Understanding Arctic Sea Ice Loss

[visitor]

The extent of Arctic sea ice loss in the summer July - August - September period in 2007 was about 1.4 million square miles (3.6 million square kilometers) greater than in 1980, according to the University of Illinois Cryosphere Today. For comparison, the lost ice coverage (orange colors) was equal to an area about 44% of the size of the contiguous U.S., or 71% of the non-Russian portion of Europe. Image reproduced courtesy of Wunderground.com and the University of Illinois Cryosphere Today.

www.skepticalscience.com/Making_Arctic_Sea_Ice_Loss_Real.html

[marchesarosa]

Arctic Ocean - shallow, virtually land locked basin - ice comes and goes because of winds and currents, seasonal and cyclical warming and cooling.

Antarctica - a continent miles deep in ice surrounded by the "unrelentingly cold" Southern ocean - very cold, ALWAYS - seasonal sea ice NOT diminishing overall.

Swings and rundabouts?

Who understands why?

Why do certain Europeans obsess about the Arctic and blithely ignore the other end of the world?

[marchesarosa]

For those of you who really want to understand the sceptical position on catastrophic global warming spare the time to look at this carefully argued presentation of the case. It's quite long so it is also a test of your willingness to understand and openness to criticism of the "consensus" position

vimeo.com/8865909

[visitor]

Jan 1, 2012 11:03:35 GMT marchesarosa said:

For those of you who really want to understand the sceptical position on catastrophic global warming ...

Yeah, did you see the reaction to that video at WTFIUWT?

Dr Burns says:

January 1, 2012 at 1:47 am


“…while it is fairly clear that CO2 and other greenhouse gasses may be responsible for some of this warming”
Exactly what is the evidence for this ?
Such unsupported statements are what we expect from alarmists !

Athelstan says:

January 1, 2012 at 1:48 am


Its all about the sun and that wet stuff between the plates, volcanicity, corriolis, solar cycles, milankovitch cycles and basic physics of atmospheric pressure, the rest is myth, unscrupulously fabricated to suit an overtly political agenda. Lets face it, we have even incorrectly named the planet, it should be called Ocean.

John Marshall says:

January 1, 2012 at 1:56 am


It is not ‘clear’ that warming since the LIA was in part due to GHG’s. That claim is an act of faith not science. The LIA was due to planetary cycles not an atmospheric makeup of gasses that were certainly present during the LIA period. Why did these GHG’s not stop the LIA? Because the theory of GHG’s is flawed and violates the laws of thermodynamics.

See:- Unified Theory of Climate by Nikolov and Zeller 2011

.

climate-change-theory.com says:

January 1, 2012 at 5:52 am


Anthony and others:

This should be the year in which we come to accept, not that the effect of carbon dioxide has been over-estimated, but rather that it has no effect what-so-ever.

Back radiation from a cooler atmosphere simply cannot warm the surface. It does not have enough energy to get over the threshhold needed for warming. So this fact switches off the power of any assumed “greenhouse effect” and the GHE hypothesis crumbles. No one has ever proved that such back radiation does in fact cause warming and the onus is very much upon the IPCC so to do, because it has always been their false assumption – nothing from the pages of physics. Maybe some oil companies should post a reward for anyone who can prove such – the publicity would be great.

I leave you with Prof. Claes Johnson’s words climate-change-theory.com/Johnson_quote.jpg

Nutters one and all.

Marchesarosa, you now seem to be falling in with my lot much more than your own, well done. A little more reading and you might actiually get there.

[pippop]

Jan 1, 2012 15:01:05 GMT visitor said:

Yeah, did you see the reaction to that video at WTFIUWT?

Link?

[visitor]

Jan 1, 2012 15:49:36 GMT pippop said:

Jan 1, 2012 15:01:05 GMT visitor said:

Yeah, did you see the reaction to that video at WTFIUWT?

Link?

Sorry - wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/01/getting-the-year-off-to-a-good-start/#comments You will see that quite a few (possibly a majority but I can't be bothered counting) of the comments of these 'skeptics' AKA deniers, claim that there is no such thing as the greenhouse effect.


Interesting that Marchesarosa recommneds this video when, towards the end, the presenter call for a Carbon Tax. As I said, perhaps Marchesarosa is closer to my 'side' after all.

BTW - There is much to agree with in this video although 1C of temperture rise by the end if this century as we see a doubling of CO2 from pre- industrial levels is simply way too low. Compounded on top of that is the warming we’ll see from N2O and methane increases. 3C is far more realistic, and an entirely different issue is whether or not that will be “catastrophic” for humanity.

[visitor]

A common skeptic argument is that there is no empirical evidence for man-made global warming. People who make this claim can't have looked very hard.

To make the science even more accessible in this time of multimedia and short attention spans, there is now a YouTube video outlining the empirical evidence for man-made global warming.

[pippop]

Jan 2, 2012 9:31:05 GMT visitor said:

...and an entirely different issue is whether or not that will be “catastrophic” for humanity.

You have reminded me Visitor of something that I've been meaning to ask about for a while now.

