“Here, the expected 1990 – 2003 period is missing so the correlations aren’t so hot! Yet the WMO codes and station names /locations are identical (or close). What the hell is supposed to happen here? Oh, yeah – there is no ‘supposed’, I can make it up. So I have.”

"plot past 1960 because these will be artificially adjusted to look closer to the real temperatures."

"Specify period over which to compute the regressions (stop in 1960 to avoid the decline)"

"Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!"

This is all from the UEA Climate team, mainly discussing climate reports which were submitted to and subsequently used by the IPCC to create world policy. I knew the well reported material but this goes way beyond that.
My only other question here now is as they've been caught confessing to 'tweaking' their data to fit by eavesdropping, how much more has contributed to the figures the vast majority of people worldwide accept as genuine?

Full report

Sorry, weather's got me in a brain storm/funny mood. I just thought we could get rid of a lot more CO2 if we doubled the concentration in our canned sodas and beers. It may mean more sturdy aluminum cans but we've gotten good at recycling/conserving that resource. So a little more C per can might assuage the extra Al per can.

The media have been very clever in providing balance from scientists who disagree with global warming theory by wheeling out the same handful of names every time they want to show them. This deliberately creates the impression no one else does, but although I knew of many more who do someone has just collected a page of PhDs in the area who have openly done so, and been collectively ignored for doing so.

The main question this raises is how can they all be wrong when they are at least as qualified as their opponents? And if they both claim to be right then surely the science is in so much dispute it's impossible to say it's yet known?

List of quotes

Last week the 2010-11 sea level figures were posted by NASA (ie no controversy there), and unlike any time in my limited reading of such figures, it fell twice as much as it had the previous year and every year before it for centuries. The 3mm annual rise has been a standard feature, and one which to me killed the AGW argument stone dead as that was part of a 22,000 recovery from the last small ice age.

The trend was slowing, from a little over 3mm a year to 3mm in about 2008, as consistent with the total curve to zero. As sea expands from warming and ice melts then had both been increasing then so would the sea. It's the easiest indicator as varies less than ice and many times less than temperature. NASA however had to put a spin on it due to this fact, that the heat had evaporated so much sea as rain it had removed it onto land. Now my geography lessons taught me about the water (and carbon) cycle, and it takes around a week for flooded areas to drain back to the sea through rivers, springs and evaporation. A year of sodden ground is physically impossible, it has nowhere to be stored as gravity has to return it to sea level from higher ground.

So imagine my surprise when the envisat satellite results were released a week later, and don't just show a decline for a year but the last two, a total of 10mm since 2009. As yet NASA and their friends haven't replied anywhere to this, but unlike the dodgy temperature records which I've already demonstrated can be selected and adjusted to look any way they need to, these are raw figures direct from the source before a single academic could rewrite them.

So the sole explanation is flooding, although a fall in temperatures and an overall stable ice sheet (even the arctic has suddenly started freezing at record speed, long before the normal end of summer) would be the regular reasons, meaning it must be an unprecedented amount of flooding combined with as yet unknown methods of holding that water back from returning to the sea. It is tantamount to a doctor saying the patient is getting over an infection even though their temperature is rising. There may be an extremely rare and obscure reason for it for a very short time but not over a longer period. Some phenomena are directly linked, and just as a raised temperature in an infection means the germs are still being fought, a falling sea level has to mean a falling temperature over a longer period than a week or two. This is two years.

Two year sea level fall

So, David Bowie's "Man Who Fell to Earth" is a true story? Is that where the water is going, stolen by aliens? (TeeHee)

Actually, can a more highly concentrated atmosphere of CO2 contain more dissolved H2O in it than a less densely concentrated one? That figure is relevant. A quick balance of replacing O2 with CO2 would mean less space for H2O to fill (as long as the atmosphere volume is constant) If my balance is correct, a higher Atm CO2 level would mean the oceans should rise on a decreased atmospheric ability to hold gaseous H2O. Ah, the double whammy!

