Re: Yeah Wheaton is back, pixie let the games begin


"timepixdc" <timepixdc@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message

They can't if after the melt it ends up in the thicker ice build-up
elsewhere


"Watch out, Al Gore. The glaciers will get you!" With that appended note, my
friend, retired field geologist Jack Sauers, forwarded to me a report that
should have been a lead item in every newspaper in the world. It was the
news that the best-measured glacier in North America, the Nisqually on Mount
Rainier, has been growing since 1931.

The significance of the fact, immediately grasped by any competent
climatologist, is that glacial advance is an early warning sign of Northern
Hemisphere chilling of the sort that can bring on an Ice Age. The last
Little Ice Age continued from about 1400 to 1850. It was followed by a
period of slight warming. There are a growing number of signs that we may be
descending into another Little Ice Age-all the mountains of "global warming"
propaganda aside."

". Since 1980, there has been an advance of more than 55% of the 625
mountain glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring group in
Zurich. (From 1926 to 1960, some 70-95% of these glaciers were in retreat.)

.. A comparison of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's 1965 and 1990 Plant
Hardiness Zone Maps, shows a southward change of one zone, or 10°F, between
1965 and 1990.

.. Careful measurements of the oxygen isotope ratios in German oaks, which
are rigorously calibrated to temperature data, show a 1°C temperature
decline from 1350 to 1800 (the lowpoint of the Little Ice Age). Temperature
thereafter increased by 1°C from 1800 to 1930, and has been declining since
then.

.. From weather stations in the Alps, and in the Nordic countries, we find
the temperature decline since 1930 is also 1°C.

.. Satellite measurements have shown growth in the height and breadth of the
huge Greenland ice sheet, the largest in the Northern Hemisphere

On Nisqually

That brings us to the Nisqually glacier, up on the 14,410-foot Mount
Rainier, near Tacoma, Wash. Just 85 feet shy of Mount Whitney, the highest
point in the lower 48 states, Mount Rainier has 26 glaciers, and is the
largest single peak system in the United States.

In 1931, fearful that the receding glacier would provide insufficient runoff
for their newly completed hydroelectric facility, Tacoma City Light began
careful measurements of the glacier. Since the mid-1800s, the glacier had
receded about 1 kilometer. Annual to semi-annual measurements, continued by
the U.S. Geological Survey and private contractors for the National Park
Service, provide the longest continuous series of glacier measurements in
North America.

The details are described in a report by government specialists, which
appeared in the September 2000 issue of Washington Geology:

"The greatest thickening during the period of measurement occurred between
1931 and 1945, when the glacier thickened by about 50% near 2,800 meters of
altitude. This and subsequent thickenings during the mid-1970s to mid-1980s
produced waves that advanced its terminus. Glacier thinning occured during
intervening periods. Between 1994 and 1997, the glacier thickened by 17
meters at 2,800-m altitude, indicating probable glacier advance during the
first decade of the 21st century."

That's the story from Mount Rainier. Retired geologist Sauers, who has been
observing conditions in the Cascade Mountains of western Washington for a
lifetime, says "I'm preparing for an Ice Age." Perhaps we all should."
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/Ice_Age.html

"Climatologist Patrick J. Michaels, the author of several books on climate
change including "Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by
Scientists, Politicians, and the Media," believes the contribution of human
activity on planetary warming will be "modest" and pointed out several
examples of what Fox News omitted in terms of the scientific debate.

"The net ice balance in Antarctica is positive, it is gaining ice," Michaels
said, noting that the Fox News special only focused on areas where ice is
melting to imply an alarming rise in sea level is imminent. Michaels is an
environmental sciences professor at the University of Virginia and a senior
fellow at the Cato Institute.

Antarctica "will contribute to reduction in sea level because it is gaining
ice ... The net ice balance in Greenland is very close to neutral," Michaels
added."
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200511/CUL20051115a.html

"The good news is that leading climatologists and meteorologists are
actively debunking this nonsense. One of them, Dr. F. Fred Singer, president
of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, is in the forefront.

He debunks a June 7 statement issued by several national academies of
sciences just before Britain's Tony Blair arrived for talks with President
Bush, saying, "The Statement simply regurgitates the contentious conclusions
of the (UN) International Panel on Climate Change report of 2001, which has
been disputed by credible scientists. The so-called scientific consensus is
pure fiction."

Contrary to claims that rising global temperatures will melt the ice caps of
Greenland and Antarctica, thus elevating sea levels catastrophically,
average temperatures over Greenland have been falling since 1987 at a rather
steep rate of 2.2 degrees Celsius per decade. Over Antarctica, they've been
falling for 50 years. Crichton also correctly reports that Nils-Axel Mörner,
a professor of geodynamics at Stockholm University, has found "a total
absence of any recent sea level rise" and has instead found evidence of a
fall in sea levels in the last 20 years.



What about the trend in global average temperatures, a question central to
the debate in State of Fear? According to satellite data, since 1978 the
planet has been warming up at a rate of 0.08 degree Celsius per decade.
Simple arithmetic reveals that, if that rate continues, the planet will warm
by 0.8 degree Celsius by the end of the century. That compares with an
increase of 0.6 degree Celsius during the 20th century. No catastrophe
there. http://www.reason.com/0505/cr.rb.the.shtml



"Over the ages, climate has varied. Generally speaking, the Northern
Hemisphere has been warming since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 17th
century. Most of the global warming observed in the 20th century occurred
between 1900 and 1940, when the release of greenhouse gasses was far less
than later in the century. Between 1940 and 1975, temperatures fell--and
scientists feared a lengthy period of global cooling. The reported rise in
temperatures in recent decades has come rather suddenly--probably too
suddenly given the relatively slow rise of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere."

