Resisting Climate Hysteria

trainspotter said:

Errrrmmmmmmmmm not quite old chum ......



http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm

But but but NASA can't be wrong ?



http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-new-record-maximum



Alarming eh? Yes yes yes the ANTARCTIC LAND ICE is melting ... at the rate of 0.19mm ocean rise per year and expected to take several 1000's of years before complete meltdown at the ate.

The ARCTIC is where the BIG defrosting is happening. Since the late 1970s, the Arctic has lost an average of 20,800 square miles (53,900 square kilometers) of ice a year; the Antarctic has gained an average of 7,300 square miles (18,900 sq km).

Penguins in Antarctica, Polar bears in Arctic. Crazy world huh?

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explod said:

The whole issue is so complex that few scietists can encompass it all, which of course opens the way for the finger-pointing and ridicule.

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“There hasn’t been one explanation yet that I’d say has become a consensus, where people say, ‘We’ve nailed it, this is why it’s happening,’” Parkinson said. “Our models are improving, but they’re far from perfect. One by one, scientists are figuring out that particular variables are more important than we thought years ago, and one by one those variables are getting incorporated into the models.”

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The issue I was referring to wasn't simply the rate at which Antarctic ice might be melting. It appears that the melting of the sea ice around glaciers in West Antarctica will allow the whole of the inland glacier to slid into the ocean and trigger a rise of many meters.

The scientists believe that there is almost no chance of the glaciers not disintegrating without the protection of the sea ice. Time span is uncertain but between 100-300 years.

The sea ice is melting because of substantially warmer water cause by global warming.

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Water was never more than two feet deep while we carted timber, and for a long time in autumn 1915 was perfectly dry, the river having stopped running in February or March.” Russell McDonald, Riversdale, Central Murray Valley

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It is often claimed in the popular press that Lake Alexandrina has been a freshwater lake for 7,000 years.[5]

In fact, the Lower Lakes formed when the Southern Ocean burst through a coastal dune formation flooding an areas of natural subsidence. This occurred between 6,000 and 7,000 years ago when sea levels were 1-2 metres higher than they are today.

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THE university ditched a $4 million contract for sceptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg's Australian Consensus Centre, amid strong backlash from staff, students and the public.
Education Minister Christopher Pyne is disappointed and remains committed to opening the centre.

"It is surprising that individuals at an institution of higher learning claiming to embrace the notion of academic and intellectual freedom would display intolerance and shout down a voice in the debate they simply don't agree with," a spokesman told AAP on Saturday.

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In short, climate change is not worse than we thought. Some indicators are worse, but some are better. That doesn’t mean global warming is not a reality or not a problem. It definitely is. But the narrative that the world’s climate is changing from bad to worse is unhelpful alarmism, which prevents us from focusing on smart solutions.

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Alarmism has encouraged the pursuit of a one-sided climate policy of trying to cut carbon emissions by subsidizing wind farms and solar panels. Yet today, according to the International Energy Agency, only about 0.4% of global energy consumption comes from solar photovoltaics and windmills. And even with exceptionally optimistic assumptions about future deployment of wind and solar, the IEA expects that these energy forms will provide a minuscule 2.2% of the world’s energy by 2040.

In other words, for at least the next two decades, solar and wind energy are simply expensive, feel-good measures that will have an imperceptible climate impact. Instead, we should focus on investing in research and development of green energy, including new battery technology to better store and discharge solar and wind energy and lower its costs. We also need to invest in and promote growth in the world’s poorest nations, which suffer the most from natural disasters.

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Climate-change doomsayers notwithstanding, we urgently need balance if we are to make sensible choices and pick the right climate policy that can help humanity slow, and inevitably adapt to, climate change.

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“The massive industrialisation of the adjacent coastline for coal and gas ports is adding even more development pressures, including plans for dumping millions of tonnes of dredge waste into Reef waters.”

After being blasted by ministers and tourism operators and being contacted by The Courier-Mail, Sir Richard was in retreat last night, with a spokeswoman saying he had not been aware of the work being done on the Reef when he made the comments. She said Sir Richard was not aware at the time of posting of Australia’s $2 billion investment and was “greatly heartened’’ by this news.

