About That Missing Sea Ice

[threegee]

The story from NOAA our politicians and the press focused on:

Arctic sea ice coverage was at its sixth lowest January extent since satellite records began in 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Average ice extent during January was 5.43 million square miles. The Arctic sea ice pack usually expands during the cold season, reaching a maximum in March, then contracts during the warm season, reaching a minimum in September.

The correction that no one wanted to know about (or you to know about) - because it doesn't fit in with the requirements of the highly lucrative global warming industry.

As some of our readers have already noticed, there was a significant problem with the daily sea ice data images on February 16. The problem arose from a malfunction of the satellite sensor we use for our daily sea ice products. Upon further investigation, we discovered that starting around early January, an error known as sensor drift caused a slowly growing underestimation of Arctic sea ice extent. The underestimation reached approximately 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles) by mid-February. Sensor drift, although infrequent, does occasionally occur and it is one of the things that we account for during quality control measures prior to archiving the data. See below for more details.

So, as long as their archives are correct their quality control measures don't extend to not putting out inaccurate and alarmist reports. This isn't the first time there has been a fanfare about the release of junk data which was then quietly retracted. Nor is it likely to be the last.

[mercuryg]

....their quality control measures....

They don't have any!

We've been here before, in another thread I believe, with relation ot the IPCC approved data put put last October for Siberia which was, as it happens, a copy of that put out by the same agency in September. This resulted in alarmist claims that October, 2008, was the warmest, ever, on record! It wasn't, of course, as the figures were for the previous month. When questioned as to how this could happen, the agency (GISS? I have not the name to hand but they are one of four who monitor for NASA and the IPCC) stated that they could not afford a quality control process.

[Symptoms]

Excellent news ... let's now get on with building those much needed coal-fired power stations. Fingers up to those pesky Russians and their gas tap ... I say we should start digging-up our 200 years worth of coal reserves to feed a new generation of coal-fired stations. Even if the builders are a bit slow with the carbon capture technology the only folks to suffer will be a few fish and reindeer eaters in Scandiavia ... letting them choke is a small price to pay so we can keep warm.

[Monsta®]

Excellent news ... let's now get on with building those much needed coal-fired power stations. Fingers up to those pesky Russians and their gas tap ... I say we should start digging-up our 200 years worth of coal reserves to feed a new generation of coal-fired stations. Even if the builders are a bit slow with the carbon capture technology the only folks to suffer will be a few fish and reindeer eaters in Scandiavia ... letting them choke is a small price to pay so we can keep warm.

hold on save the coal! chop down the rainforests first and plant palms for palm oil and kill any remaining oranutangs!

sorry like but the world is f*cked and any stupid blind idiots who say its just scare mongering want lashed until they see sense!

still theres nen need to cry over spilled milk!

[threegee]

Excellent news ... let's now get on with building those much needed coal-fired power stations. Fingers up to those pesky Russians and their gas tap ... I say we should start digging-up our 200 years worth of coal reserves to feed a new generation of coal-fired stations. Even if the builders are a bit slow with the carbon capture technology the only folks to suffer will be a few fish and reindeer eaters in Scandiavia ... letting them choke is a small price to pay so we can keep warm.

Sorry we're still closing down coal fired power stations. Doubtless continuing Maggie T's master-plan to trash the mining industry. It's now back to the future with nuclear! You really should get into the right century.

To put the argument back on to a serious (and non-emotive) level: do you or do you not believe the planet is warming, and if so why, and on what grounds do you hold this belief?

Please set out why we need to spend billions of pounds on carbon capture - technology that by and large doest yet exist, and is totally unproven - in order to make what little industry we have left even less competitive by driving energy cost up still further. Is this supported by any actual science, or is it just pure politics and/or green-lobby emotion?

Do you believe we can tamper with nature on this scale to achieve a positive result? If you study the weather forecast on a daily basis you'll surely find that the five day one is of very little practical use, and the ten day ones are a pure fiction. So, do you think our current understanding of the atmosphere makes any predictions about what is going on at twenty or even fifty years distance worth the paper it's printed on, let alone worth throwing countless billions of pounds we don't have at?

