NSIDC - Arctic Sea Ice At Annual Minimum; Barely Above 2007 Record Levels

[hatrack]

September 16, 2008
Arctic sea ice settles at second-lowest, underscores accelerating decline

Sign up for the Arctic Sea Ice News RSS feed for automatic notification of analysis updates. Updates are also available via Twitter.

The Arctic sea ice cover appears to have reached its minimum extent for the year, the second-lowest extent recorded since the dawn of the satellite era. While above the record minimum set on September 16, 2007, this year further reinforces the strong negative trend in summertime ice extent observed over the past thirty years. With the minimum behind us, we will continue to analyze ice conditions as we head into the crucial period of the ice growth season during the months to come.

Overview of conditions

On September 12, 2008 sea ice extent dropped to 4.52 million square kilometers (1.74 million square miles). This appears to have been the lowest point of the year, as sea has now begun its annual cycle of growth in response to autumn cooling.

The 2008 minimum is the second-lowest recorded since 1979, and is 2.24 million square kilometers (0.86 million square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average minimum.


Figure 1. Daily Arctic sea ice extent for September 12, 2008, was 4.52 million square kilometers (1.74 million square miles). The orange line shows the 1979 to 2000 average extent for that day. The black cross indicates the geographic North Pole.

Conditions in context

Despite overall cooler summer temperatures, the 2008 minimum extent is only 390,000 square kilometers (150,000 square miles), or 9.4%, more than the record-setting 2007 minimum. The 2008 minimum extent is 15.0% less than the next-lowest minimum extent set in 2005 and 33.1% less than the average minimum extent from 1979 to 2000.

This season further reinforces the long-term downward trend of sea ice extent.


2. The graph above shows daily sea ice extent.The solid light blue line indicates 2008; the dashed green line shows 2007; the dotted line shows 2005; the solid gray line indicates average extent from 1979 to 2000.

Overlay of 2007 and 2008 at September minimum

The spatial pattern of the 2008 minimum extent was different than that of 2007. This year did not have the substantial ice loss in the central Arctic, north of the Chukchi and East Siberian Seas. However, 2008 showed greater loss in the Beaufort, Laptev, and Greenland Seas.

Unlike last year, this year saw the opening of the Northern Sea Route, the passage through the Arctic Ocean along the coast of Siberia. However, while the shallow Amundsen's Northwest Passage opened in both years, the deeper Parry's Channel of the Northwest Passage did not quite open in 2008.

A word of caution on calling the minimum

Determining with certainty when the minimum has occurred is difficult until the melt season has decisively ended. For example, in 2005, the time series began to level out in early September, prompting speculation that we had reached the minimum. However, the sea ice contracted later in the season, again reducing sea ice extent and causing a further drop in the absolute minimum.

We mention this now because the natural variability of the climate system has frequently been known to trick human efforts at forecasting the future. It is still possible that ice extent could fall again, slightly, because of either further melting or a contraction in the area of the pack due to the motion of the ice. However, we have now seen five days of gains in extent. Because of the variability of sea ice at this time of year, the National Snow and Ice Data Center determines the minimum using a five-day running mean value.

Ongoing analysis continues

We will continue to post analysis of sea ice conditions throughout the year, with frequency determined by sea ice conditions. Near-real-time images at upper right will continue to be updated every day.

In addition, NSIDC will issue a formal press release at the beginning of October with full analysis of the possible causes behind this year's low ice conditions, particularly interesting aspects of the melt season, the set-up going into the important winter growth season ahead, and graphics comparing this year to the long-term record. At that time, we will also know what the monthly average September sea ice extent was in 2008—the measure scientists most often rely on for accurate analysis and comparison over the long-term.


Figure 3. Daily Arctic sea ice extent for September 12, 2008, the date of this year's minimum (white) is overlaid on September 16, 2007, last year's minimum extent (dark gray). Light gray shading indicates the region where ice occurred in both 2007 and 2008.

EDIT/END

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

[tom_paine]

1. And this was the "rebound year".

:rofl:

And while it still could go the other way in terms of the length of time the arctic and antarctic "global temperature buffering system" drags it out before full-scale climatological shift begins... (seems unlikely to reverse unless we reverse "business as usual", which is not likely, either)

...it seems "faster than expected" is the answer to just about EVERY environmental question, these days.

Yep. This was thr BIG REBOUND all the deniers where crowing about earlier this year that was gointer shut us up, eh? Goin' ter' shut up up good.

Where are they now?

[hatrack]

2. Oh, they'll be back soon enough.

They'll be shouting "See!?!? See?!?! It was COLD in Terre Haute this summer, so THERE!!!!!"

[The Croquist]

3. You beat me.

I've been looking at the web-site daily for an update, hoping to see an end. I hope they are right about it bottoming out for the year but storms can really do a number on the ice so we will see. They don't mention storms but they do say that it isn't really guaranteed yet.

Now for the argument.

I know the 30 year trend has been down but 2008 does look like a rebound year. It is up 9.4% from 2007 and that means we now have 390,000 square kilometers more of multi-year ice then a year ago. The earth was 0.27 degrees cooler in the last 12 months then the previous 12 months and there is a good chance this cooling trend will continue for a while so maybe the ice will have an even better year in 2009.

I guess this means the predictions of an ice free North Pole this year were wrong.

[tom_paine]

4. Does simple common sense ever break through? I know better than to ask about scientific thinking...

The common sense the trillions and trillions of tons of ice have become water overall, as measured by the satellites that can now literally measure the weight of the ice on the Earth at any given time. Or the common sense, obvious to anyone with even a bit of biological knowledge or understanding of the scientific method, that there are few biological processes that run in a striaght line. The more complex the biological process, the mroe this is so. And what is climatology but a massively complex integrated set of geologic processes fully integrated with the biologic processes which detemine climate and the totality of life on Earth, in the end?

Or the common sense that says that MAYBE the massive amounts of ice we are converting, might have some slight negative feedback potential in terms of global temperature, to briefly prvide cooling before the warming overwhelms and ends it, as it is poised to do in the Arctic in summer VERY SOON, deacdes at most...what about that?

Common Sense doesn't not exist in the minds of deniers, nor scientific method. You belong to a cult, plain and simple. Naturally, your propagandists accuse the scientifically literate of that which YOU are doing...cultishly ignoring mounting data. Not that you are a Nazi, but this is a common and old authoritarian trick, and very similar to the Nazis accusing the Jews of being serial liars wanting to take over the world. Say, that's just what the Jews said about the Nazis. Maybe they were both a little bit right, eh? You know, like they say on Fox News, 1 + 1 = 2 is just an opinion, a liberal he-said/she-said, right?

:rofl:

Weak minds fall for it. ALWAYS the weak-minded fall for it. It carries it's own defense and grows more powerful the more facts and truth is thrown at it. As anyone who has spoken with a Bushie knows, this is a real and powerful phenomena. As I link to below, even science is sitting up and quanifying this phenomena, so prevalent it is in our Empire these days.

Sure, it is still possible that you could be right and the overwhelming consensus of everyone who isn't taking large briefcase-fulls of money from the Bushies, their various propagandists, liars, Oil barons, etc, are wrong. That possibility, as evidence mounts, grows smaller every day and even now borders on infinitessimal.

So, keep slinging your bullshit implied assertion about how "since the North Pole didn't melt everything should be OK", but it is meaningless jabber.

Meaningless jabber like your complete and total ignorance (is it willful or genuine...I can't tell) of the idea, frequently corrborated by hard data, that as much of the arctic melting, if not more, is caused by "from the bottom" melting caused by warming oceans.

Or how the collapse of the an antarctic ice shelf IN THE MIDDLE OF ANTARCTIC WINTER not three months ago further boosts the idea that the well-known fact of "from the bottom melting" (well, well known to everyone except those paid not to know...and YOU) is a factor in global ice melt.

