Category Archives: Sweeping Statements

Is Melting Ice Warming The Arctic?

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“Is Melting Ice Warming The Arctic?” Steven Goddard has an insight to offer about today’s earlier WUWT post about Screen and Simmonds’ 2010 Letter to Nature about  the contribution of Sea Ice melting to Arctic warming. Did you know that “ice loss has occurred mainly during the summer“? This is one of those curious posts where, to attack a conclusion, the denialist argument implicitly accepts that climate change is happening. Here Steven has chosen to argue about which months the warming is happening, not whether it is happening at all…

UAH Arctic Temp vs NSIDC Ice. After "climateinsiders.wordpress.com".

Enthusiastic arm-waving follows. Steven’s confused by the fact that Arctic climate warming appears stronger in the winter months. Guess what? Ice won’t melt at either -20°C or -2°C, only at 0°C. What happens when ice melts? It absorbs energy. Perhaps the melting of sea ice is buffering rising Arctic temperatures in the summer months.

What will happen when Steven discovers that apples fall down? Stay away from high school physics textbooks Steven, you might have your world rocked.

Climate Change and the dinosaurs

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“Climate Change and the dinosaurs“. Anthony Watts has found a press release from Plymouth University. Geological evidence from Norway suggests that during the Cretaceous period, characterized by substantially higher CO2 levels than today, there were several abrupt temperature drops:

over a period of a few hundred or a few thousand years, ocean temperatures fell from an average of 13 degrees centigrade to between eight and four degrees.

Anthony’s implication is that this kind of ancient temperature change shows that there are potential natural drivers as strong as the theorized current man-made changes. So it mustn’t be our fault this time either.

Of course the study found evidence of sudden temperature drops, not rises.

Guardian Continues To Spread Misinformation About Eyjafjallajokull

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“Guardian Continues To Spread Misinformation About Eyjafjallajokull“. Self-important non-volcanologist Steven Goddard tries to use an error in the reporting about the CO2 released from the erupting Eyjafjallajokull volcano to repeat the disproved denialist meme that human CO2 output is insignificant (“we know that plants, soil and the oceans generate 30 times as much CO2 as all fossil fuel burning combined“).

Let’s just stop here for a moment and remember that the “plants, soil and the oceans” are part of the active carbon cycle. Barring human intervention, they are effectively in balance. Fossil fuel CO2 output is not counteracted. That, in a nutshell, is the bloody problem! Steven’s deliberately repeating a denialist deceit.

Some of the original reporting incorrectly listed the volcano’s CO2 output as 15,000 tonnes/day, and compared it to the daily 206,465 tonnes of CO2 that would normally be generated by the canceled transatlantic flights. It turns out that the correct estimate of the volcano’s CO2 output should have been 150,000 tonnes, possibly ranging up to 300,000.

So the media got this a bit wrong at first. Damn them! Of course this is just irrelevant whining as far as the climate change debate goes.

It’s interesting to note that the daily CO2 emissions of transatlantic flights alone are equivalent to a continuous full-on volcanic eruption, isn’t it?

Volcanoes and Water

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“Volcanoes and Water“. Steven Goddard tells us that volcanic eruptions are mostly steam and ash. Because The Guardian was stupid enough to say in a caption that the cloud rising from the Eyjafjallajokull eruption in Iceland contained smoke!

Correct but irrelevant, Steven. I’m not so sure about your theory that volcanic explosions are due to contact with water though. I think that depressurization of the magma and sudden release of contained gasses might be involved.

But that’s a nice collection of volcano photos.

A House bill aiming to make research and data open to the public

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“A House bill aiming to make research and data open to the public“. Anthony Watts says “Climategate demonstrated what can go wrong when a few misguided scientists take control of data and keep it from the public.” I say it demonstrated what can happen when a few denialist cranks run wild. In any case, he’s pasted a press release from the Alliance for Taxpayer Access about the Federal Research Public Access Act.

