Ah yes, fond memories of sitting dead in the water on a small ferryboat watching the Columbia glacier in the 70's. The captain let a Japanese tourist lay on the horn, causing tons of ice to drop off which created a small sunami that turned out to be just a hair under capsize caliber. It was the first time I heard "mofoksheet" in Japanese.
Later that week I slipped on a glacier just outside of Anchorage and cracked my coccyx. Glaciers are slippery and dangerous ....can't melt soon enough for me.
Posted by TIKI AL at March 1, 2009 09:10 PMGlaciers are slippery and dangerous ....can't melt soon enough for me.
Jet packs, man. Use jet packs. If they're good enough for Bond they are good enough for you.
Okay. Let's say peter's 3 Japanese theorists are correct: Modern humans have never lived through global warming so how can modern humans ever know how to measure it...so we can't measure it...can't be done. That is his supposition, and his entire argument in one swell foop (apologies to Inspector Clouseau).
peter wants to be correct. Good god, he needs to be correct after trickledown economics, WMDs in Iraq, Mission Accomplished, tax breaks for the wealthy, Afghanistan, the elections, ad infinitum...etc. After all of his wrong beliefs he is begging to be correct about anything he formerly believed in.
If peter's 3 scientists are correct, and we really don't understand the antecedents of global warming all that well, what are we to do? Nothing? peter, in the past, says we do nothing. But his revered scientists aren't saying it isn't happening, they are only saying there are measurement issues because we don't understand it well enough and we may be overestimating mans impact. What peter wants is to be correct in the first place, and in the second place he wants us to do nothing.
So what if us Broke Back Mountain Hollywood leftcoast liberal bone smoking faggots are correct and global warming is largely man made, and can be corrected by man's actions. Well, we spend a bunch of money ...about the cost of the Iraq war... to cleanup our ways. If we are wrong, we've wasted some money, and although the environment is cleaner, we could have been burning oil drums full of crude in our backyards instead of streetlights.
But if peter is wrong, and we do nothing, then someone shoots his grandchildren as they scavenge for food on the wrong person's property. That's the way it will work. republi-KKKons are like that.
Posted by phidipides at March 1, 2009 10:19 PMif you've seen one sea ice floe...
One of my favorite Cole Porter dittys!
Posted by phidipides at March 1, 2009 10:23 PMComing out of hibernation I see Christina. I'm touched, and all this love y'all are showing. Nice, I'll be back in a while for more. {hid it's not just three, but many and growing!
Posted by peter at March 2, 2009 03:40 AMOne part of the "George Will--Climate Scientist" saga that I didn't understand is the sea ice thickness component---even if the Arctic ice is somewhat "comparable" in surface area in the depth of our now warming winters, it's much thinner now.
The meters-thick ancient ice has been severely depleted, so the mass of ice is smaller, and the "new" ice just melts away in the summer/fall.
Why was this not brought up in debunking our conservative entertainer cum climate scientist, Prof. Christina?
As always, I object to acknowledging Peter Pinhead's prejudices at all and continue to maintain that as a poison-brained spreader of rank lies and propaganda, his posted falsehoods relating to global warming should be deleted immediately.
If anything he raises needs to be debunked, it can be done without giving him an outlet for spreading his lies. The days of allowing the wingnuts to continue willfully spreading their lies hither and yon should be over.
Posted by euzoius at March 2, 2009 06:07 AMThank you for such a clear and interesting explanation of what's really going on with sea-ice.
Posted by Mary at March 2, 2009 09:24 AMOkay Christina, why did you drop what Andrew Alexander wrote so quickly? Has the Arctic ice returned to 1979 levels or not? What about the vents? And what about the currents? What model projected the last two years of colder climate in the northern hemisphere? And what of this newly discovered volcano in Antarctica? Maybe you can tell us why our climate has cooled with China, India and the third world producing two to three times the UN's IPCC CO2 projections?
Then there's...
"Shunichi Akasofu, head of the International Arctic Research Center in Alaska, has expressed criticism of the theory before. Akasofu uses historical data to challenge the claim that very recent temperatures represent an anomaly:
"We should be cautious, IPCC's theory that atmospheric temperature has risen since 2000 in correspondence with CO2 is nothing but a hypothesis. "
Akasofu calls the post-2000 warming trend hypothetical. His harshest words are reserved for advocates who give conjecture the authority of fact.
"Before anyone noticed, this hypothesis has been substituted for truth... The opinion that great disaster will really happen must be broken."
"It seems that global warming and the halting of the temperature rise are related to solar activity. Currently, the sun is "hibernating". The end of Sunspot Cycle 23 is already two years late: the cycle should have started in 2007, yet in January 2008 only one sunspot appeared in the sun's northern hemisphere, after that, they vanished completely (new sunspots have now begun to appear in the northern hemisphere). At the current time, it can clearly be seen there are no spots in the photosphere. Lately, solar winds are at their lowest levels in 50 years. Cycle 24 is overdue, and this is is worrisome." The Register (UK)
Why is it worrisome Christina?
