An that was an argument from ignorance from FX.
The reality is that scientists that contributed to the IPCC had been punting regarding the suspected acceleration of the ice loss, **because there was no hard evidence for that.
**
The ocean rise and other effects were understated and the predictions set to very conservative levels, the latest data just told us that those conservative levels are not what we should expect.
Sure, the alarmists may think such strange things, but that strawman isn’t what we’re talking about here. We’re considering the observations and published, peer-reviewed science from the scientific community.
Of course if FX would look at what NASA/GISS is reporting he would be aware that the evidence shows that the area in question of the Antarctic has increased in temperature for the last 50 years.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20090121/
Notice that back then in 2009 the implication that the glaciers would accelerate in that region was not pressed on, for the simple reason that we needed to wait for the researchers to find out if that was the case.
As even the few contrarian scientists admitted in an amusing video from Climate Crocks, you can not ignore thermometers, and this is even more so when we are talking about the natural thermometers: the glaciers and ice caps.
The very limited GISS data shows a cooling trend for the summer there. While the winter warming there seems extreme, you have to remember that means that the average temperature is -40 instead of -50 degrees. The ice isn’t melting, it’s that the glacier is surging forward, the ice from the interior is pushing it. The cold season at the south pole does not show drastic warming, and looking at the map you can see how little data there is from land based stations. GISS data also shows that the twenty year trend shows cooling of the ocean in the area they are trying to freak out over.
The satellite data shows a long term cooling trend for the entire pole.
One picture from 2008 is not scientific data. Glaciers and ice sheets always are calving, unless the snow stops falling on them.
Taking one event, or a short time period, and trying to say the entire ice sheet will be gone in a decade or two is insanity.
Good thing I linked to other evidence, FX just will ignore what it is not convenient.
Which is why the scientists who produced the study didn’t take one event or a short time period…
Even if you cherry pick the start date, as always happens when somebody is trying to sell you on “drastic climate change”, and use the 50 year trend, starting with the coldest period in modern history, you still get a cooling of the ocean in the area they are talking about.
Let’s make this clear and obvious. The 50 year GISS data shows a cooling of the ocean around Antarctica.
If there was a warming trend for the southern ocean polar regions, you can be sure that would be in the story. There’s a reason the sea ice is increasing around Antarctica.
Let’s make this clear and obvious: your favorite cherry-picked spatial-distribution map shows no such thing as you claim, and your claims are contradicted by the research: Increasing Antarctic Sea Ice under Warming Atmospheric and Oceanic Conditions, and even a paper from the skeptic Judith Curry: Accelerated warming of the Southern Ocean and its impacts on the hydrological cycle and sea ice.
Yeah, I’ve mentioned the reasons at least three times now, and so do the papers above. The rapid melt of the Antarctic ice sheet is ironically a contributing factor to the current growth of seasonal sea ice because of the freshwater outflows. It must be discouraging for you to be so consistently wrong about this subject!
It is clear and obvious that FX is avoiding the areas that do show the heat, the maps he is looking at are indeed the oceans, but not the areas that we are discussing about, and even in the few spots the maps he is looking at the warming is there, as it was shown in the previous link I made.
Pathetic.
It’s not a claim to look at the GISS data and point out that it shows cooling around Antarctica. Maybe you see something else. Which is pretty strange, but it can happen.
NH cold season, which is the southern pole warm season
NH warm season, which is the SH cold season
Note how the zonal mean graph clearly shows the cooling trend
Note how the map misses the heat reported by the linked research. Cherry picking with no understanding indeed.
I avoided using the recent data, but looking at the 2002-present trends is yet another reason to be skeptical of claims made my politicians and activists, and stick to science.
Note the extreme cooling trend, the zonal map shows it clearly. But even the global ocean mean is cooling.
NH warm season
-.02 C
NH cold season
-.08 C
Which isn’t what we have been hearing should be happening, if CO2 is the primary forcing of global temperatures. CO2 levels have increased a lot, just as the global mean has started to drop.
Either the global temp is climbing, as the IPCC and global warming enthusiasts have been claiming it would, or it isn’t. If it’s not climbing, the IPCC and friends have a credibility with the public.
It is as NASA/GISS and virtually all scientific organizations reports.
Piffle, as the latest evidence shows, the natural thermometers are also telling us that the temperature is climbing. It is the ones that claimed that we should not had worried about the acceleration of the ice loss the ones that should not get any support.
There you go again with your belief in facts and measurements and knowing what is happening. You make it seem like a matter of measuring and facts, rather than models and assumptions. Haha that is joke. Of course it *should *be a matter of fact, but so rarely is.
The ocean around Antarctica is actually quite the conundrum, so much that dozens of papers/studies/hypothesis/reasons have been proposed to explain why the south pole isn’t warming as it was supposed to.For example, a paper from 2006 that wolfpup wants us to believe in.
