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If the globe is warming, why is Antarctica cooling?
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Until I read the New York Times last week I had not heard of availability entrepreneurs. John Tierney, that paper’s always entertainingly readable op-ed columnist, used the expression in his New Year’s prediction piece warning us we are in “for very bad weather.” In 2008, he predicted, our television will bring image after frightening image of natural havoc linked to global warming. We will be told that such bizarre weather must be a sign of dangerous climate change — and that these images are a mere preview of what’s in store unless we act quickly. Mr Tierney is the journalist who brought us the story back in 1990 describing a 1980 wager about natural resources between the economist Julian Simon and the ecologist Paul Ehrlich. “Betting the Planet” has been widely cited and reprinted since then. If you take the time to re-read it you will surely wonder why anyone still takes Paul Ehrlich seriously but that is by-the-by. This latest Tierney column is about climate change and the people who promote it as the major problem confronting the modern world. It deserves to be read in full but this extract gives the flavour:
One of the examples Mr Tierney used to illustrate his point was the way the press seized on Arctic sea ice last year hitting the lowest level ever recorded by satellites as a sign that the whole planet was warming while ignoring that the Antarctic sea ice last year reached the highest level ever recorded by satellites. The coverage of Antarctica ignored the generally cooler temperatures but concentrated on the small area closest to South America where temperatures have warmed and the ice sheet has grown smaller. Now I am no scientist but I do have a sceptical geologist as a brother who keeps referring me to articles he comes across which suggest that not everything in this climate change debate is as certain as the availability entrepreneurs would tell us. So today I delved into the data collected by all those American NASA satellites which form the basis for much of the argument. Perhaps I should just let the pictures tell the story.
The maps come from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), located at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, which says it “supports research into our world’s frozen realms: the snow, ice, glacier, frozen ground, and climate interactions that make up Earth’s cryosphere. Scientific data, whether taken in the field or relayed from satellites orbiting Earth, form the foundation for the scientific research that informs the world about our planet and our climate systems.” In November 2007 on the measure of the Sea Ice Extent the total area was 16.1 million square kilometers which was up from 15.9 million square kilometers in November 2002 and 15.8 million square kilometers in November 1987. Using the second NSIDC measure of Sea Ice Concentration and the figures are 12.0 m. sq. k. in November 2007, 11.5 m. sq. k. in November 2002 and 11.1 m. sq. k. in November 1987. Make of it what you will but I am moving in to Brother David’s camp. |
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19 Comments
Just to add, Radio National Jan 5 2008 feature ‘Meltdown’ visited both Arctic and Antarctic via abc podcast. It’s a good listen.
Antarctic temperatures are rising faster than the world average - more ice cover there is probably related to more ice melting into the sea!
Yep.. supports my contention Mother Earth has tilted slightly putting the Arctic sea ice into more sunlight and the correspoending “shadow” down below. Oh.. and I recommend single hull constructed tourist ships keep out of the sea below 40 deg.
The term “global warming” is misleading anyway - “climate change” is better - with emphasis on “change”. There is nothing explicitly wrong with warming or cooling but the more quickly it occurs, the more living things that won’t have time to adapt.
I think you will find that the average max in Sydney this year in December was about 20% lower than last year.
a page which gives a good explanation of sea ice (NB different from icebergs) is: http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_ice.html. For the difference between climate and weather…well, for a start, don’t just look at a single data point like Sydney Dec, 2007.
Actually if you look at the data for January instead of November, the figures for sea ice concentration for 2007, 2002 and 1987 are 2.9, 2.8 and 3.2 million square miles respectively, which is roughly what you’d expect if the Anarctic was warming.
Increased Antarctic sea ice is a consequence of global warming and in accordance with the global climate modelling. As AVERAGE global temperatures increase, there is increased evaporation of water from oceans leading to greater Antarctic snow fall.
I like the explanation that it is not “global warming” but a complex system to which heat is being added. I don’t believe any scientist has claimed that temperature will rise by exactly 4.2% everywhere.
1) I know someone who voted Green at the last election, so using Richard Farmer’s logic, this means that all that propaganda about Labor winning the election is wrong.
2) Did you know that as warming occurs, ice slides off land into the ocean faster?
It is the ice on the land moving into the sea that causes rising sea levels. Look at Greenland to see where the problem lies. Sea levels are rising because ice is moving off the land and hot water takes more space than cold.
Perhaps the Arctic ice is melting because there is more “hot air” in the northern hemisphere because that’s where most of the climate change scientists live.
The Earth doesn’t warm uniformly (due to the interaction of Milankovitch cycles with the distribution of land masses, with virtually all - except Antarctica - located in the Northern Hemisphere). So, a cooling Antarctica doesn’t mean ACG isn’t happening.
We hear ad nauseum from the environment movement, journalists and publicity dependent sections of the scientific community about the dangers of abrupt climate change, all with fested interests to service. Let Crikey become an instrument for debating ACG!
Selective misquoting is a poor way to support an argument. Read the full page from which Richard Farmer cherry-picks his “facts” . The scientific community is surely a more reliable source of data than Big Oil and their beneficiaries. End of hot air…
Greater sea ice flows are due to the THICKENING of the Anarctic icesheet in the last 20 years. Greater ice on the land corresponds to greater amounts of sea ice. Follow link:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/295/5554/476
err sorry via the Science Show website, abc radio national
http://neptune.gsfc.nasa.gov/publications/pdf/pubs2002/2_Spatial_patterns_variability.pdf
Linked article demonstrating a slight cooling trend in Antarctic temperatures set against a warming on the Anarctic peninsula (2% of the Antarctic land mass)
Good q. Need a TOP scientists to explain variability e.g. Dr Hansen at NASA. Last days of cancer can also be least painful (!?) 1. Nov. is start of summer (??) 2. lakes, waterfalls observed in Antarctica recently (!) 3.North pole no land? (cp Greenland?)