Antarctic Ice shelves not melting as previously thought.

[Boater14]

I'll see you and raise you. Tree hugging, lefty usgs says tides higher from cape hattarass to Boston.

[ljb5]

There will eventually be around 10 billion people inhabiting this planet, IMO, all made possible by cheap, easily accessible fossil fuel. All will want an American middle class lifestyle. How will you meet this demand without fossil fuel? ( Coal, oil, natural gas, etc.). I read that energy demand will double over the next 30 years, despite the economic slowdown. How will you meet this demand without fossil fuels? I'm not trying to be critical, I wish there were a great alternative to fossil fuels, but I just don't see a viable replacement. At least not until the crisis is upon us.......

Well, that's the problem right there.

If we truly need it, we must stop wasting it.

How will we meet this demand without fossil fuel? Probably with great discomfort and inequity.

[Boston]

actually its the inequality there desperate to preserve

there's plenty of viable options, and cheap to, but its hard to get people off there asses and actually doing something when its just so easy to drive to a filling station. Hell I'll even be running the furnace off alternative fuels come this winter. And I'll pay pennies on the dollar to do it.

Its not that there aren't tons of alternatives, its just that what industry offers is whats best for them, not for you.

Its not in the corporate interest to act in an altruistic manor, its there job to squeeze as much money as possible out of you, so they invent a system so complex the vast majority of people are fooled into thinking it must be necessary to the production of fuels. When in fact I can produce perfectly good fuel in a 55 g drum using nothing but a scale and a drill with a mixer on it. I spend about five minutes a week collecting waste oil from several of the local eateries and after that its some lye and some methanol. Now is that really all that hard ?

Now throw in the algae based bio system, and you need what, a giant concrete vat and a very fine net, maybe a press, a few pumps and some waste water, add sunshine. We could be doing this on a municipal basis outside every waste water treatment plant with enough room to build a few big fat vats and using human waste to feed the algae. That magic polymer to provide atmospheric CO2 and poof !!! problem solved. At least in terms of and additional CO2, the real issue is getting rid of what we've already added to the atmosphere.

Yup the oil and gas industry has some of us snowed alright, but not quite all of us.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, they're wrecking the planet, on pure greed. Makes me want to puke

[varadero]

[Boston]

care to now post the Northers hemisphere sea ice anomalies ? arc_antarc_1979_20091.gif

and then maybe an average of the two ?

from there we can also include glassier trends

we might also discuss ice thickness, something measurements of extent fail to address.

of course there's another way to look at it, ice melts in warmer temps, so we could just look at the trends in average sea and land surface temps.


<------ and that kids is about as close as I've yet to come inserting an image in this thing.

[varadero]

[Boston]

well hey, a distinct loss of ice overall. And thats not even accounting for thickness. Which isn't part of the extent graphs.

I liked my graph better though, shows the trends very clearly and overlays the data. Something else thats a good way to look at this is ice volume. Which takes extent and thickness into account.

[varadero]

This is a great animation of the Arctic gyre and the export of sea ice out the Fram strait.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOgkb...eature=related

[varadero]

Boston's graph
B

[LeeG]

RodB, have you learned anything since the initial c&p?

[skuthorp]

There's a psychology at work here, I liken it to religious beliefs. Some people so hate the reality around them that they prefer to believe in a fantasy. Its called denial. Its a very real psychological condition and its not uncommon. In some psychosis memories are blocked, in others realities are replaced.

When 98% of the scientific community that studies a particular theory agrees with its basic tenants, yet Joe public prefers to believe something else, and passes along any bit of agnotology that discredits even the remotest aspects of the developing science. Its denial. Curious/interesting to observe but frustrating at the same time, cause its the only planet we have, and we're killing it, plain and simple.

