Clear evidence that Al Gore was right and government energy policies are having the required effect…….No?
Arctic ice returns to 1980s levels of cap cover
The Arctic ice cap has not, contrary to the predictions of climate alarmists, completely disappeared: in fact it has been growing rapidly, increasing by an entire third just in 2013 and more since. "It would suggest that sea ice is more resilient perhaps. If you get one year of cooler temperatures, we've almost wound the clock …
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 13:56 GMT The Axe
No
No. It's clear evidence that Al Gore is a lying little shit and that western government energy policies don't make any difference.
Governments are increasing taxes on the poor in their countries to make the rich feel good that they are doing something, anything. But none of the actions make any difference because countries like China & India are increasing their CO2 output as developed countries shoot themselves in the foot. China won't start to cut back till 2030 and any lessening in it's annual increase in CO2 is only due to increasing efficiency as its economy booms, not due to climate control actions.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 14:21 GMT Hollerith 1
Re: No
Mr Axe, no government (except perhaps the Danish one) has done anything of significance at all to address climate change. I do not mean just China and India, I mean USA and Canada and Brasil and Mexico and France and so on. I see no evidence that any country's carbon footprint is being reduced in any meaningful way.
The artic ice cover is one of many indications of climate change. Every time a country or an area has a good summer or a fiendishly cold winter, it and it alone is pointed to as All the Proof You Need for whatever side you are on. The scientific opinion is based on the aggregate.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 00:01 GMT veti
Re: No
All this is "clear evidence" of, is that Lewis Page is an accomplished troll who can reliably get The Faithful to click through and approve his articles without checking the sources.
If you could be bothered, you'd have noticed that the authors of this paper don't dispute that Arctic sea ice is in decline. What they do say is that it " may be more resilient than has been previously considered."
This is good news, but anyone who extrapolates from that to "therefore, AGW is bunk" is someone who is not even trying to pay lip service to logic, science or facts.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 09:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: No
>climate scientists who study it must now bend over backwards to fit the new observations into their alarmist predictions
Wow. Go watch Chasing Ice and then try and tell me it's "alarmist".
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIZTMVNBjc4
Footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE4ynZB0Wj0
Full doc: http://www.netflix.com/watch/70229919
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 21:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: No
Do you have any idea what the normal, cyclical (annual) melting/calving process looks like? From what I've seen of this footage, they were mostly just capturing that, only up close and personal this time around. (I've never actually watched the whole thing, but I will try to find time to do that soon enough.) In fact, the only thing which really bothers me here is all of that dust or dirt or whatever that seems to be so abundant. Is that normal, or something new? What causes it? Generally speaking, any darkening of the snow and ice (which may still be there even if it isn't necessarily as readily apparent as what you see in this footage) will cause an increase in the melting rate when exposed to the sun, even if all other things (temperature, amount of sunshine, etc.) stay pretty much the same.
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Monday 27th July 2015 10:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: No
>Do you have any idea what the normal, cyclical (annual) melting/calving process looks like? From what I've seen of this footage, they were mostly just capturing that, only up close and personal this time around. (I've never actually watched the whole thing, but I will try to find time to do that soon enough.)
No I appreciate that the calving process is natural (and spectacular to watch) however the really interesting stuff is when he's monitored the same glacier over a long period with time lapse cameras and you can see just how much they've deflated and retreated over a comparatively short space of time. Some of that is covered in that YouTube video linked above. Anyone who downvoted it has either not bothered watching it or is in outright denial.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 14:30 GMT Jtom
Re: No
Must NOW bend over backwards? No, that has been their position for over a decade. They are quick to say the long term temperature trend for the Arctic is warming, as they repeated here, but never, ever point out that the thirty-year temperature trend for the Antarctic is COOLING. No, no. That's...different. Doesn't mean a thing. Global warming is global, even if it isn't, because if it weren't, they couldn't blame it on Man's contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 11:24 GMT mhenriday
Re: No
On the other hand, there are alternatives to Mr Page, who has no scientific background and whose credibility with respect to these matters is nil. Those interested in the (almost) current extent of Arctic sea ice and how it compares with that seen in previous years can, for example, consult the readily available Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC)....
But on the other hand, what do they know, compared with the omniscient Mr Page ?...
