Ice loss in Greenland has had some climatologists speculating that global warming might have brought on a scary new regime of wildly heightened ice loss and an ever-faster rise in sea level. But glaciologists reported at the American Geophysical Union meeting that Greenland ice’s Armageddon has come to an end.
New paper shows ‘dramatic slow down of ice loss in southeast Greenland’
A paper published online yesterday in the Journal of Geophysical Research finds “the loss rate in southeast Greenland for the more recent period has become almost negligible, down from 109 ± 28 Gt/yr of just a few years ago. The rapid change in the nature of the regional ice mass in southeast and northwest Greenland, in the course of only several years, further reinforces the idea that the Greenland ice sheet mass balance is very vulnerable to regional climate conditions.” Global warming allegedly due to greenhouse gases would not be expected to cause such regional interannual variability in Greenland ice loss, thus pointing to shifts in weather instead.
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 116, B07406, 11 PP., 2011
Interannual variability of Greenland ice losses from satellite gravimetry
Key Points:
This study shows dramatic slow down of ice loss in southeast Greenland
Glaciers in northwest Greenland dominate the ice loss since 2007
Greenland ice mass shows significant interannual variability
Himalayan Glaciers Stable Since 1992 Despite Large Human CO2 Emissions, Scientists Determine
Read here. The IPCC “consensus” science and global warming alarmists stated that Himalayan glaciers are melting at an accelerating rate and predicted their demise from CO2-induced warming would be soon. A recent peer-reviewed study finds that large glaciers in the northwest Himalayas are not experiencing accelerated warming, thus they won’t be disappearing as predicted.
“Working in the Nanga Parbat region of northern Pakistan…used a multi-temporal/multi-scale approach based on historical data, repeat photography and satellite imagery to develop a 70-year history of the behavior of that region’s Raikot Glacier…two German scientists report that visual comparison of repeat photography indicates “relatively small rates of recession and surface changes over the last seven decades,” and they say that “in the 1994 image, no significant retreat of the glacier margin can be detected in comparison with 1985.”…they report that “glacier fluctuations over the past 70 years are characterized by retreat between the 1930s and 1950s, a marked advance between the 1950s and 1980s, and a relatively stable situation after 1992,” adding that “a general trend of reduced glacier thickness does not appear significant over the whole observation period.”” [Susanne Schmidt, Marcus Nusser 2009: Journal of Glaciology]
They can spin it every which way, does not dare hide the finding that the world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade.
The work comes from a survey all the world’s icecaps and glaciers, made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall. And from this, it has been found that the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less then previously estimated. Furthermore, the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy.
Yet the claim that the Himalayan glaciers were about to disappear was at the heart of Glaciergate, and the “Voodoo Science” jibe by Rajendra Pachauri.
One of the riddles which is puzzling geologists all over the world is the continuous retreat of the ice glaciers. Does this phenomenon indicate that the sun is getting hotter as some astronomers believe or is it dependent upon comparatively unimportant changes in the earth’s atmosphere ?
Consideration such as these were discussed by Professor R. Speight, formerly professor of geology at Canterbury College, Christchurch, New Zealand and now curator of the Canterbury Museum. In his presidential address to the geology section of the Science Congress today. His subject was “Some Aspects of Glaciation in New Zealand.”
The steady retreat of the glaciers in New Zealand he said had been observed during the last 70 years. Photographs taken in 1896 and 1935 showed that several glaciers had retreated distances varying from 100 yards to half a mile in 40 years
WORLD-WIDE PHENOMENON
The phenomenon, however, was world-wide. Equally impressive records were obtainable from Switzerland, Scandinavia, Iceland and the United States. Attempts had been made to reconcile these observations with the Bruckner cycle of climate change every 16 years. Pro-fessor Speight said, but so many discrepan- cies occurred that in his opinion precise synchronisation with that period could not be accepted.
In Alaska glaciers had been retreating from 100 to 200 years, the average rate of recession being about 50 feet a year. The Antarctic ice-sheet also showed signs of recent retreat.
“In fact,” said Professor Speight, “no case is recorded of a region of the world in which there are present signs of an advance. This is quite apart from the general retreat since the pleistocene age and may be merely a pacing phase. Its precise significance can only be determined by continued observation.”
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Some of Greenland’s glaciers are moving about 30 percent faster than they did 10 years ago, contributing to rising global sea levels, but that still may not be enough to reach the most extreme projections for 2100, scientists reported on Thursday.
… “Two meters is really kind of a worst case,” Moon said. “Now we have the luxury of a little bit more time and being able to actually look at the observations from the last 10 years. At this point it doesn’t look like there’s any evidence for the worst-case scenario.”
A low projection of 8 inches is within reach, the researchers found,
‘Glacier covered with blankets to reduce summer ice-melt’
Photoblog by David R Arnott, NBC News
People living near the Rhone glacier in the central Alps of Switzerland have come up with a striking tactic to counter the effects of climate change. Each summer the glacier is protected by blankets to keep ice melt to a minimum, the European Pressphoto Agency reports.
The grant will fund initiatives including a research fellowship on ice sheets and sea level to improve understanding of how ice sheets are likely to contribute to rising sea levels and the potential effect this could have in the southwest Pacific region.
Morgan said while studying the climate change debate it was clear that good scientific research was critical to ongoing understanding of the global warming issue and its risks.
The grant from his family’s charitable foundation will advance the contribution from the ARC research projects, which focus on understanding Antarctica’s climate history and processes, and their influence on the global climate system.
“Given the estimates of anthropogenic contributions to climate change remain subject to some uncertainty, and given that policy responses cannot wait until we have absolute certainty, it is imperative that the science continues to narrow it down to minimise the chances of inappropriate and costly policy responses,” Morgan said.
We have been hearing a lot about how the decline in Arctic ice is following the “steepest slope ever.” The point is largely meaningless, but we can have some fun with it. The Bremen Arctic/Antarctic maps are superimposed above, showing that ice in the Antarctic is at a record high and growing at the “steepest slope ever.” You will also note that most of the world’s sea ice is located in the Antarctic. But those are inconvenient truths when trying to frighten people into believing that “the polar ice caps are melting.”
NIWA looks below Antarctic ice shelves to investigate the polar ocean system with a new high-tech probe.
NIWAs new Ice Tethered Profiler (ITP) places NIWA at the forefront of polar oceanography. It gives NIWA, and international scientists, insight into the interaction between the ocean, Antarcticas sea ice, and ice shelves thereby unlocking mysteries in Antarctic polar oceanography.
NIWA transported the ITP to Antarctica. It was deployed by NIWA scientist Craig Stewart, and IRLs Tim Haskell. The very first set of data from below the ice was sent via satellite on 19 November 2010.
It will provide NIWA with the first-ever year-round data set of what is happening beneath the ice in McMurdo Sound. The ITP collects temperature and salinity profiles. This information is relayed in real-time, via satellite, to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute website.
This will lead to a better understanding of the interactions between the ice sheet, the oceans, and what contribution this is making to sea-level rise. We are trying to understand how the ice shelf interaction is changing over time, says NIWA oceanographer, Dr Mike Williams.
Peer-Reviewed Study By Amateurs Trumps Bogus Antarctic Temperature Study By The “Experts”
Read here and here. Gotta love that headline. Amateurs taking it to the “experts” and then winning – very cool, in a non-temperature sort of way.
A group of interested individuals (amateur climate enthusiasts) took serious issue with the mathematical/statistical techniques used by climate-scientists to reconstruct Antarctic temperatures in a 2009 peer-reviewed study. As it turns out, this group of amateurs were better versed in proper mathematical/statistical analysis than the experts, and they brought that specific expertise to bear on the 2009 temperature reconstruction study. Objectively, even AGW alarmists are praising their work!
The result of this new peer-reviewed study? The Antarctic climate is not this monolithic warming environment that the IPCC Climategate “experts” attempted to portray to the politicians and taxpayers in the 2009 study. Instead, like all other large regions of the globe, Antarctica exhibits areas of warming, cooling and temperature stability. [Ryan O’Donnell, Nicholas Lewis, Steve McIntyre, Jeff Condon (2010)]
Based on this new analysis (O’Donnell et al.), modern temperature trends are no threat to the continent-sized ice sheets. Antarctica is soooo cold, a half-degree per decade, either way, is of zero significance.
New scientific research shows that massive ice sheets in Antarctica do not just grow on top when snow falls, they also grow from the bottom up.
Ice melts at the bottom of ice sheets, and the water helps the sheets slide across the ground below. But the water can refreeze to the bottom of the sheets and push them up, the researchers report on Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science.
The base of a massive ice plateau on the East Antarctic ice sheet called Dome A is about 24 per cent refrozen water, according to the team headed by Robin Bell, a geophysicist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
“The ice sheets are not simple layer cake structures. Water moves around underneath the ice sheet and deforms” it, Bell explained.
Cracking ice shelves make headlines, but ice loss estimates that are revised downwards don’t. While there is great hand wringing over coastal ice loss in Greenland and the West Antarctic Peninsula, East Antarctica has more than eight times the ice mass of either.
