Exclusive: No ice at the North PoleFrom a June 20 National Geographic article:
Polar scientists reveal dramatic new evidence of climate change
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Friday, 27 June 2008
It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.
The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.
"From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important. There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole, not open water," said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.
Arctic warming has become so dramatic that the North Pole may melt this summer, report scientists studying the effects of climate change in the field.But there's a big problem with this "alarming" story: it's not even rare for the North Pole to be ice free.
"We're actually projecting this year that the North Pole may be free of ice for the first time [in history]," David Barber, of the University of Manitoba, told National Geographic News aboard the C.C.G.S. Amundsen, a Canadian research icebreaker.
See the details here, and note that the New York Times ran (and then retracted) a similar story back in August 2000.
From a November 2000 Patrick Michaels article:
By August 29, the level of outrage the Times had incurred provoked a half-hearted retraction of sorts, on page D-3, where the paper admitted it misstated the true condition of polar ice, noting that about 10 percent of the Arctic Ocean is open in the summer and that those open areas do in fact sometimes extend to the Pole. McCarthy, the Times reported, “would not argue with critics who said that open water at the pole was not unprecedented.” How about the truth? Open water is common.
That’s apparent from even a cursory look at the U.N.’s own temperature data or from a study of climate history. Climatologists are pretty sure that polar regions were around 2°C warmer than they are today during the period from 4,000 to 7,000 years ago. That’s three millennia in which summer sea-ice was likely more scattered than it is today. The only ecological catastrophe ecologists might be able say resulted from this deplorable condition was the rise of human civilization.
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2 comments:
I wonder if the lack of polar ice is due to the recent rash of volcanic eruptions in the Arctic Circle. See "Editor's Note" at
http://www.akdart.com/warming6.html#1a
In Canada, we have a healthy polar bear population that has just gone on a Protected Species list; what is that about? This is clear proof the NGOs and EPA do not have a clue about science. Two polar bear populations on Baffin are decreasing in number, but this is a region of the arctic that is cooling not warming. Polars are stable or increasing! Polar bears are a variety of brown bear and probably will do very well when and if it warms, but not in competition with brownies simply because of their colour. The species, however, has survived numerous ice ages before this, their KODAK moment, arrived.
However, it is certainly not about the bears. This is about abstract computer modeling being falsely elevated to the level of science and then presented as if it were science. Modeling produces objective computer generated conclusions based upon input assumptions and processing. In order for models to be approximately predictive, the assumptions must be realistic and work backward as well as forward. In most complex cases, modeling is GIGO. GIGO is their real value; eliminating hypothetical possibilities.
Politics operates on GIGO propaganda - secondary causation not on first principles. Science or first principles do not affect government decisions in democracies. When a politically correct model gives the politicians an advantage to manipulate politically correct voters in an election year, democracy becomes extremely unpredictable.
Bear protection is all about a mass movement that intends to destroy global prosperity by crowd control in the brave new world. NIMBY is the unintentional foremost philosophy of the enemies of our prosperity but by putting bears on an endangered list when they are not endangered is ‘new speak’, mind-control, and secondary reasoning all wrapped up in one, and it intrusive into someone else’s (Nunavut’s) back yard to boot. Science should not be secondary to modeling under any serious circumstances because there is too great a likelihood of missed assumptions and empty logic rendering the conclusion dead wrong.
Where is Al Gore’s consensus going with this? There is not a scrap of objective science in the CO2 global warming hypothesis either.
Francis Manns, Ph.D., P.Geo. (Ontario)
323 Blantyre Avenue
Toronto, ON
M1N 2S6 Canada
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