'Unprecedented' melt sinks hope for Arctic ice recovery

Mon, 2008-08-11 12:30Richard Littlemore
Richard Littlemore's picture

'Unprecedented' melt sinks hope for Arctic ice recovery


The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reports :



Just like the 1930s.
How cyclic.
Meanwhile Antarctic ice sets new records.

And this new study is also timely.


GW not causing more storms.
again... hmmmmm

That's great. I really hope that soon you also might start addressing the topic at hand, or providing links relevant to the points that you're making.

"Like the 1930s": I don't see that in any of the CIS or NSIDC material.

"Cyclical": I don't see that either, but perhaps you're holding something back.


And the as for your Tropical Cyclone paper, it's inconclusive.

What's your point? 

Took less than one second to find.

Actual news paper article from 1922.
Looks familiar doesn't it?

The entire AGW theory is inconclusive.

Basically it comes down to:

AGW has NO conclusive anything to support it.

... have been known for ~150 years. They are better known now and conclusively known. Only a fool would claim that there is no reason to believe that increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere shouldn't be expected to enhance the greenhouse effect.

PS. I'm from Alberta, Gary, and still have nearly all my right-leaning tendencies in tact. I'm aware of them. Are you aware of your political biases?

Political bias?

Seems I am not alone>

Bad new for the greenie agenda.

BTW; your comment about greenhouse effect?
The problem is (as usual) in the detail.

Not much to get excited about.
But don't take my word for anything (you wouldn't anyway)
Go look it up. It is all easy to find.

First, I read about it on realclimate long before I ever read one of your musings. More importantly, scientists have known this since long before you were born. It doesn't change the facts. Search this:


The problem IS in the detail. And the detailed problem here is that you oversimplify, obfuscate, cherry-pick, and repeat ad nauseum what are essentially lies. "AGW has NO conclusive anything to support it." Keep telling yourself that mr centrist-antisocialist, but stop trying to spread the lie to others.


Looks like Gary didn't want to learn anything.

Here, read this:


You're acting like a ninnie -- did you want to learn about CO2 or not? Now comes a silly argument against positive feedbacks (supported by a link to argument for negative feedback by clouds by Roy Spencer). Groan. If you believe in solar and albedo, then you believe in the potential for positive feedbacks. If you believe in forest fires and black carbon, then you believe in the potential for positive feedbacks. If you believe in Spencer's negative feedback effects with respect to clouds then I think you're at odds with the cosmic ray idea.

The accuser is just as biased as the accused. You know that your very biased as well. You'd be a fool to spit in god's face and lie in his presence.



2) Co2 will absorb and then re-emit longwave radiation




Fern Mackenzie

Impossible to argue?
The individual points are valid as stated.
Bus as has been pointed out SOOOOOOO many times.
Impossible to argue?
Dispute these facts:
The world has warmed and cooled in similar cycles for milenia.
The earth cooled during the fastest increase in man made CO2.

All indisputable. All only slightly relevent.

The real story is Much more complicated.

Look up greate climate shift cycles for one of the issues.

etc. etc. etc. There is NO SIMPLE explaination.

Your level of hysteria rises in sync with your spelling mistakes.

Gary said: "Meanwhile Antarctic ice sets new records".




Ian Forrester

You guys are not going to keep a streight face and claim you don't know all about the Ice melting of the thirties and the FACT that the Antarctic has been setting records for Ice coverage all year?


Every kid knows that when you go out in the morning on your way to school after a cold night, there is a skim of ice over the puddles, in the creek, on the river -- wherever -- just BEGGING to be stamped on and smashed into a pile of shards. It's thin, it's light, and by noon it will all be gone. It comes & it goes as the season gets established. Thin ice means NOTHING. Oh wtf. I am going to bed & leaving you to your delusions of scientific competence.


Fern Mackenzie

Fern.... really, that it?
Have you even looked at some of the data on antarctica?


The antarctic is COLD and it ice mass is GROWING.
Look it up and them explain it.

Conditions in context (from NSIDC)



Fern Mackenzie

Based on this rapid ice melt, Professor Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School* in California says that the computer models he has been running this year appear almost prophetic.... They indicate that the Arctic could be ice free during the summer months by 2013 - with serious consequences for the planet. Of course, that hasn't happened in all of human history.

From The Guardian:



Will the NEVER learn.
so far those models are batting 0.
Nice try.
We will see the actual results soon enough. And it won't be supportive of the leftie agenda.

Anything and everything is caused by Global warming.

Will the insanity ever end?


"And if Einstein's scared, I'M SCARED."*

Fern Mackenzie

* "Talking Atomic Blues"

I agree completley with everything you said.

More than 31000 of them in fact.


And a BA in science does not a scientist make.



That's hilarious:

"have done the research... More than 31000 of them in fact."

31000 is becoming a key word, like "ancient astronauts".

Google 31000 and feel the power of myth.


Just google "antarctic setting ice record"
You will get dozens of links.
Pick one, they all say the same thing.

And since it holds most of the ice mass of the planet, there is no chance that we will ever see Hansen's fabled 23 foot sea level rise.
No surprise to any informed person.

Ten million fools repeating a lie cannot make it true.