I nearly (but not quite) get that, as the IPCC story (as it hasn't ever happened before so only clutching at straws to guess what'll happen as CO2 steadily rises) goes that rising temperatures will evaporate more sea, putting the water in the atmosphere as clouds and thus providing an effective greenhouse gas. But this has had a 50% rise to see the result and the temperature has clearly not shown any additional rise which would have been expected.

So if the sea level were to evaporate then that would surely balance a rise from added heat, and depending on the overall exchange will either see a net rise or fall in level. However despite the statement the sea is expected to create more clouds from evaporation they have never referred to the consequent effect on sea level if it does. I'm only an interested observer and I picked it up.

If I follow you correctly you're saying rising CO2 should block water vapour in the atmosphere and thus keep it in the sea, raising levels, while NASA's AQUA satellite showed CO2 did exactly that, ie replaced H20 with CO2, actually reducing the greenhouse effect, which was not what they expected.

The end result so far though is not theory but observation, and the sea level has fallen quite a lot. Is this consistent with your equations?

Note the caveat I included (the volume of the atmosphere remains the same). If the volume of the atmosphere increases, it could hold more CO2 and more H2O. One way to draw data on the atmosphere volume is to determine if the low Earth Orbit ISS is experiencing more drag than was calculated to effect it twenty years ago when it was designed. A greater atmosphere volume would also indicate that the average temperature of the air is increased.

Was it the concentration of CO2 bit that you didn't follow fully? Here's perhaps a better (well, different) way of stating the issue. I do not have exact physical constants in front of me so remember what is important in this is relative concentrations. For a given volume of standard air, say one cubic foot, at STP can hold 1,000 molecules of H2O. If we remove some of the 8% component of that volume that is O2 down to 7% and replace it with enough gaseous CO2 (increasing the CO2% from 9% to 10%), what will the effect on ability to hold H2O be? I've conjectured above that 100% relative humidity would then represent a lower number of total H2O molecules in that 1 cubic foot )for arguments sake say 900 molecules of H2O). In an open system with unbounded volume we wouldn't have to remove the O2 to get room for the CO2, but its ability to hold moisture will definitely change (because humidity is a local phenomena) and standard values for those parameters should be calculated and demonstrated.

It seems to work, but seems to be one of the three alternatives either expected or occurred.

1) CO2 adds to the greenhouse gases with no associated changes- the atmosphere being open expands to include it.

2) CO2 replaces O2 and H20, as if in a closed system.

3) CO2 causes H2O to increase and join it, the only scenario to cause increased warming.

As the atmosphere is an open system I'd assume that CO2 adds, but your replacing theory is what the satellite found although NASA also expected an open system where the two greenhouses gases (major and minor in this case) joined forces.

So if I do follow your reasoning correctly, you are expecting the CO2 to knock out the other gases, which indeed has happened, and as a result actually reduced the greenhouse effect for each H2O molecule replaced.

I am guessing you're a scientist, my science stopped when the maths became too tough and had no choice to switch to words rather than numbers to complete my education. I cannot handle equations beyond the most basic, if presented in a diagram can do better if simple but is really like trying to read three different pages at the same time in a foreign language I know a little of. I do go looking for friendly scientists to analyse some of the raw data I read to check if it's really what it looks like, and it usually is so tend to find even without knowing the minutiae within the details such as these the big picture remains identical, in this case falling sea level must mean falling temperature.

While you're here and on the subject the CO2 rise is the real issue. That is a brand new phenomenon in modern times, and because the hockey stick was produced (along with three other universities who produced something else for the same period) to fit the rise, the genie was out of the bottle (except one which denies your wishes rather than grants them). A vandal genie so to speak. The IPCC took the reins and employed the same universities to tell them (as if they could) what would the effect on the climate be from the continued rise, at least till 2200.