Aagin, I gotta give you deniers credit for medieval doggedness and zealotry. It takes a lot to ignorae the massive amount of data coming out lately about both environment and ecology. Undoubtedly the same reservoir of willful ignorance has murdered millions of people directly and many more indirectly. It stood against Galileo and Pasteur. Now, the sciences of advertising and propaganda have marshalled it to stand against all humanity. It stands at your elbow. Doesn't matter what common sense says, doesn't matter what the hard data says, does it?

Actually, as you well know, hard data is a witches' trick anyway. Burn 'em to cure 'em.

:rofl:

So, how long will you hold to the lies (as there is roughly a 99% chance that you have been lied to, and are lying to yourself, thus I feel confident in speaking to you with a certainty, though there is the tiniest chance that the deniers are right, though for the wrong reasons) that you are indocrtinated with? How much actual hard data to see before you renounce your own private Jim Jones?

Will it be the end of Arctic Summer Ice, now coming so very soon and almost certainly in your lifetime?

Of course not. You will metaphorically be fighting in the streets of Berlin in may 1945 to protect having to personally accept the fact that you were such a fool for so long, like those that actually DID fight for Hitler in Berlin because they couldn't admit they had been weak-minded sckers to the mendacious.

Just as you can't, and it doesn't matter how much eivdence piles up.

So, sure your fantasy about regrowiwng artic ice caps makes no sense, not even with the bits of half-truth you were spoon-fed and now barf back out on this forum without giving it a thought like a baby bird and a chewed-up worm. As the years pass, it will make less and less sense, particularly when there is no more Arctic Summer Ice, as is almost certain to happen within the next 30 years or less.

But that won't matter to you, eh? Jim Jones is a good man, everything he says is true and you won't hear a word against him, right? And if Jim said to drink that harmless Kool-Aid, then by God, everyone should drink, right?

By the way. Want to read about yourself? Oh, it's about Bushies, but the same really applies to all the ignorant rejectors of scientific method and weak-minded suckers for authoritarian propaganda.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4011775

You are all deeply related, psychologically and otherwise. You might not fall for the Bushies political lies, but you sure do fall for some of their transparent lies that should not fool a well-educated ten-year-old.

Sorry to be so harsh, but at this point you deserve no less. The Bushie Lies, including Global Warming Denial is far too exposed to warrant anything less. And I will not be policially-correct, Bushie-style, to try to treat you as if you are anything lese than a medieval flat-earter with little common sense nor scientific literacy.

Scientifically, you are no different than a Flat Earther or Witch Burner. Historically you are their kissin' cousin', and spiritual descendant.

Now read about yourself. Gain some self-awareness, not that I think your ego will allow you to. You have been a fool for far too long. The bamboozle HAS YOU. You will do ANYTHING to keep from staring into the reality of your own foolishness. Tell yourself any lie. Ignore any data, even if it sits in front of your eyes.

In many ways you may be worse than a Bushie in much the same way one oculd argue that the Good Germans did more damage to Germany by sheepishly falling in line with the Nazis, than the Nazis themselves. No Good German personally gassed any Jews. But without them, millions could not have been gassed to death.

You are but a small cog, like each Good German, but millions of you, in apathy and ignornace, make nightmares come to life. And all you have to do is keep on being what you are: apathetic, weak-minded, ignorant, and easily manipulated by lies and propaganda. Just like them.

Like the environmental and ecologcal nightmare that almost certainly awaits your descendants, if you have any (and it would be poetic justic, though not justice for those poor unborn descendants of yours, if you had lots of children so that you DNA is WELL represented in the coming nightmare).

Boy, how they will curse your name...all our names, really, as shortsighted idiots and weak-minded, easily fooled numbwits.

And we will all deserve it...all of us. But SOME will deserve it more.

Oh my yes, some will deserve so much more of it.

[The Croquist]

5. Exactly what did I say to tick you off?

True I said that 2008 was a a rebound year but it was. The ice appears to have increased by 9.4% from 2007. I acknowledged that the thirty year trend was down and I'm sure you agree with that.
Is it because I mentioned that the last 12 months were cooler then the previous 12 months? Was it because I am hoping that 2009 will be a better year then 2008? I doubt it is any of these. Maybe it's because I reminded you that the scientists were wrong about the North Pole being ice-free this year. Not that an ice-free North Pole is that unusual. It has been recorded several times dating back to the 1950's and before that nobody really ever monitored it. Actually nobody really monitored it before November 1978.

I think the reason you are so ticked off is that I don't agree with you and that is unacceptable to you.

Satellites monitor not just the Arctic ice but the Antarctic ice, sea level and the worlds temperature and have now been doing it for about 30 years. Prior to that ice coverage and global temperatures were just guess work. Sea level was better but still problematic.

From 08/1979 through 08/2008 Arctic ice has dropped from 8.1 to 6.0 million square kilometers (I'm using the monthly published figures). From 08/1979 through 08/2008 Antarctic ice dropped from 18.1 to 17.9 million square kilometers.
From 08/1979 through 08/2008 the temperature has risen .153 degrees.

The overall trend is less ice and warmer temperatures. I do not dispute any of this. So what is it that I dispute?

What I dispute is that any of this is significantly linked to man. I know the earth has lost ice over the last 30 years, The earth has lost ice for the last 18,000 years. Is the current loss more then natural fluctuation? I don't know. I don't think that scientists know either. The difference is that they won't admit any doubt. That is a dangerous attitude that casts doubt into their integrity.

The temperature has risen since 18,000 years ago. Is the current temperature differences more then just natural fluctuation? I don't know that either. I don't know allot of things.

As you said "what is climatology but a massively complex integrated set of geologic processes fully integrated with the biologic processes which detemine climate and the totality of life on Earth, in the end". I don't disagree except to say that they are only two of many factors. Astronomical, chemical and other factors should also be included. Exactly what other factors I don't know. Like I said, I don't know allot of things.

One thing I would like to know is why you think that man can be so sure of what is happening to the climate when it is "massively complex" and we have so little data to study it with.

The climate of the earth has changed for billions of years and will continue to change for billions more with or without man's help.

Exactly why do you condemn scientists who disagree with you as taking "large briefcase-fulls of money from the Bushies" yet trust without question those taking many more times the money from governments? Both have reasons to find supporting data to their cause of the sponsors.

You can call me a cultist but I would prefer to argue data. The short term data supports your argument but I think it is over too short a period to be significant. The long term data shows that what is happening on the planet today is normal. There is reason to believe that it was as warm or warmer 1,000 years ago as it is today. Was that caused by man? Once again I don't know. One thing I do know is that I never get an answer to this question:

When did significant man-made global warming begin?

Without a start date it is tough to argue the subject. Did it start 30 years ago?, 100, 500, 1,000, 5,000 or 18,000 years ago? We've got pretty good evidence that the earth started warming about 18,000 years ago. Did man cause this? If not, what caused it? I would like to know.

Both sides, but in my opinion more so the believer's in global, warming are big on looking at specific events to support their cause. You mentioned "the collapse of the an antarctic ice shelf" as further evidence but this shelf is insignificant when looked at logically. I assume you are talking about the Wilkins ice Shelf that lost 415 square kilometers in March of 2008. As I mentioned above the Antarctic had 17,900,000 square kilometers about 2 weeks ago. That means that the lost about 0.000023 of the ice shelf. This was reported however as a giant loss and you believed it. Who is the weak minded here tom_paine?

I'll ignore the insults. They're not worth replying to.

That said. Thanks for the reply.

[tom_paine]

6. No, the denial in general is what ticks me off. I've had enough of it.

Oh, you MUST show me these ice-free N. Pole links. Please do. ESPECIALLY if it isn't bullshit.

