Breaking News-Humans 'not to blame' for climate change

[mrmom2]

Reports of Record Arctic Ice Melt Disgracefully Ignore History


By Noel Sheppard | September 9, 2007 - 00:31 ET

In the past couple of days, the media have reported "grim" melting of ice in the Arctic while disgracefully ignoring the history of the region prior to 1979 and explorations of the area as far back as 1903.
As the Washington Post reported Friday (emphasis added):

The Arctic ice cap is melting faster than scientists had expected and will shrink 40 percent by 2050 in most regions, with grim consequences for polar bears, walruses and other marine animals, according to government researchers.
​

Unfortunately, like the Post, most press outlets conveniently ignored a crucial element of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration study being cited. As reported by the Seattle Times Friday

In an average August between 1979 and 2000, the Arctic Ocean was covered with about 3 million square miles of sea ice, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. By Labor Day this year, the total had shrunk to a little more than half that, shattering the previous record low set in 2005.
​

Why is 1979 important? An August 28 National Post article on the subject explained (emphasis added):

The record melting of the passage comes two weeks after the NSIDC and two other ice-monitoring agencies in the U.S. and Japan declared that the Arctic Ocean ice cover has shrunk to its smallest size since regular satellite imaging of the polar cap began in 1979.
[...]
"[A]nalysts at the Canadian Ice Service and the U.S. National Ice Center confirm that the passage is almost completely clear and that the region is more open than it has ever been since the advent of routine monitoring in 1972."
​

Getting the picture? Claims of "grim consequences" and "record low" ice levels are based on a satellite record which began in 1979, while routine monitoring of the region started in 1972.
How can anyone make a claim with a straight face that ice conditions in the Arctic are either historically low or grim when we've only been monitoring these levels for the last 35 years? Is everything that happened in this region - in thousands of millennia since the Big Bang occurred - totally irrelevant?
Such is especially the case given the history of successful sea-based explorations of the Arctic dating back as far as 1903.

For instance, a name media would love for global warming alarmists not to know is Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer who successfully navigated the Northwest Passage on August 26, 1905 (h/t Walt Bennett, Jr.):

The North West Passage was done. My boyhood dream - at that moment it was accomplished. A strange feeling welled up in my throat; I was somewhat over-strained and worn - it was weakness in me - but I felt tears in my eyes. 'Vessel in sight' ... Vessel in sight.
​

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this Passage was clear enough of ice for a wooden sailboat, with a crew of seven, to successfully navigate it more than 100 years ago. How many times in the history of the planet do you think a similar - or even more ice-free - condition existed in this area?
Not that the media cares, but this Passage was also conquered several times in the 1940s (emphasis added):

Built for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Force to serve as a supply ship for isolated, far-flung Arctic RCMP detachments, St. Roch was also designed to serve when frozen in for the winter, as a floating detachment, with its constables mounting dog sled patrols from the ship. Between 1929 and 1939 St. Roch made three voyages to the Arctic. Between 1940 and 1942 St. Roch navigated the Northwest Passage, arriving in Halifax harbor on October 11, 1942. St. Roch was the second ship to make the passage, and the first to travel the passage from west to east. In 1944, St. Roch returned to Vancouver via the more northerly route of the Northwest Passage, making her run in 86 days. The epic voyages of St. Roch demonstrated Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic during the difficult wartime years, and extended Canadian control over its vast northern territories.
​

Putting it all together, when you consider that serious monitoring of Arctic ice levels only started in 1972, and that explorers successfully navigated these seas in relatively archaic ships 60 and 100 years ago, how can anybody honestly claim that today's conditions in this region are in any way unprecedented, historic, or grim?
Beyond this, as the planet entered a warming phase in 1975, isn't it not at all surprising that ice levels in this area are lower now than then? Wouldn't an honest media always point out the existence of this trend rather than presenting data exclusively from this period that conveniently ignores everything prior?
Sadly, this is the disingenuousness we see from today's press which continually make hysterical historical claims that intentionally ignore historical facts.
How disgraceful.
http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/09/09/reports-record-arctic-ice-melt-
disgracefully-ignore-history
Noel,


One of the commenters on your Arctic blog post the other day asked what the skippers on The Deadliest Catch think of global warming. Here's the testimony of one of them:



Al_Batross: With all the current stories about global warming's environmental impact etc. have you found, in your long career, any significant changes in the amount of crab or where you find them?
Johnathan Hillstrand: I want to see global warming, I have not seen it yet. We have a glacier that has grown 5 miles in the last two years. In the Southeast opi fishing has not seen global warming but we've been waiting for it. Bring it on!



http://www.patriotresource.com/deadliest/articles/0705chatjohn.html

 

[Walter]

All this happened before most of us were born so it doesn't count.

 

[Extrafire]

Seems it isn't just a consequence of warming.

PASADENA, Calif. - A new NASA-led study found a 23-percent loss in the extent of the Arctic's thick, year-round sea ice cover during the past two winters. This drastic reduction of perennial winter sea ice is the primary cause of this summer's fastest-ever sea ice retreat on record and subsequent smallest-ever extent of total Arctic coverage.

