Wolf Howling: sea ice

Showing posts with label sea ice. Show all posts

Sunday, January 2, 2011

A Question To Ask Every Global Warming Proponent

We are at a critical point in the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) war on prosperity. The EPA is about to engage in economy busting regulation of CO2 on the theory that it is a pollutant. And on that basis, Obama is destroying our energy infrastructure with his war on coal, which accounts for 50% of our nation's electricity generation, and oil, which, with declining domestic productions, now accounts for over half of our trade deficit. This has us on a road to pay disastrous prices for energy in the future, with all that means for our economy and jobs. If our nation is to return to prosperity, we must change the paradigm of the AGW debate.

For the last two decades, the meme of the warmies, repeated ad infinitum, has been that climate science is proven by peer reviewed literature and that the consensus is that the science is beyond dispute. Today, there is a mountain of evidence showing that the meme is a canard. It is time to change the terms of the debate on this issue. It is time to demand, unequivocally, that the warmies tell us exactly what would falsify the theory of AGW. And it is time to demand that the EPA Administrator answer that question under oath before Congress.

We have had fifteen years of stable or slightly falling temperatures (notwithstanding the inane babbling of uber-warmie Jim Hansen and his manipulation of NASA data - including the "raw data"). Much of the world has just experienced one of the most horrendously cold Decembers on record. This comes on the heels of warmies telling us for years (Hansen, the MET, and virtually all other warmies included) that global warming would mean temperatures rising co-extensively with humans pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, causing untold calamities and much milder winters.

Instead, the climate models used by the warmies have catastrophically failed over the past 15 years and we are experiencing record-setting bitter winters. Shamelessly, warmies now tell us that AGW is the cause of this cold weather. AGW is, they alledge, melting sea ice, thus leading to changing weather patterns and increased humidity that is the cause.

It is notable that NASA told us, in 1999, that AGW was causing changing weather patterns over the Arctic, but that the result thereof would be ever milder winters. Regardless, and more importantly, do see Roger Pielke, Sr's specific criticism of this new theory. Pielke, an IPCC scientist, critically notes that the proposed narrative suffers from significant factual errors and actually raises "substantive issues with the robustness and accuracy" of the 2007 IPCC report.

Thus do we need to be forcing the warmies to answer, at every turn, the simple question, what evidence would be necessary to falsify the theory of global warming? What are the "facts" that they identify as forming the crucial underpinnings that AGW? With that answer in hand, then the meme of AGW will cease to be mindless dogma. It will become actual science that cannot withstand scrutiny.

The evidence against AGW is mountainous. The rise in temperatures in the last century are not in any way extreme compared to what we see throughout geologic history. World temperatures are nowhere near a historic high. For but one example, Nature magazine, a pro-AGW publication, is today discussing the study of ice cores showing that temperatures 130,000 years ago were a whopping 9 degrees F. warmer than today.

Geologic history shows no correlation between CO2 and climate. To the contrary, evidence shows CO2 levels lagging temperature spikes by centuries. A very recent study looking at this issue over the past several decades found a direct correlation between humidity and temperature, but no significant correlation between CO2 and temperature.

Our geologic history has shown numerous temperature spikes at least equal to, and in most cases exceeding, the current warming that has been occurring since the end of the Little Ice Age. Just within the past 2,000 years, evidence shows the Roman Warming and the Medieval Warming periods likely exceeded temperatures occurring today (notwithstanding the infamous hockey stick). So how can the warmies possibly show that the modern warming trend is anomalous?

What about ice? The warmies would have us believe that the ice caps are melting and that it is only a matter of time until Manhattanites are taking gondalas to work. Yet on the aggregate, we are losing little if any ice cover, and there is nothing anomalous about the local ice cover that we are losing. The vast majority of the world's ice is in Antarctica - approximately 90%. And the ice there is growing, hitting record highs in 2010. The Arctic has lost ice, but this is not an inexplicable anomaly. Moreover, interestingly, we recently learned that the area of thick ice in the Arctic has actually doubled since 2008. Regardless, there have been numerous periods in recorded history where Arctic sea ice has tended low. So how do the warmies distinguish our modern situation from history?

And when the warmies claim that their work is peer reviewed, understand that the term is meaningless as a measure of reliability (that according to one of the fathers of the modern peer review process). That is all the moreso in the context of climate science, where the entire scientific process has been bastardized - AGW proponents have substituted "peer review" as ipso facto proof of reliability in place of reproducibility of their results. Indeed, an important aspect to changing the paradigm on AGW is to ask whether each and every study and data set relied on by the AGW crowd include all the raw data, meta data, methodology and computational formulas such as would allow the work to be independently verified. Anything not meeting this criteria - and it is a very large chunk of the studies upon which the canard of AGW is built, including the temperature data sets of NASA and others - is worthless as proof of AGW. Indeed, we should be demanding that our government pass legislation holding that anyone operating pursuant to publicly funded grants and who publishes studies in respect thereof without information that would allow for independent verification be thereafter banned from recieving any future public grants. I can assure you that would shake the AGW promoting academia to their core. Certainly we should demand that the EPA not place any reliance on unreproducable studies when making regulatory decisions.

It bears repeating that carbon dioxide is a trace gas, forming only 0.03% of the earth's atmosphere. It is not even the most significant of the green house gases; water vapor is. The vast majority of the 0.03% of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is produced naturally. Indeed, all of the human burning of fossil fuels only contributes 0.0042% to the level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. And that is what is supposed to be driving our climate? Pay no attention to that little glowing ball in the sky.

The few true believers are nuts. The rest who are pushing this are pursuing either money, dictatorial power over our lives, or the destruction of America - or some combination of all three. Our prosperity depends on winning the argument about AGW in the public square, and that with virtually all of the mainstream media arrayed in favor of AGW. Regardless, the argument can and must be won. Step one is to change the paradigm of the argument.

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Monday, April 5, 2010

Climategate Update 26: The Return Of Arctic Sea Ice, Der Spiegel On Climategate, & The Whitewashing of Climategate In The UK

Climategate continues it convulsions. Der Spiegel covers it in a long article, explaining why belief in global warming in Germany is plummeting. Yet left-wing politicians continue to pretend that nothing has changed. Various attempts to whitewash this greatest scientific scandal of our time are made, including the ridiculous findings of a House of Commons inquiry. AGW scientists continue to make claims that simply defy logic, yet many AGW scientists are running scared, and it seems to me at least that contrary science is now being truly heard. Moreover, in but the past few days, another major development has occurred in the spirit of Climategate. After years of scaremongering as to how the ice in the arctic was receding and would soon disappear, causing massive changes to our climate, sea ice in the arctic is now all but completely recovered.

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Der Spiegel has a good article, A Superstorm For Global Warming Research, on Climategate and its reverberations. It is too long to condense, but it looks at many aspects of Climategate and its fallout, finding politicization and sloppy work exposed and public confidence in AGW theory waning. But while the majority of the article is quite good, it goes off the rails when it comes to dealing with computer modeling. The Der Spiegel authors assume that, despite it all, AGW is real and the computer models used to predict AGW still valid. But as I have pointed out here, the computer models relied upon by the IPCC are fundamentally and fataly flawed. They assume that the primary driver of temperature is CO2 and they have failed over the past decade as the earth has cooled while CO2 has risen. Dr. Doug Hoffman makes much the same point in a recent post in his blog, The Resilliant Earth. He looks at numerous computer models, concluding:

[M]ore pernicious are the lies generated by climate models, models held up to be oracles of scientific truth—and nothing could be farther from the truth. The models lie because they are built on faulty assumptions, calibrated with inaccurate data and are, by their very nature, incapable of calculating “correct” answers.