Of course, like when you spoke of Amundsen's NW Passage Journey, also hugely misleading. Amundsen's journey, now that I have read about it, took THREE YEARS precisely because he was basically puddle-jumping for brief periods in summer/early-fall in a place that never fully melted.

IF as you asserted in one of your previous misdirections, the NW Passage was open then Amundsen would not have taken three years to get through it. Classic misdirection. I'll bet that one has fooled a lot of people (most of whom won't go to the trouble of looking up Amundsen's Voyage to find where the misdirection/lie lays) for you, eh?

Given that misdirection of yours, you'll forgive if I look upon your assertion with extreme skepticism. But by all means do show me. It provides insight into the very advanced sciences of spin and propaganda. Of course, if it isn't a misdirection/half-truth like your use of Amundsen, I'd like to see the data even more.

But, like the Amundsen thing, you have probably left out a key piece of information that slants the whole thing toward thinking your right...until you find that keystone piece of data like Amundsen's passage lasting THREE YEARS.

Just curious, did you make up the Amundsen misdirection yourself or get it from somewhere else? How about this N. Pole misdirection (which is probably something like large melt-water puddles were reported some years, even though the ice beneath was 6 meters thick...but they WERE open expanses of water at the N. Pole..right...right? :rofl: Yeah, probably something like that.

Did you make that one up yourself or get it from the Wise Use Coalition or Alaska Oil and Gas?

You say I dismiss the scientists who disagree because I assume they are getting scads of money from Bushies, to simplify it. Of course, such has been demonstrated to exist numerous times. Newsweek, just a few months ago, did a cover story on the massive climate change denial industry. Gore mentioned it in his movie. It has been reported on in a dozen different places over a decade or more. So, don't insult my intelligence by saying there aren't PLENTY of scientists taking money from the Climate Change Denial Industry, just as they did from the Cancerous Tobacco Denial Industry, which was also a wild success for decades.

So, don't insult my intelligence. I have looked of the CVs of some of these Climate Change Denial Scientists. In most cases, most of their publications are in Capitalism Magazine and other Bushie shit like that, NOT peer-reviewed journals. I've personally Googled it. You could, too.

And as to the Wilkins, it is not the size but what it indicates. If you think I believed, in terms of volume, that it was a gigantic loss, then you are wrong about that as everything else. It is not the size of the shelf so much as the implications.

Just as the first few pebbles or ice-slabs that are prelude to a massive avalanche are not substantial in size. Using your logic, though, a person standing in an avalanche-prone area that feels those first few flickers of ice and hears the rumble should relax, chill-out, and casually reply, "This odd, hard spray of ice chips hitting us in the face and the ominous large rumble don't mean anything. After all, they only represent 0.000023 of the ice field above us."

The insults you deserve, and more, for being fooled and distracted so easily. For being so unversed in scientific thinking that you cannot find your way back out of the professionally-crafted lies and half-truths using your critical thinking skills.

Allow me to help:

What I am trying to say above is that you are unconsciously or perhaps consciously echoing the deceptions of the massive Climate Change Denial Industry. they are crafted to sound as reasonable as possible, yet each contains a single, massive logical flaw.

Your here is the idea that Wilkins is 421 sq. miles or 0.000023 of the antarctic ice. Fine. While that is technically true, the size of the shelf has NOTHING to do with it's scientific significance. What IS scientifically significant here?

1) That it happened in the dead of antarctic winter.

2) That it happened a full two decades before the scientific community, the 98% of it that agrees the evidence for anthropogenic human warming is sufficient to warrant a conclusion, predicted.

Size has nothing to do with it. Nothing. NOTHING. NO-THING.

And yet, you have been duped, led like a cow into a dead-end stall. I have to admit that, ever since I have educated myself on the massive advances in propaganda, PR, advertising, spin and all the rest of it that constitutes How To Manipulate People Without Them Knowing It, I stand amazed at how effective this Nuclear-Powered Sophistry is, and how successful it is at making false connections in people's minds.

Sloppy thinking leads you to this. How you could be convinced after reading the articles and literature, even that which is posted on DU E/E let alone peer-reviewed journals, that the SIZE of Wilkins had any bearing on it's significance is beyond me.

So, do tell, where did you hear that size bit? Did you cogitate it yourself, or read it somewhere? Just curious, considering it suggests a dearth of critical thinking. It your part of the lack the original thinking or being duped by a professional sophist into repeating what they are saying.

Just curious. Which leads us full circle as to answer your question WHY your post ticked me off. It's bad enough to see Freepers and Dittoheads and the like falling sucker to Bushiganda,it's worse to see someone who should know better, such as yourself and I have read my posts and no you are not stupid.

But one thing I have learned these last eight-years is that intelligence has little or nothing to do with being able to critically think in such a way as to see through very carefully crafted and calibrated misdirections, half-truths and lies.

Lots of intelligent people, yourself included, can be fooled by what is a massive multi-billion dollar self-referential circle of propaganda that looks like the Bushiganda "political" propaganda arm because it is it's cousin, it's brother, in structure, method and even types of misdirection.

You should know better. But you don't. And while I did call you an idiot, you are not an idiot, strictly-speaking. But in the area of the mind that digests, analyzes and can see through lies, you are enfeebled.

There is no word for it...maybe "unconscious" as being the opposite of conscious or self-aware.

It makes me laugh that you would ascribe a juvenile reasoning to me. That you don't agree with me and it's unacceptable.

That's funny. :rofl: If it comforts you, go ahead. And I DID blister you. But not simply because you disagree with me and I don't find that acceptable (must pause to laugh at you again :rofl: ) but because here we are very near at a time when we are getting cascades of environmental and ecological data sounding alarm bells. The existence of the Multi-Billion Dollar Climate Change Denial Industry has been exposed ten times or more, most recently by Newsweek. And here you are repeating their bullshit.

I am ticked off not at you but what you represent. The triumph of ignorance over science and reason again and again and AGAIN throughout human history. The fact that we humans are NOT creatures of reason, but instead easily foolable, easily manipulable, emotionally infantile, barely fell out of the trees hominids.

And if you think I don't include myself with the rest of us dumb shortsighted infantile monkeys, you are mistaken. It's just that our ignorance as individuals lies in different places.

My "dumbness" lies elsewhere, and I am just as capable of you as being blinded, acting foolishly, repeating bullshit I never really considered, etc. But it is just in a different area of life/knowledge.

That's what I am angry at, what you represent. My dumbness only hurts me, it doesn't help spread bullshit that helps bad people devour the future of the human race for short-term power and profit, as yours does. We are on the deck of the Titanic and you are still listening to the ones who are responsible to keep you calm, happy, and quiet until you slip beneath the waves and the rich ones get in the lifeboats.

And you and MILLIONS of others are doing their work for them.

THAT'S what ticked me off, not some juvenile ire at being disagreed with. What you represent. And that you and millions like you, led by the nose by the Bushies and their Professional Liars, by they environmental or political, have helped to destroy a country and a life, perhaps even an entire civilization/species that could have been so good to so many more for so much longer than it will be now.

[The Croquist]

7. Examples of open water at the North Pole

1959
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08578.htm
Skate (SSN-578), surfaced at the North Pole, 17 March 1959

1987
http://www.navsource.org/archives/08/08664.htm
U.S. and British sailors explore the Arctic ice cap while conducting the first U.S./British coordinated surfacing at the North Pole. The ships are, left to right: the nuclear-powered attack submarine Sea Devil (SSN-664), the fleet submarine HMS Superb (S-109) , and the nuclear-powered attack submarine Billfish (SSN-676), 18 May 1987.