This process began in around 1990, and 20 years later the fall in temperature, erratic short term but stable long term ice caps, growing polar bear population and probably most of all beyond temperature falling sea level were not part of the predictions. They all expected the arctic to be ice free in summer by now, Britain to be snow free in some, loss of Kilimanjaro and Himalayan glaciers (nothing significant there), and no drop in temperature or sea level en route. Any child would have questioned the wisdom of predicting the effect of an unprecedented change introduced into the atmosphere on the climate given it alone gave rise to chaos theory and is an open non-linear system. Previous models were for long term forecasts only, up to 6 months, and they were rarely any more reliable than tossing a coin. To expect this to be extended centuries ahead with no previous data to go on (always the best way to see the future) they were quite happy to create programs regardless, knowing by the time the results were in with enough to assess their accuracy they'd be retired. They couldn't lose, and as a result had no personal interest in the consequences either way as they couldn't be tested before they'd be long gone.

This year more and more pillars of global warming have fallen than ever before. The collective indicators imply the temperature and associated major features are doing what they always have, minor variations within major long term (22,000 year or so) cycles and PDOs and nina/nino cycles which can be seen to have caused a peak in 1998 because they always do. Al Gore's lecture last week blaming every single problem in the world (including the Arab spring, honestly!) on AGW had made the fatal error of induction (he's not the brightest) by blaming the small local events on a greater one which as already described is far from certain. The only certainty is rising CO2, but the current effects are within previously normal variations and only became analysed as the CO2 rose and assumed to be doing something to them. Unless the temperature had already risen way above the expected 0.5C at current CO2 levels then anything under 2C is fine according to the IPCC. It won't even get half way by 2100 now, the graph is half done and would need a new input to arise from nowhere to get it to ramp up more than half way through the process which no one expected or would expect.

The IPCC position on solar changes are thus: "Changes in solar output over time can only be minimal and in no way affect the climate to a noticeable degree".

OK, in fact the genuine situation was that solar changes were little understood outside a small group of experts who had a purely academic interest in it before the CO2 debate, besides some making a fortune using it to predict the weather for private businesses, but as the world only listen to the IPCC that is the state of the science.

I have just heard the UK Met Office, who provide some of the data for the IPCC have veered off that path and in a paper soon to be published in the only instrument available (by serious organisations anyway), Nature Magazine, have stated:

"The warning coincides with research from the Met Office suggesting Europe could be facing a return of the “little ice age” that gripped Britain 300 years ago, causing decades of bitter winters.

The prediction, to be published in Nature, is based on observations showing a slight fall in the sun’s emissions of ultraviolet radiation, which over a long period may trigger mini ice ages in Europe."

Here it is, enjoy!

This actually means either the IPCC or Met Office are wrong. Take your pick.

Satguru,

I don't think any evidence would be enough for some to accept ACC. Your quote at the bottom from Mike Hulme needs looking at though. You impugne the honesty of tens of thousands of Scientists who got into that extremely well payed area of climate change. Most scientists get into low paid work for the betterment of mankind. Some do sell out to cigarette companies and oil and mining companies, but not the vast majority. However, you believe the Oil and mining companies who are likely to lose TRILLIONS if we convert to a green future are all pure at heart and concerned with mankind over their own wealth. That dog just don't hunt mate.

Obviously I've been asked this question before, and there is a two part answer. Firstly I'd happily accept global warming (sorry, climate change is an abbreviation of 'climate change through global warming' and without one the other doesn't exist) if indeed there was any. That's actual measurable change far beyond the previous cycles.

Currently the worst case scenario (ignore the slopes as they are different whoever measures them) is the temperature has risen 0.8C in 150 years. Besides the error margins being around that figure themselves so technically such a small amount may be little more than noise, in itself is not remarkable. There's a 22,000 year rise since the last ice age, when the sea level rose many feet a century when it turned around, and until we complete the cycle (they go back as far as life on earth, millions of years) of course we must continue to rise overall. Now had CO2 remained fairly stable then every single climatologist would have agreed with me. But as it shot up, inexplicably regardless what we are told, they started to worry. But coincidence of events is not any more than the earliest observation stage in science, and if you assume cause and effect you then waste decades and billions looking for connections even though they may never have existed.