Last week’s Science magazine had a News Focus article on estimates of ice loss in Antarctica. It quietly discussed a paper published in May by two NASA scientists:
H. Jay Zwally & Mario B. Giovinetto (2011) Overview and Assessment of Antarctic Ice-Sheet Mass Balance Estimates: 1992– 2009. Surv Geophys DOI 10.1007/s10712-011-9123-5 (note this is Open Access)
[…]
“Mass balance estimates for the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and in more recent reports lie between approximately +50 to -250 Gt/year for 1992 to 2009. The 300 Gt/year range is approximately 15% of the annual mass input and 0.8 mm/year Sea Level Equivalent (SLE).”
[…]
Their reanalysis provides much lower estimates of net change in ice, ranging from +27 to -40 billion tons per year. For 1992 – 2001 they are prepared to go even further, estimating a loss of only 31 billion tons per year. These still sound like huge numbers, but to put it in perspective, 2400 billion tons of snow falls in Antarctica each year, so we’re dealing with a gain or loss in the range +1.1 to -1.7%.
Antarctica sea ice shows accelerating increase over past 30 years
A paper published last month in the journal Climate Dynamics finds that “The Antarctic sea ice extent (SIE) shows an increased trend during 1979–2009, with a trend rate of 1.36 ± 0.43% per decade. Ensemble empirical mode decomposition analysis shows that the rate of the increased trend has been accelerating in the past decade.”
Sea ice trends in the Antarctic and their relationship to surface air temperature during 1979–2009
‘Spiegel Surprised By “Amazingly Robust”, Record Antarctic Sea Ice – NASA’s Walt Meier Bewildered, Can Only Speculate’
By P Gosselin
[…]
Spiegel writes “when ice in the north and south pole are discussed, then it’s usually about melting caused by global warming. However, sea ice in the Antarctic, contrary to the Arctic, has proven to be amazingly robust.” Spiegel can hardly conceal its disbelief.
One scientist who is scrambling and who is visibly baffled is meteorologist Walt Meier, who seems irritated by the new puzzling Antarctic sea ice record – the second in 2 years. In the Spiegel report, he attempts to play it all down by claiming that the record amount is “only 3.6% over the 1981-2010 mean“. Meier adds: “This year the edge of the ice extends out only 35 kilometers further than an average year.”
That is a pretty impressive picture (from Climate Depot).
Some of the ice extends for 1500km from sea to land, and it encompasses the entire continent including the west Antarctic peninsula
I met a guy skiing this winter who was going for a ski touring trip down there. (His first ski touring trip!) Not in the winter, we presume
Background
A long succession of climate models has consistently suggested that anthropogenic-induced global warming should be significantly amplified in earth’s polar regions and, therefore, that the first signs of man’s expected impact on the world’s weather should be manifest in that part of the planet; or as Donella Meadows (2001) has described it, “the place to watch for global warming — the sensitive point, the canary in the coal mine — is the Arctic.” So let’s see what those who have looked for human-induced warming in the Arctic have found there.
What was done
Going to one of the most recent and substantial of such efforts, we encounter the paper of White et al. (2010), who produced a comprehensive review — and thoughtful analysis — of past climate change in earth’s north polar region, which was published in Quaternary Science Reviews.
What was learned
The nine researchers begin by describing how “processes linked with continental drift have affected atmospheric circulation, ocean currents, and the composition of the atmosphere over tens of millions of years,” and that “a global cooling trend over the last 60 million years has altered conditions near sea level in the Arctic from ice-free year-round to completely ice covered.” They also report that “variations in arctic insolation over tens of thousands of years in response to orbital forcing have caused regular cycles of warming and cooling that were roughly half the size of the continental-drift-linked changes,” and that, in turn, this glacial-interglacial cycling “was punctuated by abrupt millennial oscillations, which near the North Atlantic were roughly half as large as the glacial-interglacial cycles.” Last of all, they note that “the current interglacial, the Holocene, has been influenced by brief cooling events from single volcanic eruptions, slower but longer lasting changes from random fluctuations in the frequency of volcanic eruptions, from weak solar variability, and perhaps by other classes of events.”
What it means
In comparing the vast array of past climate changes in the Arctic with what climate alarmists claim to be the “unprecedented” anthropogenic-induced warming of the past several decades, White et al. conclude that “thus far, human influence does not stand out relative to other, natural causes of climate change.” In fact, they state that the data “clearly show” that “strong natural variability has been characteristic of the Arctic at all time scales considered,” and they reiterate that the data suggest “that the human influence on rate and size of climate change thus far does not stand out strongly from other causes of climate change.”
The ice is up to 30cm (12 inches) thick in some places, according to the Russian news agency Itar-Tass.
Signals are reported to have been received from a fishing boat and a research vessel which are in the greatest distress, stuck in the ice about 12 miles (19km) from the coast.
The temperature in the area is -22C, according to Itar-Tass, and forecasts suggest it will fall even lower.
70 trillion cubic feet of ice have been added to the Arctic core since January 2009. That translates to 2000 cubic km – enough to cover Manhattan with 20 miles of ice (or 32,000 Manhattans with 1 meter of ice).
When your former prime minister goes public and declares that the government should buy a new icebreaker, then you’re not talking about Britain – yet. This is former prime minister and industrialist Tiit Vähi, who comes from Estonia. He believes that the state should urgently order a new icebreaker, “Instead of spending money on buying icebreaking services.”
[snip]
But, what is so much fun here is that, long term-investment is being considered necessary, for what is obviously been seen as an ongoing problem, and the ice is expected to freeze over even more than 1987. Yet EU funded researchers, with €22 million of research grants, are claiming that “the sea surface temperature of the Baltic Sea was warmer in the past”.
Professor Aarno Kotilainen at the Geological Survey of Finland says: “Some estimates suggest that climate change in the Baltic Sea area causes sea surface temperatures to rise, increased winds and shortened ice-cover season.” Perhaps he should be looking out the window a little more often.
The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes.
Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic , while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.
Not Even In The Same Ballpark
Posted on September 15, 2011 by Steven Goddard
Green is 2011 ice not present in 2007. Red is the opposite. Pixel counting shows 15% more ice in 2011 than 2007. Bremen shows 2011 and 2007 essentially identical today. Should I laugh, or cry?
Not only is ice extent the highest in seven years, but the ice is getting thicker and is positioned exactly where alarmists don’t want it to be. The map above shows 1.5 metre+ ice vs the same date in 2011. The thick ice has shifted towards the west into the Chukchi Sea, where it will slow summer melt.
Combine that with sea surface temperatures in the Bering Sea which are far below normal, and our chicken little friends are looking at a very bad summer.
I’d been wondering about this, storm-driven record SIE loss means there’s the opposite possibility following of record SIE growth in better conditions – sure enough.
Gareth Renowden attributes Arctic summer sea ice melt to the sun:
“It might take a few months for the drama to unfold, but drama it most certainly is. The future of the planet is being written in the Arctic Ocean by the sun and the warming waters, and we get to watch.”
The warmists are starting to get all emotional over the lack of Arctic ice this summer. Here is a comprehensive article which should ‘cool’ their warm little brains:
Excerpt:
‘Graphs conveniently start in 1979 — peak ice year of last century…Arctic sea ice extent was much lower prior to 1979’ — ‘In 1990, IPCC published graph based on NOAA data. It shows Arctic ice extent in 1974 was almost 2 million km^2 less than 1979. 1974 Arctic ice coverage was similar to current coverage, which is also about 2 million km^2 less than 1979…CIA published document in 1974,which tell us prior to 1974, Arctic ice coverage was an additional 10% lower. Deducting another 10% puts us back to about 2007 levels of ice. If IPCC, NOAA and CIA know about this, why is the information being obfuscated?’
The ozone hole over the Antarctic could be to blame for changes in the breeding patterns of Ross Sea adelie penguins.
United States ecologist David Ainley and Landcare Research, Lincoln, ecologist Phil Lyver have been on the ice this summer studying the Ross Sea’s smallest and most abundant penguins.
Ainley, of HT Harvey and Associates in San Francisco, is the driving force behind efforts to make the Ross Sea a marine-protected area.
In Christchurch yesterday, on his way home from the Antarctic, he said adelie penguins were breeding later in their lives than in the past.
Comprehensive surveying of the birds at three Ross Sea sites – Cape Royds, Cape Bird and Cape Crozier – over 16 summers had showed some of their vital dates were changing
[…]
“The average age of first breeding has increased from around 4 to 5 years old to 6 to 7 years. It’s very interesting. My hypothesis is that it has to do with increasing amounts of sea ice in the Ross Sea region, which has been under way for the last 20 years or so because of the ozone hole.”
More ice meant the penguins ended up drifting further away from their traditional breeding grounds, Ainley said.
“During the winter, the birds are finding themselves further and further north, so in spring they have to get back south.
‘Perihelion precession, polar ice and global warming’
Duncan Steel
The changing insolation theory (CIT) mooted herein is capable of explaining various
observed phenomena which the AGW hypothesis has not yet been able to accommodate.
