West Antarctic Ice Sheet is now "Beyond the point of no return"

[Frederick Jackson]

It looks like the West Antarctic ice sheets are now slipping over the grounding sills and the will continue to move into the sea and melt and an accelerating pace as shown in two new studies. A potential sea level rise of 4 meters just from one of these glaciers.

http://www.motherjones.com/environme...sheet-collapse

But I imagine the climate change deniers will continue their plaint (what was the last I heard, oh, the sea ice coverage for the Southern Ocean had increased; or that for one year and one part of the Arctic the sea ice had increased; or that tree ring evidence shows we had hot spells in the past and so on) until they get knocked over in a storm, drown, starve to death or whatever.

[Matt P]

Well, I don't consider myself solidly on either side of the issue but I have read enough to know that the global warming movement was initiated by elite interests as a means of creating world government and much of their arguments were based on absolute BS "science" and all pretty much motivated by making money (imagine that). As the evidence collapsed, "global warming" got replaced with "climate change." And, again, I'm no scientist but I know the earth's climate has changed dramatically over the centuries and, for a vast majority of her time, without the impact of human beings. Do humans have an impact on the earth? Absolutely. We are destroying the ecosystems that sustain life, poisoning her oceans, cutting the tops off her mountains and leveling her forests and doing more harm to this wonderful planet that many future generations will have to deal with. It happens to be my personal belief that you're not going to wake up the masses to change when you're using arguments that can't be supported and you are ignoring many other aspects of the debate--like world wide weather modification experiments, chemtrails, "free" energy suppression, disclosure, etc. Until all truths / evidence is on the table, no amount of name calling or ridicule will get the message across.
As well, I was under the impression that the earth and her oceans are NOT like a bathtub, whereby you drop a weighted object into it and all water rises at the same amount throughout. I thought it had been established that the oceans' water is effected by gravitational pull from large land masses and so more of that water would be attracted to the larger land masses and NOT raise water a consistent amount throughout the planet?

Matt

[wnlight]

It would be good to separate the two issues:

1 - The climate has been warmer over the last twenty years.
2 - Human activities are responsible for the climate changes.

Then we can discuss these issues better. It really rubs me wrong when people mix these issues. I say Yes to number 1, and No to number 2.

Humans are certainly despoiling our planet Earth, but are not significantly warming the climate. One must remember that our sun is a variable star. Its energy output is not constant. It appears that we are now on the threshold of a mini ice age. The proponents of global warming - no scratch that out. The proponents of climate change will use any argument to pin a drouth or a snowstorm on our use of cars or other modern conveniences. Of course, there are alternatives to using fossil fuels, but we as a mass have been convinced by the greedy elites that we must use petroleum.

So, we certainly are making our planet a less inviting place in which to live. I would be pleased if we all switched from fossil fuels to alternative energies sooner rather than later when it gets harder to breath. But here is the point. If you insist muddying the waters of your argument by bringing in unsupported extraneous issues, you will turn off the listener.

The extreme will be when you are shouting into the blizzard force wind that we must control CO2. No one will hear you.

Edit: When the West Antarctic ice sheets slip into the sea, the sea level will rise about 20 cm. Not nice, but not a disaster.

[Maknocktomb]

Good point about the ocean levels. In fact the Pacific Ocean in Panama is higher than the Atlantic/Caribbean Sea coast when ships go through the Panama Canal. The climate change/global warming is all about a global tax to steal more money from the citizens of this planet.

[Hervé]

Have you folks even read that article beyond its catchy title?

Here is the crux of the matter:

The whole process may still play out on the scale of centuries, but due to the particular dynamics of this ice sheet, the collapse of these major glaciers now "appears unstoppable," according to NASA (whose researchers are behind one of the two studies).

"The simulations indicate that early-stage collapse has begun," notes their paper...

[...]

There is a limit to how fast glaciers and ice sheets can move, and the Science paper emphasizes that the entire process may take several hundred years and possibly as much as a millennium.

... by that time there may be new ski resorts in Florida...

[Frederick Jackson]

As well, I was under the impression that the earth and her oceans are NOT like a bathtub, whereby you drop a weighted object into it and all water rises at the same amount throughout. I thought it had been established that the oceans' water is effected by gravitational pull from large land masses and so more of that water would be attracted to the larger land masses and NOT raise water a consistent amount throughout the planet?

