A little fiddle here and a little fiddle there and: Hey Presto! You have some more "warming" data

Below is some "news" about the Greenland ice sheet:

The Greenland ice sheet is poised for another record melt this year, and is approaching a "tipping point" into a new and more dangerous melt regime in which the summer melt area covers the entire land mass, according to new findings from polar researchers.

The ice sheet is the focus of scientific research because its fate has huge implications for global sea levels, which are already rising as ice sheets melt and the ocean warms, exposing coastal locations to greater damage from storm surge-related flooding.

Trend in the reflectivity of high elevation ice in Greenland, showing the record low as of June 26, 2012. Credit: Meltfactor.org.

Greenland's ice has been melting faster than many scientists expected just a decade ago, spurred by warming sea and land temperatures, changing weather patterns, and other factors. Until now, though, most of the focus has been on ice sheet dynamics — how quickly Greenland's glaciers are flowing into the sea. But the new research raises a different basis for concern.

The new findings show that the reflectivity of the Greenland ice sheet, particularly the high-elevation areas where snow typically accumulates year-round, have reached a record low since records began in 2000. This indicates that the ice sheet is absorbing more energy than normal, potentially leading to another record melt year — just two years after the 2010 record melt season.

“In this condition, the ice sheet will continue to absorb more solar energy in a self-reinforcing feedback loop that amplifies the effect of warming,” wrote Ohio State polar researcher Jason Box on the meltfactor.org blog. Greenland is the world's largest island, and it holds 680,000 cubic miles of ice. If all of this ice were to melt — which, luckily won't happen anytime soon — the oceans would rise by more than 20 feet.

Just one teeny problem; The 2012 figure (black line) in the graph above looks like it's heading off in a different direction from all the other years (see the bottom of the graph). But the guys the author took that graph from show something quite different:



The black line is not dropping relentlessly at all. It's moving off in the same direction as the other years. Nothing to see here. Move along! Is there such a thing as an honest Greenie?

Also note that the misquoted article says: "accurate records began in March, 2000", and Warmists are usually emphatic to say that a 10-15 year period is too short to allow any generalizations about climate trends!