Specifically, what has been observed and is pertinent here are the following:
1. A gradual rise in mean global temperature over the past two centuries;
2. Accelerating spring and summer melting of Arctic sea ice reaching an extent not
previously witnessed;
3. No substantial loss of Antarctic sea ice, and actually a small growth in its extent
(Shepherd et al. 2010; Parkinson and Cavalieri 2012);
4. The greatest rises in regional temperatures (and temperature variability) being at
high northern latitudes (Liu et al. 2007; Wu et al. 2011). […]
Forecasts of the 2013 sea ice minima [extract from Judith Curry post]
The Search Sea Ice Outlook is an international effort to provide a community-wide summary of the expected September arctic sea ice minimum. The average of all these forecasts for 2013 was 4.1 M sq km (compared to an average of 4.4 sq km for 2012).
One of the most sophisticated models used in seasonal sea ice forecasting is the UK Met Office model, which includes the state-of-the-art sea ice model used in climate model applications (CICE). The UKMO forecast (experimental) was for 3.36 M sq km +/- 1.5 M sq km, where the range is provided by an ensemble of simulations (compared to 4.4 +/- 0.9 M sq km for 2012).
As per Cryosphere Today, the current sea ice area is 4.746 M sq km. This is a whisker above the 2009 minimum, which is the highest minimum since 2007.
Scientist Julienne Stroeve has studied Arctic ice for decades. Every summer she travels to north to measure how much ice has melted. She knows that climate change is melting the ice fast, but on her last trip, she couldn’t believe what she saw. Vast areas of Arctic ice have disappeared, beyond our worst expectations.
This is what the experts warned us about. As the earth warms, it creates many “tipping points” that accelerate the warming out of control. Warming thaws the Arctic sea ice, destroying the giant white ‘mirror’ that reflects heat back into space, which massively heats up the ocean, and melts more ice, and so on. We spin out of control. Already this year — storms, temperatures — everything is off the charts.
We CAN stop this, if we act very fast, and all together. And out of this extinction nightmare, we can pull one of the most inspiring futures for our children and grandchildren. A clean, green future in balance with the earth that gave birth to us.
We have 30 months until the Paris Summit, the meeting that world leaders have decided will determine the fate of our efforts to fight climate change. It might seem like a long time – it’s not. We have 30 months to get the right leaders in power, get them to that meeting, give them a plan, and hold them accountable. And it’s us vs. the oil companies, and fatalism. We can win, we must, but we need to blast out of the starting gate with donations of just a few dollars/euros/pounds per week until the summit. For the world we dream of, let’s make it happen.
The expedition is being led by Chris Turney, “climate scientist”, who has “set up a carbon refining company called Carbonscape which has developed technology to fix carbon from the atmosphere and make a host of green bi-products, helping reduce greenhouse gas levels.” The purpose of the expedition is “to discover and communicate the environmental changes taking place in the south.”
‘Carbon Off-setting an Expedition to the Antarctic’
Posted by jennifer
CHRIS Turney is professor of climate change at the University of New South Wales. He recently set off on a 233-foot-long Russian-flagged ship with 70 or so colleagues to check-out the climate by following in the footsteps of famous explorer Douglas Mawson’s 1912 expedition to the Antarctic.
[…]
Since setting off, the ship has got stuck in ice. Three ice breaker ships have set-off to rescue it.
Should the fuel consumption of the three ice breakers also be included in Professor Turney’s carbon offset calculations?
Eighty three years ago today, Mawson was sailing along the Antarctic coast. In 2013, global warming nutcases trying to retrace Mawson’s route are hoping an icebreaker comes and saves them.
>”Not sure what research you can do stuck in a ship in the middle of ice”
Jennifer Marohasy (myself, Goddard, and many others I’m sure) had this thought:
“I’m also wondering what the Professor has discovered about climate change and the change in ice cover at the Antarctic since 1912 when Douglas Mawson ventured down there.”
I expressed dome hope at Jennifer’s that Turney would spend some of his bonus downtime thinking about this, now that he’s got the time, that he didn’t have before evidently.
“Some built snowmen, others had snowball fights. Perhaps because no one had seen any living plants for almost a month, someone built a snow tree. Inside the ship, the expedition doctor was leading a first-aid course, a Scrabble tournament was in full flow and one of the chefs had started giving groups of passengers rudimentary lessons in Russian.”
According to the AAE’s “Explorer’s Message” sea ice is “disappearing due to climate change” but “building up” where they are “here” (my bold):
ICE-STRANDED EXPLORERS’ MESSAGE:
A statement from the Australasian Antarctic Expedition:
We’re stuck in our own experiment. We came to Antarctica to study how one of the biggest icebergs in the world has altered the system by trapping ice. We followed Sir Douglas Mawson’s footsteps into Commonwealth Bay, and are now ourselves trapped by ice surrounding our ship.
Sea ice is disappearing due to climate change, but here ice is building up. We have found this has changed the system on many levels. The increase in sea ice has freshened the seawater below, so much so that you can almost drink it. This change will have impacts on the deep ocean circulation.
Underwater, forests of algae are dying as sea-ice blocks the light. Who can say what effects the regional circulation changes may have on the ice sheet of the Antarctic plateau, or whether the low number of seals suggests changes to their population.
Apparently sea ice measured in millions of square kilometres is a disappearance.
I notice too that “change” is applied to naturally occurring phenomena but attributed to “climate change” i.e. doublespeak conflating natural process with anthropogenic causation and hoping no-one will notice. The uninformed wont notice of course, to them, by now, after all the indoctrination, any climatic change has human causation.
Turney’s team is still in astonishing denial. It is stuck in thick ice off a continent that has more of it than usual, yet still it claims warming is melting more ice than ever:
“Sea ice is disappearing due to climate change, but here ice is building up.”
Become known variously as ‘Ship of Fools’ (Bolt, WUWT), elsewhere ‘Ship of Climate Fools’. And even The Australian editorial ‘Ship of (Cold) Fools’.
Only themselves to blame:
‘The cause of the Akademik Shokalskiy getting stuck in Antarctica – delay from sightseeing mishaps and dawdling by the passengers getting back on ship’
Blog of the Australian green politician on-board, Janet Rice:
“The third drama of the day is the one which is still unfolding. Because of the Argo mishap we got off late, and had one less vehicle to ferry people to and fro. I’m told the Captain was becoming rather definite late in the afternoon that we needed to get everyone back on board ASAP because of the coming weather and the ice closing in. As I write we are continuing to make extremely slow progress through what looks like a winter alpine snow field – it’s yet another surreal part of this journey that we are in a ship trying to barge our way through here!”
“I’m sure the Captain would have been much happier if we had got away a few hours earlier.”
“After experiencing the ship being surrounded by breakout ice on the 18th or 18th of December in just HALF AN HOUR, they stayed in that area, moved slightly up the coast and with an incoming blizzard and MORE ice on the way, they went onshore and forced the boat to wait for their return. THEN they got stuck.
For Chris Turney to then go on TELEVISION and act shocked that all this ice just mysteriously appeared and hemmed them in without any warning, is stunning. If the Captain gets sued for damages, I hope he takes every penny Chris Turney and the University of New South Wales will ever have in the future.”
Aphan fills in even further with an update below that – not good reading for the Turney spin.
‘Akademik Shokalskiy: were those careless risks in dangerous but foreseeable conditions?’
Guest post by Shub Niggurath
[3] On Monday the 23rd, the fateful day, the Akademik Shokalskiy sailed back toward the coast. The goal was to take people to Hodgeman islets, 8 km from the edge of fast ice, to study penguins and seals. Recall the circumstances under which this was being done: a storm was approaching and the ship was moving into thick, fast ice it well knew had built up substantially in the area.
DataSciNZ [hotlink] points out that sea-ice data was available showing that sea ice was much higher than in recent years, and wind data was also available . DataSciNz ask:
“Were the organisers of the AAE wholly unprepared, or at least practising risk management an order of magnitude more sloppy than we’ve come to expect from activities planned and funded through major Antarctic research nations?”
They [DataSciNz] conclude,
“First, there is data available that seems (from an armchair observer’s perspective) to suggest the AAE was taking an undue risk, with unfavourable weather rapidly advancing on them when they entered unusually extensive sea ice.”
DataSciNz article:
‘Using data science to better manage risk (and avoid getting stuck in the ice)’
An interesting thing about judgement is that it is true or false, black or white. Risk management is about probabilities.
Nate Silver coached us on how to construct Bayesian probability estimates……..
That’s right, our initial 1% risk of needed a rescue has been elevated to 13% when we know it is the worst ice year in 20 and make the other assumption we did. This appears to get worse at every decision point following new information the AAE encountered, based mentioned above based on the probabilities used to populate the table below.
Table 1. Bayesian Probabilities following Nate Silver’s format, estimating the posterior likelihood of AEE requiring rescue. The prior probability, x, is estimated initially, and then estimated using the posterior probability from each step. All estimates for x, y, and z are very rough and readers are encouraged to calculate results from their own estimates.
Step x y z posterior New Event Considered
1 1% 75% 5% 13% Exceptional sea ice year – 1 in 20
2 13% 75% 10% 53% Destination only reached via narrow polynia
3 53% 95% 25% 81% An onshore storm is coming
4 81% 80% 50% 87% SEGWAYD
Wow, so that’s remarkable. There were 4 steps where the AAE probably should have reassessed the probability they would require a rescue?