2000
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940CEFDE133EF93AA2575BC0A9669C8B63&scp=2&sq=For%20the%20first%20time%20in%2050%20million%20years%20North%20Pole&st=cse
Ages-Old Icecap at North Pole Is Now Liquid, Scientists Find
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: August 19, 2000
The North Pole is melting.
The thick ice that has for ages covered the Arctic Ocean at the pole has turned to water, recent visitors there reported yesterday. At least for the time being, an ice-free patch of ocean about a mile wide has opened at the very top of the world, something that has presumably never before been seen by humans and is more evidence that global warming may be real and already affecting climate.
The last time scientists can be certain the pole was awash in water was more than 50 million years ago.

2004
http://www.athropolis.com/news/submarines.htm
Nuclear Submarines Surface in Arctic
British and Americans Rendezvous at Pole

HMS Tireless pops up for a peek.
The Arctic was a little less tranquil on April 19, 2004 when the American fast-attack submarine USS Hampton and the Royal Navy submarine HMS Tireless popped up at the "top of the world". They surfaced at the North Pole through two naturally occurring leads or "gaps" in the ice about 1/2 mile / .8 km from each other.


Amundsen Expedition
http://149.48.228.121/wgbh/nova/arctic/expe-nf.html
Perhaps you should read up on it again. Apparently you "forgot that he spent about 18 months at Gjoa Haven King William Island exploring as far as the Magnetic North Pole without attempting to sail further west. Within days of sailing west he spotted a whaling ship out of San Francisco. At the time he was due north of North Dakota. Apparently the captain of the whaler was too stupid to know he couldn't sail there. I made no misdirection.

Denial Scientists
I asked you why it is you condemn "denial" scientists for taking money but not AGW scientist for taking much more money. You mention Al Gore's movie. I'm not impressed. He also used footage from "The Day After Tomorrow" in his documentary and showed NY City flooding.

Wilkins Ice Shelf
The press reported the Wilkins Ice Shelf as giant not me.
Giant Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapses
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080325-antarctica-photo.html
So scientist were wrong about it breaking up. They are wrong about allot of things.

[tom_paine]

8. AGW takes money? From special interests intent on a predetermined outcome?

Bullshit. I AM a scientist, albeit a biologist, and I can tell you that is mostly bullshit.

Again, the false dichotomy, begging the question, and some dreadfully misleading statements by you, particularly the attempt to conflate legitimate scientific inquiry with "tobacco company fake science" and the oil companies' version of it.

Now, you have already insulted my intelligence now twice, by trying to tell me the the legitimate scientific community and the grant-seeking structure (know anything about how it works? I do, since I have submitted them more than once). It's complex but let's just say science is the opposite of religion in more ways than one...science stops and doubts itself at every moment, science "delights" in attempting to tear down faulty ideas for that which survives is that much more likely and stronger for having passed through the fire.

To compare that grant system to the Climate Change Denial Industry, and yes the scientific community is not perfect and I have no doubt, like most human endeavors, it's not 100% honorable...but to fully compare them, you would have to be either deliberately being obtuse or ignorant in the extreme of what are appropriate criteria to declare something comparable to another. But it tries, very hard, through such structures as rigorous peer-review, to say it mildly.

So please, you can think that the Climate Change Denial Industry, which pays questionable scientists (like the tobacco companies, or are you going to argue that tobacco companies were innocent victims, too?) for preordained results and buries that which doesn't agree with it, is like legitimate scientific grants? Again, what the tobacco companies did is established fact, established in court and in the court of reality as belonging to the "don't insult my intelligence" category by those foolish enough to deny it.

Are you going to insult my intelligence and tell me the tobacco companies are innocent, just like the Climate Change Denial Industry? I mean REALLY. Can we agree that 1 + 1 = 2, or is that also a lib'rul scientific trick made by guys making $40,000/yr trying for job security?
:rofl:

And we all know to what lengths people will go to to protect vast riches like a $40,000/yr. salary. Who WOULDN'T kill for that?

:sarcasm: :rofl:

I would wager you know little to nothing about how any scientific community works, or any legitimate grant dispensing organization like NIH. That doesn't stop you from denouncing what you know nothing of.

I have said it before and I will say it again. You may not be a Bushie, but in this regard you are little different from them, and trying to compare the Climate Change Denial Industry to legitimate grant conferring organizations is a stretch so far, a half-truth that isn't even a quarter-truth, as to be as odious and disgusting as any outrageous intelligence-insulting lie the Bushies have ever told.

I mean, what kind of idiot would compare the tobacco companies' PR money machine, now DEMONSTRABLY proven to have been serial liars and corruptors of data, to say the least, to legitimate scientific endeavors and legitimate scientific funding channels?

I ask again WHAT KIND OF IDIOT?!?

Now, I spent much of my time debunking your implicit defense of tobacco company science (through your defense of similarly questionable oil company "science").

I am going to look more closely at your links. That will take time. But I can already see on first glance that you are merely trying to shove data in my face which is misleading and you are making the poorest of analyses, who's poorness coincidentally bolsters your position.

Just let me give one quick for instance, then I can go back to reading your links...

First, I have to give you credit for a brilliant misdirection, at least with the 2004 nukes subs surfacing at the N. Pole. I have asked this a few times and you have yet to answer, making me believe I already know the answer. But I will ask it one more time. Where did you get that link? Did you make the faulty logical connection yourself (as I will shortly point out why that is the case) or are you just repeating a faulty analysis you heard somewhere else?

If you do not answer, now that I have asked this question a third time, there can be little doubt of why you are not answering.

OK, so now here's the staggeringly brilliant misdirection you are likely repeating, at least for that one link:

Do you actually believe that a brief, anomalous opening at the pole is comparable to what has yet to happen, but is very likely to happen within the next decade, long-term fully-ice-free (i.e. connected by surface waters to the rest of the arctic ocean) arctic summer open ocean extending hundreds of miles with a briefly opened anomalous hole a half mile wide?

Are you actually tying to insult my intelligence that way? What's next? Telling me the blood from a paper cut is analogous to a leg amputation.

You just made a logical fallacy, an awful one. One likely cooked up "in the bowels of hell" which is to say the Climate Change Denier Industry.

Again, if you are you are not just insulting my intelligence, but your own (unless you are a Bushie Mole doing what you are paid to do, in which case you are just doing your job)


the other part of the misdirection is that this was 2004, so even it it WAS relevant, which it isn't..it does nothing to advance your point that LONG AGO (30+ years, I assume...before sat measurements) the N. Pole was clear.

What does 2004, when global warming and arctic ice melt were clearly advanced, have to do with the point that the N. Pole was ice-free 30+ years ago and more?

Nothing, that's what. More faulty logic, more misdirections. Again I ask, am I speaking to you or the Climate Change Denial Industry.

As to what you said about Gore's movie: not only ignorant in the extreme but a 100% replica of the Structure of the Bushie Lie. Literally 100% similar. 100%. That, naturally makes me suspicious even more. How can you be an actual Democrat and embrace Bushie Illogic so thoroughly, at least on this issue? Not just their position, which is bad enough, but the very science-denying and illogical medieval structure of their flawed thinking is 100% mirror in the way you "debate" (it can't even really be called that)

It is possible, I just can't see how from where I am sitting. Tell me, do you agree with Bushie environmental policies? Would you say your agreement with the Bushies is ONLY Climate Change Denial or does it extend to other Bushiganda categories? How many issues DO you agree with the Bushies on beside Climate Change Denial?

Another question you will likely willfully avoid answering. Why is that, I wonder? :rofl:

Thus again I ask, are you a paid agent of the Climate Change Denial Industry, since your misdirections are VERY GOOD and you yourself a good bit more intelligent than most of the rockheads who follow the Bushies on anything, but especially Climate Change Denial and Evolutionary Denial.

Just sharpening your skills or are you regurgitating their lies, half-truths and misdirections for free? If so, you should really consider getting paid for your time.