Boston I am of the belief that we, as a species will do nothing at all, at least partly as a result of your proposition, until it is far too late. Then as a species we either adapt, or in the extreme case, largely die out. And it won't just be climate change, overdrawing on the fossil bank, overfishing the seas, desertification, reductions in available arable land will all play their part at a tipping point. But then I am cynic, and not especially concerned about the scenario.

[Phillip Allen]

Boston I am of the belief that we, as a species will do nothing at all, at least partly as a result of your proposition, until it is far too late. Then as a species we either adapt, or in the extreme case, largely die out. And it won't just be climate change, overdrawing on the fossil bank, overfishing the seas, desertification, reductions in available arable land will all play their part at a tipping point. But then I am cynic, and not especially concerned about the scenario.

similar to my belief

[varadero]

RodB, have you learned anything since the initial c&p?

His initial c&p has very few flaws. The Antarctic sea ice has seen a positive trend since official measurements have been logged. The Arctic however has seen a decline. The fact that measurements were started at the end of a 40 year cold period (1940-1980) for the Northern hemisphere, and there are historical logs of low ice periods in the Arctic prior suggests to me, and not just me, that we are on the down side of a sine wave cycle where the initial data was measured at a peak. Q, What is the trend of a sine wave? A, Zero, or it depends where you start or finish your measurements. Regardless, the OP and the Data presented are in agreement.

[LeeG]

Regardless, the OP and the Data presented are in agreement.

"Antartic ice shelves not melting as previously thought", the Antartic ice shelveS weren't thought to be melting.

[varadero]

Que?

[ljb5]

suggests to me, and not just me, that we are on the down side of a sine wave cycle where the initial data was measured at a peak. Q, What is the trend of a sine wave? A, Zero, or it depends where you start or finish your measurements.

Nothing more than idle speculation.

What if it's a sine wave superimposed on a downward trend?

What if it's several complicated processes going on at the same time?

[Phillip Allen]

shouting again...

[LeeG]

Que?

The Antartic ice shelves weren't thought of as melting, why would anyone think the shelveS were melting when the data doesn't support it? The op article is about ONE 120 mile shelf and a model of it. RodB posted about the Antartic ice shelves in plural. Is that really that hard to figure out?

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2012GL051012.shtml

The mechanisms by which heat is delivered to Antarctic ice shelves are a major source of uncertainty when assessing the response of the Antarctic ice sheet to climate change. Direct observations of the ice shelf-ocean interaction are extremely scarce, and present ice shelf-ocean models struggle to predict reason able melt rates. Our two years of data during 2010-2012 from three oceanic moorings below the Fimbul Ice Shelf in the eastern Weddell Sea show cold cavity waters, with average temperatures of less than 0.1 {degree sign}C above the surface freezing point.

[varadero]

From April 25 1939! Boy does this sound familiar.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/arti...nore*|||sortby