After all that good sense on risk management, DataSciNZ then says:
“Some on social media are now hyping the cost of the rescue and calling for the AAE to pay up. Undoubtedly the rescue was expensive (millions?), but climate variability outside the range we’ve experienced in recent decades, centuries and millennia may prove far more expensive (billions or trillions) to infrastructure exposed to similar risks – storms, floods, etc. Can the AAE and embedded journalists harness the #SpiritOfMawson to understand and communicate their experience, and tell their story, so that we all can learn from it?”
I’m sure they’ll try, but a lot of people have already learned from #SpiritOfMawson – not what DataSciNZ hopes they’ve learned though.
Feminism and icebergs: a new low in climate ‘science’
By Post Editorial Board March 8, 2016
Congratulations, taxpayers of America: You’ve just spent $412,930 on a “scientific” paper on the “relationship between gender and glaciers.”
That’s what the National Science Foundation dropped on “Glaciers, gender and science,” 10,000-plus words of gobbledygook from University of Oregon prof Mark Carey.
Sure, that’s roughly 40 bucks a word — but many of them are big words.
The study urges scientists to take a “feminist political ecology and feminist postcolonial” approach when studying melting ice caps and climate change. Hey, it’s not really global doom unless it comes with full-bore cutting-edge social-justice buzzwords.
Another taste: “The feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.”
More just science — and human-ice interactions. Wow.
Written by Tony Thomas, Quadrant Online on 16 March 2016.
Feminist glacier studies, an expanding field of academic climate-science rigor, sometimes needs an R-rating. Like this new feminist glacier research from a team led by Professor Mark Carey at the University of Oregon. Carey scored a $US413,000 grant in 2013 for his glacier research, with the paper being one output from it. It is titled “Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research.”
The epic, 15,000-word monograph cites Sheryl St Germain’s obscure, 2001 novel, To Drink a Glacier, where the author is in the throes of her midlife sexual awakening. She “interprets her experiences with Alaska’s Mendenhall Glacier as sexual and intimate.[i] When she drinks the glacier’s water, she reflects:
“That drink is like a kiss, a kiss that takes in the entire body of the other … like some wondrous omnipotent liquid tongue, touching our own tongues all over, the roofs and sides of our mouths, then moving in us and through to where it knows … I swallow, trying to make the spiritual, sexual sweetness of it last.”
Continuing in the tradition of 50 Shades of Ice, the paper further cites Uzma Aslam Khan’s (2010) short story ‘Ice, Mating’. The story
“….explores religious, nationalistic, and colonial themes in Pakistan, while also featuring intense sexual symbolism of glaciers acting upon a landscape. Khan writes: ‘It was Farhana who told me that Pakistan has more glaciers than anywhere outside the poles. And I’ve seen them! I’ve even seen them [obscenity deleted]!’ ” (emphasis in original)
Icy conditions normally inhibit tumescence, but the paper’s four authors (two of them men, but writing through “the feminist lens”) seem to be in a state of sustained arousal. To them, even ice core drilling evokes coital imagery:
“Structures of power and domination also stimulated the first large-scale ice core drilling projects – these archetypal masculinist projects to literally penetrate glaciers and extract for measurement and exploitation the ice in Greenland and Antarctica.”
The study quotes feminist artists and suggests that satellite and aerial imaging of glaciers, rather than involving scientific credibility and accuracy, is actually a masculine construct and “reminiscent of detached, voyeuristic, ‘pornographic’ images.” It continues, “Such a gaze has been troubled by feminist researchers who argue that the ‘conquering gaze’ makes an implicit claim on who has the power to see and not be seen.”
In passing, the study notes that climate change “can lead to the breakdown of stereotypical gender roles and even ‘gender renegotiation’ (Godden, 2013).” This had me worried as I prefer to stay with my male gender. I looked up Naomi Godden’s tract, and was relieved to find that it merely reported on a Peru village’s fishermen and housewives switching roles when fishing declined (climate change, which halted 19 years ago, being of course the stated culprit for the decline).
According to the official numbers from DMI, annual temperatures across Greenland were just as high in the 1930s and 40s as they have been in recent years. The only exception was the unusually warm year of 2010.
But what about summertime temperatures? Since that is when most ice melt occurs, this time of year is perhaps the most relevant.
Based on the actual temperature record, (and not the adjusted version), we can see that the pattern is similar to the annual trend for both Nuuk and Angmagssilik, on the west and east coasts respectively.
Again, temperatures since 2000 for the main part are, if anything, lower then the 1930s and 40s.
[see mean summer temp graphs]
There is nothing here to suggest that the climate in Greenland in the last century is any more than a reflection of natural cycles such as the AMO.
Sea Ice Page
Glaciers
val majkus says:
October 28, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Nice article by John McLean in Quadrant Online https://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/10/glaciergate
John is a member of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition and the article is about IPCC procedures
FALL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION:
Galloping Glaciers of Greenland Have Reined Themselves In
Richard A. Kerr
Science 23 January 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5913, p. 458
DOI: 10.1126/science.323.5913.458a
Ice loss in Greenland has had some climatologists speculating that global warming might have brought on a scary new regime of wildly heightened ice loss and an ever-faster rise in sea level. But glaciologists reported at the American Geophysical Union meeting that Greenland ice’s Armageddon has come to an end.
New paper shows ‘dramatic slow down of ice loss in southeast Greenland’
A paper published online yesterday in the Journal of Geophysical Research finds “the loss rate in southeast Greenland for the more recent period has become almost negligible, down from 109 ± 28 Gt/yr of just a few years ago. The rapid change in the nature of the regional ice mass in southeast and northwest Greenland, in the course of only several years, further reinforces the idea that the Greenland ice sheet mass balance is very vulnerable to regional climate conditions.” Global warming allegedly due to greenhouse gases would not be expected to cause such regional interannual variability in Greenland ice loss, thus pointing to shifts in weather instead.
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 116, B07406, 11 PP., 2011
Interannual variability of Greenland ice losses from satellite gravimetry
Key Points:
This study shows dramatic slow down of ice loss in southeast Greenland
Glaciers in northwest Greenland dominate the ice loss since 2007
Greenland ice mass shows significant interannual variability
J. L. Chen et al
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/07/new-paper-shows-dramatic-slow-down-of.html
New Zealand Glacier Monitoring:
End of Summer Snowline Survey 2010
NIWA Report
“On average, the latest survey indicated very slight mass positive balance for the index glaciers for the 2009/2010 glacier year”.
Himalayan Glaciers Stable Since 1992 Despite Large Human CO2 Emissions, Scientists Determine
Read here. The IPCC “consensus” science and global warming alarmists stated that Himalayan glaciers are melting at an accelerating rate and predicted their demise from CO2-induced warming would be soon. A recent peer-reviewed study finds that large glaciers in the northwest Himalayas are not experiencing accelerated warming, thus they won’t be disappearing as predicted.
“Working in the Nanga Parbat region of northern Pakistan…used a multi-temporal/multi-scale approach based on historical data, repeat photography and satellite imagery to develop a 70-year history of the behavior of that region’s Raikot Glacier…two German scientists report that visual comparison of repeat photography indicates “relatively small rates of recession and surface changes over the last seven decades,” and they say that “in the 1994 image, no significant retreat of the glacier margin can be detected in comparison with 1985.”…they report that “glacier fluctuations over the past 70 years are characterized by retreat between the 1930s and 1950s, a marked advance between the 1950s and 1980s, and a relatively stable situation after 1992,” adding that “a general trend of reduced glacier thickness does not appear significant over the whole observation period.”” [Susanne Schmidt, Marcus Nusser 2009: Journal of Glaciology]
http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/06/himalayan-glaciers-stable-since-1992-despite-large-human-co2-emissions-scientists-determine.html
Glaciergate no more
They can spin it every which way, does not dare hide the finding that the world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade.
The work comes from a survey all the world’s icecaps and glaciers, made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall. And from this, it has been found that the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less then previously estimated. Furthermore, the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy.
Yet the claim that the Himalayan glaciers were about to disappear was at the heart of Glaciergate, and the “Voodoo Science” jibe by Rajendra Pachauri.
>>>>>>>
http://eureferendum.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/glaciergate-no-more.html
H/t Andy at ‘Asia’
RIDDLE OF THE GLACIERS. Ice Retreating.
The Sydney Morning Herald Friday 13 January 1939
One of the riddles which is puzzling geologists all over the world is the continuous retreat of the ice glaciers. Does this phenomenon indicate that the sun is getting hotter as some astronomers believe or is it dependent upon comparatively unimportant changes in the earth’s atmosphere ?
Consideration such as these were discussed by Professor R. Speight, formerly professor of geology at Canterbury College, Christchurch, New Zealand and now curator of the Canterbury Museum. In his presidential address to the geology section of the Science Congress today. His subject was “Some Aspects of Glaciation in New Zealand.”
The steady retreat of the glaciers in New Zealand he said had been observed during the last 70 years. Photographs taken in 1896 and 1935 showed that several glaciers had retreated distances varying from 100 yards to half a mile in 40 years
WORLD-WIDE PHENOMENON
The phenomenon, however, was world-wide. Equally impressive records were obtainable from Switzerland, Scandinavia, Iceland and the United States. Attempts had been made to reconcile these observations with the Bruckner cycle of climate change every 16 years. Pro-fessor Speight said, but so many discrepan- cies occurred that in his opinion precise synchronisation with that period could not be accepted.