Unfortunately, nobody pays for speaking scientific truth. I wish. I could make some serious bread if their actually WAS a "left-wing counterpart" to the Climate Change Denial Industry. But nobody pays to spread scientific truths, only liars get paid for spreading Bushiganda misdirections and red herrings, these days, it seems, and paid well.

So, if you are not getting paid for this (and as our conversation continues it seems more and more likely that you ARE being paid, either directly or you are an employee defending the company that pays you...something like that), you really should look into getting paid for it.

Finally, your "criticism" of the Gore movie is not only laughable but straight from the Bushie Smear, Discredit, Lie, Misdirect, Repeat Playbook. 100% with no deviations.

Shall I break it down?

Find an insignificant issue but one which makes a good contemptuous sound-bite like "Al Gore used footage from The Day After Tomorrow". Use said insignificant issue as a red herring designed to automatically discredit everything in one fell swoop.

Now, I know it's very likely you have not seen the movie, being what you likely are, and also in the most charitable interpretation of who and what you are, you likely haven't seen it. I have. More than once. And EVEN IF a snip of the movie "Day After Tomorrow" is in there (it probably isn't, and you are just repeating another Bushie half-truth...next time I watch it I will check and debunk that likely lie) it has no bearing on the overall scientific veracity of the movie.

But it makes a hell of a short, declarative smearing contemptuous conversation-stopper, doesn't it?.

You'd know how irrelevant that clip (if it even exists) is to the larger movie..that is, if you'd watched it. But we both know you've never seen it once.

Again, another BRILLIANT misdirection, using the Bushie Template for Lying like a pro, you did, on poor ol' Gore. Again, if you are not a member of our nation's vast Lying Industry (which includes much MUCH more than just the Climate Change Denial Industry), then you should make a career change ASAP.

Whether you know what you are doing or not. Whether you though up these points yourself or are just repeating them...you are one hell of a misdirector and deceiver. You have mastered the Bushie Art of Lying Without Technically Lying (I wouldn't have believed such a thing was possible until witnessing it myself for eight years and more).

And if you are without scruple, as you may or may not be, you could make a helluva lot of money using that glib tongue and propagandists' skills.

If you aren't already doing so.

I want to thank you for this exchange. Very enlightening indeed. You remind me once again that the battle of ignorance is not strictly about intelligence. Not even close. You are very intelligent, that much is clear. And if you work for the Oil Cos. or the Climate Change Denial Industry, you're not even ignorant.

Just greedy and cruel, unAmerican and mendacious. But gettin' paid, that you are, if that is the case. In that event you can take comfort knowing you make five times as much as those climate scientists who apparently lie so much to hold on to a crappy $40,000/yr. desk job.

Yes, enlightening. Take comfort in that. Bushie Liars, Tobacco Liars, and Climate Change Denial Liars, among others, have literally eradicated the very concept of truth and lies, fact and fiction. It's all now he-said/she-said and what people believe. Hard data? No such thing in Bushie Amerika.

In Imperial Amerika, there is no such thing as a "fact" anymore. A great place for someone like you. A terrible place for the scientifically literate, the conscious and self-aware. Not to mention those who really love those crazy liberal Founding Fathers and their crazy liberal Constitution and Bill of Rights.

So, enjoy. And maybe...just MAYBE, the force of all the lies the Bushies and you have told about Climate Change will actually use their "cosmic force" to turn back the mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology of climatology, pollution, ecology, etc.

Maybe you and the Bushies REALLY CAN create your own realities by telling enough lies and misdirections, carefully calibrated at a cost of billions by the finest mind-manipulators money can buy, and literally cool the Earth with the Power of Propaganda.

Naah. I'd have to be an idiot to believe THAT. Bullshit doesn't trump chemistry and physics. Otherwise, Jews, liberals, Gypsies and homosexuals would have been literally changed into subhumans by the magic power of Nazi Lies. But they weren't, they stayed human beings right up until the German Bushies murdered them.. And neither will the magic repetition of Bushie Lies make the population go back to 1,000,000,000, restore the extinct species lost, or the summer arctic ice, or cool the Earth when the arctic ice is even more vastly diminished or gone.

You keep trying, though.

Now, I'm off to read the rest of your likely misleading links. :hi:

[The Croquist]

9. How are my "misleading" links doing?

How did I "attempt to conflate legitimate scientific inquiry with "tobacco company fake science""? I never mentioned tobacco, you did.

I also never said that "AGW takes money? From special interests intent on a predetermined outcome?" so why did you accuse me of that? What I said was that AGW scientists take much more money. Is that not true? If so, why don't you provide supporting evidence?

Why is it that the scientists agreeing with you are members of "the legitimate scientific community' but those disagreeing with you are not? Most scientists would agree that "science stops and doubts itself at every moment" but obviously that doesn't include you or many climatologists. Instead you insult those that disagree with you and specifically claim that I am insulting your intelligence.

You also mention religion. This has nothing to do with religion. It is about facts. I have presented facts.

"I mean, what kind of idiot would compare the tobacco companies' PR money machine, now DEMONSTRABLY proven to have been serial liars and corruptors of data, to say the least, to legitimate scientific endeavors and legitimate scientific funding channels?" Not me.

I ask again WHAT KIND OF IDIOT?!? I don't know. I never mentioned tobacco. You did.

Now, I spent much of my time debunking your implicit defense of tobacco company science (through your defense of similarly questionable oil company "science"). Too much time in my opinion since you were the one to bring up the tobacco industry, not me.

I look forward to your response to my links.

What does 2004, when global warming and arctic ice melt were clearly advanced, have to do with the point that the N. Pole was ice-free 30+ years ago and more?

The first link was 1959 not 2004. What I said was "Not that an ice-free North Pole is that unusual." I never said that the entire Arctic surface was ice free recently. We don't accurately know what the Arctic was like before satellites but did you ever notice that the Arctic explorers used to travel north in the early spring?

Peary started his journey north on March 1, 1909 and claimed to have reached the North Pole on April 6, 1909 (it is a questionable claim). By shear coincidence in the last 30 years, March is the month with the highest amount of ice in the Arctic. April on the other hand is only number 3 (February is number 2). Now if I were an explorer I would prefer to travel during the time of maximum sunlight and temperature (June, July and August) but for some reason he didn't. Unlike you, I'm not a scientist so What do I know? Why do you think they traveled in March and April? Could it be that they were worried about open water?

But I'm glad you mentioned that in 2004 "global warming and arctic ice melt were clearly advanced". Perhaps you can answer the question I asked several posts ago? "When did significant man-made global warming begin?" I think it's an important question.

"In Imperial Amerika, there is no such thing as a "fact" anymore." What facts have I falsified?

[tom_paine]

10. Round and round we go, entertaining as ever.

Feign ignorance all you like. Insult my intelligence all you like with the "What, little old me?" routine.

(still reading your links - the 2004 submarine one is as deceptive and irrelevant to your point as it first appeared)

Some replies, then I am done with you. Feel free to have the last word, if you wish.

Your false disingenuousness is quite grotesquely charming. Again, you simply cannot be stupid enough to actually miss my point about the Tobacco Companies' PR Defense of the "Scientific" Lies and False Data being similar if not identical (literally comprising many of the same players and firms) in structure, function, and methodology.

Cannot be. Therefore you are being purposely and falsely obtuse as a rhetorical trick..a BUSHIE rhetorical trick which you wield with considerable skill.

No one is that stupid. Actually your use of pretending to be stupid is actually quite smart, from a deception point of view. By purposefully remaining obtuse, it allows you to keep bludgeoning me with that whole bullshit about "when did I ever mention the tobacco companies?"

Wha...lil' ol' me? you reply. :rofl:

You didn't mentionthem. But pretending to be stupid and miss the obvious similarities is as Bushie/Orwellian/crazy as trying to pretend to be so stupid as to think that water and alcohol cannot be compared for they have no similarities, when anyone can see they have several, not the least of which is that they are BOTH LIQUIDS.