Assuming that we (as a nation) can lay our hands on the astronomic sums being talked about, don't you think that there would be better uses for these massive resources?

If - for the sake of argument - the planet is warming then do you think the overall consequences will be bad or good? Actually it probably is warming a bit - we are coming out of an exceptionally cold period once again. However the more recent fashion is to talk about climate change - thus taking a two way bet on something that by its very nature has always changed one way or the other.

Note that no one is saying we shouldn't take all practical measures to clean up exhaust gasses, and general pollution. In fact this issue is detracting from other serious issues that aren't getting the attention they deserve. What we are talking about here is the carbon dioxide + global warming myth. It's not about whether you are for or against the environment, it's about the sensible direction of available resources towards an achievable and worthwhile goal.

Some reasoned argument to show that you haven't been sucked in to this dangerous and costly myth please? I've been following the arguments for some years now and have found the scientists who question it are more than eager to consider all the issues, whereas the ones promulgating it generally refuse to engage in serious debate. The same reaction you'd expect when you question someone's religion.

So there's the challenge: show us you've though this one through properly, and that this is not a religious belief that you only feel must be true!

[Andy Millne]

So there's the challenge: show us you've though this one through properly, and that this is not a religious belief that you only feel must be true!

I accept

[Malcolm Robinson]

GGGG, where did you get that pic of wor lasses bloomers?

GGG, I don’t know which way I lean on the current global warming issue but I do believe that all the pollution in man’s recent history, since the industrial revolution say, must be having an effect. You cannot expect a natural balance to remain when you pump synthetic pollutants out so something has to give; I just don’t know what yet. One thing is for sure, Nature has its own ways of dealing with excess and that normally means a drastic cull of the offending predator!

On an esoteric side issue I am fascinated by the Mayan calendar and the soon to be astrological alignments which I think will have a bearing on our more mundane way of life. In fact, if you want a prediction, I think that celestial bodies and their gravitational and magnetic influences will soon become topics of interest, in much the same way global warming has, as we start to understand the universe better or maybe more accurately, start to feel their effects.

[threegee]

...

GGG, I don't know which way I lean on the current global warming issue but I do believe that all the pollution in man's recent history, since the industrial revolution say, must be having an effect. You cannot expect a natural balance to remain when you pump synthetic pollutants out so something has to give; I just don't know what yet. One thing is for sure, Nature has its own ways of dealing with excess and that normally means a drastic cull of the offending predator! ...

This is the problem: the global warming industry is muddying the issue. C02 is a vital part of the ecosystem and available in abundance, even taken as a "greenhouse gas" it is only a marginal contributor, and man's contribution to this marginal contribution is pretty minor. Trying to alter the levels of an innocuous life-giving substance in the atmosphere at colossal expense is pure madness. But we can all see the environmental pollution that is going on; it makes us feel bad, and we know that it can't continue like this.

Lead pollution is a crime for which a lot of people have escaped punishment. Its done huge damage to health, but it's a non-fashionable issue and is better buried as there's no political mileage in it. Plastics pollution is perhaps the single biggest problem we have on the planet. Practical measures are easy and cheap, but there's little political will to do anything about it. It's non-glamorous to go flying off to international conferences on global plastic waste. It's also a creeping problem, so impossible to imagine any doomsday scenario to capture the headlines. We are simply too familiar with plastics, they're part of our everyday lives and impossible to imagine an existence without. Suggesting that we should change our attitude to them has no political appeal at all.

There's an interesting video on the Sun on the BBC website today.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8009185.stm

Common sense says that when you turn down the only source of heat in the room things will cool. Some scientists are suggesting that this may presage another ice-age. The astronomers admit that they are baffled. But not the global warming industry. They know more about this than the astronomers and the the particle physicists put together. They are absolutely certain; here's proof positive that the problem is worse than even they imagined. As certain as if their globe-trotting expense allowances and comfortable new research budgets depended on it.