In Alaska glaciers had been retreating from 100 to 200 years, the average rate of recession being about 50 feet a year. The Antarctic ice-sheet also showed signs of recent retreat.
“In fact,” said Professor Speight, “no case is recorded of a region of the world in which there are present signs of an advance. This is quite apart from the general retreat since the pleistocene age and may be merely a pacing phase. Its precise significance can only be determined by continued observation.”
http://www.real-science.com/1950-climate-science-involved-actual-scientists
Catastrophe postponed:-
By Deborah Zabarenko
Thu May 3, 2012 2:42pm EDT
Deborah Zabarenko has got her facts muddled though because she’s reporting:-
Maybe the catastrophe is back on.
‘Glacier covered with blankets to reduce summer ice-melt’
Photoblog by David R Arnott, NBC News
People living near the Rhone glacier in the central Alps of Switzerland have come up with a striking tactic to counter the effects of climate change. Each summer the glacier is protected by blankets to keep ice melt to a minimum, the European Pressphoto Agency reports.
http://photoblog.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/27/19170081-glacier-covered-with-blankets-to-reduce-summer-ice-melt
Antarctic
Morgan donates money to climate research
Published: 12:31PM Tuesday June 02, 2009 Source: NZPA
Economist and philanthropist Gareth Morgan has donated $250,000 to Victoria University’s Antarctic Research Centre (ARC).
The grant will fund initiatives including a research fellowship on ice sheets and sea level to improve understanding of how ice sheets are likely to contribute to rising sea levels and the potential effect this could have in the southwest Pacific region.
Morgan said while studying the climate change debate it was clear that good scientific research was critical to ongoing understanding of the global warming issue and its risks.
The grant from his family’s charitable foundation will advance the contribution from the ARC research projects, which focus on understanding Antarctica’s climate history and processes, and their influence on the global climate system.
“Given the estimates of anthropogenic contributions to climate change remain subject to some uncertainty, and given that policy responses cannot wait until we have absolute certainty, it is imperative that the science continues to narrow it down to minimise the chances of inappropriate and costly policy responses,” Morgan said.
Antarctic ice is at a record high and growing at the ’steepest slope ever’
Steven Goddard
Watts Up With That?
June 30, 2010
We have been hearing a lot about how the decline in Arctic ice is following the “steepest slope ever.” The point is largely meaningless, but we can have some fun with it. The Bremen Arctic/Antarctic maps are superimposed above, showing that ice in the Antarctic is at a record high and growing at the “steepest slope ever.” You will also note that most of the world’s sea ice is located in the Antarctic. But those are inconvenient truths when trying to frighten people into believing that “the polar ice caps are melting.”
Scientists probe beneath Antarctic ice shelves
NIWA Media Release 22 November 2010
NIWA looks below Antarctic ice shelves to investigate the polar ocean system with a new high-tech probe.
NIWAs new Ice Tethered Profiler (ITP) places NIWA at the forefront of polar oceanography. It gives NIWA, and international scientists, insight into the interaction between the ocean, Antarcticas sea ice, and ice shelves thereby unlocking mysteries in Antarctic polar oceanography.
NIWA transported the ITP to Antarctica. It was deployed by NIWA scientist Craig Stewart, and IRLs Tim Haskell. The very first set of data from below the ice was sent via satellite on 19 November 2010.
It will provide NIWA with the first-ever year-round data set of what is happening beneath the ice in McMurdo Sound. The ITP collects temperature and salinity profiles. This information is relayed in real-time, via satellite, to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute website.
This will lead to a better understanding of the interactions between the ice sheet, the oceans, and what contribution this is making to sea-level rise. We are trying to understand how the ice shelf interaction is changing over time, says NIWA oceanographer, Dr Mike Williams.
Continues…….(with graphic and animation links)
Peer-Reviewed Study By Amateurs Trumps Bogus Antarctic Temperature Study By The “Experts”
Read here and here. Gotta love that headline. Amateurs taking it to the “experts” and then winning – very cool, in a non-temperature sort of way.
A group of interested individuals (amateur climate enthusiasts) took serious issue with the mathematical/statistical techniques used by climate-scientists to reconstruct Antarctic temperatures in a 2009 peer-reviewed study. As it turns out, this group of amateurs were better versed in proper mathematical/statistical analysis than the experts, and they brought that specific expertise to bear on the 2009 temperature reconstruction study. Objectively, even AGW alarmists are praising their work!
The result of this new peer-reviewed study? The Antarctic climate is not this monolithic warming environment that the IPCC Climategate “experts” attempted to portray to the politicians and taxpayers in the 2009 study. Instead, like all other large regions of the globe, Antarctica exhibits areas of warming, cooling and temperature stability. [Ryan O’Donnell, Nicholas Lewis, Steve McIntyre, Jeff Condon (2010)]
Based on this new analysis (O’Donnell et al.), modern temperature trends are no threat to the continent-sized ice sheets. Antarctica is soooo cold, a half-degree per decade, either way, is of zero significance.
See graphics……
Bottoms up Antarctic ice growth discovered
March 4, 2011 – 5:11PM – smh
New scientific research shows that massive ice sheets in Antarctica do not just grow on top when snow falls, they also grow from the bottom up.
Ice melts at the bottom of ice sheets, and the water helps the sheets slide across the ground below. But the water can refreeze to the bottom of the sheets and push them up, the researchers report on Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science.
The base of a massive ice plateau on the East Antarctic ice sheet called Dome A is about 24 per cent refrozen water, according to the team headed by Robin Bell, a geophysicist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
“The ice sheets are not simple layer cake structures. Water moves around underneath the ice sheet and deforms” it, Bell explained.
Antarctic ice – more accurate estimates
Cracking ice shelves make headlines, but ice loss estimates that are revised downwards don’t. While there is great hand wringing over coastal ice loss in Greenland and the West Antarctic Peninsula, East Antarctica has more than eight times the ice mass of either.
Last week’s Science magazine had a News Focus article on estimates of ice loss in Antarctica. It quietly discussed a paper published in May by two NASA scientists:
H. Jay Zwally & Mario B. Giovinetto (2011) Overview and Assessment of Antarctic Ice-Sheet Mass Balance Estimates: 1992– 2009. Surv Geophys DOI 10.1007/s10712-011-9123-5 (note this is Open Access)
[…]
“Mass balance estimates for the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and in more recent reports lie between approximately +50 to -250 Gt/year for 1992 to 2009. The 300 Gt/year range is approximately 15% of the annual mass input and 0.8 mm/year Sea Level Equivalent (SLE).”
[…]
Their reanalysis provides much lower estimates of net change in ice, ranging from +27 to -40 billion tons per year. For 1992 – 2001 they are prepared to go even further, estimating a loss of only 31 billion tons per year. These still sound like huge numbers, but to put it in perspective, 2400 billion tons of snow falls in Antarctica each year, so we’re dealing with a gain or loss in the range +1.1 to -1.7%.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/07/27/antarctic-ice-%E2%80%93-more-accurate-estimates/
Antarctica sea ice shows accelerating increase over past 30 years
A paper published last month in the journal Climate Dynamics finds that “The Antarctic sea ice extent (SIE) shows an increased trend during 1979–2009, with a trend rate of 1.36 ± 0.43% per decade. Ensemble empirical mode decomposition analysis shows that the rate of the increased trend has been accelerating in the past decade.”
Sea ice trends in the Antarctic and their relationship to surface air temperature during 1979–2009
Qi Shu, Fangli Qiao, Zhenya Song and Chunzai Wang
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2011/08/antarctica-sea-ice-shows-accelerating.html
‘Spiegel Surprised By “Amazingly Robust”, Record Antarctic Sea Ice – NASA’s Walt Meier Bewildered, Can Only Speculate’
By P Gosselin
[…]
Spiegel writes “when ice in the north and south pole are discussed, then it’s usually about melting caused by global warming. However, sea ice in the Antarctic, contrary to the Arctic, has proven to be amazingly robust.” Spiegel can hardly conceal its disbelief.
One scientist who is scrambling and who is visibly baffled is meteorologist Walt Meier, who seems irritated by the new puzzling Antarctic sea ice record – the second in 2 years. In the Spiegel report, he attempts to play it all down by claiming that the record amount is “only 3.6% over the 1981-2010 mean“. Meier adds: “This year the edge of the ice extends out only 35 kilometers further than an average year.”
More>>>>>
http://notrickszone.com/2013/10/22/spiegel-surprised-by-amazingly-robust-record-antarctic-sea-ice-nasas-walt-meier-bewildered-can-only-speculate/
Spectacular graphic of Antarctic SIE (from Climate Depot):
http://cdn2.spiegel.de/images/image-558175-galleryV9-tdgt.jpg
That is a pretty impressive picture (from Climate Depot).
Some of the ice extends for 1500km from sea to land, and it encompasses the entire continent including the west Antarctic peninsula
I met a guy skiing this winter who was going for a ski touring trip down there. (His first ski touring trip!) Not in the winter, we presume
Arctic
A Brief History of Climate Change in the Arctic
White, J.W.C., Alley,R.B., Brigham-Grette, J., Fitzpatrick, J.J., Jennings, A.E., Johnsen, S.J., Miller, G.H., Nerem, R.S. and Polyak, L. 2010. Past rates of climate change in the Arctic. Quaternary Science Reviews 29: 1716-1727.
