry for the formatting - cutting & pasting from spreadsheet to text editor to RC)
Lister, C. R. B., Heat Flow and Hydrothermal Circulation, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Vol. 8, p.95
“lava heat content of 1350cal/cc”
“The worlds largest oceanic hotspot, the Hawaiian/Emperor seamount chain, may put out as much as 10e9 cal/s,…”
lava heat content 1350 cal/cc
ice melting 80 cal/g
Vesuvius
volume erupted 4 km3
= 4e+9 m3
= 4e+16 cm3
heat released = 5.4e+19 cal (about 17 years worth of Hawaii hotspot heat output, if my math is correct)
ice melt mass 6.75e+17 gram
arctic ice area ~14e+6 km2
= 1.4e+13 m2
= 1.4e+17 cm2
thickness melted 4.82 cm (if uniform over total arctic ice area)
OR
area melted 7.36e+11 m2
@ 1m thickness =7.36e+5 km2 (”first year ice… thickness from 0.3 to 2 meters” NSIDC glossary)
2007 melt area 7.72e+6 km2 (rough estimate from NSIDC charts)
% due to eruption 9.5 % (assuming the average thickness of melted ice was 1 meter, and not allowing for any of the heat being lost to warming the 4 km thick sea water column, or air, or evaporation)
28 June 2008 at 11:23 AM
It currently seems that the willingness of the media to cover global warming is directly proportional to the financial costs of the aspect of global warming that they are covering.
Thus, articles that link the loss of Arctic sea ice to global warming are acceptable, and any news article on Arctic sea ice will generally touch on the role of global warming - usually with a mention for polar bears, which are indeed cute (not too cuddly, tho).
What isn’t acceptable is to directly link extreme weather events to global warming, as that opens up some financial liability issues that end up on the doorstep of the fossil fuel industry. More flooding, droughts and heat waves are expected in a warming regime. The explanation is pretty clear: a warmer atmosphere means more evaporation over land and oceans, leading to a drier continental interior and a moister atmosphere. Large masses of warm moist air can produce more precipitation, leading to unprecedented flooding. In other regions, persistent high temperatures lead to more frequent droughts and heat waves.
Actually, a few news outlets are covering this: http://www.wtok.com/news/headlines/21817599.html - but most are not making the connection. Almost no U.S. news outlets have drawn the connection between flooding in the Midwest, drought in the Southwest, and global warming - but that’s not the case with the European media (and European governments), which regularly points out that everyone needs to start thinking of these “extreme conditions” as the new normals.
Where the U.S. media really fails entirely is on solutions to global warming - and U.S. academic and scientific institutions aren’t doing their jobs here either. For example, NASA - JPL has a good basic overview of global warming at http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm - until you read their “solutions” section, that is. There are in fact only two solutions, both of which need to be implemented: halt the use of fossil fuels, and halt deforestation.
That leads to the large and important question: without fossil fuels, what do we do for our energy supply? Sunlight and wind are the two basic energy resources that won’t run out. The technology is already well-developed and ready to be implemented - everything from solar themal to solar PV to giant wind turbines to micro wind turbines.
However, I’ve never seen a single media article in any U.S. press outlet that covered these issues - the large-scale evidence for global warming (melting glaciers, warming poles, shrinking sea ice, ocean temperatures) to the local scale (more intense hurricanes, more intense precipitation, more frequent droughts and heat waves) while also discussing the real causes (fossil fuels and deforestation) and the real solutions (replacement of fossil fuels with renewables, limiting deforestation, and halting the use of fossil fuels, especially coal and oil.)
The only real reason seems to be financial - fossil fuel interests and global fossil-fueled transportation & electricity interests don’t want to face lawsuits over the costs of these extreme weather events, and they also don’t want to see their markets for fossil fuels shrink. There is probably a decent legal argument that the fossil fuel industry could be held legally responsible for a certain fraction of recent crop losses due to Midwest flooding, for example - especially since they’ve waged a very well-documented multi-decade PR campaign that attempted to hide and distort the evidence for global warming.
The current U.S. media coverage on the fossil fuel industry and global warming can be seen in this article - a long interview with Chevron’s CEO that doesn’t even mention global warming - apparently, it’s not a question the reporter thinks is relevant:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/21/business/21interview.html?ref=business
However, the NYT, to their credit, did cover the current efforts by the BLM to sabotage the expansion of solar thermal electricity generation in the U.S.: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/us/27solar.html - that would be the same BLM that has been working overtime to transfer public lands to fossil fuel interests for the past 8 years or so.
28 June 2008 at 11:34 AM
Re #9, #30
Historical and recent climate data are valuable in assessment of climate trends and in prediction,
even IF, we have passed one or more of the climate tipping points.
28 June 2008 at 11:39 AM
Re #44
Alastair,
Again I agree with you and this goes to the discussion points raised in the Ics Shelf Instability thread. That scientists are reticent when speaking outside of the purview of their field.
I think that Dr. Hansen has been doing this very well combining his professional understanding and knowledge with his perspectives as an individual speaking as a citizen.
I hope that more scientists follow this example and offer their perspectives as individuals/citizens based on their knowledge and understanding.
John
28 June 2008 at 12:01 PM
I find the following web site a nice place to compare Artic Ice levels, to date I am more worried about June of 1979 and 1999 then current ice levels, but I plan to keep looking!
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=06&fd=27&fy=1979&sm=06&sd=27&sy=2008
28 June 2008 at 12:27 PM
In post #40, CobblyWorlds points to a recent analysis by Perovich et al. (2008), which uses calculations of solar energy input to the Arctic Ocean to assess the melting last summer. However, Perovich et al. make the usual error in assuming the values for albedo of the ocean and sea-ice.
They assert:
“Open water reflects only 7% of the incident solar radiation, compared to 85% for snow-covered sea ice and 65% for bare sea ice….”
Actually, the fact that the direct component of the incident sunlight arrives at a shallow angle to the surface and thus experiences a much larger albedo, as one would expect for any transparent material. This fact has been known since early tower experiments in the 1970’s, which indicated albedo values approaching 30% or more, depending on wind speed. On the other side of the equation, the albedo for sea-ice is likely to be too large, since the sea-ice begins to melt and form ponds, which have properties much closer to that of open water. Measured albedo during the peak of the melt season can be as low as 40%. Thus, there isn’t a great deal of difference between the albedo values during the seasonal peak in insolation during the melt season.
During the SHEBA experiment, measurements of incident and reflected energy were collected, but there was no coincident measurement of the direct beam. Also, the Eppley pyranometers used have a cosine angle roll off for energy with high incident angle. As a result, I don’t think their results to be of great value, even thought these data are often cited. See: Perovich, D. K., T. C. Grenfell, B. Light, and P. V. Hobbs (2002), Seasonal evolution of the albedo of multiyear Arctic sea ice, J. Geophys. Res., 107(C10), 8044, doi:10.1029/2000JC000438.
Part of this repeated confusion is due to the fact that we often see composite photographs derived from satellites. From this point of view, there is a stark contrast between the bright sea-ice and the dark ocean. These photographs usually view the scene below by looking straight down at nadir, or nearly so. The light which is captured by the camera is reflected from incident light which tends to arrive at the surface from nearly overhead and is likely to be diffuse in origin. It’s true that this portion of the incident light experiences the large albedo differences as noted in Perovich et al. (2008), but this light represents only a fraction of the total incident sunlight at the surface.
E. S.
28 June 2008 at 12:40 PM
Ok ok I hear you all but if the polar ice cap is melting where is the vast sea level rise every man and his dog is going on about?
I know this posting won’t be allowed to be posted up but you never know, Realclimate may actually answer some relevant questions sometime soon.
[Response: Ask some and see. (Note that the Arctic sea ice is floating and only has a very minor effect on sea levels - the worry is in relation to the land based ice-sheets (Greenland and West Antarctica)). - gavin]
28 June 2008 at 1:03 PM
A question:
What do we know about the age distribution of ice in the arctic? If some suitably huge area of the arctic is totally free of ice this summer, could it then be claimed with confidence that this was the first time such a large region was free of ice in “x” years, where x is some largeish number like 50,000 or 100,000 ? What would be the basis for such a claim? Ice cores? I know such statements are/ will be made but I don’t know their scientific basis. I don’t know what the long term average rate for replacement of sea ice in the arctic is. If it is 50,000 years or something, then I presume claims about how often the arctic has been totally free of ice could easily be based on ice cores. If it is 1,000 years, say, then probably all of the ice has been replaced within the last few thousand years it seems you couldn’t use ice cores to support statements about it being the first time in 50,000 years, say, that the north pole was this free of ice. ???
28 June 2008 at 1:03 PM
Martin Verneer notes that concerns related to the “christianized pagan gift-giving festival” are somewhat misplaced since Santa’a workshop isn’t generally thought to be at the North Pole specifically. That’s a comforting thought, but will we ever be able to adjust to the concept of the “Barge of Solitude”?
In a serious vein, the map plot from the Independent article is at least a few weeks old. In addition to an overall retreat, IIRC one change since then has been that the first-year ice has broken through the Fram Strait, which seems significant since that hasn’t been observed to happen before.
28 June 2008 at 1:13 PM
Re: #19
Dear cce,
I have just been to your site and began reading and could hardly “put it down”! Please publish this as a book! It is wonderful, and it takes a lot these days to keep my attention. (I am unfortunately getting to be pretty jaded.)
I loved it!
28 June 2008 at 2:12 PM
I enjoy reading your blog. Regarding the “volcano”, in 1999, a team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, led by geophysicist Rob Reves-Sohn, funded by the NSF, discovered Arctic Ocean thermovents along the Gakkel Ridge. The 1800 km Gakkel Ridge runs across the arctic from Greenland to Siberia and is submerged up to 4 km deep. Geologists now know that the Gakkel Ridge is an active zone of slow spreading tectonic plates with massive amounts of activity including explosive emissions of super carbonated magma that have blown the tops off dozens of undersea mountains, produced mineral/metal riches from extensive hydrothermal vents throughout the range and holds sea life around smoker chimneys with abundant hydrogen-sulfide based ecosystems.
It is the focus of scientists from around the world because of:
Governments seeking to stake their sea bottom dominion claims, grant money, greed/wealth, reputations/degrees, adventure, and advancement of human knowledge . The arctic seems to be teeming with researchers (American, Russian, and Canadian), their ice breakers, ships, submarines, and tourist flotillas! See ScienceDaily for info.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080625140649.htm
28 June 2008 at 2:43 PM
Ike Solem wrote:
I urge everyone to read that article. It is appalling that while the federal government is pushing offshore oil drilling and mountaintop-removal coal mining, proposing to strip-mine shale oil and tar sands and to dramatically expand the production of high-level nuclear waste, they have declared a two-year moratorium on new solar electric power plants on public lands — which have some of the best solar energy resources in the world — for “environmental reasons”.
Meanwhile, the meager federal investment and production tax credits for solar and wind energy have not been renewed and are due to expire this year.
If the federal government were actively seeking to crush the solar and wind energy industries in order to protect fossil fuel and nuclear interests from the competition, they couldn’t find a more effective way to do it.
28 June 2008 at 3:34 PM
What are considered to be the dominant physical processes responsible for the recent (15 to 20 years) variability of the ice at the Arctic circle? Specifically, are the processes related to thermal matters such as increases in the air and water temperatures, increased radiative energy deposition onto the surfaces of the ice field, or others, or are they more related to structural issues?
Have any of the GCMs correctly estimated the observed trends?
Have any special-purpose models correctly estimated the observed trends?
Thank you for any assistance for finding information about these. Google Scholar gives so many hits that it’s difficult to know where to start.
28 June 2008 at 3:37 PM
@66, tony, floating ice doesn’t raise the level of the water in which it floats - the simplest example of this is to pour a full glass of water with ice, and let it melt. The glass doesn’t overflow as the ice turns liquid. This is where science meets single malt
(strictly, it does, but only a *very* small amount; for our purposes, the difference is negligible)
When ice is *added* to water, the level goes up, of course. Once the barrier of the sea-ice is gone, there is a concern that the land-ice in places like Greenland will melt into the sea. That *would* be disruptive, causing a sea-level rise and introducing a lot of dense fresh water into the circulation currents.
28 June 2008 at 3:41 PM
SecularAnimist (#71) wrote:
Synthetic oil made from coal may do quite well — from an economic perspective. Here is an article touting its feasibility back in 2006 when oil was $40 per barrel rather than $140 per barrel:
Thanks for the Cheap Gas, Mr. Hitler!
How Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa perfected one of the world’s most exciting new fuel sources.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Monday, Oct. 23, 2006, at 3:30 PM ET
http://www.slate.com/id/2152036/
The emissions per unit of energy is roughly twice that of conventional oil.
Please see:
Search for New Oil Sources Leads to Processed Coal
By MATTHEW L. WALD, July 5, 2006
http://zfacts.com/p/420.html
But tar sands beats this — with emissions roughly three times that of conventional oil. National governments might not give such matters much thought — though the last seems to have caught the attention of mayors.
Please see:
U.S. mayors pass resolution urging cities not use oilsands derived fuel (US-Mayors-Oilsands)
Jun 23, 2008 5:00:00 PM MST
The Canadian Press
http://www.oilsandsreview.com/news.asp?ID=16986
Not that the mayors have much of any real power in the matter, I’m afraid.
Non-traditional fossil fuel promises to be much dirtier than conventional oil. I wonder whether this been factored into business as usual scenarios?
Unfortunately, non-traditional fossil fuel has the advantage that we can leave a great deal of the infrastructure the same — such as the internal combustion engine. And unfortunately, whether the subject is water, gasoline, electricity or humans, one principle seems rather invariant: that things tend to follow the path of least resistance.
28 June 2008 at 3:50 PM
Gee, tony– there’s your post, up for all to see. Too bad it’s so silly. The arctic ice is already floating– melting it has no net effect on sea level, since it’s already displacing its mass in water. Archimedes could have told you that.
28 June 2008 at 4:17 PM
Here’s Dr. James E. Hansen on Youtube. I was hoping to find his senate testimony there, but no luck. This video is 4 days old.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVCMBozpoA0
28 June 2008 at 4:24 PM
RE: 30
Hey All,
I apologize for the digression to the earlier discussion; however, I seem to recall several several instances in which there has been ice free areas in the polar region over the last 50 years.
Two simple examples:
A textual recording regarding polar adventures: http://www.sid-hill.com/history/skate.htm
A pictorial recording regarding polar adventures: Though the truth is that images such as below, (Note the 5th photo down from the top: http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08578.htm ), are not naturally occurring openings. However, the depth of the ice even then was not significant, based on many journal notes I have read.
Point being, regardless of the temperature and winds even in the middle of NH winter, the polar ice dimensions, away from pressure ridges, are not very thick as a rule. This is quite different from the example of the ice that used to form in Lake Erie as the ice dragged the bottom and scarred the rock as recently as the 1970’s.
This does not mean that the current ice melt pattern is an example of anything less then excessive heat content in the region. In addition to warming, the observations regarding ice melt could also be related to increased ocean salinity. It is possible the Arctic ice melt could also be related to ocean currents carrying highly saline water caused by the recent increased SSTs in the temperate oceans between 1985 and 2005 to the region.
Meaning that the recent ice melt is likely due to global warming with an additional participant that has not been explored yet. Hence, this may offer the opportunity for additional research and model fodder to address how regional deviations can participate in global changes. It may be possible that this could be similar to the earlier thread regarding the West African Iodine and Bromine effects on methane or sulfides. If the research holds up it appears to not decrease the accuracy of the models, only to offer the opportunity to better model the physical processes.
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
28 June 2008 at 4:27 PM
#38 Nylo, The vagueries of Polar ice are well known, on one side of the Pole you may have more ice, on the other less. There was a long standing Anticyclone SW of North American side of pole exacerbating arctic ocean gyre movement, causing more open water there, as it is big open area right now. Polar ice does not behave in a continuous expected as usual way, Polar sea Ice changes with the wind and with so many other factors as well. This is why, stating no ice at the Pole may be wrong, or premature, winds and ice momentum may make it not so. A better number or graph to watch is
total ice extent, http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
2008 extent is a little behind 2007, it should be surprising to some as winter was cold in some qaudrants around the Pole. However there is more first year ice now, the melt may be greater this year for that reason.
#52 Historic evidence may be found in the DNA of Bowhead whales. the Atlantic and Pacific Bowheads are genetically different suggesting a long long time of ice barriers, in other words,
this seasonal melting of vast Arctic Ocean ice, never happenned, all the way back to when there was no Bowhead DNA distinction.
28 June 2008 at 4:47 PM
Wayne, the NOAA website says:
“September Arctic sea ice has decreased between 1973 and 2007 at a rate of about -10% +/- 0.3% per decade. Sea ice extent for September for 2007 was by far the lowest on record at 4.28 million square kilometers, eclipsing the previous record low sea ice extent by 23%.” […] “Snow extent and sea-ice are also projected to decrease further in the northern hemisphere, and glaciers and ice-caps are expected to continue to retreat.”
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html#q10
I’d like to see what the 5 year trend looks like.
28 June 2008 at 4:48 PM
John Pearson, do a little reading. You’re asking if we know anything from drilling “ice cores” in the Arctic sea ice, but I hope you realize that’s silly. It’s thin floating ice there — if you read just a bit (try some of these):
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?sourceid=Mozilla-search&q=age+arctic+sea+ice
you’ll find plenty of information on the age of that ice is documented. Not by drilling cores, but by how much accumulates and melts.
Yes, core drilling does reveal a lot about the age of ice — but it’s cores drilled in the sediment below the water. You can look that up too. It’s revealed a great deal about the age of the ice shelves in the Antarctic.
28 June 2008 at 5:17 PM
I have a Quibble:
“- the worry is in relation to the land based ice-sheets (Greenland and West Antarctica). - gavin”
WAIS is mostly not land based.
I would like to repeat my query from a previous thread:
Does anyone have a link to the presentation referred to in the article
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/06/25/2283071.htm?site=science&topic=latest
sidd
28 June 2008 at 5:25 PM
RE # 49 Harold Pierce Jr.
Why do you assume marine phytoplankton in the arctic are CO2-limited? Can you cite any published papers on this?
Regardless, even if they are, the zooplankton that eat the phytoplankton, and the fish that eat the zooplankton, will exhale CO2 into the water. And the seals and polar bears will exhale their CO2 directly into the atmosphere. So, unless you can come up with a mechanism by which the phytoplankton are sequestered in the deep sea and not undergo decomposition, it is difficult to see how there could be a net reduction in atmospheric or oceanic CO2 levels.
28 June 2008 at 5:40 PM
Re #76 catman306
Here is a collection of Hansens videos from the house hearing on political interference:
http://www.uscentrist.org/about/issues/environment/nasa-dr-james-hansen/house-hearing-interference
28 June 2008 at 5:47 PM
80: One of the purposes of this site is to educate the layman. I don’t always have time to wade through a bunch of journal articles in areas that have nothing to do with my field. Next time you want to answer someone’s question I suggest you either attempt to answer it without lecturing them about how silly it is or simply keep quiet. I have no idea how people figure out how ice free the poles have been over long periods of time. How is it done? Can it be done?
28 June 2008 at 5:47 PM
Here is the URL for the pictures of the three subs at the north pole
[edit]
[Response: No disinformation sites please - similar photos can be seen here or here instead. As I stressed above, the issue is not a few leads in the pack ice, but genuine large expanses of open water. - gavin
28 June 2008 at 6:53 PM
@81 Sidd:
“I have a Quibble:
…
WAIS is mostly not land based.”
A minor quibble indeed! (why even make it?)
Some (are you talking volume or surface are?) of the WAIS may be over terrain currently under the local “sea level” but it is indeed grounded and as such much (most?) of it is supported above the water and it’s melting will indeed contribute to sea level rise.
Arch
28 June 2008 at 7:09 PM
Re (61) : The BLM moratorium on new Environmental Impact Statements is indeed a nasty development that should be remedied. Especially in these times of economic decline, we ought to be able to hire enough staff to handle the demand. Unless or until there is evidence that it is deliberate sabotage ( this is certainly possible for Bush appointees ), I wouldn’t attribute it to deliberate sabotage. Bureaucracies do tend to operate in this this manner.
(82/49) Regardless of the potential effect on CO2 uptake by the seasonally icefree polar ocean, there are two major effects from the icefree ocean that should be of general concern. The first is that even if (and I think it is a big if) the polar biological productivity were to increase, it is still a major change to the ecology of the region. The second, is that the boundary conditions on both the atmosphere and oceans will be substantially different from what they used to be. This would have an effect on both atmospheric and ocean circulation and heat balance that would have to be modeled by detailed ocean/atmospheric climate modeling.
28 June 2008 at 7:30 PM
I should have said that the paleoclimatologists who study sea floor sediments are pretty confident that the high lattitude arctic ocean has not been ice free for many hundreds of thousands of years. An ice-free ocean, and the extra sunlight implied by that, would have a significant impact on the microfossils that are deposited on the seafloor. I don’t know any of the details, but I do know that the detailed study of these is a major source of information on paleo-climate.
28 June 2008 at 7:52 PM
John Pearson, you want information on
> how people figure out how ice free the poles have been over long periods of time. How is it done? Can it be done?
Yes. The North Pole is an ocean. The ice is only a few meters thick and much of it melts each summer. The South Pole is also an ocean, but it is underneath an ice cap several miles thick.
Antarctic ice cores do provide a lot of information about conditions over geologic time.
Around the edge of the Antarctic, broad beds of sediment are present, some of which have been under ice shelves that have lasted a very long time. Drilling into those sedimentary layers provides a history of the kind of organisms that lived there.
Arctic ice can’t tell much from ice core drilling because it is never very old. Instead cores are drilled from the sedimentary layers below the water. Each layer of sediment is a record of the kind of organisms that lived in the water.
Open water favors very different kinds of organisms than ice covered water, so the sediment record gives a picture of when and for how long there was ice on top of the water in a particular area.
Try try clicking this link, most of these after the first few science journal abstracts are brief popular science articles on topics that will help you find answers to some of your questions.
http://www.google.com/search?q=ice+shelf+sediment+core+drill
Other readers here will be able to point you to other sources. Most of us responding here are like you and like me, ordinary readers not experts in the field — most of us try to help point out answers to the basic questions that are often asked.
Putting “paleo” into the Search box at the top of the page and searching this site will find much more.
Hope this helps.
28 June 2008 at 8:00 PM
Re 82: Chuck: There is a mechanism by which ocean eco-systems sequester CO2 into the deep sea. It is called “the biological pump” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_pump) and basically involves inorganic carbon (calcium carbonate) sinking. My understanding of this process is that it mostly occurs near coastal upwellings which bring up nutrients from the deep and that it is responsible for a significant fraction of ocean carbon sequestration. That being said, I have no idea what role this might play in a world with an ice free arctic ocean. I believe that will require measurements that can’t be made until the arctic is ice free. (Just for the record: I certainly don’t agree with Pierce’s “why worry” sentiments. )
28 June 2008 at 8:06 PM
Specific pointer to article and illustration on sediment cores under ice and what’s learned:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/science_news/4204867.html
“The ANDRILL objective for this year is to look at the sediments trapped under the modern day ice shelf (see graphic …) in an effort to model how much—and how rapidly—the Ross Ice Shelf has changed. Layers of sediment that date to times when the site was covered by ice are coarse grained and include large pieces of gravel (the geological term is “diamict”). Sediment from the years when the drill site was covered by open ocean are made of diatoms, tiny marine plankton (”diatomite”). These very different rock types give geologists a clear picture of what conditions were like in the geological past. We are drilling back in time: The deeper we drill, the older the sediments get.”
http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/Core_example.jpg-.jpg
“The sediments tell the story. An example of rock types and interpretation from the ANDRILL core.”
28 June 2008 at 8:12 PM
RE: #82
As long as the aeals and polar polar bears are alive, they become CO2 sinks since they need lots of fat for insulation to keep warm. Fish are CO2 sinks also. If any these animlas die and sink to the ocean floor, they are consummed by scavengers such as crabs and lobsters. The shells of these animals are CO2 sinks because these are mostly chitin. As their bodies of the animals decay, nutrients are released and these can be used by filter feeder whose shells are usually calcium carbonate, which is a CO2 sinks.
Nothing goes to waste in the ocean, and most of the carbon ends up as limestone or in coral reefs.
28 June 2008 at 8:44 PM
I have been wondering a couple of things about the ice that is melting up there.
For example, 20 years ago (and I am just picking the year out of a hat), I assume that the ice was much thicker. I also assume that warm water both from the Pacific and the Atlantic has gone into the Arctic Sea and done some melting of that ice from below.
But, in my certainly imperfect understanding, doesn’t the ice first need to absorb lots of kcals before it will actually melt?
So, for example, has anyone calculated the kcals, over time, that were necessary to make the sea ice reach the melting point?
Has this value been added to the calculations when searching for the so-called “missing” heat content of the oceans?
[N.B. Obviously, I don’t know all that much about physics, ok?]
28 June 2008 at 8:50 PM
Hank: I appreciate the links but those are all for Antarctica. Why is there so little on the arctic?
92: “As long as the aeals and polar polar bears are alive, they become CO2 sinks since they need lots of fat for insulation to keep warm.” This is just nonsense. Most of the rest of your post is nonsensical in detail, but correct in it’s premise that biological processes send some CO2 (in the form of calcium carbonate) to the depths. But the claim that “nothing goes to waste in the ocean” is non sequitur . The ocean is fully capable of disgorging large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. It isn’t “waste”. It is just what physics/chemistry/geochemistry/ecology dictates. The efficiency of the biological pump depends on poorly characterized mechanisms. For example; heterotrophic bacteria can compete with carbon fixing autotrophic bacteria for nitrogen which can result in a substantial reduction of carbon export to the deep since the heterotrophic bacteria send CO2 back to the atmosphere via respiration. The nature of this competition is not well understood.
28 June 2008 at 8:59 PM
I have a question for Gavin or Mark Serreze, or rather a comment and a question because I was surprised that youz guys referred to the opening of the Arctic Sea in the summer as largely “symbolic.”
OK, it was bound to happen under the current conditions, so it was expected, but “symbolic”?
As PeterW in #13 noted, and as I am sure you are aware, the change in albedo is bound to have all sorts of detrimental effects.
Also, I think it is quite all right to use this tipping point to catch the attention of the public who are sleeping at the wheel.
If the denialists can use junk science to grip the public’s mind, what is wrong with using facts?
The change in albedo for such a long period of time each year is bound to cause all sorts of weird weather that we have never before experienced. Hot air is going to go up there, and what is going to come back down? Not the colder air we used to get.
And the remaining glaciers and ice caps of the Canadian Archipelago are gonna go. Today, Pituffik (Thule), Greenland, hit a record high of 62 F, breaking the old record of 57 F, set in 2002. OK, I know, we can call that part of the natural variability, but well…
[Response: The symbolic part is the focus on the North Pole. The substantive part is the Arctic wide decline in ice cover. - gavin]
28 June 2008 at 9:18 PM
Citing a speech by a retired TV weatherman who could no more construct a climate model than a television camera , and the philosophical authority of one “Thomas Eddington ” ( the inventor of the supernova light bulb, perhaps –surely not the Sir Arthur who confirmed the relativistic precession of the orbit of Mercury?) ,James Kerian, scion of the North Dakota potato, fruit and nut-sorting machine dynasty, and recent mechanical engineering graduate of Gonzaga University, has authored a Wall Street Journal online oped entitled “Yellow Science”, equating global warming warnings with the “Yellow Journalism ” William Randolph Hearst devised to spawn the Spanish American War .It baldly ,and bizarrely, asserts that no hard scientific evidence links human activity and climate change. None. Nada. Zip.
http://adamant.typepad.com/seitz/2008/06/yellow-journalisms-moral-compass.html
28 June 2008 at 9:43 PM
Re: 69
Thanks Tenney. At this stage, I’d love any input (contact info on site). I’m especially interested in any scientific blunders/misrepresentation or false logic that anyone can spot. This thread has more on what I’m trying to accomplish. http://www.manpollo.org/forums/showthread.php?t=192
Thanks again!
28 June 2008 at 9:59 PM
RE: 87/88
Hey Thomas,
My apologies as I do not have confirming evidence; however, I suspect that ice cover is not going to cause a major reduction in phytoplankton activity. Based on the recent work done in Antarctica it would seem that ice covered areas are also biologically rich. Then again it is possible that the evidence only occurs at the edge of large regions of ice cover, (it was not clearly described in the article I had read).
The only question I have would be, is there a possibility that the ice cover may actually be protecting phytoplankton from UVA/B energy? Most images of ice floes taken from beneath the ice suggests there may be rich algae and bacteria colonies growing in the translucent ice.
I am curious about the source for what you are sharing, in regards to the biologic levels changing as the sea ice cover changes. About the only change in activity, I would expect, would involve a change in air breathing water borne sea life, that may be limited by the ice cover.
I had not considered CO2 to be much of an issue as I would expect it to be well dissolved in the sea water. There have been a number of recent articles in regards to whether sea life flourishes being related to the nutrient and iron content. I would appear these would seem to be well dissolved in the sea water as well (without an overabundance contributing to a dead zone). It would appear that the remaining contributor would be light, an interesting aspect to research may be how much would the quantity of life change in the region, if the albedo changes?
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
28 June 2008 at 10:00 PM
Re # 92 Harold Pierce, Jr.
What you have written makes no sense whatsoever. I strongly suggest you learn some basic physiology before claiming that seals, polar bears, and fish are CO2 sinks (Hint: Start your readings with basic aerobic cellular respiration). And for the record,the shells of crabs and lobsters are indeed mostly chitin, but that is a polysaccharide (a polymer of N-acetyl glucoseamine). Their shells do contain some calcium carbonate, but that is added only after a molt - and some of it is recycled from the previous exoskeleton - there is no continuous deposition, so the shells are not a significan CO2 sink.
# 90 John E. Pierson ” I have no idea what role this might play in a world with an ice free arctic ocean.”
Then why mention it?
28 June 2008 at 10:18 PM
In comment # 86 Arch Stanton wrote at 28 June 2008 1853:
Re: Quibble, WAIS
“…it’s melting will indeed contribute to sea level rise.”
oh, i entirely agree. my point was that WAIS is substantially grounded below sea level
sidd
28 June 2008 at 10:42 PM
John E. Pearson (#84) wrote:
wayne davidson (#78) wrote earlier:
Same story gets told by the mitochondria of three species of right whale:
New DNA Studies Verify Existence Of Three Right Whale Species
ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2005)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050223130802.htm
… and their whale lice:
Secrets Of The Whale R.iders: Crablike ‘Whale L.ice’ Show How Endangered Cetaceans Evolved
ScienceDaily (Sep. 14, 2005)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/09/050914104455.htm
… which aren’t insects but are actually crustaceans closely related to the “snapping shrimp.”
Please see the abstract:
… and:
Depending upon the whim of the author or the exact species, the “snapping shrimp” may be called a snapping shrimp, mantis shrimp, mantid shrimp, p.istol shrimp, etc. even though technically it isn’t even a shrimp.
It is a fascinating creature:
Mantis shrimp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stomatopoda
… noted for its hyperspectral color vision:
“Weird Beastie” Shrimp Have Super-Vision
Anne Minard
for National Geographic News
May 19, 2008
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/05/080519-shrimp-colors.html
… and ability to see circular polarization:
Mantis shrimp vision reveals new way that animals can see
Public release date: 20-Mar-2008
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/cp-msv031308.php
… among other things:
Pistol Shrimp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uNUDtLCxj0
YouTube - Mantis Shrimp Attack (emerald crab)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hkv_30niM_A
… and at least one species of mantid shrimp has had its entire mitochondrial genome sequenced:
A.D. Miller and C.M. Austin, The complete mitochondrial genome of the mantid shrimp Harpiosquilla harpax, and a phylogenetic investigation of the Decapoda using mitochondrial sequences
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution
Volume 38, Issue 3, March 2006, Pages 565-574
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1055790306001400
Mitochondria are of course endosymbionts of the eukaryotic cell — and would appear to be most closely related to rickettsia, the bacteria responsible for typhoid:
Michael W. Gray, News and Views: Rickettsia, typhus and the mitochondrial connection
Nature 396, 109-110 (12 November 1998)
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v396/n6707/full/396109a0.html
For more on rickettsia, please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickettsia
So to make a long story short, it appears that there has been sea ice in the Arctic Ocean pretty much constantly for the past six or so million years. But don’t you just love how its all related!?
28 June 2008 at 10:50 PM
Incidentally, there are a few extraneous “.”s in my post above. Turns out that the spam catcher doesn’t like Latin.