Audacious on your part. So infantile and backward it cause the jaw to drop in astonishment. You speak like a Bushie an almost all ways, whether you are one or not. And I have been here to deconstruct all of it for any who should happen in here to read our exchange.

But no more audacious as your AGW misdirection last post. As I explained last time. Again you either didn't understand or are simply pretending not to because it suits your purposes. I will not go through it again, except suffice to say I have found a succinct way to summarize your rhetorical misdirections.

You take apples and oranges and pretend they are the 100% exact same thing. At the same time you take other bags of apples and oranges, and deny that they are even both fruit. Scientifically illiterate, but from a propaganda/PR viewpoint, utterly brilliant. All laymen deceived, and your misdirections take so long to explain and debunk that it succeeds even when the truth is deception is exposed.

Wha...lil' ol' me? you reply. :rofl:

As I have said before, you have mastered the Bushie Art of Lying Without Technically Lying. To be quite honest, I am not sure you falsified any of the facts you have presented. That is the amazing, disarming, and pernicious power of the Bushie Template of Deceptive Framing you are using, is that it does indeed provide a tremendously high level of Plausible Deniability, which is all you really need to launder a lie into a doubt.

But you took those facts and created a false narrative that is quite audacious and mendacious. Again I reply that it is almost a certainty that you have thought up none of this yourself. Why won't YOU answer my simple questions on that score? What do you do for a living? What do you personally know about scientific grant issuance or NIH? Did you think you all these points yourself and find these links yourself? If not, then where? Are the analyses your own, and if not, where did you read/see them?

I like asking you these things, because you are so scared to answer them. Now you have a chance NOT to answer them AGAIN.

Who you voting for in November? I think I know...

The whole Peary/Amundsen/polar explorers deception, brilliantly constructed by you using real facts (missing the keystone necessary for full understanding, of course, The Bushie Art of Lying Without Technically Lying), like ANOTHER of my questions you refuse to answer, simply begs the common sense reply likely to be revealed upon a thorough researching of Perry and Amundsen's journals and writings (what THEY said, not what someone said they said).

Something like, big melt puddles or those anomalous small holes have apparently always occurred, and THAT was what Perry was avoiding, not huge stretches of open water. Or maybe crevasses or other hazards that exist on ice frozen solid that we don't know about because we've never experienced it or read about it.

Actually I am remembering an article I once read about a real life event that occurred during the Klondike Gold Rush...a guy actually pedaled an old-timey bike from the Yukon to Nome in 1902, because the gold had run out at Klondike and had just been discovered at Nome.

I remember that even frozen solid ice, subjected to sunlight, creaks and stretches and bends and such. It's been too long since I read it to give you much more detail, but you get a flavor of what I mean. That there were other reasons for Perry leaving when he did than the fact there were massive 2006-2008-like hundreds-of-miles massive stretches of open water in June-Oct., as they are now commonly.

And again, you seem to think that I am hostile toward you simply because we disagree. It's not that at all. Not what you say but how you say it. Not your belief that AGW is not yet proven (although you seem to tend more toward 100% certainty it is not anthropogenic), but how you cannot defend your assertions in a scientifically valid and literate manner.

That instead you take the easy way out and opt for the propagandists deceptions. It IS easier than thinking shit up for yourself, like the way I stared at this crazy Bushiganda Machine for a dozen years since the Phony Clinton Impeachment and began dissect the brilliance of the Bushie Lying Without Technically Lying strategy and others.

That's why the explanations in my post are quite unique, and while you might find similar thoughts elsewhere, it is unlikely that you will find the same combination of assertions. Because I figured it out myself, with the help of some reference material and of course everyone who came before me "a dwarf on giant's shoulders see s the farthest of the two". I didn't need the Wise Use Coalition Talking Points e-mail (or the AGW talking Points, if such existed or if I subscribed to it) to come up with my arguments, just peer-review journals and hard data, mostly. The mathematics is so terrible on it's own it could almost stand alone.

But I suspect you don't put too much stock in mathematics, except to use in your misdirections like about the size of the Wilkins Shelf, even though the size had nothing to do with any point I was making.

But in the end, Croquist, you should be of good cheer. You will win, almost certainly, and get what you want. Little to nothing will be done about Global Warming. We WILL drill the Arctic as it continues to melt and convert it's hydrocarbons to atmospheric carbon. Deniers will deny and cash their big big checks. Others may act as footsoliders out of spite or or fun, or out of a simple medieval hatred for rationality and science, as it is with many Bushies (not saying you are one, though you do talk remarkably like one).

But rest easy. Propaganda beats reason every single time, or almost every single time. In the long-run it wins again and again. The Age of Enlightenment was an all-too-brief-exception, and that's long done with (witness the widespread recent re-acceptance of pre-Enlightenment torture rationale as one concrete example).

So, no matter what you and I say, the Climate Change Denial Industry will continue to use their most advanced techniques of deception and misdirection humanity has ever created, requiring so much long-winded debunking to "unpack" the lie that no one will sit through and listen to it, especially not now in the Age of The Short Attention Span.

Victory is yours. Little to nothing will be done, and the amount of scientific evidence as it moves from 90% certain to 95% to 99% to 99.9% and so forth will not matter. This little exchange with you and your mendacious brilliance, combined with your fake stupidity when it suits your purpose, proves to me once again that reason is going to lose again under the pounding propaganda of all the "Bushies" throughout history.

Good job. Enjoy your victory. Nothing will be done. Every year the evidence will mount. Every year the lies and deceptions and misdirections that are designed for you to repeat will grow more subtle, powerful and manipulative. They are already too advanced for simple reason to deal with in a brief and clear fashion, as our exchange clearly shows.

I have learned so many things these last eight years (ten, really), not the least of which is how important willful ignorance is important to most people...probably ALL people with the tiniest handful of exceptions. Hell, being a badly imperfect human being myself it is quite likely that, in areas other than scientific and critical thinking, I am as willfully ignorant as you, and for my own selfish ego purposes, whether I know it consciously or not.

We are human beings. What else would we be?

But at least my dumbnesses and weaknesses are such that I won't help Bushie Monsters destroy our nation, our environment, or our species by either being an unwitting sucker or an odious Bushie Operative, for you are surely one of those two.

Enough. Reply if you wish. I am done with you. Spew your spew. Once you are on ignore I won't see it.

As to your links, I have looked at some of them. Honestly, if I though we could actually have a discussion without you resorting to you deceptions and misdirections, I would do so. But it occurs to me that based upon our exchange up until now that there is little point considering not only does it seem you are incapable of making your case without restorting to Bushie-style deceptions and misidrections, but that you can scarcely speak or think a single sentence outside that deceptive and self-deceiving mindset, at least from what I can see of your online persona.

I like discussing things with people who disagree. I have even been known to change my mind if the facts are good enough and coherently presented so as to form a cogent and believable hypothesis that makes sense of said data. The DU archives are replete with such great discussions in which I learned alot and no voices were "raised" cyber-wise on either side.

But it is different when trying to discuss with a Bushie or someone who speaks and thinks like a Bushie without even realizing it. THAT experience is NOT fun, NOT enlightening (except in the areas of propaganda, rhetorical deceptions, and other depressing studies I have no desire to revisit, especially after the education you gave me on how powerful the new Bushie Propaganda Techniques are..I don't need another lesson for quite awhile).

Thus, with this last post you have cemented it...there's as much point discussing this with you as there is trying to convince a Nazi Jews are human beings, too, or a Bushie that Liberals are not actually subhuman animals.

It just bounces off.