Background
A long succession of climate models has consistently suggested that anthropogenic-induced global warming should be significantly amplified in earth’s polar regions and, therefore, that the first signs of man’s expected impact on the world’s weather should be manifest in that part of the planet; or as Donella Meadows (2001) has described it, “the place to watch for global warming — the sensitive point, the canary in the coal mine — is the Arctic.” So let’s see what those who have looked for human-induced warming in the Arctic have found there.
What was done
Going to one of the most recent and substantial of such efforts, we encounter the paper of White et al. (2010), who produced a comprehensive review — and thoughtful analysis — of past climate change in earth’s north polar region, which was published in Quaternary Science Reviews.
What was learned
The nine researchers begin by describing how “processes linked with continental drift have affected atmospheric circulation, ocean currents, and the composition of the atmosphere over tens of millions of years,” and that “a global cooling trend over the last 60 million years has altered conditions near sea level in the Arctic from ice-free year-round to completely ice covered.” They also report that “variations in arctic insolation over tens of thousands of years in response to orbital forcing have caused regular cycles of warming and cooling that were roughly half the size of the continental-drift-linked changes,” and that, in turn, this glacial-interglacial cycling “was punctuated by abrupt millennial oscillations, which near the North Atlantic were roughly half as large as the glacial-interglacial cycles.” Last of all, they note that “the current interglacial, the Holocene, has been influenced by brief cooling events from single volcanic eruptions, slower but longer lasting changes from random fluctuations in the frequency of volcanic eruptions, from weak solar variability, and perhaps by other classes of events.”
What it means
In comparing the vast array of past climate changes in the Arctic with what climate alarmists claim to be the “unprecedented” anthropogenic-induced warming of the past several decades, White et al. conclude that “thus far, human influence does not stand out relative to other, natural causes of climate change.” In fact, they state that the data “clearly show” that “strong natural variability has been characteristic of the Arctic at all time scales considered,” and they reiterate that the data suggest “that the human influence on rate and size of climate change thus far does not stand out strongly from other causes of climate change.”
Sub-Arctic
—————————————————————————————————————————-
Ten ships, 600 crew trapped in frozen Sea of Okhotsk
31 December 2010 – BBC
The ice is up to 30cm (12 inches) thick in some places, according to the Russian news agency Itar-Tass.
Signals are reported to have been received from a fishing boat and a research vessel which are in the greatest distress, stuck in the ice about 12 miles (19km) from the coast.
The temperature in the area is -22C, according to Itar-Tass, and forecasts suggest it will fall even lower.
Arctic Adds 2000 Cubic Kilometers Of Ice – Despite Reports Of Accelerating Ice Melt
By P Gosselin on 31. Januar 2011
70 trillion cubic feet of ice have been added to the Arctic core since January 2009. That translates to 2000 cubic km – enough to cover Manhattan with 20 miles of ice (or 32,000 Manhattans with 1 meter of ice).
When your former prime minister goes public and declares that the government should buy a new icebreaker, then you’re not talking about Britain – yet. This is former prime minister and industrialist Tiit Vähi, who comes from Estonia. He believes that the state should urgently order a new icebreaker, “Instead of spending money on buying icebreaking services.”
[snip]
But, what is so much fun here is that, long term-investment is being considered necessary, for what is obviously been seen as an ongoing problem, and the ice is expected to freeze over even more than 1987. Yet EU funded researchers, with €22 million of research grants, are claiming that “the sea surface temperature of the Baltic Sea was warmer in the past”.
Professor Aarno Kotilainen at the Geological Survey of Finland says: “Some estimates suggest that climate change in the Baltic Sea area causes sea surface temperatures to rise, increased winds and shortened ice-cover season.” Perhaps he should be looking out the window a little more often.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/03/no-ice-here-move-along-please.html
Arctic Sea Ice — A Climate Change April Fools?
April 01 2011
The Washington Post
The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consulafft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes.
Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic , while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. Within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.
http://climatechangedispatch.com/home/8830-arctic-sea-ice-a-climate-change-april-fools-not-according-to-snopes
Arctic Sea Ice Extent
Not Even In The Same Ballpark
Posted on September 15, 2011 by Steven Goddard
Green is 2011 ice not present in 2007. Red is the opposite. Pixel counting shows 15% more ice in 2011 than 2007. Bremen shows 2011 and 2007 essentially identical today. Should I laugh, or cry?
[See plots]
http://www.real-science.com/uncategorized/ballpark?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Real-Science%2Ffeed+%28Real+Science%29
Big Trouble For Arctic Alarmists
Posted on January 13, 2012 by Steven Goddard
Not only is ice extent the highest in seven years, but the ice is getting thicker and is positioned exactly where alarmists don’t want it to be. The map above shows 1.5 metre+ ice vs the same date in 2011. The thick ice has shifted towards the west into the Chukchi Sea, where it will slow summer melt.
Combine that with sea surface temperatures in the Bering Sea which are far below normal, and our chicken little friends are looking at a very bad summer.
http://www.real-science.com/big-trouble-arctic-alarmists
Blink comparator – Ice Thickness: 20110120/20120118
http://www.real-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Arctic2011-20121.gif
Arctic Ice Growth Blows Away All Records
[See graph http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/screenhunter_37-feb-02-10-26.jpg?w=960&h=725 ]
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/timeseries.anom.1979-2008
Arctic ice area has increased by 10.5 million km^2 since mid-September 2012.
The press corpse continues to report this event as record ice loss.
>>>>>
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/arctic-ice-growth-blows-away-all-records/
I’d been wondering about this, storm-driven record SIE loss means there’s the opposite possibility following of record SIE growth in better conditions – sure enough.
Gareth Renowden attributes Arctic summer sea ice melt to the sun:
“It might take a few months for the drama to unfold, but drama it most certainly is. The future of the planet is being written in the Arctic Ocean by the sun and the warming waters, and we get to watch.”
http://hot-topic.co.nz/arctic-summer-2013-fragile-ice-pack-feeling-the-pressure/#more-12881
Shocking.
Another shameless propaganda video from Greenpeace.
“A homeless polar bear in London”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpF04nximI&feature=player_embedded
The warmists are starting to get all emotional over the lack of Arctic ice this summer. Here is a comprehensive article which should ‘cool’ their warm little brains:
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/17239/Dont-Panic-Arctic-Ice-Hits-Record-Low-Climate-Depot-Explains–Arctic-melting-hype
Excerpt:
‘Graphs conveniently start in 1979 — peak ice year of last century…Arctic sea ice extent was much lower prior to 1979’ — ‘In 1990, IPCC published graph based on NOAA data. It shows Arctic ice extent in 1974 was almost 2 million km^2 less than 1979. 1974 Arctic ice coverage was similar to current coverage, which is also about 2 million km^2 less than 1979…CIA published document in 1974,which tell us prior to 1974, Arctic ice coverage was an additional 10% lower. Deducting another 10% puts us back to about 2007 levels of ice. If IPCC, NOAA and CIA know about this, why is the information being obfuscated?’
Too much ice for Antarctic penguins
The ozone hole over the Antarctic could be to blame for changes in the breeding patterns of Ross Sea adelie penguins.
United States ecologist David Ainley and Landcare Research, Lincoln, ecologist Phil Lyver have been on the ice this summer studying the Ross Sea’s smallest and most abundant penguins.
Ainley, of HT Harvey and Associates in San Francisco, is the driving force behind efforts to make the Ross Sea a marine-protected area.
In Christchurch yesterday, on his way home from the Antarctic, he said adelie penguins were breeding later in their lives than in the past.
Comprehensive surveying of the birds at three Ross Sea sites – Cape Royds, Cape Bird and Cape Crozier – over 16 summers had showed some of their vital dates were changing
[…]
“The average age of first breeding has increased from around 4 to 5 years old to 6 to 7 years. It’s very interesting. My hypothesis is that it has to do with increasing amounts of sea ice in the Ross Sea region, which has been under way for the last 20 years or so because of the ozone hole.”
More ice meant the penguins ended up drifting further away from their traditional breeding grounds, Ainley said.
“During the winter, the birds are finding themselves further and further north, so in spring they have to get back south.
[..]
http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/8267243/Too-much-ice-for-Antarctic-penguins
The Ozone Hole could be to blame seamlessly morphs into because of the ozone hole in the space of a few paragraphs
Climate change/global warming is the cause of increased sea ice in Antarctica
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21991487
‘Perihelion precession, polar ice and global warming’
Duncan Steel
The changing insolation theory (CIT) mooted herein is capable of explaining various
observed phenomena which the AGW hypothesis has not yet been able to accommodate.
Specifically, what has been observed and is pertinent here are the following:
1. A gradual rise in mean global temperature over the past two centuries;
2. Accelerating spring and summer melting of Arctic sea ice reaching an extent not
previously witnessed;
3. No substantial loss of Antarctic sea ice, and actually a small growth in its extent
(Shepherd et al. 2010; Parkinson and Cavalieri 2012);
4. The greatest rises in regional temperatures (and temperature variability) being at
high northern latitudes (Liu et al. 2007; Wu et al. 2011). […]
http://journalofcosmology.com/JOC22/Steel_PPPIGW.pdf
Note: this is a perihelion precession theory – NOT a TSI theory, TSI is kept constant in this paper.