29 June 2008 at 3:09 AM
#59, Dr Bitz/anyone less busy who knows,
Do the CCSM3 models show the same trend in perennial ice area as shown in figure 3 of Nghiem 2007 “Rapid reduction of Arctic perennial sea ice”? GRL Vol 34, doi:10.1029/2007GL031138
I hope you’re right about the models, but I’m not convinced 2007 was just a blip from which the ice will rebound.
#65 Eric Swanson,
Thanks for pointing that out, indeed Meir/Serreze/Stroeve (ARCUS) noted angle of incidence as a reason why the overall first year ice melt may not be as much as expected for first year. However the predominance of the impact of sunlight is supported by the fact that during maximum insolation (May - Aug) the rate of loss is typically at its greatest. If modellers don’t take this factor into account, I agree they should.
I second your question in post 28, about climatic impacts outside the Arctic.
29 June 2008 at 4:21 AM
We keep seeing the same graph showing current ice cover is at least up to now, June 2008 no worse than this time last year. The winter levels were better than 12 months before. Then we get comments that there is a lot of new ice. Clearly if extent increases is increasing it has to start with more new ice. We know new thin ice is more vunerable to weather than older thicker ice. So reduced sea ice in the summer is not a good indicator of continued decline OR absence of decline. More interesting is winter levels and the volumes. Does anyone have an url showing volume and thickness showing 2007 compared to 2008? I can not remember seeing thickness after 2004 at which point it showed a rising thickness trend showing historic around 1998 - a half or third of 1950s levels.
If the ice loss trend halted in 2007, this is what it would look like. There are claimed 60 year cycles in ice cover which could mask global warming for a time.
Imagine that Sept 2008 had favourable winds and the new ice did not break up. It would still prove nothing.
29 June 2008 at 4:24 AM
#64 T Siefferman
What you see on Cryosphere Today is the percentage of ice cover on the ocean, and at this time of year you won’t see anything really notable. Try September:
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=09&fd=27&fy=1979&sm=09&sd=27&sy=2007
If you were buying a car would you just look at how shiny the paint is, or would you have a closer look?
Try ice thickness as measured by submarine, note the non linear time axis. http://psc.apl.washington.edu/IDAO/submarine.gif Zhang’s using that to show the long term accuracy of the PIOMAS model, you can use it to see the changes in typical thickness, the British Navy measurements (Wadhams) done on different tracks at different time convey the same general message, Wadhams states over 40% thinning. Or you could try the figure in the Nghiem paper to which I referred Dr Bitz.
Harold Pierce jr.
If you are correct, your suggested increased CO2 uptake will be countering what looks like a much more massive release of stored carbon.
I’ve recently been persuaded by Gareth Renowden and Steve Bloom over at “Hot Topic” that methane releases are potentially disastrous on policy/human timescales. (Er… thanks a lot guys)
In “Methane hydrate stability and anthropogenic climate change”, David Archer argues that methane release is likely to be “chronic rather than catastrophic”.
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2007.hydrate_rev.pdf
However Shakhova 2008 http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EGU2008/01526/EGU2008-A-01526.pdf
Seems to argue that there is nonetheless the potential for substantial short term release.
Then there’s the land permafrost; http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0807/full/climate.2008.63.html
So whilst talk of Methane release in terms of all of it going quickly is overstated. It seems there’s still the potential for a rapid enough release to cause serious impacts within decades (if we are in a rapid transition to a seasonally ice free Arctic - I think we are).
29 June 2008 at 5:48 AM
fred writes:
You suspect wrong, pal. They are not large enough. Go look up the size of the lava flow from a volcano. A big one might be two miles long. Now consider the size of Antarctica.
Volcanoes are not melting the ice.
29 June 2008 at 6:31 AM
I tried to find statistics detailing the coverage AGW gets in the press but couldn’t really find anything useful. Here in Germany it “feels” rather unbalanced and unscientific. Interviews with scientists are cut down to the question of what the worst possible scenario might be and sometimes it seems like the media is explicitly pushing in the general direction of climate change even if the matter has nothing to with it. I remember a lengthy interview with a scientist from a NGO in one of the major news journals on TV concerning the wildfires in Greece last summer. When asked about the cause of these fires, the scientist said it was in part real estate speculation and in part the lumber industy which first planted the wrong trees and then basically gave up on the woods alltogether when the market collapsed (or something like that). When pressed for other possibilities, she blamed the government for reacting too slowly and only half-heartedly. But this was not what the anchor man wanted to hear, so he asked her explicitly about global warming. When she said that there was no relation she could see, he asked whether she could rule out the possibility and she said of course she could not. Finally satisfied, he moved on. We see this a lot. I think it gets to the point where people get fed up with hearing about one possible katastrophe and rather want to be afraid of something else. We saw the same thing with terrorism, the famous “waldsterben” (death of the woods) and other threats. Last year it got so far, that the socienty for the german language (GfdS) voted the term “Klimakatastrophe” as the official “Word of the year”, the term that dominated media and public discussion. The danger in that is that people tend to forget about it and probably even oppose it reflexively once a critical amount of coverage has been reached and nobody wants to hear about it any more and people roll their eyes when the subject comes up. Everything about AGW that gets into the media hyped for something it isn’t and quickly destroying itself simply by not reappearing next year or by being obviously wrong (like the link between earthquakes and AGW which made it into CBS and MSNBC recently), leads to less awareness in the public, not more. It may help getting into the headlines but in the long run, I think it is counterproductive - and the long run is what we need here.
29 June 2008 at 8:18 AM
Re #74. The Athabasca tar/oil sands are expanding at an alarming rate to 3 mbpd come 2012. As heavy oil as it is called has not had much attention lavished onto it by now the economics of energy will come down. New In Situ techniques will lower the over all energy costs associated with this type of oil mining but hydrogen is needed as it water and they are in short supply so who knows how much of the 1.7 to 2.5 trillion barrels of this type of oil will see the light of day.
CTL projects are worrying though and the USA, China and Australia are planning these types of plants. Plenty of coal means use some for oil.
29 June 2008 at 8:26 AM
I was interested to see that no one had put a link to the only long term sedimentary record in the Arctic, the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program ACEX drilling in 2004 (http://publications.iodp.org/proceedings/302/101/101_.htm). They drilled on Lomonosov Ridge at about 88degN. In the 2006 Nature paper (Moran et al., 2006, The Cenozoic Palaeoenvironment of the Arctic Ocean, vol 441, 601-605), they revisited their initial results and suggest that perennial ice cover was present in the Arctic for at least the last 14 million years. Further publications from this expedition are in Nature in subsequent years.
This does not mean that there were not periods of ice-free ocean. I have participated in drilling near Svalbard, where the ice exits, (Ocean Drilling Program Leg 151,1993; see http://www-odp.tamu.edu/publications/151_SR/151TOC.HTM). The drilling showed a warming in the Pliocene ca 3 million years ago (see the Thiede and Myhre summary), but good indications of sea ice both before and since then.
A seasonally ice-free Arctic is a big deal.
29 June 2008 at 8:32 AM
I believe the psychological effect on the masses of the main ice pack retreating past the North Pole will be much greater than the last bit of mulityear ice melting along the Greenland-Elesemere Islands in the next 20 years or so.
Statistically it looks like its going to happen sooner or later. It may happen this year, it may not.
For those who are hooked on watching the retreat of the ice pack, I prefer the following site.
AMSR-E Daily Ice Map
I prefer this over Cryosphere today, as it have better resolution, however it does appear to under-report open drift conditions (3 tenths and below)
29 June 2008 at 9:19 AM
Re #49 & #82
The limitations on the growth of algae in the arctic varies with the season, the effect of sea-ice melting is not as certain as Harold would have us believe:
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005JC002922.shtml
http://www.nurp.noaa.gov/Spotlight/ArcticIce.htm
29 June 2008 at 9:49 AM
re #60 Brian Dodge,
very nice calculation… however there is a teeny error here:
[Vesuvius
volume erupted 4 km3
= 4e+9 m3
= 4e+16 cm3
heat released = 5.4e+19 cal (about 17 years worth of Hawaii hotspot heat output, if my math is correct)]
however, according to my reckoning, 4e+9 m3 = 4e+15 cm3
so heat released = 5.4e+18 cal
and so unfortunately your puny volcano only managed a miserable sub-1% contribution to the summer 2007 melt (assuming all that heat found its way 4000 metres to the surface)
unless someone can find a compensating error in your maths, I’m afraid we’re not too impressed with your volcano!
29 June 2008 at 10:10 AM
Re #93 My comment to John E. Pierson
John,
Sorry to be so curt. What I should have pointed out was that Harold Pierce, Jr. was not proposing any sort of biological pump such as you described (and with which I am quite familiar, which is why I raised the point about CO2 sequestration) - rather, he was fantasizing about CO2 being sequestered by passage through a food chain. Unfortunately, his scenario was based on a complete lack of understanding of basic physiology and ecology.
29 June 2008 at 11:13 AM
Re 89
According to my atlas the south pole is not an ocean.
29 June 2008 at 11:34 AM
Re Harold’s observation in 92:
Fish are CO2 sinks also. If any these animals die and sink to the ocean floor, they are consumed by scavengers such as crabs and lobsters.
Unfortunately, humans are doing their utmost to remove this carbon sink from the planet. We’re strip-mining the oceans of biomass with industrial efficiency; soon, only jellyfish and anaerobic algae will remain to sink carbon in the emptied, acidified oceans.
29 June 2008 at 11:51 AM
The MODID satellites provide near real-time visible/actual photos of the Artic Ocean from space (ie they are not the computer program generated graphics from the NSIDC.)
Here is a good sat picture of the North Pole from today - June 29, 2008 (ie. there is lots of melting to go yet before the Pole is ice-free for the few weeks of the year predicted.)
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2008181/crefl1_143.A2008181053500-2008181053959.4km.jpg
NorthWest Passage (upside down but still frozen solid.)
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/single.php?2008181/crefl1_143.A2008181021500-2008181021959.4km.jpg
29 June 2008 at 12:08 PM
I´ve seen meteorologists dismiss the North Polar Cape melt as some kind of natural cycle since the southern ice shows some increase. Indeed, we can see that here:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/
Is this right?
29 June 2008 at 1:01 PM
Re #92
The carbonate compensation depth (the depth below which calcium carbonate dissolves) is shallow in polar waters, so calcium carbonate sediments are virtually absent on the arctic seabed. Any CO2 sequestered by increased bioproduction as calcium carbonate will remain dissolved in the water column.
Organic carbon may deposit to the seabed. Massive blooms of Azolla growing in a fresh/brackish surface layer on the Arctic ocean created laminated sediments alternating with marine siliceous sediments during the early Eocene, and sequestered large amounts of CO2. These blooms may be the carbon source for North Sea oil deposits.
29 June 2008 at 1:50 PM
Re: 116
My understanding is that the visible spectrum is not the best for looking at ice. Despite this, if you display those images at 500 meter resolution, you can see where the ice in the North West Passage is a darker blue, which would indicate some level of breakup.
What is interesting, is the McClure strait area is breaking up from west to east. The North Pole may not melt out this year, but the North West Passage should be open water definitely.
On another note, here I sit in Nova Scotia in the rain and fog at 12 degrees celsius, and Eureka and Alert on Elesmere Island is 16 degrees C and sunny today.
29 June 2008 at 2:09 PM
#109 Mitch Lyle,
Thanks for that, I wasn’t aware of it.
29 June 2008 at 2:13 PM
As the author of the “casual” article in The Independent, I’d like to point out that on the front page of the actual newspaper (as opposed to our website) the strapline above the headline says: “Scientists warn that this summer there may be….”, which I hope puts the main headline into the correct perspective. I don’t actually write headlines, but I think the editors who did made a good job of projecting a very important story with a high degree of accuracy, which is why it got such a big pick up globally. Headline writing is after all more of an art than a science. I’m only sorry that the website didn’t carry the strapline as well, but perhaps that’s the downside of getting something for free. The reason it went so big is precisely because we put it on the front page, in the starkest possible terms, and without I hope twisting the science. By the way, I’m a great fan of RealClimate and I love your headlines especially!
[Response: Thanks for stopping by. I should probably make clear that by ‘casual’, I meant to imply that the source of the story was based on conversations with Mark and others, rather than being tied to the publication of a paper or the release of new information. I did not mean in it any derogatory sense. I agree that good headlines are tricky, but I am well aware that these are not written by the journalists. - gavin]
29 June 2008 at 2:19 PM
Harold Pierce Jr (#92) wrote:
And here I thought fat floats!
Sure — some of the polar bear will end up chitin left by crabs — but how much? It isn’t like the only scavengers in the ocean have shells — or are entirely made of shell.
Think worms:
They are as much a factor below the surface of the ocean as on dry land. And plenty of dead fish float, for a while at least. There is bacteria at work as well. Some live inside the organism itself and go to work decomposing their host as soon as it dies. What gases do you suppose are created during this process — and would you honestly expect all of that to remain in the water?
Then there are anaerobic bacteria below the oxycline. Since your biological pump relies so heavily upon algae, you might want to check look up “dead zones” in the news. Try Oregon, for example.
Yes, we are having larger algae blooms. And given the fact that land warms more quickly than ocean, resulting in areas of low pressure over land, changing patterns of atmospheric and oceanic circulation are bringing them to the coasts — where so much life’s diversity is found. When the algae blooms die off, they decay — using up whatever oxygen is in the water.
But setting the dead zones aside, there is also the fact that the ocean water is becoming more acidic, more corrosive, making the shell-formation your biological pump depends upon another endangered species.
Please see:
… and:
Yes — there is a biological pump. But judging from the rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, it isn’t able to keep up with us. Judging from the rising acidity of the ocean, the prognosis for much of this biological pump doesn’t look very good. Judging from the paleoclimate record, it is limited, and it can fail catastrophically.
29 June 2008 at 2:22 PM
Of another interesting note:
The NOAA North Pole Web Cam (they should call it the Fram Strait web cam, as it has drifted from 89 North to 84.8 North in less than 3 months).
The camera is now sitting in its own melt pool as seem from this photo:
North Pole Web Cam in its own melt pool
What is amazing is the ice has moved 5 degrees of latitude in less than 3 months.
It looks like this year, we will get to see a bunch of expensive scientific gear end up in Davy Jones’ locker live via webcam
29 June 2008 at 2:31 PM
#101, Timothy, but of course there are all these other species, All with traceable DNA history. If they all lead to 6 million years ago, that would be interesting time to study Climate wise.
#109 Mitch 14 million years ago resonates with the existence of Axel Heiberg silent High Arctic forest stump Red Dawn sentinels,
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,962379,00.html
Although Time article 45 million years number seems off, was told quite often that it was 11 to 14 million years ago.
Now for those who think climate science is easy, consider all the disciplines involved, so Radio talk show Hosts of the Right wing money machine kind, should hit the science books not climate scientists, read the science, watch low budget science TV like PBS NOVA shows, and be a little humbled by near by University professors , without the likes of them no TV no Radio just soap boxes to stand on…… .
29 June 2008 at 2:40 PM
Re: 113 and 118
CHuck: No worries.
the reason I mentioned it in the first place is that I don’t think we know all that well how eco-systems will respond as the planet warms and ocean pH decreases, etc.. An ice free arctic ocean will comprise a new ecological niche. I understand that right now the carbonate compensation depth is shallow, and there are probably relatively low concentrations of carbon fixing bacteria anyway, but as the arctic warms isn’t it likely that there will be an increase in carbon sequestration there? It seems to me that ultimately this question is going to be answered by observation, although a decent model prediction might be a bit of a coup for the models.
29 June 2008 at 3:16 PM
Can someone tell me if this big grey spot right in the middle of Greenland is an area of melting or is it an artifact? It could be melting — even Alert went to 63F today.
The images are from the Cryosphere and show today versus last year.
I used a tiny url because I saved it to my harddrive, then posted it to my blog so that the enlarged image is much better:
http://tinyurl.com/49nqge
29 June 2008 at 3:18 PM
Alexandre (#117) wrote:
For 2007, the Arctic sea ice extent minimum was 25% below the previous minimum, whereas the sea ice extent maximum for the Antarctic was roughly 1% above the previous year. Hardly comparable. And it is worth noting that Antarctic sea ice extent still hasn’t recovered from its record losses in the 1960s-70s.
Please see:
Sea Ice, North and South, Then and Now
October 8, 2007
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/sea-ice-north-and-south-then-and-now/
Some models actually show a slight cooling of the southern oceans for a while, and all show it not keeping up with the rate at which the waters to the north warm — for a somewhat longer period of time. Partly this has to do with changes in ocean circulation taking warmer water deeper and partly as the result of the southern hemisphere having less land mass and more ocean — where the ocean has a higher thermal inertia, meaning that it takes longer for those waters to warm.
29 June 2008 at 3:36 PM
Re John Pearson’s comment in 125:
An ice free arctic ocean will comprise a new ecological niche.
In fact, the loss of arctic sea ice may well annihilate an ocean entire ecosystem:
29 June 2008 at 4:19 PM
(98) Dave:
I’m in the same (intellectual) boat as the other 90percent of the commentors here, i.e. I am not a working scientist. I think you’d need a polar biologist/ecologist to get a well formulated reply. I do know that the seasonal ice covered oceans are very highly productive biologically. I think the ice/water interface seems to concentrate certain nutrients -or some such, but again I’m not going to speculate beyond that, as I think I should let the experts do that.
29 June 2008 at 4:30 PM
Re #1, others - Volcanism at the Poles:
New volcanoes at BOTH Poles erupt just as AGW starts receiving wide attention? What’s next for the denialists? Space aliens and their heat rays?
Re #49:
LOL at both the original post and Gavin’s response.
29 June 2008 at 5:19 PM
wayne davidson (124) — From 6 to 4 million years agao the Mediterranean repeatedly dessicated and refilled. During this same period the Isthmus of Panama finally closed.
29 June 2008 at 5:52 PM
Tenney #126
Average temperature in the grey spot area is -10 to -15 C per:
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_01.fnl.anim.html
Unlikely to be melting there. Other grey areas on the map are snow.
29 June 2008 at 6:59 PM
Re 116, 119: I believe that the darker blue in the NW passage (in 7-2-1 band false-colour) is melting sea ice. It wasn’t that colour a month ago. Possibly wet slush on top of the ice?
29 June 2008 at 8:07 PM
Re: #132
B Buckner,
Thanks for the link — did you notice that on June 28 almost all of Greenland heated up substantially, and on the 29th the temperatures to the north rose into the 10s and 15s (C)?
Let us not forget that huge melt in Antarctica in 2005.
29 June 2008 at 8:33 PM
It is claimed that AGW “science” predicted that Southern Hemsiphere sea ice extent would increase as arctic sea ice would decrease. I believe that claim is incorrect. AGW “science” predicted that Antarctic continental ice would increase because of more precipitaion due to global warming, not sea ice extent. AGW has no explanation for Southern Hemisphere SEA ICE extent increase. Please provide a link to AGW prediction for increased Southern Hemisphere SEA ICE extent. Southern Hemisphere SEA ICE extent is 1,000,000 sq. Kilometers greater than the 20 year average. I hope the reference by AGW “science” to increasing Souther Hemisphere sea ice extent would be older than 5years. I beleive AGW was predicting less SEA ICE in both hemispheres. But since that did not happen AGW “science” may have changed it’s position much like the term “global warming” was changed to “climeate change” when the global temperatures stopped rising a few years ago. Over the past three or four years global temps have been flat according to NOAA data. Not coincidentally the sun has been in a prolonged state of hibernation between solar cycle 23 and solar cycle 24. Because of this lull the oceans have been giving up heat. Arctic sea ice extent will be 500000 sq kilometers greater this year than last. And each of the next 4 to 5 years will show succesively more arctic sea ice. If solar cycle 24 turns out to be a dud then expect to see a decades long increase in arctic sea ice extent. It will take a few years to see if the solar/climate connection is as strong as many scientist beleive. AGW has underestimated the affect of solar influence on climate. In few years we will know the truth.
29 June 2008 at 8:59 PM
RE: 129
Hey Thomas,
Thanks for the reply, I suspect that Phil Felton in Posting 111 may show links that demonstrate the biology is active under the ice. The main difference appears to be the type of activity is different between an ice covered -vs- surface ice free Arctic ocean. Also, we have to note that as to insolation, that the albedo difference due to ice melt will likely only be higher for one to two months per year. At the same time the open ocean would make more radiant surface available for cooling during the periods of reduced insolation.
As to the salinity question, the NOAA research ships had noted in earlier cruises that for the ice melt the salinity though lower then normal for open ocean demonstrate only a thin fresh/brackish water zone. This would seem to suggest that if the volume of ice melt is as great as suspected, that there had to be a greater salinity in the region that was mixing with the melt water to reduce the expanse and depth of the brackish region.
To my layman thoughts this would seem to suggest that increased salinity could be playing a part in the total contribution as regards polar ice melt. (As the Barents build up of salinity between 2004 and 2006 was substantial.) If there was a difference when a dominant (NAO vs PDO), with the NAO ocean current carrying higher SSTs and saline ocean currents into the Arctic region had differing results in regional melt, I suspect it would be a good correlation for salinity playing a part. However, when I look at the Arctic melt record, though greater for both the PDO and NAO, it does not seem to favor one pattern over the other.
However, it would be very useful to have a few years of extensive ice melt, as seen last summer, to try to confirm how much the salinity is involved in lowering the freezing temperature of the Arctic ocean and contributing to its melting. To me it seems sad that neither the Woodshole institute nor NOAA seem to have a plan to make a cruise into the melt zones for these observations even in this International Polar Year IPY 2008 http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/ipy.html
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
29 June 2008 at 9:40 PM
RE: potential 134
Hey All,
Just a clarification in my second to the last paragraph I wrote;
“If there was a difference when a dominant (NAO vs PDO), with the NAO ocean current carrying higher SSTs and saline ocean currents into the Arctic region had differing results in regional melt, I suspect it would be a good correlation for salinity playing a part.”
I would like for it to have read;
If there were a difference between which were dominant, (NAO vs PDO), there might be a hypothesis worth exploring. If the NAO were driving an ocean current that contains higher SST’s and more saline surface water into the Arctic region, I suspect it would be a possible correlation that salinity may be playing a part in the Arctic ice loss.
The problem is I hit the Post prematurely rather then the Preview button, my apologies.
Dave Cooke
29 June 2008 at 9:52 PM
#132 sublination occurs at these temperatures, direct snow to water vapour, especially in very strong turbulent winds.
29 June 2008 at 10:04 PM
Re #104
“Does anyone have an url showing volume and thickness showing 2007 compared to 2008? I can not remember seeing thickness after 2004 at which point it showed a rising thickness trend showing historic around 1998 - a half or third of 1950s levels.”
This do?
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/200804_Figure4.png
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/200804_Figure5.png
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/200804_Figure6.png
29 June 2008 at 10:11 PM
Re #114
An archipelago perhaps?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:AntarcticaRockSurface.jpg
29 June 2008 at 10:28 PM
Re #123
“The NOAA North Pole Web Cam (they should call it the Fram Strait web cam, as it has drifted from 89 North to 84.8 North in less than 3 months).
The camera is now sitting in its own melt pool as seem from this photo:
North Pole Web Cam in its own melt pool
What is amazing is the ice has moved 5 degrees of latitude in less than 3 months.
It looks like this year, we will get to see a bunch of expensive scientific gear end up in Davy Jones’ locker live via webcam”
Yeah the transpolar drift is still moving rather fast, the flow of multiyear ice out of the Fram continues:
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/maps_daily_naresstrait.html
29 June 2008 at 11:42 PM
Erm… I know that the north pole is symbolic and such, but is it my imagination or does the http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/index.html NOAA wecbcam #1 show water flowing? I take it that the site is at 84.727°N 0.338°E, but the website is not that clear.
In any case, that water was not there a week ago
[Response: It’s a summer-time melt-pond - fresh water created from surface melting that sits on top of the ice. These are ubiquitous during the late summer around the Arctic until they either drain (if the ice structure weakens) or freeze over again in the fall. Note too that the web cam is now a significant distance away from the pole and is heading quite quickly towards Fram Strait (between Greenland and Svalbaard). - gavin ]
30 June 2008 at 1:45 AM
Re #93:
The energy required to melt the sea ice is negligible compared to the heat that goes into the oceans. I already calculated it in comment #78 of the Antarctic ice shelf posting. It’s only a fraction of the heat that we emit directly into the atmosphere by primary energy consumption (which is also negligible compared to greenhouse gases) and compensates for a forcing of roughly 10 mW/m².
30 June 2008 at 4:57 AM
The Change to newer ice can add to the “ice-albedo feedback” newer ice is darker
new ice 0.05-0.15
first year ice - 0.24-0.64
second year ice - 0.70
multiyear ice - 0.72
from A classification of sea ice using its albedo-The Geophysical Institute Univ’ of Alaska
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/~eicken/he_teach/GEOS615icenom/albedo/albedo%20classification.htm
PS at Andy Revkins Dot Earth appeared photo from Peabody Energy of huge wall of coal its fake a photomontage
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/big-coal-fires-back-over-james-hansens-criminal-complaint/#comment-58184
If you don’t see look at
http://the-black-butterfly-effect.blogspot.com/2008/06/another-coal-bluff.html#links
[Response: You are correct about the photo manipulation. The duplicated bit highlighted is a different photo of the same area (look at the shadows to the left). I wonder why they did that? - gavin]
30 June 2008 at 7:43 AM
IPCC, 2007: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M.Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
[Response: Possibly worth pointing out that a projection for 2100 is not the same as an expectation for the last few decades. - gavin]
30 June 2008 at 9:24 AM
Looks like Australia has skipped straight through an El Nino without the rain that this would normally bring, and is in for yet another hot dry year.
Or so predicts the Australian Bureau of Meteorology …
* Warmer season for western and southern Australia
* Drier conditions indicated from northwest WA to southeast Australia
They attribute this to continuing high temperatures in the Indian Ocean (associated with the Indian Ocean dipole).
If the Arctic ocean shifts to being largely ice free in summer, what impact will this have on Northern Hemisphere weather patterns? What do the models suggest will happen. A degree or so warming in the Indian Ocean is wreaking havoc down here. I imagine that an ice free Arctic would have massive implications.
30 June 2008 at 9:30 AM
Re 128:
I’m not sure what your point is.
30 June 2008 at 9:49 AM
When referencing the group of FAQs, please cite as:
IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M.Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
I understand that the comment refers to hindcast procedures, much along the lines used in this paper.
Miller, P. A., S. W. Laxon, and D. L. Feltham (2007), Consistent and contrasting decadal Arctic sea ice thickness predictions from a highly optimized sea ice model, J. Geophys. Res., 112, C07020, doi:10.1029/2006JC003855.
30 June 2008 at 9:54 AM
John, if I read your post 125 correctly, you’re suggesting that the loss of polar sea ice will increase Arctic Ocean biodiversity. I provided the link to suggest the opposite: permanent loss of Arctic sea ice may well cause a drastic decline in biodiversity.
30 June 2008 at 9:57 AM
Iceman, please see “Changing Sun, Changing Climate?” to learn why solar forcing is ruled out.
30 June 2008 at 10:07 AM
John, I think his point in 128 is that the ‘new ecological niche’ you suggest will be created in an ice-free Arctic is likely at first to be a biological desert, because of the rate of change.
The rate of change from human causes is far faster than any past event short of an asteroid impact.
Earth abides; it has little practice hurrying.
Much of the primary production (q.v.) comes right at the edge of the melting ice each year.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22primary+production%22+ice+edge
The marine biologists are very attentive to what’s changing for that reason.
30 June 2008 at 10:22 AM
RE # 146
Great question and one I have been asking on the several blogs posting Arctic ice melt threads. Question ignored.
There is a fascination (maybe obsession) with measure of ice melt extent with virtually no discussion or concern about the impact of an ice-free Arctic on precip and temp in western North America.
As the Australian drought continues to repeat, wheat harvest will likely continue to be affected. How the world will maintain grain surplus if weather in W. NA worsens the grain production there is not on the radar yet. But, it will be.
How about some thought and response to Craig’s question?
John McCormick
30 June 2008 at 10:41 AM
regarding inline response to #7
where is this increased seasonality/variability associated with the SH? i think you might be confused with resolution, as both hemispheres appear to normally fluctuate + or - about 1 million square km each year. as for which pole is “significant”, i guess of course that is for you to say! by the way, the largest annual anomaly (negative) occurred 1979-1980 and took place in the SH, with -3 million square km lost compared to the NH loss of -2 million square km last year. for betting purposes, there was not a SH repeat the following year.
30 June 2008 at 10:48 AM
> where is this increased seasonality/variability …? …
> both hemispheres appear to normally fluctuate + or - about
> 1 million square km each year …
What’s your source for that number? Why do you believe it?
Are you confusing the anomaly with the variability? Look at the size of the anomaly as a percentage of normal variation.
Compare your information to this, see if it helps:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
30 June 2008 at 11:14 AM
re 154:
yes that is my source. look at the axis for NH/SH. i guess the absolute value including the anomaly would be the variability - no?
30 June 2008 at 12:06 PM
yes, the fluctuation i refer to is from the ANOMALY graphs (for each hemisphere)from uiuc.
30 June 2008 at 12:31 PM
What I miss completely, is what North Pole are we talking about? The magnetic North Pole or geographic North Pole?
The submarines in open water at the North Pole is probably the magnetic North Pole, which has been moving northward quite fast. So an ice free magnetic North Pole in 2008 is something different than, say, 1959. According to the data, it was located at 70 degrees north in 1830.
[Response: Everyone is talking about the geographic North Pole. - gavin]
30 June 2008 at 12:41 PM
iheartheidicullen @ 153, Hank @ 154: The bald statement of “+ or - about 1 million square km each year” is broadly true; see the long-term anomaly graphs at Cryosphere Today:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.jpg
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg
However, this superficially true statement is also misleading; it is disingenuous, or at best ignorant, to equate the two anomalies.
The southern-hemisphere anomaly:
- is a much smaller proportion of the SH area; and
- has no statistically significant trend (the 2008 numbers are peculiar, but it is much too soon to tell whether this is a trend).
The northern-hemisphere anomaly:
- is larger in absolute terms;
- is much larger in relative terms;
- has had a very clear trend for two full decades; and
- this trend has clearly accelerated in the last five years.
30 June 2008 at 12:42 PM
#152 When the land or ice scape is drastically changed, fundamental differences in atmospheric planetary waves occur. I guess we are just learning about these changes as they come along. This means that the weather in your location may seem a little different than usual. Climate models
may give you a better long term idea. I have noticed a few things, winter is greatly milder
in most parts of the Arctic, dominant winds have equally changed there, rain or precipitation patterns seem out of whack pretty much everywhere else on Earth as well. 500 year Mid West flooding events occur every 15 years for instance, as Dr Masters has said on his website. If one huge area of the world has been transformed, weather wise. since every weather system is interconnected, like multiple gears in a machine, change the size, or features of one gear, and the entire machine behaves differently.
30 June 2008 at 12:51 PM
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=06&fd=29&fy=1980&sm=06&sd=29&sy=2008
30 June 2008 at 1:16 PM
Re #146: Craig, there are recent model results linking reduced Arctic sea ice to increased drought in the Western U.S. We may already be seeing the effects of this linkage, although it’s far too early for a formal attribution to be made.
That aside, less summer ice will mean a lot more heat gain throughout the Arctic, with dorect local implications for the permafrost, the Greenland ice sheet and (worst case) the East Siberian Shelf shallow clathrates. That said, as the Arctic warms the whole planet will be affected.
30 June 2008 at 2:17 PM
come on nick, “superficial” “disingenuous” “misleading”? same “trend” would be apparent in SH from 1993 on. “trend” currently in limbo in NH, i guess that’s what the excitement’s about. 50/50 odds, maybe i shouldn’t have got out of bed today with that kind of likelihood.
yours,
“at best ignorant”
30 June 2008 at 2:31 PM
Here is a good satellite picture of the NorthWest Passage from yesterday (June 29, 2008). No ships going through that for about 6 weeks (with a resulting two or three week window to reach the Pacific before it freezes up again in mid-September.)
http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/2008181/crefl1_143.A2008181185000-2008181185500.500m.jpg
30 June 2008 at 3:49 PM
Why they (Credit: Peabody Energy) did the photo manipulation?
I think that connect to the problem of peak coal that may come soon. If we can’t trust coal we should find alternative now. the manipulated photo show that there is a lot of coal. The original attached text in “An Export in Solid Supply” by CLIFFORD KRAUSS is
“An 80-foot wall of coal at Peabody Energy’s North Antelope Rochelle mine in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming is an example of abundance in America.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/19/business/19coal.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19726391.800-coal-bleak-outlook-for-the-black-stuff.html
By the way I guess there used to be mountain peak above the coal In the photo.