No the oceans to a very good first approximation are just like a bathtub. Add water and sea level will rise. (There may be a small isostatic compensation, which means the bottom may sink a little when you add water, or when water is withdrawn it may rise a little, but his is a small effect, and similarly, as water is just a tiny bit compressible, there will be a tiny fraction of a percent less in the rise or fall in the sea level) Further, heat it and it will rise. Put a mass under the ocean and this will cause the water to hump up over the underwater mass, and contrary wise a negative mass anomaly (for example a submarine trench) will result in a depression in the sea level. This is how we measure the earth's gravity field in high detail over the oceans using satellite radar altimeters. The ideal static ocean surface that conforms to a gravitational equipotential surface is called the geoid. The ocean surface departs from the geoid due to ocean currents and baroclinic effects. With centimeter accuracy radar altimeters we can actually measure ocean currents by measuring the departure of the ocean surface from the (static) geoid. This program of measurement began in the 1970s and has gotten increasingly more sophisticated and accurate. The altimeters, in addition to measuring the geoid and ocean currents also provide estimates of wave heights and surface wind speeds. A modification of the altimeter where it also has a conical scanning mode about can be used to analyze the sea state into its component spectrum of waves travelling in various directions.

Regarding the rest of this post I find it equally puzzling. Arguments that cannot be supported? What?? Thousands of research papers attest to the fact that the global climate is changing and changing dangerously fast. The evidence is all over the place. It is not only scientific, it is under our noses, in our faces. Have we checked the insane weather lately around the world? The storms, the heat waves, the cold snaps, the droughts, the flooding. Have we checked the (disappearing) glaciers all over the world? Have we checked the loss of sea ice? Have we checked the changing ecosystems as animals and plants migrate north?

I was at NASA when it started to get into the climate change business. Yeah, there was political stuff for sure then. I was not on the band wagon at that time. I do not believe this is now a political thing. Too much evidence, too many independent scientists. And how is it in the interest of TPTB to push a climate change "false flag" agenda. I don't get it. Everything points to the contrary. They are denying it because they have their money in fossil fuels and it is the climate change deniers who are in their pay (the Koch brothers seem to be the front men here; and see my final comment below for another reason to the contrary.)

Of course one can argue that climate changes anyway regardless of humans. But the real kicker is this. If indeed we are in a natural warming cycle, then the anthropogenic component of the warming could just push is over the edge. After tremendous loss of life (billions) from famine we may then be facing the final consequence; a renewal of the Ice Age. This is very likely to happen based on past climate history. Remember we are in an interglacial period. Fresh water from the melting Greenland ice cap might put enough fresh water into the N. Atlantic to shut down the global conveyor belt. Within a few years Northern Europe will be locked in an Ice Age. (see: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SyAEucg6teg)

Now within a few years of Ice Age conditions the last of viable agriculture in Canada and Siberia will be wiped out. Population will be reduced (I should think) to well below the billion level. Maybe 500 million,the level enunciated on the Georgia Guidestones. Hmm, global warming a "false flag" of TPTB? Or the very opposite, global warming as a goal of TPTB. Along with global thermonuclear war and global chemical neutering, "fixing" the global climate system is an option you would think these bright people would seriously consider. "Things are going this way, so let us help the system along. And just in case things to too far so that we cannot feed OURSELVES we will save up the world's seed stocks in a vault on Svalbard Island."

[Frederick Jackson]

Amzer Zo, I read a bit beyond the catchy title. The point in not to warn you to sell your seaside property, but to provide further evidence that global warming is real. But even in a longer time frame of decades and maybe a century, rising sea level is serious business, as now almost all major cities in the world lie at sea level. A millenium? I think on that time scale (if we have not way before reverted to an ice age) the forecast is for a hell of a lot more than 4 meters. Regarding "simulation", the simulation supports the observations. That is it adds weight to the observations. This is what we do in science today. (Applause? Snickers? )

[DeDukshyn]

I climbed Robson Mountain up as far on the Robson glacier as far as I could without any climbing equipment in 1992. One of the most memorable excursion I have done. There were markers along the trail leading up to the lake on the top, where Robson glacier fed into. Apparently, the lake is relatively new, and at these markers, were pictures of what the glacier looked like in say 67, 74, 81, 87, etc. which showcased the massive reduction in size this glacier had gone through in less than a century. Miles difference in it's length -- it was astounding! And this was well before any talk of global warming had ever occurred. I wonder what it looks like today? I would like to go back and see for myself.

There is no doubt, the ice is melting, the earth is warming, and it is happening faster than we believe.

