WSJ: Whatever Happened to Global Warming?

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Ridgerunner said:
Melting since when? Here’s an article that says it’s getting bigger than it was two years ago. dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2738653/Stunning-satellite-images-summer-ice-cap-thicker-covers-1-7million-square-kilometres-MORE-2-years-ago-despite-Al-Gore-s-prediction-ICE-FREE-now.html

This is a debate. Lots of people doubt global warming. Some, like Russian scientists think we’re about to go into another ice age. The Indian environmental agency decoupled from the IPCC because of its faulty data. As was pointed out, Australia is now “off the bus”. There hasn’t been any atmospheric global warming in 18 years despite “definitive” and “uncontested” predictions that it would.

So now we’re told it’s hiding in the oceans and the rocks despite the fact that the transfer of atmospheric heat to oceans is incredibly slow. Some agree that the oceans are warming but say it’s just normal warming from the Little Ice Age. Some don’t agree that the oceans are warming at all.

In the U.S. it’s highly political, and generally speaking one’s position on MMGW reflects one’s political proclivities. There is a lot of money in it and strangely, the big promoters do not in any way live as if they believe in it themselves…not on either side of the debate.

And, of course there’s “discrediting the quote”. “My card is better than your card.” :rolleyes:

It’s just one big high school-level debate, with each side having its graphs and quotes, and there’s nothing any more definitive about it than there is about whatever the high school debate topic is at present.
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nrdc.org/globalwarming/qthinice.asp
nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/thick-melt.html
wired.com/2014/09/science-graphic-ice-caps/

Yeah, I find the politics surrounding it annoying, too, but it’s just a fact that the icecaps are melting. I can’t speak to whether it’s a cyclical event or whether it’s due to arctic methane or whether it’s man-made, but it is a fact that it’s happening. This is why so many nations are rushing to the North Pole to extract natural resources. That wasn’t a possibility a decade or two ago, but now it is.
 
Theo520 said:
It is bizarre to propose the oceans not follow the laws of physics and thermodynamics.
Proposing the heat was mysteriously and only recently sequestered down to the deep was the definition of strange.
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Which law of physics or thermodynamics is being contradicted by the theory that heat from the sun is accumulating in the oceans?
 
According to NASA satellite photos Antarctica is also shrinking, at a rate of 24 square miles per year since 2002. I think probably the best way to approach this whole subject is to look at photographic maps of Earth’s geography. I don’t have any sort of firm commitment to this issue one way or the other, I’m simply using my eyes to look at irrefutable maps showing slight but perceptible shrinking of the icecaps.

nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarctica_Melting.html
climate.nasa.gov/
 
Exiled_Child said:
nrdc.org/globalwarming/qthinice.asp
nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/thick-melt.html
wired.com/2014/09/science-graphic-ice-caps/

Yeah, I find the politics surrounding it annoying, too, but it’s just a fact that the icecaps are melting. I can’t speak to whether it’s a cyclical event or whether it’s due to arctic methane or whether it’s man-made, but it is a fact that it’s happening. This is why so many nations are rushing to the North Pole to extract natural resources. That wasn’t a possibility a decade or two ago, but now it is.
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As I said, it’s just a debate. There are “quotes” for both sides of the argument, and some that “straddle” it.

Here’s one saying both arctic and antarctic ice caps are growing.
thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/19121-with-ice-growing-at-both-poles-global-warming-theories-implode

Some, on the other hand, say the arctic ice is decreasing but variable, while the antarctic ice cap is indisputably growing.

Nothing about this is any more definite than whether the stock market will go up or down tomorrow. But there is definitely a lot of money paying people to opine.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Here’s one saying both arctic and antarctic ice caps are growing.
thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/19121-with-ice-growing-at-both-poles-global-warming-theories-implode.
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This article says “sea-ice melt in 2014 fell below the long-term mean”, referring to the arctic. That is not the same thing as saying the trend is not for shrinking ice caps. Every year the ice goes through a large freeze/thaw cycle. No meaningful conclusion can be drawn from a snapshot of ice in the middle of the summer.
 
Ridgerunner said:
As I said, it’s just a debate. There are “quotes” for both sides of the argument, and some that “straddle” it.

Here’s one saying both arctic and antarctic ice caps are growing.
thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/19121-with-ice-growing-at-both-poles-global-warming-theories-implode

Some, on the other hand, say the arctic ice is decreasing but variable, while the antarctic ice cap is indisputably growing.

Nothing about this is any more definite than whether the stock market will go up or down tomorrow. But there is definitely a lot of money paying people to opine.
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The ice caps shrink every summer and grow every winter, so to get an accurate picture of what’s happening you need to look at large number of photos taken on the same days throughout the year for a good number of years.

theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/01/new-satellite-maps-show-polar-ice-caps-melting-at-unprecedented-rate

The Guardian article some good links detailing satellite maps and satellite photography.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
This article says “sea-ice melt in 2014 fell below the long-term mean”, referring to the arctic. That is not the same thing as saying the trend is not for shrinking ice caps. Every year the ice goes through a large freeze/thaw cycle. No meaningful conclusion can be drawn from a snapshot of ice in the middle of the summer.
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It says more than that, of course, including that the antarctic ice cap is more extensive than it has ever been since records have been kept.

“The most recent data show that the Antarctic is currently surrounded by more sea ice than at any other point since records began. In all, there are right now about 20 million square kilometers of frozen sea area surrounding the Antarctic continent. That is 170,000 square kilometers more than last year’s previous all-time record, and more than 1.2 million square kilometers above the 1981-to-2010 mean, according to researchers.”

