Myth of Arctic meltdown: Stunning satellite images show...

[John Reece]

From Mail Online:

Myth of Arctic meltdown: Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago...despite Al Gore's prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now

Seven years after former US Vice-President Al Gore's warning, Arctic ice cap has expanded for second year in row

An area twice the size of Alaska - America's biggest state - was open water two years ago and is now covered in ice

These satellite images taken from University of Illinois's Cryosphere project show ice has become more concentrated

By DAVID ROSE FOR THE MAIL ON SUNDAY

[...]

[Leonhard]

Since this part of Civics has turned into NatSci and the mods don't mind, I won't mind commenting here.

Okay John Reece, first of all, shame of you for quoting The Daily Mail. You're basically quoting straight from a tabloid to support your views. It doesn't help that the writer is David Ross who's convinced the IPCC held a meeting because of what he wrote, and hasn't withdrawn his statement despite being corrected multiple times.

And what on earth has happened to your posts? They're basically just snippets from articles now with near zero comments on them. Are you slowly turning into Truthseeker? I thought this was a nono on this forum?

Finally the article linked to is wrong:

Al Gore is not, was not and will never be the leader of the scientific community. He's a politician and like a lot of other politicians he makes mistakes. I'm not aware of any projections popular in the scientific community that held that the artic would be cleared in a few years like that. Its certainly clearing faster than projected, but not that fast.

There were scientists talking about this stuff before Al Gore went anywhere near a podium about it. Bringing Al Gore into that article serves as nothing but a distraction from the science.

The polar ice goes through a cycle each year, with a minimum in september and a maximum around March. There's been a systematic downward trend of the yearly average. You can slant it by measuring the thickness at the different part of the year.

But don't guess, look at the real data. Here's yearly estimates for the past two years. You judge for yourself whether David Ross had it right. Remember these are the exact same measurements he's got access to.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ch...sea-ice-graph/

chart.jpg

I think its overwhelmingly clear that he's using cherry picked data to get his results. So far its clear that the arctic is melting in the long term trends.

Whether that is good or bad is another discussion, and whether anything should be done about a third discussion. These are the facts though.

[Littlejoe]

Since this part of Civics has turned into NatSci and the mods don't mind, I won't mind commenting here.

Okay John Reece, first of all, shame of you for quoting The Daily Mail. You're basically quoting straight from a tabloid to support your views. It doesn't help that the writer is David Ross who's convinced the IPCC held a meeting because of what he wrote, and hasn't withdrawn his statement despite being corrected multiple times.

And what on earth has happened to your posts? They're basically just snippets from articles now with near zero comments on them. Are you slowly turning into Truthseeker? I thought this was a nono on this forum?

Finally the article linked to is wrong:

Al Gore is not, was not and will never be the leader of the scientific community. He's a politician and like a lot of other politicians he makes mistakes. I'm not aware of any projections popular in the scientific community that held that the artic would be cleared in a few years like that. Its certainly clearing faster than projected, but not that fast.

There were scientists talking about this stuff before Al Gore went anywhere near a podium about it. Bringing Al Gore into that article serves as nothing but a distraction from the science.

The polar ice goes through a cycle each year, with a minimum in september and a maximum around March. There's been a systematic downward trend of the yearly average. You can slant it by measuring the thickness at the different part of the year.

But don't guess, look at the real data. Here's yearly estimates for the past two years. You judge for yourself whether David Ross had it right. Remember these are the exact same measurements he's got access to.

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ch...sea-ice-graph/

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1953[/ATTACH]

I think its overwhelmingly clear that he's using cherry picked data to get his results. So far its clear that the arctic is melting in the long term trends.

Whether that is good or bad is another discussion, and whether anything should be done about a third discussion. These are the facts though.

Is the Daily Mail the UK equivalent of the US National Enquirer?

[seer]

I think its overwhelmingly clear that he's using cherry picked data to get his results. So far its clear that the arctic is melting in the long term trends.

Whether that is good or bad is another discussion, and whether anything should be done about a third discussion. These are the facts though.

Len are you denying that the Arctic sea ice has been recovering?

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2014/...mber-2014.html

Last month I wrote:

If this keeps up until the minimum, the 2014 melting season will have been excellent for restoring some of the ice lost since the first big volume drop in 2007.

And it has kept up. The difference with the post-2010 years and 2007 has increased a little bit more, and sea ice volume levels according to PIOMAS are effectively at the same level they were in 2009. In short, an astounding rebound. It was always clear that the Arctic could be very volatile, but this swing is huge and shows what two consecutive melting seasons with conditions that are relatively good for ice retention (2013 was cold and cloudy, 2014 cold and cloudy at the start, followed by little movement) can mean for the ice pack.