“He is looking forward to speaking with (Federal Environment) Minister Greg Hunt in coming days to discuss the situation and the Government’s plans to protect the Reef,’’ she said.

Mr Hunt said the comments *surprised him given Sir Richard’s airline business was a major consumer of fuel, a contributor to climate change gases. He said he had spoken to Virgin Australia boss John Borghetti and would speak to Sir Richard this week.

“John Borghetti was extremely apologetic,’’ Mr Hunt said. “Advice from Virgin Australia suggests that he may not have been given the full picture and it wouldn’t surprise me if he didn’t even know what was being posted.’’

Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators’ Col McKenzie said the outer reefs were in good shape. “The Reef is not endangered but it is in danger from some activists who use it as a handle to fight against coal,” he said. Attempts were made to contact the 1 Million Women group last night.

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Our goal is to inspire 1 million women to take practical action on climate change by cutting a minimum of 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse pollutant causing global warming. Every woman who joins has a personal goal to cut a min 1 tonne of CO2 from their daily lives within a year of joining the campaign.

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EVERY ONE OF US WHO SWITCHES SENDS A MESSAGE TO THE DIRTY ELECTRICITY COMPANIES THAT WE WILL NO LONGER SUPPORT THEIR INVESTMENTS IN FOSSIL FUELS.

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West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) - a slow motion collapse

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula) has thinned significantly as a result of warmer temperatures in the surrounding Antarctic Ocean. The upper ocean in this region has increased in temperature by more than 1 °C since 1955. The greatest degree of thinning has happened in an area called the Amundsen Sea Embayment.

Many glaciers have retreated and 10 ice shelves have been seen to retreat in recent years. 87% of glaciers along the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula have retreated in the last 50 years with most of these showing accelerated retreat in the last 12 years.

Recently (May 2014) it has been revealed that the WAIS is collapsing, an event that seems to be unstoppable. It will still take a very long time to happen however, several centuries or perhaps up to 1,000 years.

The key area is the 182,000 square km (70,000 sq miles) Thwaites Glacier which is being undercut by warmer water from the Amundsen Sea resulting in its retreat. The water is being driven by changes in wind patterns in this part of Antarctica. The collapse of the Thwaites Glacier alone could lead to a 1.2m (4ft) rise in global se levels, though the biggest effect is likely to come from it acting as an "ice dam" a sort of cork in a bottle of the rest of the WAIS behind it. This could lead to another 3-4m (10-13ft) rise in sea level.

The collapse of the glacier and rise in sea levels is thought to progress slowly for about two hundred years, but then it probably will speed up considerably. It is thought that there may be two stable states for the WAIS, as it is at the moment (or rather as it was about 50 years ago) and then for it not to be there at all, currently it is undergoing a change between the two states. From 1992 to 2011, the Thwaites Glacier retreated around 14 km, faster than anywhere else in Antarctica.

The end result of this is the possibility that we have already been committed to a rise in global sea levels by 3m or more over the coming centuries.

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Warm Water Under Antarctic Glacier Spurs Rapid Melting

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ScienceCasts: No Turning Back - West Antarctic Glaciers in Irreversible Decline

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basilio said:

By the way Train Spotter the section you quoted from Sckeptical Science website regarding increases in ocean levels from melting Antarctic ice did not take into account the above research.

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Sea level rises as ice on land melts and as warming ocean waters expand. As well as being a threat to coastal habitation and environments, sea level rise corroborates other evidence of global warming.

The blue line in the graph below clearly shows sea level as rising, while the upward curve suggests sea level is rising faster as time goes on. The upward curve agrees with global temperature trends and with the accelerating melting of ice in Greenland and other places.

