North Pole ice completely vanishes this year?

[scotthm]

Quote from that article: the cooling is "not significant", and probably caused by the melting Antartic ice breaking up into the ocean. Another interesting allusion from the article is that sea level is rising more than what can be accounted for so far.

Which just supports my position that scientists still aren't quite sure what is driving global climate change.

And I believe that your comment that the ocean cooling is "probably caused by the melting Antartic ice breaking up into the ocean" is nothing more than speculation on your part, as I didn't see that mentioned in the aritcle.

---------------

 

[prometheuspan]

I loathe "fisking"; it easily becomes a tool to overwhelm a discussion rather than participate in it -- especially in the hands of we who are verbose. Rather than addressing the central thesis in my post, you've chosen instead to break it up into a series of unrelated bits and render it unrecognizable. I don't have the apparently limitless devotion you have for this subject, Prometheuspan, but I can at least touch on a few points.

For some reason now the board doesn't any more want to let me edit
my posts.

You can touch on points all you like.

The link which you gave to the al gore debunking page is nothing but propaganda. Half of it is direct distortion of what Al gore actually said
and the other half is direct distortion of global warming science.

A six meter or eight meter raise en totalia would be pretty tame compared to the final total rise if all ice melted, which can be conservatively estimated to raise sea levels as much as 30 or 40 meters.

http://www.grida.no/climate/vital/19.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080211172517.htm

I suggest you go looking at the whole of whats out there for information rather than the cherry picked bits which support your position, which are easilly debunkable if you bother to look up more than what suits you.

1. ea level rise likely limited to 2-6 feet by 2100
   
   Sep 4, 2008 ... Global sea level rise is unlikely to exceed 2 meters (6 1/2 feet) ... 0.2 to 2 meter (30 to 80-inch) range, less than the 4-9 meters (12-30 ...
   news.mongabay.com/2008/0904-sea_levels.html - 28k - Cached - Similar pages
2. Why sea levels will rise and the implications of rising sea levels ...
   
   Sep 6, 2008 ... Florida itself has much to fear from rising sea levels. The State has an average height of only 30 meters above sea level, and there is a ...
   robertkyriakides.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/why-sea-levels-will-rise-and-the-implications-of-rising-sea-levels/ - 41k - Cached - Similar pages
3. Huge sea level rises are coming – unless we act now - earth - 25 ...
   
   Jul 25, 2007 ... This would yield a rise in sea level of more than 5 metres by 2095. ..... If sea level rises by 5 metres... By Vinnie Lam. Mon Jul 30 ...
   environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg19526141.600-huge-sea-level-rises-are-coming--unless-we-act-now.html - 74k - Cached - Similar pages
4. USGS maps global sea-level rise effects on population | lightblueline
   
   The team also found that a 100-foot (30-meter) rise in sea level would cover 3.7 million square miles of land worldwide. A rise of just 16 feet (5 meters) ...
   lightblueline.org/node/190 - 21k - Cached - Similar pages
5. Sea level rise - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   
   It is estimated that Antarctica, if fully melted, would contribute more than 60 metres of sea level rise, and Greenland would contribute more than 7 metres. ...
   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise - 182k - Cached - Similar pages
6. EPA : Global Warming : Resource Center : Publications : Sea Level ...
   
   This does not mean, however, that these maps show the land that would be flooded with a 1.5-meter (5 foot) rise in sea level. For a variety of reasons, ...
   yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/ResourceCenterPublicationsSLRMapsIndex.html - 66k - Cached - Similar pages
7. DGESL : Research : Climate Change and Sea Level : Sea Level Rise
   
   Mar 28, 2006 ... Data from the Global 30 Arc-second Elevation Dataset (GTOPO30), which offer a ... areas susceptible to sea level rise of one to six meters. ...
   www.geo.arizona.edu/dgesl/research/other/climate_change_and_sea_level/sea_level_rise/sea_level_rise_old.htm - 21k - Cached - Similar pages
8. Sea Level Rise and the Maldives
   
   Fortunately, even a one meter rise in sea level would leave Male somewhat ... but it would only be 30 cm above the ground with a 30 cm rise in sea level. ...
   users.rcn.com/jtitus/Maldives/Small_Island_States_3.html - 25k - Cached - Similar pages
9. RealClimate
   
   Sep 4, 2008 ... My best guess based on guesses about heat transfer by rain in Greenland is that we will see 3 meters of sea level rise in the next 30 years, ...
   www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/09/how-much-will-sea-level-rise/ - 473k - Cached - Similar pages
10. Sea Level Rise May Be Twice More Than Expected
    
    Sep 4, 2008 ... By one United Nations calculation, a meter rise in the oceans would ... fact that the potential for sea level rise is greater than what they ...
    dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/09/04/sea-level-warming.html - 57k - Cached - Similar pages

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That said, I'm not a hard-core "denier" [grimaces]. I think it's pretty clear the long-term trend is, at least until the last few years, that the world has been getting warmer at a pretty steady rate. The trouble is, that rate appears to go back more than fifty or so years. It goes back about one hundred and fifty years. Most of the warming we've seen might very well be natural. I doubt humans have been blameless, but it wouldn't surprise me a bit if human contributions have been greatly exaggerated. CO2 is definitely rising as well, but given that the ice records show CO2 increases after warming, that CO2 might not have an exclusively anthropogenic source. It just might be escaping from permafrost that has been thawing since before the twentieth century. And as sea temperatures rise, more CO2 is released ... but remember, those sea temperatures might be falling ... it'll be fun to keep an eye on CO2 levels over the next ten years.