WILL EARTH GET WARMER? Scientist Has New Theory More than eighteen years of observ- ing the fluctuations of Arctic weather conditions in the fifty-eight Soviet scientific stations in the Far North, writes the Moscow correspondent of the "Observer" (London), lead Rus- sian meteorologists to a forecast of warmer winters and hotter summers for the North and South Poles. They believe that the earth is enter- ing a new cycle of warmer weather. A sceries of curious discoveries have been announced in support of this theory. It has been noted that year by year, for the past two decades, the fringe of the Polar icepack has been creeping northward in the Barents Sea. As compared with the year 1900, the total ice surface of this body of water has decreased by twenty per cent. Various expeditions have discovered that warmth-loving species of fish have migrated in great shoals to waters farther north than they had ever been seen before. Recession of the Barents Sea ice fields have been verified in recent years by numerous vessels of the Soviet mercantile marine plying between Murmansk and Spitzbergen. These phenomena had at one time been attributed to a supposed swerve in the course of the Gulf Stream which had brought an increased volume of warm waters to the Polar basin. Rus- sian scientists are now inclined to cor- relate the changes to the general warming up of the planet. The Gullf Stream theory does not ex- plain the rising temperature of the waters of Baffin Bay and the Bering Straits, according to Soviet experts. It does not seem to account for the fact that the rivers of Norther Siberia freeze over later and thaw earlier than they did two decades ago. Nor does it explain the fact that the zone of Arctic subsoil, which has been rigidly frozen since the Glacial Age, is receding northward in Siberia so that at the city of Mezina it is now forty miles farther north than it was in 1829. There is also the unexplained pheno- menon of the rise in air temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere at Bom- bay, Valparaiso, Buenos Aires, and Cape Town. "Remarkable Changes" "Our generation is living in a period when remarkable changes are taking place almost everywhere throughout the world," writes Professor L. Berg, of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. "'Certainly these widely distributed phenomena cannot be due to the action of the Gulf Stream, which, however, naturally receives its share of the greater general warmth." The slow thawing of the Arctic is given as a partial explanation for the record voyages of Soviet ice-breakers to northern latitudes, which have never before been reached by navigating vessels. The Sadko in 1935, in ice- free water of the North Kara Sea, steamed to 82 degrees, 42 minutes of northern latitude—an all-time record. The Yermak, which at the opening of the century was unable even to penetrate the fringe of ice-fields jam- ming the South Kara Sea, last year sailed northward in the Laptev Sea, turning back only after it had exceed- ed the Sadko mark by twenty-four nautical miles, at 82 degrees, 6 minutes. The general warming of the earth seems also to account for the loosen- ing up of the huge cape of ice on the roof of the world. Floating Laboratory This was shown in the drift of the Papanin Ice-Floe Expedition, which for nearly a year studied Arctic con- ditions from its precarious floating laboratory. The party of four youth- ful scientists in their spectacular drift from the North Pole to the Greenland Sea found that the Polar ice-pack is moving approximately twice as fast as expected from earlier observations. Again, research buoys, dropped into the Kara Sea to study Polar sea cur- rents, indicated a movement to the coast of Greenland and Iceland two to three times more rapid than recorded movements several decades ago. This gradual loosening of the Polar ice-cap has led such Arctic experts as Professor Vise to forecast that the ice- breaker Sedov, now adrift in the Polar ice-pack following a course similar to but more northerly than that of Nansen's Fram, will be carried along much faster than the Fram, shortening the crossing of the Arctic Ocean to a little over two years. 1938 Records The Fram took three years. Pro- fessor Vise believes that the Sedov, which was trapped in the icefields north of the New Siberian Islands more than a year ago, should reach the Greeland Sea by the end of this Fix this text
year, carried by the same ocean stream that bore the Papanin party. The strange weather records of 1938 seem to fit the picture of a slowly warming earth. In England, March and December of last year were the warmest of the century during which records have beent kept at Greenwich. In December, Moscow was gripped in a protracted cold spell and tem- peratures fell at times to 50.8 degrees below zero. Centigrade. During the same month, Soviet scientists, winter- ing at the observatory on Rudolf Is- land, 560 miles from the North Pole, reported a temperature well above the

[varadero]

The map below shows the “2007 record low” Arctic ice extent, and the red dot indicates where a Russian boat sailed to in 1935 – in ice-free water.
Apparently there was less ice in the Eastern Arctic in 1935 than there was during the all-time-record-lowest-Armageddon-we-are-all-doomed-irreversible-tipping-point summer of 2007.

[Boston]

Lets keep this in a proper perspective, following the KISS principal as much as posible, we're discussing a poorly written op ed piece from the same guys who brought us the Inquirer, another bastion of factual information

the tittle is misleading, the article is misleading, most likely sensationalized to help sell magazines, or gain converts to the online site. The original article is barely represented and in no way itself definitive being just one of hundreds of pieces of the puzzle.

I particularly liked this one from Lee

"Antartic ice shelves not melting as previously thought", the Antartic ice shelveS weren't thought to be melting.

Its a beautiful example of how far off this article really is.

