A desperate Greenie attempt to explain the Arctic/Antarctic anomaly

Greenies have been pushing heavily the recent shrinking in the Arctic icecap. To them it is proof of global warming. That only convinces completely uninformed people, however. A superficial but damaging retort to such rubbish is to ask why the Antarctic is not melting too. Global warming that affects only one half of the earth is not very global! The post below is an attempt to answer that particular challenge by saying that the Antarctic is so melting too! It also offers a completely naive explanation of Arctic melting that ignores many non-CO2 explanations for it -- such as vulcanism in the Gakkel Ridge and the matters discussed in the article immediately following this one.

The post below has many truths in it but, like most Green/Left screeds, it tells only part of the story. We are asked to believe, for instance, that the Antarctic is melting even though its temperature is way below zero degrees (Celsius) in all places except at the very edges. But zero degrees is the melting point of ice. So how can ice melt if it is below that temperature?

The vast majority of the Antarctic would not melt under any presently foreseeable circumstances. THAT is what the Greenies should be pointing to in explanation of the Arctic/Antarctic anomaly but, since 91% of the earth's glacial ice is in the Antarctic, that would undermine their scares about rising sea-levels! What a dilemma!

I also append immediately following the Greenie article another comment on it that I received via email. The commenter notes Hansen's claim that the ozone hole has a cooling effect and then points out that it should in fact have a warming effect. Hansen's claim is however an amusing implicit admission that the great Greenie efforts to shrink the ozone hole have not worked.

The climate change deniers never miss a chance to tell us that research is showing the Antarctic ice sheet is actually growing. That sounds like the total amount of ice is increasing and things are just fine......the globe isn't heating up if it's not happening there......right? That IS enough to make some people disbelieve the climate scientists because, after all, no one wants to think the climate is going to steadily get worse. We all secretly hope that the deniers are right.

Yes, the Antarctic ice sheet is growing in height in the central region, but making just that one point is very misleading and quite dishonest. There is an enormous amount of research that has been conducted on the poles and there is much more to the story than just the increase in snow in the middle of the continent. Indeed the coast is where the real action is.

The leading U.S. climate scientist Dr. James Hansen responded via email saying "The most precise data on the mass of the ice sheets, from the gravity satellite, show that, overall, Antarctica is losing mass, as is Greenland, even though East Antarctica is gaining a small amount of mass."

"All of the models, and the observations, have the central parts of Greenland and Antarctica growing faster because of global warming. This is a consequence of warmer air holding more moisture, thus increasing snowfall. But the net effect of warming on both continental ice sheets is mass loss, the increased melting being a larger effect than the increased snowfall.

He also said "The fact that West Antarctica is shedding mass at a substantial rate, even though there is only small warming of surrounding sea surface temperatures, is a telling fact in my opinion, and a likely consequence of the warming ocean at depth, which affects the ice shelves that buttress West Antarctica, as discussed in our paper "Dangerous human-made interference with climate: a GISS modelE study."" [1]

But the reason that the North Pole is melting so much faster (last years summer minimum shattering the previous record of 2005) than the South Pole is very easy to understand. The South Polar Ice Sheet is two miles thick. That means that the ice is at an altitude of over ten thousand feet where the temperature is much colder than a mere six or so feet as at the North Pole. This makes it impossible for the slight rise in global mean temperature to have any affect at all in the south accept around the edges of the continent.

Also, it sits on a continent rather than on water that is above freezing - as in the north. The ice in the north is an average of 6 to 12 feet thick and is being warmed from beneath as well as above. This has a much larger impact on the North Polar Ice Cap.

Dr. Hansen also pointed out that the ozone hole (the portion of the lowest ozone being roughly the size of the Antarctic ice sheet) is letting more heat escape into the atmosphere as the ozone is a greenhouse gas. [2]

The South Pole is quite literally the coldest place on Earth, and it always will be much colder than the North Pole no matter how much global warming occurs. The Greenland Ice Sheet is very similar to the South Pole and the research shows that it, too, is melting at an accelerated pace around the edges.

"....between 1996 and 2005, they detected a widespread glacier acceleration and consequently an increased rate of ice discharge from the Greenland ice sheet," write three climate scientists in an article for RealClimate.org of research published after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report was written. [3]

It would seem that the north and south poles should react the same, but because of these gigantic differences they cannot. Antarctica is not the canary in the mine..........the canary is the Arctic, and it's telling the scientists that things are changing faster than they had thought possible.

Source

Comment:

I'm sure others have much to comment on but here's one thing that I notice.

Dr. Hansen also pointed out that the ozone hole (the portion of the lowest ozone being roughly the size of the Antarctic ice sheet) is letting more heat escape into the atmosphere as the ozone is a greenhouse gas

How so? Ozone's greatest response is in the ultraviolet, so it shields us from the sun's higher frequencies. An ozone depletion of any sort will allow more energy to reach the earth, all of which is converted to heat. Conversely, ozone's response to infrared is rather slight.