[mercuryg]

While agreeing with Malcolms perfectly logical observation that we have, as a race, increased the levels of pollution we are soiling the planet with, the fact remains that our contribution - in terms of CO2 - pales into insignificance when weighed up against the natural emissions. The figures I do not have at hand, but we are talking hundreds of billions against tens of millions. I'm not advocating that we should all waste energy willy-nilly - it costs too much - but neither am I pedalling the myth that we all need to switch to hybrid cars pretty soon or the planet will die (in fact, as of the moment and for the last several years, I don't drive.)

As Threegee rightly points out, there is a considerable amount of money spent on research into this area, most of which seems to produce computer models that predict things we can not possibly predict; the weather forecast example is clearly relevant, as it highlights the variability of nature. Furthemore, if you talk to the Inuit, who carry out a regular census of Polar Bears (name, religion, address, telephone number....) they will tell you that while numbers are declining in some areas, they are increasing in others. They will also tell you that this happens over decades, it is not unusual. They do this regular count, incidentally, in order to deduce where they are most likely to get eaten while fishing.

The whole climate change industry is allowing governments to impose absurd and poorly thought out quotas and taxes on nations worldwide: the commitment to renewable energy that this country has made is impossible to meet - that's a fact, not a supposition: we could not build the number of wind turbines required in the time given, and then we would have nowhere to put them (apart from off shore, but remember - unlike our local ones - that the sea moves, and with it the cables....I'm sure Gooch would have told them that).

To sum up, the advert that runs for ever on TV - the one saying 'we are now producing more CO2 than the planet can cope with' - is not true at all; we are contributing very little indeed.

Now, on another note, Malcolm also raised the point about magnetic influences - I agree, there is a very odd planetary arrangement arriving soon, and cosmic storms are expected in the near future. This is all very interesting, and merits greater investigation. Meanwhile, I'm strapping myself to my desk for all of 2012, in case the increased gravitational pull of Jupiter sucks me out of the window.

[Malcolm Robinson]

This is all very interesting, and merits greater investigation. Meanwhile, I'm strapping myself to my desk for all of 2012, in case the increased gravitational pull of Jupiter sucks me out of the window.

LOL.

Winter solstice 2012 to be, more or less, exact!

(And I thought Aquarius was supposed to being in a new age of free love or was that just the songs?)

[Guest mrsvic]

This is all very interesting, and merits greater investigation. Meanwhile, I'm strapping myself to my desk for all of 2012, in case the increased gravitational pull of Jupiter sucks me out of the window.

LOL.

Winter solstice 2012 to be, more or less, exact!

(And I thought Aquarius was supposed to being in a new age of free love or was that just the songs?)

Increased gravity sounds great... anything for a better view of the Red Spot is fine by me... certainly worth the risk of world destruction... a bit of bad-timing mind, as by 2012 the country should have wasted their billions fixing up all the ex-council (aka ex-councillor's pension-fund) houses... and it could all end up getting sucked out the window

[Monsta®]

Increased gravity sounds great... anything for a better view of the Red Spot is fine by me... certainly worth the risk of world destruction... a bit of bad-timing mind, as by 2012 the country should have wasted their billions fixing up all the ex-council (aka ex-councillor's pension-fund) houses... and it could all end up getting sucked out the window

wey if that doesn't the freak Asteroid 99942 Apophis will, destined to cause a near miss in the year 2029 but will more than likely hit us if there calculations are wrong wiping out all life! mint!

read this!

[Guest mrsvic]

wey if that doesn't the freak Asteroid 99942 Apophis will, destined to cause a near miss in the year 2029 but will more than likely hit us if there calculations are wrong wiping out all life! mint!

read this!

Impressive stuff Monsta! I never had you down as an Astronomy-Biology reader!

[Malcolm Robinson]

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/a99942.html

[Malcolm Robinson]

I think the ‘perfect’ alignment with the centre of our universe, rebalancing our planets ‘wobble’, the inversion of the poles due to solar storms and the plant’s orbital path might just throw some of those calculations out monsta!

Nice political side swipe Mrsvic! By 2012 the basic rate of tax will be 50% and rent and rates will be astronomic even just to keep the pension differentials enjoyed by some ex local authority bods!