Are the poles really losing ice this year?

[SUBMAN1]

The alarmists say that there will be free water at the North pole this year for the first time ever. Well, not so fast, we have seen this before to the tune of 10 miles long and 3 miles wide. Not stunning.

Next, we hear that NASA's James Hansen predicted in 1980 that this would happen. He was recently quoted as saying it is happening exactly like he predicted. Well, not so fast. If you read his paper - http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/effects/downloads/Challenge_chapter2.pdf - You will find that he predicted this would be happening symmetrically at both poles. Antartica however has has record snowpack and ice additions to its continent this year! nice huh? Here is 30 years of data - notice that the sea ice has remained a constant and is expected to remain a constant! Hahahaha!

http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/5189/icechangelargely6.jpg

This is not the only thing that Dr. Hansen contradicts in his statements. Matter of fact, everything is going opposite to what he predicted. Nice work NASA - you deserve a cookie - NOT!

I like this one:

Dr Hansen also talks frequently about the unprecedented temperature rise in the Arctic, yet his own temperature records show that much of the Arctic (including Greenland) was warmer from 1920-1940 than now. The NASA graph below from Nuuk, Greenland is typical of long term records of the region.
http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/07/03/giss-nuuk.png

Nice. This is NASA at its finest hour.



And the media also likes to report inaccurate data:

Last summer, the headlines read "First ever traversal of the Northwest Passage". This sounds very dramatic, except that it is entirely incorrect. As the BBC reported: "In 1905, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first person to successfully navigate the Northwest Passage, in a wooden sailboat." The Northwest Passage has been navigated at least one hundred times (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6999078.stm) over the last century.
And how about this?

According to official US Weather Bureau records (pdf) (http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf) from 1922, there was open sailing very close to the North Pole that year. Anthony Watts unearthed (http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/16/you-ask-i-provide-november-2nd-1922-arctic-ocean-getting-warm-seals-vanish-and-icebergs-melt/) this quote from the Weather Bureau:


"In fact, so little ice has never before been noted. The expedition all but established a record, sailing as far north as 81 degrees in ice-free water.


We must check back in seven weeks to see if the North Pole is ice-free. My money is on the experts being wrong - again. As the great physicist Dr Richard Feynman said, "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts."

Couldn't have said that any better myself.

Go here to read the full article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/goddard_polar_ice/

-S

[Enigma]

"Ignorance is the belief in the ignorance of science"
-Enigma

[SUBMAN1]

"Ignorance is the belief in the ignorance of science"
-EnigmaI'd opt, as would most of the world, for a much more educated opinion from a leading phyisicists than that one! :D

-S

[Frame57]

I had also heard that the southern polar cap is gaining mass.

[mcf1]

some good news.
I read that the ozone hole is shrinking.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1050495.stm

[kiwi_2005]

some good news.
I read that the ozone hole is shrinking.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1050495.stm

Theirs an ozone hole right over New Zealand been there since the late 80's skin cancer is ripe in our country and so is cheap counterfeit skin protection lotions!

Ha! FF3 don't recognize the word Zealand and offered me Sealand:rotfl:

[mrbeast]

The amounts of ice aren't neccesarily the major issue right now, but the age of the ice. Studies show that the proportion of young ice is increasing, indicating that summer melting is more widespread than previously encountered. This would suggest that temperatures are indeed increasing.

http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/2558/seaiceagessm2008bg9.jpg

In the Arctic, sea ice extent fluctuates with the seasons. It reaches its peak extent in March, near the end of Northern Hemisphere winter, and its minimum extent in September, at the end of the summer thaw. In September 2007, Arctic sea ice extent was the smallest area on record since satellites began collecting measurements about 30 years ago.
Although a cold winter allowed sea ice to re-cover much of the Arctic in the months that followed, this pair of images reveals that conditions were far from normal. The February 2008 ice pack (right) contained much more young ice than the long-term average (left). In the past, more ice survived the summer melt season and had the chance to thicken over the following winter. This perennial ice generally gets thicker each winter, which makes it more likely to survive the next summer.
The area and thickness of sea ice that survives the summer has been declining over the past decade. Whereas perennial ice used to cover 50-60 percent of the Arctic, it covered less than 30 percent in 2008—down 10 percent from 2007. The ice that remains is also getting younger. In the mid- to late 1980s, over 20 percent of Arctic sea ice was at least six years old; in February 2008, just 6 percent of the ice was six years old or older.
Independent of human-caused global warming, the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice can vary as a result of natural ocean and atmospheric cycles. One important cycle is the Arctic Oscillation which seesaws between a positive and negative phase over three-to-seven-year periods. During the positive phase, persistent lower than normal atmospheric pressure over the polar latitudes steers winds and storms away from the Arctic; winds tend to flush sea ice out of the Arctic basin to lower latitudes, where it melts. In the negative phase of the oscillation, persistent higher than normal pressure over the pole brings winds and storms toward the Arctic basin, and keeps sea ice circulating within the Arctic, allowing the ice to build up.
According to polar scientist Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, sea ice extent did go up and down with the phases of the Arctic Oscillation throughout much of the 1970s and through the mid-1980s. Since the 1990s, however, human-caused global warming appears to be driving the losses of perennial sea ice. For the past ten years or so, the Arctic Oscillation has been mostly neutral or negative, says Meier, but sea ice has continued on a downward slide.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17975

[UnderseaLcpl]

Temperatures are increasing, no doubt. But there is little reason to believe that man caused it or can do anything about it. The global climate and carbon leves have risen and fallen for as far back as we can see in any samples of the soil.

Someday people will look back on "an Inconvenient Truth", probably in the small ice-age we are overdue for, and refer to the same way we do about the "flat world" and "earth is in the center of the solar system".

At least we are getting what we paid for; government-quality research.

[NEON DEON]

Sea Ice extent is declining according to the The National Snow and Ice Data Center:

http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/200807_Figure3.png


And this statement:

"June sea ice extent is very similar to last year and is now the third lowest on record. It lies very close to the linear trend line for all average June sea ice extents since 1979, which indicates that the Arctic is losing an average of 41,000 square kilometers (15,800 square miles) of ice per year in June. Last year, the rapid melt leading to the record-breaking minimum extent began in July."

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html

[nikimcbee]

I'm glad you guys understand this. I was going to get a Polish phonebook and start calling everyone in Poland, to check the ice their freezers.:rotfl:

Hi, is you freezer running?

-Yes

You better go catch it then.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Sea Ice extent is declining according to the The National Snow and Ice Data Center:

http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/200807_Figure3.png


And this statement:

"June sea ice extent is very similar to last year and is now the third lowest on record. It lies very close to the linear trend line for all average June sea ice extents since 1979, which indicates that the Arctic is losing an average of 41,000 square kilometers (15,800 square miles) of ice per year in June. Last year, the rapid melt leading to the record-breaking minimum extent began in July."

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html (http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/index.html)


This graph looks..... contrived. Even if it is genuine polar ice extension does not neccessarily have anything to do with mankind. The cycle of polar expansion and contraction has been repeated many times.

[Raptor1]

It's very possible that on a greater scale the graph would average like this:

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Eventually averaging like so:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[nikimcbee]

@Polak, has anyone been taking ice out of your freezer?

[bookworm_020]

I'm glad you guys understand this. I was going to get a Polish phonebook and start calling everyone in Poland, to check the ice their freezers.:rotfl:

Hi, is you freezer running?

-Yes

You better go catch it then.

I thought the same thing when I saw the title of the thread!:doh: