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LiberalPrincess
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Climate Change is REAL. You can have your own opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts. And facts say human activity is causing climate change. 
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Michael_Mayo
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My concern was that with both land or sea ice we also need to consider thickness as well as area covered.
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SamH
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weller2
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You see, we have these wonderful inventions called radars. We put one of them on that another wonderful invention called a satellite, and painted the name “Cryosat-2” on the side. Then we have put that one on yet another technological miracle called a space rocket and boosted it to orbit. A polar orbit to be exact, so it can fly over, you know, the poles.
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
So this cool toy is circling the Earth, sending radar pings. If it’s over the ice, each ping gets two returns one from the top surface of the ice, and one from the bottom. Like that:
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/filea...ryosat_first_sarin_data_antarctica_ESA_sm.jpg
(Hi-res version. Makes a nice wallpaper)
That’s from Antarctica, so you can see the mountains under the ice. Cool, eh? So we actually have a toy up there, you know, which can accurately measure not only the extent, but also the thickness of the ice. Don’t worry, Europeans have paid for this one, not you.
Anyway. The toy knows where it is, 'cause you know, GPS. So it can draw maps of ice thickness. And they come out like this:
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content..._in_spring_ice_thickness_node_full_image1.jpg
Thick ice (over 3m) is red; thin ice is green and blue. You can see that this red color is shrinking. Yes, there’s some growth in thin ice; but so what? Volume is surface times height, so if you lose, say, 1000 km^2 of 3-meter ice, you’d need 6000 km^2 of 0.5-meter ie (blue) to compensate for that loss. Ain’t happening. Sorry.
And that’s simply misleading reporting. If you read carefully, they say that the SURFACE of the ice is increasing. That’s true, but that’s not the whole story, It’s VOLUME that counts, and it’s going down.
So, yeah. Arctic melts.
And Canadians are buying gunboats. 'Cause you know, Northern Passage. Gotta get the cut of shipping profits. And there is this gas field near Greenland, which the Denmark is also trying to claim. Gotta keep 'em off.
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Michael_Mayo
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Ridgerunner
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These posts do take me back, they’re so like high school debate. “My card beats your card” (among the endless cards and quotations available to those who have time to look them up or are fed them by some mentor)
However, it does depart from the qualities typically found in a high school debate. Debate coaches attempt to teach their students proper manners in case the students’ mothers didn’t. Condescension and sarcasm are not generally regarded as persuasive characteristics.
And so it is in adult life.
I would certainly think Canada would want to patrol the arctic oceans since the Russians have been doing it for going on a century now, and since the U.S. is less reliable now for that or any other defensive task. And I don’t doubt the Danes, Canadians and Russians are all desirous of developing petroleum resources in the Arctic; particularly the Russians, perhaps, since they are worrying about a new ice age and would want to develop the resources before it hits. Undoubtedly, the U.S. government isn’t interested in developing arctic petroleum reserves, just as it is the only country of any significance that wants to cause poverty and suffering among its people by denying them energy.
Perhaps the next treaty John Kerry will attempt is one giving China the U.S. claims to arctic petroleum resources. After his agreement to do away with the Second Amendment by treaty, It would come as no surprise.
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Michael_Mayo
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“Condescension and sarcasm are not generally regarded as persuasive characteristics.”
Point well proven.
Point well proven.
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estesbob
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One would have to agree that for global warming to be correct we would actually have to see the earth warming. Correct?
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Ridgerunner
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Multiple times. It can be fun, though, right?
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estesbob
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New Study: ’2013 ranks as one of the least extreme U.S. weather years ever’– Many bad weather events at ‘historically low levels’
climatedepot.com/2013/10/18/new-study-2013-ranks-as-one-of-the-least-extreme-us-weather-years-ever-many-bad-weather-events-at-historically-low-levels/
climatedepot.com/2013/10/18/new-study-2013-ranks-as-one-of-the-least-extreme-us-weather-years-ever-many-bad-weather-events-at-historically-low-levels/
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Ridgerunner
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Granted, it has been very uneven, but I think there is general agreement that the earth has gradually warmed since the “Little Ice Age” and into our own time. There have been peaks in that trend (like the 1930s when it was warmer than now) and valleys (like now). No one knows which peak might continue to peak and which valley will continue to descend. Obviously, there have been some disappointing surprises to those predicting ever-increasing temperatures and, not surprisingly, explanations for that have not been lacking.
Unsurprisingly, western politicians and investors who are heavily invested in “alternative energies” predict rising temperatures after the current hiatus. Equally unsurprisingly, the Russians fear serious cooling, but for different reasons.
India, which has an interest in continued growth of energy use, has decoupled its national science research from that of the IPCC. China, for the same reason, ignores everything and undoubtedly hopes the U.S. will cripple its productive capacity for competitive reasons.
Much of the world would simply like to be able to heat homes and light houses predictably.
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estesbob
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Interesting-last year they told us we should be concerned about the surface Ice melt. wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/28/record-arctic-melt
This year we are told that’s not important its the volume that counts.
One thing for sure for global warming alarmists-they can always twist the data to support their views.
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SamH
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Especially when the are comparing current information to historical measurements that don’t exist so they use their own estimates to prove their point.
Kind of like the current “oceans warming” claims. The historical measurements don’t exist so they make an estimate that amazingly proves the oceans are warmer now than they were 50 years ago. They can’t do that with surface measurements because the records do exist and unfortunately (for them) they show land masses are starting (and alarmingly) to cool.
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SamH
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Should I believe a computer model or my own eyes?
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Michael_Mayo
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Climatedepot does not deny climate change is happening, so it cherry picks the up side.
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estesbob
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Ender
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That wasn’t the assertion made or defended. What matters is the truth, and you need to be able to support your position without distorting it. I could also ask why, if it doesn’t matter, the assertion was made in the first place and defended in the second.
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Ridgerunner
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I think you’re missing the whole thing.
You see, as global warming progresses, the atmospheric heat will radiate down through the ground to the earth’s core. Eventually, the core will get so hot the center will explode through the surface like a moon pie in a microwave. Your picture is obviously a computer model showing what it will look like.
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Ender
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You recognized it yourself - energy is reflected back into space without being absorbed; it’s a function of the Earth’s albedo. Besides that, CO2 doesn’t absorb radiation at all frequencies but only at a specific subset so if all the radiation at those frequencies is absorbed at some particular concentration then the addition of more CO2 will have no effect. I don’t know what those values are or how close to saturation we are but it is another consideration.
Whatever the precise statistical meaning of the term is, that value was touted as meaning “The models are right, accept them and move along.”
I’m thinking that missing the fact that warm air melts ice is pretty big. It’s also worth pointing out that if they as yet still don’t understand “whatever effect” it is that they missed how they were able to tweak their models to incorporate a 15 year period without warming and why they should be given any credence now at all?
It cannot be calculated if only because there is no “albedo constant” with which to determine how much energy actually reaches the Earth’s surface. Nor do I think we have any handle on how much CO2 can get scrubbed out of the atmosphere. If we’ve had much higher CO2 concentrations in the past how did we ever have subsequent ice ages?
Theories are tested through their predictions. A theory that cannot predict anything, or is wrong in what it does predict, is useless.
Ender
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