How did this happen?
Barrowice @Barrowice 23 Jun
For the first time ever the people shouting ‘the end is nigh’ are the sane ones? while those who say “no it isn’t”are now the lunatics! #agw
https://twitter.com/Barrowice/status/349038977917009920
One from the archives (2007)
“Arctic summers ice-free ‘by 2013′”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm
The Northwest Passage Shipping Update from Real Science is optimistic Andy:
“Other than the 20 mile wide chunks of thick multi-year ice blocking the Northwest Passage, everything is all set for commercial shipping”
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/northwest-passage-shipping-update-4/
The satellite image is spectacular (zoom out or select ‘Infrared’, Alaska/Canada border top centre):
http://www.arctic.io/observations/8/2013-06-20/8-N70.399625-W123.270772/Canada-Inuvik
About 2 and a half months until the Arctic is ice free:
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_ext.png
Although -1 STD of 1979 – 2006 average doesn’t quite seem to be the track for that.
Forecasts of the 2013 sea ice minima [extract from Judith Curry post]
The Search Sea Ice Outlook is an international effort to provide a community-wide summary of the expected September arctic sea ice minimum. The average of all these forecasts for 2013 was 4.1 M sq km (compared to an average of 4.4 sq km for 2012).
One of the most sophisticated models used in seasonal sea ice forecasting is the UK Met Office model, which includes the state-of-the-art sea ice model used in climate model applications (CICE). The UKMO forecast (experimental) was for 3.36 M sq km +/- 1.5 M sq km, where the range is provided by an ensemble of simulations (compared to 4.4 +/- 0.9 M sq km for 2012).
As per Cryosphere Today, the current sea ice area is 4.746 M sq km. This is a whisker above the 2009 minimum, which is the highest minimum since 2007.
http://judithcurry.com/2013/09/08/arctic-sea-ice-minimum/#more-12893
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Arctic Sea Ice Extent Same As 40 Years Ago
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/11/27/arctic-sea-ice-extent-same-as-40-years-ago/
AW on MV Akademik Shokalskiy entrapment:
UPDATE:
The expedition is being led by Chris Turney, “climate scientist”, who has “set up a carbon refining company called Carbonscape which has developed technology to fix carbon from the atmosphere and make a host of green bi-products, helping reduce greenhouse gas levels.” The purpose of the expedition is “to discover and communicate the environmental changes taking place in the south.”
http://www.christurney.com/ (h/t to Sagebrush Gardener)
It seems they found out what the “environmental changes taking place in the south.” are.
From the WUWT sea ice page, Antarctic Sea Ice is more than 2 standard deviations above normal: [see graph]
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/26/so-much-ice-in-antarctica-that-a-research-vessel-gets-stuck-in-summer/#more-99920
One of the icebreakers that’s coming to rescue them is now stuck as well.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/27/world/antarctica-ship-stuck/
Traitor In Chief says:
“………………They can’t take assistance from an Evil Petroleum powered vessel! Send it away!”
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/scientists-need-to-average-their-way-out-of-the-ice/#comment-304096
‘Carbon Off-setting an Expedition to the Antarctic’
Posted by jennifer
CHRIS Turney is professor of climate change at the University of New South Wales. He recently set off on a 233-foot-long Russian-flagged ship with 70 or so colleagues to check-out the climate by following in the footsteps of famous explorer Douglas Mawson’s 1912 expedition to the Antarctic.
[…]
Since setting off, the ship has got stuck in ice. Three ice breaker ships have set-off to rescue it.
Should the fuel consumption of the three ice breakers also be included in Professor Turney’s carbon offset calculations?
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2013/12/carbon-off-setting-an-expedition-to-the-antarctic/
‘Antarctica – The Canary In The Cuckoo Mine’
by stevengoddard
Eighty three years ago today, Mawson was sailing along the Antarctic coast. In 2013, global warming nutcases trying to retrace Mawson’s route are hoping an icebreaker comes and saves them.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/antarctica-the-canary-in-the-cuckoo-mine/
>”Should the fuel consumption of the three ice breakers also be included in Professor Turney’s carbon offset calculations?”
Scott Scarborough says:
“They could ask for a Russian Nuclear powered Ice breaker.”
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/scientists-need-to-average-their-way-out-of-the-ice/#comment-304103
No offset required.
Apparently the unexpected ” pause” in the expedition has allowed them to do some more research,
Not sure what research you can do stuck in a ship in the middle of ice,
>”Not sure what research you can do stuck in a ship in the middle of ice”
It has a well stocked bar Andy.
>”Not sure what research you can do stuck in a ship in the middle of ice”
Jennifer Marohasy (myself, Goddard, and many others I’m sure) had this thought:
I expressed dome hope at Jennifer’s that Turney would spend some of his bonus downtime thinking about this, now that he’s got the time, that he didn’t have before evidently.
Comment from: Hasbeen [at Jennifer’s]
Prof Turney!
Say after me 3 times, Prof Turney, Turney, Turney.
And here I’ve been thinking of him as Prof Turkey. Oh well, turkey is as turkey does. I was right all the time.
‘Aurora Australis abandons attempt to save Akademik Shokalskiy in Antarctica’
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/aurora-australis-abandons-attempt-to-save-akademik-shokalskiy-in-antarctica-20131230-302na.html#ixzz2owVNiXQF
That’s the second icebreaker pulling out. Maybe the French will have a go.
Still, all the more time for “research”. Accounts of which are:
“….counting birds in the area and drilling through the ice surrounding the ship to photograph sea life”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11178563
And,
“Some built snowmen, others had snowball fights. Perhaps because no one had seen any living plants for almost a month, someone built a snow tree. Inside the ship, the expedition doctor was leading a first-aid course, a Scrabble tournament was in full flow and one of the chefs had started giving groups of passengers rudimentary lessons in Russian.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/29/antarctic-passengers-air-evacuation-icebreaker
So much to “discover and communicate”.
More “research”:
“…….tests done by the scientists on board the vessel have found that the frozen wasteland encasing its hull is now between 3m and 4m thick.”
http://tomnelson.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/links_5941.html
Another clueless Antarctic tripper, this ones a Kiwi:
‘Antarctic dream soon to be reality’ – Stuff
Nelson man Mike Armstrong is rugging up for a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity in Antarctica.
“Antarctica is a bellwether for climate change for the rest of the world”, he [Armstrong] said.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/9559778/Antarctic-dream-soon-to-be-reality
In other Antarctic news:
‘China set to begin building fourth Antarctic base for climate change research’
FoxNews.com
……will allow enhanced studies into climate change and other fields.
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/12/26/china-workers-at-fourth-antarctic-base-taishan/
I’m guessing, given it’s a Chinese base, that “other fields” would include mineral ore sampling – just as Mawson did in 1929-30:
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/screenhunter_963-dec-27-18-04.gif?w=640
“Tons of rock and mineral ore were brought home”
Quote from Stuff article
“”It’s all social science. If we want to protect the environment, we need to change the way people think about the environment.
”
Thanks, I think we already did that.
According to the AAE’s “Explorer’s Message” sea ice is “disappearing due to climate change” but “building up” where they are “here” (my bold):
http://www.news.com.au/national/stricken-russian-ship-mv-akademik-shokalskiy-with-aussie-scientists-aboard-is-playing-the-waiting-game-in-antarctica/story-fncynjr2-1226791671102
Also at Steve Goddard’s:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/12/29/scientists-trapped-in-record-sea-ice-announce-that-it-is-disappearing/
The AAE might check November 2013 Global, Arctic & Antarctic Sea Ice Area:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NSIDC%20GlobalArcticAntarctic%20SeaIceArea.gif
Apparently sea ice measured in millions of square kilometres is a disappearance.
I notice too that “change” is applied to naturally occurring phenomena but attributed to “climate change” i.e. doublespeak conflating natural process with anthropogenic causation and hoping no-one will notice. The uninformed wont notice of course, to them, by now, after all the indoctrination, any climatic change has human causation.
‘Warmists trapped by irony off Antarctica’
Andrew Bolt Blog
[Mawson vs Turney comparisons]
UPDATE
Turney’s team is still in astonishing denial. It is stuck in thick ice off a continent that has more of it than usual, yet still it claims warming is melting more ice than ever:
“Sea ice is disappearing due to climate change, but here ice is building up.”
This is pathological..
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/warmists_trapped_by_irony_off_antarctica/#commentsmore
Become known variously as ‘Ship of Fools’ (Bolt, WUWT), elsewhere ‘Ship of Climate Fools’. And even The Australian editorial ‘Ship of (Cold) Fools’.
Only themselves to blame:
‘The cause of the Akademik Shokalskiy getting stuck in Antarctica – delay from sightseeing mishaps and dawdling by the passengers getting back on ship’
Blog of the Australian green politician on-board, Janet Rice:
“The third drama of the day is the one which is still unfolding. Because of the Argo mishap we got off late, and had one less vehicle to ferry people to and fro. I’m told the Captain was becoming rather definite late in the afternoon that we needed to get everyone back on board ASAP because of the coming weather and the ice closing in. As I write we are continuing to make extremely slow progress through what looks like a winter alpine snow field – it’s yet another surreal part of this journey that we are in a ship trying to barge our way through here!”