It would indeed be interesting if it was possible for us to try to start over and have a strictly scientific rational debate about this. But given your idea of "debate" and given my obvious hotheadedness and sick-to-deathedness of the Triumph of Bushiganda everywhere I turn, there is no way you could pretend to be scientifically literate, instead of having the mind of a propagandist, and I could never hold down the rage that sometimes grips me when someone talks to me like they were a Bushie and I an idiot who didn't know better and can't see through Bushiganda.

So, we can't discuss your links, though I will read them and keep my own counsel as to how much I am moved. As I said, from what I have seen so far, there is none of it that cannot be debunked by the addition of your deliberately withheld keystone fact, though there is still more for me to look at so I can't say ALL of it is thus.

And that's as far as we'll go. Save you bullshit and just enjoy the fact that you are going to get your way in that shit isn't going to be done about GW, A or otherwise, so you will get to find out if that 1-in-100 chance that you were correct all along turns out.

Of course, if the 99% chance that the scientific consensus and the unchanging mathetmcatics of population, peak oil, environment, and ecology is correct, then you, all your descendants and eveyone we know is permanently fucked by this for the rest of their lives and perhaps for the rest of the life of the human species.

But in either case, Billion-Dollar Propaganda beats a bunch of $40,000/yr. scientists again. Taking candy from a baby. It's as easy to drown out science, as the Bushies and you yourself have readily shown, as it is to drown out a crying baby with a 100-watt amp blasting Megadeth.

Enjoy it. You've won. Society says so with it's actions up to date and will in the future, regardless of all the talktalktalk. Relax. Enjoy. Propaganda whips reason's ass. We are going to go all the way, until we know FOR SURE that we are a significant component of GW (99% certain at this point, given the data) or that we are a small of insignificant part of GW (1% certain, give or take a decimal or two).

So you are getting your way no matter what those pointy-headed lib'rul lying hippie scientists trying to protect their big $40,000/yr. salaries.

JUST fucking enjoy it. Just on't piss down my back and tell me it's raining. After all, no one is paying ME to delude myself and others.

You know where I could get on that gravy train? Hell, pay me enough, Croquist, and I'll come back under another monniker and help you team up. With my understanding of what you are trying to do, we could make a devastating team! Just IMAGINE the squid ink we could cloud the waters with TOGETHER!

We'll make those trying to cling to reason feel like a leaf in a hurricane! They won't know which way to turn, which way is up! SEE if we don't.

:rofl:

Naaah. I'm just kidding, my conscience would never allow me to do what you are doing for very long, no matter how much you paid me. And you may well be doing it for free, too, which makes you a bigger sucker than I ever imagined.

Goodbye now.

[Viking12]

11. Save your fingers t_p. Poster is a denier troll.

I've been through the same thing as he continues to claim the earth is "cooling"; globalw arming stopped in 1998 don't ya know?

Basic ignorance in science and stats yet professes loudly. Even claims those of us with PhDs are part of the "conspiracy". Same denialist tripe.

[tom_paine]

12. Thanks, but it's done already, even if Denier Troll posts a reply...I'll never see it.

The miracle of the Ignore.

Thanks for the simpatico, though, brother scientist. Sister Scientist? Just...thanks.

:hi:

[Viking12]

13. I'm a policy wonk type, enrgy and environment stuff w/ specialization in climate issues

I have a strong undergrad science background but my grad and professional work is focused on the science-policy interface.

[The Croquist]

14. Sorry to here that you are going to ignore me

I just wish you had answered this one question:

"When did significant man-made global warming begin?"

Is that too much to ask?

[Barrett808]

36. In principle, anthropogenic warming began as soon as humans started liberating buried carbon...

...and changing the natural carbon fluxes.

The signal became detectable above noise only recently, say around the year 2000. As predicted by many climate scientists.

[The Croquist]

38. If anthropogenic warming only became detectable since 2000

we have a problem. The earth's temperature from 2000 forward is lower then at times prior to 2000. Either the theory is wrong or noise is still overwhelming the data. I will not deny the possibility that the noise is still overwhelming the data. I think that natural variability (especially short term variability) is much stronger then anthropogenic changes. I think that picking out man's contribution is almost impossible given current knowledge and technology.

I like the answer of "liberating buried carbon". It makes more sense to me then other claims such as when we started agriculture, industrial age or when the US refused to sign Kyoto but for a long time the amount was not significant. I assume that's what you meant by "In principle". Looking at Wikipedia they think the Chinese started mining coal about 10,000 years ago but I can't imagine that there was enough carbon released to make a noticeable difference. The early industrial age was significantly water powered with a move to coal. Oil was a relatively late comer. I've been trying to find an estimate of global energy consumption since 1800 or so but have failed miserably. Can you help? My understanding is that it really exploded post WWII but I don't have numbers. CO2 levels are a proxy but we don't know how well they really track and good numbers for that only go back about 50 years or so.

[Barrett808]

39. Historical world energy production, let's see...

...The Oil Drum is a good source for such things: http://www.theoildrum.com . You may also want to check out the "Olduvai theory," which tries to do something similar to your goal, methinks: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=Olduvai+theory&btnG=Google+Search .

[The Croquist]

15. Try looking at the data

http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2

[Viking12]

16. Try taking a freshman stats class

[The Croquist]

17. I never took a freshman stats class

The only math I took as a freshman was calculus. I took several statistics courses later on. Do they count?

Now why don't you look at the data and prove me wrong? Here is the website again:
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2

The data is collected continuously from satellites and compiled in monthly figures. Since you have a strong "undergrad science background" I'm sure you can process the data yourself but for the convenience of others here are the annual numbers beginning in 1979:
1979 -0.073
1980 0.088
1981 0.053
1982 -0.153
1983 0.036
1984 -0.258
1985 -0.213
1986 -0.147
1987 0.110
1988 0.109
1989 -0.110
1990 0.074
1991 0.118
1992 -0.191
1993 -0.149
1994 -0.012
1995 0.111
1996 0.022
1997 0.047
1998 0.514
1999 0.041
2000 0.035
2001 0.198
2002 0.312
2003 0.275
2004 0.196
2005 0.339
2006 0.261
2007 0.282

According to these numbers 1998 is the warmest year of the 30 year record. 2008 is not yet complete so I haven't included it yet. If you want I will post the first 8 months of 1979 through 2008. I have been accused of being a cultist but I present facts and back them up with links. Exactly what is wrong with that?

The "deniers" didn't launch these satellites, NASA did. The people processing the data are doing it for NOAA.

The fact that the temperature peaked in 1998 doesn't mean that global warming doesn't exist but it does mean that the jury is still out.

Let me know if you want to see more data.

[XemaSab]

18. "Global warming" is a bad term; "climate change" is a better term

The warming will not be uniform across the planet, and some areas may be much cooler.

How do you explain this graph?

[The Croquist]

20. I explain it the same way I explained it earlier:

I know the 30 year trend has been down but 2008 does look like a rebound year. It is up 9.4% from 2007 and that means we now have 390,000 square kilometers more of multi-year ice then a year ago. The earth was 0.27 degrees cooler in the last 12 months then the previous 12 months and there is a good chance this cooling trend will continue for a while so maybe the ice will have an even better year in 2009.

I do not argue that the 30 year Arctic sea ice trend is down nor do I argue that the 30 year global temperature trend has been up.

The Antarctic sea ice however is relatively stable and the global temperature since 1998 has dropped. I agree that temperature changes will not be uniform but why do people focus on one pole and not the other? Please don't post about West Antarctica without including the entire continent. I've already argued that.

Keep in mind that I am talking about global temperatures. I understand that some places will be warmer and some places will be cooler then previously but that is natural. Just because Montreal was 3 degrees cooler then New York city in 1956 doesn't mean it has to be 3 degrees cooler every year for things to be "normal".

I am not drawing any conclusions although I did say "there is a good chance this cooling trend will continue."