Is it natural or man-made? I appreciate Gregg Braden's view on the subject -- There is no doubt the earth goes through natural climate fluctuations and the warming of the Earth we see does appear to follow these cycles, but it seems the speed of the recent warming has been heavily influenced by human activities. This seems reasonable and logically valid.

I am still waiting for a tropical Canada

[sirdipswitch]

WOE!! Now I think I'm a bit confused??!! You went from the Antarctic ice melting in post number one, to ending post number 6, with an "Ice Age"??? !!!

I think I may have to re-think this a bit. I was still tryin to figure out how one (1) glacer, was gonna raise the oceans by "4" Meters!!!

Oh well, never mind, I will stop. I don't think I'm smart enough for this conversation. hmm.


re-think, re-think, re-think -

[Hervé]

20 Years of Winter Cooling Defy Global Warming Claims

James Taylor, Contributor
I write about energy and environment issues.

4/30/2014 @ 8:06AM |12,777 views

Winter temperatures throughout the United States are in a 20-year cooling trend, defying alarmist global warming predictions and debunking claims that warmer winters are causing environmental catastrophe.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data, presented by the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, reveal this winter’s exceptionally cold winter was merely the continuation of a long-term cooling trend. The trend line for the past 20 years shows more than two degrees Fahrenheit of cooling in U.S. winter temperatures since 1995.

The two decades of cooling temperatures defy alarmist assertions that global warming is causing warmer winters. The Weather Channel presented a typical example of such bogus winter warming claims in a December 13, 2013 article, titled “Winters Getting Warmer In U.S., But Precipitation Trends Are a Mixed Bag.” At the very top of the article, The Weather Channel posted a map of U.S. winter temperature trends from 1970-2012, produced by the alarmist website Climate Central. Virtually the entire map is colored various shades of red, reflecting an asserted winter warming trend during the period. The map is accompanied by an insert claiming U.S. winter temperatures rose 0.61 degrees Celsius between 1970 and 2012.

U.S. winter temperatures. Credit: International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project.

As U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) data show, The Weather Channel and Climate Central engaged in deceptive and unscrupulous cherry-picking to mislead readers into thinking a long-term cooling trend was actually a long-term warming trend. The NOAA data referenced and linked above show winter temperatures have been cooling for the past 20 years. U.S. Historical Climatology Network data show the cooling trend extends back even further, all the way to 1930. Nevertheless, The Weather Channel and Climate Central deliberately chose an outlier year, 40-plus years ago (1970), with a winter much cooler than other years immediately before and after, and compared it to a recent outlier year (2012) with a winter that was much warmer than other years immediately before and after.

As the NOAA and USHCN data show, almost any way you slice and dice the data, the United States is in a long-term winter cooling trend. The period 1930-2014 shows cooling. The period 1995-2014 shows cooling. The long-term trend line from just about any other year to the present shows cooling. Nevertheless, a very few data points can be cherry-picked to give the illusion of winter warming, so that’s just what The Weather Channel and Climate Central did.

The winter cooling trend is important for other reasons, as well. Global warming activists frequently assert that warmer winters are causing all sorts of environmental harms. The poster child for these alarmist claims is assertions that pine beetle infestations in the western United States are caused by warmer winters failing to keep pine beetle populations in check. Clearly, this and other assertions of warmer winters causing environmental havoc are pure garbage, given that winters have been cooling for the past 20 years, and indeed the past 80 years. Global warming cannot be causing pine beetle epidemics if the claim depends on assertions that winters are getting warmer. Winters are not getting warmer; they are getting cooler. Therefore, global warming cannot be causing recent pine beetle epidemics. Objective scientists point out, instead, that pine beetle epidemics have occurred for millennia, including in extremely cold places like Alaska. Government forestry practices that have unnaturally suppressed wildfires, leaving in place an unnatural density of old and weakened trees, are much more likely to fuel pine beetle epidemics.

Score this one Objective Science 1: Global Warming Alarmists 0.

[gripreaper]

Amzer Zo, they changed it from "Global Warming" to "Climate Change", so that fixed everything and removed all of the anomalous variables.