30 June 2008 at 4:36 PM
Re: 146 “If the Arctic ocean shifts to being largely ice free in summer, what impact will this have on Northern Hemisphere weather patterns?”
Maybe we’ve already seen some of the impact with shrinking Arctic sea ice in recent years.
My observations agree with the statement on the NOAA NCDC Global Warming website that:
… “there is evidence of increases in the heavy and extreme precipitation events”
in mid-high northern latitudes.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html#q10
30 June 2008 at 4:41 PM
Does anyone know if anyone keeps track of ‘dry fronts’? I live in a region (N. Georgia) that has been experiencing droughts for the past several years. We seem to be having the usual number of fronts passing per week (1 or 2), but 20 years ago each front would produce 1/2 to 1 inch of rain. Last summer and this, each front may only produce 0.1 inch to 1/4 inch. So we get lightning and wind, which may be quite intense, but very little rain.
If a ‘dry front’ is defined as a front that produces less than 0.1 inch of rain, is anyone keeping track? This might be a new metric for tracking the desertification of the SE US.
30 June 2008 at 4:46 PM
#146 Craig Allen, #152 John L McCormick,
I gave up posting what more I was going to say, keeps getting rejected by the filter. But in short, yes there will be an impact, yes it quite possibly is already happening. I am worried about it.
30 June 2008 at 4:59 PM
iheartheidicullen @ 162: Sorry if my tone was intemperate, but really the SH and NH sea ice trends have been analysed at length online by Tamino and others, over the last year or two, with the clear conclusion that the SH anomaly trend is small (the anomaly at the maximum last year was about 1.5% of the mean annual maximum, if I remember correctly) and not statistically significant (at the 95% level, I think), whereas the NH trend is large (tens of percent), long-lived, and statistically very significant indeed.
30 June 2008 at 5:15 PM
Re #146, #152, #167
Recent papers with a direct bearing on this issue:
“Accelerated Arctic land warming and permafrost degradation during rapid sea ice loss”
David Lawrence, Andrew Slater, Robert Tomas, Marika Holland, and Clara Deser
Geophysical Research Letters, June 13, 2008
(UCAR press release)
Good coverage of this at Open Mind, and extensive discussion at Hot Topic here.
Lawrence et al focus in the impact on permafrost, but that are equally significant implications for the whole NH.
Also significant:Greenland Ice Core Analysis Shows Drastic Climate Change Near End Of Last Ice Age
Lawrence et al find evidence of a significant and rapid step change in Arctic temperatures associated with rapid loss. We’re seeing rapid ice loss. If the atmosphere can reorganise on such short time-scales, we badly need to look inside the models to see if we can tease out the implications. Perhaps Gavin might like to comment - or better, work up a post on the issue…
30 June 2008 at 6:22 PM
RE: 166
Hey Catman,
From observations I have been making since the 1980’s the reason for the dry fronts you are experiencing in GA may be related to the reason for the reduction in US coast crossing tropical storms over the last two-three years. A La Nina event appears to set up a series of seasonal pressure waves which are the reverse of what you should see during a neutral or positive ENSO pattern.
It appears that during an La Nina period an anti-cyclonic (high pressure) zone sets up near Southern Arizona and New Mexico drifting between S. Cali and S. Texas during the early summer. If this high pressure wave drifts south it appears to cut off the flow of Gulf of Mexico water vapor from flowing up the Mississippi Valley and feeding the normal Late Spring and Early Summer afternoon showers in the Southern Mid-Atlantic region.
Normally we would see the Bermuda High pressure wave interacting with this SW US pressure wave, by oscillating East and West. Since the mid-1970s the two patterns appear to have become disconnected at times with the Bermuda High retrograding and sitting off the coast of the Savannah/Charleston region at times, resulting in an increasing occurrence of a dry, high temperature wind coming out of the SW. At other times it will take up a station about 400-500 miles SSW of Ireland.
(In the mid-80s the Bermuda High actually retrograded to the point it set up south of Panama City FL.) (You may remember this period as when one season the Mid-West had a drought and the Southern farmers shipped hay to them and two seasons later the Southern farmers had a drought and the Mid-Western farmers returned the favor.) It appears the Bermuda and SW US High, at least for the last 5 years, has more of a the character of moving North and South.
In short, the current pattern will likely breakdown over the next two years and the El Nino pattern will slowly reassert itself with the wetter and generally warmer winter temperatures in GA. While the Mid-west will likely return to their normal balanced moisture with cooler winter time temperatures. There is a real good review of the effects of the ENSO events at the NOAA site and as of last Fall there was a good reference to be found there that talked about the formation of Stagnant Fronts. (Note: One of the modeled expectations related to Climate Change relates to an increase in formation and duration of Stagnant Fronts. http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/stagnation/index.php?month=5&year=2007&submitted=1#maps )
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
30 June 2008 at 6:40 PM
This pix from Cryosphere
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/arctic.jpg
viewed in the context of the last few weeks shows how homogenous the whole ice pack is, and most disturbingly how the area adjacent to the Canadian Archipelago is now showing as in the 80% to 60% range. This would seem to suggest that the multi-year ice is now well and truly adrift and practically indistinguishable among the mush of younger ice. With no anchoring of the old ice and the on-going push through Fram Straight the whole future of the Arctic over the next few months looks like it will be determined by how the wind blows.
30 June 2008 at 7:50 PM
Nigel (#171),
Try looking at the higher resolution sea ice images available from the University of Bremen here (my new favourite sea-ice site - hat-tip to LG Norton at #110 above). You can see a lot more of what’s going on - and it certainly looks as though a lot of the multi-year ice is disappearing fast…
30 June 2008 at 10:15 PM
What effect will the melting north pole ice have on sea levels? Did someone actually ask that with a straight face???
Try this: Fill a glass half full of ice. Fill the remainder with water. Let the ice melt.
Robert
[Response: You are mostly right, but (as always) the real world is a little more complicated. The main issue is that sea ice is fresher than sea water (has less salt), and since salty water is more dense (1028 kg/m3) than fresher water (1004 kg/m3 for 5 psu), the volume of sea water displaced by the ice is slightly less than the volume of the ice if it melted. Thus sea levels do rise if fresh ice melts over a salty ocean. Having said that, it is a really small effect - if the entire Arctic summer sea ice pack melted (average thickness 2 metres, density ~920 kg/m3, area 3×10^6 km^2 (0.8% total ocean area) => a 4.5 cm rise instantly which implies a global sea level rise of 0.36 mm. Given current rates of rise of 3 mm per year, this is negligible (but not zero). - gavin]
1 July 2008 at 12:18 AM
With regard to my (#146) question about the effect of an ice-free arctic on weather patterns:
I’ve been thinking about atmospheric circulation a lot as I try to work out what global warming if doing to Australia’s climate. So bringing together my shambolic understanding of atmospheric circulation, here are my pondering on the implication of an ice free arctic for northern hemisphere weather.
1) It seems to me that the key mechanism for any impact must be the changes that increased arctic ocean temperatures will impose on the atmospheric circulation feature known as the Polar Cell, and via this on the Ferrel cell which sits over the mid latitudes.
There are handy explanations of these at Wikipedia …
* Atmospheric circulation
* Hadley cell
2) The World’s deserts are due to the down-welling of dry air caused by the northern and southern Hadley Cells. This works as follows: As hot air rises in the tropics, moisture condenses causing high tropical rainfall. As it descends in the Horse latitudes (approx 30 degrees north and south) the opposite effect happens and deserts therefore occur. It seems that decreasing rainfall in these regions in recent decades is due to a shift and expansion of this down-welling toward higher latitudes due to global warming. In the northern hemisphere this is causing the desert regions to expand northward. In the south they are expanding southward. This is very evident in Australia, where the east moving low pressure systems that bring us our rain increasing pass south of the continent. As a result, our westerly fronts are much drier than in the past.
3) At the poles, cold air within the Polar Cells descends then travels equator-ward and rises at the junction with the Ferrel Cells at the temperate latitudes around 60 degrees. (The Ferrel Cells are a secondary cells that sit between and are driven by the circulation of the Polar and Hadley cells.) The descending air masses of the Polar Cells is responsible for low precipitation at the polls. And likewise it is responsible for high precipitation where the air rises at the junction with the Ferrel Cells at latitudes 60 degrees.
4) So in thinking about the implications of a warmer arctic, we need to consider what this will do to the circulation of the Arctic Polar Cell. Given that it is driven by the descent of cool air at the poll, a warmer arctic would presumably slow the circulation. Therefore you would expect that the southward movement of air from the poll to latitude 60 degrees would slow. This would have a kick-on effect on the Ferrel cell, so you would expect the northerly movement of surface air - the mid latitude westerlies - within that cell to also slow. With a decreased mass of air moving, perhaps we will see decreased precipitation at and around latitude 60 degrees where it ascends. Then again, with a big expanse of exposed arctic ocean, you would expect evaporation to increase, so rainfall might be expected to increase north of the confluence of the Polar and Ferrel cells.
5) Given that that Ferrel Cells acts like a ball bearing between the upwelling of the Polar Cells and the downwelling of the Hadley Cells, you would expect there to be weather implications within the region of the Northern Ferrel Cell if the relative rate of circulation of the Arctic Polar and Northern Hadley cells alters. If there is an increased miss-match between the mass of air movement in each, then perhaps this would lead to increase turbulence and therefore increased storminess. Alternatively, perhaps the Hadley cell is currently slower than the Polar cell, so the slowing of the Polar Cell will actually bring the two into better accord and storminess will decrease. I imagine that this has implications for the number and intensity of tornadoes and hurricanes.
Can anyone point to discussions of this sort of thing anywhere on the internet? Preferably by someone who knows what they are talking about - unlike myself. And does anyone know what the current balance is between the Northern Polar and Hadley cells. Surely someone somewhere is investigating all this with climate models.
1 July 2008 at 9:17 AM
Well, the WSJ is at it again.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121486841811817591.html
“Global Warming as Mass Neurosis” by Bret Stephens
1. Let’s confuse the mean temperature of the continental 48 with the mean temperature of the whole world!
2. Now how about the increasing ice extent in the Antarctic??
3. This winter the Northern Hemisphere was the coldest in decades! (And a bunch of German scientists predict global warming will take a “vacation” for a few years.)
4. And 3,000 scientific robots have shown that the ocean has cooled over the last five years!
I know enough from following the discussions here to ignore the first three points, but I missed the underlying story likely misrepresented in point 4. Someone care to comment, or point me to the relevant discussion?
1 July 2008 at 9:55 AM
Robert, people often don’t consider the ice on Arctic land. The situation is more like a bowl with an ice cube in the water and another resting on the rim. Tip the ice on the rim into the water (i.e., melt the land ice), and the water level in the bowl rises.
1 July 2008 at 10:06 AM
The young neocon speaks. This really belongs in The Weekly Standard.
Anybody care to compose a rebuttal for comments?
1 July 2008 at 10:24 AM
Re Eyal Morag @164: “By the way I guess there used to be mountain peak above the coal In the photo.”
No, The Powder River basin is in the rolling high plains of NE Wyoming and SE Montana and there is relatively little overburden above the coal beds.
1 July 2008 at 10:39 AM
RE: 174
Hey Craig,
I am afraid this discussion my be slightly OT, as both your and my observations may involve processes unrelated to changes in Arctic Ice Coverage. I read through your thoughts and though I am not an expert being little more then a layman myself, I have some insights that seem different from your developing hypothesis.
First and foremost is I have yet to see a good discussion on how Global Warming effects your observation of a Northward movement of the apparent circulation of the ITCZ heat energy and water vapor distribution. I have a hypothesis of my own; however, I have insufficient synoptic data to back it up. I can share with you two observations I think are crucial. The first is the NASA observations in 2004 and again in 2005 that demonstrate that the air high over the poles appeared to be warmer then normal, though at the surface the temperatures appear normal and drier in Winter. While in the Summer the temperatures appear to be slightly warmer and a bit wetter. The second observation relates to the apparent difference in the wet/dry adiabatic altitude at temperatures in the range of -30 Deg C. Apparently, the British Arctic Survey Team operating out of Northern Canada in 2006 seemed to suggest that the formation of ice/snow in the upper atmospheric region of around 250mb seems to be remaining as super cooled water drops.
Secondly, as to your thoughts in regards to the Polar, Farrel and Hadley cellular interaction. It is likely the interface between the Hadley and the Farrel cells drive the Northern Jet Stream. Though I have not seen any data that would suggest the speed of the Jet Stream has shown a decrease. However, occurrence of the north and southern deviation (meanderings) of the Jet Stream have increased to the point that many former seasonal patterns appear to be changing. At issue is trying to determine the cause of these changes, for instance are the deviations due to an attempt of the Jet Streams to speed up? Where as more the impetus for speed has been traded for increased volume and without constraint it has resulted in increased the North/South meandering. However, most winds, even the Jet Stream, are more likely driven by the differences in Air Pressure cells and not circulation interaction or latitudes.
The interesting thing is when looking at the synoptic record we have a clear signature of an increase in the speed of the surface Polar Easterlies in the NH. At the same time we seem to have an indication of a decrease of the surface Temperate Zone Walker circulation between 20 and 40 Deg. North and South. Yet, if we look at the Air Pressure records, ( http://nomads.ncdc.noaa.gov:9091/ncep/NCEP ) at the various altitudes there does not seem to be a increase in these values, though the occurrence of where the Air Pressure zones occur seem to be related to the ENSO, PDO and NAO interaction. At best there seems a possibility that the geographical breadth of these Air Pressure Zones may have changed rather then their intensity.
In the past we have had extensive discussions in regards to these observations on UKWeatherWorld; however, there has not been much research released recently. Hence, the discussions have waned there over time. I can share that there may be several resources you may want to research further as you continue to develop your hypothesis. NOAA and the Hadley Met Center have quite a collection of discussions and studies along these lines as do several of the Scandinavian countries. However, I do not recall any discussions that appear to track with your current thoughts.
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
1 July 2008 at 10:53 AM
OFF TOPIC but can anyone verify or refute this paper on GHG:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v3.pdf
[Response: Garbage (again). - gavin]
1 July 2008 at 11:06 AM
Re 172 and therein cited,
This pattern of ice melt is hard for polar bear “cubs of the year” to survive. Unless the multi-year ice reverts to shore anchored modes, we may be seeing the functional extinction of polar bears.
1 July 2008 at 11:45 AM
In #170 david cooke wrote … “While the Mid-west will likely return to their normal balanced moisture with cooler winter time temperatures.” …
However, warming trends are evident in the climatalogical data. Thus it is not possible for the Mid-west to return to “cooler winter time temperatures”.
Data plots:
http://npat.newsvine.com/_news/2007/02/28/590802-upward-trends-in-low-temperatures
1 July 2008 at 1:04 PM
Okay, I’d like to post the following rebuttal to the WSJ opinion piece. Before I post, any feedback from this great group is appreciated!
1 July 2008 at 2:59 PM
#144 Peabody image manipulation
I made an animated gif of the overlain sections and it shows quite clearly that the left hand 30% of the image overlays directly (with slight scaling) on to the part of the image from 280 to 480 pixels. It is clearly a picture of the same spot taken at a different time of day (hence the shadows change). As to why they would have done it, and then claimed that it was just a question of ‘touching up‘ the photo, that remains a mystery.
1 July 2008 at 3:06 PM
[# arja Says:
28 June 2008 at 8:22 AM
Why do you keep on telling your kids funny stories about father Christmas living at North Pole? Everyone should know that he lives in Finnish Lapland. What on earth would his reindeer eat at North Pole. Ice?]
Easy.
Penguins.
1 July 2008 at 3:09 PM
RE: 182
Hey Pat,
Not to quibble; however, I have done an extensive analysis of the USHCN data for the Mid-Western region just for kicks, myself. For 40 of the sites for which there is a historic record of a minimum of 75-78 years and 8 sites of which there is a record of more then 110 years in this region, the Monthly low temperature, when tracked from year to year separately for the Months Dec. Jan. and Feb., shows an average low temperature rise of 1.5 degrees since 1930-33 using a 30 sample moving average.
Point being is, I suspect we have a miscommunication occurring. Though there is a increase in the low temperatures, whether it is your estimate of a rise of 12 Deg. F or the USCHN record demonstrating a 1.5 (+/-.5) degree average monthly long term rise, the low temperatures are generally lower during a positive ENSO or negative to neutral transition for this region. Normally, they will warm during a negative ENSO of positive to negative transition based on my long term observations.
I am curious though, is your data based on the measured daily low temperature? If so how widely distributed are your sensing stations? Have you noted a change in the relative or specific humidity at each station that tracks with the changes in the temperature trend? Have you tried comparing the wet bulb/dry bulb low temperature data? Have you tried to analyze the range of the daily high and low temperature against the daily range in the humidity values? Have you tried tracking the difference in the high temperature from the day before to the current days low temperature to demonstrate the change in the radiational cooling from one day to the next day? Finally, have you ran a comparison between the indicated radiational cooling to the change in humidity?
I know too many questions… I have found that a simple temperature analysis will not tell me as much as an analysis that reduces the confounding variables to a minimum. That is part of the problem the experts face today in that it is very difficult to separate the seed from the chaff. My hope is that the science will continue to march along with better data sets and increasingly improved analysis techniques. I am always curious as to how someone has arrived at the conclusions they have and an explanation of yours would be welcome, though a bit OT for this thread.
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
1 July 2008 at 3:17 PM
RE: Chuck Booth #82
Actually, the extra biomass would contain some current atmospheric CO2. But if it were even as much as a trillion tons of new animals and plants composed solely of carbon, we’d still have retarded the growth in CO2 by about three weeks.
Whoopie.
Be still my beating heart.
This would also have to assume that our fishermen wouldn’t fish these stocks for our own consumption. How likely is that? We have had recent satellite pictures of no-go areas for fish breeding (and fish stocks haven’t recovered as quickly as models suggested). Where the poor recovery is because of fishing trawlers going in there and catching spawning fish. Even though, if they listen to their own people, they should know that fish stocks have to recover before they can fish at the old levels they were used to, so fishing now robs their future for fifty years so that they get paid for one year now.
So not likely, is it.
1 July 2008 at 3:25 PM
# 180
The tone of that paper alone should give away its bias. Quite a bit of the paper involves attacking the analogy of a greenhouse to the actual greenhouse effect– it’s not a surprise to anyone that the analogy breaks down pretty quick, but the authors feel like they are making a revelation here. They go on about how a greenhouse effect violates thermodynamics, how a pot of boiling water invalidates the greenhouse effect, and other absurd remarks.
1 July 2008 at 3:28 PM
[Re: 125 John E. Pearson Says:
29 June 2008 at 2:40 PM]
However, this ecological niche of the North Polar Ocean is already occupied by organisms. Given no better models or reasoning, we can only assume that the new ecological niche will create new biomass opportunities (which as I’ve said earlier, is only a one-time reduction in CO2) at the expense of the biomass currently exploiting the current niche.
If you want to take some time looking at the solution, feel free. But I’d call this a dead end (pardon the pun) until someone looks at it.
1 July 2008 at 3:55 PM
RE #174 Craig
My layman’s view of the Polar cell circulation’s response to removal of the ice cover is:
Open water picks up more solar heat; descending cool dry air is heated and moistened (latent heat); the warmer, moister, less dense air gets pushed south (& west; Coriolus effect) to the convergence with the Ferrel cell(s); this warmer, moister, less dense air rises faster; precipitation releases latent heat, increasing convection; the increased convection sends even more air mass higher in the atmosphere and poleward; radiation cools the poleward bound air mass, precipitating out more water; the cool dry dense air descends, continuing the cycle.
I.e., I would expect more heat(sensible & latent)=> more convection=> more mass flow=> a stronger cell, at least in the summer. Latent heat released by freezing in the fall would tend to keep the increased convection going. If my simplistic qualitative view captures the dominant mechanisms, we should see larger seasonal variation as well.
PS #112 Chris,
thanks for checking my math - I should have entered 1e6 instead of 100000(it LOOKED like enough zeros!). I wonder what will be the cause du jour for this years melting?
1 July 2008 at 3:57 PM
Jim some suggestions:
“NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934.”
In 2001 Hansen et al. published the following:
“The U.S. annual (January-December) mean temperature is slightly warmer in 1934 than in 1998 in the
GISS analysis (Plate 6). This contrasts with the USHCN data, which has 1998 as the warmest year in the century.
In both cases the difference between 1934 and 1998 mean temperatures is a few hundredths of a degree. The main
reason that 1998 is relatively cooler in the GISS analysis is its larger adjustment for urban warming. In comparing
temperatures of years separated by 60 or 70 years the uncertainties in various adjustments (urban warming, station
history adjustments, etc.) lead to an uncertainty of at least 0.1°C. Thus it is not possible to declare a record U.S.
temperature with confidence until a result is obtained that exceeds the temperature of 1934 by more than 0.1°C.”
So Hansen freely conceded this 7 years ago, nothing begrudging about it!
“The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years.”
Hardly, the March extent (minimum) is changing at 4.2 ± 4.6 %, i.e. fluctuating without much trend, two years ago it was 20% below average.
The September extent (maximum) is changing at 0.8 ± 0.8 % i.e. rather flat.
1 July 2008 at 4:09 PM
RE 183
Jim,
Thanks for the rebuttal. I’m not competent to critique, but it does help me with point 4 in my post above.
1 July 2008 at 4:10 PM
David (#186),
I updated the website (below) to include additional data plots.
If you go there I think you will find the answers to your questions.
http://picasaweb.google.com/npatnew
1 July 2008 at 4:33 PM
#183, Jim, yet again another fabulous arm chair commentator from the WSJ. Similar to TV football anchors, but with a difference, he didn’t watch the climate change in person, is like a commentator looking at the stadium parking lot and making key comments about the football game in progress. I wonder if WSJ ever reported the astounding record Polar ice melt of 07?
1 July 2008 at 4:41 PM
Re #180, thanks Gavin. I knew it was but your response confirms it.
1 July 2008 at 4:47 PM
Mark at 185 indicates that reindeer would eat penguins at the North Pole. I’ll ignore the problem of reindeer being herbivores, for the moment, because these are undoubtedly magical reindeer and I don’t know what THEY would eat. But I do know that there aren’t penguins at the North Pole. Search “penguin” here: http://www.salon.com/people/bc/1999/12/21/larson/index1.html
1 July 2008 at 4:48 PM
Unless they are also magical, invisible penguins.
1 July 2008 at 4:59 PM
Phil, #191, I may be missing some text here, but
“Hardly, the March extent (minimum) is changing at 4.2 ± 4.6 %, i.e. fluctuating without much trend, two years ago it was 20% below average.
The September extent (maximum) is changing at 0.8 ± 0.8 % i.e. rather flat.”
Means (as far as I can tell) that the minumum us changing by:
Sometimes increasing by 0.4% (-1SD)
Sometimes decreasing by 4.2% (median)
Sometimes decreasing by 8.8% (+1SD)
Given more than 1SD below is just as likely as more than 1SD above, this doesn’t mean “rather flat”.
Same problem with the september. If the lower bound is 0%, only if the upper bound is also 0% could that be considered “flat”.
Maybe it’s just the text you use.
1 July 2008 at 5:29 PM
Mark, did you learn New Math?
I learned it the old way; I read it thus:
> 4.2 ± 4.6 % is a range between these extremes:
4.2 + 4.6 = +8.8 %
4.2 - 4.6 = -0.4 %
> 0.8 ± 0.8 % is a range between these extremes:
0.8 + 0.8 = +1.6 %
0.8 - 0.8 = 0
How did you do the addition? Can you show your work?
1 July 2008 at 5:46 PM
“Unless they are also magical, invisible penguins.”
There were once the northern hemisphere equivalents of penguins.
They were called the Great Auk. Humans killed them, to extinction.
Magical, invisible birds. Gone forever.
1 July 2008 at 6:21 PM
On Gavin’s response to comment #173, that melted sea ice being less salty(ergo less dense) than the underlying water will lead to a slight rise in sea level. Live and learn. Thank you. It may be a negligible rise, but it’s interesting to know that it’s non zero.
1 July 2008 at 6:48 PM
RE: 193
Hey Pat,
Interesting data, though it does not seem to be the representation of the low temperature for Dec., Jan., and Feb. that we were originally talking about. It looks to me you are representing the DJF and Annual mean, which I believe can have multiple variables. I can see in most of the DJF mean graphs you appear to have between a 1 to 2.5 Deg F. variation across the record for most sites which would appear close to what I have seen in the USHCN record.
To reduce the participation of other variables I prefer to look at the low temperature (Tmin) average, (since I am concerned about the change in the radiant loss). If I am trying to develop the amount of “radiant efficiency”, I also like to track the high temperature of the day before, against this mornings low, as that helps me to see the change in the range across long term data sets. (I simply insert a blank Cell at the top of the Tmax column to offset the data by one day and extract the difference between Tmax and Tmin to demonstrate the radiant cooling range.)
I also usually try to include the change in the Relative Humidity,(if it can be found), in my graphs as humidity plays a part in the atmospheric heat content. It was not until I started comparing the daily temperature range between a Desert (or recently cleared land) as opposed to a Rain Forest that I found out how important that change in the humidity is.
Since 2006, I have started using the Julian Date across the historic record, as this appears to make the best statistical model of comparing apples to apples. (For instance if you compare say the 15th of June across the data set you can choose samples of thirty from anywhere in the historic record (total population of June 15th values for that station record) and have a proper statistical sample according to my statistics references.) This helps me to identify if there may be multiple modes (variables) participating in the statistical models. (Sometimes I get the feeling that the way we are looking at the data today may be be like if you were to try to solve a algebraic equation and were not abiding by the algebraic orders of operation…)
The important point is, no matter the data set, an increase in the long term surface temperature record is present. My hobby of late has become one of trying to determine how global warming could be changing the weather patterns. (For me, it is one thing that the models seem to suggest more extremes, it is another to understand how these extremes are caused.)
I think I have taken up enough space talking about the Mid-West temperature records and my evaluation of US surface temperature changes. Time to get back to the thread, have you any insights regarding Arctic air/ocean temperature or salinity changes?
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
1 July 2008 at 7:06 PM
RE: 193
Hey Pat,
Sorry, I went back to review your graphs and saw the low temperature record values this time, my apologies. By the way have you considered using Dot Plots of the temperatures? It just seems curious to me that when I look at the trend data and the data points and I see what appears to be an even distribution of outliers across the range, even though we are seeing upward trending. (I was expecting to see skewing of the data set.)
Dave Cooke
1 July 2008 at 7:48 PM
David (#202),
Yearly low temperature plots at Green Bay WI and Park Rapids MN exhibit increases of 5 to 11 deg F from the early 1900s to 2008 - as shown on data plots (link in #193), from 10 year moving averages.
Milder winters in the Midwest have been occurring because there have been fewer and less extreme Arctic air blasts into the Midwest.
1 July 2008 at 9:57 PM
And I think what the postings by Mark and Phil aren’t clear about is what an ‘increase’ in a minimum is — is that a change in the direction of less, or more? It’s probably in the original source clearer than here.
1 July 2008 at 11:55 PM
A question if I may…
I am not surprised by the current Arctic ice melt, but I am at a loss by the faster melt north of Canada as opposed to the slower melt north of Siberia.
North America had an “average” winter in spite of La Nina and yet for most of the past winter Siberia was above normal.
The melt conditions are exactly opposite to what I expected….
2 July 2008 at 8:40 AM
Japanese Naval Records indicate a fleet navigated a completely ice-free Arctic Ocean at the peak of the Medieval Warm Period, so total melting is nothing new, however unlikely at current temperatures.
[Response: What tosh. Where do you get this kind of nonsense? - gavin]
2 July 2008 at 9:14 AM
#206 Think winds and JUne dominant low pressure…
2 July 2008 at 9:18 AM
Re: 206
Believe the rate of melting is largely a function of how much warm air is transported north by various weather systems. So, it’s possible that the North America weather has been more favorable for melting this season so far.
Understand that many other factors are involved as well, but the prime differance between one side of the artic and another is weather and currents.
2 July 2008 at 9:39 AM
Well, I posted my rebuttal on the WSJ forum, but strangely, I can only see the first two pages of comments. Can anyone else see later comments? Do you have to be a subscriber or something?
2 July 2008 at 9:46 AM
Re: comment #206
Tom G,
If you had been looking at daily temperatures in Canada south of Banks Island, you would have observed that strong heat waves from the south were reaching all the way to the Arctic Sea and melting the ice there.
This was not the case in northern Siberia.
2 July 2008 at 9:54 AM
Jim Peden, I am interested in what possible source could suggest this, as the first mention of Japanese Naval engagements is the engagement of the Mongol force circa 1280 CE (origin of the kamikaze legend). It would appear your source is as ignorant of Japanese/Naval history as they are of climate.
2 July 2008 at 11:07 AM
Re 212:
If you google “Jim Peden” you’ll find your way to a webpage featuring an amusing grab-bag of the stock howlers and talking points. You’ll also find RealClimate mentioned as:
one particular pro-hoax web site calling itself “Real Climate” which tells us that it is all about “climate science from climate scientists”, …. The site isn’t actually run by “scientists”, it’s actually run by Environmental Media Services, which specializes in spreading environmental junk science on behalf of numerous clients who stand to financially benefit from scare tactics through environmental fear mongering. [edited - no need to repeat nonsense]
At last, the cunning conspiracy is revealed!
[Response: Gosh! I wondered where those monthly million-dollar deposits were coming from …. (I wish!). It shouldn’t need saying, but all EMS do is host our server (see the original disclaimer). - gavin]
2 July 2008 at 11:14 AM
[Mark, did you learn New Math?
I learned it the old way; I read it thus:
> 4.2 ± 4.6 % is a range between these extremes:
4.2 + 4.6 = +8.8 %
4.2 - 4.6 = -0.4 %
> 0.8 ± 0.8 % is a range between these extremes:
0.8 + 0.8 = +1.6 %
0.8 - 0.8 = 0
How did you do the addition? Can you show your work?]
That’s how I worked it, but the text said “mostly flat”. Which isn’t “sloped” unless you’re a very bad carpenter.
Hence the query.
2 July 2008 at 12:17 PM
David (#203),
I’ve been using Microsoft Excel’s scatter diagrams with trend lines determined based on moving averages.
2 July 2008 at 12:35 PM
Re #214
Sorry I omitted the timescale in error, it’s /decade.
I would argue that a slope of less than 1%/decade is ‘mostly flat’
2 July 2008 at 1:21 PM
Thanks to Brian Dodge (#60) and corrections from (#112) about how much ice a Vesuvius-sized volcano could melt. This was approached by the denial community in different ways, from the simple (from alt.globalwarming):
Now let’s use just a tiny bit of common sense, and consider honestly
for just once in the hysterical discussion this topic always seems to
devolve into:
Which is likely to have more impact on frozen ice in the water
directly above those volcanoes?
A tiny theoretical change which nobody can actually measure, in the
air (above) that ice?
Or a literal mountain of red-hot molten rock exploding directly into
the water, at over 10 times the boiling point of water?…
Hmm. Lemme think.
Wow.
Tough one.
We should probably raise taxes, and immediately had over our national
government, to social-ists at the UM
to the numeric (from Bob Krumm’s blog):
“A cubic mile of molten rock, like was launched by Vesuvius on to Pompeii, converts to 4.186 billion cubic meters. At a density of 3,000 kilograms per cubic meter, that much molten rock works out to be approximately 1.25 x 1013 kg.
Basaltic magma has a specific heat of 1,000 joules per kilogram per degree Celsius. In other words, a kilogram of magma releases 1,000 joules of heat energy for every degree it cools until it transforms into a solid. A kilogram of molten rock at 1350 degrees Celsius, therefore gives off 250,000 joules of heat as it cools to its crystallization temperature of 1100 degrees Celsius. Passing through that phase from liquid to solid, that kilogram releases another 400,000 joules of heat. Then as the solid rock cools from 1100 degrees to 0 degrees Celsius it releases another 1,400 joules per degree, or 1,540,000 joules. In total, one kilogram of molten basalt at a temperature of 1,350 degrees releases 2,19 million joules of heat into the surrounding atmosphere. Multiplying the weight of a cubic mile of lava by the heat energy released per kilogram and we find that a Pompeii-sized underwater eruption releases 2.739 x 1019 joules of heat into the sea.