“I’m sure the Captain would have been much happier if we had got away a few hours earlier.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/02/the-cause-of-the-akademik-shokalskiy-getting-stuck-in-antarctica-sigtseeing-mishaps-and-dawdling-by-the-passengers-getting-back-on-ship/#more-100363
I’m sure the Captain would have been much happier too.
Aphan writes in the WUWT link above:
“After experiencing the ship being surrounded by breakout ice on the 18th or 18th of December in just HALF AN HOUR, they stayed in that area, moved slightly up the coast and with an incoming blizzard and MORE ice on the way, they went onshore and forced the boat to wait for their return. THEN they got stuck.
For Chris Turney to then go on TELEVISION and act shocked that all this ice just mysteriously appeared and hemmed them in without any warning, is stunning. If the Captain gets sued for damages, I hope he takes every penny Chris Turney and the University of New South Wales will ever have in the future.”
Aphan fills in even further with an update below that – not good reading for the Turney spin.
‘Akademik Shokalskiy: were those careless risks in dangerous but foreseeable conditions?’
Guest post by Shub Niggurath
[3] On Monday the 23rd, the fateful day, the Akademik Shokalskiy sailed back toward the coast. The goal was to take people to Hodgeman islets, 8 km from the edge of fast ice, to study penguins and seals. Recall the circumstances under which this was being done: a storm was approaching and the ship was moving into thick, fast ice it well knew had built up substantially in the area.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/01/akademik-shokalskiy-were-those-careless-risks-in-dangerous-but-foreseeable-conditions/
Jo Nova adds:
DataSciNZ [hotlink] points out that sea-ice data was available showing that sea ice was much higher than in recent years, and wind data was also available . DataSciNz ask:
“Were the organisers of the AAE wholly unprepared, or at least practising risk management an order of magnitude more sloppy than we’ve come to expect from activities planned and funded through major Antarctic research nations?”
They [DataSciNz] conclude,
“First, there is data available that seems (from an armchair observer’s perspective) to suggest the AAE was taking an undue risk, with unfavourable weather rapidly advancing on them when they entered unusually extensive sea ice.”
DataSciNz article:
‘Using data science to better manage risk (and avoid getting stuck in the ice)’
http://datascinz.blogspot.co.nz/#!/2014/01/using-data-science-to-better-manage.html
“I introduce what I believe is an exciting new descriptive acronym: Something Else Goes Wrong And Yet more Delay (SEGWAYD). “
DataSciNz article:
An interesting thing about judgement is that it is true or false, black or white. Risk management is about probabilities.
Nate Silver coached us on how to construct Bayesian probability estimates……..
That’s right, our initial 1% risk of needed a rescue has been elevated to 13% when we know it is the worst ice year in 20 and make the other assumption we did. This appears to get worse at every decision point following new information the AAE encountered, based mentioned above based on the probabilities used to populate the table below.
Table 1. Bayesian Probabilities following Nate Silver’s format, estimating the posterior likelihood of AEE requiring rescue. The prior probability, x, is estimated initially, and then estimated using the posterior probability from each step. All estimates for x, y, and z are very rough and readers are encouraged to calculate results from their own estimates.
Step x y z posterior New Event Considered
1 1% 75% 5% 13% Exceptional sea ice year – 1 in 20
2 13% 75% 10% 53% Destination only reached via narrow polynia
3 53% 95% 25% 81% An onshore storm is coming
4 81% 80% 50% 87% SEGWAYD
Wow, so that’s remarkable. There were 4 steps where the AAE probably should have reassessed the probability they would require a rescue?
After all that good sense on risk management, DataSciNZ then says:
“Some on social media are now hyping the cost of the rescue and calling for the AAE to pay up. Undoubtedly the rescue was expensive (millions?), but climate variability outside the range we’ve experienced in recent decades, centuries and millennia may prove far more expensive (billions or trillions) to infrastructure exposed to similar risks – storms, floods, etc. Can the AAE and embedded journalists harness the #SpiritOfMawson to understand and communicate their experience, and tell their story, so that we all can learn from it?”
I’m sure they’ll try, but a lot of people have already learned from #SpiritOfMawson – not what DataSciNZ hopes they’ve learned though.
Near-record high 2013 Antarctic SIE in the satellite ere interpreted by DataSciNZ as:
“Exceptional sea ice year – 1 in 20”.
Well yes, well above normal much like exceptional years 2010, 2009, 2008, 2003 – but moreso:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
Expedition Communication Director Alvin Stone: “Climate Warming Led To The Vessel’s Awkward Predicament”!
http://notrickszone.com/2014/01/03/expedition-communication-director-alvin-stone-climate-warming-led-to-the-vessels-awkward-predicament/
“I was forced to survive on bread and water in Russian prison because it didn’t serve vegetarian alternative says freed British Greenpeace activist ”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2530646/I-forced-survive-bread-water-Russian-prison-didnt-serve-vegetarian-alternative-says-freed-British-Greenpeace-activist.html#ixzz2otainla7
Climate change idiots out of danger
http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=84594
Not sure about the Russian crew though
But the rescue boat is only doing 1/4 of a knot, and it sure looks icy out there
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/02/rescue-ship-aurora-australis-slowed-to-a-crawl-fighting-heavy-sea-ice-to-reach-open-water/
Aurora Australis told to stay in the area in case the Snow Dragon needs help
http://www.arabnews.com/news/503176
Feminism and icebergs: a new low in climate ‘science’
By Post Editorial Board March 8, 2016
Congratulations, taxpayers of America: You’ve just spent $412,930 on a “scientific” paper on the “relationship between gender and glaciers.”
That’s what the National Science Foundation dropped on “Glaciers, gender and science,” 10,000-plus words of gobbledygook from University of Oregon prof Mark Carey.
Sure, that’s roughly 40 bucks a word — but many of them are big words.
The study urges scientists to take a “feminist political ecology and feminist postcolonial” approach when studying melting ice caps and climate change. Hey, it’s not really global doom unless it comes with full-bore cutting-edge social-justice buzzwords.
Another taste: “The feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions.”
More just science — and human-ice interactions. Wow.
http://nypost.com/2016/03/08/feminism-and-icebergs-a-new-low-in-climate-science/
I had a conversation about this kind of stuff with my 15 year old son. Not specifically feminist glaciers though.
He said life was becoming like a Southpark episode
Very astute
‘The Settled Science of Grant Snaffling’
Written by Tony Thomas, Quadrant Online on 16 March 2016.
Feminist glacier studies, an expanding field of academic climate-science rigor, sometimes needs an R-rating. Like this new feminist glacier research from a team led by Professor Mark Carey at the University of Oregon. Carey scored a $US413,000 grant in 2013 for his glacier research, with the paper being one output from it. It is titled “Glaciers, gender, and science: A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research.”
The epic, 15,000-word monograph cites Sheryl St Germain’s obscure, 2001 novel, To Drink a Glacier, where the author is in the throes of her midlife sexual awakening. She “interprets her experiences with Alaska’s Mendenhall Glacier as sexual and intimate.[i] When she drinks the glacier’s water, she reflects:
Continuing in the tradition of 50 Shades of Ice, the paper further cites Uzma Aslam Khan’s (2010) short story ‘Ice, Mating’. The story
Icy conditions normally inhibit tumescence, but the paper’s four authors (two of them men, but writing through “the feminist lens”) seem to be in a state of sustained arousal. To them, even ice core drilling evokes coital imagery:
The study quotes feminist artists and suggests that satellite and aerial imaging of glaciers, rather than involving scientific credibility and accuracy, is actually a masculine construct and “reminiscent of detached, voyeuristic, ‘pornographic’ images.” It continues, “Such a gaze has been troubled by feminist researchers who argue that the ‘conquering gaze’ makes an implicit claim on who has the power to see and not be seen.”
In passing, the study notes that climate change “can lead to the breakdown of stereotypical gender roles and even ‘gender renegotiation’ (Godden, 2013).” This had me worried as I prefer to stay with my male gender. I looked up Naomi Godden’s tract, and was relieved to find that it merely reported on a Peru village’s fishermen and housewives switching roles when fishing declined (climate change, which halted 19 years ago, being of course the stated culprit for the decline).
More>>>>>[and link to original]
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/the-settled-science-of-grant-snaffling.html
# # #
It never occurred to me when I started looking into “climate change” that it would eventually open up to drivel like “feminist glacier studies”.
‘Summer Temperature Trends In Greenland’
June 15, 2016 By Paul Homewood
[see annual mean temp graphs]
According to the official numbers from DMI, annual temperatures across Greenland were just as high in the 1930s and 40s as they have been in recent years. The only exception was the unusually warm year of 2010.
But what about summertime temperatures? Since that is when most ice melt occurs, this time of year is perhaps the most relevant.
Based on the actual temperature record, (and not the adjusted version), we can see that the pattern is similar to the annual trend for both Nuuk and Angmagssilik, on the west and east coasts respectively.
Again, temperatures since 2000 for the main part are, if anything, lower then the 1930s and 40s.
[see mean summer temp graphs]
There is nothing here to suggest that the climate in Greenland in the last century is any more than a reflection of natural cycles such as the AMO.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/summer-temperature-trends-in-greenland/