Archives for March 26, 2008

There is an Australian e-journal that is popular with many government-types called crikey.com.au. Today the lead story began,

“A chunk of ice seven times the size of Manhattan (as big as the Isle of Man if you prefer a more Anglo-centric news source) is hanging by a thread to the main, still-frozen body of the western Antarctic. Satellite images are showing the rapid disintegration of a 41km x 2.5km ice chunk, a part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf that has been there for hundreds, maybe 1,500 years. It is happening, the scientific consensus seems to be, because the seas are getting warmer. It’s that greenhouse thing.

So, what to do? Blame China? No, we need to take individual responsibility. Wait on the Garnaut report? No, too little too late. We must act now … of course! Let’s turn some lights off on Saturday. For an hour. That’ll fix it. Meanwhile, click on the image below to watch a video of what Earth Hour is up against.” [end of quote]

Anyway, that’s about as clever as it gets even from the so-called alternative media and the story is much the same in The Australian.

Then of course there are the blogs, including some which actually provide data and background information to put the collapse of the icesheet in some context:

“In reality it and all the former shelves that collapsed are small and most near the Antarctic peninsula which sticks well out from Antarctica into the currents and winds of the South Atlantic and lies in a tectonically active region with surface and subsurface active volcanic activity. The vast continent has actually cooled since 1979…

“The full Wilkins 6,000 square mile ice shelf is just 0.39% of the current ice sheet (just 0.1% of the extent last September). Only a small portion of it between 1/10th-1/20th of Wilkins has separated so far, like an icicle falling off a snow and ice covered house. And this winter is coming on quickly. In fact the ice is returning so fast, it is running an amazing 60% ahead (4.0 vs 2.5 million square km extent) of last year when it set a new record. The ice extent is already approaching the second highest level for extent since the measurements began by satellite in 1979 and just a few days into the Southern Hemisphere winter and 6 months ahead of the peak. Wilkins like all the others that temporarily broke up will refreeze soon. We are very likely going to exceed last year’s record. Yet the world is left with the false impression Antarctica’s ice sheet is also starting to disappear.”

Read the complete blog post and check out meteorologist Joseph D’Aleo graphs at http://icecap.us/index.php/go/political-climate.

Then there is more information from Anthony Watt’s:

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/surprise-theres-an-active-volcano-under-antarctic-ice/

Map of volcanoes in Antarctica
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/antarcticvolcanoes2.jpg

This image is from NASA, and shows areas with greatest warming in Antarctica are near the peninsula and pacific ring of fire groups of volcanoes:
http://veimages.gsfc.nasa.gov//17529/antarctic_temps.AVH1982-2004.jpg

here is the original article
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17257

But now look at what Wikipedia has done to it:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Antarctic_temps.AVH1982-2004.jpg

They say ” they image is misleading…visit the discussion page”…okey dokey, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Antarctic_temps.AVH1982-2004.jpg
and on that page they say “use alternative image” (GISS maps) instead which is this:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/do_nmap.py?year_last=2007&month_last=09&sat=4&sst=1&type=trends&mean_gen=1212&year1=1951&year2=2004&base1=1951&base2=2006&radius=1200&pol=pol

And it STILL shows a big red area over the ataractic peninsula where volcanism is the strongest.
[end of quote from Anthony].

Thank goodness for the internet.

UN climate body in panic mode as satellite temperatures turn down and a hard winter lashes both hemispheres

A soprano thrillingly hits her top-A, sighs with relief at achieving the desired effect, and moves on. But not the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) whose climate alarmism started to crescendo in 2001 in the Third Assessment Report (3AR) with the statement that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely (>66% probable) to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”.

Recently, in their Fourth Assessment Report (4AR), and faced with their failure to convince the public that the sky is falling, the IPCC delivers even more preposterous advice in ever shriller tones, saying that “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely (>90% probable) due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations”. The wobble around top-A is clearly discernible.

The press, most of whom have firmly identified with the alarmist cause, continues to appease the Green gods by faithfully running IPCC’s now unrealistic scientific propaganda, thereby stoking public alarm; the science is a done deal, they say, and the time has come to stop talking. According to UK journalist, Geoffrey Lean, all that is lacking to solve the global warming “crisis” is political will from governments.

Well, thank the Lord for that lack. For the IPCC’s 2007 final Summary for Policymakers shows that the climate alarmists are at last on the run. Their evidence for dangerous, human-caused global warming, always slim, now lies exposed in tatters for all to see.

In contrast, the alternative, persuasive and non-alarmist view of climate change is well summarized in two recently issued and readily available documents. The first is a letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations, which was released at the UN’s Bali conference last December, supported by the signatures of 103 eminent professional persons. The second is the Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change, the release of which coincided with the launch of the International Climate Science Coalition at a major climate rationalist conference in New York in early March.

The evidence for dangerous global warming adduced by the IPCC has never been strong on empirical science. Endless circumstantial scare campaigns have been run about melting glaciers, more droughts and storms and floods, sea-level rise and polar bears, but all founder on one inescapable problem – as does Mr. Al Gore’s over-hyped science fiction film. And that is that we live on a naturally variable planet. Change is what planet Earth does on all scales, and so far not one of the alleged effects of human-caused global warming has been shown to lie outside normal planetary variation. Sea-level rising? Sure, it happens. And the appropriate response is adaptation, as the Dutch have known for centuries.

Stuck with the absence of empirical evidence for dangerous warming or abnormal change, in 2001 the IPCC turned to graphmanship, giving prominence in its 3AR to the so-called “hockey-stick” record of temperature over the last 1000 years. The hockey-stick graphic, which appeared to show dramatic increases of temperature during the 20th century compared with earlier times, has now been exposed as statistical chicanery and, thankfully, is nowhere to be seen in the 4AR.

No hockey-stick and no empirical evidence, what is a man to do? Well, obviously, turn to virtual reality rather than real reality: PlayStation 4 here we come.

The IPCC’s expensive and complex computer models can be programmed to produce any desired result, and it is therefore not surprising that they uniformly predict warming since 1990. Meanwhile, the real-world global average temperature has stubbornly refused to obey this stricture. It exhibits no significant increase since 1998, and the preliminary 2007 year-end temperature confirms the continuation of a temperature plateau since 1998 to which is now appended a cooling trend over the last 3 years.

Is global cooling next?

“Best fit” of yearly average temperature

Lower atmosphere global temperature differences (0C) from 1979 – 1998 average

“Global warming theory indicates that temperature rise due to increasing carbon dioxide emissions should be most prominent at heights of 5-10 km in the lower atmosphere; instead, more warming is occurring at the surface. For the lower atmosphere, the satellite data indicate that, since the 1998 El Nino when temperatures spiked 10C due to a rise in water vapour emissions (the principal “greenhouse gas”), global temperatures dropped sharply, then stabilized and now show signs of continuing down – is global cooling next? (data courtesy of Professors John Christy and Roy Spencer, University of Alabama , Huntsville ; a best-fitted spline curve represents longer term temperature trends).”

Read the entire Canada Free Press article here.

Dr. Bob Carter is a Research Professor at James Cook University, Queensland, Australia, who studies ancient environments and climate, and whose website is at http://members.iinet.net.au/~glrmc/new_page_1.htm