One kilogram of ice at 0 degrees Celsius requires the addition of 333,550 joules of heat energy to turn it into a liquid. Dividing that number into the quantity of joules of heat released by the volcano that we calculated above, we find that the cubic mile of magma can melt roughly 82 trillion kilograms of ice. A cubic meter of ice at 0 degrees weighs 917 kilograms, so that works out to roughly 90 billion cubic meters of ice melted by our undersea volcano.
Because of the shifting currents beneath the North Pole, the sea ice there is only two to three meters thick. Dividing 3 meters into the volume of ice that our volcano melted, we find that it would cover an area of just under 30 billion meters square, or a little less than 30 thousand square kilometers. Convert that into English, and it works out to 11,532 square miles of ice three meters thick, or an area about 10% larger than the state of Massachusetts.
Obviously, I’ve made some simplifications, like ignoring whatever effects the pressure of 13,000 feet of sea might have on the equation, and I haven’t taken into account the change in melting point as a result of the salinity of the ocean. But this is probably close enough to demonstrate that Jonah Goldberg’s original question is worthy of much more analysis.
In short: how much polar ice is melted by an undersea volcano? A whole lot.”
An article in Investors Business Daily has picked up the “Volcanoes Ate My Homework” storyline about Arctic ice melting (“Are Volcanoes Melting Arctic?” June 30, 2008). This ends with the paragraph:
“Earth is not a museum, but a geologically active place that reminds us frequently how relatively puny our activities are. The WHOI’s voyage to the bottom of the sea shows it is climate alarmists who are skating on thin ice.”
This, in turn, got picked up by Dakota Voice, where Bob Ellis ended his article with:
“According to the article, Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute spoke at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change and said Arctic temperatures were warmer during the 1930s, and that most of Antarctica is actually cooling now.
Anthropogenic global warming apostles would have us believe the planet has never changed in all it’s history, and suddenly man and his evil, capitalistic, oil-company fed industry has plunged the planet into an unprecedented warming event.
That simply isn’t the case. The planet hasn’t been sitting in a glass case all these years (or in a museum, as the IDB article put it). Greenland wasn’t so named as a joke; it used to be warm enough for the Vikings to plant vineyards.
But if you’re already biased against capitalism and the West, why let an inconvenient truth get in your way of a useful tool for bashing both?”
Vineyards in Greenland? Not only in this article, but as it turns out, all over the web. Yeah, I realize it’s probably a conglomeration of the “warm, green Greenland” and “Vineyards in England” contrarian arguments, but if this is the level of truthiness they use to approach science, is it any wonder they’re confused about climate change?
P.S. “social-ists” used to defeat the spam filter.
2 July 2008 at 2:00 PM
#217, A little hint for the volcano “dun it” gang, find the spot where the surface ice has melted, either on a glacier or on floating ice, aside from that , laughing is a healthy thing to do, its good stand up comedian stuff. .
2 July 2008 at 2:03 PM
RE: 215
Hey Pat,
Yes, I realized that. Excel is supposed to have the capability to support Least Squares or Linear Regression functions, if you are interested. I generally only use the old Bell Labs technique (Dot Plots) to check for multiple attributes. (I have been expecting greater evidence of multiple attributes / modes or a shifting mean in the weather station data sets then I have found.)
Have you tried sampling the daily Tmin values in the USHCN yet? I have found if you will also include the TMIN/TMAX Flag Codes you can check the data continuity. (Generally I try to only select sites with a minimum of 90 years history when I am looking for a strong correlations and use sites with a minimum of 60 years for regional testing.)
I am curious what would a long term Arctic weather station (Like Pt. Barrow, AK) low temperature, wind, pressure and relative humidity record would show us. (Regional Weather Stations above the Arctic Circle http://pabr.arh.noaa.gov/wmofcst.php?wmo=ASAK69PAFG&type=public ) Have you tried to access and analyze data from any of these sites yet? I had not thought to try to test for temperature trends above the Arctic Circle until yesterday.
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
2 July 2008 at 2:10 PM
Dear Gavin,
Moving right-along to http://nsidc.org/data/virtual_globes/
then- Greenland melt file for Google Earth (KMZ, 404 KB),
Isn’t Melt curve at lower left best served by exponential-
non-linear regression curve, rather than linear as depicted
in Graph??
Upmost Respect,
Richard
2 July 2008 at 3:04 PM
“less than 1% per decade … flat”
It’s slow on a human lifetime time scale.
On an ecological time scale it’s quite rapid.
2 July 2008 at 3:11 PM
Re: #183
Jim, remember who you are dealing with (WSJ). They choose only certain comments — mine was already filtered out.
Good luck, and let us know what happens.
2 July 2008 at 3:20 PM
For anyone who might still be interested, the WSJ forum seems to be fubared. It keeps reporting spurious empty pages that appear and disappear, regardless of the browser I use. I reposted my rebuttal for good measure, but so far, no dice.
I blame Rupert Murdoch.
2 July 2008 at 3:29 PM
#150
It would be foolish to “rule out” solar forcing completely, as certain correlations between solar variation and climate have certainly been observed in the past, and the current warm period has coincided with high solar activity. Ruling out solar as a forcing would be equivalent to saying ENSO and the NPI and other forms of natural variability no longer play a role in climate change because of CO2….they obviously do, as the declining temperatures of the past year have shown.
This isn’t to say that greenhouse gases may or may not be the dominant factor now, but to not consider other forcings on climate would be rather narrow-minded. Climate science is still very young, and there is lot that has not yet been determined or proven.
2 July 2008 at 3:31 PM
[# Phil. Felton Says:
2 July 2008 at 12:35 PM
Re #214
Sorry I omitted the timescale in error, it’s /decade.
I would argue that a slope of less than 1%/decade is ‘mostly flat’]
Unless you’re expecting 0%/decade. My shelf is “flat” but if you put a well balnced steel ball bearing about 5mm diameter on it, it will move. So it is “flat” for storing books on. However, if it were a machinist’s bench, that’s not very flat at all.
You need a bit of context. Alternatively, if the third year had grown by 0.4% the eighth shrunk by 1% and the 8.8% was in the fifth year, then again, that’s “flat”. But if it was 0.4% bigger, 0.2% smaller, 1.6%smaller, 2.4% smaller….
That would not be flat.
It’s a problem though with limited text availabe and graphical needs.
2 July 2008 at 3:33 PM
Just when did this Vesuvius sized volcano erupt and cause all this melting we are seeing currently in the Arctic? And can anyone point me to the Richter Scale readings on that eruption?
best,
John
2 July 2008 at 3:37 PM
(from alt.globalwarming):
Sigh.
So get a cold store. Put the temperature at *exactly* 0 degrees C.
Put some ice in it.
Leave it.
Still there?
Now, we cannot measure the temperature with our bodies, but put the thermostat at +0.5C.
Leave the ice there.
Still there?
Nope.
(the only reason I put it there was in case anyone *dumb* enough to read and think “they may have a point” was passing. this is an experiment they can manage for themselves)
2 July 2008 at 3:46 PM
Re Gavin’s in-line to Jim Peden @207,
Perhaps Mr. Peden is confusing Japanese ‘naval records’ with Gavin Menzies’ tosh about the arctic exploits of the Chinese Treasure fleets.
2 July 2008 at 3:48 PM
Paul Melanson quotes some global warming denier: “But if you’re already biased against capitalism and the West, why let an inconvenient truth get in your way of a useful tool for bashing both?”
It is really quite peculiar how so many deniers seem to assume that taking action to mitigate anthropogenic global warming is in fundamental conflict with “capitalism” — as though the manufacturers of wind turbines, solar thermal power plants, photovoltaic panels, energy-efficient buildings and appliances, etc. were not profit-seeking companies. It is as though they equate “capitalism” with “the fossil fuel industry”.
According to WorldWatch Institute, in 2007 alone $71 Billion in private investment went into the wind and solar industries. Now admittedly that is just a couple quarters worth of profits for ExxonMobil, but still, it’s not nothing.
2 July 2008 at 4:00 PM
#206
Actually, North America experienced a colder than normal winter, at least compared to 30-year averages.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=5&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=1106&year1=2007&year2=2008&base1=1977&base2=2007&radius=1200&pol=reg
Interestingly enough, the last two moderate/strong La Nina winters did not have such a cooling effect on North America…in fact they were very warm.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=5&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=1106&year1=1998&year2=1999&base1=1977&base2=2007&radius=1200&pol=reg
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2008&month_last=5&sat=4&sst=1&type=anoms&mean_gen=1106&year1=1999&year2=2000&base1=1977&base2=2007&radius=1200&pol=reg
Perhaps a function of the PDO switch believed to have occurred this past year?
2 July 2008 at 5:23 PM
#230: I don’t know the immediate cause,the la Nina or what, but it’s been a cold summer too where I’ve been, which was Grand Rapids Michigan til a couple of days ago, and is Vancouver, BC since. It seems I can’t find enough clothes to wear. I had to sleep under a wool blanket last night to avoid turning the heat on!
2 July 2008 at 5:25 PM
A minor quibble with the Krummy blog (#217), he has neglected that he would have to heat a column of water roughly 4.3 km deep and several hundred km^2 in area–so we’re talking a few degrees of heating at most. Now given that most of the deep ocean is right near freezing, as well as salty and dense, this heat will stay in the deep ocean, and the ice will never see it.
2 July 2008 at 6:43 PM
David (#219),
While a NOAA NWS hydrologist from 1976-2005, I worked on consistency analysis of climate station data for use in calibration of hydrologic model parameters for flood and low water forecasting and risk assessment.
Since leaving NWS, I created plots for annual mean temperature plots at 19 stations in Alaska (about half inland and half near coastal waters/ice). The majority of the climate stations in Alaska have records beginning in 1950. Several NOAA NWS Cooperative Climate Stations in the Midwest have daily records starting in the 1890s.
I’ve plotted average daily Tmin values (annual, seasonal and monthly) for many stations, and average annual and monthly dewpoints - but not recently.
2 July 2008 at 7:42 PM
NSIDC July update is now available:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html
2 July 2008 at 8:02 PM
Re #232
“A minor quibble with the Krummy blog (#217), he has neglected that he would have to heat a column of water roughly 4.3 km deep and several hundred km^2 in area–so we’re talking a few degrees of heating at most. Now given that most of the deep ocean is right near freezing, as well as salty and dense, this heat will stay in the deep ocean, and the ice will never see it.”
I tried to give a post with sample calculation here but the spam checker wouldn’t let me!
See here for an example:
http://www2.ocean.washington.edu/oc540/lec01-11/
2 July 2008 at 8:12 PM
The solar crowd has some new research and has some jumping for joy.
http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/138/paper/AS06018.htm
Does a Spin–Orbit Coupling Between the Sun and the Jovian Planets Govern the Solar Cycle?
Abstract :We present evidence to show that changes in the Sun’s equatorial rotation rate are synchronized with changes in its orbital motion about the barycentre of the Solar System. We propose that this synchronization is indicative of a spin–orbit coupling mechanism operating between the Jovian planets and the Sun. However, we are unable to suggest a plausible underlying physical cause for the coupling. Some researchers have proposed that it is the period of the meridional flow in the convective zone of the Sun that controls both the duration and strength of the Solar cycle. We postulate that the overall period of the meridional flow is set by the level of disruption to the flow that is caused by changes in Sun’s equatorial rotation speed. Based on our claim that changes in the Sun’s equatorial rotation rate are synchronized with changes in the Sun’s orbital motion about the barycentre, we propose that the mean period for the Sun’s meridional flow is set by a Synodic resonance between the flow period (~22.3 yr), the overall 178.7-yr repetition period for the solar orbital motion, and the 19.86-yr synodic period of Jupiter and Saturn.
I’m a layman. Can anyone help explain what this means?
[Response: Not much. There is a vague numerological connection between the orbit of Jupiter (roughly 10 years) around the sun and the length of an average solar cycle. Ever since this was noted (decades ago) people have hypothesised that the latter is connected to the former. This paper is just an extension on that theme. The completely absence of any force, mechanism or physics that could - even theoretically - make a link has not apparently been a deterrent. Why this has any implication for climate is .. mysterious.. to say the least. -gavin]
2 July 2008 at 8:17 PM
Unfortunately, my attempt to answer the question previously posed to me by Ray Ladbury was rejected as “spam”, and multiple attempts to find the forbidden language was unsuccessful. In fact, I could find nothing in verbiage not traditionally used in climate science. Such is the life of a “denier”….
2 July 2008 at 8:24 PM
re #217, #226, #232
Not to mention that if you subtract 110% of the area of Massachusetts (~2.3e4 km2) from the area that melted last year (~7.72e6 km2), you’re left with ~7.7e6 km2, or 99.7%. Volcanoes as a cause for 2007 arctic melting? 99.7 percent BS.
2 July 2008 at 8:51 PM
Gavin says “Why this has any implication for climate is .. mysterious.. to say the least”
I thought so but a well known meteorologist who likes to sign certain ‘petitions’ claims that “On each occasion that the Sun has done this in the past the World’s mean temperature has dropped by ~ 1 - 2 C. ”
2 July 2008 at 8:51 PM
Jim Peden (237) — If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.
First of all, the internet seems to me to becoming less reliable; your comment may simply not have even reached the spam filter. Second, try putting in hyphens .
2 July 2008 at 9:29 PM
#232 Ray, the stand up comedian contrarians will easily point out that not all of the Arctic Ocean is 4.3 Km deep, its a no brainer. Volcano “dun it” guys dont know that I have collected Pumice rocks on the shores of Ellesmere Island in the early 80’s when there was lots more ice, there is a thing called geological activity, which mind you, can be picked up by US or Canadian Geological surveys, But hey, lets not encourage them to do proper research, its fun to read them so over the top.
#234 Thanks Gavin, Great report. I want to note the early Melt aspect of 2008, which is a match
with the late now defunct “big blue” skies which was an extraordinary event of continuous cloud free skies which lasted several months, well before spring, giving a greater ice extent at least on the North American side of the Pole, what “big blue” gaveth “big blue” taketh away…..
2 July 2008 at 10:46 PM
Re #240
I had exactly the same problem posting a reply to that post (see #235) and was unable to find what the offending word was (the message explicitly said that it was a spam violation). It told me to email ‘them’ if I thought it was a mistake, but no address given.
[Response: contrib - at - realclimate.org - gavin]
2 July 2008 at 11:19 PM
Jim Peden:
I’d love to hear your response to Ray Ladbury’s question. Can’t wait.
But I have to wonder: why would you solicit information from a website which you yourself have described elsewhere as “a staged and contracted production, which wasn’t created by “scientists” …
3 July 2008 at 12:30 AM
Mike, cite please? You’re apparently quoting something. What?
3 July 2008 at 12:58 AM
Brian Dodge #238 (and all those before him): that’s all for a volcano producing a cubic mile of hot rock, coming into direct contact with sea water, Krakatoa style. I have nothing against theory, on the contrary, but what about the small empirical matter of observability of such a beast on a planet instrumented to see kiloton events wherever they might happen?
3 July 2008 at 1:06 AM
#230 Sean,
From Jeff Masters:
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=880&tstamp=200712
Under “This winter’s jet stream pattern.” 17 Dec 07.
From now on any list of candidates for odd largescale northern hemisphere weather should initially (at least) include the Arctic.
Jim Peden
Pop it on your website then.
If it’s already there I can’t find it.
3 July 2008 at 6:25 AM
NSIDC Arctic sea ice news and analysis, 08/07/02 update: “Satellite data shows us that surface melt began earlier than usual over most of the Arctic Ocean (see Figure 4) http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/200807_Figure4.png ”
In the area between Greenland, Svalbard and the North pole where the NOAA webcams are located, the NSIDC´s Figure 4 shows surface melt beginning earlier than 2008/06/10.
But, the webcam images don´t show the same: 2008/06/10: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/npole/2008/images/noaa1-2008-0610-151907.jpg . I don´t see surface melt
2008/06/21: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/npole/2008/images/noaa1-2008-0621-211904.jpg Surface continues whitout melting.
The Figure 4 seems to be incorrect, at least at that location.
What do you think about??
Thank you.
3 July 2008 at 6:39 AM
Paul Melanson,
You’re assuming the heat in the lava is all evenly distributed. It isn’t. The lava isn’t perfectly spread out so as to melt ice. Most of it is in huge lava flows, and the surface solidifies long before the center. The center can take years to cool down. So all the heat isn’t instantly transferred to the ice.
Air, on the other hand, circulates.
3 July 2008 at 6:54 AM
The main media idiocy in this case is as usual concentrated on the americanized and germanized etc. subject “polar bears” which are feared to dissappear. They didn’t dissappear during the Eem warming ca. 125000 years ago and during the climatic optimum ca. 9000-5000 years ago, when it was warmer than it is now (or was it? We’ll never know before it’s far too late.)
The knowledge, that mankind is threatening itself by among other things threatening millions of species is of course not very popular, because it’s more difficult to grasp and more unpleasant to understand. Media is what they call entertainment (Zbigniew Brzezinski called it “tittytaintment” back in 2001, when asked what the according to him 80 pct. unnessescary members of mankind should be doing in 2050. How enlightened. Brzezinski is the main adviser to Obama).
TV is idiocy, but TV, as the internet, is a product of certain types of human beings and their endless need for escaping reality and replacing it with “virtual reality”. As I see it, this is merely an expression of their deathwishes - they find life as it is unbearable. TV etc. is the “modern” form of religious nonsense, as usual used by psychopaths (”power-seekers”) to manipulate others. Every evening the citizens do their own brainwashing in front of their TV-sets. Modern totalitarianism is driven by “free will”.
I think mankind is incapable of solving the problems concerning global warming, as it has shown itself incapable of solving any other real problem coming towards it during the socalled “history”. Mankind is completely unable to control even it’s most elementary parts of it’s “inner pigdog” as it was called around 1933-45. Almost everyone wants to own their own 25 square kilometers flatscreen TV and then have one in their cabin(s) too, then in their car(s) and so on and so forth, they’ll all have children even the ones who can’t and so on and so forth. And there’s no end in sight. The flat earth society is bigger than ever.
Mankind is in itself a global catastrophe. But I think the earth will survive us, even if it’s far easier for it to survive the termites or the volcanoes.
3 July 2008 at 7:39 AM
Those interested in why ice is complicated , may want to study this:
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/maps_daily_arcticbasin.html
Many buoys are moving opposite to “average” or “normal” drift…..
3 July 2008 at 8:21 AM
Re #249, Polar bears did not exist 125,000 years ago I believe.
There is always war and that is where peak oil will exacerbate climate change in regard to prices, resources and impacting the so called globalised economy.
3 July 2008 at 9:09 AM
Re 247:
It depends on what surface melting means.
Does it mean surface temps of 32F, the presence of liquid water or visible ponding?
Also, snow doesn’t even necessarily melt at 32F.
If the humidity is low enough, it will sublimate instead.
So, maybe the dewpoint needs to be 32F.
3 July 2008 at 9:21 AM
RE: 233
Hey Pat,
Actually, what is happening of late is critical. Based on the NOAA data set for the number of days the low temperature has exceeded the freezing point for brine water has certainly increased such that the 1998 and the stretch from 2002 to 2007 have exceed the normal high of near 205 days, with maximums of 241 and 247 days. When you look at the former record in the 1939 (+/- 3 years) the current records are definitely outside of the standard deviation of the record.
Here is the data set access I used to reach this conclusion:
http://www.arh.noaa.gov/clim/climDataSearch.php?stnid=PABR
Another interesting point is that the warming of surface air temperatures above 15 Deg. F is not all that remarkable. It is not until you get to to 0 Deg. F that the really interesting data begins to show up. What was fun was when walking down the thermometer from 32 Deg. F to 0 Deg. F was the plateau that I reached at 15 Deg. F. The average days change actually flattened out requiring a strong downward change to get the average to change.
The interesting thing is how much the trend data seems to be different from the data here: http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/TempChange.html
Well I am hoping I have stirred up a hornets nest over on UKww with this observation and I want to thank you for your observations and taking the time to share your research with me. Hopefully, we will talk again soon.
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
3 July 2008 at 9:27 AM
hang on Ray (232), geothermal heat can’t stay in the deep ocean; if it did, the deep ocean would be hot, just like the continental crust is at a depth of 3 or 4km. Convection carries the geothermal heat to the surface. If we call the deep ocean the bottom 3km, then, were it not for convection carrying the heat to the surface, the total geothermal heat flux of about 20TW would raise the temperature of the deep ocean by 1K every 4000 years or so.
[Response: You need to compare that heat flux with the flux associated with the overturning circulation and associated processes. For a rough estimate, downwelling water to the deep ocean in convection zones is about 40 Sv (10^6 m3/s), assuming that comes in with say 2 deg C, and leaves (through upwelling, isopycnal and diapycnal diffusion), that is a heat flux of 320 TW, thus at least an order of magnitude larger than the geothermal fluxes. Model estimates of the effect of geothermal heating on the ocean temperatures and circulation have shown small effects - a few tenths of a deg C in the deep water (i.e. Adcroft et al, 2001 - they used ~18 TW of geothermal heat into the bottom of the ocean). - gavin]
3 July 2008 at 10:22 AM
With UAH and RSS mean temps for June out, can anyone offer why the carbon warming b/n 1979 and the present has only increased about +0.05*C and +0.285*C, respectively. I would have thought that over the last 29 years, we would have had more warming.
Then considering the lack of solar activity over the last several months, I wonder how that will affect the global mean temp for the coming months, and eventually sea ice.
Curious to read some viewpoints here about that. Thanks. Happy 4th.
3 July 2008 at 10:35 AM
Re: 247, 252
OK. Now I understand that the onset of surface melt is not the same thing that the onset of pools or visible ponding. The pools are the second phase of melting.
But these pools are very easy to see in the webcam pictures. Search&Results: In 2003, the first pools appeared at 07/04. * 2004: 07/05. * 2005: no pictures. * 2006: 06/28. * 2007: lag of pictures.
* 2008: 06/29.
According to the NSIDC,s Figure 4 (http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/200807_Figure4.png ), the onset of surface melt in 2006 was later than in 2008. But pools appeared then one day earlier than now! Lag of effects of the earlier first onset of surface melt of 2008?
3 July 2008 at 11:14 AM
RE: 255
Hey Floodguy,
Actually, since we do not have a great handle on the mechanics yet probably not. If I were to take a SWAG I would suggest that the relationship between what we are seeing the last two years are likely linked to the 1960’s dip.
It is more likely that the lighter colored aerosols being added to the atmosphere by emerging industrial powerhouses are driving the deviation we see today. As to actual data you may want to search on the recent data regarding the surface accumulation in the Canadian and Alaskan Arctic by NASA and the NOAA US Western coastline aerosol detection stations regarding aerosol precipitation fallout being detected there. Here is a link to a recent NASA satellite study:
http://climate.gsfc.nasa.gov/publications/fulltext/2007JD009349.pdf
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
3 July 2008 at 11:18 AM
RE no ice at the North Pole or other symbolic, localized effects of GW that might inspire us to action. For me it was the droughts in the Sahelian-Sudanian belt in Africa featured in the film, IS IT HOT ENOUGH FOR YOU? (1989?). I had been aware of droughts and famines there since the 1970s and Biafra. Once I made the connection that I might be contributing to these droughts and famines, that spurred me into action.
So I think single effects in localized regions could play a great role in getting people involved. Sometimes the entire basket of harmful GW effects might be too overwhelming to handle for beginners in GW awareness and mitigation. They might just throw up their hands in a sense of helplessness.
RE all this talk of FLAT. Here’s some bad flat — flat-screen TVs, which (except for Toshiba apparently) use nitrogen trifluoride in their manufacture, a 17,000 times more potent GHG than CO2, which remains in the atmosphere 550 years — according to an article based on a new study (see http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=102269 )
I have an old clonker TV that I assume didn’t use that GHG, but I was thinking of perhaps buying a new TV once the digital conversion goes into effect next year, so now I’ll have to be sure it doesn’t involve nitrogen trifluoride in its manufacture. I can do that!
If we focus on one or two things at a time people can do, then it doesn’t seem so impossible. It helps foster an “I can do that,” can-do attitude. It’s the LITTLE WAY OF ENVIRONMENTAL HEALING. According to Mother Teresa, our love and concern for that single localized GW harm makes our tiny, drop-in-the-ocean efforts infinite. She said she wouldn’t have helped over 35,000 destitute people, if she hadn’t gone out to that first dying man in a Calcutta street. One step at a time adds up, as long as we don’t see it’s a Mt. Everest of needed action we’re climbing, and get paralyzed.
3 July 2008 at 11:27 AM
David, Of course things don’t stay in the deep ocean indefinitely, the question is timescale. The deep ocean and surface water don’t overturn because of differences in density, so the exchange is via global circulation. My point is that a volcano could be going off 4.3 km below your feet at the North pole and you’d never have any indication. The heat would dissipate to the general volume of the ocean–so, no, the deep ocean would NOT be hot. The volcanic flux is about 3 orders of magnitude smaller than that coming in from the surface.
3 July 2008 at 11:30 AM
256 Malkdev, You need to travel on sea ice like people in the Polar regions do. One spot may be like winter with strange looking sublimated or jagged snow (as with the NOAA picture), the other very wet with water pools everywhere, nothing is uniform, everything depends on everything else, ice thickness for example, the NOAA webcam shows a very small area, most likely chosen for its thickness (they dont put things on thin ice). Sleeping in a tent on the ice, even late spring feels like…….. sleeping on ice!
3 July 2008 at 11:37 AM
RE #217 & “But if you’re already biased against capitalism and the West…”
You really got me pegged, I’ve been against capitalism and the West for a long time, since I was a kid — and I was reared in a staunch Republican, patriotic family! The reason is I’m a Christian, so I guess that says it all. I took Sunday school very seriously.
Then I went to the East, and found out they’re not any better than us — maybe just bad and good in different ways. So I stopped looking for paradise and started working on making myself a better person. But I keep back-sliding, keep picking myself up and dusting off the dirt, and keep on trying again. So now I’m not so disgusted with capitalism and the West as I used to be, bec we all have problems we have to work on, and it’s really hard getting out of our bad, GW-causing ways and other bad habits.
BTW, I think I have found paradise afterall. Just give “doing the right thing” or “random acts of kindness” a little try, maybe when no one is looking, so you won’t be lumped in with those social-ists or bleeding-hearts.
3 July 2008 at 12:04 PM
RE 217 & “Which is likely to have more impact on frozen ice in the water directly above those volcanoes? A tiny theoretical change which nobody can actually measure, in the air (above) that ice? Or a literal mountain of red-hot molten rock exploding directly into the water, at over 10 times the boiling point of water?…”
You’ve really brought up a very important point. Nature can do us a lot of harm. I understand there are volcanoes under the Antarctic ice — the more dangerous type.
But the way I see it is, we can only do what we can do. We can’t stop volcanoes, but we can reduce our GHGs, at least 2/3 of them in cost-effective ways that save us money and make us richer. And for the bleeding hearts, we can reduce even more with a bit of sacrifice.
We wouldn’t want to add insult to injury by causing GW on top of natural disasters and problems. It might just be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. It’s those last few inches of flood water over the levee or the last bit of storm intensity that can cause the most harm.
And since we can’t control natural harms, it behooves us all the more to reduce as much as possible our own contributions to harms against humanity and nature. We need to redouble our efforts, considering all the other harms out of our control.
P.S., there’s a good novel about GW in conjunction with volcanic eruptions under Antarctic ice, THE RISING, JOURNEYS IN THE WAKE OF GLOBAL WARMING by Tom Pollock and Jack Seybold (see http://www.risingglobalwarming.com ). Maybe the scientists here could talk about whether this scenario is possible.
I’m also thinking that melting glacial ice on land masses can cause local earthquakes. I’m wondering if massive melting of ice on Antarctica — once it gets really under way — might actually trigger some earthquake activity and possible (yikes) volcanic activity.
3 July 2008 at 12:21 PM
Re: 255
RSS shows warming of 0.17 degrees per decade of the lower troposphere since 1979 (the most of any temperature series). UAH shows warming of 0.13 degrees per decade since 1979 (the least of any series). Current temperatures are depressed due to the strongest La Nina in decades.
3 July 2008 at 12:34 PM
[224] - “It would be foolish to “rule out” solar forcing completely…This isn’t to say that greenhouse gases may or may not be the dominant factor now, but to not consider other forcings on climate would be rather narrow-minded. Climate science is still very young, and there is lot that has not yet been determined or proven.”
Climate Science is not that young. Solar forcing is not “ruled out”, but it is weighed and measured alongside the other forcings. The conclusion is that, at most, it contributes less than one-fifth of the net anthropogenic forcing.
So, it’s not irrelevant, but the important thing is that there isn’t anything we can do about. What we can do something about - CO2, CH4, deforestation, etc - has a greater effect already, which will only grow if we don’t stop emitting the stuff. This simply isn’t in doubt anymore.
That’s not to say that there isn’t good science that can be done to investigate Sun-Climate interactions, whether current or past, but it does mean that there is no chance of the Sun giving us a free pass so that we don’t have to take responsibility for what we are doing to ur climate.
3 July 2008 at 12:53 PM
“K Johansen Says:
3 July 2008 at 6:54 AM
The main media idiocy in this case is as usual concentrated on the americanized and germanized etc. subject “polar bears” which are feared to dissappear. ”
No, I think the Polr Bears will go somewhere else, rather than sit on the dwindling ice until they drown.
Where?
Oh, Alaska mainland.
Where there’s food to eat.
Unfortunately, there are already humans there. Ah well, more protein for Mr Bear, eh?
What? A cull of these dangerous animals!
The death of the Polar Bear will be because we’re already on the land they would have to move to and, greedy buggers that we are, we’re not letting go. So we’ll eliminate the competition.
3 July 2008 at 12:54 PM
247, 252, 256
Re: 260
Thank you for your answer.
You say: “the NOAA webcam shows a very small area”. OK, but that area is representative of a bigger area (maybe a 5% of the arctic ocean?) And in that area (the triangle between Greenland, Svalbard and the north pole) there is no agreement between the webcam pictures and the NSICD´s Figure 4. And I continue without understanding that fact.
Regards.
3 July 2008 at 1:21 PM
#1 Andy, Gavin
Yep this “it’s the volcanoes under the Arctic” looks like the stock phrase at the mo but that Andy Revkin ala NYT is on the case.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/a-last-round-on-fire-under-north-pole-ice/
No offence intended but also time for realclimate to step into the breach dear friends? I’d appreciate an authoratitive post on it.
3 July 2008 at 1:25 PM
RE: #248
I didn’t assume anything, but the people I was quoting did. If I wanted to make such calculations I would go back and study my geophysics first, then consult with people who knew what they were doing. However, unlike those who think that propaganda trumps reality, I am more than satisfied to let special-ists study this and let me study in my field. Just like I go to see an MD if I’m sick instead of trying to cure myself using calculations on the back of a napkin.
The reason I quoted this garbage was because we’ll all be hearing it ad nauseum in editorials and on the Internet. Like “vineyards in Greenland” it will get a life of it’s own. Besides, I figured everyone here could use a laugh…
P.S. Hyphen to defeat spam filter
3 July 2008 at 1:29 PM
pete best (251) wrote “… Polar bears did not exist 125,000 years ago I believe.” I seriously doubt that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear
3 July 2008 at 1:38 PM
#266, Not even 5% , I’d say something like .000001% . 1 square kilometer of say 10 million square Kilometers. 1/10X10E6 =.0000001 for the picture, Hard to say how many “dry” spots there is for the entire Arctic Ocean remaining ice , something like 30 to 40%… If you want to disprove a big league outfit like NOAA you need big league proof. Extrapolating from one litle camera shot is not the way to find errors.
Happy 4th for American readers, wish that they could remember our 1st of July Canada day though…
3 July 2008 at 1:47 PM
As for the polar bears you are missing my point: it’s just as important that several million other species are threatened by extinction. It’s far more important that fx. Cyprus now has to get water shipped in from Greece, Barcelona is making plans getting water from the Rhone in France etc. But of course you see no pictures of that on your TV. Polar bears are cute, water isn’t. Nonsense is selling nonsense, facts are not… The globe is warming, but everything looks fine on your TV, and soon you can even ski there, or at least look at the celebrities apparently chosen by some god to do it.
(BTW I’m really not able to understand why anyone can admire a god like these mideastern tyrannic types, because as Albert Camus said around 1945: “If god exists, he must be evil”.)
3 July 2008 at 2:38 PM
Re: 253,
Alaska stations at Barrow, Bethel, McGrath and Norway show mean annual temperatures which contradict statements made on the AK annual mean on the climate.gi.alaska.edu ClimTrends webpage.