Henri
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 13:46 GMT Chris Miller
@Henri
I'm sure Mr Page can defend himself, but a cursory glance at his details reveals him to hold an engineering degree from Cambridge. I don't know if that gives someone a 'scientific background' in your circles, but it does in mine. Still I suppose he must be unlikely to be a real scientist, because (as we all know) "99% of scientists" subscribe to warmist alarmism.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 18:01 GMT kingkp
Re: No
Oh dear. Clearly another Arts student who knows nothing about science. First of all the people doing the extrapolating here are your orthodox climatologists. Based on 25 years of data they managed to predict the end of world being nigh....unfortunately had they waited 5 more years they may have realised they were measuring a fluctuation not a trend. In science you observe and collate data, then you hypothesise and formulate typically a set of rules that extend or are based upon your current collection of rules that have been verified over a considerable amount of time by many independent observers. Then you carefully calculate what this means and check the predictions against empirical data. Typically this extension to the rule set predicts something else that can also be measured and verified. There are many example of this in physics. A real science.
Now for all the intellectually challenged Art students like yourself out there here's a quick intro to the scientific method...
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL6-x0modwY">The scientific method in one minute</a>
In orthodox climatology a bunch of idiots who should have studied English literature rather than science have take a very basic principle and extrapolated from this utter bollocks.
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Friday 24th July 2015 21:10 GMT ReduceGHGs
Re: No
Gore is NOT the issue. He's been telling us what the experts have been saying for decades.
We here in the West are responsible for most of the pollution in the atmosphere and oceans. We've also benefited the most from the polluting activities. Shifting the focus to China and India is self-serving. Let's get our house cleaned up first before we point fingers at others. And with enforceable trade laws/policies our trading partners will follow suit if they want to continue trading with the world's largest consumers.
Learn more about climate change and join the efforts to force a change in course.
ExhaustingHabitability(dot)org
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 15:31 GMT TheVogon
"Clear evidence that Al Gore was right"
At least in regards to Anthropomorphic Global Warming, that hasn't been in any credible scientific doubt for at least a decade now.
"and government energy policies are having the required effect"
If the desired policy is to put heads in the sand and pretend it isn't happening, and the required effect being larger short term corporate profits then yes.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 20:44 GMT Chris Miller
@TheVogon
I think you mean anthropogenic, rather than anthropomorphic. As for the "that hasn't been in any credible scientific doubt for at least a decade now", it all depends what you mean by AGW. Mankind has dumped gigatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere over the last couple of centuries. There's no scientific doubt that doing this will tend to increase atmospheric temperatures through the greenhouse effect and associated changes. There's a great deal of scientific uncertainty about (a) how much of the temperature increase over the last couple of centuries is properly attributable to AGW; and (b) how much increase we might expect if we continue our atmospheric pollution unchecked.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 11:18 GMT TheVogon
Re: @TheVogon
"anthropogenic, rather than anthropomorphic"
Yes - ooops.
"There's a great deal of scientific uncertainty about (a) how much"
True, and over what timescale - but there is no uncertainty that things are already changing due to AGW, and that the predicted results mostly are not going to be good. At a minimum the sea level rise we already know is going to happen due to AGW is going to cause massive issues even at the most conservative estimates of eventual magnitude.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 17:18 GMT psest328
Re: Good news for Polar Bears
**Mind you, ice growth proves Global Warming since it's been proven that as temperatures rise, more humidity is carried into freezing regions, and that not only results in, but aids in the creation of surface ice. That is also why seasonal geographic locations may see more snow and have that snow start falling earlier in the winter season and end later.
(There, I fixed it for you)
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 11:24 GMT kyndair
Re: Good news for Polar Bears
Scientists (at least those who have worked out how to hold a pencil) are not predicating an ice age, we are already in an ice age (which is defined as a period when there is a permanent polar ice cap on the planet). What some predicted was that we may have another glacial period (when ice builds up on land masses away from the poles). It's worth pointing out that ice ages are not the 'normal' state for planet earth so at some point it is likely that the ice age will end. The debate at the moment (at least among some) is how much human activity is altering the balance or speed of change and what can be done to make things manageable
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 00:13 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Good news for Polar Bears
"seasonal geographic locations may see more snow and have that snow start falling earlier in the winter season and end later."