As it happens, in the climatology field publicly funded research in the US has been “open to the public” for years. Try the RealClimate web site’s Data Sources page for a decent listing. This is something that denialists have always whined about, even with their noses shoved in it.

The Federal Research Public Access Act’s real purpose is apparently to “stimulate scientific and technological innovation and competitiveness.”

IPCC sea level prediction – not scary enough

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“IPCC sea level prediction – not scary enough“. How dare the scientists improve their sea level predictions and come up with higher values! They must be using a trick. Anthony Watts just copies and pastes the Niels Bohr Institute news release about a forthcoming paper in Geophysical Research Letters and counts on his readers to rage in the comments.

Recent studies agree that sea level will rise by roughly one meter over this century for a mid- range emission scenario.

The IPCC’s sea level predictions are considered very conservative by many climatologists, although you wouldn’t think so from the denialist accusations. The new data and models suggest a rough tripling of the expected 100 year sea level rise.

Levy walks, solar flares, and warming

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“Levy walks, solar flares, and warming“. Once more with conviction: there is no link between solar flare cycles and global temperature trends. A statistical analysis by Martin and Kristoffer Rypdal, discussed at Physorg.com here, puts the solar climate theory of Scafetta and West to bed.

No correlation between Solar Flare Index and Climate. This would be a better presentation if the time scales matched...

You know that a “disproof” of AGW is pretty stinky when even Anthony Watts is reluctant to use it. His readers seem less picky though and are fighting over whether they can still cling to it.

To quote the paper authors:

A corresponding theory of global warming of solar origin does not exist. What does exist is a set of disconnected, mutually inconsistent, ad hoc hypotheses. If one of these is proven to be false, the typical proponent of solar warming will pull another ad hoc hypothesis out of the hat. This has been the strategy of Scafetta and West over the years, and we have no illusion that our paper will put them to silence.

This remark seems to also have relevance to the recently discussed amateur climate theories of Stephen Wilde…

One more thing to worry about – undersea supervolcanoes

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“One more thing to worry about – undersea supervolcanoes“. Anthony Watts copies and pastes a National Science Foundation press release entitled “Scientists explore origins of ’supervolcanoes’ on the sea floor, Ancient goliaths blamed for multiple mass extinctions“.

Why? So he can float the faulty logic of we have so many things to worry about, why restrict our “freedoms” because of trivial old AGW.

Pilgrimage to Montana

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“Pilgrimage to Montana“. Steven Goddard takes on the glacial retreat at Glacier National Park. It’s all natural, of course.

Now that Arctic ice area is normal , Antarctic ice area is normal , sea level rise is failing to accelerate , temperatures are below all of Hansen’s scenarios , and the IPCC has proven itself to be untrustworthy – where can the CAGW religion go?  Simple … Montana!

Steven tells us that the glaciers in Glacier National Park started declining before there were SUVs. How could that be? Also, its snowy in Glacier National Park right now (early April).

Now it’s a fact that most Montana glaciers reached their recent maximums about 150 years ago and have been in retreat since but what has the recent trend been? Steven of course doesn’t tell us, but try this quote:

As recently as 1975, many North Cascade glaciers were advancing due to cooler/wet weather during the 1944-1976 period. However, by 1987, all North Cascade glaciers were retreating. However, since 1976 these glaciers have receded rapidly. Between 1984 and 2007, they have lost an average more than 12 m in thickness and 20 to 40% of their volume.[10].

I also love how Steven tries to manipulate charts. On two charts, of Montana summer temperature and winter precipitation, he slaps a big horizontal line (the “average”) to help people miss inconvenient statistical trends. Thus “proving” that there has been no local climate change that could be linked to the glacial retreats.

NSIDC’s Walt Meier responds to Willis

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“NSIDC’s Walt Meier responds to Willis“. Dr. Meier takes up Willis Eschenbach’s challenge and responds to the self-serving “questionnaire” about climate with a rational discussion.

From the sound of minds clanging shut in the comments, I don’t think Anthony’s readers are buying it.

Nice try,Walt…