3 July 2008 at 3:26 PM
Re: 270
My 5% (and perhaps more) was refered to the triangle between NE Greenland, NO Svalbard and North Pole. Maybe, the conditions showed by the webcam could be extrapolated to that zone. (NOAA reports “extrapolating” from the webcams: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/essay_untersteiner3.html )
Curiously, now I´ve seen a change in the Figure 4 of the NSIDC june report: now it is updated at july 1. And now the green colour in “my triangle” has disapeared…
The “new” onset of the surface melt is shown at that location in blue and dark blue, at late june: as the webcams showed (and very near to the past years).
I think this new update clarifies all. The onset of surface melting in that concrete sector of the Arctic hasn´t been earlier than past years.
Regards.
[Response: The updated figure is indeed significantly different from the first version. This one probably makes a little more sense. - gavin]
3 July 2008 at 3:28 PM
Ref 234 from Gavin. I routinely visit the NSIDC site. I notice that the 2007 and 2008 curves for surface overage are diverging, with more and more of the sea surface being covered this year than last. I know that this year’s ice is much thinner than last year’s. So that, while the surface area may be greater this year compared with last year, the volume of ice in the Arctic this year is probably already less than at the same time last year. I gather from the NSDIDC site that the forecast is that before the summer has finished, there will be less surface coverage in 2008 compared with 2007. This must mean that some time within the next 60 days or so, the 2008 surface coverage curve is going to take a huge change of direction and head very rapidly downwards; far more rapidly than on July 1st 2007. I searched the NSIDC site for a discussion of this, but could not find any. Can someone confirm that my reasoning is correct, and give me an idea of when the sudden change in 2008 ice surface area is likely to occur? TIA.
3 July 2008 at 4:22 PM
Goodness what a lot of hot air hyping this. Enough to fry some eggs on people’s faces considering that this year’s melting is now behind 2007, and 2006 and 2005 for that matter in spite of all that thin thin ice.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
You think maybe lower global temps have something to do with it? Or do people not care about that data anymore?
3 July 2008 at 4:36 PM
#273 Malkdev, Gavin, I agree that the preceding map was a little too green over much wider area, spotty melting pond zones notwithstanding.
3 July 2008 at 4:44 PM
Another example of half-truths etc. at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/goddard_polar_ice/
I was considering whether I had time or energy to comment, but wondered if anyone knew who Steven Goddard is and what the “policy based evidence making” is about. Its disappointing seeing the cheering in the comments which just me despair.
[Response: “ice free up to 81N” gosh! Possibly it’s worth pointing out that even above Svalbard you could have sailed past 82 N in ice free conditions last year, and approaching from Siberia, you could have gone to past 84 N. - gavin]
3 July 2008 at 4:47 PM
#274,
What will happen in the coming months will happen.
Funny, when I read “Early onset of melt” and all below, I immediately realised why they made a such a bold estimate.
3 July 2008 at 4:55 PM
Re #269
I would seriously suggest that your doubts aren’t that well founded.
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~candela/pbevol.html
3 July 2008 at 5:13 PM
Compare and contrast:
“… Figure 2 indicates that on a daily basis, sea ice extent appears slightly higher than 2007 for most of the month. This apparent contradiction arises because of the monthly averaging calculation and because some days may have areas of missing data. … June sea ice extents in 2008 and 2007 are essentially identical, and near the lowest values for June ever recorded by satellite for the Arctic….”
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
“… sea ice concentration (SIC) data* of AMSR-E standard products are used for area calculation.
* Usually, sea ice extent is defined as an average of several days in order to eliminate calculation errors by data deficiency. However, we adopt the average of two days in this site for the purpose of rapid release.
… we are applying the AMSR-E sea ice concentration algorism developed by Dr. Comiso in NASA/GSFC.
… The numbers of sea ice extent in this site are estimates calculated by certain algorism.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
3 July 2008 at 5:36 PM
Re #275
Spyros lower global temps don’t matter much, local temps are far more important and they haven’t been that low.
3 July 2008 at 5:47 PM
It seems to me, from looking at the 500m- and 250m-resolution MODIS pictures, that the whole arctic ice pack, barring a very narrow strip along the archipelago coast, and the channels within the archipelago, is broken into floes with sizes ranging up to around 8km, separated by leads most of which are narrow but which range up to a few km in areas. All of this counts as solid “extent”, of course, but observing “area” graphs at CT might give a more reliable impression.
This pattern of broken ice includes essentially all the perennial ice along the archipelago coast. Almost none of it is fast to the coast.
All this broken ice is in motion, and some is flushing out (mostly out of Fram Strait, but also through the very constricted Nares Strait). By watching the motion of individual floes one can estimate the overall speed through these straits - my attempt at this came out at one or two knots.
Curiously, very little of the ice seems to be moving west along the archipelago, towards the Beaufort sea polynya, which I would expect from the action of the Beaufort Gyre. Almost all that ice close to the archipelago coast, which I believe to be the perennial ice, is instead heading east towards Greenland and Fram Strait.
Looking at MODIS archives, it was not like this in early July 2005, early July 2006, or even early July 2007.
The other really noticeable contrast with previous years is that this year there is almost no cloud cover on the ice pack.
Recommended: http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/
3 July 2008 at 6:05 PM
Re #274:
AIUI, the assumption is that most of the first-year ice will melt, and much of it is located around the North Pole this year, so it will melt late (if at all) because of less insolation at high latitudes. Also, it’s almost completely surrounded by multi-year ice (except towards the East Siberian Sea), so there won’t be much open water around it soon that could assist melting. Probably it highly depends on the weather in August and September.
BTW, does anybody know an image like figure 4 of the June 2008 NSIDC sea ice news (multi-year ice percentages), updated to current conditions? It’s possible to extract the information from the NIC ice charts (updated today), but it’s hard to see the whole picture there.
3 July 2008 at 6:10 PM
Between April and June, I looked at the IR satellite photos of the Arctic, every day, as they updated every few hours.
The multi-year ice was located in a rather restricted area off of northern Greenland and the northern islands of the Canadian archipelago.
In April, the multi-year ice to the west of Ellesmere began its move to the south, along with the ice before it. That multi-year ice moved down to the Beaufort Sea and melted.
The multi-year ice off of northern Greenland went out that strait by Svalbard.
Thus, the multi-year ice is gone, all gone.
Any curve that represents the sea ice extent this year cannot be compared to last year’s curve — it would be comparing apples to oranges.
If you go to the site of the University of Bremen, you can see from their graphics that the remaining ice is melting out from the middle of the Arctic Sea.
How can anyone think that the remaining ice is going to last through this summer?
See here: http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.html
3 July 2008 at 6:36 PM
Re #282
Wayne has said that the flow has been different this year, the buoys program shows a strong trans polar drift but the gyre seems rather weak.
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/maps_daily_arcticbasin.html
3 July 2008 at 6:49 PM
RE:#243 Tamino asks:” But I have to wonder: why would you solicit information from a website which you yourself have described elsewhere as “a staged and contracted production, which wasn’t created by “scientists” …
I have to question about what his definition of scientists is, since Mr. Peden later states in a comment in a at the same sight http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/pgutis/public_enemies.html#comment1178
that: “consider the theoretical possibility that Sen. Inhofe, myself, and the 32,000 other scientists who have come forth in protest are correct.”
My question is what field of science does he think Senator Imhofe specializes in? Oh wait a minute- I forgot –Political Science! I wonder how many of these are included in the 32,000 “scientists” he mentions.
3 July 2008 at 9:17 PM
Clarence, on a different thread ( http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/06/ice-shelf-instability )
in comment #168, posted this animation of images from Bremen University of the Beaufort Sea area, from May 1st through the end of June roughly.
It shows how the multi-year ice went south to the Beaufort Sea and melted there.
http://i27.tinypic.com/2qc3r79.gif
What didn’t move south just melted right where it was, as there was a record-breaking heat wave for a few days there in northern Canada on the coast of the Arctic Sea.
3 July 2008 at 9:24 PM
RE 244 Mike, cite please? You’re apparently quoting something. What?
Hank, Is this what your looking for?
http://www.alabamawx.com/?p=7509#comments
Comment #77
3 July 2008 at 10:20 PM
Eli is running a pool on when the NW passage will open. First prize is a blue bunny (magnet).
3 July 2008 at 10:22 PM
How 32000 people with some sort of science degree (maybe), have been hoodwinked
4 July 2008 at 1:18 AM
#284 Tenney Naumer,
Check previous years of QuikScat. The internal structure of the ice is always masked in the summer, it’s due to the amount of water vapour and surface melt. It does not mean the multi year ice is gone. The NIC charts clearly show there’s still multi-year ice in there. Just much less than last year.
A massive melt to come is by no means certain, although anyone who thinks it isn’t at all possible needs to consider that weather uncertainty acts both ways.
Re my #278
Now NSIDC have radically changed figure 4, it doesn’t seem to me to support a very atypical melt. Which makes me feel a bit happier.
4 July 2008 at 1:52 AM
In the thread linked by mike in 288, the weather guy points to this chart of global temperatures going back 4500 years. http://www.longrangeweather.com/images/gtemps.gif
I’ve seen that graph before
4 July 2008 at 3:14 AM
Tenney @ 287 : my observations (not current, but looking back at the MODIS archive) don’t agree with yours. Much of the ice off Banks and Prince Patrick islands does seem to have gone west and melted after the big fracture on about 7th May. But the ice off Ellef Ringnes, Axel Heiberg, Ellesmere, and north Greenland does not seem to have moved west. A coastal polynya opened in mid May, then closed again a few days later as the ice was pushed back against the archipelago. Neither has this ice melted in place, although it has certainly broken up. The 60-day buoy tracks make it clear that this ice has moved around 500km eastwards, towards the Fram Strait, during May and June, and continues in that direction at about 5-10km per day.
4 July 2008 at 3:31 AM
>239, 244, 288
“Is this …”
I asked you your source — is that where you got what you pasted in?
It might be. I pasted that line you quoted into Google — it’s posted on upwards of a dozen blogs, I quit counting after the first page of hits. I was asking you your source, hoping you had an original source.
Try the same exercise, paste some of the stuff you’ve quoted here into Google and get a feel for how it’s being circulated. Repetition isn’t credibility. Citing to “some guy on a blog posted this” isn’t either.
Chasing those is whack-a-mole stuff, not worth the effort after a while.
4 July 2008 at 4:16 AM
Re #269, Well the oldest fossil is under 100,000 years old although they state that the species is around 200,000 years old but the jury seems to be out on that one. However I stand corrected if that is indeed true but they do state that its between 1.8 million and 10,000 years ago which is rather a large gap although evolutionary changes do indeed take a long time.
4 July 2008 at 5:16 AM
Re 263
Strongest La Niña in decades? La Niña episodes in 1999 and 2000 were stronger that this one. How many years are your decades made of?
[Response: Ummm, no. the commenter is actually right. check your facts before pronouncing someone else wrong. By standard measures such as the Multivariate ENSO index (”MEI”), this recent La Nina was the largest in two decades. - mike]
4 July 2008 at 5:17 AM
[274] - That wasn’t quite how I read the NSIDC piece. They said that all the preconditions were there for a record melt, but that it would now depend on the winds and cloud (ie the weather). They also noted that 2006 was poised for a record melt (compared to 2005), but there wasn’t one because of the weather that year.
That said, the preconditioning is so strong that even with cloudy weather it looks likely that the ice will fall below the 2005 level and be the second lowest on record, even if it doesn’t exceed the record melt last year.
4 July 2008 at 6:59 AM
This may seem a silly question, but what are the upper limit estimates for sea level rise by (say) 2030 / 2050? Worst case emission scenarios, extra methane release, the works. Is there a value X such that we can say “Sea level will not rise by more than X metres”, or do we just not know enough about ice sheet dynamics to make that estimate?
4 July 2008 at 7:22 AM
[Re: #277: I was considering whether I had time or energy to comment, but wondered if anyone knew who Steven Goddard is and what the “policy based evidence making” is about. Its disappointing seeing the cheering in the comments which just me despair.]
Worse, those not cheering get in based on whether “Dr” Stephen Goddard is moderating at the time.
4 July 2008 at 8:30 AM
#286, & “consider the theoretical possibility that Sen. Inhofe, myself, and the 32,000 other scientists who have come forth in protest are correct”
I’ve considered it, even tho it is a very remote possibility now. It would be the great false positive bonanza! Assuming that we are trying to avoid the false negative (that we avoid doing nothing when GW is actually happening), and we become very energy/resource efficient/conservative, that will solve lots of enviro, political, and economic woes, and will be great in and of itself, even without GW happening.
So, either way — whether GW is happening or not — we really need to mitigate it, and in the process reap all the other wonderful benefits such actions yield. And most importantly, avoid the (increasingly great) chance of a FALSE NEGATIVE SCENARIO in which we do nothing to mitigate GW when it really is happening — which is a very dire scenario, opposite the happy scenario of mitigating GW when it is not happening.
OK, is that clear now?
4 July 2008 at 8:43 AM
Re: 274, 278, 283, 284
Looking at the slope of the melt data, it looks like 2008 is like 2007 except only about 3 days behind. Around the end of July last year, the melting slowed down. This year, I expect that curve to keep at a steep slope for a while longer, as the ice will be very thin and in poor shape.
I find it hard to believe however, that all that 6 meter thick multiyear ice that hangs around the north coast of Greenland and Elsmere Island is all gone. Does anybody have an updated multiyear ice map ?
On a climate note, I have a question. In the mid northern latitudes, the warmest week (based on long term historic records) occur about 5 weeks after the summer solistice. Does the same apply at high latitudes (ie is the warmest week the last week of july for the North Pole, statistically speaking) ?
4 July 2008 at 11:11 AM
wrt 236 and gavin’s comment. There is no observed effect on the TSI at earth’s orbit. End of story.
4 July 2008 at 11:58 AM
#285, Phil , http://nsidc.org/seaice/processes/circulation.html
some ice circulation now is exactly opposite near the archipelago. Meaning
its badly broken ice, succeptible to winds, prevailing momentum and tides. The old ice is taking a beating, also the apparently more closed Russian shoreline is explained, look at Russian side buoys heading towards Russia….
4 July 2008 at 12:12 PM
#296 The climate world does not rotate around the Galapagos Islands! As some may recall, there was unusual clear skies in the North American Arctic sector during the long night and spring, triggereing very cold surface temperatures, to the joy of contrarians, who as their habit dictates, had to demonstrate their lack of knowledge about basic climate equations:
lack of clouds in darkness = cold
lack of clouds with sunshine= hot
Canadian Arctic Spring was warmer due to lack of clouds, oblivious to LaNina.
Average climate is the combination of all regions, not just the one by Peru.
4 July 2008 at 12:19 PM
Re: 296
My decades are made out of 10 years, as in “the last El Nino this strong was in 1988″
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/klaus.wolter/MEI/
4 July 2008 at 12:23 PM
Re: my post in 292, which was truncated.
It should be:
In the thread linked by mike in 288, the weather guy points to this chart of global temperatures going back 4500 years. http://www.longrangeweather.com/images/gtemps.gif
I’ve seen that graph before, but this new one takes the cake.
http://www.longrangeweather.com/images/chart.pdf
4 July 2008 at 1:10 PM
Re #303
#285, Phil , http://nsidc.org/seaice/processes/circulation.html
some ice circulation now is exactly opposite near the archipelago. Meaning
its badly broken ice, succeptible to winds, prevailing momentum and tides. The old ice is taking a beating, also the apparently more closed Russian shoreline is explained, look at Russian side buoys heading towards Russia….
Yes looking at the IAB maps the Beaufort gyre (a source of multiyear ice) has almost gone, the transpolar drift is apparently running close to the north american side. As you say that explains the Siberian and Laptev sea behaviour this year.
http://iabp.apl.washington.edu/maps_daily_arcticbasin.html
4 July 2008 at 1:41 PM
Re: 305
Of course that should be “La Nina” not “El Nino.” Sorry.
4 July 2008 at 2:13 PM
Re: #293
Dear Nick,
Sorry, I did not repeat what I had already written in #284 about the multi-year ice north of Greenland. Sure, it went out the Fram.
What’s left of the multi-year ice is some tiny fraction of what was already a very small percentage of the total sea ice.
Paolo Morelli just sent me a new link to images that show a different picture than even the Bremen or the UIUC graphics — see here:
http://www.seaice.dk/iwicos/latest/amsr.n.ice.20080704.gif
and
http://www.seaice.dk/iwicos/latest/amsu.n.comb.20080704.gif
4 July 2008 at 4:03 PM
Tenney #309
Can you describe how it is that you differentiate between new and multi-year ice when looking at the satellite photos?
4 July 2008 at 4:14 PM
Re #236 where mike say:
To answer your question, they are talking about solar tides.
Just as the earth has tides from the sun and the moon, the sun will have tides from the Milky Way and its planets. The major planet is Jupiter so it will provide the main tide, and combined with that of the glactic centre could account for the 11 year solar cycle. Saturn is also a giant planet with a 30 year orbital period, and the two planets will produce high (spring) tides when they are aligned with the sun every ~22.3 years, and when they are aligned in the the center of the galaxy as well every 178.7 years.
We know that the solar cycle (main tide) does not have a profound effect on the climate, although it does have some. If the solar cycle is the result of a Jovian tide, so it is unlikely that the lesser effect of Saturn could account for the global warming that is now occuring.
HTH,
Cheers, Alastair.
4 July 2008 at 4:24 PM
This arctic sea surface ice anomoly is just noise. Please don’t worry so much. In a few years it will not be an issue.
Everyone was so excited about Atlantic basin hurricane activity 3 years ago and were sure it was AGW caused. Now, hardly anyone talks about hurricanes because the number and intensity in the Atlantic basin has dropped to below normal for 2 consecutive years. And the TC that hit Burma developed and travelled over waters that were below normal in sea surface temperature.
Everyone was so excited about new records being set in global average temperature, but with no record setting global averages in 10 years, ho hum.
4 July 2008 at 5:38 PM
re 294Citing to “some guy on a blog posted this” isn’t either.
Chasing those is whack-a-mole stuff, not worth the effort after a while.
Hank, I agree completely but this weather guy is the most influential weather guy in the state of Alabama. He’s influencing a lot of people and spreading a lot of bad info. I am not a scientist but would like to help balance the scales.
4 July 2008 at 6:00 PM
Wow! cce dug up a diamond in #306:
The “climatologist” and “meteorologist” who run the “Harris-Mann Climatology” company predict that between 2019 and 2045 the cyclic return of hot and dry climate will cause more nudism, murals, schizophrenic art, caricatures, depression, and death camps, to name just a tiny subset.
For sheer entertainment, everybody should click on the second of cce’s links in the above quote.
Context: The “weather guy” that cce refers to is TV weather person James Spann in Alabama. The 4500-years temperature graph that Spann cited as the truth, is the distorted one in the first link above. Spann also wrote:
So apparently Spann does not consider the folks who produced that first chart to be fringe lunatics nor extremists. We can see where Spann sets the bar on fringe lunacy and extremism, by looking at the chart in the second link above, produced by the same stable, mainstream, well-grounded folks.
(Spann was spouting in response to an op-ed piece by University Professor of Polar and Marine Biology James B. McClintock, in the Birmingham News. Spann’s credentials seem to me to be just a tiny bit less appropriate: Spann claims to have completed a Broadcast Meteorology program at Mississippi State. That program’s web site has a disclaimer: “This program is not designed for those looking for federal government positions in meteorology. Those positions require several high level math, physics and chemistry courses that are not required in the on-campus program.” Spann got some national media coverage (guess which shows?) in 2007 comments about The Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen.)
4 July 2008 at 6:20 PM
Gary P (312) — Remember we are concerned about long term averages, not just a few months or even a whole year:
http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_browse.html
4 July 2008 at 6:50 PM
The difference is that sea ice has a memory. Multi year ice (ice that has survived through a few or more summer and is thick, is much harder to melt than new ice, formed during a single winter.
4 July 2008 at 6:53 PM
David B. Benson (315)
Such alarming figures. It is amazing what colors can do. Why not use 1900 for the baseline, then all the globe will be dark red.
I prefer plotting my own data. try the following:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/offset:-0.15/mean:6/plot/gistemp/from:1979/offset:-0.24/mean:6/plot/uah/mean:6/plot/rss/mean:6
4 July 2008 at 7:42 PM
Nick Barnes: Looks like I’m about to lose our November 07 bet on sea ice minimum unless things cool down fast up there.
4 July 2008 at 8:09 PM
Gary P., Gee, anomalous years for hurricanes, superstorms like that in Burma, record ice melt–sounds like a lot of strange weather events. And you’re right, any one of them could be just weather, but all of them, and as parts of long-term trends–that’s climate change. You’re making a pretty good case for it.
4 July 2008 at 9:04 PM
Re #301:
The North Pole has no warmest week. Temperatures stay close to 0 °C from end of June to end of July.
I made temperature plots from the reanalysis 2 (NCEP/DOE) data for the North Pole (actually a zonal mean at 88.5° N; there’s no grid point at the pole) and for the zonal means at 85° N, 81° N and 75° N (excluding land and the last also excluding the always ice-free parts of the Atlantic).
Individual years are gray with darker colors indicating more recent years, 2008 is black and 2007 red; blue is the 1979-2007 mean, green the 2003-2007 mean. All values are running means from the 00Z, 06Z, 12Z and 18Z 2m temperatures. Alignment is corrected for leap years (note that nominal dates in 2008 are 0.75 days behind the seasonal cycle when compared to 2007 because of the leap day).
The multi-year ice isn’t all gone. What has melted in the Beaufort Sea is mostly ice that has been rotating in the Beaufort gyre; only a smaller part came from further east. The NIC ice charts show still a broad strip north of Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago with 80+ % multi-year ice. (I’m still looking for an easier to read multi-year ice map with current data.)
4 July 2008 at 9:44 PM
>312, Gary
Is there a function for timespan trends, like the illustrations that Atmoz and Stoat provide?
http://atmoz.org/blog/2008/01/29/on-the-insignificance-of-a-5-year-temperature-trend/
4 July 2008 at 10:39 PM
An interesting article about Arctic sea ice, polar bears, and U.S. politics:
Politicizing the Polar Bear
By Richard Ellis
Truthdig.com (Posted on Jun 30, 2008)
http://www.truthdig.com/report/page5/20080630_politicizing_the_polar_bear/
4 July 2008 at 11:09 PM
Ray Ladbury, for a combination of extreme weather events and their relationship with climate, see NOAA’s CEI:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cei/cei.html
Unfortunately, it is US only, and I know of no explicit attempt to determine its relationship with AGW specifically. However, see this graph which seems to show a significant rise in recent years.
5 July 2008 at 12:32 AM
for those interested in such tings, i have now a rotating melted greenland at http://membrane.com/sidd/greenrockturn.html
1.5M animated gif, so pliz be kind, cache with attribution
server is old and crotchety, and may fall over (like me)
i may, as time permits, rotate unmelted greenland, will let yall know.
sidd
5 July 2008 at 1:09 AM
Symbolism. A little water at the North Pole.
Extinction is forever, sure, but as long as we don’t all perish during MY lifetime, then I see no reason to fret. –Quite a few million of us are thinking this, but there’s no sense in saying it out loud.
Picture the last two humans on earth. They are carrying an empty gas can, as they go in search of some place where they can get some more fuel for their empty Hummer.
As they are the very last of their species, there has been no infrastructure or communications network for quite awhile–so it is totally impossible for them to know they are the very last.
They both agree that there used to be an Exxon-Mobil station just over the next hill. They have no idea at all that they are both already well over the hill, in terms of tomorrow.
But as they walk, we can hear them arguing. One is quite concerned that the gas station may not be there any more, as he has observed that gas stations are declining in number. His friend thinks he’s an idiot, and tells him so: “You and your trends. I’ve got plastic. What you’re about to see, my pathetic friend, is exactly how well money talks. You’d still be riding a bicycle if it weren’t for me.”
The good folks studying polar ice were thinking, just several years ago, that this North Pole ice-free event would come, say, sometime after 2050. Amusing ourselves reading this thread and sipping a good latte, we might wonder just when our last two heroes set out between their Hummer and eternity. Sometime after 2050?
5 July 2008 at 1:59 AM
#277 Phil Scadden: “I was considering whether I had time or energy to comment, but wondered if anyone knew who Steven Goddard is and what the “policy based evidence making” is about. Its disappointing seeing the cheering in the comments which just me despair.”
The only living person named Goddard you’ll find in the scientific literature w/publications related to climate is a Steve Goddard, at UNL. I’m pretty sure he’s not the same fellow. The real Goddard coauthored a paper on improving the quality of longitudinal temperature datasets in the U.S., which ironically is related to the pseudo-Goddard’s gripes, but nothing else seems to indicate any relationship.
I’ve asked “The Register” as well as the ghostly version of “Steven Goddard” for a CV, to no avail. Apparently there’s something drastically wrong with it?
It also appears that “The Register” is taking a rather aggressively protective stance toward “Goddard” and his “analysis” in article comments, as public requests for his CV are moderated out, as well as at least some criticisms of his writings.
What’s even more annoying about “Goddard” than the ample grist he’s providing to the mill of deception are his accusations of scientific misconduct against James Hansen. All potshots taken from behind a cloak of anonymity, of course.
Perhaps if “The Register” is peppered with requests for a CV they’ll get either get tired of publishing Goddard’s slander or they’ll cough up his identity. I personally think they’re being punk’d so they’d be doing themselves a favor either way.
5 July 2008 at 2:57 AM
Is there any comment on this article?
It needs a reply/response I think…
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/goddard_polar_ice/
5 July 2008 at 6:35 AM
Alastair writes:
Huh? The Milky Way is the galaxy we’re in.
5 July 2008 at 8:52 AM
Re:320
Thanks for the plots. The center of the above freezing period is around the middle of July, so the north pole is still warming 3 to 4 weeks past solar maximun.
If we had 200 years of daily climate records for the north pole, like we have for the mid latitudes, then the curve would be smoother, and a warmest week could be picked out, if it does not simply plateau.
It appears that the mid point of the warmest period occurs a little earlier than mid latitudes. I would expect, with global warming, with the ice melting earlier, this date would move forward for the high latitudes, and should also cause the date of minimun arctic ice extent to move foward also.
5 July 2008 at 9:39 AM
Re: #320
OK, Clarence, you have access to much better data than I do — those egg codes got beyond me last night. Maybe after I have another cup of coffee, I will try again. In the meantime, I will have a go at your other links — thanks for all the effort!
5 July 2008 at 10:32 AM
328.
Huh? The Milky Way is the galaxy we’re in.
Yes, and the earth includes the water that is showing a tide.
Hopefully that jarred out out of complacency and made you think about your misconception.
The Sun is not the entire milky way. It is not at the gravitational centre (where it would see no or little gravitational variability). It’s out on the bondooks.
Where the greater mass is moving about quite fluidly and its density-per-light-year is malleable to a large degree. The Sun’s density is not that malleable, it must obey hydrostatic limits.
So the Sun has its surface moved about because the average gravitational pull keeps changing magnitude and vector based on the changing locations of the rest of the milky way.
Just like the waters of the earth respond to the changing gravitational vectors from the Sun, the moon and the other planetary bodies.
5 July 2008 at 11:13 AM
#331, Mark, keep in mind that gravitational force decreases as the inverse square of distance, so about the only object in the solar system that has any influence would be Jupiter–and that is probably negligible. Beyond the solar system, gravitational influences are infinitesimal. I look on this theory as an exercise in numerology.
5 July 2008 at 11:20 AM
Mark, would you cite your source on what you report you know about how the sun behaves? Where are you getting this information?
What I find says so little is known that models use many estimates, not yet observations.
Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics
Volume 69, Issues 1-2, February 2007, Pages 3-17
Challenges to Modeling the Sun-Earth System, a Workshop, Huntsville Workshop 2004 “Challenges to Modeling the Sun-Earth System
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2006.07.017
5 July 2008 at 11:52 AM
#327 PaulM,
The article you referenced…
1) Steve Connor did not report “The North Pole will be ice-free this summer “for the first time in human history,” he reported:
This may seem pedantic, but that article does not support the use of the word “will”, read Connor’s arcticle and it will be seen that there are plenty of qualifications that make clear this is not certain (”would be” “may well have”). The denialists are just trying to make a straw man here. “On course” does not mean you will get there, it means on course.
2) What relevance are small areas of open water in 2000 (or earlier) given the loss of over 2million km^2 perrenial ice since then* (on a 3.6M km^2 baseline)? None at all, given the volume losses in that subsequent 8 years.
*Nghiem 2007 “Rapid reduction of Arctic perennial sea ice.” (meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Nghiem/rapid_reduction_of_Arctic_perennial_sea_ice.pdf) and subsequent findings of perennial loss over this last winter. I said small; well 10 by 3 miles is about 77km^2, and we’re talking extent measured in millions of km^2.
3) “Summed up over the entire earth, polar ice has remained constant.” Why sum over the entire earth if the author is talking about the Arctic??? An obvious trick designed to avoid awkward facts. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.jpg
How about we start discussing 20th century U.S. temperature trends using global datasets?
4) Selecting a 1984 paper by Hansen that uses a mixed ocean depth of only 65 metres. i.e. picking superseded work using early models that didn’t fully account for damping due to ocean heat content. Something improved by later research.
Try something more current, where Antarctica warms much less than the Arctic: http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/research/climate/highlights/GFDL_V1N6_gallery.html Again either the author is aware that the current models don’t support their propaganda, or they should bother to educate themselves to avoid spreading their lack of knowledge. Whichever way you look at it, it doesn’t look good.
5) Soot is still a human impact. The collapse of old (millenial) ice shelves along the Canadian Archipelago suggests the warming now is actually having more of an impact than past warming, as does the permafrost melt impact on buildings/infrastructure. And temperatures went down after the 1940s, anyone foolish enough to claim that’s going to happen in the Arctic?
6) The wind driven outflushing of perennial ice is likely linked to the Arctic Oscillation (AO). Changes in the mode of the AO propagate down from the stratosphere. Shindell and other researchers find that GHG driven stratospheric cooling affects the AO mode - favouring such outflushing. Yet again, with the denialist advocates, what is more interesting than what they tell you is what they omit. Shindell at el abstract: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/1999/Shindell_etal_1.html
7) The author is a gift to a dodgy used car salesman: He can’t even be bothered to look under the bonnet (’hood’ for those in the US):
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/images/20070822_oldice.gif from NSIDC 22 August 2007 figure 4.
Current AMSRE concentration plots suggest he’s bought a rust bucket that’s been polished up by the car dealer’s nephew: http://iup.physik.uni-bremen.de:8084/amsr/arctic_AMSRE_nic.png
8 ) Re the Northwest Passage, see my post #41 above, point 2 under historical evidence. Amundsen’s transit was not at all comparable to conditions last year. Real sceptics do their research, others just read a single line that tells them what they want to hear and they run with it.
9) It is also notable that the caveats given by the researchers, such as the angle of incidence of insolation at the pole and weather related uncertainty have been completely overlooked by the author! Once again, the author is building a straw man argument, claiming “they said “X” will happen”, when “they” are actually saying “there is a realistic chance “X” may happen”. Anyone with any knowledge of the Arctic would not claim an ice free North Pole is impossible. Some will claim they were right when it was just a serendipitous correlation between their prejudice and reality.
A real sceptic would trash that article.
Denialists will swallow it hook line and sinker.
The public will be left in doubt - which is exactly what that sort of stuff is all about.
Rant over.
5 July 2008 at 12:33 PM
“Hank Roberts Says:
5 July 2008 at 11:20 AM
Mark, would you cite your source on what you report you know about how the sun behaves? Where are you getting this information?”
Astrophysics.
Take a course.
I did.
Or do you have a theory about the distribution of matter in the galaxy inconsistent with the spiral galaxy placement?
Do you know any different theory about stellar lifecycles than the hydrostatic equations used to discern the construction of the sun?
Please, if you know of any theory, let us know.
If you don’t take a look at any standard textbook on stellar formation.
5 July 2008 at 12:37 PM
[# Ray Ladbury Says:
5 July 2008 at 11:13 AM
#331, Mark, keep in mind that gravitational force decreases as the inverse square of distance, so about the only object in the solar system that has any influence would be Jupiter–and that is probably negligible. Beyond the solar system, gravitational influences are infinitesimal. I look on this theory as an exercise in numerology.]
True. However, the density of the stellar atmosphere is a lot less dense than our water.
There are also a lot of stars out there.
The magnitude isn’t part of the explanation of 328’s query. That asked nothing about magnitude, just indicated incredulity that the sun, being part of the milky way, could feel tidal forces from the rest of the milky way.
The explanation I gave was HOW the sun could feel tidal forces from the rest of the milky way.