Yet paradoxically have a significantly warmer average winter temperature (as is happening in Siberia). When you're that far below freezing you can go a _long_ way up and still have snow.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 13:48 GMT Matthew Smith
" we've almost wound the clock back A FEW YEARS on this gradual decline that's been happening over DECADES". Well thats OK then.
Meanwhile, in a bit of creative accounting, the landmass of Antartica is melting and shedding its glaciers onto the southern oceans at an ever quickening rate. Happily, this means that the loss of ice at the arctic is now balanced out, so the overall percentage of sea-ice shows no difference from 30 years ago. So no need to panic. Phew.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 14:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
Did El Reg get bought by Murdoch?
Yay, the ice is back, lets burn more fuels, climate change is all a lie to promote gay marriage etc. etc. etc.
First glowing reviews of Fiat 500s (Really? A hairdressers car. For IT people?)
Next you'll be telling us wind-powered generators are noisy - just like Murdoch's favourite lap-dog The Mad Abbott.
Why not just ... take a cautious approach and reduce fossil fuel use, while promoting alternative fuels? What the hell is wrong with that? It's only wind and solar, not orgone energy or luminiferous aether we're dealing with.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 14:15 GMT caradoc
Re: Did El Reg get bought by Murdoch?
"reduce fossil fuel use, while promoting alternative fuels? What the hell is wrong with that?"
Well, clearly fossil fuels are not doing what is claimed for them, so why reduce the use of a cheap and efficient power source and alternative fuels are producing more problems for the environment than they are supposed to be solving.
"climate change is all a lie to promote gay marriage" Not as such, but they are both part of the "Progressive" agenda.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 18:01 GMT Cynic_999
Re: Did El Reg get bought by Murdoch?
"'
Progressives' tend to believe a consensus by scientists.
"
At the risk of being accused of making a "No true scot" argument, there is real science and then there is political science. When you see a washing powder or toothpaste advert that claims that a product has been "scientifically proven" to clean whiter than any other product, that's an example of political science - the scientist (if there really was one) has produced data to support a desired conclusion. The "proven" effects of second-hand smoking, recreational drugs and much of the dietary "science" we hear about frequently is similarly skewed to support whatever the establishment or paymasters would like to be true. Real science does not change according to the fashion of the day (how's the ozone doing these days, BTW?)
Real science goes from observation to theory to proof (or at least validation), and theory is driven by data, not the other way about.
Proving a scientific theory (the last time I read about scientific method) is an inductive process that requires that the scientist make a prediction based upon the theory and then carry out an experiment or observation to see whether the prediction was correct. From what I have read about climate change, so far practically none of the predictions made by the "climate scientists" has turned out to have been accurate, and some observations have turned out to have shown the opposite of what was predicted. Therefore I cannot understand why the theory is touted as being fact - which suggests it has been all but proven. I really don't care how many scientists agree or disagree with the theory - physical laws are not made by taking a democratic vote on whether to adopt them or not.
I also know with certainty that we (Mankind) are not going to change our ways by a sufficient amount to make any significant difference whether the theory is correct or not no matter how much our governments tax us or fine us for putting our rubbish in the wrong bin. Earth's climate has been changing in cycles for many millions of years, and it is not likely to stop now. The reason for the change (and whether the reason this time around is different to the reasons for cycles over the past millions of years) is not as important as being able to ride the change unscathed. Therefore IMO all the money spent on CO2 reduction would be far better spent helping us to better survive a change in climate than on a few pathetic, half-hearted and ultimately futile attempts to stop it happening. Digging drains is more likely to avert a flood than trying to prevent the rain.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 12:59 GMT Wombling_Free
Re: Did El Reg get bought by Murdoch?
" From what I have read about climate change, so far practically none of the predictions made by the "climate scientists" has turned out to have been accurate, and some observations have turned out to have shown the opposite of what was predicted."
Funny, you could change 'climate scientists' to 'respected economists' and the sentence would still make sense.
Funny also how the same "economics" (care to prove that? no, I'll wait...) is being used as the argument FOR fossil fuels. Just goes to show how selective people are with their truths.
Oddly enough, nuclear is a great option! Far, far cleaner than fossil fuels, even with the accidents.
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Friday 7th August 2015 22:01 GMT Working Dog
Re: Did El Reg get bought by Murdoch?