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The ocean doesn’t rise steadily like water poured into a bathtub — instead there are splashes and jiggles in its rise. Weather patterns like El Niño can shove tens of centimeters of water up onto shores for months at a time, as they did in California in 1998. Floods in Australia in late 2010 strangely resulted in water piling up on that continent, robbing the oceans of enough water to lower global sea level by 7 millimeters for more than a year. While the ocean grows, the land also shifts: The ground rises where it was once pressed down by glaciers, and river deltas sink as loose sediments compact. What looks like sea level rise in one place might really be the result of the land falling

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One problem has been attributing what, exactly, has caused the rise seen so far. Since the 1970s, for example, it is thought that about 40 to 50 percent of sea level rise was caused by 'thermal expansion' — the fact that water simply takes up more room as it gets warmer; 35 percent by melting glaciers; 5 percent because people have been extracting groundwater, using it, and pouring it into the ocean; and the remaining amount probably from melting ice at the poles. The primary reason this accounting is tricky is spotty data: Satellite measures of ocean height only go back to 1993, for example, and of the world’s more than 100,000 glaciers, there are only 17 with melt records going back 30 years or more. "We have to make huge assumptions," says Chambers.

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These so-called 'semi-empirical' models tend to top out twice as high as the 'process-based' models, making 2 meters of sea level rise feasible for 2100 — enough to flood the homes of 187 million people. But the IPCC says it doesn’t have much confidence in these results. "They’re interesting," says Chambers, "but I don’t think they should be given as much weight as the process-based models."

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No matter which way you look at it, the result is cause for concern. "I always tell people if they live under 3 feet above sea level, they should be worried about the next 100 years," says Chambers. "We probably can adapt to a certain extent. The problem is that we’re not planning for it."

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Alarming eh? Yes yes yes the ANTARCTIC LAND ICE is melting ... at the rate of 0.19mm ocean rise per year and expected to take several 1000's of years before complete meltdown at the current rate.

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When two dozen ice experts were surveyed in 2012, their best guesses for polar ice loss were all over the map — but their average was higher than the IPCC’s estimates, and their range easily put sea level rise over a meter by 2100. For a middle-of-the-road emissions scenario, for example, this group guessed at a sea level rise of 33 to 132 centimeters; the upper bound of that is roughly in line with semi-empiricalmodels, but nearly double the IPCC’s most recent estimate (which allows, to be fair, tens of centimeters of wiggle room for possible dramatic ice sheet flow from the Antarctic). "The [IPCC’s latest] AR5 process-based projections appear optimistic and over-confident when compared with views of ice sheet experts," writes glaciologist Aslak Grinsted of the University of Copenhagen on his website. There is "no good reason" for this, he adds.

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This debate about whether there will be 1 or 2 meters of sea level rise by 2100, however, pales in comparison to the numbers for the long-term outlook. The last time the planet was steadily 2 degrees C warmer than pre-industrial times, some 120,000 years ago, sea levels were 5 to 10 meters higher than today. It’s likely we’ll hit 2 degrees C of warming by 2100, unless we take extreme measures to mitigate emissions. "The bigger concern is the longer term," agrees Scambos. "By the end of this century the rate of change in Greenland will be so high that the next hundred years will be dialed in for significant sea level rise."

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basilio said:

We are clearly talking at cross purposes Trainspotter.

I brought up one particular study (which encompasses many years research work) What is happening to the glaciers in Antarctica.


And when they go the sea levels rise between 1.5 to 4 metres depending on how much of the glaciers collapse.

Did you check out the research in any way or just recopy your last notes

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The other points you raise are distractions TS. If you can find some Luke Warmer who can demonstrate that this research is fundamentally wrong go for it.

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Multiple studies of Antarctica indicate growing ice sheet instability, especially in the Amundsen Sea Embayment, where the Thwaites, Pine Island, Smith, Kohler, Pope, and Haynes Glaciers drain the central West Antarctic Ice Sheet. A study using Earth Remote Sensing satellite radar interferometry (EERS-1 and -2) observations from 1992 through 2011 finds "a continuous and rapid retreat of the grounding lines of Pine Island, Thwaites, Haynes, Smith, and Kohler" Glaciers, and the authors conclude that "this sector of West Antarctica is undergoing a marine ice sheet instability that will significantly contribute to sea level rise in decades to centuries to come" (Rignot et al. 2014). Bedrock mapping combined with a numerical model shows that early-stage ice sheet collapse is potentially underway in the Thwaites Glacier Basin, largely driven by subshelf melt. The model forecasts that rapid collapse could occur within 200 to 900 years (Joughin et al. 2014).