PS: note that the gravitational attraction of the rest of the galaxy is enough to cause the sun to move in an orbit. If the magnitude of force was negligible, then the sun would be travelling in a straight line.
Think on that for a while.
5 July 2008 at 12:40 PM
CobblyWorlds, PaulM also trolls the Register website for anti-AGW stories to support. See the other comments from people about Steven Goddard to show what PaulM likes to hear.
5 July 2008 at 1:11 PM
#327 paulm:
The casual issuance and acceptance of accusations of scientific misconduct in that article reveals the real problem with making progress on modifying our habits to reduce our unacceptably large contribution to climatic instability.
To a greater or lesser extent government and industry are responsive to popular pressures. If popular pressure in the form of a response to a perceived risk is rooted in solid understanding of that risk we may expect popular pressure to move government and industry in the direction of mitigation of whatever risk may be at hand.
Unfortunately Goddard’s article reveals the author’s deep ignorance of scientific inquiry and how it operates in the modern world. Comments by the consumers of Goddard’s article indicate that a sizable slice (I would argue the majority) of our populace probably have no true understanding of the “scientific method” or how it has come to be implemented.
In fact, we take for granted that we all understand the word “science” when in fact most of us do not.
Taken on the whole, our populace is unable to discriminate opinions or feelings from a linearly coherent and self-consistent body of knowledge. Without being able to make this discrimination we (I mean the collective body responding to any given perceived risk) are highly vulnerable to manipulation by special interests.
Hence “the debate” over global warming. Or, for that matter the “debates” over a plethora of issues that are contentious not because of underlying facts but because remediation of these issues threatens various interests.
The article and particularly the comments on “The Register” and myriad other loci of discussion (for instance, NY Times climate blog) tell us that until we can improve our collective understanding of science as a concept we can expect to encounter a lot of friction in any attempt to make progress in public and industry policy responses to GW. Indeed, as we’ve seen there’s enough intellectual drag on the GW response that it’s quite arguable we’ll end up with far too little response, too late.
RC and other similar sites might be well advised to always include and prominently advertise a standard treatise on what we actually mean when we say the word “science”. We assume that word and all it conveys are understood, but it’s clearly not the case, as evidenced by “Goddard” and his unwitting readers.
5 July 2008 at 1:27 PM
#330 Tenney Naumer.
And anyone else interested…
NIC’s Arctic page http://www.natice.noaa.gov/products/arctic/index.htm
The Egg Code: http://www.natice.noaa.gov/egg_code/index.html
Ice Codes: http://www.natice.noaa.gov/egg_code/page2.html
Open up the Ice Codes.
Now open up this page: http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/East_Arctic/Hi_East/2008/hiea080630color.pdf I’ve chosen Hi East Arctic because that’s the one that covers the pole.
Area B is the biggest, looking to the egg code for that area you can see…
8-10
8 1
4 1.
The top line means there’s between 8/10 and 10/10 ice coverage.
The second and third lines are read together, to read them you need to refer to the Ice Code. The second line is the fraction, and each figure below is the type of ice for that fraction figure.
Bear in mind that for any number that has a dot, you carry the dot over to all numbers to the left. So from the third line “4″ isn’t ice type “4″, it’s ice type “4.”.
So using fraction amounts and the respective ice codes are B is:
8/10 of 4.(thick first year ice), and 1/10 of 1. (medium first year ice).
Area I is just along the Northern coast of Greenland, seperated from area B by area F, it is 8/10 old ice that’s survived more than 1 year (perennial). That’s the sort of stuff that shows up bright white on the QuikScat images.
If you want to see the difference between this year and last check out this: http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/East_Arctic/Hi_East/2007/hiea070702color.pdf
This time last year the largest area (G) was 8/10 perennial. With a bite out of that (A) being 1/10 perennial, 8/10 thick first year.
And here’s the same time in 2000: http://www.natice.noaa.gov/pub/East_Arctic/Hi_East/2000/hiea000703color.jpg Solid 8/10 perennial. The trace of 1/10 first year is because the ice cap, even as it once was, was mobile so subject to cracking. Those cracks would freeze over with first year ice.
Which reminds me: With regards the 10 mile by 3 mile crack in the Arctic (my post above point 2): Nare’s Strait seperates Ellesmere Island from the West Coast of Greenland. At it’s narrowest just before it opens into the Arctic it’s some 14-16 miles wide.
#337 Mark, thanks, I have noticed other people touting that article.
5 July 2008 at 1:44 PM
CobblyWorlds et al
I’d also put your attention toward a recent El Reg discussion about the LHC. The level of deliberate ignorance is very similar to AGW denial. And by deliberate ignorance, I mean that the only argument they have is “you could be wrong, so let’s assume I’m right”. They don’t even want to think, they just want to tell someone what to do because they’re right.
I have asked El Reg respondants on how AGW is a conspiracy to pop over to the 11/9 conspiracy debunking sites and tell them that they have absolute knowledge of a worldwide conspiracy: AGW science, so they cannot say a conspiracy cannot exist about the twin towers, because they have a real life example there.
I also suggested that the ones thinking that a very small chance of something going wrong in the LHC being enough to stop it go to the AGW denialists and tell them that even a small chance of catastrophe MUST be avoided.
In neither case did they do so.
Probably because their beef wasn’t with the science or the probabilities but with scientists ever considering themselves right.
I suspect some of the more rabid god squad are riding the pony so we’ll stop making the gaps we don’t need god to explain bigger.
5 July 2008 at 3:09 PM
Re Steven Goddard, he says this about himself in comments:
“I am an independent scientist/engineer who has taken the time to analyze the data.”
There you have it. Apparently that’s all it takes to write columns for The Reg.
5 July 2008 at 6:03 PM
Re #139
Thanks Phil Felton
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/200804_Figure4.png does show the difference 2007-2008. I take it the units are in metres of thickness - only asking as the US is less metric than here in France.
However by eyeballing it, I can not see if the overall thickness is less and if so, is it down enough to make the volume less that 2007? I can not see any text with the diagram to tell us what we are seeing, and nothing in National Climatic Data Center monthly report or NSIDC.
Re 246 - I take you point that weather as well as climate was a factor in the 2007. However, there will be unfavourable years, and … So it is good to see some recovery in the extent - hope it lasts to become a multiyear recovery. However, without a better handle on draft I can not see if volume is up or down. From Fig4 it would appear there is the current data available to do a monthly volume. I would like to see a running graph of volume.
5 July 2008 at 6:24 PM
Regarding the sun and a supposed 178.7 year climate period: I used a periodogram technique for finding quasi-periodic anomalies in the GISP2 ice core temperature proxy by Alley, but just for the Holocene. While my method suggests there may well be some quasi-periods between 45 and 90 year intervals, there certainly are none to be found by this method at any longer intervals, up to 300 years.
5 July 2008 at 10:40 PM
327 paulm :
I posted this comment as I have a Google alert on Ice Sheets and this showed up in it. There will be many others monitoring the news like this, trying to figure out what the latest is. Many have read his article - It is the no. 1 read on the Reg in the last 24 hrs.
On reading it I found it very convincing that it was compelling science. However, I know that this is not the case and so I place my post requesting a reply to this. I hope that one will be sent to the editors at the Reg and also posted in the articles comment section.
If we are to convince the general public that there is danger around the corner then contributors to Real Climate and such like have to get the news out to the public. This means disseminating it through appropriate channels. The general public does not come to Real Climate, RC has to go to them.
The challenge of current Climate Change will not be over come until most of us understand and accept the changes required, empowering our leaders to act.
6 July 2008 at 5:33 AM
Well, no, it would simply be travelling along a very large orbit. Just how tight is the sun’s orbit within the galaxy, BTW? Equivalent, say, to the diameter of Mercury’s?
6 July 2008 at 6:26 AM
Mark, the tidal differential on the Sun from the Milky Way galaxy is negligible. Want the math?
6 July 2008 at 8:20 AM
sean egan (#342) :
That is not a graph of thickness. It’s a graph of ice age. The units are not meters - they are years. Older is generally thicker - but I don’t know anything more about the relationship.
6 July 2008 at 8:53 AM
Jim Galasyn, perhaps the general public requires a translation for the term “independent scientist/engineer.” Near as I can tell, it means somebody too dumb to get grants or meaningful employment.
6 July 2008 at 9:17 AM
Mark, I second Barton and suggest you do the math on this one. Consider the fact that we are ~2.5 x 10^20 meters from the Sun, while the galactic mass is “only” 5.8 x 10^11 solar masses. I get an acceleration of about 0.2 nanometers per second^2.
And if we are talking about tidal forces, we’re talking inverse cube dependence. I think you’ll find that despite having smaller masses, the planets exert much larger forces on the Sun, albeit still probably negligible.
6 July 2008 at 12:00 PM
Ray,
Not that simple.
Why does the Moon have nutation (where it wobbles from side to side, showing us slightly more than half the moon surface)? Because it isn’t even.
Again, the query I was responding to was how the sun, being part of the milky way could feel any tidal forces FROM the milky way.
I explained how.
6 July 2008 at 12:53 PM
#327 paulm follow-on to Register screeds:
This is probably completely futile to continue pursuing, but for what it’s worth “Steven Goddard” replies to my email. I believe this by and large a canned response:
Dear Doug,
Thank you for your thoughtful questions about the article.
My intent in writing this series is to raise what I believe are legitimate questions about discrepancies and changes in published predictions and data.
Over the last few years I have been surprised to see that some normally critical and analytical members of the press have treated a few government scientists as if their opinions were above question. America was built around a healthy skepticism of government, so why is government funded global warming research considered exempt by the American press?
The only skills required to do this sort of analysis are a basic ability to read and understand maps, graphs and technical papers. As an engineer, my work often involves digging into other people’s work in detail to find possible sources of error, and I have applied the same methodology here. I have little interest into delving into theory - that is for climatologists. Rather, my interest is in comparing published predictions vs. actual results, as well as changes to published data.
I have made in this article a short-term verifiable and falsifiable prediction about Arctic sea ice this summer. If I am incorrect, obviously my credibility is damaged. This is in sharp contrast to the standard global warming predictions of events 80+ years from now. I am amazed that some publications are even willing to print such nonsense.
BTW- I have no direct or indirect ties to any energy industry and no financial stake in this debate. My interest is in making sure that decision makers and the press have accurate and complete information.
I would love to do a Q&A with Dr. Hansen to get my questions answered.
Best regards,
Steven
I’ve asked him to come out into the light of day:
Steven,
Thanks for your reply. I was despairing of ever hearing from you.
I’m going to reply with the assumption that you are in fact what you claim to be.
To be blunt, your articles are offensive in that they accuse Dr. Hansen of scientific misconduct. Your remarks in both your latest and your earlier articles go quite beyond a simple processing of numbers, crossing instead into such excursions as:
“Hansen is only telling half the story”
and:
“If someone wanted to present a case for a lot of recent warming, adjusting data upwards would be an excellent way to do it. Looking at the NASA website, we can see that the person in charge of the temperature data is the eminent Dr. James Hansen…”
and finally:
“…when the data is calibrated in lockstep with a very high-profile and public political philosophy, we should at least be willing to ask some hard questions. Dr. James Hansen at GISS is the person in charge of the NASA temperature data. He is also the world’s leading advocate of the idea of catastrophic global warming, and is Al Gore’s primary climate advisor. The discrepancies between NASA and other data sources can’t help but make us consider Einstein’s advice: “If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.”
That last quote goes beyond being a rhetorical question or tease and instead seems an attempt to steer readers to the conclusion that Dr. Hansen’s scientific work has become inseparable from and is fact dependent on external factors removed from pursuit of truth. That’s a very serious matter, and I can’t think you’d make that suggestion if you understood how serious such a charge really is. Perhaps you also don’t understand the patina of authority that comes with publication of opinion pieces such as yours in even such a low-level outfit as El Reg, but please believe (I think you already know this) there are legions of ill-informed folks just gobbling up what is perilously close to if not actually libel, authored by you and promoted by El Reg. It’s just not the same thing at all as a few hastily scrawled rants in a blog comments section.
As I have remarked earlier, Dr. Hansen’s work and professional life is entirely visible, published for all to see. Meanwhile, you are anonymous. Without a CV your name means nothing, and in fact given that it includes “Goddard” the moniker seems fictitious. Nobody has the means to establish with certainty your credentials or more importantly the agenda you are pursuing (which does seem to include targeting Dr. Hansen specifically) or your track record of honesty and correctness. Your correctness is poor (see comments on Real Climate), which taken in conjunction with your seeming reluctance to identify yourself is positively destructive to any hope you may have of gaining a following among any but the ignorant (and I say “ignorant” in the non-pejorative sense).
But given your peculiar personal attacks on Dr. Hansen it’s not really your credibility I care about. It’s giving Dr. Hansen or some useful (ie educated, practicing in the field) proxies the opportunity to perform public corrections on your public errors with your public participation that really counts. Hiding behind an obscure, self-moderated discussion thread at El Reg is not the way you can allow this to happen. You also can’t have a scientific repartee in the accepted sense as you don’t appear to work within the community of research scientists, so why not bring your discussion over to Real Climate and get the complete record corrected, not just to Dr. Hansen’s benefit but also incidentally your own?
Thanks again for writing.
Doug
PS– There are a number of people who believe Steve Goddard at UNL is you. They are conflating his professional activities with your opinion pieces. As I mentioned earlier in fairness to Dr. Goddard you need to correct this problem, which is another good reason to come out.
6 July 2008 at 2:28 PM
Interesting series of comments. The game is on! It seems pretty clear to me that the Denialists are mounting their final defense; regardless of the actual climatological meaning (being little to none) of an ice-free North Pole, the Denialists are correctly sensing that the unwashed masses are likely to come unglued in the event. Prudence dictates that no serious student of climate change place much weight on transient events like ice coverage (or lack of it) until such transients become trends in their own right. Weather is not climate, as they say, so the matter will generate no real science. So for now, I suppose, the Denialists can rage. If the ice melts it will be what it is, the cruise ship operators will reap a harvest in excursions. If it doesn’t then nothing else will have changed and we’ll continue to lurch unsteadily toward our certain future. The mass of Western men will resolutely keep to the sports page while the planet sorts itself out. Which of course it will. The science of all this is fascinating while the political argument is a revealing sideline. The two will proceed along their appointed paths unto the end because neither in itself can address the total problem. If we had actual scientists in political positions that might change things. I suspect the day is approaching when science will by law become policy, policy pulled out of thin air at the very edge of catastrophe. Then we will see what intelligent people bent on ultimate survival can really accomplish.
6 July 2008 at 2:51 PM
Ray (332), but didn’t interstellar (and maybe “primordial stellar”) gravitational force begin and keep the whole galaxy going?
6 July 2008 at 3:10 PM
Ray (349), we’re a bit OT here, but it’s interesting science. I can’t disagree with your numbers, but the effect? Is not the Sun’s gravitational pull on the Earth, and in turn the tidal forces, exactly the same as the Earth’s pull on the Sun, ignoring the nil angle differences? And if the Sun affects our tides wouldn’t the Earth cause tidal action on the Sun? Maybe even to a greater degree given the lower density of the solar atmosphere (at least at the fringes), though somewhat mitigated by that nil angle difference.
6 July 2008 at 3:36 PM
Rod, Amazing what you can do when you are the only force with unlimited range that doesn’t get canceled out by opposite charges, huh?
6 July 2008 at 4:12 PM
It occured to me that many non-linear systems can entrain on a weak external forcing. So it is at least plausible that the 22 year solar cycle entrains on the Jupiter-Saturn tidal influence.
That said, I find no 22 year influence on global temperature throughout the Holocene.
6 July 2008 at 7:47 PM
> 327, 351
Perhaps the Register needs bigger numbers to set rates for advertisers?
Seems trollish.
6 July 2008 at 9:32 PM
> Is not the Sun’s gravitational pull on the Earth, and in turn the
> tidal forces, exactly the same as the Earth’s pull on the Sun …?
Reality check needed here. Compare the masses of the Earth and Sun.
6 July 2008 at 9:33 PM
RE 352 cat black
I disagree that the melting of the Arctic Ice cap is merely a “transient event” with little or no “actual climatological meaning”. The sediment core record indicates that no hot weather periods in the last 700,000 to as much as 4 million years resulted in open water over a large fraction (>60%) of the Arctic Sea including the North Pole(see comment 40). The meters thick ice covering millions of square kilometers has enough thermal inertia to shrug off warm weather(at least it has for hundreds of thousands of years), but not resist a warming climate. The thermal inertia of the thousands of meter thick Greenland Ice sheet makes its integrative time constant even longer(>20x volume, >1000x thermal path length, nonlinear function due to rate dependencies). My laymans’ viewpoint is that as the Arctic ice has thinned (due to global warming, climate change), it has moved to where it only now responds to the weather (will the North Pole be ice free this year? Depends on the wind, cloud cover, monthly temperature history etc; i.e., the weather). I agree that most people will not fully understand the implications of this, because most don’t know diddly about Hadley cells, Ferrel cells, the Polar cell, albedo, latent or sensible heat, and mechanisms by which solar energy can be transported from the Arctic to melt more of the Greenland ice sheet. They may have the wrong reasons, but they will see this as a “tipping point” and may well “come unglued”. Especially if they put $4+ a gallon gasoline, global warming disinformation, and Exxon/Mobil record profits together in a “perfect storm” (rightly or wrongly) of public reaction.
When Dr. Hansen came unglued a teeny bit and called for the criminal prosecution of energy company executives, my first thought was “he’s REALLY frustrated from dealing with the Bush Administration”, followed quickly by “Holy [expletive] cow, he’s really worried; we’re in [expletive] deep [euphemism: excrement]” as the significance sank in. I’m not reassured, or optimistic.
Regarding the issue of liability for the effects of global warming, I would like to point out that we’re(USA & developed nations population mostly) the ones who burned the fossil fuels to CO2, not Peabody Coal or Exxon/Mobil. Firearm and ammunition manufacturers aren’t held liable for the murder and mayhem their products (in the wrong hands) cause in our society.
Perhaps if gun industry spokespeople had a history of claiming their products can’t cause harm, or that what appear to be bullet holes in people are actually caused by cosmic rays, sunspots, volcanoes, internal forcing, or other natural phenomena, the courts might rule differently.
6 July 2008 at 10:22 PM
Rod, this may help.
“The Jupiter tide on the Sun is 1/1000 the height of the Moon’s tide on the Earth and totally insignificant. There is an equally strong tide on the Sun caused by Venus, but again, that tide is minuscule.”
– Leif Svalgaard, at http://www.solarcycle24.com/ in the Spaceweather discussion, Posted - 07/06/2008 : 20:45:11
It’s off topic here.
6 July 2008 at 11:07 PM
RE: 359
Hey Brian,
In regards to: “Regarding the issue of liability for the effects of global warming, I would like to point out that we’re(USA & developed nations population mostly) the ones who burned the fossil fuels to CO2, not Peabody Coal or Exxon/Mobil.”
We may have been the ones to use the products; however, our governments were the ones that provided the environment for the products and vehicles to flourish and to become the “drug” of choice. In addition, it was our government that promoted and saw tax profits from the economic expansion opened up by these energy sources and the taxes that could be obtained by the exploitation of the oligopolies formed of both the fuel producers and the fuel consuming product manufactures.
Our government and science researchers have been attempting to find a technical alternative for fossil fuels for nearly 60 years now. As wood became scarce, the development of plastics created from the cracked hydrocarbon wastes generated in the vaporization of oil have been harnessed to replace wood. As to transportation or industry the truth is there is no other portable energy source that offers quite the concentration of energy or the abundance found of the original bounty found in liquid fossil fuels.
The point being we burned the fossil fuels because that was the most economical and over time it eventually became the only choice. As the systems were tuned to provide the most cost effective energy source and utilization, the transportation industry has grown into a oligopoly. We also have to keep in mind that part of the growth for the personal transportation and economic freight hauling we the need for alternatives to the rail oligopoly.
Cheers!
Dave Cooke
6 July 2008 at 11:52 PM
Lynn Vincentnathan (#258):
NF3 almost certainly wasn’t used to make it, but as far as I know, all of the etching gasses used for similar purposes are also very strong GHGs (and all of the etching gasses in use when Kyoto was formulated were included in it), of similar magnitude to NF3. Furthermore, essentially all electrictronics require etching gasses. The problem is by no means unique to TVs.
7 July 2008 at 12:36 AM
Yeah, and when I jump off a cliff my gravitational pull on the earth is exactly the same as the earth’s pull on me.
Yet, strangely, I’m the one that quickly accelerates to 200+ mph and goes “splat” soon after.
7 July 2008 at 2:11 AM
Re #342, #347:
The captions for the figures are here.
Older ice isn’t necessarily thicker than younger ice. It may lose more during the summer than the freezing season can replace. An example is the floe that is carrying buoy #7413. It barely survived the 2007 melting season in the Beaufort Sea. In figure 4 of the April 2008 NSIDC sea ice news it must be located near the tip of the slim red strip. Now it’s heading towards the North Pole and it will be there until the beginning of September at current speed.
Animations of sea-ice with position of buoy #7413: Full lifetime, weekly (2.3 MB), 2007 melting season, daily (4.1 MB).
7 July 2008 at 4:07 AM
[# Hank Roberts Says:
6 July 2008 at 9:32 PM
> Is not the Sun’s gravitational pull on the Earth, and in turn the
> tidal forces, exactly the same as the Earth’s pull on the Sun …?
Reality check needed here. Compare the masses of the Earth and Sun.]
See, this is the sort of question to which the magnitude of effect is important. Not whether it’s possible: there IS a tidal effect from the solar system on the sun (despite the sun being part of the solar system). But when someone asks “is the effect the same?” you can answer “no”, not if the question is “can the sun be affected by the solar system”.
If we’re going to be trusted, we need to be trustworthy in our answers.
7 July 2008 at 4:12 AM
Brian Dodge (359) Says:
{Regarding the issue of liability for the effects of global warming, I would like to point out that we’re(USA & developed nations population mostly) the ones who burned the fossil fuels to CO2, not Peabody Coal or Exxon/Mobil. Firearm and ammunition manufacturers aren’t held liable for the murder and mayhem their products (in the wrong hands) cause in our society.}
But when the companies deliberately lie or rubbish evidence because it will negatively affect their profit levels, they ARE involved intimately with the problem.
The people who took up smoking in the ’60’s and ’70’s were lied to by advertising and propaganda from the tobacco companies telling them they were safe. In the 70’s and maybe into the 80’s they were deliberately lying to avoid telling people smoking was dangerous.
For the people so lied to, their cancers ARE the fault of the company.
Since then, there’s not been any debate about smoking being bad for your health, so people starting smoking since the mid/late 80’s have themselves to blame.
Oddly enough, one of the biggest payroll sources for Anti-AGW propaganda is Phillip Morris: if the smoking lobby can convince people scientists wrong on GW, they can move on to whether they are wrong about smoking and cancers.
7 July 2008 at 4:12 AM
Rod, The relevant fact that you are missing is the fact that tidal forces go as the inverse cube of the distance. The Wikipedia article on the subject does a reasonable job of explaining this.
7 July 2008 at 4:16 AM
Gurk!
Re: 350, I noticed I worded it badly. Very badly. Oopsie.
The reason why the moon nutation exists is because the moon is not a point object.
Orbital mechanics is the only part of Rocket Science that deserves the use in the phrase “it’s not Rocket Science”. How a rocket works is easy. How to get it there (orbital mechanics) is the bloody hard bit!
7 July 2008 at 8:14 AM
Okay, let’s do the math, since Mark still thinks he has a point.
Webster (1925) gives the height of mid-ocean tides as:
h = 0.85 MA RB4 / (MB r3)
where h is the tide height, MA the mass of the tide-raising body, RB the radius of the affected body, MB the latter’s mass, and r the separation between them. The proportionality constant is for the SI.
Let’s try Jupiter on the Sun. From NASA fact sheets, we have:
MA = 1.8986e27
RB = 6.96e8
MB = 1.9891e30
r = 7.7857e11
This results in h = 0.000403 meter, or 0.403 millimeter. Not too significant.
Now, let’s try the Milky Way galaxy on the Sun. New values are:
MA = 2.0e42 (I assume 1 trillion Solar masses)
r = 2.6e20 (I assume 27,000 light-years)
This results in a tide of 1.1 x 10-14 meters, or about 10 billion times less than Jupiter raises. It is equivalent, in fact, to one one-hundred-millionth of a micron. It is a distance smaller than the width of a hydrogen atom.
No significant effect. Sorry.
Reference:
Webster, A.G. 1925. The Dynamics of Particles and of Rigid, Elastic and Fluid Bodies. Leipzig: B.G. Teubner.
7 July 2008 at 9:05 AM
Re: #369
Sigh.
The point is the query “Huh? The Milky Way is the galaxy we’re in” has nothing to do with “the sun will have tides from the Milky Way”.
Oh, and the “tidal” pattern is because of the change in masses, not the average. Granted not much still, but your maths is measuring the wrong thing.
Ta.
7 July 2008 at 9:07 AM
[Yeah, and when I jump off a cliff my gravitational pull on the earth is exactly the same as the earth’s pull on me.
Yet, strangely, I’m the one that quickly accelerates to 200+ mph and goes “splat” soon after.]
Wow. You must be very aerodynamic.
Me? I’d be grabbing handfuls of air on the way down. Every little helps!
7 July 2008 at 9:17 AM
Mark, Re: the phrase “It’s not rocket science.”
Um, not to nitpick, but actually, the propellant guys have to be pretty damned smart–we are talking controlled explosions here. A small mistake and you mixture either burns too hot, eroding your nozzle, or too cool, and you run out of fuel. And if you still doubt me, look up “multi-phase flow” and its relation to propellants. There is absolutely no part of spaceflight that is easy or routine.
7 July 2008 at 10:32 AM
[Um, not to nitpick, but actually, the propellant guys have to be pretty damned smart–we are talking controlled explosions here.]
That’s merely engineering being difficult. The actual science is pretty straightforward. The difficult science is how to get down from your stable orbit into a lower stable orbit. You can’t accelerate down to that, it works against you.
7 July 2008 at 11:38 AM
Mark @ 370: yes, Abbe Mac @ 311 was technically correct to say that the Sun has tides from the Milky Way. But Barton @ 328 was also correct to say “Huh?”. The Swiss Alps raise much larger tides on the Sun than the Milky Way does.
7 July 2008 at 11:50 AM
Hank (358), admittedly the respective accelerations will be different and depend on the individual masses, but the Force is exactly the same on both Earth and Sun. Doesn’t matter which is big M and which is little m. Same as an apple falling from a tree.
7 July 2008 at 12:30 PM
Brian (359), a minor clarification. I am unaware of any significant (or even minor?) corings from the Arctic region, other than lower Greenland. Are there some? Or is your assertion an extrapolation ?
7 July 2008 at 12:38 PM
Hank (360), despite the equality of gravitational forces, I agree the inequality of tidal acceleration makes it extremely difficult to imagine it as having any effect on any solar cycle.
7 July 2008 at 12:51 PM
This gravitational discussion should come closer to home, there is a strange tidal anomaly
which occurs uniquely during the full or new moon on Arctic Ocean ice.
The best explanation I can give is that its tidal and wind combination, but tides occur everyday, just as the ice goes wild every full and new moon, not only on the coast but everywhere as reported by Polar ice extreme adventurers. . May be someone has a better explanation,
gravity plays a role, that is all I know.
http://www.eh2r.com/index_pop_ups/spring.html
7 July 2008 at 4:12 PM
I did a back of the envelope calc on the volcano thing. I looked up an estimate for total geothermal energy output of the Earth. To give a break to the volcano folks I assumed it all comes out through the oceanic ridges. Since there are 80,000 km of ridges and 1800 km (2.25%) of these are in the Arctic, I simply applied 2.25% of this total geothermal energy to a slab of ocean 500,000 square miles in area and 4 km deep. A temperature rise of 0.001 C per year would be the result.
I then applied a 1 watt/sq meter forcing to a 10 meter thick slab of ocean and he atmosphere above to get a warming of 0.6 C per year. That is, a 1 watt/sq meter forcing has 600 times the strength of a geothermal effect.
Note: The 0.6 C/yr warming isn’t an actual warming. Since the ocean is covered with ice, rather than warming the surface, the forcing would melt ice. The energy need to melt a volume of ice is equal to the energy needed to warm water by 80 C. Thus the energy that can produce 0.6 C of warming would cause the melting of 0.6/80 = 0.75% of the ice cover per year. Over a decade that is a 7.5% reduction in ice cover produced by imposition of a *net* 1 watt/sq meter forcing to the Arctic. Since the actual loss of ice is similar in magnitude to this figure, I conclude that a 1 watt/sq meter forcing is “big enough” to produce the melting actually seen, whereas geothermal energy is much too small.
The reason the geothermal “melting power” is so small is because it is applied at the *bottom* of the ocean. It has to heat up all that water before it can affect the ice. The poster who called it the “Princess and the Pea” effect has it exactly right.
Now there is one way geothermal energy could matter. If the normal geothermal energy were stored up for a long time and then released over a short time, then it could produce *transient* melting.
For example, even if the average energy release is 1/600th the size of forcing effects, if the energy were stored up for 3000 years and then released over a single year, the effect would be 5 times larger than the forcing effect. This, of course, is what a volcano does. However, associated with volcanic energy releases are *explosions*.
One of my sources said that about 1% of geothermal energy shows up as earthquakes, that is, kinetic/potential energy. The energy needed to warm a volume of water 1 degree C is equal to the energy needed to lift it 430 meters. If we assume that delivering energy volcanically is associated with about 1% of the energy beg released as potential/kinetic energy, this means that a 1 C warming (sufficient energy to melt 1.25% of the ice cover) would be associated with a potential/kinetic energy equivalent to lifting the ocean bed some 4 meters, which would generate an enormous tsunami.
Since nothing like this has happened we can be sure than no volcanic eruption big enough to matter has happened.
Another way to look at this is that an eruption large enough to melt a significant amount of ice would be on the order of 100,000,000 Hiroshima bombs. That is a big explosion.
7 July 2008 at 5:13 PM
About #378, on the link mentioned
http://www.eh2r.com/index_pop_ups/spring.html
you must look for a noticeable tidal wave, Caught during the full moon, which opened very thick sea ice near the NW archipelago coast. Apparently unusual and always during a lunar event in line with Earth and sun.
As a matter of probable coincidence, definite observations confirmed an extraordinary event. On March 23, 1989 there was a huge lead opening off the archipelago coast which spanned from Greenland to near Alaska as seen on NOAA Satellite pictures. This lead opened through thick ice in front of many North Pole bound expeditions, causing a terrifying noise which lasted for several hours, as soon as it opened, sea water froze, it was very cold. This mega lead appeared to have closed within 24 hours. Causing a wall of new ice shingles 1 Km wide, 10 meters above the ice surface, as long as the eye can see. It took a snowmobile expedition 1 week to cross this new ice shingle ridge.
Now here is the twist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_asteroid
On March 23 1989 an Asteroid , called Apollo had a near miss to Earth. Did this tiny little
thing compared to the Earth, add to the gravitational full moon tidal anomaly? A question which I have yet seen resolved.
7 July 2008 at 5:25 PM
Wayne,
The high tides that happen at full and new moons are called spring tides. See Wikipeia Note that they happen twice for each orbit ot the moon.
Therefore it is unlikely that the 11 year solar cycle is caused by Jupiter’s orbit. That also takes 11 years, but that means the solar tides it causes will peak every 5 1/2 years.
Returning towards the topic, above the Arctic Circle there will be times when there is only one tide because points there will always remain closer to the sun and moon than the centre of the Earth in summer and further from them in winter.
Cheers, Alastair.
7 July 2008 at 5:27 PM
Nick, 374.
No, if Hank in posting #328 had said “huh? the tidal forces compared even to jupiter is miniscule” then that would have been correct. “Huh? the sun is part of the milky way” is incorrect.
Later workings showed the numbers (and although the changes available are slightly larger, it’s only by a couple of orders of magnitute and still pretty insignificant) but no retraction to the silly rebuttal. The sun being part of the Milky Way doesn’t stop the sun feeling tidal forces from the milky way. The milky way being thinly spread stops the sun from feeling any *significant* tidal force from the milky way would have been better, but was an option not taken.
7 July 2008 at 5:58 PM
#381, Alastair, Thanks, I looked at that, the tide magnitudes near the coast are apparently the same. I was always stumped by this, we call them spring tides, but the ice, acts a little stranger during these events. I would be more than happy to see a tidal chart showing an estreme anomaly in sea level at thesame moment as with observed tidal ice events, but the charts I’ve seen show 100 cm tides even at the full moon. Nevertheless spring tides have a significant impact on the withering ice as we write.
