North Pole may disappear [briefly] this summer

[TeTeC]

So does this mean my compasses won't work?

Yep.

You can still use the cows however.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7575459.stm

 

[Gokul43201]

Interesting, as I am reading up on this, it appears that the artic actually has MORE ice than this year at the same time, it's just in different areas. See link

http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/576/arcticicefb6.png

http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=08&fd=31&fy=2007&sm=08&sd=31&sy=2008

Yes, there may be more ice this year. I don't know if that should be expected, but this year has also been cooler than last year, so I'm not surprised.

Also, I'm verifying what I read that says the Arctic Ice has only officially been recorded since 1979, so "all of recorded history" is 29 years?

Edit:Apparently it is true, scientific sea/ice satellite record keeping only began in 1979.

http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/

But tradespeople and explorers have been looking for Arctic passages for hundreds of years.

 

[Art]

Washington (ChattahBox) - A report released by the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado has revealed that the Arctic ice is at its second-lowest level in history, and is melting because of the impact of global warming.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center put out the report late last week, confirming that the Arctic sea ice is melting away.

It is at its second-lowest point in recorded history. The lowest-point in recorded history was in 2007.

The report stated that “We could very well be in that quick slide downward in terms of passing a tipping point.”

That tipping point has to do with global warming, and is causing major problems for the Arctic sea ice, and endangered species such as the polar bear.

The level of Artic sea ice in 2008 is at 2.03 million square miles, compared to 1.59 million square miles in 2007.

http://chattahbox.com/science/2008/09/01/arctic-ice-melts-away-due-to-impact-of-global-warming/

When one ignores the usual AGW sensationalist spin and keep in mind that recorded history stretches back an amazing 29 years, according to the information in this report it seems the Arctic sea ice is a long, long way from disappearing this year.

Funny how they manage to make what should be good news look like the apocalypse

 

[Evo]

But tradespeople and explorers have been looking for Arctic passages for hundreds of years.

True, and I'm not saying that the position of the ice has allowed for passage since we started exploring the region. The shift in ice allowing a route could be a good thing, as you pointed out. No telling how suddenly it could close up again, though.

 

[Gokul43201]

So why would we more likely jump to a man made cause than one that is proven to happen naturally again and again without man?

First of all, "we" don't do the science here. It is done by a bunch of climate scientists that know a whole lot more about the field than we do. I think we should clearly separate us from them.

Secondly the claim that they "jump to a man made cause" is missing the point.

What they have arrived at, through careful or careless means, is that CO2 plays a noticeable role. Whether that CO2 is man made, kangaroo made, geologically generated or shipped into our atmosphere by aliens doesn't matter one bit.

 

[lisab]

Frankly, I'm tired of the reaction mainstream science gives people who raise doubts about the far-too-politicized subject of AGW. It seems when someone questions the science, they are told "You aren't qualified to ask that question," or "People who are making these decisions are far smarter than us," or "Don't worry your pretty head about it." Or worse, they're accused of being Bush lovers or oil company puppets.

Look, the entire population of Earth is being asked to make huge changes to our lifestyles. Why can't doubts be raised in a civilized manner?

 

[tribdog]

What will happen to all the penguins if the North Pole melts?

 

[Evo]

What will happen to all the penguins if the North Pole melts?

They'll be okay trib, they live in the South Pole.

 

[tribdog]

They'll be okay trib, they live in the South Pole.

WHAT, they're all gone from the north pole? oh the humanity.

 

[Gokul43201]

What will happen to all the penguins if the North Pole melts?

They fly south for the summer.

 

[Gokul43201]

Frankly, I'm tired of the reaction mainstream science gives people who raise doubts about the far-too-politicized subject of AGW. It seems when someone questions the science, they are told "You aren't qualified to ask that question," or "People who are making these decisions are far smarter than us," or "Don't worry your pretty head about it." Or worse, they're accused of being Bush lovers or oil company puppets.

Look, the entire population of Earth is being asked to make huge changes to our lifestyles. Why can't doubts be raised in a civilized manner?

It is one thing for the layperson (like you and me) to ask questions (and a good thing, too). It is completely another thing for us to sit in our armchairs (you in yours, and me in mine - and mine rocks!) and pronounce that hundreds and thousands of peer-reviewed papers are basically nothing more than a bunch of silliness which can easily be refuted by this here three sentence argument...

 

[Gokul43201]

What will happen to all the penguins if the North Pole melts?

Trib, you need to learn the art of telling a joke and making sure people know it's a joke.

For instance, a subtle modification thusly, does the trick.

What will happen to all the penguins if the North Pole melts?

Or even...

What will happen to all the penguins if the North Pole melts?

If those are a too subtle, you could add a wee bit more emphasis:

What will happen to all the penguins if the North Pole melts?

 

[tribdog]

subtle, that's me. I thought the fact that I wrote something was enough to tell you its a joke.

 

[russ_watters]

What will happen to all the penguins if the North Pole melts?

The north pole can't melt - it isn't made of ice, it's just a steel pole, sunk in concrete ( http://www.northpole.com/ ). Now those houses they built on the arctic ice cap, on the other hand, are in some trouble.

 

[russ_watters]

Trib, you need to learn the art of telling a joke and making sure people know it's a joke.

We recognized the joke - it's just funnier to not let him have it.

 

[Gokul43201]

Now those houses they built on the arctic ice cap, on the other hand, are in some trouble.

Yeah, they say the housing market there is on the brink of a total meltdown.

 

[tribdog]

Yeah, they say the housing market there is on the brink of a total meltdown.

or total meltdown?

 

[tribdog]

We recognized the joke - it's just funnier to not let him have it.

I live for someone to give me the recognition I crave. You know how much it tears at my insides to be ignored?

 

[russ_watters]

See, I knew you'd understand!

 

[Andre]

The north pole can't melt - it isn't made of ice, it's just a steel pole, sunk in concrete ( http://www.northpole.com/ ).

Actually it was a pole. Found it.

 

[Andre]

Contrary to the title of this thread, the rapidly growing ice is now causing a disaster:

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=967a7bcf-53f6-4963-99af-4be36121ef0b

Number of narwhals trapped in Arctic ice could be 4 times higher than thought

As many as 400 Arctic tusked whales face death as ice closes in

 

[russ_watters]

That doesn't really have anything to do with anything, Andre - ice grows and recedes in a yearly cycle.

 

[Art]

This whole debate on climate change is degenerating into farce.

The world has never seen such freezing heat

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
<snip>
The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.
<snip>
Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml

These people were either deliberately lying or were grossly incompetent. One now wonders how many other 'errors' there are in the GISS historical database which were insuffuciently large to attract investigation?

Either way, whether the error was malicious or accidental, it shows the management to be fools. Fools if they thought a lie of such magnitude would get by the rest of the scientific community and fools for not questioning their conclusions when common sense should have sent alarm bells ringing. What it does show is they need a management clearout and some real independent scientists given the job of record keeping at NASA.

 

[LightbulbSun]

That doesn't really have anything to do with anything, Andre - ice grows and recedes in a yearly cycle.

What he said. Let's not try to exaggerate yearly cycles.

 

[Andre]

What he said. Let's not try to exaggerate yearly cycles.

Here is a part in the yearly cycle.

source

It merely shows that ice growth was unusual strong in October, trapping the narwals and it also gives feedback about the actual variation in the ice cover in relation to the OP.

Nothing more than that. Also related is https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=263921

 

[mgb_phys]

Contrary to the title of this thread, the rapidly growing ice is now causing a disaster:

It allows Canada's new secret weapon to attack wherever they want (here shown attempting to eat a US nuclear sub)