I'd like to think we can all agree on the basics

the world is warming, and its warming in direct relation to the atmospheric CO2 content nearly exactly as predicted by the estimates of Arrhenius something like 120 years ago. So its not like this is some new fangled science designed to aggravate the republitard agenda.

climate is an average of all weather, in finding that average some areas of study will be warmer, some cooler, overall the trend is warming. Both in the oceans and on land.

So how ethical is it to ignore that climate is an average, ignore that no one ever said that on average the Antarctic ice is melting, and present an op ed piece suggesting that the previous science was flawed.

Its classic agnotology designed to confuse less well informed readers. Nothing more.

[Boston]

Oh and Voodoo, speculation isn't science, its not data collected in a scientific manor to be compared with actual scientific data, and its certainly not sufficient to prove a thing. So why interject speculation into the science.

this bit about possible oscillations, is suggestive of the "its natural variation" argument, which can be shot down in flames with a quick look at the CO2 data. There is simply no natural deviation even remotely close to the 400 ppm we find ourselves at today, within the record going back about 15 million years. Or well before the advent of humanity.

Also this last about some boat that presumably went about one millimeter farther into the ice pack than what present day data supports possible in open water. A what definitive proof is there this eve occurred and what independent verifiable data exists to support the original claim. What ocean conditions may have been different that could have caused a localized anomaly to allow this possibility. There are just to many variables to be using speculation

If we start using words like If and If we start speculating and if we ignore the scientific process then maybe, if we really want it to, the moon is made of cheese.

[ljb5]

The map below shows the “2007 record low” Arctic ice extent, and the red dot indicates where a Russian boat sailed to in 1935 – in ice-free water.

What a simple mind it must take to think a little red dot disproves such a mountain of established, peer-reviewed, verified research.

It's been obvious for years that varadero lies, posts false information, misrepresents facts, ignores reputable sources and puts his faith in unreliable sources (Seriously, dude... a blog on Wordpress?!)....

But that's not his real problem.

His real problem is arrogance. What type of person believes to their core that they can over-throw the entire scientific community by just glancing at a graph or reading a single article?

No matter how smart you think you are, varadero, you are not so smart that you can get away without doing the work, understanding the science and dealing with the facts.

I'm sure Phillip will be along shortly to accuse me of arrogance, but that's far from the truth. I never substitute my own hunches for the careful evaluation of true experts.

[wardd]

The map below shows the “2007 record low” Arctic ice extent, and the red dot indicates where a Russian boat sailed to in 1935 – in ice-free water.
Apparently there was less ice in the Eastern Arctic in 1935 than there was during the all-time-record-lowest-Armageddon-we-are-all-doomed-irreversible-tipping-point summer of 2007.

was their position checked with gps?

[ljb5]

was their position checked with gps?

Do not argue with the Red Dot!

The Red Dot came from a blog on WordPress! How could anyone doubt the Red Dot?

[ahp]

I just skimmed the current issue of "Scientific American" which has an article concerning Antarctic sea ice. It is melting faster. Sea ice tends to block and slow the movement of glaciers towards the coast and berg calving. Glacier movement and berg calving is speeding up.

I invite anyone to read the article and correct me if I have misunderstood.

[ccmanuals]

My tendency is to trust NOAA.

http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/vid...rare-in-arctic

[LeeG]

But NOAA is the gov't and has heathen scientists working for them. They're hiding the Holy Grail and hemp oil in Area 51.

[Boston]

Its all just an evil plot ( I've always suspected the ancestors of All Gore started this malarky ) going back to, what was it ? 1750 something like that, when that first gubment official, oh wait, wasn't a US gubment yet, discovered CO2. Might have been around 1820s when CO2 was found to be a greenhouse gas. Or 1890s when it was first calculated what doubling the CO2 content of the atmosphere would do to temps.

