Useful graphs regarding sea ice

I came upon what appears to be a good report on sea ice. To the right is what concerns many, if concern is the right word; it may be the graph is undeniable proof that my car is a bad boy.

(Both graphs go to 2008, but state the max range is 2000. Who knows what that means? Probably, some precise scientist missed the title.)

The NYT ARTICLE has an impressive automated representation of sea ice (and water) in the north. Not a bad report, taken with a pound of salt. Recall, the author is a journalist giving his impression with some data included.

Below is the point I keep raising. If you use the same logic in antarctica that is used in the arctic, then we are having serious cooling problem. The trend is much stronger.





I do not understand the myopia. I guess the farther from New York, the less important is the location on the earth.

Of course, the piece being a NYT article the reported says "most" are convinced humans are "partly" causing the warming. That sort of party line, non-science, non-journalism is to be expected. Pep talks work when speaking to your team.

Are we also partly the cause of a global cooling? Or, should the use of "climate change" now be mandatory and we are partly responsible for that, whatever it is supposed to mean. Imagine: no climate change is the correct natural phenomenon. Oh, too narrow? Then any macro changes from 1990 -2005 is something to fix, since clearly that era is the standard of the earth.

A U.S. parks' (I guess it is the Dept. of Interior) handout now in use (co-ventured with NASA, our Hansen friend at work,) spends your tax payer's money saying, over and over, that global warming is real. If so, why keep saying it over and over? Why keep saying the Bush people are getting in the way of the truth of global warming? The politics is clear.

Then, the piece switches to global change in mid-thought. I guess some people really are so stupid as to be herded about, mooing on cue. If you want billions of dollars for PR and massive changes in the law, you should be able to hold onto your assumption, if not explain it.

A side thought - there really is a serious concern over the glib use of catch phrases global warming and climate change. The are not the same. Change would include warming, I suppose, but that is the only relation.

Since "warming" seems a dubious trend, as time goes on, the gentle shift to "change" is disingenuous. Like a magician switching a prop. Still, when I point this out and expect my dialectic partner to gush, "Oh, you are right and I am wrong," this does not happen. Rather, I get a look like I am speaking in tongues. These are honest, smart people, not the spin meisters of today. I could understand someone reworking their ideas using new data, but to stare blankly is curious. Also, they do not argue, just stare like they are avoiding someone who will bite them.

I recently wrote about volcanic activity near Greenland, melting the ice. Here are a few other tidbits.

Arctic Volcanoes Found Active at Unprecedented Depths
Kimberly Johnson
for National Geographic News
June 26, 2008
Buried under thick ice and frigid water, volcanic explosions are shaking the Arctic Ocean... {not a report of recent known activity, just the idea of volcanoes.}

This article did not mention NASA was helping with the funding the study. A Canadian version of the story is more complete, since Canadians actually read. At one point:

The scientists say the heat released by the explosions is not contributing to the melting of the Arctic ice, but Sohn says the huge volumes of CO2 gas that belched out of the undersea volcanoes likely contributed to rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. How much, he couldn't say....

Still, I am still partly melting the arctic and freezing the antarctic.

HERE is a page noting two active volcanoes in the arctic, but the data is freeze dried. At least, we know there have been documented past eruptions that cracked the ice. A bit more, mentioning the tectonic plates activity under the arctic.

Volcanic eruptions reshape Arctic ocean floor: study
Wed Jun 25, 4:13 PM ET
PARIS (AFP) - Recent massive volcanoes have risen from the ocean floor deep under the Arctic ice cap, spewing plumes of fragmented magma into the sea, scientists who filmed the aftermath reported Wednesday.

The eruptions -- as big as the one that buried Pompei -- took place in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge, an underwater mountain chain snaking 1,800 kilometres (1,100 miles) from the northern tip of Greenland to Siberia.

Scientists suspected even at the time that a simultaneous series of earthquakes were linked to these volcanic spasms.

But when a team led of scientists led by Robert Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts finally got a first-ever glimpse of the ocean floor 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) beneath the Arctic pack ice, they were astonished....

I have noted many times the massive increase in under water eruptions in the past few years, but no one seems to echo this factor as it does not fit the target conclusion.

Something is going on, but what? Some say the poles will move, others point to global wobble (which I think may be my fault), and so on. When you go past Al Gore's birth, you find our planet has a wide variation in activity, temperature, etc. To look at a 1999 graph and postulate the future is the height of arrogance, especially when peers gently commented the math was in error, a kind chastisement for a contrived basis of a political movement.

As Ira Gershwin advised about popular stories: "It ain' t nes'assarily so." Things are a bit more complex than poorly constructed induction posits, especially when the conclusion is a target, not a result.

The Polar Bear Lie

The UN folks have been busy in their press office. Now, the "thousands" of unnamed scientists seem have declared Polar Bears are just about extinct. You know 2050. Time to wear a sandwich board: THE END IS NEAR.

I know this is not so, from reading about them before the media had a new bone to gnaw, leaving scraps for the masses. IN FACT: Polar Bear populations likely increase in warmer condition.

I won't even bother bemoaning the lack of journalistic work etc etc. It is obvious that journalists need not apply. The reports are cool aid drinking. I will just refer you to other data:

Artic Ice (not Antarctic - I am tired of talking about the misinformation about the South Pole, let's go north)

A study commissioned by Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans examined the relationship between air temperature and sea ice and concluded, "the possible impact of global warming appears to play a minor role in changes to Arctic sea ice." Rather, the Canadian study found that changing wind patterns are the primary cause of changing sea ice distributions. Moreover, while sea ice has decreased in the Arctic, it has remained relatively constant (or even increased slightly) in the Antarctic since 1978.

Is Global Warming Killing Polar Bears?

Though polar bears are uniquely adapted to the Arctic region, they are not wedded solely to its coldest parts nor are they restricted to a specific Arctic diet. Aside from a variety of seals, they eat fish, kelp, caribou, ducks, sea birds and scavenged whale and walrus carcasses. In addition, as discussed above, Arctic air temperatures were as high as present temperatures in the 1930s and polar bears survived.

Interestingly, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an international organization that has worked for 50 years to protect endangered species, has also written on the threats posed to polar bears from global warming. However, their own research seems to undermine their fears. According to the WWF, about 20 distinct polar bear populations exist, accounting for approximately 22,000 polar bears worldwide. As the figure shows, population patterns do not show a temperature-linked decline:

• Only two of the distinct population groups, accounting for about 16.4 percent of the total population, are decreasing.
• Ten populations, approximately 45.4 percent of the total number, are stable.
• Another two populations — about 13.6 percent of the total number of polar bears — are increasing.

The status of the remaining six populations (whether they are stable, increasing or decreasing in size) is unknown.

Moreover, when the WWF report is compared with the Arctic air temperature trend studies discussed earlier, there is a strong positive (instead of negative) correlation between air temperature and polar bear populations. Polar bear populations are declining in regions (like Baffin Bay) that have experienced a decrease in air temperature, while areas where polar bear populations are increasing (near the Bering Strait and the Chukchi Sea) are associated with increasing air temperatures. Thus it is difficult to argue that rising air temperatures will necessarily and directly lead to a decrease in polar bear populations.