SOURCE
Global Warming's Killer: Critical Thinking By Russell Cook Is there any issue more dependent on widespread lapses in critical thinking than the idea of man-caused global warming? Nothing wrecks an argument faster than a question revealing a gaping hole in that argument's fundamental premise. Notice the abundantly obvious derailment in this example: "We need to do something about the proliferation of ghosts causing an unprecedented number of people to have nightmares lately. This problem leads to widespread sleeplessness, which in turn leads to a downturn in work productivity and overall economic hardship, and you are a cold-hearted capitalist pig if you deny the need for workers to be healthy." Any critical thinker will yell, "What?! Prove ghosts exist before you start calling me names!" The so-called global warming crisis has gotten away with an equally preposterous premise -- that human activity drives climate change -- for nearly two decades, because that premise at least sounded plausible. After all, humans do damage the environment to some extent in various ways, and the weather does seem a bit weird lately, so maybe it's possible that our greenhouse gas emissions have a detrimental effect. Plus, reporters tell us that scientists are saying this is so. Overlooked by many is the very thing that's kept the issue alive all this time. No different from in a ponzi scheme, the public must never lose confidence in the idea that this issue is a problem in need of a solution. The moment anything approaching a majority of people starts asking tough questions about skeptic scientists expressing legitimate opposition, the entire issue goes into a fatal tailspin, taking down all those who unquestioningly defend the idea. Think about all the assertions we've heard and what happens when anybody starts asking critical questions using information that's easier than ever to find on the internet. Even at the height of winter in the northern hemisphere, we're told the Arctic ice cap is melting and that polar bears drown when swimming through too much open water. Yet polar bear populations are increasing, online Arctic weather station feeds closest to the ice cap routinely show freezing temps in all but the warmest summer months, and this particular winter, Arctic Sea Ice Extent has returned to levels very close to the 1979-2000 average. The media has been implying that extreme weather is more frequent, yet blaring headlines from long ago are easily found on weather appearing to be just as extreme, if not worse. We're told that the dry warm winter in the U.S. this time around indicates global warming, yet horrible cold temperatures in Europe this same winter aren't called a similar indicator. Many express anguish over ocean acidification, yet these same people never mention the irrefutable fact that oceans are alkaline and that it would thus take some kind of herculean phenomenon just to push them into a pure neutral pH balance, long before they ever become even mildly acidic. Prominent NASA personnel who criticized NASA's alarmist narratives on global warming in a recent WSJ letter are said to be politically driven, yet NASA climate scientist James Hansen is routinely seen being arrested at civil disobedience global warming rallies organized by far-left enviro-activists. The chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that "everything that we look at and take into account in our assessments has to carry credibility of peer-reviewed publications, we don't settle for anything less." Yet people who meticulously sift through IPCC reports are finding out that in its 2007 report alone, over 5,500 such publications were non-peer-reviewed. And on and on. Critical thinking is eventually deadly to the idea of man-caused global warming. It's a death by a thousand cuts. But there is one more especially egregious lapse in critical thinking here -- not regarding the science, but instead vis-à-vis what the public is led to believe about skeptic scientists. We're told that skeptic scientists lie about all of the "death by a thousand cuts" evidence. We're told that they work for big coal and oil -- much like so-called expert shills were paid by tobacco industries to "manufacture doubt" about the hazards of smoking. Yet no reporter pushing that narrative bothers to show which peer-reviewed science journal-published paper written by a skeptic is an outright fabrication written in exchange for fossil fuel industry money. No reporter bothers to show how myriad examples of critical thinking reveal pre-existing -- not manufactured -- doubt about claims of evidence for global warming. And no reporter ever attempts to first disprove that the paltry funding skeptics did receive from the fossil fuel industry was given simply because those people agreed with what the skeptics were already saying. The accusation that skeptic scientists are corrupt is devoid of critical thinking. Anybody will spot these problems after a thorough examination of all the facts: Al Gore says that book author/reporter Ross Gelbspan discovered leaked evidence from 1991 coal industry memos proving that skeptics are corrupt, yet other book authors and reporters quoted words from those memos prior to Gelbspan, including Gore himself. Uncounted numbers of people quote words from those memos to prove that skeptics are corrupt, yet not one ever shows the memos in their full context. Gelbspan claimed in a late summer 1997 NPR radio interview, using the most commonly quoted fragment sentences from the memos, that "sinister" efforts were being made to confuse the public about global warming, yet when the full-context memos are read at Greenpeace archive scan web pages (where only an astute researcher would know to look for them; they are not found there via ordinary internet searches), it becomes abundantly obvious that the memos were for a very small pilot project PR campaign, and Gelbspan took the fragment sentences entirely out of context. Gelbspan was long praised as a Pulitzer-winner, the designation even appearing on the front of his hardcover 2004 Boiling Point book, yet the Pulitzer organization has never recognized him as a prize-winner. On and on and on, there is a sea of red flags to be found in the accusation itself and all the people surrounding it. Tie the full exposure of the global warming issue's ever-increasing science problems with the revelation of how a literally unsupportable accusation bordering on libel/slander was concocted against its scientist critics, and the world should now see how all the hysteria was and is nothing more than an "information" Ponzi scheme based on constant infusions of misinformation that could have been revealed as such years ago. A death of a thousand cuts becomes a stake through the heart. SOURCE