Nonetheless, politicians continue to ignore Climategate, acting as if it never occurred, and that AGW theory is reality. Thus do we have Obama now 'pivoting' to his cap and trade legislation ostensibly to combat global warming. And in Britian, an utterly laughable House of Commons inquiry into Climategate found, after one day of hearings, that the issues arising out of Climategate were but smoke and mirrors. And of course, many AGW scientists attempt much the same. For example, Goddard has published a temperature map based on adjusted temperatures that, if it is to believed, has the arctic and antarctic with temperatures rising starkly. Yet, as meteorologist Joe Bistardi points out, that is impossible. Arctic sea ice is growing significantly.

This growth in Arctic sea ice despite the continued growth in human CO2 contribution is of great import as to the validity of AGW theory. Dr. North at EU Referendum has up a must read post on this, A Death Spiral For Warmists:

Jonathan Leake in The Sunday Times picks up on the news that the size of the Arctic ice cap has increased sharply to levels not seen since 2001, putting the ice extent two days ago almost at the average level for 1979-2000.

Given the enthusiasm the media have shown for reporting Armageddon claims about the retreat of the ice, it is significant that his is the only such report in today's batch of newspapers – although The Daily Mail covered it briefly yesterday. Hitherto, the only detailed report had been on Watts up with that?.

But what is especially significant about the Leake report is his interview with Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Colorado. He is said to be "surprised" by the Arctic’s recovery from the great melt of 2007 when summer ice shrank to its smallest recorded extent. "In retrospect," he says, "the reactions to the 2007 melt were overstated. The lesson is that we must be more careful in not reading too much into one event."

In making this declaration, Serreze is getting away extraordinarily lightly. It was he, after all, who was pre-eminent in stoking up the alarm over the Arctic ice melt, providing fuel for the warmists and driving much of the global warming scare as the ice extent became a poster child for the activists. . . .

Monday, September 8, 2008

The Ecstasy of Scientific Consensus; The Agony Of Climate Change Reality

This is priceless. Lewis Gordon Pugh, a true believer in the religion of global warming, had both the courage of his convictions and a taste for adventure. Thus to prove the reality of global warming, he set off on a much pulicized trip towards the North Pole. His plan - to maneuver a kayak through the cracks in the sea ice the Goracle has been warning everyone about, the ones caused by anthropogenic global warming.

This from EU Referendum:

Anyhow, a few days ago, before abandoning his madcap venture, he was reporting: "We are still struggling to get beyond 81° north." His fossil-fuelled support boat, the MV Havsel, was continuing to push east in the hope of finding a break in the ice so the idiot and his companion could paddle further north. However, it was to no avail. They were right up against the edge of the ice wall and got no further.

It has to be recorded that Pugh did not even get as far as the expedition in 1922 when a team sailed as far north as 81° 29' in ice-free water, giving the lie to any claims that there is anything exceptional in the current meltback. Furthermore, that expedition was in August with perhaps a month to go before the ice retreat stopped with the onset of winter.

Read the entire post. There is much more, particularly for the carnivores among us.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Thick Ice, Thriving Polar Bears, & Global Warming Legislation

This picture of polar bears puportedly stranded on a drifitng ice flow has become an icon of the global warming community. We now know it was taken wholly out of context. We also know that sea ice is at or above normal levels in both hemispheres. Polar bears are thriving. Yet there is legislation in Congress to declare polar bears a protected species. That legislation has little to do with protecting polar bears and everything to do with advancing the global warming agenda through our courts.

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The iconic photo above, purported to show two forlorn polar bears stranded on a drifting ice flow, was made famous by the Goracle. Al Gore used that photo as a centerpiece on his lecture circuit, stating of the two bears: "Their habitat is melting . . . beautiful animals, literally being forced off the planet."

