News Not Told: Arctic Ice Disappearing
With deep sadness, I report the news not being told: the artic ice is melting even faster than originally expected. This image portrays the original expectations. Curiously, the mainstream news has more discussion on oil rights on the now open water, than discussion of the significance of this on the climate of the Northern hemisphere. To say that this is a tipping point is an understatement.
Image from wikipedia.
Actual images from Ecolo:
An animation of how the ice has been melting is here.
Researchers at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency found at their latest study that ice sheets in the Arctic Ocean could shrink this summer to the smallest area on record since satellite observation of the sheets began in 1978. This shrinking is happening gradually year by year due to the global warming and increased average temperatures.
The most serious decline refers to the areas covered with perennial ice that have been gradually shrinking since 2005, and this year, areas with perennial ice further withered to nearly half the size seen in 2005, according to the results of this study.
(World Ecological Problems)
Sadness.
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Stumble It!
How can this happen?
Since world temperatures actually haven't gone up since 1955, what's your theory for why this is happening?
Your premise is false, Dave, but thanks for playing
According to NASA, global mean surface temperatures HAVE increased.
Your data is wrong, mn_lib, but thanks for playing
Even NASA had to admit that data was wrong. I'm sure it was just an 'accident'.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2274346.ece
So back to the original question. Since the world temperature hasn't gone up, what's Gracie's theory on why the ice caps are melting? (Although, if the pictures came from NASA, maybe we need to take a closer look.)
Denial and Lies
Gee, Dave why don't you check it out and tell us why. There are many sites dedicated to lying about global warming since admitting global warming would mean less greedy profits and maybe some sacrifices.
US data since 2000 corrected. No impact on global analysis.
Did you even read your own reference?
If you had, you'd know that NASA's figures on temperatures in the United States since 2000 had been too high by up to 0.27F.
You'd also know that since the US land surface is such a small percentage of the world's land area, the effect on global records is negligible.
And you would have also learned that the corrected figures left evidence of long-term warming intact.
Nice try.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/07/020974.php
“The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot,” according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from US Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.
“Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.”
This morning's New York Times? No, the U.S. Weather Bureau, 1922
powerline?
It won't matter Dave if you even physically visited these locations because emotionally you are not ready to accept change. I have seen women who never accept that their husbands are cheating even when confronted with hotel receipts and pictures. I have know people to die rather that admit that the way they live is unhealthy.
Because admit just one thing like global warming and suddenly a whole lot of comfortable beliefs just tumble.
powerlineblog? I smell a freeper troll.
That's the Internet equivalent of the National Enquirer.
The source
Understandable if you don't trust Powerline. So here's the source of the quote, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. They might know something about the oceans, after all-
http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf
But mn_lib, you don't seem to have anything to say about your 'facts' being BS.
And Gracie, the person not ready to accept change is the one who posted on arctic ice decline but now can't tell me why it is happening. 'Less greedy profits'? How about all the government funded research into global warming? Don't you think the folks who investigate it on a government grant have a reason to substantiate it? To keep getting more grants, perhaps?
Look, Gracie, I'm not trying to throw bombs here, as you would like to think. I'm not indifferent to the thought that man is causing harm to the earth. But we both live in a state that, several million years ago, was covered with ice nearly a mile thick. We've been keeping records of weather for what, 200 years at best? And you are convinced that man is responsible for the arctic ice melt?
Changing your argument as it's disproven
I've seen this strategy before so it's no surprise.
You challenged Gracie to come up with a theory that explains why arctic sea ice is disappearing and prefaced the request with your own unsourced claim that world temperatures haven't gone up since 1955.
I posted a link to a NASA study that showed your premise is false.
You found a newspaper article about a minute correction NASA had to make to roughly 5 years of data for the US only, claimed that "my" data was wrong, repeated your unsourced claim that global temperatures haven't gone up and conveniently ignored that said article included statement from experts who explained that the correction had a negligable effect on the global figures and that the data still showed a long-term warming trend.
Then you found a 1922 account of short-term observations of arctic sea ice. Nothing about scientific studies. Nothing about global temperature trends. Nothing that refutes anything I've posted. I also like how you tried to give that obscure little 86-year-old report more weight by attributing it to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Yes, it's on their site, but it isn't their report.
You asked why I have nothing to say about "my" facts being BS. Well, because they aren't.
With your statement poo-pooing global warming still unsupported, all you're left with is a really old account of warmer than normal conditions observed in one area of the Arctic in 1918-1922.
Minute correction?
The warmest 5 years in the last hundred were in the 1930's instead of the 1990's, which is more than a minute correction. Libs had been pointing to this study for years to show a steady increase in temperature, and it turns out there was no appreciable increase.
What is still unsupported is the theory of global warming itself. Gracie shows pictures of the ice coverage of the arctic and says duh! there's your proof, even though she offers no evidence of what is causing the change. You assume that it is a proven fact and lash out at anyone with the temerity to question your 'facts' or intentions. Your 'solution' to global warming is to handicap the US economy to the point of threatening a global recession, yet no one seems to give a thought to China and India, who will keep humming along, laughing at the US.
The incredible irony here is that you guys tout yourselves as the party of diversity and tolerance of thought, yet you have no tolerance for any other thoughts on global warming.
Not debatable even, just denied by certain folks
Our analysis, summarized in Figure 1 above, uses documented procedures for data over land (1), satellite measurements of sea surface temperature since 1982 (2), and a ship-based analysis for earlier years (3). Our estimated error (2σ, 95% confidence) in comparing nearby years, such as 1998 and 2005, increases from 0.05°C in recent years to 0.1°C at the beginning of the 20th century. Error sources include incomplete station coverage, quantified by sampling a model-generated data set with realistic variability at actual station locations, and partly subjective estimates of data quality problems (4).
Record warmth in 2005 is notable, because global temperature has not received any boost from a tropical El Niño this year. The prior record year, 1998, on the contrary, was lifted 0.2°C above the trend line by the strongest El Niño of the past century.
Global warming is now 0.6°C in the past three decades and 0.8°C in the past century. It is no longer correct to say that "most global warming occurred before 1940". More specifically, there was slow global warming, with large fluctuations, over the century up to 1975 and subsequent rapid warming of almost 0.2°C per decade.
(NASA GISS)
Unsourced claims, faulty reasoning & freeper rhetoric
Goodbye troll.
Goodbye?
So sorry to see you go, you were almost interesting. You're on your way to stock up on canned food for the coming end of the world, no doubt. Since you're convinced of global warming (it is warming this week right?) don't forget lots of sun screen.
As the years go by and the earth fails to melt as predicted, you'll no doubt find a way of blaming it all on the evil Bush/Cheney, just like 9/11 and the war we are winning in Iraq. And as the Dems in Congress come to their senses and vote to open up offshore drilling and maybe even ANWR, the price of gas will come down and folks will forget all about going green and riding bikes to work instead of SUV's.
What I'm saying is that $4 a gallon gas is the best chance you will ever have of getting folks away from carbon based fuels, which is the big bogeyman in your global warming scenario. So instead of sounding like a looney version of chicken little, maybe you should try convincing people to go green because of the cost rather than the desire to hug trees.
Acceptance
My son had a hard time accepting that people had to die sometime. I had to promise that I would try to live to be 100, before he could work around that.
The human race has not yet accepted that they can change climate, can blow up the planet and end civilization as we know it. From up in a plane, the planet is so big and we are so small, how could we have that effect? Yet from that same plan one can see that land in all directions, tilled and re-landscaped by humans.
As humans we have the power, now can we accept the responsibility?