The second part is that not every measurement agrees with the statistics. Average temperature is a concept and not a measurable reality, so instead they use anomalies, variations from a fixed average, which irons out the vast gaps between thermometers and urban heat islands. How many people knew the hockey stick was one of four separate graphs submitted to the IPCC, two others were similar but not so extreme and one was random. The IPCC chose the striking one (although in science and sport scoring you eliminate the two extremes and take the average of the middle when faced with conflicting versions) and based their whole policy on it ever since. No one here has the time or patience for a full on essay on how hard it is to measure large scale temperature, but suffice to say the sharp rise in 1979 coincided exactly with the arrival of satellite measurements while the earlier ones were a mixture of thermometer land and sea readings and proxy ones, the tree rings actually falling while the others rose. Do you have enough confidence in the system to commit trillions of pounds worldwide to stop something that's barely even happened according to the worst case data?

As for post-normal science, I read the article, the interview and the history. It's very simple. The view is if the cause is important enough then the actual truth doesn't matter as long as you can persuade people you are right. No thank you.

---------------------------

Your standard view about 'big oil' does not acknowledge any actual market forces or economics. Big oil are behind this almost as much as Al Gore. Two reasons again, one is so simple anyone can get it. If you restrict energy use the price goes up. There's only so much oil left, double the price and they get twice as much for nothing. Thumbs up for big oil.
The second is so complex even with the simplified version few people can follow it. Carbon credits are given to oil companies and the like, they don't use them all and sell the remainder at the end of the year and make billions. You'd need a PhD in economics to know how these things work but again energy companies profit massively the way they are currently set up, as had they run them the way you'd expect they indeed would have been opposed.

You really need to stop looking at the obvious and simplistic explanations when it comes to the economics behind this system. They are totally independent to AGW and irrelevant to it. I'm happy to discuss economics till the cows come home as I actually studied it, but wittering on for days about interested parties based on complex market movements and equations cannot affect the actual point that whoever looks at it at any angle AGW is probably an assumption based on a statement by Arrhenius, supported by a few lab experiments in a closed system, and then extrapolated into a future beyond our lifetimes with a +/- 400% error margin. You don't need to be an oil magnate to doubt the validity of that.

So the scientists have still decided to become corrupt all at the same time.

Not necessarily,scientists are as equally as like to be tempted to corruption as are other people,unfortunately the picture of the scientist as a standard bearer for the truth and nothing but the truth is not borne out by the cluster $%^& that is climate change.

So we trust the scientists to find cures for illnesses and many other good things to society and trust our children with the medical people but when it comes to this issue which has more evidence than smoking or the ozone layer we are sceptical. It is coincidental that this issue would cause us to take some financial hits and to change our way of dealing with the planet and doing nothing would be much easier.

Not at all. Scientists, especially the consensus, has got it wrong time and time again. From the world being flat and the centre of the solar system to the cause of stomach ulcers. They are human, limited and when they make mistakes (eg the IPCC reports) they make big ones.

OK, the only potential cause of 'runaway climate change' (Skeptical Science's latest catchphrase) is positive water vapour feedback. The 33C greenhouse effect was said to be 1C from CO2 at 260ppm, back in 1850, and a doubling with no feedback would contribute a doubling to add another 1C at 560ppm. All additional rise would be due to positive feedback.

This is an experiment, it's run half its distance, the current rise at 390ppm is .8C, on an already rising trend. That means the rise from CO2 would be between .5 and .6C maximum. That is both observation and attribution. No paper ever said the feedback from increased ocean evaporation would be delayed, so I'd say the scientists have lost the ball. How can a single observer, in or out of the science world can miss that?