The fact that "Global warming" is being replaced by "climate change" does bother me. The climate has always and will always change.

By changing term to "climate change" it makes it very easy to blame any unusual weather activity on "climate change". Honestly I believe that if the earth is cooler 5 years from now posters will be pointing at that, and blaming it on man.

[XemaSab]

21. I hear what you're saying, and any discussion is going to be circular.

I didn't want to totally threadjack this thread, and I wanted a response from a BUNCH of people, so I posted a couple questions in another thread. I'd appreciate it if you'd respond.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x172064

[GliderGuider]

22. That's why I prefer the term "climate chaos".

[GliderGuider]

19. My freshman stats course was a few years ago

These days I just use Excel. Here's a chart of the data in the above post with a second-order polynomial trend line overlaid, along with the R^2 value. There isn't enough data in the series you presented to draw strong conclusions, but the shape of the trend line is, ummm, suggestive. A linear trend line shows the same ascending pattern, but with a slightly lower R^2.



You seem to be placing extraordinary emphasis on one outlier, while ignoring the trend. If I remember my stats class correctly, that's considered bad science. Or agenda-driven blindness. Or a red herring. Or something like that.

[The Croquist]

23. We have allot in common.

Almost all I do these days is excel as well.

One of my points is that there isn't enough accurate data. I do not accept data prior to satellites as accurate. I can go in a long diatribe about it if you want but I won't unless you request it.

I understand your point regarding 1998. It was an extraordinary year but that's partially my point. For some reason we are expected to believe that the climate used to be steady and all of a sudden it is going bonkers. My argument is that the climate was always as "bonkers" as it is today. Some years are warm. Some are cool. Some are wet and some are dry.

You chose a second-order polynomial for your trend line. If you choose a logarithmic trend line the trend is mush less impressive. I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm just saying that you may not be completely correct. :)

Now imagine if instead of the first full year being 1979 it was 1998. The trend would be down. Would that be correct? Obviously not. But if 9 (soon to be 10) years isn't enough is 30 years enough? Although I question the accuracy of pre-satellite data there are reasons to believe that the earth was both warmer and cooler in the past. The "Year Without a Summer" (1816) was very cold as was the "Little Ice Age" and the "Medieval Warm Period" was warm although scientists disagree on the significance or even the existence of the latter two.

My point is, if the earth could have warmed and cooled without man's assistance for decades or even centuries why couldn't it do it for 20 years? Am I right? I don't know but I don't claim to know.

[XemaSab]

25. To throw fuel on the fire

Apparently they had hundred-year droughts in California in the past.

If you lived in the middle of it, you'd think California was naturally completely arid, and you'd be completely adapted.

If you lived at the beginning of it, you'd think the world was coming to an end.

If you lived at the end of it, you'd think the world was coming to an end.

[The Croquist]

26. Feel free to throw gas in the fire

There are 50 states in the US. It stands to reason that one of them having a 100 year drought in any given year shouldn't be considered unusual. Of course you already knew that. I'm pretty sure you're just sitting back and laughing.

It also stands to reason that it is not unusual that one of the 50 states will have 100 year rain, floods, heat and cold. That's what happens when you look at 50 separate places instead of just one.

[XemaSab]

28. I don't mean a "hundred year drought" like one measures a so-called "hundred year flood"

I mean a drought that lasted for a hundred freakin' years!

Our current agricultural regime would fail. Just fail. There's no way you can plan for something like that. If you knew it was going to last for a hundred years, you could build a giant canal from somewhere else and hopefully keep the system from totally collapsing, but I'm picturing the reservoir managers sitting there year after year trying to formulate a water budget with nothing in the tank.

It wouldn't even be like the dust bowl. If the population of North Dakota had to all pick up and move, I'm sure the other states could handle the influx effectively, but the population of California? Not to mention taking California food out of the equation? It would be a total crisis.

[The Croquist]

29. Are you suggesting that there is a reason to believe that California

is entering a drought that lasts for a hundred years? If so I would like to see evidence supporting this.

[Barrett808]

31. Droughts of decades to centuries in length aren't uncommon...

...even during the remarkably stable climate of the Holocene. So there's no reason we couldn't be deeply into a Western megadrought, which is already of once-in-a-century proportions.

Earth's climate system is capable of much worse variations (for humans), which is why it's best left undisturbed.

[Barrett808]

30. Australia's Murray-Darling basin is getting a taste of this right now

They call it "The Big Dry."

'Big Dry' turns farms into deserts
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7577528.stm

Australia's Murray Darling Basin is going downhill
http://www.geocities.com/daveclarkecb/Australia/MurrayDarling.html



Rainfall trend 1970-2006 in eastern Australia (mm/10yrs)

[The Croquist]

32. The Murray-Darling basin

The Murray-Darling basin lies largely in New South Wales. This site shows the annual rainfall for New South Wales from 1900 to present.
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/timeseries.cgi?variable=rain®ion=nsw&season=0112

If you can come up with data for all of the Murray-Darling basin, and only for it, I am willing to adjust my numbers.

2002 was the 4th driest year of the last 108 so I decided to call that the start of the current drought. 2002 through 2007 was the 3rd driest of the 18, 6 year periods so it certainly is dry but the 6 year period prior to that (1996 - 2001) was the 5th wettest so that certainly can't be considered a drought. 1900 - 1905 was the driest followed by 1936 - 1941.

Regardless this doesn't strike me as a 100 year long drought although if it keeps up for another 94 years I am perfectly willing to change my mind.

Keep in mind that XemaSab mentioned a hundred year long drought in California so even if this qualified it wouldn't necessarily be out of the ordinary. The world is a big place.

[Barrett808]

33. This is the "worst drought in 100 years," not a "100-year-long drought"

Although who knows, it may turn out to be a centuries-long drought.

[The Croquist]

34. We seem to have a communication issue

XemaSab referred to a "hundred-year drought" and when I replied he explained he meant "a drought that lasted for a hundred freakin' years!". When I replied to you it turns out we're back to a "hundred-year drought".

Regardless, the seven year New South Wales drought from 1940 - 1946 averaged 419 millimeters of rain a year. The current six year drought from 2002 - 2007 has so far averaged 452 millimeters of rain a year. That does not include 2008 since it is not yet over and (more importantly) I don't have numbers.

It looks to me that the 1940 - 1946 was worse then the current drought and that means that the current drought is not the worst drought in one-hundred years.

Even if it was it was the worst, it would not mean anything by itself. The world is a big place and some place is always going to be suffering a "hundred-year drought".

From the articles I read it seems obvious that the bigger issue is that they are taking too much water from the lakes to irrigate their farms. That is not a climate issue but a natural resource issue. I am a global warming denier, not a defender of man abusing the planet.

[Barrett808]

35. "I am a global warming denier, not a defender of man abusing the planet."

Then perhaps we can agree on a related issue: ocean acidification. Regardless of how you feel about the radiation physics of CO2, I'm sure you'll agree that drastically reducing the pH of the oceans on a geologically brief time scale is a Bad Thing. The conclusion is ineluctable: either we reduce human CO2 emissions, or the oceans die -- even if the climate remains peachy.

[Barrett808]

37. Meant to reply to this, but missed -- see my post #35. n/t

[XemaSab]

40. I'm a she

;)

[Viking12]

24. It's the not the 'facts' that are the problem

It's the incompetent reasoning and fallacious conclusions that are problematic. Bullshit statements like, "The fact that the temperature peaked in 1998 doesn't mean that global warming doesn't exist but it does mean that the jury is still out" ignore simple statistical principles.

[The Croquist]

27. I have drawn no conclusions.

"The fact that the temperature peaked in 1998 doesn't mean that global warming doesn't exist but it does mean that the jury is still out"

How does that ignore simple statistical principals?

Please review my posts. My argument is that we (including me) don't know what is going on.