Wednesday 11 September 2013

Hopes raised, hopes dashed...

From the WSJ:

The area of Arctic sea ice was nearly 30% greater in August [2013] than a year ago, according to recent satellite data, though projections based on longer-term trends suggest the sea ice will continue its decline over time.

Arctic sea ice covered 2.35 million square miles in August, up from 1.82 million square miles a year earlier, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, or NSIDC, in Boulder, Colo. The level recorded last year was a record low.

"Sorted,"
says the Climate Change Denier.

"Oh not it's not," chorus the Climate Change Believers:

From the BBC:

The volume of sea ice in the Arctic hit a new low this past winter, according to observations from the European Space Agency's (Esa) Cryosat mission.

During March/April - the time of year when marine floes are at their thickest - the radar spacecraft recorded just under 15,000 cu km of ice. In its three years of full operations, Cryosat has witnessed a continuing shrinkage of winter ice volume...

While there has been a great deal of attention focused of late on the falling extent (area) of sea ice in the Arctic, especially during summer months, researchers emphasise that it is volume that provides the most reliable assessment of the changes now underway in the northern polar region.

9 comments:

Lola said...

heaves deep sigh. There's no hope of getting any sense out of anyone about this is there?

Bayard said...

Or course not, it's a religion.

Ian Hills said...

North West Passage blocked by ice -

http://www.sail-world.com/UK/North-West-Passage-blocked-with-ice%E2%80%94yachts-caught/113788

Antarctic ice cover keeps increasing -

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/10163570/Our-lights-will-stay-on-but-it-will-cost-us-a-fortune.html

(there's a bit about TB cows in burgers in the above article, which should get Mark going.)

Graeme said...

current knowledge finds it hard to explain why Arctic ice is declining while Antarctic ice is increasing. The real problem is the lack of proper measurements of just about any metric of climate "science". That is what needs to be addressed before we start building even more useless windmills/bird slicers.

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, no, see G's comment.

B, and therefore it is our beholden duty to mock them.

IH, never mind the area, it's volume that counts. Unless we are talking about the Antarctic, where we ignore the increasing thickness and fret about a few bit snapping off the edges.

G, exactly.

Bayard said...

Once again, Thinking Fast and Slow has an explanation for this. I seems that our brains are wired up to construct coherent patterns from events and we try to do this, even if the events are random, hence religions as an attempt to assign some sort of causality to chance events. The same thing appears to have happened with Global Warming. What started out as a theory that made sense of the world as perceived has become The Truth, to be followed without resort to reason or analysis. Anything that contradicts The Truth, however reasonable must therefore be a falsehood.

Anonymous said...

B: "... our brains are wired up to construct coherent patterns from events and we try to do this, even if the events are random, hence religions as an attempt to assign some sort of causality to chance events."

Yes, this has been said many a time and is almost certainly true. We like to look for explanations ("Daddy, but why...?") and even a flawed one is better than none at all.

Lola said...

G. Oh God! The worlds turned upside down and no-ones told me!!!!

Anonymous said...

L, yes, despite what people believe, ice is heavier than water, so it slides to the very bottom of the earth, i.e. the South Pole.