There are several important falsehoods in the Goracle’s doomsday pronouncement. Arctic sea ice now covers as much territory as it did in 1970, there is actually more sea ice in the Antarctic, polar bears are thriving, and the use of this picture to show polar bears in danger was, as Carole Williams terms it in a recent article, a classic example of "How the Environmental Extremists Manipulate the Masses." Ms. Williams has the whole background story to the photo, which was stolen from a marine biologist and subsequently forwarded to the Goracle and his acolytes who proceeded to twist it completely out of context. (H/T EU Referendum)

As a threshold matter, polar bears are some of the world’s greatest swimmers, being able to swim tremendous distances. Polar bears have been tracked swimming over 60 miles at a time. You of course would not know that from the Goracle, but what you also wouldn’t know, until you read Ms. Williams article, is that the photo of the polar bears was taken near shore, easily within swimming distance for the bears. They were in no danger whatsoever. Or as Christopher Booker put it today, the bears "weren’t drowning," they were just "waving" for the cameras. And you would also not know from the Goracle that the polar bear population is at "historic highs" and growing.

The second bit of what we now know to be incorrect in the Goracle’s statement is that the sea ice has replenished. To be fair to Gore, what knowledge we had indicated otherwise whilst he was on the lecture circuit, bringing home the green. But, as Christopher Booker explains:

Last autumn the BBC and others could scarcely contain their excitement in reporting that the Arctic ice was melting so fast there would soon be none left.

Sea ice cover had shrunk to the lowest level ever recorded. But for some reason the warmists are less keen on the latest satellite findings, reported by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the website Cryosphere Today by the University of Illinois.

This body is committed to warmist orthodoxy and contributes to the work of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Yet its graph of northern hemisphere sea ice area, which shows the ice shrinking from 13,000 million sq km to just 4 million from the start of 2007 to October, also shows it now almost back to 13 million sq km.

A second graph, "Global Ice Area", shows a similar pattern repeated every year since satellite records began in 1979; while a third, "Southern Hemisphere Ice", shows that sea ice has actually expanded in recent years, well above its 30-year mean.

Read the article here. That one will be difficult to explain away but I have faith in the Goracle and the IPCC once they get time to focus on it. They are busy at present trying to work out how global warming is causing snow from Iraq and Jerusalem to a massive snowfall in China.

But back now to the polar bears. In a bit of utter insanity, the Fish and Game Service is currently being pushed to declare polar bears an endangered species. Hearings are occurring as we speak.

What makes this truly insane is that the polar bears are thriving. According to the Inhofe blog, studies undertaken in 1970 estimated the the polar bear population to be about 5,000 –10,000. A 2002 study put the polar bear population at "historic highs, between 20,000 and 25,000. They occupy their entire natural range. And they are a hearty species. The fossil record shows that polar bears have survived several past global warmings that occurred before recorded history, one of which saw the Arctic wholly denuded of ice.

So how on God’s green earth can anyone suggest that polar bears should be listed on as an "endangered species?" And what could possibly be their motivation?

To justify listing polar bears as endangered, global warming enthusiasts are using dubious computer models that, they claim, predict that thirty years or so down the road, the now thriving polar bears will become endangered They have no physical evidence to support their assertions. It is a measure of how screwed we are as a people that our government is seriously considering this legislation.

The motivation for listing the polar bears as endangered has everything to do with the politics of global warming, not the plight of the thriving polar bears. Once listed as endangered, then global warming enthusiasts can challenge in court a whole host of economic and other activities across the width and breadth of America on the basis of their supposed effect on the polar bear and its Arctic home. Or as Senator Inhofe has stated:

Listing the bear as a threatened species is not about protecting the bear but about using the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to achieve global warming policy that special interest groups can not otherwise achieve through the legislative process.

Read the post here. You can find the Minority Report on this issue here. There is a reason we have democracy and several hundred men and women to debate and hold hearings. Somehow, though, I suspect this attept to run around the left side of the legislature and get it into the courts has the Goracle’s full support.