7 July 2008 at 6:02 PM
Mark,
’scuse me son, but how do you think you get down to your lower stable orbit without your propellant guys doing their job. I will say it again. There is no portion of spaceflight that is routine. I have worked on enough anomaly investigations and failure review boards to know that when you start saying “That’s easy,” your tuckus is about to disappear into the yawning maw of complacency. Every satellite is unique and faces its own dilemmas. I have seen propellant engineers save satellites that had been written off for lost. I’ve also seen people take a cavalier approach to a 24 hour mission and have it fail because of propellant problems. In space, nothing is easy.
7 July 2008 at 8:14 PM
re OT rocket science. Before one relegates the entire field of rocket propulsion to engineering you really have to understand the history of nozzle development, e.g. Like gHz frequency digital modulators it’s pretty much (at least was initially) more of an art than a science, let alone an engineering challenge.
7 July 2008 at 9:08 PM
Mark wrote, conflating two hypotheticals:
> No, if Hank in posting #328 had said “huh? …
If I’d written anything in 328, my name would be Barton.
Check your sources.
8 July 2008 at 1:40 AM
re # 376
McKay, J L; Hillaire-Marcel, C; de Vernal, A; Polyak, L; Darby, D
(2006), Title, Eos Trans. AGU, 87(52), Fall Meet. Suppl.,HR: 1340h AN: OS53B-1101
Holocene Paleoceanography of the Chukchi Sea / Alaskan Margin, Western Arctic Ocean
“A multi-proxy approach to the analysis of deep-sea sediment cores has been used to investigate paleoceanographical changes in the western Arctic.”
“It is also possible that the isotopic composition of the planktonic foraminifera was influenced by enhanced sea-ice formation and sinking of isotopically-light brines during the early Holocene. This second hypothesis is compatible with reconstructions from dinocysts that suggest maximum sea-ice extent during the early Holocene.”
*******
Jan BackmanC, Martin Jakobssonb, Reidar Løvliec, Leonid Polyakd and L.A.Lawrence A. Febo Quaternary Science Reviews
Volume 23, Issues 11-13, June 2004, Pages 1435-1454
“Numerous short sediment cores have been retrieved from the central Arctic Ocean, many of which have been assigned sedimentation rates on the order of mm/ka implying that the Arctic Basin was starved of sediments during Plio–Pleistocene times.”
*******
Nature 300, 321 - 325 (25 November 1982); doi:10.1038/300321a0
Origin, nature and world climate effect of Arctic Ocean ice-cover
David L. Clark
Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA
“During the Cenozoic, an open water Arctic Ocean changed to the modern permanently ice-covered condition. Significant world climate modification accompanied this change but the precise role of the Arctic Ocean in major Pleistocene climate events is controversial. The present ice-cover averages 3 m thickness but there are theories that during the Pleistocene it was Antarctic-like, several thousand metres thick. The time of origin of the ice-cover is placed as young as 0.7 Myr ago and as old as the middle Miocene.”
**********
google scholar “Results 1 - 10 of about 900 for “Arctic ocean” “sediment core”.”
There have been many cores taken, although far fewer than in ice free ocean areas. Many of the papers don’t address whether or not the ocean was ice covered, but other science. There is currently debate over rates of sediment accumulation, stratigraphy, and whether the Arctic has been permanently covered for 100000, 800000, or millions of years, but I haven’t seen any that assert that the present melting we’re seeing is business as usual based on the sediment record.
8 July 2008 at 1:56 AM
Sigh, despite your pedantic ponderings, the context was clear enough to those of us interested in what’s happening on earth. And the context was whether or not galactic tides could impact solar output and therefore climate on earth.
Note the title of this blog. Real *Climate*. With “on earth” being implied.
8 July 2008 at 2:25 AM
Off topic re rocket science - my brother was a NASA engineer at the Cape.
from wikipedia -
“Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning “knowledge”) is the effort to discover, understand, or to understand better, how the physical world works, with observable physical evidence as the basis of that understanding.”
“The American Engineers’ Council for Professional Development (ECPD, the predecessor of ABET[1]) has defined engineering as follows:
‘The creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property.’”
Sucessfully developing the Shuttle Main Engine was definitely pushing the envelope-
weight- ~7000 lb
fuel consumption- ~275 gallons/sec liquid oxygen & ~750 gallons/sec liquid hydrogen, pumped from tanks at 30psi and delivered at > 4000 psi
combustion chamber pressure - 3000 psi
combustion chamber temperature 3,300 °C (6,000 °F), (higher than the boiling point of iron.)
Pressure stability of the first generation engines was tested by detonating four sticks of dynamite in the combustion chamber while the engine was running at full throttle
- but it was (mostly) engineering, based on extensive understanding of the underlying science (physics, chemistry) and math. At the leading edge, whether it’s engineering or science is a fuzzy and ultimately unimportant distinction. This is also very much the case in High Energy Physics.
8 July 2008 at 2:51 AM
Sheesh, guys.
A throwaway comment.
Orbital mechanics IS weird and strange.
WWII got rocket propellants.
All this stuff about GHz doohickeys is how to get more or better controlled propulsion.
Engineering is HARDER than physics, because physics includes only those things we’re thinking about or can formulate. Engineering has to deal with the real world, which obeys all the laws, not just the one we know about. Add into our limited ability to reach much beyond our current technical level and you have a field that is real hard. The physics isn’t anywhere near as important as the engineering. And nowhere near as difficult. As you’ve been pointing out. But the problems and their solutions are driven by the engineering, not the physics.
And you’re conflating the two.
8 July 2008 at 4:09 AM
As I’ve already whined about here, a fellow by the name of Steven Goddard is publishing a series of articles in the online IT journal “The Register”. These are chock-a-block with yummy DenialChow and are being gobbled up eagerly all over the world by intellectully malnourished climate change skeptics.
Here’s what Goddard tells me motivates his articles:
“The questions I have raised need to be answered. They are completely legitimate questions, formed from apparent contradictions and changes in Dr, Hansen’s published data and public comments. What is truly disturbing is that so few are asking them.”
Mr. Goddard also tells me in private correspondence he’s afraid to reveal his identity or CV because he’s received “a number of death threats from zealous believers in catastrophic global warming”. Apparently the danger is so great that he cannot even bring his pseudonym to Real Climate to satisfy his sadly appealing need for explanation and information. I suggested he do so several times but the more I repeat myself the more ill-tempered he becomes. Go figure.
I’m going to try to help him here, and he won’t have to write a thing. The only thing is, I can only gag down one article at a time; the misconceptions and distortions are just too thick to handle all his articles in one meal.
Are the ice caps melting?
(http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/goddard_polar_ice/print.html)
Goddard opens his first article with the breathtaking announcement ‘The headlines last week brought us terrifying news: The North Pole will be ice-free this summer “for the first time in human history…Or so the experts at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado predict. “.’
The actual headline of the article? “Scientists warn that there may be no ice at North Pole this summer”
What this piece says– once you bother to read it which Goddard counts on you failing to do– is there’s a greater than 50% chance of open ocean this year at the pole, with the pole possibly reachable by surface craft. Nobody quoted in the article says the pole will be ice free, certainly nobody at Boulder, nor even did “The Independent”, the source of the article.
(Independent article: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-no-ice-at-the-north-pole-855406.html)
Goddard’s first paragraph of his first article is a nicely figured rococo lie. The really great thing about this, I suppose, is that later Goddard can create a double cognitive shortcircuit by writing -another- article about how the predictions he fabricated in his first article turned out not to be true. Leaves your head spinning, doesn’t it?
That first lie is an important precedent, one that may save you a lot of time. If you don’t want to wade through the rest of this little critique I can guarantee you’ll only learn one significant thing from the time I spent slogging through Goddard’s article. Goddard’s a liar. There, a single fact you can take with you, now go on about your life. But if you just can’t resist more punishment, here goes…
Goddard next refers to the prior existence of polynyas at the pole as proof that the pole has previously been “ice free”. He shows a photo of 3 nuclear subs, surrounded and dwarfed by ice as far as the eye can see as evidence of the “ice free” pole. Keep your eyes peeled, because Goddard’s going to ask ‘em to lie to you again, in just a paragraph or so.
Goddard moves on to a graph, apparently from the University of Illinois (no cite, but it looks real) showing global sea ice area from 1979 to the present. Although a recent downward trend in coverage is clearly visible by naked eye inspection, Goddard invites us to believe there has “…been no net gain or loss of polar sea ice since records began.” A few minutes’ extra work, or rather full disclosure, on Goddard’s part would of course have revealed that Arctic coverage has been declining at about 3.4%/decade. It is true that Antarctic ice has been on the increase, but it’s nothing to write home about (0.9% +/-1.3%/decade). Given the relatively similar initial sizes of Arctic versus Antarctic sea ice and the much steeper downward slope in Arctic ice, it’s easy to see why Goddard needed to beg the favor of lying eyes to make his point with the University of Illinois graph. Goddard would like us to look at it and form the opposite conclusion from what it plainly shows.
(UI graph: http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/07/03/ice_change_large.jpg)
(Arctic/Antarctic coverage: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/)
Introducing Dr. James Hansen with a brief quote saying that 2007’s fairly dramatic loss of old ice confirms “The Arctic is the first tipping point and it’s occurring exactly the way we said it would”, Goddard then refers to an ancient 1980s article http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/effects/downloads/Challenge_chapter2.pdf, in which Dr. Hansen’s initial prediction was of cleanly symmetric polar amplification. Goddard’s essential beef in this section is that because the predictions and models of the 1980s have since been refined to correct observed discrepancies in Antarctica, recent statements by Hansen are somehow not accurate or credible. In other words, Goddard’s claim is that the more Hansen learns, the less he knows and should be believed. Goddard can’t resist embroidering further by saying Antarctic sea ice “has rapidly expanded” since Hansen’s 1980s remarks, when of course we know that there has been an extremely modest increase in Antarctic sea ice, little enough that the derived slope in the coverage graph is useful in seeing any increase at all.
Having besmirched himself early and large, Goddard moves on to discuss soot. Referring to a 2004 paper examining the impact of soot on albedo, Goddard fabricates a conclusion by Hansen: “In 2004, Dr Hansen… explained that most of Arctic warming and melting is due to dirty snow from soot, not CO2.”
(http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2004/2004_Hansen_Nazarenko.pdf)
The paper Goddard is referring to is work of Hansen’s on integrating soot into global climate modeling. As a product of this work, Hansen concludes that soot is a significant player. Here are conclusions of the paper that come closest to Goddard’s fabrication, as far as I can tell:
“Our estimate for the mean soot effect on spectrally integrated
albedos in the Arctic (1.5%) and Northern Hemisphere land areas
(3%) yields a Northern Hemisphere forcing of 0.3 W m2 or an
effective hemispheric forcing of 0.6 W m2.”
“We suggest that soot contributes to near worldwide
melting of ice that is usually attributed solely to global warming.”
“Our estimate for the equilibrium global warming of current soot levels
is 0.2°C, most of which is already achieved.”
So yes, soot is a problem, but no, Hansen never said “most of Arctic warming and melting is due to dirty snow from soot” or anything remotely like it.
Moving on in an article that seems less and less about the North Pole and more and more about Dr. James Hansen’s imagined offenses, Goddard rants: “Dr Hansen also talks frequently about the unprecedented temperature rise in the Arctic, yet his own temperature records show that much of the Arctic (including Greenland) was warmer from 1920-1940 than now.”
Well, no, they’re not Dr. Hansen’s temperature records. And no, Dr. Hansen is not found talking frequently about unprecedented temperature increases in the Arctic. But this doesn’t stop Goddard from selecting a few graphs to show that, yes, the temperature at many stations was warmer circa 1920-1940. I’m not sure exactly what Goddard’s point here was, but it does not take long to pull the covers back and see, just like everywhere else, Greenland is showing a swift upward trend in temperatures in the past few decades.
Finally tiring of chewing on Hansen, Goddard spends few words speculating that a “brown cloud” helped cause the 2007 melt, but provides no citations or other information on this. Apparently self-appointed armchair climatologists are free to do this sort of handwaving and see it published before a global audience, courtesy of “The Register”, even as they nitpick and complain about real climatologists’ refinement of real climate models.
Concluding his article, Goddard clinches his case that 2007 was nothing special because in 1922 “…there was open sailing very close to the North Pole that year.” Yes, the Weather Bureau reports it was possible to sail as north as 81 degrees that year and you can trust this data because Dr.James Hansen was not born yet. I wonder if Steven Goddard could walk that last 540 miles to the North Pole? I suppose so, because in his reality being 540 miles away is “very close”. It’s also safe to say Goddard gets no closer than 540 miles away from any approximation to a useful contribution to the human condition, either.
8 July 2008 at 7:57 AM
Mark, I’m not going to retract what I said, because I said nothing wrong. You are the one asserting that it can somehow matter that the Sun has tides from the Milky Way. I showed that the tide has no noticeable affect on anything. [edit]
Mentioning the Milky Way is irrelevant [edit]. Deal with it.
8 July 2008 at 10:00 AM
O.K. I’ve tried to read through a bunch of this (with 392 replies, it’s a little difficult to go through all of them in one sitting).
I guess I’m what you guys term a “denier”. Somehow, I’m mentally deficient for believing that this whole Global Warming thing is a hoax.
[Response: No. Just wrong. - gavin]
I’ve seen enough data to show that a) we’ve had many periods of warmer climate than we do now and b) that Mars is also going through a period of climate change. Recent reports also indicate that possibly Jupiter is also experiencing changes to the climate there as well. (I guess we managed to corrupt those two planets with our polution causing probes) I don’t deny that the climate is changing. I just don’t believe that humans are a significant factor in it. There’s a little thing called the sun that seems to do just fine with it.
Another thing. Warmer climates mean that we have more fertile grounds. Better growing conditions. So, granted, we have some fools who have placed their homes directly on the beach who might lose them, but is it really such a bad thing that more people be able to eat?
I’m sure I’ll be excoriated and scorned for a while, and maybe even have my post pulled. I just would love to see someone answer the following questions:
1) If it’s man-made, then why are other planets experiencing changes similar to ours?
[Response: They aren’t. - gavin]
2) If it’s man-made, then why have we had much (as much as 7 degrees) warmer than we do now before man had a major impact on the world?
[Response: Does the existence of natural forest fires preclude the existence of arsonists? This point is logically incoherent. If you see someone murdered, does the culprit get a pass because more people died at the Somme? The current rise in greenhouse gases is man-made and it is currently driving climate change. None of the things that drove climate change in the past appear to be relevant because they are either not changing, are too slow or are insignificant on these shorter timescales. - gavin]
3) If it’s so bad, then since now colder climates historically able to produce better quality foods and drinks than now, and warmer climates encourage plant growth, is the risk not worth it to provide better crop production than before?
[Response: Where is the data to back that up? But in any case, the issue is that we, and various ecosystems, have gotten used to the relatively stable climate we have now. Changes will be positive in some places, and negative in a lot more - increasingly so as the world warms. Sure, English wine and Canadian wheat will do well, Bangladesh? - not so much. - gavin]
4) Why is it the proponents (believers/hypists/faithful) want to shut down not only fossil fuel production, but also all other energy production methods in the United States and other developed countries? (Try to build a windmill, solar farm, nuclear plant, hydrothermo dam, offshore turbine facility in the US. You CAN’T. The environmental crowd will ALWAYS crow about some endangered species, bird, fish, etc.)
[Response: B**cks. New generating capacity is going up all over the place. But frankly this is irrelevant to any issue of what is actually happening to the atmosphere. The radiative properties of CO2 and CH4 are completely independent of how society chooses to deal with that information. We might actually find common ground in agreeing that society is not doing a great job on this issue so far. - gavin]
I have said it before, and I will say it again, and I’m sure your church of environmentalism can’t stand to hear it, but the AGW theory and the entire environmentalist movement is not about “saving the planet”, but controlling others. Please, someone here have the intellectual honesty to at least address the issues I’ve gone over.
[Response: In return, try laying off the intellectually lazy cliches and paranoid conspiracy theories. - gavin]
Paul
8 July 2008 at 10:02 AM
Barton, #392
Please show me where I said it can somehow matter that the sun has tides from the milky way.
I’ll wait…
8 July 2008 at 10:22 AM
Mark, no one thinks it matters. Do you need attention?
8 July 2008 at 10:32 AM
Hank, any point to asking? Surely if your hypothesis is correct, you are walking straight into my dastardly plan.
8 July 2008 at 10:55 AM
RE: #393
Paul, perhaps RealClimate is not the best place for you to begin your research into climate change, because RealClimate tends to be rather technical, and delves into individual topics in depth. For example, your comment #93 covered a wide range of topics beyond the narrow scope of this “North Pole notes” post. Gavin answered well (#94), but this is not the best place for your broad and basic queries.
Here’s a well-written introduction to the global warming debate, by cce. It’s in a nice narrative format, it’s got both text and video versions, and it’s not the least bit confrontational: The Global Warming Debate: A Layman’s Guide to the Science and Controversy.
For point-by-point addressing of arguments (rather than the above narrative coverage of many points), here is a great indexed site: Skeptical Science.
Along the same lines, here is another indexed site on Grist, though I believe it’s not updated as often as the Skeptical Science site. It seems to be broken at this moment, but keep trying: How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic.
8 July 2008 at 11:41 AM
RE # 397 Tom, you offered Paul some good advice he is likely not programmed to follow. His choice of characterizations gives him away.
Paul did not come to RealClimate to debate or learn. He came here to vent his spleen. When I see the ‘church of environmentalism’ and ‘(believers/hypists/faithful) want to shut down not only fossil fuel production, but also all other energy production methods in the United States and other developed countries?’, I relegate that kind of contributor to the Bozo Bin.
Gavin was too generous with his time. People like Paul are best ignored.
His defect is not that he is mentally deficient (his words). He has a conspiratorial mind prone to absorbing nonsense and lies that do not require any thinking…only believing.
John McCormick
8 July 2008 at 12:55 PM
RE #398:
Yeah, I pretty much figured that was Paul’s motivation. But I like to give people the benefit of the doubt at least once, because there are lots of people whose anger is perfectly justified given their knowledge.
It’s easy for the majority of the folks who gravitate to the RealClimate blog, to forget how little most people in the world know about climate. Or science. Or math. Or Nature. Or places outside their own town or even neighborhood.
Imagine someone who has heard from their best friend, that all the planets are warming exactly like the Earth is. And this person has never heard a contradiction to that statement. And this person has only the vaguest notion of what planets are and where they are. (I’m not exaggerating!) They also have not even a faint awareness that other people know much more than their best friend. So they get angry, which would be appropriate if the actual situation matched the one in their head.
I like to give such folks at least one chance to improve their fundamental knowledge. But if they don’t take advantage of that chance, then I ignore them. Sometimes after yelling at them.
8 July 2008 at 1:00 PM
More for people following Doug’s message.
Steven Goddard has said to me he’s a Californian and a vegetarian who pefers to cycle than drive (a comment that grants great irony to the posters congratulating him and villifying the “eco nazi” “hippies” while doing so).
He said (though I don’t believe him) that he doesn’t want to see time and effort wasted on climate change and CO2 when there’s a water shortage in California because they are putting it all in animal feed.
Whether this rings any bells…
8 July 2008 at 1:34 PM
re: 398. Precisely. Whether or not he bothers to show up here again will tell the tale as well. Chances are that he is just a smug, drive-by poster with little scientific understanding. How sad that such people have such little critical analysis ability. Or the ability to admit when he is simply wrong.
8 July 2008 at 1:42 PM
Actually, I did go to the website and have spent most of the day reading articles there.
Very interesting.
I didn’t find my opinions changed, but I did find that there are wildy varying opinions presented as fact on both sides of the argument.
John, I was quite irritated by some of the sneering commentary by some of the “enlightened” crowd.
There is a new program underway to create a solar farm of a huge nature in Nevada in the desert. Somewhere that would be very much out of the way and yet, the environmentalists are blocking it because of some small animal that would be harmed by it.
[Response: Where do you get your information from? Nevada Solar One is now up and running and is the thrid largest solar power plant in the world. If you are going to doubt everything I have to say, at least have the intellectual honesty to check your sources. - gavin]
There is a construction project underway in eastern North Carolina that is to build a huge windmill project. It would provide clean, inexpensive energy to the residents of some of the poorer counties here, and yet, the environmentalists are blocking it because a) it’s a danger to birds and b) it’s too noisy and cause noise polution that would endanger many native species.
[Response: Environmental impact assessments are necessary for big projects - but N.C. seems to be pushing ahead with wind anyway. Texas an California - as different as two states can be, are leading wind energy deployments. Maybe if you stopped trying to look for excuses to demonize environmentalists you could focus on the facts? - gavin]
And you can “ignore” me all you want John. I’m actually trying to find facts. There seems to be a LOT of hype on both ends. Mainly from your end in my opinion, but that’s not my call, it’s history’s. I do believe there is a LOT of money involved in this movement and that’s a large portion of where it’s coming from. Some of the things are just too contridictory.
Gavin, I appreciate your responses. In response to your responses, I’ll address what I’ve learned today in reading on Skeptical Science and some of the commentary and related sites after…
1) If it’s man-made, then why are other planets experiencing changes similar to ours?
[Response: They aren’t. - gavin]
Actually, there are changes happening on Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto of similar nature, warming. According to the information, there is actually additional reasons that it’s occurring on other planets that, according to some, has little to none to do with the sun’s output, but others believe so. Again, a discrepency.
[Response: No. It’s someone lying to you. There is no ‘global warming’ on Jupiter - what you have is a new storm that has developed near the Great Red Spot, but it is neither global, nor warming. Pluto has just passed perihelion (the closest approach to the sun) and is still warming because of that. Since we haven’t even observed an annual cycle for Pluto, how you can define a climate change is beyond me. Saturn? No clue what you are talking about. But think about this more logically - climate is always changing (I think I heard that somewhere). Therefore you would expect roughly half the planets to be warming and half cooling at any one time even if there was no connection between them. But frankly people are seizing on anecdotes for climate change in the solar system that would rightly be derided if I was to use analogous arguments on Earth (i.e. global warming is happening because of a big storm, or that a single glacier was melting). - gavin]
2) If it’s man-made, then why have we had much (as much as 7 degrees) warmer than we do now before man had a major impact on the world?
[Response: Does the existence of natural forest fires preclude the existence of arsonists? This point is logically incoherent. If you see someone murdered, does the culprit get a pass because more people died at the Somme? The current rise in greenhouse gases is man-made and it is currently driving climate change. None of the things that drove climate change in the past appear to be relevant because they are either not changing, are too slow or are insignificant on these shorter timescales. - gavin]
Actually, according to several sites, yes, there was as much as a 7 degree variance higher in previous times, and according to some, that is because of natural factors, and that those natural factors don’t seem to be occurring right now. Not sure I believe that. It was warmer by a lot a long time ago, but now, it’s warming nowhere near that level, and yet, it’s because of man.
[Response: Huh? Everyone agrees that there were warmer times before - Google the Cretaceous or Eocene, or mid-Pliocene and obviously that was due to natural variability. But the causes were tectonic, or orbital, or due to geologically-controlled changes in greenhouse gases. But that isn’t what is happening now. - gavin]
Your response to #3, I could find very little in one direction or another, but there is a LOT of data out there to sort through, so maybe I’ll learn more and respond later.
Your response to #4, I partially addressed above, but I’ll also respond one other thing. You’re right. We’ve made a mess of how to properly provide energy to the masses. Those who made money spent massive amounts trying to make more and keep people from taking away their money pit. One article I was recently reading stated that hemp seed oil produces a cleaner buring fuel (nearly 90% burn, with considerably less ash and CO2 production) than any fossil fuel (33% burn at the most efficient) and was actually banned because the oil industry (and the rope industry, as hemp weave made a stronger and less expensive rope than current materials) decided to push their congresscritters to close it down because hemp could make Marijuana. Again, we’ve made a mess of our energy needs, and frankly, if we used hemp and flax seed oil for fuels, we’d be doing considerably better (flax burning at a 88% rate).
(And yes, John, you can pick your jaw up off the ground. I’m not some rabid beast.)
Paul
8 July 2008 at 1:49 PM
Mark, you can tell Steven that the real reason they’re having a water crisis in Cali is not the water feed. It’s Pistachio’s.
Pistachios require cleaning of some form. Either hand cleaning, which is cumbersome, inefficient and expensive, or washing.
Washing is easy, cheap and quick.
There was recently an article on the Food Network that was discussing them. They visited the 11th largest pistachio farm in California. 11th largest!!! And they were told by the owner that they use over 500 MILLION GALLONS OF WATER ANNUALLY!!!!
Imagine if they raised the cost of water $.01/gallon for the farms. They would have enough to buy water from every state with flood conditions and provide water for their entire state. Or better yet, they could create an aquaduct system throughout the entire western US and actually move water from drought areas to needed areas and efficiently provide for everyone.
Paul
8 July 2008 at 1:51 PM
(Apparently, either I put in too many posts back to back, or just didn’t get sent)
Mark, tell Steven that the main reason is Pistachios.
An article on the Food Network had the 11th largest pistachio farm owner claiming they use 500 million gallons of water annually. The 11th largest!!
Paul
8 July 2008 at 2:08 PM
Tom,
What is amazing though is that, instead of finding out, they attack.
If they are genuine, they don’t even know enough to know they know nothing. Which is kind of strange when they make accusations and make up “the science wot they know” and tell us that this is right and what the people who study this believe is wrong. Or the experts forgot something and they can and will enlighten us( “It’s the Sun Stupid!!” “What, that hot burny thing hovering just beyond arms reach? Never thought of that..!”).
And worse, if they are still genuine, that we don’t admit our mistake, they call everyone names and make up strange and far-reaching conspiracy claims.
Or they aren’t legitimate and they don’t WANT to believe because it then becomes their fault. AND IT’S NOT I TELL YOU NONONONONNONNNONONONNONNONONO! I’M TELLING!!!!
In one case of a family member, the denial is because God Wouldn’t Let That Happen. And the insistence that we are making a change for the worse is an attack not against them but against God.
I’ve tried to ask “well, what if, after giving us intelligence, he wanted to see if we’d use it?”.
And then they get upset.
8 July 2008 at 2:38 PM
Apparently, since I posted a rather long reply, it’s awaiting moderation. That’s fine.
As far as the “drive by” poster with “little scientific understanding”, I’m actually well educated and try to improve myself on a regular basis. I believe that there are forces at work that are driving both ends of this mess. If I am wrong on science, I want to know. I want to know why. I want to review the data and if I’m interpreting it incorrectly, then I want to figure out why.
I was irritated by the attitude in the first 80 or 90 posts that basically attempted to humiliate anyone who would dare to disbelieve. That’s why the snarky attitude in the first post. You’ll find that I’m a) very eager to debate in a civilized manner and b) like to find out the facts.
Anyone who is willing to completely disregard any facts presented that oppose their viewpoint, give creedence to the idea of an almost religious ferver. I do look at the facts, from both sides, and try to figure out what’s going on.
Paul
8 July 2008 at 2:46 PM
[edit - do you have any idea how insulting that is?]
Today, science is typically portrayed as self-correcting, but it took decades for most evolutionary biologists to disassociate themselves from the junk science of eugenics. For years, the most consistent critics of eugenics were traditionalist Roman Catholics, who were denounced by scientists for letting their religion stand in the way of scientific progress. The implication was that religious people had no right to speak out on public issues involving science.
The reason I don’t slavishly hold to one side or another is simple. For the longest time, the world’s leading scientists and scholars told us the world was flat. That the world was the center of the universe. And even that flight was impossible and so was space flight. Eventually, we find that no matter what our preconcieved notions are, the world of reality has a tendancy to annoyingly correct our perceptions.
Paul
[Response: None of your statements are true. Scientists since ancient Egypt have known the Earth was round. Occasional religious authorities decided otherwise. Anyone that has ever seen a bird or an insect knows that flight is possible. That insight is not restricted to scientists. Space flight was a theoretical possibility from the time of Newton. What you are displaying here is a post hoc justification for not wanting to hear what is being said. Maybe you should look at your own preconceived notions? And check on reality now and again to correct them. - gavin]
8 July 2008 at 3:03 PM
For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction that acts on a different body.
Paul. You seem unable to read any facts that oppose your viewpoint. You have a religious fervour that AGW is incorrect and that you have found The One True Answer. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a zealot and unable to think beyond their beliefs.
Gavin and many of the frequent posters here have a nearly saintly patience with each and every one who comes on here and asks “how do you know that X isn’t doing it?”.
You have none.
You don’t even know what you are talking about. You have some soundbites you have from others and, rather than be skeptical of what THEY have told you, you come on here and tell us we’re wrong.
Then get upset when we say “no, you’re wrong”.
Go away and find out what warming has happened on other planets. Find out how much of a change they have had. Work out how that change is modified by distance (radiative power varies with the fourth power of temperature and energy density does down with the second power of distance. this should allow you to work out a rough calculation of how temperature varies with distance). Now see if that describes the changes here. Be skeptical of what you’ve heard about GW not being A.
When you’re done with that, you should have enough knowledge to argue what you’ve been told on this site.
Rather than just tell us you’re wrong because some thing you’ve read makes you think we are.
8 July 2008 at 3:03 PM
Re: #406 (Paul)
What irritates *me* is people who *claim* that they want to know the objective truth, and that they’re well educated, then repeat drivel like “there are changes happening on Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto of similar nature, warming.” It sure looks like you’re not educating yourself, you’re just regurgitating other peoples’ stupidity.
Most commenters here (myself included) were skeptical at one time (in my case, highly so). So we invested the time and effort to find out. Only THEN did we come here to make assertions. If you want to play the “humble investigator into truth” card, get your facts straight *first*.
8 July 2008 at 3:03 PM
Gavin, you seemed surprised by my response. Given your response to it, I believe you may have misunderstood me (and that EASILY could have been me being somewhat wordy using three lines to say what one sentance could do, as one of my former professors once told me)….
[Response: Huh? Everyone agrees that there were warmer times before - Google the Cretaceous or Eocene, or mid-Pliocene and obviously that was due to natural variability. But the causes were tectonic, or orbital, or due to geologically-controlled changes in greenhouse gases. But that isn’t what is happening now. - gavin]
I agree, according to what I was seeing, the data shows that “that isn’t what is happening now.” I don’t know if those factors are sun-driven, naturally derived, or man-made.
In the planetary commentary, it’s simple. There are changes happening. I asked the question. And you replied that there wasn’t change happening. I went to the sites mentioned, did some research, and as I said, there is something happening on some planets as to be expected, as you stated. What I also said was that there is little to no consensus on what the cause is for those planets having changes occurring, but that my original question and original assumption was very much in doubt that it was solar influenced.
The Nevada solar project that was put on hold was the new project. It was mentioned (and I’m having a hard time finding the specific article on that right now) along with several others that were because of environmentalist protests to Bureau of Land Management and the entire problem was addressed in the following article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/us/27solar.html
The article does not specifically mention the lawsuit that caused the BLM to take the action they did, but there was one.
Paul
[Response: The BLM decision had nothing to do with environmentalists, and in any case was rescinded in short order given the overwhelmingly negative reaction from everyone (environmentalists included). - gavin]
8 July 2008 at 3:03 PM
500 million gallons per year is a tiny fraction of Californian water use (something like 80 billion cubic metres per year; 500 million gallons is about 2 million cubic metres). Without numeracy there is no hope.
8 July 2008 at 3:24 PM
Mark, as you may have seen, I read up on things, as several of you have asked me to do. I found that, yes, I was wrong in my preconcieved notion on what I’d heard about climate change on other planets. Yes, according to several sites, there is something happening on some planets, but as Gavin so graciously pointed out, in a dynamic system, there are going to be changes.
Gavin, my quote from the article was not intended to be insulting, but, instead, an attempt to prove a point. That not being able to be flexible in our opinions can lead to bad results. And that’s why I’m trying to find out more. Trying to learn. I appreciate the time you’ve taken and the carefully crafted responses.
With regards to the response you had, there were many “scientific” texts that had agreement with the religious texts.
[Response: Find one scientific reference since the third century BC to the Earth being flat (to save you the trouble, there don’t appear to be any). - gavin]
Nick, you’re missing the point of my comment. With many more than 11 farms, and the 11th largest using 500 million, even if the ten larger were much more efficient and only used the 500 million number (not likely, but I do not have access to the exact amounts), then the top 11 farms would use 5.5 billion gallons of water annually. It does add up.