More arctic debunking

From "New Scientist", no less. (The "New" comes from the far-off times when "new" was a code-word for "Communist")

Energy flowing from the equator up towards the North Pole may partly explain the rapid warming of the Arctic, say researchers. It is well documented that the Arctic is warming about twice as fast as the rest of the globe, but the reason for this remains a mystery. The leading hypothesis is that ice disappearing as a result of climate change is largely to blame. Warmer temperatures melt the Arctic ice and exposes water, which absorbs more sunlight than ice. This causes temperatures to rise further, melting more ice, and so on.

But a team led by Rune Graversen at the University of Stockholm in Sweden now challenges this theory. The researchers analysed temperature measurements taken during the 1980s and 1990s by satellite instruments. But instead of just looking at which regions have warmed the most, they also examined the height in the atmosphere where the warming took place. The researchers found that most of the warming is happening high above ground. At midsummer, the data shows that the air that has warmed the most is 2 kilometres above land.

This, says Graversen, rules out the theory that Arctic warming is being accelerated by melting ice. Although the researchers remain unsure what is accelerating Arctic warming, they suggest it might be related to how fast energy is being transported towards the North Pole by cyclones. The team calculated the flow of energy into the Arctic Circle using meteorological data, and looked at how this flow has changed since the 1980s. They found that the amount of energy transported from the tropics into the Arctic has increased and that the increase corresponds to the rise of temperatures in the region. "We are not saying this is the only explanation," says Graversen, "this could explain maybe 25% of the amplification of warming in the Arctic."

The team's findings fit well with suggestions that more and more cyclones, which carry warm air, have been moving into the Arctic Circle.

Clouds could also explain the movement of energy into the Arctic. Some studies have suggested that there are more and more clouds over the Arctic, says Graversen. These might be soaking up energy from the sun and warming up the atmosphere.

One question Graversen's findings raise is whether energy from the tropics is also being directed towards the South Pole. The surface of the Antarctic is not warming nearly as fast as the rest of the globe, but in 2006, John Turner of the British Antarctic Survey published findings showing that the air 5 kilometres above Antarctica has warmed more than anywhere else on Earth over the last 30 years.

Source




Fur now correct again

CANADA: I am starting to warm to this whole climate change business. Arrived in Vancouver for a night just before 2007 drew to a close. With barely a few hours remaining before the stores closed, I raced out and bought a fur coat. A long coat cascading down to my ankles, light as a feather and as warm as a ... well ... fur.

A few days later, despite sub-zero mountain temperatures, I am still positively glowing with warmth from my new fur. Not just because animal skins protect from the cold. No, there is the unexpected, more cerebral, inner-warmth that comes from learning that by buying a fur, I have done the right green thing. According to the Fur Council of Canada's new ad campaign, fur is now eco-fashion. Thats right. Wrapping yourself in a fur is a guilt-free pleasure. More than that, it's positively good for the planet.

Barely 10 days in, I am loving 2008. It holds the promise of lots more surprises from green politics as the climate change juggernaut continues to head in the most unlikely directions.

Let me explain. At the weekend, Canada's National Post reported on an advertising campaign launched at the end of last year by the Fur Council of Canada, which represents 70,000 of the nation's fur traders. These sassy new ads feature gorgeous women draped in fur, one under the heading "Environmental activist". The ads explain that buying a fur coat is the ecologically correct thing to do because fox stoles and mink coats are natural, renewable and sustainable. By contrast, synthetic furs are no more than by-products of the petro-chemical industry. Making a single faux fur coat can chew up 19 litres of petroleum, a non-renewable resource, says the council. Ergo, buying a fur coat is good for the planet.

Welcome to the brave new world of climate change politics. The Fur Council's campaign has been so successful that even comedians are sending out the "fur is green" message. Picked up by a Canadian comedy show, a camp-looking guy who resembles Borat in a fur coat gets off some great lines assuring us that a genuine fur coat creates less pollution than synthetic textiles and uses no child labour. "So say auf Wiedersehen to faux fur," he smiles into the camera. "You wouldn't wear a barrel of oil, so why would you wear a coat that is made from one?"

You can find it on YouTube. And if you're worried about being sprayed with paint by those nasty PETA people, funny fur boy has some advice: "Well, you just turn around and tell them that every spray can produces enough fluorocarbons to drown three polar bears. Who's the killer now, PETA?" Fur boy's advice if you want to do something good for the environment: "Kill a small animal and slap it on your noggin."

Alan Herscovici, the council's executive vice-president, told me by phone from Montreal that the global warming issue provided the perfect opportunity for the fur industry to tackle the animal rights industry. He described these groups as the new politically correct hate groups and lamented that the media rarely exposes the intimidation they use to pillory legitimate industries such as fur.