The PIOMAS sea ice volume graph produced by Wipneus shows the uptick and relative position of the 2014 trend line even more clearly:

[Leonhard]

Len are you denying that the Arctic sea ice has been recovering?

No, there's been similar "recoveries" in the past. In 1996 there was a spike of ice growth, but it was quickly followed up by the same downward trend. There's spread in the results, but there's a clear trend.

Screen Shot 2014-09-08 at 8.15.10 PM.jpg

[John Reece]

Al Gore is not, was not and will never be the leader of the scientific community. He's a politician and like a lot of other politicians he makes mistakes.

No claim has been made that Al Gore is "the leader of the scientific community" ― not by me, and I did not notice any such claim in the Mail Online article.

The fact that Al Gore is not a scientist is one of the reasons the OP was posted in Civics rather than NatSci.

The Global Warming / Climate Change community has been happy to let Al Gore be a spokesperson for the catastrophic AGW political campaign.

I have never seen any consensus-oriented scientist speak out to correct the massive public misconceptions promoted by Gore.

His movie has been seen in practically every public school in the USA, giving the impression to an entire generation of students that he is presenting the scientific consensus of the science community.

He received a Nobel Prize jointly with the IPCC ― for the same reason.

The Nobel Peace Prize 2007 was awarded jointly to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change"

This thread quite properly belongs in Civics.

[Leonhard]

I provided links to some well founded data, the very same that David Ross by extension is referring to. I provided an argument why the sudden spike is no overturn of the models.

I'd really love to hear what you have to say about those, all that other talk about where this should be posted, and Al Gore isn't as interesting I think.

No claim has been made that Al Gore is "the leader of the scientific community" ― not by me, and I did not notice any such claim in the Mail Online article.

He's targeted by Global Warming dissenters. He's an easy target and a politically interested one, so that's understandable to some degree. However when he's brought in to somehow represent climatologists, then its more of a strawman than a representation.

The fact that Al Gore is not a scientist is one of the reasons the OP was posted in Civics rather than NatSci.
...
This thread quite properly belongs in Civics.

This entire post is about whether or not the Arctic is melting. And by extension whether the global temperature is changing, and what causes it. It belongs in NatSci in my opinion, however its up here. As I said Al Gore is a distraction. There's only two relevant things to discuss here: The scientific evidence, what they indicate.

Personally I think there's only one reasonable conclusion to draw: While there's some scatter in the data, there's an overwhelmingly strong downward trend.

The Global Warming / Climate Change community has been happy to let Al Gore be a spokesperson for the catastrophic AGW political campaign.

Scientists have made fairly clear statements on Global Warming so far. They haven't hidden them away. If you want the conservative estimates just read the IPCC report to get the average estimated rate of water height, and the potential one given various hard to predict events.

They are unfortunately not the first goto for the press. That's a guy like Al Gore who might get more than half of it right. Is it worth spending energy on him, when there's politicians out there saying things like "The Earth is actually cooling and the sun is the cause of it." Even people who outright dismiss that added CO₂ can cause a significant heating effect?

I have never seen any consensus-oriented scientist speak out to correct the massive public misconceptions promoted by Gore.

There might have been, but then again I almost never see a Global Warming Dissenter retract a mistake. Where does that leave us?

His movie has been seen in practically every public school in the USA, giving the impression to an entire generation of students that he is presenting the scientific consensus of the science community.

The education of children US and how appallingly substandard it is, is a whole other discussion.

He received a Nobel Prize jointly with the IPCC ― for the same reason.

Yeah, the "Peace Prize" which is given a very weird standard of merit. President Obama got it simple for being not-Bush. Its a pretty weird award.

[Zymologist]

Yeah, the "Peace Prize" which is given a very weird standard of merit. President Obama got it simple for being not-Bush. Its a pretty weird award.

I have nothing to add to this thread, but I'd just like to say: this is funny. Thank you.

[John Reece]

As I said Al Gore is a distraction.

The essence of the article is expressly and specifically a contrast between Al Gore's prediction and subsequent reality.

[Leonhard]

The essence of the article is expressly and specifically a contrast between Al Gore's prediction and subsequent reality.

The first line of the article is also Myth of Arctic meltdown.

[tabibito]

Late last year 7 volcanoes spread across the world erupted. At least 4 of those pumped fine ash into the upper atmosphere that acted as a sunscreen and probably will continue to do so through the remainder of this year, even without the additional ash being produced by volcanoes that have kicked in during the course of this year. Fuji is expected to erupt by the end of 2016 at the latest, with a high likelihood that it will blow before the end of next year.
Cooling as a result of reduced sunlight reaching the Earth's surface is to be expected, and with it reduced yields from crops. If there is enough volcanic activity, famine can result. Interesting times.