Sea level rising fast along American East Coast – or not A new study published in Nature Climate Change claims there is a sea level rise “hotspot” along the East Coast of the United States. The gullible press picked up on the story. The lead sentence from the Arizona Daily Star reads: “From Cape Hatteras, N.C., to just north of Boston, sea levels are rising much faster than they are around the globe, putting one of the world’s most costly coasts in danger of flooding, government researchers report.” The paper is Asbury H. Sallenger Jr, Kara S. Doran, & Peter A. Howd, 2012, Hotspot of accelerated sea-level rise on the Atlantic coast of North America, Nature Climate Change (see full paper here). Sallenger et al. claim that during the periods 1950–1979 and 1980–2009 the rate of sea level rise in this northeast hotspot was ~ 3–4 times higher than the global average. Their contention is based on computer modeling, statistical analysis, and extrapolation of data. “We test the hypothesis that a statistically significant observed northeast hotspot of accelerated sea level rise exists by determining its position and dimensions and comparing them with model projections. (See my post Statistical Significance in Science – how to game the system) The computer games of Sallenger et al. are countered by real data. Actual readings from tidal gauges show a record of deceleration of sea level rise (dated from the early 20th Century to present) in the following cities: Annapolis, Baltimore, Bar Harbor, Boston, Charleston, Eastport, Newport, and Portland, all in or near the alleged hotspot. Some other stations in the area, such as Atlantic City, Montauk, and New London, show a small increase in the rate of sea level rise. (Reference: Houston, Jr. And Dean, R.G., 2011, Sea-level acceleration based on U.S. tide gauges and extensions of previous global-gauge analyses. Journal of Coastal Research, 27(3), 409–417.) Sallenger et al. are hard-pressed to come up with an explanation for the “hotspot.” They invoke this: “Climate warming does not force sea-level rise (SLR) at the same rate everywhere. Rather, there are spatial variations of SLR superimposed on a global average rise. These variations are forced by dynamic processes, arising from circulation and variations in temperature and/or salinity, and by static equilibrium processes, arising from mass redistributions changing gravity and the Earth’s rotation and shape.” They miss a simple explanation: sediment compaction and subsidence from varying rates of groundwater withdrawal. Relative sea level depends in part on the geology of the area. That is superimposed on a regional, long-term sinking of the East Coast caused by isostatic rebound from the last glacial epoch, i.e., as the central part of North America rebounds from the weigh of the now melted continental ice sheet, it tilts the coastal area into the ocean producing an apparent sea level rise. SOURCE
Brit global warming skeptics now outnumber believers Fewer Britons than ever support the proposition that global warming is caused by human-driven CO2 emissions, according to the latest survey. Some 48 per cent of Britons now agree with the suggestion that warming could be "mostly natural" and that the idea of it being human-caused has yet to be proven. By comparison only 43 per cent agree with the idea that warming is "mostly" caused by industrial and vehicular CO2 emissions. In Canada the ratio is 58:34 in favour of the mamade warming hypothesis, while in the USA it's a tie. Only 43 per cent of Britons think we should get poorer in order to protect the environment. The numbers have actually moved very little since November 2009, but believers are now in the minority. The studies were conducted by Angus Reid and surveyed four thousand people in the USA, Canada and the UK. The UK is only one of three countries in the world to pass legislation mandating CO2 reduction, and the issue dominated the media agenda between 2006 and the Copenhagen Summit in 2009. So the UK is unique amongst the three countries surveyed, in giving its population saturation exposure to the climate change issue, and early exposure to CO2 mitigation policies. It would seem that the more people hear the arguments and study the policies, the less they like them. SOURCE
Meteorologist Dr. Wolfgang Thüne Calls Warmist Institute’s Science “Pure Voodoo Magic For Spreading Fear Among The Public” As the science of the warmists gets exposed as woefully inadequate, slipshod and flawed, all they can do now is give each other awards in pompous ceremonies in an effort to generate a (fake) sense of achievement and contribution. They’ve been reduced to a pretend world. One example is the Technical University of Berlin recently awarding Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber an honorary doctorate. Schellnhuber is Director of the infamously über-alarmist Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and is chairman of the WBGU Advisory Council. Last year Schellnhuber and his WBGU published a “masterplan” calling for the dilution of democracy worldwide and forcing societies to take up a highly restricted “sustainable path” that would keep the planet from reaching his nine mathematically concocted “dangerous tipping points”. In it he advocates indoctrination and “changes in awareness”. Schellnhuber even once publicly stated that 1 billion people would be the ideal human population for the planet, which would be like eliminating all the world’s people except China and letting them have it all to themselves. Schellnhuber, however, having clearly drifted from science to radical policy formulation and advising, is coming under increasing fire from number of scientists and critics. For example, Dr. Wolfgang Thüne, a retired German meteorologist and member of the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE) commented yesterday on Schellnhuber’s honorary doctorate: That Professor Dr. Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber, the inventer of the “tipping elements”, is now being celebrated and awarded an honorary doctorate is amazing. But what’s even more amazing is that he received this from the TU Berlin for his ‘outstanding scientific achievements in the fields of climate impact research and policy counselling’. Did the TU Berlin, in its addiction to political attention, even stop to consider just how much it is damaging its excellent reputation among the professional world? The climate science by Schellnhuber & Co. is pure voodoo-magic spreading fear among the public and reaching big time into the pockets of taxpayers. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) is senselessly wasting the money of taxpayers. ‘Climate protection’ is a scientific swindle because the weather is not something that can be protected.” Thüne even demands that the PIK be shut down immediately. "That would be a small but effective step in preventing the national debt from getting out of control.“ Dr. Wolfgang Thüne is a certified meteorologist, who for years was a meteorology expert for ZDF television, and has written about the falsifiications and fraud surrounding the UN IPCC. He is the author of numerous books. His latest work is: “Prophets in the Struggle for the Climate Throne. How primal fear is used in the struggle for money and power.” SOURCE
British Greenies fracked! Fracking should be permitted in Britain because the risk of earthquakes and water contamination is minimal, a government-ordered report has found. Scientists from the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society said the controversial method of extracting natural gas from shale should be given the go-ahead, subject to tight regulations and continuous monitoring of drilling sites. The panel said that despite evidence fracking can trigger small earthquakes, the tremors felt at ground level would be about the same size as those caused by a lorry driving past a house. Chances of any contaminated water or gas escaping into groundwater supplies were "very low" because of the depth at which the process takes place, they added. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, involves the injection of water, sand and chemicals into shale beds at high pressure to split the rock and release the natural gas stored within. Prof Robert Mair, chair of the panel, said: "The risks associated with fracking can be managed effectively in the UK, provided operational best practices are implemented and enforced through effective regulation. "[There are] a number of issues we believe must merit further consideration including the climate risks associated with the extraction and subsequent use of shale gas and, very importantly, the public acceptability of hydraulic fracturing." SOURCE *************************************** For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here *****************************************