So really this is one long lived hoax involving generations after generations and thousands of scientists all working there evil to,
to
um
to

um

oh yah
screw up the US economy ;-)

[wardd]

Its all just an evil plot ( I've always suspected the ancestors of All Gore started this malarky ) going back to, what was it ? 1750 something like that, when that first gubment official, oh wait, wasn't a US gubment yet, discovered CO2. Might have been around 1820s when CO2 was found to be a greenhouse gas. Or 1890s when it was first calculated what doubling the CO2 content of the atmosphere would do to temps.

So really this is one long lived hoax involving generations after generations and thousands of scientists all working there evil to,
to
um
to

um

oh yah
screw up the US economy ;-)

that's unpatriotic, only the wealthy are allowed to screw the economy

it's right there in the constitution, ask the supremes

[WX]

was their position checked with gps?

In 1935?

[Phillip Allen]

In 1935?

I think his point is that all lats and longs determined before GPS are suspect thereefore the maps don't count unless he wants them to

[Boston]

mariners have been nailing small islands out in the middle of an incredibly vast ocean for centuries, I have no doubt in the ability of ancient mariners to accurately determine there location. What I do question is myriad of other factors which may have effected the ice in one very small area and over what seems like a very small distance, maybe 100 miles from what I can see in the photo. Could be a shifting current or an eddy, could be a low snow year, or a statistically insignificant anomaly, the list of what's, how's, and why's are endless, so from a scientific point of view, nothing can be concluded from that pairing of data. You'd need thousands of plots just like that one, assuming there is even a corroborated lat and lon for that location at that time. Before you could begin to map the minimum ice extent for that time period.

What we do know, and can track very well is the CO2 content of the past atmosphere. We also know what the past temps were going back quite a way, 1 million years through the ice records so far and counting. Other methods go back even farther. Through those multiple methodologies all agreeing quite well its really clear that CO2 is having exactly the effect expected. The world is warming up just as predicted.

[varadero]

A piece written by Dr, Walt Meier.

Often, much of the focus in the news is on the effect of warming air temperatures on observed decline in Arctic sea ice extent, such as in the The Economist article. Others have suggested, such as in last Saturday’s post, that winds are the key to understanding the extent decline. These are not competing viewpoints, but reflect complementary contributions to changes in sea ice extent. For a full description of how sea ice changes – day-by-day, month-by-month, and over the years and decades – both wind and air temperatures (along with other factors, e.g., the oceans) need to be considered.
Winds and daily variations in extent
Winds primarily affect sea ice extent by pushing ice around, either spreading the ice out over larger area (increasing extent) or compressing it into a smaller area (decreasing extent). Often, day-to-day changes in sea ice extent are primarily due to changes in winds and not freezing or melting. The winds can also open areas of water within the ice-pack, called leads, if they push floes of ice apart. Thus, even during winter, there are open water areas or areas of thin ice (as leads begin to re-freeze) throughout the ice-pack. It is this feature that has allowed submarines to surface at the North Pole since the 1950s, even though the overall sea ice thickness was much greater in the 1950s compared to today. (In other words, surfacing subs at the North Pole are not an indicator of Arctic sea ice conditions.)
Winds and interannual changes in extent
Winds are variable, blowing at different directions and speeds. Thus over time, the effect of the winds settles into an average pattern and their net effect on extent is smaller relative to temperatures. However, average wind patterns can themselves vary over longer periods of time due to large-scale climate oscillations, most notably for the Arctic Oscillation (AO). During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the AO was often in a positive mode that favors the motion of older, thicker sea ice out of the Arctic. The remaining younger, thinner ice cover was more easily melted completely in the subsequent summers. This contributed to some of the summer extent decline during that period, as was noted in papers by Rigor and Wallace (2004) and Rigor et al. (2002). However, in recent years, this relationship appears to have broken down. After very strongly negative AO winters in 2009-2010 and 2010-2011, the summer sea ice again reached low levels (Stroeve et al., 2011).
Winds and summer extent
Even over a season, variation in the winds can play an important role. They were a key factor in the record low extent of 2007, as noted for example by Ogi and Wallace (2012) and Zhang et al. (2008) , who found that ~30% of the record low extent could be attributed to unusual ice motion (driven by the winds). According to Ogi et al. (2010), 50% of the year-to-year variation in extent can be explained by the variation in winds. Ogi and Wallace (2012) noted that if the wind patterns were similar to 2007, the minimum extent during 2010 and 2011 would have likely been as low as or lower than 2007.
Effects of winds and temperature on long-term changes in sea ice
Winds can also influence the long-term trend in extent. Ogi et al. (2010) estimated that up to 33% of the trend for 1979-2009 could be explained by winds. One mechanism for this long-term influence is via long-term changes in the winds, which have been noted by Ogi et al. (2010) and Smedsrud et al. (2009). Another effect on extent due to winds is in how effective winds are pushing the ice around. Spreen et al. (2011) noted that while some increase in wind speed is observed (in agreement with the Ogi and Smedsrud papers), the speed of the ice increased much more. In other words, the winds are becoming more effective at pushing the ice around.
The motion of sea ice is affected not only by winds (and other smaller factors), but also by the ice itself. Thinner ice is more easily pushed around by the winds than thicker ice (Haas et al., 2008). And the sea ice cover has been getting substantially thinner through the loss of older, thicker ice (e.g., Maslanik et al., 2011; Kwok and Rothrock, 2009). Zhang et al. (2008) found that thinner ice cover was a crucial factor in the 2007 ice loss and if the ice pack were thicker, a record low would not have occurred under the same winds. As mentioned above, some of this loss can be ascribed to the positive AO of a couple decades ago. However, since then the AO has been in a mostly neutral or negative mode and yet older ice has continued to be lost. For those interested, a nice animation of changes in ice age can be seen at the NOAA Climate Watch website.