A team led by Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., studied trends in Arctic perennial ice cover by combining data from NASA's Quick Scatterometer (QuikScat) satellite with a computing model based on observations of sea ice drift from the International Arctic Buoy Programme. QuikScat can identify and map different classes of sea ice, including older, thicker perennial ice and younger, thinner seasonal ice.
[...]
Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters. Link for whole article.

 

[Walter]

 

[Tonington]

ABC that stalwart of journalistic integrity...tell me this ABC. You gloss over the facts as much as Gore did. If we look at temperature and carbon dioxide, why is it now that carbon dioxide is steadilly rising, before temperature increases now? Sure in the past temperature caused carbon dioxide increases, but now it is not so. The growth in carbon dioxide is increasing as is human growth. As we grow, so too does the concentration in the atmosphere. If it were heat induced growth of carbon dioxide concentrations, the oceans would be losing carbon dioxide, instead of gaining. As we emit more carbon dioxide, more is absorbed into the oceans, simple stuff. Move from an area of high concentration(the atmosphere) to an area of lower concentration(the oceans).

This is evidenced by the increasing acidity of the ocean. So by 2050, the oceans will have, at the current rate, a pH which is .2 lower than pre-industrial times. That may sound like pittance to you, but not to ocean life. That is a significant change. The calcifying organisms, including planktons which cycle CO2 and oxygen, will be severely disrupted. Want a demonstration, drop chalk into some vinegar.

 

[Extrafire]

Real, serious scientists always said humans were "not to blame"

One of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works".
Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.
His comments came on the same day that the Nobel committee honoured Mr Gore for his work in support of the link between humans and global warming.
"We're brainwashing our children," said Dr Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It's ridiculous."
At his first appearance since the award was announced in Oslo, Mr Gore said: "We have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we're facing."
Mr Gore shared the Nobel prize with the United Nations climate panel for their work in helping to galvanise international action against global warming.
But Dr Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicised, said a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures - related to the amount of salt in ocean water - was responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place.
However, he said, that same cycle meant a period of cooling would begin soon and last for several years.
"We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was," Dr Gray said.
During his speech to a crowd of about 300 that included meteorology students and a host of professional meteorologists, Dr Gray also said those who had linked global warming to the increased number of hurricanes in recent years were in error.
He cited statistics showing there were 101 hurricanes from 1900 to 1949, in a period of cooler global temperatures, compared to 83 from 1957 to 2006 when the earth warmed.
"The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures," Dr Gray said.
He said his beliefs had made him an outsider in popular science.
"It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."

 

[Tonington]

An excellent example of what Dan Sarewitz calls "excess of objectivity" in science.

Simply put, this means that in most any political issue involving science, there is an ample reservoir of knowledge from which partisans can selectively draw from to support a wide range of positions. Those skeptical of the human role in climate change are often criticized for cherrypicking science and selective presentation of science. And appropriately so. But these standards should be applied across the board, even to those who argue strongly for a human role in the climate system.

 

[Extrafire]

An excellent example of what Dan Sarewitz calls "excess of objectivity" in science.

No, just telling it like it is.

 

[Extrafire]

ABC that stalwart of journalistic integrity...tell me this ABC. You gloss over the facts as much as Gore did. If we look at temperature and carbon dioxide, why is it now that carbon dioxide is steadilly rising, before temperature increases now? Sure in the past temperature caused carbon dioxide increases, but now it is not so.

As has already been pointed out on numerous occasions, the temperature increases responsible for CO2 increases predates by at least 800 years. Good question, why is CO2 increasing, worthy of study. But the temps have stopped increasing.

 

[Tonington]

As has already been pointed out on numerous occasions, the temperature increases responsible for CO2 increases predates by at least 800 years. Good question, why is CO2 increasing, worthy of study. But the temps have stopped increasing.

And that is irrelevant, as that pattern has no similarity to the conditions experienced now. Those proxy records show how feedback loops work. The global mean temperature is not a predictor of human emissions.

 

[Extrafire]

The global mean temperature is not a predictor of human emissions.

Quite true. But human emissions do not have more than minuscule effect on global mean temperatures either.

 

[Tonington]

Can you quantify that remark?

 

[Extrafire]

Yeah, but we've been through all that already. Let's not do it again.

 

[Walter]

Thursday, November 29, 2007
Carbon Emissions Don’t Cause Global Warming
Guest Blog by David Evans, Science Speak
Our scientific understanding of global warming has gone through three stages:
1. 1985 – 2003. Old ice core data led us strongly suspect that CO2 causes global warming.
2. 2003 – 2007. New ice core data eliminated previous reason for suspecting CO2. No evidence to suspect or exonerate CO2.
3. From Aug 2007: Know for sure that greenhouse is not causing global warming. CO2 no longer a suspect.
The paper discusses how the ice core changes, missing greenhouse signature in the real data and the recent waning of the warming all suggest that carbon emissions are not behind the changes we have experienced in recent decades.