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“There hasn’t been one explanation yet that I’d say has become a consensus, where people say, ‘We’ve nailed it, this is why it’s happening,’” Parkinson said. “Our models are improving, but they’re far from perfect. One by one, scientists are figuring out that particular variables are more important than we thought years ago, and one by one those variables are getting incorporated into the models.”

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basilio said:

TS on rechecking the Sceptical Science website article I realised that their discussion on sea level rises was essentially looking at what has occurred in the past 150 odd years. It was written in response to people who have denied that there has been any increases at all.
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It isn't useful in terms of discussing what would be the effects of a collapse in the Antarctic glaciers.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise-intermediate.htm

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basilio said:

PS

By the way that was an excellent article from Yale university. When one reads it in full it offers (in my view) a good overall picture.

I noticed that one of the big questions marks in the article was the behavior of Antarctic glaciers. They just wern't prepared to commit to a final outcome. And if you noticed that towards the end of the discussion scientists who worked with the ice fields believed sea level rises would be significantly higher than other scientists. Clearly that represents their understanding of what may be happening.

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The West Antarctic Ice Sheet forms what is called a marine ice sheet – the ice is resting on bedrock, but that bedrock is below sea level. (Parts of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet are also below sea level).

Where the bedrock under a marine ice sheet slopes down towards the interior of the continent, such as under parts of West Antarctica, the ice sheet may be unstable. If the coastal part of the ice sheet flows more rapidly and thins (e.g. in response to ice shelf changes), it will start to float. This reduces the forces restraining the ice sheet, which is then able to flow even more rapidly. This will drain more ice from further inland, thinning the ice sheet upstream, which may also start to float. With bedrock that slopes backwards, becoming deeper towards the interior, continued retreat of the boundary of the grounded ice sheet may proceed very rapidly. In this way, a small initial retreat could in theory destabilize large sections of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, leading to rapid ice loss. However, uncertainty remains around how likely this process is and how much it might affect sea level rise by 2100.

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The IPCC AR5 states that, based on a wide range of emission scenarios, sea level rise from thermal expansion of the ocean, melt of glaciers and small ice caps, and from Greenland and Antarctica, would be in the range 0.26 to 0.82 m by 2081–2100.

Estimating extra sea level rise from a further acceleration of outlet glaciers is not straightforward. Processes such as those controlling basal sliding of glaciers (where water at the bed of the glacier lubricates it and allows it to move more rapidly) are not well understood.

IPCC AR5 concluded that only the collapse of marine-based sectors of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, if initiated, could cause global mean sea level to rise substantially above the likely range during the 21st Century, and that this additional contribution would not exceed several tenths of a metre of sea level rise during the 21st Century.

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Estimating extra sea level rise from a further acceleration of outlet glaciers is not straightforward. Processes such as those controlling basal sliding of glaciers (where water at the bed of the glacier lubricates it and allows it to move more rapidly) are not well understood.

IPCC AR5 concluded that only the collapse of marine-based sectors of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, if initiated, could cause global mean sea level to rise substantially above the likely range during the 21st Century, and that this additional contribution would not exceed several tenths of a metre of sea level rise during the 21st Century.

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Scientists Fear Irreversible Changes from West Antarctic Ice Sheet Collapse

Most projections of climate change presume that impacts will happen incrementally as greenhouse gas pollution increases and temperatures warm. However, scientists are increasingly studying the presence of “tipping points” in the climate. Pushing global temperatures past these thresholds can trigger irreversible changes even if we do not add any further CO2 to the atmosphere. These changes may be abrupt or may take hundreds of years, but once the threshold is passed they cannot be reversed.

The longer we continue with business-as-usual emissions of greenhouse gas pollution, the greater the risk that we will push parts of our climate system past these tipping points. Now, two new studies (Cole et al. and Joughin et al.) of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) show that we may have already passed a tipping point of crucial importance to the stability of this massive ice sheet.

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basilio said:

It is interesting to see the IPCC's view on the risks and consequences of a collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet.

As I understand it is largely a consensus document that requires many governments to agree on the final report. Frankly I think that quote is ridiculous

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The IPCC said more than 1800 comments had been received on the final draft of the "summary for policymakers" to be considered at a meeting in Stockholm before the release of the final report. It did not comment on the latest report, which said scientists accepted their forecast computers may have exaggerated the effect of increased carbon emissions on world temperatures and not taken enough notice of natural variability.