There are more articles like this. A lot more. But as I said before, all of this is really just a “my quote is better than yours” debate.
 
Ridgerunner said:
It says more than that, of course, including that the antarctic ice cap is more extensive than it has ever been since records have been kept.

“The most recent data show that the Antarctic is currently surrounded by more sea ice than at any other point since records began. In all, there are right now about 20 million square kilometers of frozen sea area surrounding the Antarctic continent. That is 170,000 square kilometers more than last year’s previous all-time record, and more than 1.2 million square kilometers above the 1981-to-2010 mean, according to researchers.”

There are more articles like this. A lot more. But as I said before, all of this is really just a “my quote is better than yours” debate.
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You said that perhaps both polar ice caps were growing. I only challenged that statement with regard to the arctic. I don’t think any reasonable case can be made that the arctic is growing.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
Which law of physics or thermodynamics is being contradicted by the theory that heat from the sun is accumulating in the oceans?
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LBN,
The premise has no scientific basis
The warming is hiding in the bottom of the ocean.
Someday it will pop out and say BOO!
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Infrared radiation emitted by greenhouse gases only penetrates the oceans by a few microns, thus can’t directly heat the bulk of the oceans
 
Theo520 said:
Infrared radiation emitted by greenhouse gases only penetrates the oceans by a few microns, thus can’t directly heat the bulk of the oceans
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If the top few microns are directly heated, that heat is quickly conducted to the next few microns, and inches, and meters. Heat conduction is a well-understood phenomenon. When you place a pan on a gas stove, the hot gas can only directly heat the outer one molecule of the pan. But the whole thickness of the pan gets almost as hot as the bottom few molecules very quickly. In the case of the oceans, in addition to heat conduction like this, you also have actual stirring and mixing due to winds and waves, which spreads the heat even faster. So you see there is no law of physics or thermodynamics being violated when IR radiation heats the oceans.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
If the top few microns are directly heated, that heat is quickly conducted to the next few microns, and inches, and meters. Heat conduction is a well-understood phenomenon. When you place a pan on a gas stove, the hot gas can only directly heat the outer one molecule of the pan. But the whole thickness of the pan gets almost as hot as the bottom few molecules very quickly. In the case of the oceans, in addition to heat conduction like this, you also have actual stirring and mixing due to winds and waves, which spreads the heat even faster. So you see there is no law of physics or thermodynamics being violated when IR radiation heats the oceans.
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There is no magic heatpump that flipped on 18 yrs ago.
 
I noticed that that in both What’s Up With That and in pro global warming websites, images from the University of Illinois Cryosphere project are cited. So I assume that this source is acceptable to all sides of the debate as a reliable source of raw data. I went to the U of I website and found that they have an interactive web page that will generate a side-by-side image of any two dates in their database for the arctic ice cap. Here is a link to that page:

University of Illinois Cryosphere project

Of course What’s Up With That picks dates that tend to show ice is growing while global warming proponents pick dates that show the opposite. So instead of recommending any dates at all, I invite anyone who is interested to play with the date selection themselves and decide for themselves if the ice is growing or shrinking. I would only add some guidance on interpreting whatever pops up: Pick the same day in the year on both the right and left images so the two images are comparable, since ice coverage goes through a very large seasonal cycle. And give more weight to comparisons over longer time spans as compared to shorter time spans, since random weather patterns are much more influential in year-to-year measurements than in comparisons over 10 or 20 years. But you pick the actual dates yourself. Pick dates around September for minimum ice and April for maximum ice. That way you won’t be fooled by people with an agenda - on either side of the debate - to pick dates that due to random variation tend to favor their particular view of the issue.
 
found this quote worth sharing, on the failure of climate models
If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out but tomfoolery.
But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow
ennobled and no-one dares criticize it.
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Garbage In, Garbage Out
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Theo520 said:
If you are keen to explore the science

NASA Study Finds Earth’s Ocean Abyss Has Not Warmed

THE NOAA OUTGOING LONG WAVE RADIATION DATA APPEARS TO BE
INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE THEORY OF ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING
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Just the first sentence in the article you quote from Dr Jennifer Marohasy (a biologist) is nonsense. She writes:

“Earth absorbs energy from the sun and in turn loses an equal amount of thermal or long wave energy back out to space”

This is obviously not the case because the earth goes through warm and cold periods. Then she throws in the Stefan-Boltzmann law to make it look more scientific. Her description on how greenhouse gases operate is hair-raising.

In another publication she states that the earth is cooling if we take the 1998 peak as starting point.

You really need to come up with better references if you want to convince people.
 
Theo520 said:
If you are keen to explore the science

NASA Study Finds Earth’s Ocean Abyss Has Not Warmed
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Do you actually read the articles you are quoting?

It says:
“Coauthor Felix Landerer of JPL noted that during the same period, warming in the top half of the ocean continued unabated, an unequivocal sign that our planet is heating up. Some recent studies reporting deep-ocean warming were, in fact, referring to the warming in the upper half of the ocean but below the topmost layer, which ends about 0.4 mile (700 meters) down.”
 
Theo520 said:
LBN,
The premise has no scientific basis

Infrared radiation emitted by greenhouse gases only penetrates the oceans by a few microns, thus can’t directly heat the bulk of the oceans
Click to expand...
Heat conducts, and penetrates to the depth of the ocean.
 
Theo520 said:
LBN,
The premise has no scientific basis

Infrared radiation emitted by greenhouse gases only penetrates the oceans by a few microns, thus can’t directly heat the bulk of the oceans
Click to expand...
Heat conducts, and penetrates to the deeper regions of the ocean.
 
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