* Posts by Coffey3C

2 publicly visible posts • joined 12 Nov 2012

Steady Antarctic ice growth 'limits confidence in climate predictions'

Coffey3C

Re: Higher temperatures =

I know. It's still so damned disappointing though. When you consider, that when one of the growth industries of lying about a certain issue spring up, it can only function as a delaying tactic. In the end the process will make the final determination, but it is just such an indefensible waste of time. In the tobacco cause, the lying and obfuscation lead to them not losing a case in court for what, fifty-five years? A generation or two, of people who should have known better, smoked more and a percentage died.

With this issue, however it's different. WE delay, and it becomes harder, and harder, and more expensive... This is an escalating threat. When a public forum/journalist/agenda uses the basic lack of educational systems, and the resulting deplorable ignorance, against us.... What do they gain by throwing us all under the bus? Taylor and the like over at the Heartland Clown College get to be employed in one of the largest growth industries today, i understand. His kids will go to collage. I get it.

But. What then?

Have people even noticed that all of the most capable climatologists, and all of those who can speak well in the public forum, are wasting no time trying to publicize this issue? Why should they? Those in a position of public trust, who are supposed to watch out for and react to just these issues, seem only able to focus on their own venial short-term agendas while the rest of us are thrown as a whole right under that buss.

I've never liked the term 'Catastrophic Global Warming." Life will go on, but changed. The planet will continue, even though our public opinions seem perfectly content with allowing our governments and industries to run destructive testing on the only bit of rock in the universe that we can live on. What really offends me, however, and this is the unforgivable part, is that they've never read a history book. When there are ten to twelve billion people on the planet, just about the time we are running out of oil, the same governments that are running amok and acting like undisciplined toddlers right now, are going to be panicked for survival.

Who could possible imagine, that a few degrees of temperature rise in the middle of the Pacific ocean would lead to millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa dying, or being in danger of dying', of thirst? America was at the height of it's power, and Europe was working together as never before. Oil was cheaper and far more plentiful, and food production setting records every year... And all they could tell us is that we did not have the resources to reach those people in time.

It's people who are at risk from AGW. It's our food production, and our economic models, and the political balance of power, that we don't seem to be very good at maintaining in the best of times. No. The readers here need to ask themselves, that while the climate scientists in the US can't work, because they are being so badly harassed by spurious freedom of information requests, why they no longer bother to expose themselves to the sea of articles just like this one?

It's because we've screwed around with this for fifty years, and the meaning has been clear for twenty years before that. Reduce CO2 emissions. Not tariffs or taxes, nor caps and trades, but an actual reduction in the pollution that is causing obvious and measurable physical damage to the atmospheric bubble we are trapped within. Now, with tipping points kicking in, and methane bubbling out of the Arctic and Atlantic ocean... Eight degrees of warming may well seem like a gift.

Nature, as it always does, will settle this "Debate," but wasted time as well as our inability to act due to private agendas are the true Catastrophe here. This is not a failure of our technology. It is a failure of our educational systems, our political systems, and our society as a whole.

Coffey3C@gmail.com

Coffey3C

Re: Higher temperatures =

No matter how many articles I see like this, I can never get used to the deliberate deception of the public. The increase in arctic Sea Ice is very well understood by climate scientists, and is completely consistent with what is observed and predicted in climate studies.

Arctic sea ice is expanding at approximately 0.9% per decade, and has done so consistently for at least thirty to forty years. The damage to the ozone layer over the antarctic due to pollutants has still left the area under the ozone hole. That layer of ozone, when it is present, warms up as it absorbs energy from the sun. If it is missing, the highest levels of the atmosphere grow colder, and the atmosphere of the Antarctic loses heat to space more quickly. Thus, when the winter comes, it cools more quickly, and ice grows more rapidly.

Secondly, Land Ice in the arctic is melting, and as per the usual variation in observations in something as complicated as world climates, in some places it is melting very much more rapidly then predicted, and in other areas a bit less. The important point is: Antarctic Land Ice is melting. Increased fresh water from runoff, and also from an increase in precipitation due to more moisture being available in the warmer atmosphere, have freshened or diluted the surface of the antarctic ocean. Colligative properties. The fresher the water, the higher the freezing point, and the faster the surface waters freeze.

Now, one final and seminal point. Although this article lies, like so many others, in taking the meaning of studying one interesting and complex aspect of the climate and conflating it to somehow mean that it casts some doubt on climate change (Its like someone studying tread wear on tires, and The Register reporting that we might be in doubt about cars.), there is really very little comparison in Arctic and Antarctic Sea ice in the overall effect on climate. All the Arctic Sea ice is disappearing at an astounding rate, which exposes the poll to absorb much more energy, in the summer. This causes further warming, and is a climactic tipping point. Antarctic Sea Ice expands so slightly, in the depth of winter, when the poll is tipped away from the sun, all due to well understood causes, that you pretty much need good satellite data and fast computers to even measure it. And. This winter ice melts away every year. It's seasonal.

Lastly, The real changes are also causing changes in ocean currents and wind patterns in the area. The real 'What if?' type questions concerning scientists, deal with the possibility that this will direct much warmer water at the base of some of the ice shelf areas, where they rest on the sea floor or the grounding line, and cause them to melt and break free.

There really is no excuse for an article like this to be printed. Most climate scientists are far more skeptical of journalists and journalistic publications than they could ever be about scientists intentions, but even still there are many who are readily available to clarify our understanding of causation on some of these issues; and, if they do not know, they will tell you. Unfortunately, taking work or comments that a scientist does, and drawing a completely indefensible conclusion, as this article does, is far too commonly the result. Antarctic sea ice expansion is an important confirmation of the causes and projections for global warming.

This article and headline are deliberately misleading, and despicable.

Coffey3C@gmail.com