Global Warming

[Dave]

Skeptics put the freeze on NASA 'hot air' about Greenland ice


FoxNews.com, July 26, 2012, By Jeremy A. Kaplan

Read more: www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/26/skeptics-put-freeze-on-nasa-hot-air-about-greenland-ice/#ixzz21kdS6xuL


NASA’s claim that Greenland is experiencing “unprecedented” melting is nothing but a bunch of hot air, according to scientists who say the country's ice sheets melt with some regularity.
A heat dome over the icy country melted a whopping 97 percent of Greenland’s ice sheet in mid-July, NASA said, calling it yet more evidence of the effect man is having on the planet.

But the unusual-seeming event had nothing to do with hot air, according to glaciologists. It was actually to be expected.

"Ice cores from Summit station [Greenland’s coldest and highest] show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time," said Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data.

But rather than a regular 150-year planetary cycle, the new NASA report calls the melt “unprecedented,” the result of a recent strong ridge of warm air, or a heat dome, over Greenland -- one of a series that has dominated Greenland's weather since the end of May.

'NASA should start distributing dictionaries to the authors of its press releases.'
- Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist

"Each successive ridge has been stronger than the previous one," said Thomas Mote, a climatologist at the University of Georgia. This latest heat dome started to move over Greenland on July 8, and then parked itself over the ice sheet about three days later. By July 16, it had begun to dissipate, along with the ice, NASA said.

Climate skeptics said the NASA report itself was the only “unprecedented” item.

“NASA should start distributing dictionaries to the authors of its press releases,” joked Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist and the author of the World Climate Report blog.

It is a cyclic event - we just have a hard time remembering last year, let alone 10,000 yrs ago.

[Virginia]

The draught in the Midwest is so bad fish are dying by the thousands. Either no water for the fish or it is too hot for the fish to survive. I would not want to live close to athousand fish laying dead. The Mississippi is so low in places that barges cannot travel thru. Now I am waiting for another dust bowl.

Does HAARP have anything to do with this?

[Dave]

We have spoke many times about the weather patterns being cyclic.

The last dust bowel was only 60/70 years ago - before then it was?

HAARP - you know I would not doubt it. If you screw with the weather someplace else, how can it reamin the same here? What about all the talk about HAARP being use to force earthquakes in China, Turkey, and Iran - maybe this is an after effect. Could be? Maybe?

[Dave]

Humans' Role In Antarctic Ice Melt Is Unclear
by RICHARD HARRIS, August 22, 2012

www.npr.org/2012/08/22/159786793/humans-role-in-antartic-ice-melt-is-unclear



Ten years ago, a piece of ice the size of Rhode Island disintegrated and melted in the waters off Antarctica. Two other massive ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula had suffered similar fates a few years before. The events became poster children for the effects of global warming. But a new study finds that the story isn't quite so simple.

There's no question that unusually warm air triggered the final demise of these huge chunks of ice. But a lingering question is whether these events can be attributed to human-induced global warming.

To probe that question, Robert Mulvaney and colleagues at the British Antarctic Survey drilled down 364 meters (more than 1,000 feet) and collected an ice core that tells the story of heating and cooling along the Antarctic Peninsula over the past 50,000 years.

Mulvaney says the sharp warming trend we're seeing now is quite unusual but not entirely unique.

"In the last 2,000 years there was another period around about the 1500s where we also saw a warming about similar to the rate of today," he says, but the temperature cooled again. "And then at about 400 A.D., we also saw not quite as great a warming there as well, but then it cooled again."

That finding, published in Nature magazine, raises an obvious question. Since there's a history of extreme temperature changes in this part of Antarctica, what can we say about the cause of the latest strong warming trend?

"I still think the jury must be out, whether you can attribute it one way or the other. I think this neither proves nor denies that this is a human-induced change," Mulvaney says.

And that makes this finding interesting not just for scientific reasons, but for political ones.

There's a very broad scientific consensus, based on many lines of evidence, that human changes to the planet are having a real impact on air temperature, sea temperature, droughts and melting ice. But Mulvaney knows that his more ambiguous finding is likely to be picked up by skeptics who are looking for evidence to argue that natural variability, rather than human activities, explain the Earth's rapid warming. So be it.

Related NPR Stories
Reading the Poles: Earth's Ice in Jeopardy
June 20, 2006
Shifted Ice Cap Unexpectedly Reveals Life
July 19, 2005

"I'm a scientist; I'm just being honest and reporting what we see," he says. "I'm not trying to be political here. I'm not trying to either prove or disprove human-induced climate change."

In fact, Mulvaney says when he started studying Antarctica in the 1980s, he was skeptical that humans were already affecting the climate and the ice.

"I think as the years have gone by I've moved considerably away from that early skeptical stance," he says. "And as I stand here now, you can't keep going year after year with most of the evidence all pointing in the same direction and not come to the conclusion that the climate is warming."

Another Antarctica expert, Eugene Domack from Hamilton College, says it is hard to distinguish natural cycles from human-caused trends in something as dynamic as ice. But he says these changes in Antarctica are mirrored with similar changes now in ice-sheet disintegration in the Canadian arctic.

"That tells you something is up that's more widespread than a local phenomenon," Domack says, adding that global changes are more likely due to human activity.

This question is obviously important because melting ice has historically raised and lowered sea levels dramatically. So knowing its fate matters a lot to the hundreds of millions of people who live near the coast.

[Elflord]

One major problem I encounter with this topic is the fact that it is difficult for me to see flawed data when a global warming alarmist publishes new data. But, in my defense, I am not a climatologist. I used to follow a lot of Jon Daly's research, who really was a climatologist before his death.

Check out www.john-daly.com/ for a picture of the mean sea level from 1841. The oceans do not appear to be rising.

A lot of what I read in newspapers is authored by meteorologists, not climatologists. If I want to know whether it'll rain today I need a meteorologist. If I want to know how hot the earth was in 1500 CE I'll consult a climatologist.

And, if I want to know ANYTHING about weather I'll ignore Michael Mann.

Who'da thunk I could come to a philosophy website and discuss the weather??? Awesome.

[Dave]

Just goes to show - all things are relevant.

Social manipulations - go to a foreign country - America's polution is the cause of global warming being an American Why, because we go around preaching that we did this and that - all the while - industry moved to mexico and china who wont even talk about it.

The miss-direction of global warming fears force international global cooperation to correct - more globalism

Is not the trend toward a "One World Government" completely scriptural?

[Virginia]

My brother just returned from Alaska. (He did have to make a side trip on the way home. His gallbladder went bad and he was taken to a hospital in Vancouver for surgery. He finally got home yesterday)Fortionally it was on the way home. I watched a docu on Alaska about a small town in nw Alaska. The rise in the ocean flooded half the town and our gov moved the rest to a safer location. I wish I could remember the name of the town but I don't. My brother was impressed with how large Alaska is. Sarah Palin is a loved celebrety.