"Progressives' tend to believe a consensus by scientists."
Anyone who uses the word "consensus" in the context of science is demonstrating their ignorance for all to see. The only thing that counts in science is hard, repeatable, verifiable data. Anything else is BS. One good way to pick out the BS is to look for the error bars in any graph.... No error bars=B.S.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 17:37 GMT psest328
Re: Did El Reg get bought by Murdoch?
Ok, let's say fossil fuels don't contribute to climate change. Why reduce the use of a cheap and efficient power source?
here's some reasons:
1. It's actually not very efficient, we've just been using it so long, we've found more efficient ways to utilize it
2. Personal heath effects of breathing in fossil fuel fumes and exhaust. Look at the air quality of china, where they have to cancel events due to health risks, and watch satellite images that show how the jet stream drags that crap over land and oceans to other countries
3. Cost. I still say fossil fuels are our best source of power, but that's only because enough hasn't been done in alternative research. $3 a gallon is nuts! I'd push for us to look to more renewable sources of fuel just for the cost savings alone.
I don't want my kids hacking and coughing because every time they take a deep breath, half of what they take in is fuel exhaust in the future. I don't want that for myself. Even if we're not destroying the environment, at the very least, we're destroying ourselves. If you disagree, breath in car exhaust fumes for a few hours and see how you feel.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 04:16 GMT Charles Manning
Re: Did El Reg get bought by Murdoch?
"Even if it costs us nothing for fossil fuels, they are just wrong."
Except that cheap energy has lead to a step change in our ability to support people. It is what allows us to feed 9 bn people well, when just 60 years ago we had only 3 bn people - many of them starving. In that same time, the air has also become cleaner.
"I would like to cycle to work with out breathing exhaust from infernal combustion engines." But on the flip side, being able to eat and keep warm in winter are not too bad.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 18:18 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Did El Reg get bought by Murdoch?
"Except that cheap energy has lead to a step change in our ability to support people"
But burning fossilised plants or algae should be a stepping stone to developing better, more reliable(*) energy sources, not an endpoint in itself.
For starters, the substances being burned are far more valuable as feedstock for production processes than as fuel.
(* Windmills, solar panels and Tidal are not "better" or "more reliable", as they all generate peaky output and have substantial periods of downtime which can't easily be mitigated without spending far more than just getting on with building safer nuke plants)
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 21:29 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Did El Reg get bought by Murdoch?
"Even if it costs us nothing for fossil fuels, they are just wrong."
Before we started burning fossil fuels in a big way, we mostly burned trees - which are a renewable resource, of course, at least in the long term. Trouble is, they're also highly polluting in a "you don't really want to breathe THAT air" way. Plus, we cut them down and burned them much faster than they were able to grow back, often leading to a near-complete denuding of forest lands. This made more room for agriculture and settlements, though.
We lost so much forest back then that there are actually more trees growing now in a lot of places than there were some centuries ago. In fact, in the urban/suburban environment where I live, if you look at local pictures going back 100 or more years, you'll see almost no trees (certainly not many large ones), while today we are often referred to as "a tree city". So in that respect, at least, the switch to fossil fuels has been a net positive.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 22:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Did El Reg get bought by Murdoch?
Petrol is not expensive because it is expensive to produce and deliver. It is expensive because it is taxed massively. Blame greedy self-serving governments for the petrol (and diesel) price, along with the millions of bludgers on social security who should not be there.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 04:50 GMT MondoMan
Re: Did El Reg get bought by Murdoch?
psest worries: "I don't want my kids hacking and coughing because every time they take a deep breath, half of what they take in is fuel exhaust in the future. "
No worries, then. Modern engines do a great job of fully combusting gas with only H20 and CO2 as "fuel exhaust". No hacking, no coughing, no problem.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 17:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
Same tired old story...
Same tired old story we've been hearing since the 1970s...
We've been 'sounding the alarms' for over 35 years and I still don't need 900 SPF sunblock. Still breathing without a WWII gas mask too. Didn't have to put my home on stilts to avoid the arctic flooding.
It's called "The Weather". Deal with it.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 19:42 GMT Kumar2012
Re: Did El Reg get bought by Murdoch?