[Hervé]

In the following article, a short discussion is taking up the OP article starting at "A Guardian headline":


Antarctica, is it melting or not? Man-made global warming can't explain this climate paradox

Aeneas Georg
Sott.net, Thu, 15 May 2014 08:34 CDT

In the last week or so a number of articles have surfaced concerning scientific observations made in Antarctica. When comparing these articles, it's hard to not be a little puzzled as to what is going on. One even gets the impression that climate scientists don't talk much to each other but rather stay within their own specific field of research. Before we examine these articles, let's take a quick look at Antarctica. According to Wikipedia:

At 14.0 million km2 (5.4 million sq mi), it is the fifth-largest continent in area after Asia, Africa, North America, and South America. For comparison, Antarctica is nearly twice the size of Australia.

About 98% of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, a sheet of ice averaging at least 1.6 km (1.0 mi) thick. The continent has about 90% of the world's ice (and thereby about 70% of the world's fresh water).

Furthermore the Antarctic ice sheet is divided into the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) and the East Antarctic ice sheet (EAIS), something which is often missed in the mainstream media, where promoting the man-made global warming idea is all-important. Here is an image of Antarctica:

© Wikipedia

I couldn't find the exact percentage but as we can see, the WAIS is by far the smaller of the two ice sheets, accounting for no more than 20%. There are important differences between the two ice sheets. From Wikipedia again:

In East Antarctica, the ice sheet rests on a major land mass, but in West Antarctica the bed can extend to more than 2,500 meters below sea level. Much of the land in this area would be seabed if the ice sheet were not there.

Earlier this week a report claimed: Antarctica's ice melt is unstoppable:

Massive regions of the ice sheet that makes up West Antarctica have begun collapsing in a process that scientists have worried about for decades and fear is likely unstoppable, two separate teams of scientists said on Monday.

A Guardian headline specified that Western Antarctic ice sheet collapse has already begun, scientists warn, with the subheading, "Two separate studies confirm loss of ice sheet is inevitable, and will cause up to 4 meters of additional sea-level rise."

The collapse of the Western Antarctica ice sheet is already under way and is unstoppable, two separate teams of scientists said on Monday.

The glaciers' retreat is being driven by climate change and is already causing sea-level rise at a much faster rate than scientists had anticipated.

The loss of the entire western Antarctica ice sheet could eventually cause up to 4 metres (13ft) of sea-level rise, devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world. But the researchers said that even though such a rise could not be stopped, it is still several centuries off, and potentially up to 1,000 years away.

Making predictions and statements about something being "unstoppable", and sea level rises hundreds of years - if not thousand of years - into the future, is seems to be a little unscientific and more akin to saying what elicits the most institutional grants wishful crystal-gazing, especially given the fact that the current events are little understood.

WAIS may be melting, but the Guardian goes on to report that the larger EAIS is growing at a rate of about 60 gigatons per year:

A more recent estimate published in November 2012 and based on the GRACE data, as well as on an improved glacial isostatic adjustment model, indicates that the East Antarctica actually gained mass from 2002 to 2010 at a rate of 60 ± 13 Gt/y.

A separate report in the news a few days ago concerned record sea ice around Antarctica. So these are two different phenomena different teams of scientists are monitoring: ice levels on Antarctica (East vs West), and sea ice extent around Antarctica.

The two are most likely connected, something which the scientists appear reluctant to discuss because man-made global warming dictates that we see just melting ice.

According to this May 12th article in The Australian:

Antarctic sea ice has expanded to record levels for April, increasing by more than 110,000sq km a day last month to nine million square kilometres.

© National Snow and Ice Data Center

The National Snow and Ice Data Centre said the rapid expansion had continued into May and the seasonal cover was now bigger than the record "by a significant margin''.

"This exceeds the past record for the satellite era by about 320,000sq km, which was set in April 2008,'' the centre said. 

In other words, Antarctic sea ice is growing and has been above the long term average for some time. Have a look at today's status:

© University of Illinois

Antarctic sea ice has now been significantly above the satellite average level for 16 consecutive months.

What's clear is that there are no signs that Antarctica is 'melting' as a whole. That doesn't mean the studies cited above regarding melting of West Antarctica's ice sheets are bogus; just perhaps that too much effort has gone into 'fitting the facts around the policy'... When one only has a hammer, everything looks like a nail, as the saying goes.

So what can explain this paradox between observations in East and West Antarctica?

As mentioned earlier, with respect to WAIS, " the bed can extend to more than 2,500 m below sea level". As such it would also be vulnerable to what goes on in the depths. Wikipedia again:

In contrast to the melting of the Arctic sea ice, sea ice around Antarctica has expanded in recent years. The reasons for this are not fully understood, but suggestions include the climatic effects on ocean and atmospheric circulation of the ozone hole, and/or cooler ocean surface temperatures as the warming deep waters melt the ice shelves.