Add the latest sea level fall, it's fallen as much in two years than it rose in more than the previous three. That was never expected either and is far easier to measure than temperature and ice coverage. All the additional signs of a lack of warming have been explained away as if nothing that happens in the long or short term (regardless of how it diverged from their expectations) can break their faith. That is not science and I hope a lot of people get the sack over the next few decades as they have let the world down big time.

A lot of people would be nearly all climate scientists who are not as smart as Satguru. Plus all reputable Science organisations and NASA etc. Lord Monckton is also smarter than all the scientists. There is not one peer reviewed article published to support the deniers. You could make history Satguru and be the first. But of course peer review is a conspiracy by all the scientists and around we go again.

You are being had mountaingoat. The number of scientists who both disagree and have data published supporting it are in the thousands, but because the media generally support the theory then you and most other people don't know about it. Add to that the vast number who work for organisations where they'd be sacked or demoted if they spoke out and you have a political situation and not a scientific one.
Only yesterday the psychologist Steven Pinker was interviewed about genetic influences and how despite the research demonstrating it most scientists avoided any material showing children were mainly influenced by their genes and not the environment. This was a political movement as much as any other, which denied and suppressed the truth for 'a greater good'. Post-normal science again.

There's the petition project where over 1000 scientists signed to say on record that there is not sufficient evidence for AGW. Many great names agree with me and not with you who are equally qualified, that alone means any claims of a scientific consensus can't be right, they are all there and can't be claimed as a result.
Dissenting scientists Oddly this is the first time I've ever seen a Wikipedia page marked for deletion. That doesn't look good from here.

Only yesterday a paper was published correlating the temperature with sunspot activity, one of a number which arrived this year. Even the UK Met Office now predict a cooling period due to reduced solar radiation. Don't worry about me being smart, all I do is listen to both sides, and rely on their smartness. Like a jury member. If you prefer to rely on computer programs for your trust then go ahead, but they are not based on anything real, only present records are and so far they show very little besides a suggestion and potential correlation between CO2 rising and the temperature, while it's also possible as a number of scientists say that CO2 has been released by the ocean after it warmed, so skewing the data. Bear in mind nearly all the apparent warming and CO2 rise has been measured since 1980, the year measurements were made by satellite. This alone means anything before that was less reliable and possibly not comparable.

These are all reasonable doubts, I accept most people see them as irrelevant and unimportant but when your liberty rests on the finding of such doubts in a criminal trial they suddenly become the most important things in your life. Please look at both sides and study the data not on the TV before making your conclusions.

We will have to agree to disagree. I am going to have a bex and a lie down lol.

Wow, Berkeley University have just released four papers measuring world temperature. None of it says anything new or reportable, indeed the actual articles written worldwide treat it as a confirmatory piece used to quash any final doubts we are wrecking the climate and the planet itself.

However, had they actually read one of the four papers rather than the summaries they were given, they would have seen that despite it measuring temperatures, one paper actually explains the possible reasons for the rise:

“Such changes may be independent responses to a common forcing (e.g.greenhouse gases); however, it is also possible that some of the land warming is a direct response to changes in the AMO region. If the long-term AMO changes have been driven by greenhouse gases then the AMO region may serve as a positive feedback that amplifies the effect of greenhouse gas forcing over land. On the other hand, some of the long-term change in the AMO could be driven by natural variability, e.g. fluctuations in thermohaline flow. In that case the human component of global warming may be somewhat overestimated.”

Having spent years learning about newly discovered solar and oceanic influences on the climate, far far more complex than the simplistic 'CO2 in- heat out' formula used by these clearly superior minds, it seems one university has finally began to catch up. It's a shame the media prefer not to mention it while trumpeting everything else in it totally out of its actual context.

Now the media (a list is given in the article linked) have been caught cheating, imagine how widespread it is across the board and how they have deliberately reported what they want to say and not what is actually happening. I'd recommend a mass emailing of The Guardian for claiming this removes all doubts about AGW as it actually does the exact opposite, and if that is the case then I am happy and accurate in saying they are liars and they have been caught out.