***
On a side issue, why has the carbon offset market collapsed in Europe? Why are emission trading schemes creating havoc with several governments? Like Australia's PM Rudd for one?
A much better question:pants pissin pete: what is the differnce between a trained gop talking points spewing moron and a trained ape? If you said none you were correct for the first time this year..
Posted by headxray at March 2, 2009 06:17 PMI'm many time zones away at present, so my timing is a bit off with these answers. Hope they help.
ice thickness...Why was this not brought up in debunking our conservative entertainer...
second paragraph of my post:
" Indeed. Arctic sea ice extent (and thickness) is shrinking and has been for some time..."
Sea ice thickness and sea ice age are related (see my overview of se ice growth here). The oldest ice in the Arctic has been around maybe a decade. It is not like terrestrial ice with the luxury of a stable platform on which to grow. I'm repeating myself but: sea ice drifts according to the ocean and atmospheric circulation and its fate depends in part on that circulation. Some nice maps are here. The ice is oldest where it jams up against the Canadian archipelago and stays around for a while but eventually it either melts in the Arctic basin or is exported out of the basin into warmer waters (where it melts). There is significant variability in sea ice drift due to the northern annular mode of atmospheric variability. Understanding this is critical to understanding sea ice variability and trends in the Arctic (more on this here).
You can see some maps of sea ice age here.
Has the Arctic ice returned to 1979 levels or not?
No, it has not, it continues to decline, as I wrote in the second, sixth, and eighth paragraphs of my short post. Check the links to my prior posts or the other links provided in the new one for more. 1979 is the start of the satellite observation era but the record can be extended farther back using shipboard and aircraft ice charts, see here.
George Will arrives at the "global" result by combining both northern and southern hemisphere sea ice extent. This is an odd thing to do given the differences in Arctic and Antarctic sea ice. Please do check some of the links provided in my post.
What about the vents?
The vents in what?
warming trend hypothetical
The word "hypothesis" is misconstrued quite a lot, despite the noble efforts of my colleagues who teach the scientific method in intro courses at both the university and high school levels. In science, we develop hypotheses to explain observed phenomena. We then design experiments and make further observations to test and refine those hypotheses. One hopes, and it seems to be the case, that over time our understanding of the world around us is improved via this method.
the last two years of colder climate in the northern hemisphere
2008 was the ninth warmest year in the complete instrumental record (which starts in 1880) so help me out: "colder" than what? Oh, you know, I'm messing with the yearly stats, just as Peter does. On global average, 2008 was the coolest year since 2000. !
As with confusion over the scientific method, the difference between climate and weather comes up again and again. A good introductory Physical Geography textbook is available online here thanks to a University of British Columbia prof. In a nutshell: climate is defined by the mean and variability about that mean in a region. Of course some years are on average cooler than others.
Global climate models and weather forecasting models are designed to do different things. It makes no sense to ask why a global climate model cannot predict a given year's weather. There is a nice introduction to GCMs at the American Institute of Physics website.
Posted by Christina at March 2, 2009 08:12 PMOkay Christina, why did you drop what Andrew Alexander wrote so quickly?
You are absolutely insane.
Here, I'll help: Yes, peter, global warming is a myth...a canard...a faerie tale. The increase in average temperature is a ruse to sell you a a CDS on unregulated AIG terms. We unrepentant libruhls want you to drive an efficient car and use energy that is green because we are sick fucks and dislike the smell of burning oil...much like women dislike the the smell of your aftershave.
Posted by phidipides at March 2, 2009 10:37 PMGlobal climate models and weather forecasting models are designed to do different things.
Sorry. I have to support peter here. So what next? There ARE going to be snowstorms during the winter? Piffle.
"2008 was the ninth warmest year in the complete instrumental record (which starts in 1880)"
Which year did it displace? 1921,1953,2003,one of the four in the thirties, or one of the three in the nineties?
"In a nutshell: climate is defined by the mean and variability about that mean in a region. Of course some years are on average cooler than others."
This, in spite of global warming? Nice general description of climate Christina. Now, tell me how the earth is cooler with China, India, and the Third World putting out record amounts of greenhouse gases, some two to three times those projected in the 2007 IPCC report? North America didn't do anything, Europe and Russia didn't do anything. You have been telling us the earth has a fever and in spite of more and more reasons to keep that fever going, our earth is strong enough to overcome that fever's effects and return to a more normal climate...cooler than 2000.
funny...
Posted by peter at March 3, 2009 04:48 AMpants pisser you would be the funny one but you are so stupid you actually believe those talking points they feed you to parrot....
Posted by headxray at March 3, 2009 11:57 AMAll pants pissing peter has to do is look here at home. Species of plants and birds are moving further north due to warming.
Fu*king idiot.
Posted by gay veteran at March 3, 2009 12:09 PM