Now this last bit is interesting. It has been observed that deeper layers of the oceans have been warming in recent years. The IPCC has explained away the 'pause in global warming' with the idea that all the heat in the atmosphere that 'should' have warmed our little planet has 'pulled a fast one' by hiding in the deep oceans. Not only that, but in the course of doing that, this 'model-predicted atmospheric heat' cooled the top layers of the oceans on its way down. No mean feat!

An announcement made a few days ago is, I think, key to explaining what's really going on here. Yet another team of Antarctic researchers warned that an active volcano is threatening to erupt underneath the ice in West Antarctica:

Scientists had intended to use the seismograph machines to help in their efforts to weigh the ice sheet - only to find that a volcano was in fact forming underneath the ice.

Although an eruption would be unlikely to breach the ice - the accompanying heat could have an effect on the landscape

Volcanic activity was discovered around 30 miles from Antarctica's highest volcano, Mount Sidley, and although an eruption would be unlikely to breach the ice - the accompanying heat could have an effect on the landscape.

Even a sub-glacial eruption would still be able to melt ice, creating huge amounts of water which could flow beneath the ice and towards the sea - hastening the flow of the overlying ice and potentially speeding up the rate of ice sheet loss.

Volcanic activity was discovered around 30 miles from Antarctica's highest volcano, Mount Sidley

"Numerous volcanoes exist in Marie Byrd Land, a highland region of West Antarctica," said Amanda Lough, of Washington University in St Louis in the team's paper on the subject, published in the Nature Geoscience journal.

And this isn't the only active volcanic region under West Antarctica: another research team discovered a different active volcano in 2004. The authors of the Mount Sidley report frame underwater volcanoes in terms of 'compounding the effect of global warming', but what if they are the only , or most significant, reason for melting ice in West Antarctica?

One other piece of data concerning Antarctica has been in the news in the last few days. This time it concerns the Southern Winds:

"The Southern Ocean winds are now stronger than at any other time in the past 1,000 years," said the study's lead researcher Nerilie Abram of an ocean notorious for having some of the fiercest winds and largest waves on the planet.

"The strengthening of these winds has been particularly prominent over the past 70 years, and by combining our observations with climate models we can clearly link this to rising greenhouse gas levels."

The new research, which was published in the Nature Climate Change journal, explains why Antarctica is not warming as much as other continents.

The westerly winds, which do not touch the eastern parts of Antarctica but circle in the ocean around it, were trapping more of the cold air over the area as they strengthened, with the world's southernmost continent "stealing more of Australia's rainfall", Abram said.

"This is why Antarctica has bucked the trend. Every other continent is warming, and the Arctic is warming fastest of anywhere on earth," she said.

It's not just Antarctica bucking the trend, but the whole globe. In the last 17 years there has been no 'global warming'. As IPCC lead author Kevin Trenberth said: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can't."

Yes, it is a travesty! Climate models are only as good as the assumptions they're based on. The authors of climate papers are trained to frame everything in terms of one factor: a carbon dioxide increase they attribute to human activity, which obscures awareness of being part of a much larger system that surely has multiple influences acting on the planet's complex climate.

Take this recent discovery, for example. Scientists were 'spooked' to learn that apparently simultaneous weather effects take place at both poles, the result (they think) of upper atmosphere 'teleconnections'. Noctilucent cloud intensity at the poles, it seems, is a precursor to changes in global weather patterns.

© NASA AIM

NASA Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) satellite image of Antarctica, showing night-shining (noctilucent) developing earlier than usual in 2013.

This discovery, in turn, was founded on the discovery a couple of years ago that one of the principal ingredients for noctilucent clouds is 'meteor smoke' from meteors entering Earth's atmosphere. Knowing that both noctilucent clouds and meteor fireballs are increasing in intensity and frequency, the way is open for scientists to connect the 'planet-wide-climate-change-dots' between the weak current solar cycle, loading of the atmosphere with meteor smoke a.k.a. comet dust, volcanoes erupting all over the place, and more earthquakes than ever before.

Could human activity be responsible for all this? Perhaps, but if it is true that we collectively play a key role, then it is in a far more fundamental way than runaway greenhouse gas by-products of our modern lifestyles. An upcoming book by SOTT.net Editor Pierre Lescaudron - Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection - explores the strong correlation between periods of authoritarian oppression and catastrophic, cosmically-induced natural disasters, reconciling modern science with ancient understanding that the human mind and states of collective human experience can influence cosmic and earthly phenomena.