Much has been made of the assertion, repeated regularly in the media, that
"the science is settled," based upon a supposed "scientific consensus." Yet,
some years ago in the "Oregon Petition" between 17,000 and 18,000
signatories, almost all scientists, made manifest that the science was not
settled, declaring:

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon
dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the
foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and
disruption of the Earth's climate.

Several additional observations are in order. First, the "consensus" is
ostensibly based upon the several assessment reports of the IPCC. One must
bear in mind that the summary reports are political documents put together
by government policy makers, who, to put it mildly, treat rather cavalierly
the expressed uncertainties and caveats in the underlying scientific
reports. Moreover, the IPCC was created to support a specific political
goal. It is directed to support the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate
Change. In turn, the convention calls for an effective international
response to deal with "the common concern of all mankind"--in short, to
reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. Statements by the leaders of the
IPCC have been uninhibitedly political.

Second, science is not a matter of consensus, as the histories of Galileo,
Copernicus, Pasteur, Einstein and others will attest. Science depends not on
speculation but on conclusions verified through experiment. Verification is
more than computer simulations--whose conclusions mirror the assumptions
built in the model. Irrespective of the repeated assertions regarding a
"scientific consensus," there is neither a consensus nor is consensus
science." http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007104

"Moreover, "an extrapolation of the satellite data gives at most a fraction
of a degree rise for the 2lst century," adding that, "The IPCC further
claims that the 20th century was the warmest in the past 100 years, but this
myth is based on a seriously flawed publication. The IPCC also claims that
sea levels will rise by up to nearly a meter by 2100; but every indication
is that they will continue to rise inexorably and much less, as they have
for nearly 20,000 years since the peak of the last Ice Age."

"Other scientists have joined Dr. Singer to dispute the global warming
claims. Paul Knappenberger of the University of Virginia, says of the claims
made by the science academies that, "What is missing is the scientific
assessment of the potential threat. Without a threat assessment, a simple
scientific finding on its own doesn't warrant any change of action, no
matter how scientifically groundbreaking it might be."

"There isn't a computer model for the world's weather that can reliably
predict the future by more than a week at best. This is why tracking the
routes of hurricanes proves so difficult. This is why blizzards often turn
out to be better or worse than initial projections."

"There is no scientific consensus. There is only the manipulation of public
opinion and the effort to influence public policy. There is no rapid global
warming and no way that any limits on energy use could have any effect on it
if it did exist. Global warming is a classic scare campaign and we may well
be witnessing its last desperate gasps as more and more scientists step
forward to debunk it."
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18526

At JunkScience.com, we analyzed surface temperature data collected by NASA's
Goddard Institute of Space Studies and prepared temperature graphs to
underscore this point.

If you look at the temperature trends for the Arctic region since 1880, it
appears that the Arctic generally warmed somewhat until about 1938. From
1938 until about 1966, the Arctic cooled to about its 1918 temperature
level. Then, between 1966 and 2003, the Arctic warmed up to just shy of its
1938 temperature. But in 2004, the Arctic temperature again spiked downward.

Now if the 1880-1938 warming trend had continued up until this day, there
certainly would be some significant warming in the Arctic region to talk
about. From 1918 to 1938, alone, the Arctic warmed by 2.5 degrees
Centigrade. But the actual temperature trend is much different, showing that
there's been hardly any overall temperature change in the Arctic since 1938.

Not only does the temperature data contradict the claim that global warming
is overtaking the Arctic, but data on greenhouse gas concentrations ought to
drive a spike through the heart of the claim.

During the warming period from 1880 to 1938, it's estimated that the
atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide - the bugbear of greenhouse
gases to global warming worriers - increased by an estimated 20 parts per
million. But from 1938 to 2003 - a period of essentially no increase in
Arctic warming - the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide increased
another 60 parts per million. It doesn't seem plausible, then, that Arctic
temperatures are significantly influenced by atmospheric levels of
greenhouse gases.

And even when the Arctic re-warmed between 1966 and 2003, the warming
occurred much less aggressively (about 50 percent less) than the 1918-1938
warming and at about the same rate as the period 1880-1938, despite much
higher greenhouse gas levels in the 1966-2003 time frame.

Global warming worriers can take no comfort from South Pole data either.

Over the last 30 years, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide increased by
about 15 percent, from about 328 parts per million to about 372 parts per
million. But the Antarctic temperature trend for that period indicates a
slight cooling. This observation contrasts sharply with the relatively steep
Antarctic warming observed from 1949 to 1974, which was accompanied by a
much more modest increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.

The hypothesis of global warming alarmism posits that increasing levels of
atmospheric carbon dioxide should lead to increasing temperatures,
particularly with respect to Antarctica's super-cold, super-dry air mass.
But the data seem to indicate just the opposite.

Getting back to the New York Times article, so why is the Arctic ice cap
shrinking if air temperatures aren't really warming in any significant way?
Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor wrote that "Arctic sea ice has
undergone significant changes in the last 1,000 years, even before the
mid-20th century 'greenhouse enhancement.' Current conditions appear to be
well within historical variability."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,172188,00.html







.

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