[Boston]

which is pretty much what I said with five fewer paragraphs

so I'm not sure why you post this.

from what I can see, you've posted some very conflicting views on this issue, care to clarify your position here, cause based on what I've seen in this thread so far, there's no telling what your position on this particular subject is.

Personally I think we're screwed, but I tend to actually study the data quite a bit, others may prefer to remain more hopeful and I can appreciate there views, but the deniers, now there's a group I simply can't understand. Seems reasonable to at least face the facts with whatever attitude you prefer, rather than pretend they don't exist.

from my own small perspective what I see is an out of control population emitting mountains of greenhouse gas, with no effective regulations or reservations. Its a free for all till the very end. Now the more optimistic people might argue that maybe, just maybe, we got the life span of CO2 in the environment wrong and we can do something to reduce it, through some as of yet unknown massive application of technology; but my more conservative view, remains skeptical of any earth shattering solutions suddenly presenting themselves.

I give it about half the time the IPCC predicts, say about 2050 somewhere, before we hit that magic 5~6°C doomsday scenario

[BrianY]

The map below shows the “2007 record low” Arctic ice extent, and the red dot indicates where a Russian boat sailed to in 1935 – in ice-free water.
Apparently there was less ice in the Eastern Arctic in 1935 than there was during the all-time-record-lowest-Armageddon-we-are-all-doomed-irreversible-tipping-point summer of 2007.

Varadero - you really need a lesson on how to interpret what you're looking at. if the pink line represents the typical historical extent of the arctic ice and the white area represents the extent of the ice in 2007, the fact that some guy was able to sail to the red dot in 1935 is totally irrelevant to the obvious fact that the 2007 ice coverage is significantly less than what was typical in the past. Admittedly, one year's data - whether it's the 2007 ice coverage OR the red dot - is not sufficient basis for forming any long term conclusions, but you certainly should be a little concerned by the 2007 data - enough to maybe do further comparisons of recent year's coverage compared to historical averages. That is, if you really are interested in determining the truth of what's going on out there.

[varadero]

which is pretty much what I said with five fewer paragraphs

so I'm not sure why you post this.

from what I can see, you've posted some very conflicting views on this issue, care to clarify your position here, cause based on what I've seen in this thread so far, there's no telling what your position on this particular subject is.

Personally I think we're screwed, but I tend to actually study the data quite a bit, others may prefer to remain more hopeful and I can appreciate there views, but the deniers, now there's a group I simply can't understand. Seems reasonable to at least face the facts with whatever attitude you prefer, rather than pretend they don't exist.

from my own small perspective what I see is an out of control population emitting mountains of greenhouse gas, with no effective regulations or reservations. Its a free for all till the very end. Now the more optimistic people might argue that maybe, just maybe, we got the life span of CO2 in the environment wrong and we can do something to reduce it, through some as of yet unknown massive application of technology; but my more conservative view, remains skeptical of any earth shattering solutions suddenly presenting themselves.

I give it about half the time the IPCC predicts, say about 2050 somewhere, before we hit that magic 5~6°C doomsday scenario

I am somewhat more optimistic than you, I have to be because there is no way in hell that we can stop the Chinese and the Indians with their runaway development. Back in the 90s I was so convinced by the global warming stuff I was considering selling up down here and moving back to Scotland to take advantage of the new "tropics", The drought was lingering on, the heat in Summer was unbearable, Scotland got beaten in the European cup by England (that was a bad Summer). But, the weather changed back to snow in Winters, wet Springs and Autumns and bearable Summer heat. Now we have had that as our normal for the best part of a decade. I live out in the country 4k from the nearest town, and log daily temps h+l, rain and cloud in my diary, any change at all has been in a downward trend recently. I think one way to make a huge difference is for the USA to turn off the A/C that it seems to be addicted to, and turn the thermostat down on the heating in winter. Untill that happens nothing is going to change. I do not understand why a country that tested over 1000 nuclear weapons in their own backyard has a reluctance to nuclear power (How many times do you have to test a bomb?). I do not understand how Al Gore can be talking about sea level rising, and still buys a beach front property in California. I watch this animation, http://www.climatewatch.noaa.gov/vid...rare-in-arctic and I see a change in the gyre which causes the ice export through the Fram Strait to increase, It is not melting in the Arctic, it is melting outside of the Arctic. If the AO was to go strongly negative for a couple of seasons we would see a recovery. You do not have to buy the answers to the questions if you buy the questions themselves. I truly hope for my childrens sake that you are wrong, because I will say it again, there is no way in hell we can stop the Chinese and the Indians if we cant control our own thermostats.

[varadero]

Varadero - you really need a lesson on how to interpret what you're looking at. if the pink line represents the typical historical extent of the arctic ice and the white area represents the extent of the ice in 2007, the fact that some guy was able to sail to the red dot in 1935 is totally irrelevant to the obvious fact that the 2007 ice coverage is significantly less than what was typical in the past. Admittedly, one year's data - whether it's the 2007 ice coverage OR the red dot - is not sufficient basis for forming any long term conclusions, but you certainly should be a little concerned by the 2007 data - enough to maybe do further comparisons of recent year's coverage compared to historical averages. That is, if you really are interested in determining the truth of what's going on out there.

Your Historical time line is only 30 years.

[RodSBT]

Your Historical time line is only 30 years.

And herein lies the rub.

Accurate historical data, whether it be instrument read temps., accurately measured ice pack decrease or increase, even if anecdotal, is too small of a data set to come to any form of an accurate conclusion other than the climate is a very complicated system we are only now beginning to learn how much we really don't know.

The planet is 4.5 BILLION years old. Instrument read temp. readings only go back about 150 years, do the math.

Can anyone here tell us accurately what the daily high/low temp., ave. wind speed, or ice pack depth/extent was on June 21, 1603 anywhere in the Arctic? How about the same day in 1155 on the Ross ice shelf in Antarctica? How about when Alexander the Great was making a charge east into India? What about 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs were wiped out? 500 years ago anywhere in the polar regions?