Comment: See also:

Volcanic eruptions, rising CO2, boiling oceans, and why man-made global warming is not even wrong

[DeDukshyn]

Posted by Amzer Zo (here)
20 Years of Winter Cooling Defy Global Warming Claims

James Taylor, Contributor
I write about energy and environment issues.

4/30/2014 @ 8:06AM |12,777 views

Winter temperatures throughout the United States are in a 20-year cooling trend, defying alarmist global warming predictions and debunking claims that warmer winters are causing environmental catastrophe.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data, presented by the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, reveal this winter’s exceptionally cold winter was merely the continuation of a long-term cooling trend. The trend line for the past 20 years shows more than two degrees Fahrenheit of cooling in U.S. winter temperatures since 1995.

The two decades of cooling temperatures defy alarmist assertions that global warming is causing warmer winters. The Weather Channel presented a typical example of such bogus winter warming claims in a December 13, 2013 article, titled “Winters Getting Warmer In U.S., But Precipitation Trends Are a Mixed Bag.” At the very top of the article, The Weather Channel posted a map of U.S. winter temperature trends from 1970-2012, produced by the alarmist website Climate Central. Virtually the entire map is colored various shades of red, reflecting an asserted winter warming trend during the period. The map is accompanied by an insert claiming U.S. winter temperatures rose 0.61 degrees Celsius between 1970 and 2012.

U.S. winter temperatures. Credit: International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project.

As U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) data show, The Weather Channel and Climate Central engaged in deceptive and unscrupulous cherry-picking to mislead readers into thinking a long-term cooling trend was actually a long-term warming trend. The NOAA data referenced and linked above show winter temperatures have been cooling for the past 20 years. U.S. Historical Climatology Network data show the cooling trend extends back even further, all the way to 1930. Nevertheless, The Weather Channel and Climate Central deliberately chose an outlier year, 40-plus years ago (1970), with a winter much cooler than other years immediately before and after, and compared it to a recent outlier year (2012) with a winter that was much warmer than other years immediately before and after.

As the NOAA and USHCN data show, almost any way you slice and dice the data, the United States is in a long-term winter cooling trend. The period 1930-2014 shows cooling. The period 1995-2014 shows cooling. The long-term trend line from just about any other year to the present shows cooling. Nevertheless, a very few data points can be cherry-picked to give the illusion of winter warming, so that’s just what The Weather Channel and Climate Central did.

The winter cooling trend is important for other reasons, as well. Global warming activists frequently assert that warmer winters are causing all sorts of environmental harms. The poster child for these alarmist claims is assertions that pine beetle infestations in the western United States are caused by warmer winters failing to keep pine beetle populations in check. Clearly, this and other assertions of warmer winters causing environmental havoc are pure garbage, given that winters have been cooling for the past 20 years, and indeed the past 80 years. Global warming cannot be causing pine beetle epidemics if the claim depends on assertions that winters are getting warmer. Winters are not getting warmer; they are getting cooler. Therefore, global warming cannot be causing recent pine beetle epidemics. Objective scientists point out, instead, that pine beetle epidemics have occurred for millennia, including in extremely cold places like Alaska. Government forestry practices that have unnaturally suppressed wildfires, leaving in place an unnatural density of old and weakened trees, are much more likely to fuel pine beetle epidemics.

Score this one Objective Science 1: Global Warming Alarmists 0.

Funny the term "cherry picked data" used to describe data that indicates the earth is warming, when the data produced here only represents winters, and only from 1996. It doesn't get more cherry picked than that.




If we look here we can see ~1996, avg temps were higher than today (even including the summers!) -- yet it doesn't show the larger trend. For me the topic argument is - "would it be happening anyway?"

[Frederick Jackson]

Posted by sirdipswitch (here)
WOE!! Now I think I'm a bit confused??!! You went from the Antarctic ice melting in post number one, to ending post number 6, with an "Ice Age"??? !!!

I think I may have to re-think this a bit. I was still tryin to figure out how one (1) glacer, was gonna raise the oceans by "4" Meters!!!