I have a feeling that the sceptics used to "deny" AGW but have recently changed this to CAGW.

Or have I just imagined that?

[visitor]

Pippop, there are many ways in which the so called 'skeptics' try to confuse the issue - anything that delays action is a positive result for them.

Here's a classic 'skeptic' wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/01/getting-the-year-off-to-a-good-start/#comment-850501

I keep on wondering about the whole CAGW-theory and greenhouse gases, especially CO2.
How on earth can we fear a LITTLE trapping of heat by CO2, while burning the hydrocarbons in the first place produces a LOT of heat anyway?

CO2 dosen’t trap heat. If you look at the solar spectrum you will see the energy reaching the Earths surface is greatly reduced where so called greenhouse gasses block it. Therefor the surface of the earth is colder than it would hacve been! The energy is missing! It is not a surplus.

If there were back radiation it would be filling in the holes in the spectrum! Seeing is believing

Utter nutters.

[visitor]

A balanced view - neither 'it's the end of the world' nor 'it's good for us'

[pippop]

Thanks for that Visitor, very interesting.

Did you see my reply #7?

It seems to me that the skeptic position has shifted from "I do not believe in AGW" to "I now believe that there is AGW but I do not believe that any consequences of that will be catastrophic".

Have you also noticed this change or have I imagined it?

[aviatrix]

Jan 2, 2012 13:19:01 GMT visitor said:

Utter nutters.

you can say that again

[marchesarosa]

My view of temperature change is that it is mainly due to natural causes like the sun, ocean oscillations and clouds but there are human caused regional influences like agriculture, irrigation deforestation, industrial pollution and the Urban Heat Island Effect.

The UHI, of course, totally distorts the surface station readings of the three main global land datasets because most of their measuring points are now in urban areas even if they started out in rural ones

When you have taken the above into account, how much warming is left over from the supposed centennial increase of 0.7 degrees C for the CO2 emitted from burning fossil fuel to account for?

Any of you care to estimate it?

The existence of a "greenhouse effect" is itself ill-understood, never mind the relative contribution of various natural elements to it.

Tell me, you, climate dabblers, in what order did you acquire your belief in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming? Before or after you seriously studied the evidence? Or have you even got to the stage of critical study of the evidence, yet?

For myself, I accepted the media statements about CAGW uncritically and unexamined for many years until I was prompted in March 2007 (by the Channel 4 film "The Great Global Warming Swindle" which interviewed various eminent "contrarians") to start seriously reading the evidence and the criticisms of the so-called "consensus" position.

THEN I changed my mind.

Since that time I have never stopped reading about the findings that cast doubt on the CO2 hypothesis and upon the so-called "research" it is based on.

Unlike some of you, who think you KNOW what is happening to the climate, I do not. I am merely an interested amateur who would like to increase her understanding. Curiosity is what drives my interest. So far, I understand that there is SERIOUS disagreement amongst people who either claim to be or actually are experts in the field of climate studies about how weather and climate evolves and I am beginning to understand the basis of these disagreements. Do you?

[marchesarosa]

"have I just imagined that?"

Yes, you have imagined it, pippop.

No informed sceptic has ever denied the world has warmed slightly since the Little Ice Age. What we deny is that the cause is understood with any certainty. CO2 may have a trivial part to play. It may have no part at all. It is highly unlikely to be the main influence on the last half century's temperature changes.


It's not worth worrying your pretty little head about any more!

[pippop]

Jan 4, 2012 14:56:45 GMT marchesarosa said:

My view of temperature change is that it is mainly due to natural causes like the sun, ocean oscillations and clouds but there are human caused regional influences like agriculture, irrigation deforestation, industrial pollution and the Urban Heat Island Effect.

The UHI, of course, totally distorts the surface station readings of the three main global land datasets because most of their measuring points are now in urban areas even if they started out in rural ones

When you have taken the above into account, how much warming is left over from the supposed centennial increase of 0.07 degrees C for the CO2 emitted from burning fossil fuel to account for?

Any of you care to estimate it?

The existence of a "greenhouse effect" is itself ill-understood, never mind the relative contribution of various natural elements to it.

Tell me, you, climate dabblers, in what order did you acquire your belief in catastrophic anthropogenic global warming? Before or after you seriously studied the evidence? Or have you even got to the stage of critical study of the evidence, yet?

For myself, I accepted the media statements about CAGW uncritically and unexamined for many years until I was prompted in March 2007 (by the Channel 4 film "The Great Global Warming Swindle" which interviewed various eminent "contrarians") to start seriously reading the evidence and the criticisms of the so-called "consensus" position.

THEN I changed my mind.

Since that time I have never stopped reading about the findings that cast doubt on the CO2 hypothesis and upon the so-called "research" it is based on.

Unlike some of you, who think you KNOW what is happening to the climate, I do not. I am merely an interested amateur who would like to increase her understanding. Curiosity is what drives my interest. So far, I understand that there is SERIOUS disagreement amongst people who either claim to be or actually are experts in the field of climate studies about how weather and climate evolves and I am beginning to understand the basis of these disagreements. Do you?

Who is claiming that they KNOW?