Full article

So if a respected university team of climatologists have finally concluded the ocean and sun may in fact have caused most of the observed warming in the last century or so yet every single outlet has only reported the warming and still blames you and me, isn't there a problem here? A very big problem?

Edited to include verbatim quote. Full paper available here, quote on P12 Full study

Wow, the withholding of the vital conclusion of the Berkeley report was bad enough, today, the joint author Judith Curry (I don't know why it took over a week but glad it was reported at all) disowned the report as Dr Muller released it before it was complete. So besides the conclusion being oceanic currents having the chance of influencing temperature more than man which not a single media outlet (still) has reported, it turns out not only was their own hockey stick measuring a rise fully double of the IPCC since 1900, but the last ten years had been averaged twice to removed the 2005-10 figures altogether.

Luckily Dr Muller had left a reversible equation in his method, so the GWPF who are set up to keep a watch on these people independently just did just that, and found using the raw data contained in the report that there has been no rise since 2000. Unlike previous refutations, these temperatures weren't measured independently to do no more than confuse the issue, they used his own figures but undid the little tricks he carried out to hide them.

There is a small list of detractors on this thread who I'm sure mainly still follow it, and today's question based on this latest scandal is what will it take before it casts doubt on the genuineness of the scientific material behind this claim? How many more instances of hidden data, altered data and blatant admissions 'we'll just have to make it up as usual' (CRU emails) before someone else starts wondering why they'd need to behave like this if they had a good case?
Story here

Thanks both of you for your linking this story to us. Now maybe my little sister will get off my case and realize I know a bit of what I speak. We've been having "climate change" ever since there was a planet, I feel, and most certainly have been having "warming" since the last ice age, interspersed with some mini-ice ages. Between the two, I'll take the "warming"!

Thanks habitsowner, and in fact although the media have painted any potential warming as a disaster the IPCC 2007 report lists every single benefit I always have, including possibly the most vital fact more people die of cold winters than when it gets warmer, and all the areas able to grow crops that currently can't. The benefits at least even out the problems, and as this warming is only present in their computer models (can you or I notice it even after we've been told? No) then it's simply a pretty expensive thought model.

The killer sentence in the conclusion is if we did nothing worldwide about CO2 emissions then by 2100 (we won't be here to know, so an untestable experiment) we could only be 7 times better off than we are now than 8. No, I couldn't make this stuff up, and it's so remarkable the media steer well clear of it as most readers wouldn't believe it either. The IPCC are actually far more moderate in their conclusions (although not in their projections, which have a 400% -/+ error margin, again not acceptable in science or business) but politicians who can make a fast buck off it, and the media who can write scary stories to sell more papers choose the bits that make their case.

One final example of what this attitude leads to. There is now a 'Climate Change Investment Fund' (and we all thought it was about saving the planet...) which means it is now openly a financial movement at least as much, the BBC invest their pension funds in it, and guess who owns it? One of their own directors.

Now as a legally bound broadcaster to be impartial they effectively stopped challenging climate change in 2007 (I have the memo somewhere), as effectively if they didn't spend hours a week making programmes about melting glaciers and dying penguins their pensions could be worth zip. Now that's not the dictionary definition of impartial to me, quite the opposite. Now whether or not climate change was real wouldn't be affected if people did exploit it, admittedly, but as the potential to make huge sums of money, not in 2100 but a year or two, it has the ability to make many organisations favour the mainstream view even in the face of much new evidence which again goes against the principles of science.

So how a single person can claim it's settled either means they only listen to the media and don't pay any regard to the studies directly which are all here online, or they have a personal reason not to like the BBC. It's a mess and one hopefully more people will get wise to and start wondering if indeed it is as certain as most people tell us.

It's rather humorous. Would you go to a doctor, for example, that tells you he has a 400 +/- error margin in his diagnosis?

Not me!!!

Lee

I posted this the same day in the chat, but hoped the media would do the job they are expected to do and release this paper themselves, but a week later as they haven't it's down to me again.