Since I am a skeptic, and you can actually check things for youself these days, I went and looked. The paper is proposing a mechanism to say that warming is causing the increase in sea ice. That idea is long abandoned, something wolfpup seems to not know. From the paper
I looked at the trend from 1949-1998, the period used by Jacka and Budd 1998, and it shows warming of the southern ocean. It also shows cooling of the north Atlantic, and parts of the Pacific.
But when I looked at the last 50 years, 1964-2013, it shows the cooling around Antarctica, which matches what more recent studies are talking about. Sea ice does not increase because it’s getting warmer. Sorry, but the laws of physics do not change because some people don’t like the facts. It’s another reason why you should never get your science from blogs. Scientific data shows the cooling trend there.
You can also use this link but you have to select the south pole yourself, can’t link to it. Looking at the lower stratosphere (TLS) shows cooling there as well, which leads us to the more current idea, that cooling from ozone loss, combined with an increased polar vortex has led to the cooling, for multiple reasons.
I disagree. The almost complete lack of data for such a massive ice sheet/glacier means we have almost no data at all about it.
It’s scare tactics, and it’s seeming more and more the alarmist mentality is seeking something other than warming to alarm people over.
And yet he is so sure about this not being a problem.
What the tactics here are only related to just arguments from ignorance, not a single item in his post dealt with the question if globally the earth is warming.
I’m not clear on what’s been said already that suggest the use of the term “is collapsing” is anything but a marketing exaggeration to the average person reading about the issue. But then perhaps I’m too skeptical of the Weekly World News approach to headlining.
From your terrifying article:
“Julian Scott of the BAS said that the Pine Island Glacier was accelerating 1% per year during the 1990’s, but last season that figure was up to 7%. What could be the reasons for this? The scientists think a lack of sea ice in that particular region is allowing a warmer, deep ocean current to undercut the glacier and lubricate its flow toward the sea. There is also evidence of a volcano that erupted through the ice about 2,000 years ago and the whole region could be volcanically active, releasing geothermal heat to melt the base of the ice and help its slide towards the sea, according to Scott. However, they do not feel that this is a result of the warming of the surrounding air.”
I’ll remind you that in the “collapsing” article from you the comment is made that Antartic sea ice was increasing; the concern was the glacier collapsing (by which they mean, melting in a few hundred years or more).
As to pictures showing “massive glacial calving” I’d just say that pictures are not a good way to do science. I’ve seen many pictures of the world burning up attached to AGW headlines; they just don’t use the same pictures when they are explaining the Polar Vortex which turned out to cause the coldest winter on record in much of North America. Pictures of destructive hurricanes are also very useful unless you are explaining the calmest hurricane season in decades for the North Atlantic.
I’m not debating the fundamental science. But the idea that the hoopla around this issue also belongs in the category of science is ridiculous. Our human nature is to be part of great causes, and be caught up in paradigms which color everything we do and how we present it, in support of making the cause greater.
Alarmist Headline: **Huge Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapsing.
**Body: This may take a few hundred years, is unstoppable, and may be related to AGW which has changed the winds and warmed the water. By the way, sea ice just reached record levels.
Denialist Headline: Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches Record Levels
Body: The huge East Antarctic ice sheet is very stable. By the way, there is evidence that the West ice sheet may melt eventually, although it will take hundreds of years. Increased geothermal activity is among the potential culprits.
General Doomer Headline: Burgeoning Human Population Renders AGW Moot.
Body: There are so many people on the earth that higher CO2 levels are unstoppable. By the way, feeding and housing them Right Now will consume the earth much faster than will any adverse future effects on climate. By the way, comets and earthquakes are likely Real Soon Now.
…ok…sorry about the last one.
But we don’t tend to get perspectives right once we get our blinders on for our particular great cause. The other guy’s spokesperson is out nutcase and our spokesperson is obviously an unbiased reputable source.
Well, sorta rapid, right?
Modeled to be hundreds of years at the current increased rate…
“Rapid” on a geological time scale.
Once you decide the fundamental problem is AGW, you can retrofit any and every event into that paradigm. I’m curious which model predicted the record sea ice levels before they happened. If they didn’t, I’m curious why a post-event explanation is now so persuasive, and why failure of past modeling to predict it does not give pause as to how good are models are for what will actually happen.
And I’m curious if you would have been inclined to scold a denier who 5 years ago might have insisted the sea ice would soon reach record levels.
None of this means the AGW paradigm is wrong. It does mean that once we establish a paradigm it’s nearly impossible to have a truly objective approach.
The thermometer in your backyard should be telling you that the temperature is climbing but I suspect that is because it’s Spring heading into Summer.
CO2 is up and the global temp has plateaued. You consider that to be solid evidence that the global temp may/might/maybe increase in the future. I don’t. If the IPCC supporters want to change the status quo of energy production and regulate all manufacturing, then they will have to provide convincing proof that their speculations are something more than speculations.
The point stands, the spokesperson that told us nothing was going to go wrong because Ice was increasing got it wrong. “nutcase” is reserved when those sources ignore all the costs that now will have to be added to the protection of coastal cities, cropland and massive movement of people.