According to The Daily Mail, the draft report recognised the global warming "pause", with average temperatures not showing any statistically significant increase since 1997.

Scientists admitted large parts of the world had been as warm as they were now for decades at a time between 950 and 1250, centuries before the Industrial Revolution

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trainspotter said:

I dare say after the IPPC made some pretty ridiculous claims in the past about global warming they are offering a more "moderate" approach.



http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...arming-says-ipcc/story-e6frg6n6-1226719672318

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noco said:

More evidence is coming out about a conspiracy by the UN climate Change committee......Ban-ki-Moon and Al Gore are good Greenie mates.....The IPPC have certainly been caught out just like Tim Flannery here in Australia

http://www.conspiracy-theories-hoax.com/global-warming-is-a-hoax-conspiracy-theories.html

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The Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era ”” and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years.

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what we are experiencing now is most likely to be human caused and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1300 years.

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basilio said:

Well TS it looks as if we are in (relatively) furious agreement..!!

I'm delighted to see you using NASA documents in your discussion. Obviously it's important to look at everything that is said rather than just selectively choosing a particular sentence or paragraph.

In that context I thought your last post was particularly even handed.

On the one hand NASA identified some (not all) climate changes in the past as occurring as a result of changes in the earths orbit. Spot on and now universally accepted

But for the crunch for the current situation is the final comment which says

So we go back to the the core questions I raised with particular regard to the collapse of the Antarctic ice shelfs

1) Is it reasonable to say that global warming is NOT creating very serious problems?
2) Why would we risk even further damage to our ecosystems by not reducing greenhouse gases which are most likely to be the cause of this warming ?

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China is poised to overtake the United States as the main cause of man-made global warming since 1990, the benchmark year for U.N.-led action, in a historic shift that may raise pressure on Beijing to act.

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The lead players are China and India. China is the world’s largest emitter, contributing nearly a quarter of current global emissions. With India it accounted for 83% of the worldwide increase in carbon emissions in 2000-11. Th

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Surprise! Al Gore and his carbon credit huckstering partner David Blood, both principals at Generation Investment Management (GIM), warn in their October 30 Wall Street Journal op/ed feature of peril to fossil fuel investments due to “The Coming Carbon Asset Bubble”. They argue that such “unwise and increasingly wreck less” investment strategies pose three broad risks which will cause carbon assets to become “stranded” and lose economic value: through direct government carbon regulation; as a result of market-share losses to “already competitive” renewable technologies; and due to “sociopolitical pressures” causing carbon-intensive businesses to lose their “license to operate"

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trainspotter said:

I have been quoting NASA since August 2013?

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/decadaltemp.php

And CSIRO since 2012?

http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_hist_last_15.html

I think it was around post #4806 on the 8th-November-2013 09:20 AM that I posted up the countries that have signed up for the Kyoto protocol. I also elucidated to you that it is fine to be concerned about global warming BUT it don't mean a thing if China, India, USA do not adhere to the targets.



http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/13/us-climatechange-china-idUSKBN0N411H20150413



http://www.economist.com/news/books...-problem-they-are-essential-any-solution-take

There has never been a dispute that global warming is NOT creating very serious problems? The serious problem is to get the big 3 to stop polluting !!! And all the alarming and wailing and glaciers melting won't mean jack **** until this happens.

The problem that I have is the WASTE of money (billions spent on quangos) think Bernie Fraser sooking it up cause he had 6.2 million dollars taken away form his little fiefdom on Climate Change rort. Think 23.5 million dollars just to RENT a building to house all these minions to tell us that we are destroying the planet ....... REALLY ??? Like we didn't know already. Like Al Gore making millions out of carbon credit trading but pretending to be clean and green. PFFFFFFFFFFFTtttttttttttttttttt now that is what I am talking about.



http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybe...ing-a-killing-on-anti-carbon-investment-hype/

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noco said:

If their predictions made 10 years ago are wrong, they will still persist on the AGW or I should say Climate Change....I really believe people are becoming so tired of all this garbage.

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