ICE BABY…
By ATWadmin On September 6th, 2009
Writing in The Telegraph, Chris Bookers says “BBC viewers were treated last week to the bizarre spectacle of Mr Ban Ki-moon standing on an Arctic ice-floe making a series of statements so laughable that it was hard to believe such a man can be Secretary-General of the UN.” (Not really – it’s an ideal qualification)
Thanks to global warming, he claimed, “100 billion tons” of polar ice are melting each year, so that within 30 years the Arctic could be “ice-free”. This was supported by a WWF claim that the ice is melting so fast that, by 2100, sea-levels could rise by 1.2 metres (four feet), which would lead to “floods affecting a quarter of the world”.
Everything about this oft-repeated item was propaganda of the silliest kind. Standing 700 miles from the Pole, as near as the stubbornly present ice would allow his ship to go, Mr Ban seemed unaware that, although some 10million square kilometres (3.8million square miles) of sea-ice melts each summer, each September the Arctic starts to freeze again. And the extent of the ice now is 500,000 sq km (190,000 sq m) greater than it was this time last year – which was, in turn, 500,000 sq km more than in September 2007, the lowest point recently recorded (see the Cryosphere Today website). By April, after months of darkness, it will be back up to 14 million sq km (5.4 million sq m) or more.
So, the FACTS are that the extent of Arctic ice is increasing and sea-levels are NOT rising. But,as is observed in the comments thread, those such as Mr Moon need the fearsome spectre of Global Warming to advance their own international political control agenda.
All that is needed is for the northern hemisphere to experience another 1962/3 winter, where large areas of the north sea and english channel froze over into the new year.
Always expect the unexpected.
Far be it from me to criticize such an esteemed journalist as Christopher Brooker, but I do not think he has done his research very thoroughly.
"The Arctic sea ice September minimum extent reached new record lows in 2002 (15.3 percent below the 1979-2000 average), 2005 (20.9 percent below), and 2007 (39.2 percent below). In 2007, Arctic sea ice broke all previous records by early August—a month before the end of melt season (see Arctic Sea Ice Shatters All Previous Record Lows). In 2008, the September minimum was the second lowest on record, only 9 percent above 2007, despite cooler summer conditions"
This is from the Arctic Sea Ice News & Analysis at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
The facts are that the sea ice has dramatically reduced in volume since records began, however it is true that there has been a recent slowing of the decline. But the over all trend is still downwards and the rate of change is increasing.
If however you take a two year cycle – as Mr. Brooker has chosen to do – then that shows a different picture. This appears, from my very limited understanding, to be caused by the change in global weather patterns this year.
I do think that Mr. Brooker is being at best disingenuous in his selection of statistics and to imply that Mr. Ban does not understand that there is a change in the ice between summer and winter. I am quite certain that Mr. Ban’s advisors understand this perfectly well – and almost certainly better than Mr. Brooker does.
Azir,
"that there has been a recent slowing of the decline. "
Only because the recent record was such a dramatic departure (downwards) from the trend.
But people like Booker and other ignorant morons for some reason fancy that they can spot an obvious error that has eluded the entire scientific community.
"but I do not think he has done his research very thoroughly."
How dare you?
This latest beer-reviewed abstract is well up to Professor Booker’s usual rigorous standards.
>>So, the FACTS are that the extent of Arctic ice is increasing and sea-levels are NOT rising.<<
Is this ultimately where your opinions come from, David? An obvious partisan like Booker simply makes a claim, provides absolutely no credible evidence, and you immediately jump on it and communicate it as "FACT" (your capitals) ??
From the guy who just last week said he doesn’t trust politicians or journalists we now have absolutely blind faith in a bat.
But this is different. This is something David wants to be true.
Frank
I haven’t followed the debate here but caught this
"But people like Booker and other ignorant morons for some reason fancy that they can spot an obvious error that has eluded the entire scientific community."
"Obvious" is different to different people. The scientific community fails to spot loads of errors and I don’t beleive that at least some of them are obvious to someone.
Aileen
An error obvious enough for Booker to spot would need to be very obvious indeed.
I’m talking about stuff like, for example, the fact that ice floating on water doesn’t raise the level of water when it melts. The scientists are the ones who tell you this, not the ones who miss it.
Similarly the direction of a trend is not going to be something that the likes of Booker gets right and hundreds of Ph.Ds actually working on the topic get wrong. And indeed the direction of the trend is pretty apparent to anybody with a basic maths/science background.
All of which is beside the point anyhow. Booker is demonstrably wrong.
Frank O’Dwyer -
I’m talking about stuff like, for example, the fact that ice floating on water doesn’t raise the level of water when it melts. The scientists are the ones who tell you this, not the ones who miss it.