Paul
8 July 2008 at 3:26 PM
And Gavin, I missed the LA Times article. I’m VERY glad they lifted it. I’d heard two different comments about the BLM basing that decision on a lawsuit.
8 July 2008 at 3:26 PM
RE: #410
No, Paul, you did not simply claim that other planets are “changing.” You wrote, quite specifically (#402), “Actually, there are changes happening on Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto of similar nature, warming.”
Revising history works poorly when your history is publicly written.
(Okay, John and Mark, you’re right about this guy.)
8 July 2008 at 3:39 PM
Gavin wrote: “The BLM decision had nothing to do with environmentalists, and in any case was rescinded in short order given the overwhelmingly negative reaction from everyone”
Thank you! I hadn’t heard that the BLM moratorium on processing applications for solar power installations on public lands had been rescinded. That is the best news I have heard all day. It was an outrageous decision, particularly coming from an agency that has fallen over itself to facilitate fossil fuel extraction on public lands.
8 July 2008 at 3:59 PM
Re @402 Paul
One article I was recently reading stated that hemp seed oil produces a cleaner buring fuel (nearly 90% burn, with considerably less ash and CO2 production) than any fossil fuel (33% burn at the most efficient)
I suggest you cancel your subscription to that source, it’s nonsense fossil fuels are burned in gas turbines with efficiencies exceeding 99%.
Hemp seed oil might be a good substitute for alcohol produced from corn but combustion efficiency isn’t a major factor, energy used to produce it is however.
8 July 2008 at 4:16 PM
Paul,
You claim that your initial post was somewhat hostile and provocative in response to the hostile and dismissive tone you had observed in other posts.
Well, how did that work out for you?
You have to understand that you are hardly the first person to come along and trot out the points that you raised. Not even by a long shot. We’ve seen each and every one of them time and time again. You also have to understand that unlike most public general and political blog sites, a good many regulars who comment here are working scientists. Most are not, but many of the rest have read a great deal on the science of global warming and climate change, as opposed to the rhetoric. So don’t be at all surprised by the response when someone comes along and makes provocative and unsubstantiated sophomoric assertions that are easily refuted–and have been many, many times over.
As others have advised, educate yourself on the subject so that you can form your own opinion about which arguments and which sources are more plausible. You can’t do that by reading op-ed pieces or blogs that don’t provide references to the science that backs up their assertions. You can only do it by reading about and discussing the actual science itself. And RealClimate is one of the few places where you can do that.
If you have questions as you go, by all means ask them. There are plenty of people here who are willing to bend over backwards to help you out. But not if you insult them or their intelligence with blatantly untrue statements, poorly understood misinformation, or outright fabricated disinformation.
Others have provided resources for you to investigate. Here are a few more:
At the very top of each RealClimate page is a button bar. Click on the “start here” button for links to a great many references and information sources conveniently segregated by knowledge level. There are even more embedded in the comments section of that page.
To the right of the “start here” button is the search box. Enter the subject or topic key word to find archived RealClimate posts on the desired topic.
In the right hand column are links to a number of frequently referenced archived subject topic posts under the heading “Categories” and “Highlights.”
Under the heading “Science Links” are some very helpful links, especially the very first one, Spencer Weart’s on-line book The Discovery of Global Warming.
If you do some reading on the scinece, ask genuine questions, and honestly seek to learn about the science, I’m sure you will find the discussion at RealClimate much more pleasant.
8 July 2008 at 4:33 PM
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s a shame how people with viewpoints that don’t agree with everything on this blog are often treated on here. The same thing happens to AGWers at skeptic sites, to be sure…some of the name-calling and automatic dismissals comes across as rather close-minded on both sides.
Anyone who thinks these issues are totally decided and not up for debate is delusional. As Gavin and others have pointed out, even Hansen has adjusted his views over time. That’s the way science is, we are always discovering new things and should keep our minds open to various possibilities. I know that is hard when it comes to such a politically charged issue as anthro global warming…but as new data and information comes in, the spirit of science should be to analyze and interpret it, with the intent to find the truth about our world - not prove someone else wrong or ourselves right.
Science is always evolving.
8 July 2008 at 4:47 PM
“Science is always evolving.”
Of course it is, Aaron, but there is absolutely no comparison between debating the science in good faith and merely stopping by to post the same old tired and long-refuted talking points.
Those who do so are either truly ignorant, incapable of dealing with reality, or actively seeking to provoke a response and disrupt the discussion.
We can help cure the ignorance. We’re under no obligation to put up with the latter two.
8 July 2008 at 4:52 PM
re: 418. “Anyone who thinks these issues are totally decided and not up for debate is delusional.”
Pot kettle black. The debate has been done. That is what scientific conferences, journals and peer-review are all about. It’s called the “scientific method”. It is the foundation of science and it has worked for centuries. The fundamental scientific debate re: AGW is over. What is most interesting is that none of the skeptics/deniers have a scientific explanation to explain the warming over the past 30+ years which has far exceeded natural influences. All they do is regurgitate lies and misinformation from what others (often with vested/political interests) have told them. And then they claim they are “educated” (ha!) and know more or know something that literally thousands of climate scientists/researchers do not know…and every major climate science organization in the world does not know including the National Academy of Sciences. That is the height of arrogance and insecurity (an inability to see how they are fundamentally wrong). And it is a truly sad reflection on their scientific education and supposed knowledge.
8 July 2008 at 4:53 PM
Aaron wrote: “Anyone who thinks these issues are totally decided and not up for debate is delusional.”
Anyone who thinks that there is any genuine “debate” about either the reality of anthropogenic global warming and consequent climate change, or the grave threat not only to human civilization but to all life on earth if unmitigated, “business as usual” anthropogenic global warming and consequent climate change are permitted to continue, is profoundly misinformed.
The commenters here who receive “automatic dismissals” are not those with “viewpoints that don’t agree with everything on this blog” (whatever that may mean — what does a “viewpoint” have to do with objective scientific facts?) but those who regurgitate tiresome, long-ago-refuted pseudoscientific denialist rubbish and/or rave about liberal environmentalist conspiracies to destroy capitalism with the great global warming hoax and other Limbaugh-inspired nonsense.
Those who ask genuine questions in search of real answers are always, in my experience, treated with patience and respect by the climate scientists who generously contribute their personal time to maintaining this site.
8 July 2008 at 5:05 PM
I’m not missing the point of your comment. You claim that “the real reason they’re having a water crisis in Cali is not the water feed. It’s Pistachio’s.” I pointed out that for every eighty thousand gallons of water used in California, only two are used on that pistachio farm. That’s 0.0025% of Californian water use. Even supposing the other pistachio farms each use ten times as much water, pistachios are not the reason for the water crisis in California. So you are wrong: it does not add up.
8 July 2008 at 5:40 PM
#418 Aaron:
I glanced at this site some years ago and have returned only in the past few days. Here’s what I see from my perspective.
Years ago on RC I quickly noticed the constant arrival of neophyte posters all armed with eerily similar talking points crudely disguised as questions. Arguably a majority of these introduce themselves as “confused” or “looking for facts in the debate” or “just trying to get a handle on the issues”. Nearly invariably they are quickly revealed as being on scene purely to grind away at the particular topic du jour they’ve been fed elsewhere, be it the eldritch but still occasionally visible “we can’t even predict the weather so how can we model climate” to the more recent “cosmic rays are overwhelming CO2″ canard.
You can see these memes pulsing through sites like RC, repetitive in general form even as they’re different in particular details. They have a half-life and never completely disappear. Constant renewal appears required, though, because the lose efficacy over time.
Not to say no minds are changed or no information is ever exchanged on RC, from my relatively limited picture. However the monotonously low general quality of recently arrived misconceptions and their carriers at RC along with the misconceptions’ immutability and carriers’ unwillingness to assimilate facts seems the same now as it did several years ago.
It’s as though there’s an unlimited army of recruits available, ready and willing to be handed shoddy ammunition and then sent “over the top” only to mowed down willy-nilly leaving no impression other than fatigue and a slight diminishing of patience on the part of those who’re working to maintain RC’s responsiveness.
On the brighter side, I’ve also noticed that carriers bearing even the lousier memes who take the time to bring along some reasonably well-sourced (even if the source is completely-but-earnestly-wrong) material for examination and are willing to assimilate even a little information offered in rebuttal are well treated. There’s an astonishing level of consideration extended to these, given the constant drone of repetition involved in replying.
8 July 2008 at 6:12 PM
Thank you all for your responses.
I would, however, caution against saying “the science is already settled”, “debate is over”, etc. Climatology is still a rather young scientific field, and while some principles are understood well, others are not. Therefore, it is my position that more knowledge/data and analysis is needed before we can draw such absolute conclusions. Yes, I think most of the principles and theories behind AGW makes sense…but I still think there are things that need to be proven in the real world before I can say the science is settled.
I know that many of you believe we must act drastically now to curb the effects of global warming, and because of that you cannot accept a “wait and see” approach. That is fine, and if you are that convinced that everything will occurr as predicted, then I understand your sense of urgency. However, if others do not share your desperation, please do not label us as “denialists” or whatever.
There are actually many people who think that AGW (or the effects thereof) may be overestimated, and I have had some very good conversations with some of them. So I am still making up my mind until I see better proof from either side. If it were such an obvious choice as some of you make it out to be (like whether or not the earth is flat), then I would have to be an idiot not to see the light and make my decision. But I’m not an idiot, and I don’t think the science is so cut and dried.
8 July 2008 at 6:53 PM
Aaron (424) — Here are temperatures during the Cenozoic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png
Notice that as temperatures increase, we approach those of the Miocene, when Antarctica melted. I’ll say the risk is too great to fool around with.
8 July 2008 at 6:59 PM
Aaron, Let me try explaining a few things. First, when people say the science is settled, they do not mean that we have nothing left to learn about climate. Nobody believes that. Rather, they mean that 1)We understand the role CO2 plays in climate very well; and 2)it is very unlikely that any future discovery in climate science will be sufficiently revolutionary to overturn that understanding.
Contrary to your assertion, climate science if fairly mature. It has a history of >150 years, and it presents a pretty good understanding of the factors that affect climate. See Spencer Weart’s history: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html
The importance of CO2 in climate rests on several factors:
1)It is a strong greenhouse gas. 2)It remains well mixed well into the stratosphere. 3)It persists in the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years. And so on.
Aaron, I don’t think you are an idiot. You are however quite misinformed. You do not understand the science, and so you are vulnerable to disinformation–whether deliberate or merely ignorant. I would urge you to learn more of the physics here. Then you would understand why the peer-reviewed literature favors anthropogenic causation by a ratio of over 100:1, and why not one single professional scientific society that has reviewed the science has rejected it–not even the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. There are no two sides to this debate.
8 July 2008 at 7:55 PM
re: 424. “So I am still making up my mind until I see better proof from either side.”
It is absolutely fundamental to understand that “proof” is a mathematical concept. It does not directly apply to science which is based on hypotheses, data collection, testing, repeatable experiments/peer review, conclusions/consensus and further hypotheses. Again, this gets back to the basic need to understand the scientific method/process. The scientific debate over AGW is long over per numerous peer-reviewed studies, publications and conferences. The AGW certainty is far greater than most scientific results that are widely accepted. There are no natural causes (solar, cosmic rays, etc.) which alone can explain the long-term warming that has occurred since the 1970s.
8 July 2008 at 8:38 PM
Ray, I find your post somewhat condescending…perhaps you did not mean it that way, but it certainly came across that way. You seem to be under the assumption that because I don’t have your conviction on this issue that I am “misinformed” and “do not understand the science”. How you arrived at that conclusion, I’m not sure. Honestly, all of the basic premises you outlined I am already very familiar with. I’m not new to this debate, I have been examing both sides for several years. And as I have said, I have yet to see enough compelling evidence from either side to convince me.
You seem to see this issue as rather black and white, almost with a good vs. evil mentality. Sorry, but I don’t see things as simplified as that.
Climate science, in comparison to many other fields, is still quite young. Consider that only in the past 20 years have scientists began venturing climate predictions, and there has not even been enough time for many of those projections to verify, and you’ll get a sense of what I mean. Also consider the recent development of GCMs, the recent discovery of such variables as the PDO/NPI, etc…
I am very much aware of the physics behind CO2 and the greenhouse effect. As I said, I think this makes sense…but there have been many examples of science that added up in theory, but then reality ended up a bit differently. I’m not saying this will be the case with AGW theory, but I’m certainly open to that possibility at this point.
8 July 2008 at 8:51 PM
Water professionals like myself measure large volumes of water in acre-feet. 1 million gallons is just over 3 acre feet. For a large pistachio farm to use 1,500 acre-feet annually is actually a very low number. For context, total annual water use for irrigated agriculture in California is about 35 million acre-feet annually. These numbers are very easy to find.
The point, Paul, is that you’re way too quick to assume you know what you’re talking about. This is true of both your understanding of California water issues and global climate change issues.
8 July 2008 at 9:07 PM
SecularAnimist,
Declaring the debate “over”, is exactly the comment about the church of environmentalism was all about.
To those of us who aren’t “believers”, there is a lot of debate. And there are a lot of legitimate questions that frankly, those of us who look at it from the outside have. For the debate to be “over”, it has to be accepted science. And frankly, there are areas that looking at from any of the hundreds of questions you guys answer “over and over again” that look very suspicious to someone who hasn’t absorbed all the information. Science is always evolving. And hopefully, you will not be so blind as to think there will be no changes. Even Evolution is a “theory” not proven scientific fact, and the theories for that have been around MUCH longer. There is still much debate on the subject, even if there are many who believe those who do not absolutely accept evolution as written by Darwin (and yes, I actually do have a copy of the book which I’ve read a majority of, and found even Darwin wasn’t 100% convinced that the theory was right).
Jim,
As you can tell by some of the responses, it didn’t go very well. I did make an earnest effort to read some of the site information that some people graciously posted. I have made an atempt to participate eagerly and honestly in presenting what I have known before. Given information that directly and believably can counter what I have known, I am always willing to change my views and knowledge base. It is rather difficult to accept all the changes at once. Think about it. You’ve been told for 15 years that the world is purple, and suddenly, you’re being told to accept that the world is actually blue and green. It’s not an easy transition. Not something that acceptably happens in one sitting. I certainly will do a lot more research on the topic and hopefully become more educated.
Nick, O.K. You’re right. I screwed up. (Never be unwilling to admit mistakes.) I stated that it was the “real reason”. It is one portion. Of many. There are many portions to it, but that one is going to make a difference.
Tom,
One thing I’ve been told often is that my writing style is too wordy. I say things in a way that goes around the subject and sometimes leads to confusion. I asked the question about change. The response was that there wasn’t any change occuring. According to the sites I was sent to earlier today, the statements are simple that the planets listed above are actually appearing to have some form of observed warming, but in each situation, there are some reasons that it wasn’t solar radiation which would be problematic to the AGW proposition. I was explaining, and very poorly, that from what I read, there is some change, but I actually learned that the issue that was causing me trouble on that aspect was not what I thought, and thus, today, I learned something that makes me have to re-think. Don’t bust my chops for learning, but writing badly.
Paul
8 July 2008 at 9:28 PM
Gavin,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth
If you look at the info, you’ll see that there was a great amount of debate but that the spherical concept did originate (in the Western world) in the third century BC. There were many people and many descriptions of the earth as being a flat sphere.
And yes, there was proof found that showed that it wasn’t. What I can say on that is simple. If AGW is truly accurate and correct, then those who do not believe it is right will find themselves rapidly being found in the camp of the flat-earthers. If it is found that AGW is not correct, or that the problems associated with the claims are not, then the other side will be.
A lot of the problem with the concept of “flat earth” being scientifically acceptable is from the romantic notion that Columbus’ crew was reluctant to sail to the New World because of falling off the edge of the world. It may be that there was little to no scientific belief in it, but there certainly points to there being a debate, and one with serious social consequences.
Paul
8 July 2008 at 10:34 PM
Response to Doug Bostrom -
First, it is scurrilous to reprint a private E-mail on a public forum without the author’s consent or knowledge. Then to call the other person a “liar” behind their back is quite remarkable behaviour. I have attempted to deal with you in a civil fashion, and you have violated all decorum.
Besides Doug, you are wrong on all points.
The first paragraph of the article in the Independent read on June 27 at 15:25 GMT when I took a zotero snapshot - “Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole Polar scientists reveal dramatic new evidence of climate change It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year. ”
They have since changed the text, possibly as a result of my pointing out their inaccuracy. My piece contained the text from the Independent article exactly as it read at the time. A similar article with the same text appeared on Sky News at the same time, which has been removed completely. I have a zotero snapshot of that article as well. Instead of calling me a liar on RC, how about asking me first on The Register Forum where I would expect to see the question? There was a simple explanation - apparently Steve Conner chose to correct his story.
[Response: You were hardly the only person to comment on the headline (see above), and you should know that journalists do not write the headlines in any case. - gavin]
Also, you are misrepresenting Hansen’s paper.
In Hansen Nazarenko 2004, Hansen wrote that “Our estimate for the mean soot effect on spectrally integrated albedos in the Arctic … is about one quarter of observed global warming.”
i.e. Dr. Hansen said that one-fourth of all global warming (over the entire planet) is due to Arctic soot. The same paper shows the forcing of soot as 2XC02 at 4.05 W/m2 Figure 1 shows Arctic warming of as much as 2-3C due to soot. My statement was completely correct - By any reasonable interpretation Hansen did imply that most of the warming in the Arctic is due to soot.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2004/2004_Hansen_Nazarenko.pdf
[Response: You are confused. There are many factors - both warming (CO2, CH4) and cooling (sulphates) that act on the Arctic. Soot is certainly one of them, but an attribution of the actual warming to more complicated than you have understood. See this post for instance. Imagine that there are two equal positive effects A and B, and one equal but negative effect C. The net effect is equal either to A or B, but it makes no sense to say that A is responsible for 100% of the warming or that B is. A better answer is say that A and B contribute equally. - gavin]
Also as mentioned in my article, a more recent paper from the University of California says that up to 94% of Arctic warming is due to soot.
http://www.physorg.com/news100354399.html
[Response: This is the same problem - single factor atttributions for the 20th Century are just wrong. It is too complicated for that. - gavin]
Unlike your incorrect characterization, my article (”Are the poles melting”) was about both poles - not just the Arctic. Antarctic ice is completely relevant.
According to both UIUC and NSIDC, Arctic ice is greater than this date last year. I predicted in the article that the North Pole will not be ice free this summer. Check back in six weeks to see if I am wrong.
As mentioned in my article, Mark Serreze at NSIDC said in 2000 “There’s nothing to be necessarily alarmed about. There’s been open water at the pole before” During the summer of 2000 there was “a large body of ice-free water about 10 miles long and 3 miles wide near the pole”
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E3DD1E31F93AA1575BC0A9669C8B63
Doug Bostrom - instead of calling me a “liar,” how about engaging in civil conversation as I have attempted to do with you? Hint - you could start with an apology.
8 July 2008 at 10:57 PM
> There are actually many people who think that AGW
> (or the effects thereof) may be overestimated, and
> I have had some very good conversations
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
What you can do is ask them for the sources, the facts — and then look those up. Google Scholar will give you an idea whether the statements those good conversationalists make have a basis in the published scientific work, if they don’t know for sure themselves.
And of course the real fun is that every so often you find newly published, or newly cited, work that changes your mind about what the facts are likely to be.
8 July 2008 at 11:05 PM
Further response to Doug Bostrom -
I have not accused anybody of wrongdoing, other than you. Rather I have raised completely legitimate questions about changes in datasets, graphs and maps over time. These questions deserve answers.
Everybody’s work is subject to review and analysis, particularly when they blur the line between science and politics. It is the right - in fact the duty - of all the world’s citizens to ask very hard questions of people making bold claims that have huge effect on our day to day life.
[Response: I beg to differ. Your previous articles were laced with insinuations that the GISTEMP record is being ‘fixed’ with the clear implication that it is being done deliberately to skew the results. In any scientific forum ‘thems fighting words’ - and if you think that isn’t an accusation of wrongdoing, you need to go back to English class. Had you bothered to read any of the copious papers available on the subject (for instance: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abstracts/2001/Hansen_etal.html), you would have been aware that a) the revisions to the US temperatures came from NOAA, not NASA, b) are nothing to do with Hansen, and c) are for very sensible reasons - how would you suggest dealing with the fact that today temperatures are taken in the morning, but used to be taken in the afternoon? Your brand of sneering (I particularly liked the implicit comparison of scientists to monkeys), based on complete ignorance of what the real issues are, cannot be described in any way as simply ‘asking the hard questions’. It is more akin to asking when scientists stopped beating their graduate students. - gavin]
9 July 2008 at 12:04 AM
Aaron #224: “I know that many of you believe we must act drastically now to curb the effects of global warming, and because of that you cannot accept a “wait and see” approach.”
Given the clear evidence, “wait and see” would qualify as drastic inaction.
9 July 2008 at 2:49 AM
Tamino #409 says:
Didn’t know that. Very, very interesting… because of what it tells about effectiveness of the “mendacity environment” and the soundness of ExxonMobil et al.’s modest investment in it. Contrary to most people with a history like that, you are scientifically very literate and apparently used to reading broadly outside your field.
This is a narrative deservant of exposure. Why not on your own blog!
9 July 2008 at 3:22 AM
More from Hansen-Nazarenko
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2004/2004_Hansen_Nazarenko.pdf
“The climate forcing due to snow/ice albedo change is of the order of 1W/m2 at middle- and high-latitude land areas in the Northern Hemisphere …. This compares with a global mean forcing by present anthropogenic CO2 (compared to preindustrial times) of 1.5W/m2, which is relatively uniform over the globe.”
then
“Soot snow/ice albedo climate forcing is not included in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change evaluations. This forcing is unusually effective, causing twice as much global warming as a CO2 forcing of the same magnitude.”
[Response: That was then, this is now (fig SPM2). - gavin]
The 2X greater efficacy makes the temperature effect of soot greater than CO2 in the Arctic, as can also be seen in figure 1 and figure 3. Most of the overall rise in Arctic temperature seen in figure 3 is accounted for by soot as seen in figure 1.
Furthermore, the text reads “On the other hand, our calculations exclude a factor that magnifies the soot warming effect. Melting snow tends to retain aerosols, darkening the surface more in the late winter and spring when the sun is high in the sky and most effective, thus increasing absorption and lengthening the melt season”
Thus the effect of soot is greater than already calculated. The paper spells out quite plainly that soot likely causes more Arctic warming than CO2, as does Zender’s paper.
http://www.physorg.com/news100354399.html
[Response: As above… - gavin]
9 July 2008 at 4:26 AM
Aaron, there are many who think that they have been anal probed by aliens.
That many people think something isn’t on its own a reason to believe them.
Now, if these multitudes had a reason for it being overestimated (and, why it isn’t being underestimated) instead of “we don’t know how clouds work” or “we aren’t sure what the oceans will do with this” which is an appeal to incredulity and can be used just as well to intimate that CC is *underestimated*.
Since you know at least how much you don’t know, please refrain from asking or telling those who are working on the issue they are wrong because someone has said they are. Either work it out yourself, or leave it to these others to do it.
Most people here will help clarify questions you have, but you can’t be educated without your involvement and you seem lacking in desire.
9 July 2008 at 5:06 AM
Aaron, you do realize you’re repeating a tired denialist talking point when you make this statement?
Do you understand why repeating a litany of such points tends to just cause people to tune you out (other than those who express their annoyance)?
9 July 2008 at 6:53 AM
Mark posts:
Your original post on the matter said:
“The Milky Way and its planets” implies that you were confusing the galaxy with the Solar system, a la Alfred Bester. As I showed, tides from the Milky Way galaxy are irrelevant.
9 July 2008 at 7:05 AM
Aaron writes:
Let’s see, Fourier posited the greenhouse effect in 1824. Louis Agassiz demonstrated that there had been ice ages in the 1850s. John Tyndal found that water vapor and carbon dioxide were the major greenhouse gases in 1859, and Svante Arrhenius made the first estimate of global warming under doubled carbon dioxide in 1896.
Climatology is older than quantum mechanics. And if you don’t accept quantum mechanics because it’s such a new field, what are you doing using a computer? You know that semiconductors are based on theories having to do with quantum mechanics, don’t you?
9 July 2008 at 7:10 AM
Paul writes:
His sailors may have been afraid of falling off the edge; but no scientist of the time was. Educated people have known the world was round since Eratosthenes measured its size circa 300 BC. Aristotle gave several proofs of the round world and in Columbus’s time, Aristotle was all the rage in scientific circles.
It’s also untrue that the church ever taught that the world was flat. That was made up by Washington Irving and Andrew Dickson White in the 19th century. Both had an anti-clerical agenda.
9 July 2008 at 8:02 AM
Aaron,
I am sorry that you found my missive condescending. I say that you are misinformed because you blindly parrot denialist talking points like “Climate science is a young science,” and “The science is uncertain.” Now you say that you know and accept the science but simply reject it despite presenting zero evidence to favor rejection.
Perhaps if you had read my post dispassionately without looking for condescencion, you might have gotten the point that different portions of climate science have different levels of uncertainty. The importance of CO2 is well established. There are mountains of evidence favoring a sensitivity around 3 degrees per doubling, and it is virtually impossible to construct a reasonable climate model with a sensitivity less than 2 degrees per doubling.
Science is about evidence, and since you present no evidence supporting your rejection of the accepted science, what are we to assume your rationale to be? That you don’t like the consequences? Many also do not like the consequences of the theory of evolution. Or the first and second laws of thermodynamics? Should we demand a different standard for scientific truth when we don’t like the consequences.
Aaron, the fact that you claim there are two sides to this argument shows me that you don’t understand the science, because the denialists publish bupkis. They have no alternate theories, no insights, no understanding. As Mark Twain said, “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”
Paul, WRT you issues communicating, I also recommend to you the counsel of Mr. Twain, who had wonderful advice on the craft of writing:
“Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
and
“If you see an adjective, kill it.”
There’s lots more.
9 July 2008 at 8:18 AM
Thank you Ray.
My english professor once told me “Paul, you use 3-4 sentances where one word will do.”
Sometimes, I get the feeling that stating directly what I’m trying to get across won’t get the point across (as, when I type it, I read it and say “Hey, I understand it, but will anyone else?” and then I rewrite it.
I may just toss it out there raw next time. Most of the posters here seem to be highly intelligent and capable of reading quite well, and may even be able to decipher my blobs of consciousness. I’m used to posting on forums where not all the readers have a basic education. (Spend any amount of time on a divorce support forum, and you’ll see what I’m talking about)
Paul
9 July 2008 at 8:47 AM
re: 439. Then there the tired denialist classic “church of environmentalism” from post 430. Talk about taking one’s credibility about *science* to absolute zero!
9 July 2008 at 9:22 AM
Dan,
The comment about “church of environmentalism” was specifically to point out that holding one’s belief in a particular scientific finding doesn’t give you credibility. You have zero if you’re unwilling to change your thoughts if you are proven wrong. And anyone who claims a topic in science is over, is categorically stating they are unwilling to change even if they are proven wrong. I’m not saying today someone is going to prove their theories wrong, but frankly, clinging to it seems more a religious fervor than true science.
A willingness to be open to new scientific discoveries is extremely important in science. Look at what we know now that we didn’t know 50 years ago, 100 years ago. If you are blinded by an unwavering attachment to a scientific theory, you could end up wrong.
What if, tomorrow, geologists announced that they had determined that the core of the earth was expanding for some unknown reason, and the expansion was what was causing a heating of the earth, and they had calculated models that proved it? I know. Far fetched idea, but what if everything you know today is somehow positively proven false tomorrow? Are you going to cling to it saying the debate is over?
I know at this point, I’ve seen enough conflicting “evidence” that has been “proven” to be incorrect on both ends (and yes, the sites I was sent to yesterday for research have some pretty convincing arguments), that I’m not willing today to say I think that AGW is either accurate, or as devastating as is predicted, but I’m also not willing to say it isn’t accurate or as devastating either. I will say this. The goals of the AGW activists and my desires for cleaner air and a more livable world for my children are in agreement in a lot of areas. I’d love to see coal and oil reduced tremendously in use in the world. That would provide several positive results. Cleaner air. Always a good thing. Less strip mining, leaving better, more beautiful lands for our children. Less depenedence on countries that want to harm us. Less war. I’ve got two children. I’m trying to find out what the answers are because I want to do what’s best for my children.
That’s why I’m here. I’m not here to rip at people or “vent my spleen”. I spend time on conservative forums reading from one side of the equation, and I feel like it’s appropriate for me to spend the time to get educated properly on what is going on from the other side of the aisle.
So, if you want to talk about taking one’s credibility about science to absolute zero, think about what I’m saying. If you’re right, if AGW is right, then fine. We will all be better off from the efforts you’re making. If it’s wrong, don’t hold on to say “it can’t be wrong. I’ve got charts.”
Paul
9 July 2008 at 9:49 AM
Dan (427) (though applicable to many, not just Dan): I have a philosophical disagreement with the logic that gives AGW a can’t lose for winning position. It is said “proof” is only a mathematical concept and not applicable to looking for iron-clad assurance of AGW. And that assessing AGW (and other sciences…) is a matter of making judgments on hypotheses and the analyses that went into the hypotheses. But then it is followed with, in essence (other words are used but mean the same), the current level of analysis and judgments applied to the hypothesis of AGW is such that it is, in fact, proof par excellence, and need not be further questioned. (Also, in fact, “proof” does have a clear and accepted meaning outside of mathematics even though it falls short (by a teensy amount maybe) of 100% absolute mathematical certainty.)
In short it is said 1) proof is not applicable here so quit looking for it, and 2) anyway the AGW hypothesis has been scientifically proven already so quit looking for it. That logic is invalid and self-serving.
9 July 2008 at 10:26 AM
The notion that this area of science “need not be further questioned” is from the Inhofes, Rod. You’re doing the straw man thing here.
Yes, there are nitwits out in all directions around the political axis, but there’s no point arguing with them as though they had a serious philosophy. Why bother?
[Response: This is an excellent point and one that bears repeating often. On any issue one can find people saying stupid things. While correcting them is occasionally useful (though rarely heeded), acting as if the stupidest statements are representative of the most compelling arguments is silly. One can find a history of idiocy amplified by partisan point-scorers on the environment, on foreign policy, on taxation, on human rights etc., but laughing at folly is very different to dealing with real and serious underlying issues. - gavin]
9 July 2008 at 10:44 AM
Re Paul @ 430: “To those of us who aren’t “believers”, there is a lot of debate. And there are a lot of legitimate questions that frankly, those of us who look at it from the outside have. For the debate to be “over”, it has to be accepted science.”
But that’s just it, Paul, within the scientific community anthropogenic causation of increasing greenhouse gases, greenhouse gas-induced warming, and potential climate effects and impacts of increased warming are accepted science. If the foundations of that science were still being debated you would find that debate in the form of papers published in the relevant scientific journals and presented at the relevant scientific conferences. What you do see is plenty debate about the details of competing forcings and natural variability and the underlining mechanics of the climate system (as you say, science is always evolving), but what you do not see are legitimate papers showing that the basic science of greenhouse gas forcing is wrong.
To be sure a ‘debate’ over whether or not human activity is altering the climate still rages, but it is not a clear-headed objective debate about the science among scientists actually working in the relevant fields, it’s a debate about the science and its impact on human society in the court of public opinion. Those are two entirely different debates that should not be confused. That a substantial portion of the public does not widely accept the science does not make it a scientific debate.
Paul: “Even Evolution is a “theory” not proven scientific fact”
There you go with another oft-repeated canard of misunderstanding. Here’s one thing you should keep in mind: the general usage of the word “theory” and the scientific usage of the word ‘theory’ are not at all the same.
In general usage a ‘theory’ immediately follows the observation or experience of a single phenomenon or event, or a group of seemingly related phenomena or events, and that’s often pretty much as far as the process goes. Think ‘conspiracy theory’. This is why “evolution (or global warming) is only a theory” is used dismissively to discount evolution (and global warming).
But in science, a theory is the end product of the scientific process, which starts with observation of phenomena, forming an hypothesis to explain the phenomena, designing a means to test the hypothesis, analyzing and interpreting the results of the tests, refining the hypothesis to account for observed discrepancies, retesting and refining repeatedly as needed, publishing the results for review and duplication of results by peers, consensus acceptance of the hypothesis by peers. Only at the end of the process, when peer consensus becomes overwhelming does a hypothesis have any chance of becoming accepted as a theory.
In science theories are as good as it gets. There are no proven scientific ‘facts’, only well supported, consistent theories that have withstood all attempts to disprove them.
9 July 2008 at 10:51 AM