See larger image here.
The IPCC 2007 report (the latest and greatest from the IPCC) is based on all scientific literature up to mid 2006. The Bali Conference is the bureaucratic response to that report. Too bad that the data has changed since then! See the full paper here.
David Evans, a mathematician, and a computer and electrical engineer, is head of Science Speak. David is also a former believer in man-made warming who converted to skeptic.

 

[Tonington]

I love it when they call something which didn't go through peer review a paper. Even better when their graph is made by junkscience.com.

 

[Walter]

November 30, 2007
Cdns should brace for coldest winter in almost 15 years: forecast

By Michael Oliveira, THE CANADIAN PRESS

TORONTO - After years of warmer-than-normal winters that spurred constant talk of global warming, winter this year is expected to be the coldest in almost 15 years and should remind everyone of what real Canadian cold feels like, Environment Canada said Friday.
With the exception of only small pockets of northern Canada and southwestern Ontario, this December through February is forecast to be one of the harshest winters in recent memory across the country, said senior climatologist David Phillips.
"It is somewhat remarkable that we're seeing the same situation from coast to coast to almost coast - from Vancouver Island to Bonavista, Nfld., we're showing the country as being colder than normal," Phillips said.
"The last time Canada had a significantly cold winter was back in 1994, more than a decade ago, and this may very well rival that one in terms of coldness."
1994 started with a bang of winter weather and Canadians across the country shivered through temperatures as cold as -42C - and that was before factoring in the wind chill.
Environment Canada's forecast for precipitation suggests much of the country is due for normal amounts of snow, although some cities could get more than usual, including Calgary, Regina and Toronto, which infamously called in the army in January 1999 to deal with a heavy snowfall.
The precipitation forecasts are less reliable, but Phillips said a colder winter would likely result in a lot of white Christmases across the country - defined as two centimetres of snow on the ground at 7 a.m. on Christmas Day.
Even if the forecasts don't hold true, Phillips said the weather will almost certainly be worse than the last couple years for much of the country.
Last year, a number of traditionally cold and snow-covered cities like Quebec City, Ottawa and Timmins, Ont., had a green Christmas for the first time in decades.
And places like Moncton, all of Prince Edward Island and Toronto had only two-thirds of their normal snowfall.
If there is a bright side to the gloomy forecast that most Canadians will probably curse, it's that snow and cold in the winter is good for the economy, Phillips said.
When Canadians see snow outside their windows they'll likely get into the Christmas spirit and start shopping, he said. And others will see the snow and make immediate plans to head south.
"I always think it's good for the economy when weather is behaving like it should, when winters are cold and summers are hot," Phillips said.
"With the Canadian dollar the way it is and with this colder than normal weather, it very well may be that the busiest people in the country are travel agents."
Phillips said the forecast for cold weather is being triggered in part by La Nina, a period of lower than normal temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.

 

[Walter]

See below.

 

[Walter]

"Climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia report that observed patterns of temperature changes (‘fingerprints’) over the last thirty years are not in accord with what greenhouse models predict and can better be explained by natural factors, such as solar variability. Therefore, climate change is ‘unstoppable’ and cannot be affected or modified by controlling the emission of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, as is proposed in current legislation.

These results are in conflict with the conclusions of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and also with some recent research publications based on essentially the same data. However, they are supported by the results of the US-sponsored Climate Change Science Program (CCSP).

The report is published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society [DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651]. The authors are Prof. David H. Douglass (Univ. of Rochester), Prof. John R. Christy (Univ. of Alabama), Benjamin D. Pearson (graduate student), and Prof. S. Fred Singer (Univ. of Virginia).

The fundamental question is whether the observed warming is natural or anthropogenic (human-caused). Lead author David Douglass said: “The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming.”

Co-author John Christy said: “Satellite data and independent balloon data agree that atmospheric warming trends do not exceed those of the surface. Greenhouse models, on the other hand, demand that atmospheric trend values be 2-3 times greater. We have good reason, therefore, to believe that current climate models greatly overestimate the effects of greenhouse gases. Satellite observations suggest that GH models ignore negative feedbacks, produced by clouds and by water vapor, that diminish the warming effects of carbon dioxide.”

Co-author S. Fred Singer said: “The current warming trend is simply part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that has been seen in ice cores, deep-sea sediments, stalagmites, etc., and published in hundreds of papers in peer-reviewed journals. The mechanism for producing such cyclical climate changes is still under discussion; but they are most likely caused by variations in the solar wind and associated magnetic fields that affect the flux of cosmic rays incident on the earth’s atmosphere. In turn, such cosmic rays are believed to influence cloudiness and thereby control the amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface—and thus the climate.” Our research demonstrates that the ongoing rise of atmospheric CO2 has only a minor influence on climate change. We must conclude, therefore, that attempts to control CO2 emissions are ineffective and pointless. – but very costly." (Press Release)

 

[MikeyDB]

Oh wonderful....Fred Singer a paid mouthpiece who will say anything for the right money...

Fred Singer

http://www.te-software.co.nz/blog/jester.htm
You trust this man Walter.....demonstrates something about your critical thinking.

 

[darkbeaver]

Is that Fred Tobacco Singer? Or am I confused? I am confused. But am I confused about Fred?