Wait are you actually suggesting wind farms are a useful form of energy production...kek, expensive and inefficient vanity projects which only exist to make a few watermelons feel good about themselves in the meantime driving up energy costs for the rest of us who are not millionaires like Al Bore.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 22:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Did El Reg get bought by Murdoch?
I live in fucking Danmark.
Jesus H. Fucking Christ, the watermelons have been ejaculating their nonsense right, left and centre after that 140% generation day.
The place is enough to make one puke to start with, but every time something like this that supports the progressive left agenda happens, in the echo chamber of righteousness, the thunder is deafening.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 14:54 GMT Justin Pasher
Re: Arctic sea ice extent for June 2015 was the third lowest in the satellite record.
You realize that the two reports are measuring two different things, right?
Sea ice extent vs Sea ice thickness
Which one is more important? I would imagine volume is a bigger deal than surface area, considering you can have a little visible surface area with a lot volume (and vice versa), but I'm not a climatologist (for lack of a better term).
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 16:16 GMT TheVogon
Re: Arctic sea ice extent for June 2015 was the third lowest in the satellite record.
"You realize that the two reports are measuring two different things, right?
Sea ice extent vs Sea ice thickness
Which one is more important?"
Likely extent as a smaller ice extent impacts how much of the ocean surface is less reflective and will absorb more heat from the sun.
However the sea ice isn't what we really need to worry about as it is floating and when it melts doesn't cause sea level rise. The real issue is the ice shelves and glaciers - some of which do seem to be melting - and even if we stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow will likely already cause an eventual rise in sea level of several metres.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 05:09 GMT MondoMan
Typical Vogon exaggeration :)
@vogon: you worry "even if we stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow will likely already cause an eventual rise in sea level of several metres."
In this case, "eventual" means "thousands of years from now", so not really something we need to worry about in the 21st century. Now you know.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 15:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Arctic sea ice extent for June 2015 was the third lowest in the satellite record.
No - all he did was selectively quote from a UCL paper. you get warm summers and cold summers, warm winters and cold winters. The paper suggests that ice is more sensitive to fluctuating temps in summer (no real surprise!). Meanwhile, in 2015, - you know, the present? - , June Arctic ice was at the third lowest since 1979 (start of satellite record).
'World returns to sea ice cover seen in the 1980s' as a title is at best disingenuous. The article refers to sea Ice volume, and an honest title would be 'Arctic sea ice volume returns for one year to level last seen in 2010"
For June The 2013 'high' was still lower than pre 2000 low levels, and more than 90% of the 'gain' in 2013/14 has been lost already.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 15:59 GMT ToddR
Re: Arctic sea ice extent for June 2015 was the third lowest in the satellite record.
@AC I wouldn't just have a pop at the journalist. The article is about sea ice volume and yet they say, " it has been difficult to quantify trends in sea ice volume because detailed thickness observations have been lacking."
Complete waste of time. UCL is not what it once was.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 15:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Don't panic, we're all still doomed, scientists insist
No they don't. Speaking as one myself, none of the many I know does, and nobody qualified to call themselves a scientist should, say anything so stupid.
There are certainly varying degrees of concern ranging from "Not that again. Why not do something useful for a change?" to "It may cause unpredictable environmental change and thus ecological change over the coming centuries so should be investigated further" but certainly not "still doomed, scientists insist" Not anywhere. Not ever.
The popular press of course is another matter entirely and seems singularly incapable of comprehending risk or uncertainty or even the fundamental principle of science - at all.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 13:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
Maybe the fear for their job by commenting: some employers don't like it. Maybe they don't like the abuse you get for having a 'dissenting' opinion on El Reg these days.
Anon. See above.
I remember when it was all Pentium Pros round 'ere; when the comments were a source of wit and mirth, and didn't sound like a Murdoch press bullhorn.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 11:36 GMT kyndair
Re: Don't panic, we're all still doomed, scientists insist
Unless you know of a way to escape this universe into a younger one then yes we're all doomed, even if we managed not to wipe ourselves out, escape from earth before the sun goes into its red giant phase and destroys all life on earth we would still have the problem of either the big crunch or eventual heat death (and possibly the big rip) and neither of those outcomes looks survivable.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 16:15 GMT psest328
Horrible Research
Wow! This is incredibly one-sided.
They sited 1 scientist about ice, while not bothering to mention the dozens of studies (with math and fun actual numbers) that show that as temperatures rise, so does humidity, which will cause an increase in surface ice at both polls. These studies were done 2 years ago when the arctic ice was in decline.
