Hurricane-force winds tilt slabs of ice, allowing the water beneath to freeze and forming the intriguing icy scales shown here, called “dragon skin” by the poetic. This striking image in a recent story caught my attention and I couldn’t resist adding it. Though I wish we could see the scale of the scales.
Scientists have captured drone footage of sea ice called dragon skin, formed by hurricane-force winds.
Hobart scientist Guy Williams said: “Dragon skin ice is very rare, bizarre, evidence of a darker chaos in the cryospheric realm, not seen in Antarctica since 2007.” So colourful: a “darker chaos.” Wow, I’m impressed. And uneasy. Surely this is caused by man-made climate change.
They say dragon skin sea ice is “rarely seen,” but two paragraphs before that they said the current expedition is unusual “because most Antarctic research trips take place in the summer.”
Which says it all, really. In the summer you don’t see much of winter phenomena, such as hurricane-force winds. So if they visited more often in the winter, perhaps they’d see a bit more dragon skin sea ice.
But this journalist doesn’t inquire. It’s stunning that she doesn’t spot a likely cause of this apparently rare climatic event, but it’s disgraceful that the scientists fail to mention it, since it’s hard to believe they failed to notice it. They spend all their time looking everywhere for causes.
It’s easy to imagine them busily constructing intriguing descriptions of this form of sea ice (“very rare, bizarre, a darker chaos”) that would feed fossil fuel fear and therefore fuel further funding. Which means an F for alliteration.
This story comes courtesy of my friend Warwick Hughes at Errors in IPCC climate science. He wonders whether the scientists might force a connection with climate change, and fair enough, as they’ve forced some unlikely correlations in the past. I suggest it’s highly likely so long as it’s rewarded with funding.
The warmsters have developed a liking for distortion to draw a connection with the man-made climate change hypothesis, but a similar bent is spreading through scientific ranks in general. There’s a growing cynicism that gives an unpretentious quest for truth two fingers of scorn and shoulders its way to the trough. Witness Mann’s unedifying performance in the House committee hearing last month.
But then, watch Judith Curry, Roger Pielke Jr and John Christy (AND THE REST OF US!) defend science.
I feel a spark of hope, although it fades as it ignites.
PS: Forgot to say that if you write you really ought to think.
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Slightly aligned to such pathetic journalism was another example of “Dreaver’s Dribble,” on TV 1 news last night. An item came on expounding the fact that an unprecedented May Tropical Cyclone had formed in the Coral Sea near Noumea. Tropics reporter Barbara Dreaver babbled on for awhile in her usual excited fashion, and just when I thought that we weren’t going to hear the words, “climate change,” from her, she snuck it in at the end claiming that this was most likely due to that phenomenon. If she would get off her butt and do some research she would find that TC intensity in the southern hemisphere is down to an all time low according to those scientists that study these things! Can we also blame mankind for that? If so, who cares about a category 5 cyclone in May (apart from those being directly affected by it)? Calendar months are a human construct that nature is not bound by. How do we know that TC’s in May weren’t more common in the unrecorded past?
Thanks, Ian, you make some good points. Of course these May typhoons have occurred before. I spoke with Dreaver a few years ago to tell her Pacific atolls were in no danger of sinking, having already survived the end of the Ice Age. Her response was to ask if I was insane. I thought not and still think so. But there’s no denying she’s relentless.
My Dad used to say, before his mortal coil departure, “How do I know what I think until I hear what I say?” I guess his meme was similar to yours, and a similar wonderment at the formation of ideas as the alluded quote, “I think therefore I am.” As for Dragon Skin Ice – good call RT! Like so many alarms that are pronounced by the trough-seekers, yet another case of first or second observation equals an alarming trend. If you haven’t been there much during the winter your observational record is found wanting. Innit?
BTW, Loved the F alliteration!
I too noticed the sneaky inference to ‘Climate Change’ on TV1 weather on May 9 in reference to the Tropical Cyclone Donna. A Category 4 storm. I was a little incensed by the statement blurted out at the end to the effect that ‘some scientists’ think this ‘may be related’ to ‘climate change’. I was half expecting it as I was saying to my partner “wait for it…. wait for it….”, then BINGO! The money shot. I imagined the unthinking masses, massaged into stupor by the incessant global warming (rebranded climate change) mantra that pricks the conscience as they pump the gas pedals in their filthy petrol and diesel crossovers. But I take heart in the knowledge that nature will prevail. Solar minima are collapsing the Anthropogenic Climate Change hoax as I write. Cooler climate and cooler heads will prevail and $trillions will be spared and made available for addressing real issues. Or… the massive climate change machine (the carbon criminal enterprise) has a plan C and we’re all screwed.
Haha. Good comments. I’m hoping we’ve got a Plan C. I mean to say the telling point isn’t that we are right, for we’re right enough, it’s that we persuade, and that’s the hard part. I just watched a video of Christopher Monckton on this very point as he constructed a mathematical description of the IPCC’s mistaken calculation of climate sensitivity after explaining that mathematical proofs are universal (i.e., independent of political leanings, because they’re above opinion) and irrefutable, because they’re based on mathematical principles.