[Phillip Allen]

And herein lies the rub.

Accurate historical data, whether it be instrument read temps., accurately measured ice pack decrease or increase, even if anecdotal, is too small of a data set to come to any form of an accurate conclusion other than the climate is a very complicated system we are only now beginning to learn how much we really don't know.

The planet is 4.5 BILLION years old. Instrument read temp. readings only go back about 150 years, do the math.

Can anyone here tell us accurately what the daily high/low temp., ave. wind speed, or ice pack depth/extent was on June 21, 1603 anywhere in the Arctic? How about the same day in 1155 on the Ross ice shelf in Antarctica? How about when Alexander the Great was making a charge east into India? What about 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs were wiped out? 500 years ago anywhere in the polar regions?

science does miracles doncha know

[WX]

Ice cores will give you atmospheric composition for any time you like back to when they first formed.

[Phillip Allen]

Ice cores will give you atmospheric composition for any time you like back to when they first formed.

composition? what else?

[2MeterTroll]

boy those poler bears sure are getting brown these days.

[RodSBT]

Ice cores will give you atmospheric composition for any time you like back to when they first formed.

Can they give us an accurate high and low temp. ( within say 2 degrees) for any day or week during the time the ice was forming?

[WX]

Here, do some reading, it's good for you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core

[RodSBT]

Here, do some reading, it's good for you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core

So your answer is no.

Nothing much in your link I haven't already seen before but was reminded by this tidbit that seems to be ignored as much as possible: "..Nonetheless, recent work has tended to show that during deglaciations CO₂ increases lags temperature increases by 600 +/- 400 years."

Get back to us when you can show accurate temps. for highs and lows of any given week or month beyond 200 years ago for any geologic period and then we'll start having a more enlightening view of what the Co2 story is telling us.

[PeterSibley]

Ah, you want certainty Rob? That's a problem, how much is certain and how much is a balance of probabilities .

How many of the things we spend money on are to cover certainties? War and defence spending? Insurance ?

What is certain is that the ppm of CO2 has doubled or nearly and methane is starting to bubble up from melting peats. That's a biofeedback loop and I assure you, you can be certain that is a Very Bad Thing.

[wardd]

Ah, you want certainty Rob? That's a problem, how much is certain and how much is a balance of probabilities .

How many of the things we spend money on are to cover certainties? War and defence spending? Insurance ?

What is certain is that the ppm of CO2 has doubled or nearly and methane is starting to bubble up from melting peats. That's a biofeedback loop and I assure you, you can be certain that is a Very Bad Thing.

these are all natural cycles cause by the alignment of the moons of neptune

[RodSBT]

Ah, you want certainty Rob? That's a problem, how much is certain and how much is a balance of probabilities .

How many of the things we spend money on are to cover certainties? War and defence spending? Insurance ?

The AGW crowd claims the debate is over. To me that smacks of certainty on their part and yet when I ask a basic question such as the one in post #94 there inevitably seems to be a lot of dirt kicking and beating around the bush but no definitive answer, such as WX above.

Do you think a "balance of probabilities" is a certainty?
Last I heard science doesn't claim a balance of probabilities is some how a fact. It is just that, probabilities. Just like the claim that "consensus" is some how a fact. Again real science doesn't follow that line of logic.

[Phillip Allen]

The AGW crowd claims the debate is over. To me that smacks of certainty on their part and yet when I ask a basic question such as the one in post #94 there inevitably seems to be a lot of dirt kicking and beating around the bush but no definitive answer, such as WX above.

Do you think a "balance of probabilities" is a certainty?
Last I heard science doesn't claim a balance of probabilities is some how a fact. It is just that, probabilities. Just like the claim that "consensus" is some how a fact. Again real science doesn't follow that line of logic.

lj tells us that it IS a certainty... many others here follow his uncredentialed lead