That is what I have been saying all along.
Thank you for your support.


Gary is wrong again. The Antarctic is *losing* ice mass -- this has been confirmed by high-resolution GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite measurements.


Note: My post here is not addressed to Gary. It is addressed instead to lurkers who might otherwise be misled by Gary's continuing stream of misinformation here.


Good try though.

Gary's antics aside, I suspect there is good reason to be skeptical that the Arctic polar ice won't recover. The first point to make is that what's important from a 'tipping point' perspective is how much light gets absorbed by the open ocean instead of reflected by ice back into space. Well, this rather late acceleration of melt is happily happening after the angle and amount of sunlight are changing to less damaging values. The heat budget is more (directly) affected by the amount of open sea at the peak of summer than by the amount at the end of the summer.

Of course, the amount of sea ice at the end of the summer melting is important with respect to the amount of ice (thickness and extent) that will shield the North come next melt season (and therefore how much absorbtion occurs at the height of summer). I think this is where the second point should be made: there are things other than temperature that affect the amount of ice at the end of the summer. If temperature was the only important factor, then any current discussion about 'tipping points' for the Arctic sea ice would be moot (there's still lots of warming in the pipeline). But if you read the articles, the main reason for the current rapid melting is the thin ice left over from last year. The other factor mentioned is stormy weather involving southern winds. It's not clear to me that the latter condition is obliged to occur, and it seems quite likely that the former condition is not going to be as bad at the start of next year as it was at the start of this one. Thus, in the short term, I don't think we can give up on Arctic sea ice recovery.


Some of you may wonder, "Why should I give a crap what this guy thinks?" You shouldn't -- I'm just a fish biologist trying to understand the world in which my study organism exists. Please feel free to critique my reasoning.


The 2007 ice melt was completley natural.


Where's Frank Bi when you need him? Gary, did you just say that black carbon is a very important factor and then tell everyone to relax because the 2007 melt was 'completely natural'? Pffft.

Forest fires are completey natural.

It can blow black carbon up to the Arctic from forest fires in California but the wind somehow doesn't blow black carbon from more proximal anthropogenic sources. Right. (Nevermind the problem of whether or not the forest fires have an anthropogenic component to them.)


Interesting. Making progress Steve. keep going.

Having said that, this new comment of yours relies on another bit of illogical reasoning, so I'll be as plain as possible:

If you could demonstrate that the wind somehow discriminates against transporting black carbon from anthropogenic sources to the Arctic, while moving black carbon from 'natural' sources in California all the way up there, then I'll consider the possibility that the melt in 2007 was largely caused by black carbon from natural sources. But you can't overcome the "if" at the beginning of this paragraph.


Direct quote from above article:

== "Extent is now within 780,000 square kilometers (300,000 square miles) of last year's value on the same date . . . " ==


This is bad news how??

Paul, please let's hear how this is propaganda, but Exxon's messages via Heartland weren't expensive enough to qualify as propaganda.

Good point Steve. The above nonsense is overly alarmist, but not propaganda.

Paul shows his disdain for his own 'positions' which are so insincerely held that he hardly notices when he contradicts himself.



"My True Religion Is Kindness" -- The Dalai Lama/---/Do you know why
350ppm is important?




Richard, if the spawning stock of some commercially-important species declined steadily from the time when good techniques were actually applied to estimate abundance, showing a strong negative trend over a 30 year period, would you say, "it's an interesting diversion" ? No, and you wouldn't rule out commercial use of the species as a contributing factor to the decline just because the weather had also changed.

An interesting animation of the Arctic sea ice images:









Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population, established 2001



The biggest, most successful businesses in history spend incalculable fortunes (hiring trolls like Gary) to tell us that we're an adaptive species that will continue to expand its capacity even as the ocean collapses as a food source and as we continue to burn up our principal source of fertilizer (fossil fuels) for the pleasure of driving longer distances in bigger cars.

If you were a little cavalier about this, you'd take Gary's advice and "relax." In the long term, nature will restore a balance to the world, whether humans participate in the planning or not. In the libertarian version, we'll continue "thriving," making money and expanding our consumption right up to the tipping point. Then, we'll start squabbling among ourselves and through war, famine and natural calamity, we'll thin out the human population nicely - maybe catastrophically.

My problem is that I have contributed to the world's population (and beyond my allotted quota; I have three boys). So, I don't like the libertarian outcome.


Call me a romantic.

But the necessity of thinking about good long-term planning doesn't remove the urgency of putting out raging house fires in the meantime. Of all the really stupid things that humans are doing to the planet, I am convinced that changing its climate precipitously is the most reckless. And the most vile, reprehensible and colossally idiotic sideline is the campaign to deny that the world's best scientists are onto something important, something worthy of public attention and global action.


So, I am going to continue to use what time I can find to criticize, condemn and expose the self-destructive imbecility of their position. And when we win this fight - when we put out this fire - call me again, and I'll be happy to turn my attention more directly to population - which, again, I admit is the underlying problem.


I wish I'd said that! I'm going to print that up and keep it handy for the next time someone accuses me of hating humankind & advocating eugenics etc etc etc.

Fern Mackenzie