So if you are in the business of producing and selling natural products such as furs why wouldn't you jump aboard the natural, sustainable, renewable bandwagon? Long derided as the brutish killers of innocent animals who satisfy the hedonistic vanity of callous consumers, now animal trappers and hunters are, according to the Fur Council of Canada, the new heroes of global warming. And those buying and wearing the fur coats can hold their heads high in the knowledge that they are doing the socially responsible thing.

The fur industry is fighting back using the sort of emotional blackmail that the animal rights industry mastered long ago. All these years the anti-fur brigade has assumed the high moral ground when extolling the virtues of synthetic, faux fur coats over the real thing. Now we learn that their motto can be reduced to "Save a beaver. Kill the planet."

Climate change has snatched the moral high ground. Now the inference is that the animal rights industry would rather you line the pockets of Big Oil by buying petroleum by-products such as synthetic coats, rather than support the fur-farming and hunting families of the Cree people in the James Bay area or the Dene nation north of British Columbia.

Maybe the Fur Council's campaign is just a case of green-washing, as some warn. But theirs is a more legitimate claim compared to the shonks trading on climate change. Take the booming industry of offsets. When you next jump aboard a fuel-guzzling aeroplane you can soothe your conscience by throwing a few more dollars at the airline company that promises to send your money on to some green initiative such as planting trees or investing in wind power in India.

But as Mark Jaccard, a professor at the school of resource and environmental management at Simon Fraser University, told the National Post: "Was the tree planted in Guatemala truly an additional investment in reducing greenhouses gases or would another tree have sprouted in that spot eventually? Has the Indian wind generator actually helped prevent or delay the construction of a coal-fired power station, or was it simply a wealth transfer to one region in India while the expansion of coal stations has continued at the same pace? We cannot know because future actions are unknowable."

Even for those who accept climate change is a major threat to the planet, there are plenty of reasons to remain suspicious about how companies and industries move to rebrand themselves as environmental friends. Any new industry - and make no mistake, greenwashing looks like the boom industry of the early 21st century - will attract a rich collection of snake oil salesmen, hypocrites and downright crooks in its early years. And separating the rogues from the saints can often only be done in retrospect.

For the moment, I'm prepared to back the Fur Council. Why? Because I kind of like this novel feeling. Finally, I get around to buying a full-length fur coat and it turns out to be the politically correct thing to do. There I was recently mocking a friend in the advertising industry for ending his email with a pro forma "Have a low carbon day". Now I'm looking forward to the bumper stickers that will soon start appearing on the back of the small hybrid cars driven by our green-minded friends. "Buy a fur. Save the planet."

Source




NO CONVINCING EVIDENCE FOR DECLINE IN TROPICAL FORESTS

Claims that tropical forests are declining cannot be backed up by hard evidence, according to new research from the University of Leeds.

This major challenge to conventional thinking is the surprising finding of a study published today in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences by Dr Alan Grainger, Senior Lecturer in Geography and one of the world's leading experts on tropical deforestation.

"Every few years we get a new estimate of the annual rate of tropical deforestation," said Dr Grainger. "They always seem to show that these marvellous forests have only a short time left. Unfortunately, everybody assumes that deforestation is happening and fails to look at the bigger picture - what is happening to forest area as a whole."

FULL STORY here






Corn and water

Another disadvantage of corn-based ethanol production plays out in the Gulf of Mexico

It's becoming clear that America's quest for cleaner fuels and energy independence won't be short or simple. The latest complication, surfacing from beneath the Gulf of Mexico, holds a message for North Carolina and its environmentally sensitive coastal waters. It also sounds a cautionary note about the huge increase in ethanol production mandated by the new energy bill signed into law by President Bush.

In the Gulf of Mexico a "dead zone," at times the size of New Jersey, has cropped up off Louisiana each spring and summer since at least 1985. In this zone, the water doesn't hold enough dissolved oxygen to support marine life -- including shrimp, oysters and crabs. This killing ground for commercial seafoods is linked to algae growth fueled by nitrogen -- nitrogen from fertilizer that runs into the Gulf from the vast farmlands of the Mississippi River basin. (Soil erosion, sewage and industrial pollution also play a part.)

Some scientists and environmentalists correlate the dead zone's growth with increased corn production in the Midwest. The notion is plausible -- corn-growing is especially nitrogen-fertilizer intensive. Nitrogen runs off the fields into streams, tributaries and finally the Mississippi. Algae bloom, killing seafood. The problem isn't new, but after shrinking in size following 2002 the dead zone again is expanding. In 2007 it was the third-largest on record.

Last spring's huge corn planting -- the most since 1944 -- may be a factor. It was prompted by prices boosted by demand for corn-based ethanol. (Twenty percent of the corn crop goes into ethanol production.). We've all heard how the push for more and more fuel derived from corn -- driven by federal subsidies and intensified by an illogical tariff on Brazilian ethanol -- has raised prices for everything from tortillas in Mexico to soft-drink sweeteners and livestock feed in this country. Now there's a link to environmental degradation in the Gulf.

More here

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