We can take this as your admonition against many of the AGW crowd who have, for years, told us that melting ice caps will raise sea levels. It’s the opposing camp, by the way, which has long ridiculed this claim.
aileen -
Indeed the scientific community fails to spot loads of errors. Fortunately not all of their failures are fatal. In the last couple of years the theory of dark matter has been deeply undermined, with many scientists now claiming it doesn’t exist. So there you go, 95% of the universe written off in a stroke – poof, just like that. Clever chaps, these scientists.
>>So there you go, 95% of the universe written off in a stroke – poof, just like that. Clever chaps, these scientists.<<
Pete, dark matter was always only a theory. There was never any concrete evidence that it existed and AFAIK scientists never claimed there was. It’s one of the strengths of the scientific community that it discards theories when they’re no longer sustainable (but in fact dark matter is still the most widely accepted theory to explain certain phenomena in the universe), in clear contrast to the denialists, most of whom seem even able to hold at the same time ideas that are clearly contradictory (the pair making the most regular appearance on this site is that there is no global warming and that global warming is not man-made.)
BTW, the claim that melting ice caps raise sea levels doesnt conflict with what Frank wrote. Melting free-floating ice doesn’t; melting icecaps on fixed landmass, or glaciers etc, obviously do.
Of course dark matter was only ever a theory; scientists never could grab or picture a piece of what they claimed made up most of the universe.
But then AGW is only a theory also, isn’t it?
Next, the big bang. Those clever science chaps will finally cotton on to that theory being nonsense too.
It will be nice when Greenland revives it’s traditional Scandinavian farming heritage.
But then AGW is only a theory also, isn’t it?
To "Pete Moore"
Once again Mr. Moore you show that you do not understand the scientific process. Yes it is only a theory, and the Big Bang is only a theory, as is gravity. The process of scientific advancement is iterative.
You how ever seem to claim some higher knowledge which, I am sorry to say, does not reflect well on you.
Pete,
"We can take this as your admonition against many of the AGW crowd who have, for years, told us that melting ice caps will raise sea levels"
They would be referring to greenland, glaciers and other land based ice. I’ve never heard anyone, much less a scientist, say loss of arctic ice would raise sea level, other than indirectly via feedbacks.
"It’s the opposing camp, by the way, which has long ridiculed this claim."
They do have a habit of wrestling with strawmen, yes.
The arctic sea-ice has recovered in the last two years, and it looks as if there could be much more recovery in the next 10 -20 years. Climate scientists are honest enough to admit the problems, especially with the forecasting models:
"Latif predicted that in the next few years a natural cooling trend would dominate over warming caused by humans. The cooling would be down to cyclical changes to ocean currents and temperatures in the North Atlantic, a feature known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Breaking with climate-change orthodoxy, he said NAO cycles were probably responsible for some of the strong global warming seen in the past three decades. "But how much? The jury is still out," he told the conference. The NAO is now moving into a colder phase.
Latif said NAO cycles also explained the recent recovery of the Sahel region of Africa from the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. James Murphy, head of climate prediction at the Met Office, agreed and linked the NAO to Indian monsoons, Atlantic hurricanes and sea ice in the Arctic. "The oceans are key to decadal natural variability," he said.
Another favourite climate nostrum was upturned when Pope warned that the dramatic Arctic ice loss in recent summers was partly a product of natural cycles rather than global warming. Preliminary reports suggest there has been much less melting this year than in 2007 or 2008.
In candid mood, climate scientists avoided blaming nature for their faltering predictions, however. "Model biases are also still a serious problem. We have a long way to go to get them right. They are hurting our forecasts," said Tim Stockdale of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK."
Peter,
"The arctic sea-ice has recovered in the last two years"
That’s a crazy claim. Two years is not enough to draw such a conclusion – which you can only draw by comparing it to a record melt anyhow. Besides, go look at the record and you’ll see how many times it had similarly ‘recovered’ before it fell off the charts a couple of years ago.
Frank
The fact remains that the sea ice has recovered, yes from a low base. But the forecast of cooling in the next 10-20 years is more interesting.
Peter,
"The fact remains that the sea ice has recovered, yes from a low base. "
Like I say, that claim doesn’t make sense – it’s like saying an anorexic has recovered because one month they lost a stone and the following month they only lost half a stone. If they’ve been losing 1lb a week in the long term, there is still a problem.
"But the forecast of cooling in the next 10-20 years is more interesting."
It’s interesting but not in the ‘skeptic’ sense of constituting evidence against AGW or that nobody has any idea what is going on.
If anything it would imply the opposite – it would mean this guy has predicted the effect of a natural mechanism that dominates the man made influence for a while. That’s assuming he’s right.