The climate models actually predicted this.
This article also fails to mention from that same scientist that the ice in the arctic is getting snowier, which happens when the air carries more moisture.
Am I saying we're all doomed and we're causing global warming? No. Global warming exists with or without human interference (though the evidence does point to us exasperating the effect to an incredible degree). All I'm saying is that this is expected behavior given a warming trend.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 18:30 GMT Alan Brown
Re: The climate models actually predicted this
"We need to refine them, extend them and ensure that they can actually predict something that is then verified by measurement."
Measurement itself is contentious, varying methods over the decades result in peturbations which make it hard to nail everything down, even more so when the historical distribution of measurement devices is pretty much useless (lots in some areas, none in large tracts of the globe)
There _are_ ways of measuring global averages using 40 years of satellite data, but getting funding to collate the imagery, calibrate it so the resulting data is consistent and then crunching through several petabytes of data is hard to come by - and that's despite it being less than typically gets spent on _one_ "climate crisis conference". The result is that what research is being done, is badly hamstrung.
That's a shame, as knowing the answers would go a long way towards pointing to which climate models are most accurate and whether we should be worried or not.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 16:51 GMT Ian Michael Gumby
In the meantime... Lake Michigan back to normal water levels if not more.
While this little tidbit may not have much to say about ice, it does show that there's a change in the weather pattern... (El Nino) where Chicago is cooler and damper than years past. The water level is somewhere 3 feet above normal which is important because it was down by as much as 3 feet just a couple years ago.
What does this prove? Nothing much but that the weather is cyclical and that ice and water tend to move around the planet. That while we (man) still pollute the environment, we still have a much less effect on nature than say things like cosmic radiation, magnetic poles shifting, volcanoes.
Don't get me wrong. I hate pollution, I hate trash... The Kyoto treaty was a joke. BRIC could pollute as much as they want, but Western countries were tied and it became more expensive to manufacture in the West. You want to stop pollution.. good luck with that. Talk to the BRICs
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 09:29 GMT GitMeMyShootinIrons
Re: Lewis bias
It's funny. The usual eco-warrior types bleat that Lewis is a heretic who should be flayed alive for reporting something that doesn't fit their opinion, while they calmly accept, without question equally bias drivel from the opposite corner (ie Auntie Beeb).
Good for comedy value, less so for open mindedness. So very "progressive"...
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 17:39 GMT scrubber
You Buried the Lead
Polar Bear Attacks Imminent!
Recent studies show that the natural habitat of the godless, ghostly killing machines is spreading towards the UK. People in the north of Scotland have been told to evacuate and gun laws are being reconsidered in light of the growing threat.
C'mon El Reg, get tabloiditis.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 17:42 GMT fearnothing
Terrible article, giving the impression that an increase in surface coverage is an indication that the global trend towards warming may have been changed and that we don't need to worry. All because of one cool summer. Newsflash: the reason global warming is a problem is because it's a long term trend. One cool summer does not a trend make. Cherry picking this most certainly is, along with supporting the side of those with an absurd and frankly dangerous level of denial.
El Reg, please can we get someone on these articles who isn't drinking the kool-aid?
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 13:12 GMT Wombling_Free
Yet Piracy is rising in Austfailia!
...as claimed in this very publication! With a chart with real numbers from a staunch No-Climate-Change Sensible Government (so you KNOW ITS TRUE!), thus clearly we now HAVE the scientificamatically proven evidence that Global Warming IS caused by lowering pirate numbers.
WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 17:46 GMT 45RPM
Given that the climate boffins base their warnings on (one assumes) a good deal of research and years of study, I think I'll make the intelligent decision to give them more credence than I might give to the head in the sand brigade like Page and Clarkson.
I'd love to share in the optimism - I really would. But I think that a little caution might be more prudent - especially since it's my children and grandchildren who'll really be suffering if the big brains turn out to be right.
Lewis's attitude to the environment is like that of a teenage motorist. The car in front is slowing to turn - but does the teenager take his foot off the gas? No! He does not. He ploughs on regardless, secure in the knowledge that the car in front will have moved out of the way by the time he reaches it. And it has. He's passed! And now he's slamming straight into the back of the bus that he hadn't noticed- because he'd fixated on one piece of evidence only.