A two year satellite project sent to measure the exact culprits emitting CO2 and how much by the Japanese Ibuku satellite was completed last week, and a rolling video of the red and green countries per month has also been released along with the cumulative two year diagram, and unanimously discovered the more industrial a country is the more it absorbs carbon, while the least developed and inhabited ones emit the most.

The IPCC now appear to have been created to reduce a non-existent substance, yet only a handful of online enthusiasts are aware of it. This says to me the media are as guilty of selection as any scientist or politician, as if the people were given the information to make an informed decision, they would then know what they could actually vote for and why. So as well as the main new discovery why on earth have the media left this one entirely alone despite the original project being one sympathetic to the cause? They expected to be able to supply more detailed and specific figures of the 'worst offendors', no doubt to persuade more politicians to bring more punitive laws in faster, but were happy to release the full findings with no alteration or censorship when they found the exact opposite to what they were looking for.

So why have the IPCC not been called on this one? To me, their very reason for existence is now in question, yet nothing has happened.

CO2 emitters measured worldwide

"Indeed, the map at which JAXA spokesman Sasano was pointing (see photo above) had been expected by most experts to show that western nations are to blame for substantial increases in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, causing global warming. But to an officious looking TV interviewer Sasano turned greenhouse gas theory on it’s head."...

...“in the high latitudes of the Northern hemisphere emissions were less than absorption levels.”

Original paper Note red areas coincide with major deserts worldwide.

I've had to do some research on sea levels this week. It seems like temperatures the figures are not fixed but collect many items and cobble them together to get a rough trend and no more. Besides using floats and satellites this new diagram shows you still have to combine the results of a few satellites as they don't (and can't) read the same, mainly as sea level is an average and varies per point.

But what I'd consider good news for everyone on the planet is the overall direction is now downwards, only since a year ago overall but clearly now unanimous and far more on Envisat which is a pretty important source. I am hoping to see IPCC members and climate change ministers dancing in the street when they find this out, as the one main fear is of rising sea levels, although the most they've managed for thousands of years is 10 inches a century and no different today. So far the only comment I've heard is 'Of course they won't rise steadily, you need much longer to see the trend'. However I've looked back as far as I can and still found no fall longer than a few months. Does anyone think they're being a bit pessimistic here?

10 year sea level figures

I have more quotes (with more to follow):

"There is low confidence in observed trends in small spatial-scale phenomena such as tornadoes and hail because of data inhomogeneities and inadequacies in monitoring systems."


"Many extreme weather and climate events continue to be the result of natural climate variability."

Now if you think these are from the usual oil funded pop-eyed loons, they aren't, they're from the new IPCC report. Makes me think at least.

Summary here

As I've said from day one, the complexity of the present world climate, let alone trying to project it even a day ahead, is phenomenal, and they seem to be affirming this now as the measurable areas are so diverse:

"There is limited to medium evidence available to assess climate-driven observed changes in the
magnitude and frequency of floods at regional scales because the available instrumental records
of floods at gauge stations are limited in space and time, and because of confounding effects of
changes in land use and engineering. Furthermore, there is low agreement in this evidence, and
thus overall low confidence at the global scale regarding even the sign of these changes."

So floods, one of the bete noirs of CO2phobes is off the agenda. Why? Because after over 20 years of looking, the IPCC says so.

Oh dear, hurricanes as well:

"The uncertainties in the historical tropical cyclone records, the incomplete
understanding of the physical mechanisms linking tropical cyclone metrics to climate change,
and the degree of tropical cyclone variability provide only low confidence for the attribution of
any detectable changes in tropical cyclone activity to anthropogenic influences. Attribution of
single extreme events to anthropogenic climate change is challenging."