It is clear that there are a variety of causes, and that humans are only the most significant factor. It is also clear
that both sides of the issue are chronic abusers of hyperbole.

You sound like you are almost willing to come over to the reality side of the force, whats holding you back?

The idea that the ocean is cooling is interesting, but unproven. If true, sea ice melting into it is very obvious casual factor which should be taken into account.

I really don't know where you get the notion that we're doomed from this. Do you honestly believe the planet will get too hot for anything to survive? Not even the worst case IPCC reports lend any credence to this view. Besides, the planet has warmed more and faster and cooled more and faster than the changes we're seeing right now.

I get that idea from being a data entry aid for a group of scientists working on the problem in the mid eighties. I entered thousands of pages worth of data from paper into a computer program which then ran increasingly more accurate simulations, which showed that humans were causing global warming and which predicted the changes we are seeing now as well as changes we will be seeing in the next two centuries. Depending on which sets of
variables were entered (conservative or alarmist) The simulation predicts that unless we stop burning things, all life on the surfce of the planet as we now know it will be doomed well within the next 200 years. I have had two decades to
continue studying and to keep coming across global warming deniers and in that time, my certainty has only increased
and nobody has ever made a convincing argument that global warming is not real or that it is not caused by humans.

Your graph is interesting, but it is only one graph and there are others which show something different. Small measures of variability are part of any chaotic system, and of course there will continue to be ups and downs in global temperature. The key issue is that overall the trend is hotter, not cooler.

 

[BCI]

Which just supports my position that scientists still aren't quite sure what is driving global climate change.

Not at all. Scientists say that Global Warming is real and with a certainty of 99% caused by human action.

And I believe that your comment that the ocean cooling is "probably caused by the melting Antartic ice breaking up into the ocean" is nothing more than speculation on your part, as I didn't see that mentioned in the aritcle.

---------------

My mistake. But let's go back to the article. It says that the cooling might be a mistake in measurement, and that the unexplained increase in sea level indicates rising temperatures of the ocean.

The article was brought in here to support the notion that the ocean was cooling, when it actually says the opposite.

 

[scotthm]

The article was brought in here to support the notion that the ocean was cooling, when it actually says the opposite.

No, it doesn't say the opposite, it says they're not sure what's going on, which is my entire point in this thread.

---------------

 

[BCI]

The article was brought in here to support the notion that the ocean was cooling, when it actually says the opposite.

No, it doesn't say the opposite, it says they're not sure what's going on, which is my entire point in this thread.

---------------

Yes, they are not sure how it contributes to (or factors in) Global Warming. But the chance that this complex of findings magically reverses everything we know so far about Global Warming as caused by humans is pretty slim to none. Pretty low chance, your point.

 

[Psion]

You sound like you are almost willing to come over to the reality side of the force, whats holding you back?

Reality.














Sorry, I couldn't resist. The fact is, there's lots of compelling evidence that the planet is warming. And there's some reason to believe humans cause at least some of it. But right now there are huge incentives to find proof of global warming, and lots of good reasons to not rock the boat. (I'm referring to the state climatologists a couple years ago who had their careers threatened by politicians for daring to question AGW dogma.) In such a climate, it's inevitable the evidence would appear to be one-sided. There wasn't much produced to contradict Lysenko under Stalin, was there? And I think we've had two generations raised under green ideology that the mindset of even even-minded and honest researchers might have an instinctive bias to try to prove the worst about humanity.

After a lifetime of watching well-intentioned screwups in support of noble agendas, I can't help but recognize patterns in global warming alarmism; patterns that are difficult to pinpoint precisely, but remind me of the Getty Foundation and the Kouros statues. Getty bought these amazing statues, paid experts to verify the authenticity of the statues and the records of their excavation, and was very satisfied with the convincing data they received from thousands of man hours of research. And then what happened? A Greek expert in antiquities who had personally handled Kouros statues himself walked in, glanced at the statue, and said, "It's a faaaaaake!". His glance, with no time to even peek at it under a magnifying glass versus the scholarly attention by other experts for months, and guess who was right ...

When you look to prove something you believe in, you usually find it. The AGW community is deliberately tuning out skeptics who would serve nicely at pointing out flaws in their logic and data. That's why it took so long for Mann's Hockey Stick to fall under scrutiny, revealing critical shortcomings in the results of his algorithms and focus on bristlecone pine trees (his algorithms produced hockey sticks from random noise, and the bristlecone's growth is independent of temperature).

So I worry about political responses to unsettled science that might wind up playing havoc with civilization and do much more harm than good.