Oh well, never mind, I will stop. I don't think I'm smart enough for this conversation. hmm.


re-think, re-think, re-think -

Sirdipswitch, Please read again what I said at the end about a warming spell ending with a renewal of the ice age. I said that the melting of the Greenland ice cap could flood the N. Atlantic with enough low salinity water to cause the water not to sink as it normally does when near freezing. This is because fresh water actually gets less dense as it cools below 4 deg C so that the water does not sink, but stays on top (and when cold enough will form ice more easily than the salt water.) The sinking of the North Atlantic water in wintertime is a part of the global conveyor belt that moves cold water from the poles and brings in warm water from the south. If this thermohaline circulation is stopped, the N. Atlantic drift current (the extension of the Gulf Stream) will get much colder and Europe could begin to freeze over. This process probably has been occurring naturally over the last million years of the current Ice Age. What we are doing with man induced climate waming is accelerating this process. LIKE I MEAN IT COULD HAPPEN IN THE NEXT SEVERAL DECADES for all anyone really knows. SO WE ARE PLAYING A REALLY DANGEROUS GAME. See also the link I gave that shows this process quite vividly. https://youtube.com/watch?v=SyAEucg6teg

To get an idea of just how delicate and interconnected climate processes can be consider some research some years ago that showed the Aswan Dam affecting the water conditions off the Grand Banks. The argument was made that with less fresh water in the Eastern Mediterranean because of the reduced flow of the Nile, less warm and salty water was sinking and flowing over the Giibralter sill and thus diminishing the strength of the Atlantic Intermediate Water surfacing near the Grand Banks. (I have not seen any follow up on this research.)

And yeah, that seem like a big rise for a chunk of ice. Have not played with the numbers my self. But would be a pretty simple calculation once having he dimensions and I am sure it has been done correctly -- unless one chooses not to believe anything any scientist publishes!)

[Ellisa]

When I was 18 I walked through a longish tunnel in the Rhone Glacier. It was an amazing experience. I couldn't do it now- the glacier and tunnel have both melted away. Even if some feel humans are not aggravating the problem I think we are being very foolish indeed if we assume that we have no influence whatsoever.

We should be trying to cut our carbon usage with new technologies, that actually do exist. I live in a hot and sunny country-- so we are withdrawing subsidies for alternative power and research. We should be ensuring all our rural areas have solar power available, wind power too, and forget our really dirty brown coal. All the science is in place to do this, but it's too hard politically.

Meanwhile chunks are falling off Antarctica. It may not affect you in the middle of the US, but it is already swamping islands like Kiribati in the South Pacific.

[Amanda]

I don't profess to be fully educated with regard to glaciers but I do know that change is occurring. What type of change and how far reaching I cannot say. From the information I have accessed it does appear to me that glaciers are melting and that the melting appears to be on a scale large enough to impact on the planet and how we live.

Ignoring this fact is only going to impact on how we progress and evolve as a human species. It is a shame that the mainstream media control so much of the information that is generated - about our ecology. Even textbooks are controlled by virtue of publishing houses being a part of multinational corporations. The truth is mother nature will keep reminding us that we live with her - well we are supposed to live with her not just on top of her.

Much Peace - Amanda

[Mixteca]

These assertions are an incredible example of "cherry picking" data outside of the premise. The data actually reinforce the primary arguments about climate change when they are placed in context.

* "Winter temperatures throughout the United States are in a 20-year cooling trend, defying alarmist global warming predictions and debunking claims that warmer winters are causing environmental catastrophe.

* National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data, presented by the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, reveal this winter’s exceptionally cold winter was merely the continuation of a long-term cooling trend. The trend line for the past 20 years shows more than two degrees Fahrenheit of cooling in U.S. winter temperatures since 1995.

* The two decades of cooling temperatures defy alarmist assertions that global warming is causing warmer winters. The Weather Channel presented a typical example of such bogus winter warming claims in a December 13, 2013 article, titled “Winters Getting Warmer In U.S., But Precipitation Trends Are a Mixed Bag.” At the very top of the article, The Weather Channel posted a map of U.S. winter temperature trends from 1970-2012, produced by the alarmist website Climate Central. Virtually the entire map is colored various shades of red, reflecting an asserted winter warming trend during the period. The map is accompanied by an insert claiming U.S. winter temperatures rose 0.61 degrees Celsius between 1970 and 2012."


A couple of minor points: "global warming" has never meant that every area of the globe will be warming consistently during each season during every year - rather it is the OVERALL, LONGTERM AND GEOLOGIC warming of the planetary system AS A WHOLE.

What does this mean, practically speaking? It means wilder and weirder and more unpredictable weather regionally and long term warming globally. In other words, historically cold weather in some areas, and historically hot weather in others with the only consistent being the lack of consistency in global weather patterns. This means drought in some areas, record-breaking rain and mudslides in others. Why? because the planet AS A WHOLE is changing.