But that won’t stop the ‘skeptics’ and ‘agnostics’. It’d be like concluding that central heating is a scam because the room cools if someone leaves the windows open.
Frank
If natural variations, such as the NAO, can cause cooling, they can also cause warming.
The NAO has been in predominantly "warm" mode for the last 30 years. Which is not to claim that CO2 emissions have played no part in the warming during those years, but maybe their influence has been exaggerated.
Peter,
"If natural variations, such as the NAO, can cause cooling, they can also cause warming."
Yes of course. Although these things are generally called oscillations because they average out and so don’t contribute to trend over long periods – hence the use of 30 year periods and why concluding anything on the basis of 2 years is a joke.
"The NAO has been in predominantly "warm" mode for the last 30 years. Which is not to claim that CO2 emissions have played no part in the warming during those years, but maybe their influence has been exaggerated."
Or maybe not; see http://ams.confex.com/ams/Cambridge/techprogram/paper_93062.htm
Plus, exaggerated is a loaded term which suggests deception, if you mean to say overestimated you should say so. The uncertainty for climate sensitivity is about +/- 1.5C so it could turn out to be as low as 1.5-2C and still they wouldn’t have overestimated it never mind ‘exaggerated’ it. There’s a big difference between saying that CO2 influence might be less than thought and saying it is possible that it has no important effect at all, or that it’s anyone’s guess. Indeed it could be more than thought, and other feedbacks that nobody (that I know of) has really tried to model yet might make it even worse again. But we never hear the ‘skeptics’ mention this (though the guy who wrote that article wrote an interesting book about that side of the story).
Also notice that the scientist quoted there doesn’t appear to be talking about the possibility that the NAO explains all of global warming and only talks about the possibility of the NAO temporarily masking warming caused by humans – he doesn’t suggest it means that there isn’t any. Plus, it’s certainly a bit premature to take his predication as any kind of evidence for anything until it actually happens, if it does.
Frank
Ok, "exaggerated" was the wrong word to use.
There’s a big difference between saying that CO2 influence might be less than thought and saying it is possible that it has no important effect at all, or that it’s anyone’s guess.
Where did I say that?
The point remains that if a "cold" NAO can mask AGW (which I do not dispute), then a "warm" NAO (such as has prevailed since 1980) must be capable of enhancing it. Just as a record El Nino in 1998 coincided with a record warm year.
Peter,
"Where did I say that?"
You didn’t but that’s how your point will be taken by the ‘skeptics’.
"The point remains that if a "cold" NAO can mask AGW (which I do not dispute), then a "warm" NAO (such as has prevailed since 1980) must be capable of enhancing it. Just as a record El Nino in 1998 coincided with a record warm year."
Of course but at the simplest level you have a bunch of influences and you add them up. It’s no different in principle to the fact that a car will roll down a hill on its own, but it will go faster if you accelerate, slower if you put the brakes on, etc. Still, other things being equal, if you’re headed for a cliff it’s probably a good idea to brake. It doesn’t become any less of a good idea if it’s a little foggy and you’re not quite sure where the cliff is.
Still, other things being equal, if you’re headed for a cliff it’s probably a good idea to brake.
Which presupposes that AGW is correct, and that the degree of confidence in it is sufficiently high that radical changes to our way of life are justified, in order to avoid climate catastrophe.
Peter,
"Which presupposes that AGW is correct"
No, it presupposes that all the models are wrong and we have no clue what the effect of CO2 emissions will be, other than that it will disrupt the climate somehow, either a little or a lot, but in ways we can’t predict. We know that it’s unlikely to have no effect – indeed there’s evidence it’s already had an effect – and we know it doesn’t take much to shift from one climate regime to another (the temperature difference between current conditions and the ice ages isn’t that much). We also know that the current climate stability is pretty atypical over the earth’s history.
So unless you think that there is something terribly wrong with the current climate – the one we, all of our systems, and the rest of life on earth have adapted to cope with – then poking randomly at it with (what the skeptics tell us are) poorly understood forcings would seem to be change you can’t believe in.
What the ‘skeptics’ consistently overlook is that the only justification for any complacency is that the IPCC etc models are correct, since they are all we have that sets limits on how bad it could get.
What the ‘skeptics’ consistently overlook is that the only justification for any complacency is that the IPCC etc models are correct, since they are all we have that sets limits on how bad it could get.
But there is sufficient uncertainty with the models that they could just as easily be understating the potential temperature rise, and by a significant amount. A large release of (currently frozen) methane from permafrost or the sea floor could trigger a vicious circle of rapid warming. There is evidence that this has happened in geological time and that it caused mass-extinction as temperatures rose rapidly. There would be a certain justice if humanity, which is firmly set on a course to trash the planet through over-population, was wiped out in this way.