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Tuesday 21st July 2015 17:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
It must be global warming!
Recently it seems that all scientific comments on climate contain something like the following:
"Notwithstanding the evidence described above, global warming is real and will continue per the IPPC model."
That's a sure sign that shows that scientists are definitely afraid of the Warmist bloc in the funding organizations and also the sheer terror of heresy against the given truth.
Let's get the truth out. Warmism is a failure and the sacred model fails to take into account solar activity and other factors. It even has "corrections" to data that make warming look more serious.
This is bad science, and it's time we called it!
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 10:50 GMT 45RPM
Re: Is it even worse than thought?
Correct. Have a gold star. But don't think you'll get any praise for coming here with some actual scientifically based facts in a forum overrun by the Lewis Page fan club. Brickbats are more likely.
One small correction though - even I would prefer a change from "That is, is more sea ice a warning sign" to "That is, could more sea ice be a warning sign?" It seems likely to me that it could be - but without empirical evidence I'd like to leave some small room for doubt.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 10:45 GMT 45RPM
@herman
Not actually true. We have climate data which covers a period of billions of years. The weather data that we have available to us covers a shorter period (a mere handful of hundreds of years). Climate data can be gleaned from ice-cores (between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of years) and from the fossil record (over a billion years) and rocks (as far back as you like).
We're even building up a fair few hypotheses on the climate of Mars. Clever apes that we are.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 20:11 GMT Dan Paul
@45rpm
no, what you say is not true and you should know the difference.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS "BILLIONS OF YEARS OF CLIMATE DATA".
ALL ANYONE HAS ARE THEORIES, SUPPOSITION, CONJECTURE AND OUTRIGHT LIES!
Inference is not data. The ONLY ACTUAL DATA are the roughly 300 years of actual RAW MEASUREMENTS starting when man made the thermometer. The ACCURACY of that data, it's references or of the instruments used to record it, is not absolute either. You don't "glean" data, you measure it. Rocks and Ice do not contain temperature data, we infer data from them and there is plenty of opportunity for incorrect inferences.
Making those measurements fit a curve that you THEORIZE is correct; is not RAW DATA. Picking only the data points that support your arguments is the very pinnacle of arrogance. Removing or deleting the points that don't support your argument is the same as lying.
It is fudged data, only one step removed from an outright lie. You can NEVER trust someone who lies!
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 10:05 GMT lorisarvendu
Can someone answer a genuine question please
All the CO2 we're releasing now comes from fossil fuels, right? That's oil and coal. Now, as far as I know that all came from organic material originally (coal obviously from Carboniferous era trees, and oil from crushed sea-life, probably). It got into that organic material through being "fixed" from the air by living organisms. So doesn't that mean that the CO2 was originally in the atmosphere anyway, and we're just releasing stuff back where it originally came from?
Doesn't this mean that runaway greenhouse effects aren't going to happen, because if they were...they would have happened already, before the coal and the oil was made?
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 10:40 GMT 45RPM
Re: Can someone answer a genuine question please
@lorisarvendu
Absolutely correct. My understanding is that, even in the worst case, we won't be magically creating conditions on Earth that haven't existed in the past. The problem is that the conditions we're recreating will not be survivable for many animals, plants and funguses alive now, and the change is happening far faster than it's ever happened previously; this seriously impacts the ability of evolution to cope with the change (that said, getting hit by a planet killer asteroid causes faster changes - and Earth has survived that before). In fact, Mankind (or, at the very least, civilisation) may not be able to cope with the change either - think in terms of global warfare (with nukes, chemical and bio) as we duke it out over the dwindling remaining resources (drinkable water, food and so forth).
Life, of course, will survive. Early earth was a toxic, overheated, hell stew until early life swabbed up the excess CO2 and replaced it with Oxygen. Trouble is, it took billions of years to make the planet habitable for us - and I'm not certain that we can afford to wait that long for the mess that we're making now to be reversed.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 12:17 GMT lorisarvendu
Re: Can someone answer a genuine question please
@45RPM. Thanks for your reply. I had read about a study in 2014 that claimed Jurassic CO2 was of the order of 1500ppm compared to today's 350-44ppm, but of course you're right about the differing timescales, which is something to ponder.