Of course they've managed to crowbar in warmer days and higher coastal extreme measurements (the sea level's been rising for 22,000 years, so always would have), but the big guys seem to be falling like dominoes in this. I am not however confident any politicians will look at these, just as they didn't for the previous reports which were all very careful and included many possible benefits from global warming. Nothing should change with another report, however doubtful. But if you use the context here then maybe it's pretty much time to pack up and go home:

"Projected changes in climate extremes under different emissions scenarios
generally do not strongly diverge in the coming two to three
decades, but these signals are relatively small compared to natural climate variability over this time frame. Even the sign of projected changes in some climate extremes over this time frame is uncertain."

I live in Alaska, although not on the coast. Still, I believe the reports that there is less ice.

Last summer I went on a short cruise in Prince William Sound on a boat based in Valdez. The captain said he'd never been to a certain little place he took us because it had always before been frozen.

The Northwest Passage now exists.

Recent Huffington Post.

Older Guardian article.

My son works in the fiber optics industry (installation) and assures me the Northwest Passage is now open, which makes all the difference in undersea cables. He was part of this project,

Arctic fiber-optic cable could benefit far-flung Alaskans

TOKYO-LONDON: Polar melt allows route through northwest passage.

which, unfortunately, has been set aside.

Last week we had terrible storms on the west coast, made worse because of the loss of protective coastal ice.

From the Anchorage Daily News:

"A lack of protective, shore-fast sea ice worsened the high-water danger compared to a similarly powerful storm in 1974, forecasters said."

Also see the Washington Post:

“Major differences between the 1974 storm and this upcoming storm include the fact that tides were much greater in the 1974 storm,” NWS said. “However, sea ice extent is currently much lower than it was in 1974, thus providing no protection along the coast and greater fetch.”

Ice coverage is a perfect example of the impossible complexity of the climate. The warming is not even, quite the opposite. Therefore despite a very small overall increase, you will always get localised warming and cooling, much as Britain had two of its coldest winters in living memory. But back to your ice, we are in a very long warming trend, the end of an ice age means the melting of up to all polar ice, perfectly naturally. That's going to happen in endless cycles. So although the passage has opened, Arctic ice is around 10% of the total, and for reasons I don't think anyone really understands, is a hotspot, so although is melting faster than usual also freezes faster in winter. It was a month earlier than usual this year for instance.

But the 90% of ice in the Antarctic, that which could make a difference as on land, is not melting overall. The pattern of temperature variations is very localised, and then different on land, sea and air. I haven't checked this story out as it's the first I've heard of it, so will do, but as overall ice is not melting then you can't infer anything from any local variations if the total has not decreased noticeably.

"Since the start of the satellite record, total Antarctic sea ice has increased by about 1 percent per decade. Whether the small overall increase in sea ice extent is a sign of meaningful change in the Antarctic is uncertain because ice extents in the Southern Hemisphere vary considerably from year to year and from place to place around the continent."

NASA report

1% a decade is quite a significant amount, and as contains so much of the world's ice is yet again very inconsistent with an overall warming to anyone who expects the opposite to happen. If nothing else, it does demonstrate it's far too complicated to really know.

Well, the title of the thread is, "Alaskan ice ignores global warming."

I agreed with you when you started the discussion, but observation and cogitation since then have persuaded me otherwise. Alaskan ice is unarguably decreasing.

"Global warming melts Alaskan ice" is more like it.

Also, at the beginning of the thread, I had misunderstood a fellow FunTrivian and unintentionally misrepresented his opinion.

I could have transferred everything else over to a new thread had I realised that was the first in dozens of similar reports making the picture extremely confused and confusing, at the least. Also bear in mind that report was a few years ago and ice is extremely variable in the short term as the IPCC now agree with, but was still absolutely correct for the data provided.

If it was possible I could have had the bulk of the thread moved to a general one, but at the start I simply had no idea how the studies would keep on coming and if nothing else provides me with the best filing system when I frequently need to find something, and hopefully for anyone else interested in the subject.

As for global warming melting Alaskan ice, what do you think is causing the Antarctic to grow?

(if a mod can change the thread title to 'New global warming data' then it will reflect the following material better, thanks!)