Of course the planet goes through changes all on its own.

However, the idea that we can pour toxins into earth, air and water on an unprecedented level, with an unprecedented number of humans, and NOT have any effect is not only bewildering, it verges on the absurd.

Because we have an atmosphere, the planet is essentially a "closed" system. There are effects and interaction effects that combine in ways we do not know how to measure yet. And in ways that we can clearly measure.

If you take wolves out of the ecosystem the very terrain changes because there are more deer who eat more vegetatation which results in erosion along the banks of rivers.

Imagine if the deer were also pouring toxic chemicals into the water and on the grass and spewing it into the air.

Would you expect there to be a change in their habitat? OF COURSE YOU WOULD!

Human are not exempt from the laws of nature. Or physics.

Matter and energy do not disappear.

What we do matters. What we do has an effect. When we pour toxins into our own world, how do we then expect to be absolved from responsibility once we feel those effects?

And, by the way, the effects of climate change, global warming, whatever you want to call it, affect the poorest people on this planet in the most disproportionate way.

[Mixteca]

This is affecting people in the middle of the U.S. And on the east coast. And on the west coast. And in the South. And the mid-atlantic region. Everywhere. Every place in the U.S. has experienced many more severe weather events and changing weather patterns. People have lost homes and lives and loved ones to increasingly severe weather. And we will continue to do so.

It is not possible to continually poison the planet that gives you life and allows you to live on it's surface without suffering some consequences.

[Hervé]

Posted by DeDukshyn (here)

Posted by Amzer Zo (here)
[...]

... “Winters Getting Warmer In U.S., But Precipitation Trends Are a Mixed Bag.” At the very top of the article, The Weather Channel posted a map of U.S. winter temperature trends from 1970-2012, produced by the alarmist website Climate Central. Virtually the entire map is colored various shades of red, reflecting an asserted winter warming trend during the period. The map is accompanied by an insert claiming U.S. winter temperatures rose 0.61 degrees Celsius between 1970 and 2012.

U.S. winter temperatures. Credit: International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project.

[...]

Score this one Objective Science 1: Global Warming Alarmists 0.

Funny the term "cherry picked data" used to describe data that indicates the earth is warming, when the data produced here only represents winters, and only from 1996. It doesn't get more cherry picked than that.




If we look here we can see ~1996, avg temps were higher than today (even including the summers!) -- yet it doesn't show the larger trend. For me the topic argument is - "would it be happening anyway?"

The article didn't pretend anything else than correcting the false winter temperatures fudged by the Weather Channel... right?

So, who started the cherry-picking and for what purpose?

[Hervé]

Posted by Mixteca (here)
These assertions are an incredible example of "cherry picking" data outside of the premise. The data actually reinforce the primary arguments about climate change when they are placed in context.

* "Winter temperatures throughout the United States are in a 20-year cooling trend, defying alarmist global warming predictions and debunking claims that warmer winters are causing environmental catastrophe.

* National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data, presented by the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, reveal this winter’s exceptionally cold winter was merely the continuation of a long-term cooling trend. The trend line for the past 20 years shows more than two degrees Fahrenheit of cooling in U.S. winter temperatures since 1995.

* The two decades of cooling temperatures defy alarmist assertions that global warming is causing warmer winters. The Weather Channel presented a typical example of such bogus winter warming claims in a December 13, 2013 article, titled “Winters Getting Warmer In U.S., But Precipitation Trends Are a Mixed Bag.” At the very top of the article, The Weather Channel posted a map of U.S. winter temperature trends from 1970-2012, produced by the alarmist website Climate Central. Virtually the entire map is colored various shades of red, reflecting an asserted winter warming trend during the period. The map is accompanied by an insert claiming U.S. winter temperatures rose 0.61 degrees Celsius between 1970 and 2012."
[...]

See post #19 above and cross-check who is doing another cherry-picking out of the context of the article...

PS: The "context":

.. “Winters Getting Warmer In U.S., But Precipitation Trends Are a Mixed Bag.” At the very top of the article, The Weather Channel posted a map of U.S. winter temperature trends from 1970-2012, produced by the alarmist website Climate Central. Virtually the entire map is colored various shades of red, reflecting an asserted winter warming trend during the period. The map is accompanied by an insert claiming U.S. winter temperatures rose 0.61 degrees Celsius between 1970 and 2012.