@ PapaD. If you will read my question again I made no comments about what the Earth's environment was like. I was merely asking about the spectre of "runaway greenhouse effect" that is often accompanied by meaningful nods towards the planet Venus.
This was a genuine question, not an attempt at a hidden agenda or trolling. So please don't use phrases like "I respectfully" and "with respect", as in my experience they are always intended to mean the exact opposite.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 14:20 GMT PapaD
Re: Can someone answer a genuine question please
@lorisarvendu
I wasn't trolling either, I was just hoping that you might consider that a return to CO2 levels (and corresponding temperatures) from the period that provided us with our fossil fuels could result in a global temperature increase of 2-14 centigrade, which would have a significant impact on the environment as we know it. It wouldn't be considered a runaway greenhouse effect, but a return to such temperatures would still have a major impact on life as we know it.
My short comment was just because I was being lazy and didn't want to have to write out too much whilst at work (Even this comment is fairly brief for the same reasons)
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 10:37 GMT John Deeb
The EMBIGGENING
The main things to take away from this article is first and foremost the clever use of the word EMBIGGENS and from the abstract of the Nature article called Increased Arctic sea ice volume after anomalously low melting in 2013:
- "it has been difficult to quantify trends in sea ice volume because detailed thickness observations have been lacking"
- "5% drop in the number of days on which melting occurred—conditions more typical of the late 1990s".
Combine this with the BBC statement by Tilling: "we've almost wound the clock back a few years on this gradual decline" and we arrive at a picture emerging showing that on top of the ongoing hiatus of "global warming", many increasing doubts on the exact number of the actual and all-important number of climate sensitivity and all the emerging data on historical sudden non-anthropogenic climate shifts over the millennia, we have now even more uncertainty, not less, about where to spend our trillions of virtual cash on --to, as usual with all spending over the trillion, deliver the world from Evil.
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 13:19 GMT Wombling_Free
Re: Forgot to sync my bookmark
it's just that said contributor contributes so much, and has a happy-clappy fanbase worthy of the most rabid political nutjobs.
Did anyone else notice the 'gay marriage' = Progressive = EEEEVIL vibe? There are some really threatened Regtards out there. Threatened by what other people are doing! :-O
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Wednesday 22nd July 2015 15:31 GMT GrumpenKraut
Re: Forgot to sync my bookmark
> Don't judge a whole site by one contributor ...
That's what I tell myself why I keep visiting.
Apart from what others already said, Alistair Dabbs and Trevor Pott have to be mentioned for quality content.
...and some comment threads are a pleasure to behold (but NOT those at articles like this one).
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Thursday 23rd July 2015 01:34 GMT Selden
On what planet?
"Arctic sea ice extent for June 2015 was the third lowest in the satellite record. June snow cover for the Northern Hemisphere was the second lowest on record. In contrast, Antarctic sea ice extent remained higher than average. The pace of sea ice loss was near average for the month of June, but persistently warm conditions and increased melting late in the month may have set the stage for rapid ice loss in the coming weeks....
Arctic sea ice extent for June 2015 averaged 11.0 million square kilometers (4.24 million square miles), the third lowest June extent in the satellite record."
Source: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
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Friday 24th July 2015 18:04 GMT Miguel526
Some time back in time, I remember reading the comentary of some Russian scientists (who were Not on any Western Governments' enviro-generated "global warming" dole), saying that more evidence pointed toward a global cooling beginninmg to start, in some very subtle, unseen, ways, Not a global warming. They pointed to the big piles of unmelted snow still left outside of some of their Northern cities at the end of summertime. Normally these big piles of snow scrapped from their city streets in the winter time would have melted during the summer time. But, the snow piles still stood, mostly unmelted in August. They said that something was going on which we had little concept of, but that the ready Al Gore-ist answering machine of Western environmentalists was a desperate sham, and, as such, was scientifically laughable.
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Tuesday 28th July 2015 07:54 GMT Anonymous Coward
Science to explain why global warming CAN LEAD TO MORE ICE is available...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/07/27/climate-change-skeptics-may-be-about-to-lose-one-of-their-favorite-arguments/
Not that this author of these varied (register.co.uk) anti-global-warming articles will ever want to contemplate such things, but there are some rather compelling reasons why ice cover would increase (in the near-term) during global warming.
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
