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Post by throttleup on Jun 11, 2012 14:10:56 GMT
The vast majority, almost 90 percent, of Earth's ice mass is in Antarctica, while the Greenland ice cap contains 10 percent of the total global ice mass. ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/watercycleice.htmlLet's see... 90 plus 10... carry the 2... that's almost 100! I'm sorry, what was that you were saying about the Arctic?NASA Examines Arctic Sea Ice Changes Leading to Record Low in 2007 "A team led by Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory... said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters. The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century," Nghiem said." www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.htmlThe winter AO-index explains as much as 64% of the variance in summer sea-ice extent in the Eurasian sector, but the winter and summer AO-indices combined explain less than 20% of the variance along the Alaskan coast, where the age of sea-ice explains over 50% of the year-to year variability. If this interpretation is correct, low summer sea-ice extents are likely to persist for at least a few years. However, it is conceivable that, given an extended interval of low-index AO conditions, ice thickness and summertime sea-ice extent could gradually return to the levels characteristic of the 1980s. seaice.apl.washington.edu/and just for grins...Much of the record breaking loss of ice in the Arctic ocean in recent years is down to the region's swirling winds and is not a direct result of global warming, a new study reveals. www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/22/wind-sea-ice-loss-arctic
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Post by magellan on Jun 11, 2012 23:47:28 GMT
Why does it even matter what sort of dumb ass comments get posted on this forum anyway? Most already have their minds made up, for ideological reasons. Meantime, the earth is changing and science is learning. My posts are for the viewers who are curious and want to understand what is happening and how to understand it. You are so damned vain it is funny.
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Post by throttleup on Jun 12, 2012 1:01:26 GMT
Why does it even matter what sort of dumb ass comments get posted on this forum anyway? Most already have their minds made up, for ideological reasons. Meantime, the earth is changing and science is learning. My posts are for the viewers who are curious and want to understand what is happening and how to understand it. You are so damned vain it is funny. He probably thinks this thread is about him! (with apologies to Carly Simon)
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Post by thermostat on Jun 12, 2012 1:51:24 GMT
Why does it even matter what sort of dumb ass comments get posted on this forum anyway? Most already have their minds made up, for ideological reasons. t'stat, As for your first point, quite correct. There are a lot of dumb ass comments on this board, and we appreciate your contribution.
Regarding your second point, a personal question if I may: Do you feel your mind is 'made up?'
I only ask due to the consistent theme of your contributions and your untoward reactions to individuals with a legitimate contrary viewpoint. And if your mind is made up, is it made up for 'ideological reasons' or 'other?' Sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference.
I think most people's minds are 'made up' to some extent. And that's a good thing. I mean, if you've read material or spoken to people or exposed yourself to information and have come to a 'conclusion' as a result, that seems to be the usual path people follow as they try to make sense of the world around them. But if they have a desire to learn and know what is true and right, they will generally continue to take in new information, process it, and adjust their position accordingly. If one understands that even the 'experts' can be wrong -- can make mistakes -- (the examples one could list are legion) -- then one can keep learning.
Others, as you well know, consider their insight and information to be superior to others and will make dumb ass comments as a result. throttleup, As I've written here before, science is inherently tentative and incomplete. As a scientist, it is illogical to have one's mind made up (so no, my mind is never made up). That said, as science develops, various points become established (independent of the subject). It takes solid data and convincing analysis to establish a new insight; ie the sort of thing that earns people the Nobel Prize and such. Of course, having such insight drives scientific thinking. Regarding the Earth's climate, a large collection of mutually consistent evidence and analysis describing multiple alternative aspects of this complex system has been established over the past 50 years in particular, and past 150 years more generally. Given the well established scientific understanding of the climate system and the drivers of presently observed climate change, it would take some new data and insightful analysis of genuine substance to change my interpretation. In particular, a large body of mutually consistent science would need to be reconciled with some novel, alternative explanation. Presently, no such credible scientific alternative has been presented; in the meantime, support for the concensus understanding continues to build and expand.
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Post by throttleup on Jun 12, 2012 11:04:24 GMT
thermostat: "It takes solid data and convincing analysis to establish a new insight; ie the sort of thing that earns people the Nobel Prize and such." Yeah... I may have to disagree with you on this one. Scientifically, of course... (Yes, I realize these are "Peace" prizes. Granted, some people actually do "science." Not these clowns.)
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Post by throttleup on Jun 12, 2012 11:18:34 GMT
thermostat, just a follow-up... Richard Feynman really was a good scientist -- you should give him some proper respect (as well as those who quote him).
He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965 and developed the pictorial scheme denoting the behavior of subatomic particles -- called Feynman Diagrams.
(I looked you up on wikipedia and all I found was the thermostat. It's a very nice device and I appreciate all the work you put into it. I have one in my home.)
In 1999 Feynman was ranked as one of the ten greatest physicists of all time.
You should read up on him. He was the one who magellan quoted as saying "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts." Personally, I like a good quote because it can say so much in few words.
I'd take Feynman over Gore or Pachuri anyday.
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Post by neilhamp on Jun 12, 2012 14:46:17 GMT
Wow! Look at the drop in sea ice extent over the past few days! We are now well below 2007 levels for the month of June
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Post by thermostat on Jun 14, 2012 1:28:38 GMT
Wow! Look at the drop in sea ice extent over the past few days! We are now well below 2007 levels for the month of June neilhamp, In similar fashion, the Cryosphere Today Arctic Sea Ice AREA has also dropped significantly. arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.pngAt this early point in the melt season, this appears to reflect the melting of relatively thin first year ice that formed late in the year. For example, the Bering Sea Ice is pretty much gone. What is more suggestive for this melt year is the early opening of various areas around the Arctic Basin, since open water here, as the summer solstice approaches, can provide for increased absorption of solar irradiation and heat transfer to the Arctic Ocean.
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Post by thermostat on Jun 14, 2012 1:39:36 GMT
The ARCUS Sea Ice Projections for June are out. www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2012/juneKeep in mind than unlike the poll in this discussion thread, the ARCUS projections are for the NSIDC September average for sea ice extent, rather than the daily minimal value. Thus the ARCUS values will be higher than the projected daily minimum. Also, these ARCUS values are subject to modification as the melt season progresses It is interesting to note that all of the projected values are below 5.0 million sq km, and half of them are below 4.5.
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Post by thermostat on Jun 14, 2012 2:20:54 GMT
thermostat, just a follow-up... Richard Feynman really was a good scientist -- you should give him some proper respect (as well as those who quote him).
He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965 and developed the pictorial scheme denoting the behavior of subatomic particles -- called Feynman Diagrams. (I looked you up on wikipedia and all I found was the thermostat. It's a very nice device and I appreciate all the work you put into it. I have one in my home.) In 1999 Feynman was ranked as one of the ten greatest physicists of all time.
You should read up on him. He was the one who magellan quoted as saying "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts." Personally, I like a good quote because it can say so much in few words.
I'd take Feynman over Gore or Pachuri anyday. throttleup, I was agreeing with Feynman. "science is the belief in the ignorance of experts" = "scientific understanding is inherently tentative and incomplete" Read more: wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_science_is_the_belief_in_the_ignorance_of_experts_mean#ixzz1xjJmWmHd
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Post by thermostat on Jun 14, 2012 2:30:40 GMT
Related to the Feynman kerfuffle above, "A KERFUFFLE has broken out between philosophy and physics. It began earlier this spring when a philosopher (David Albert) gave a sharply negative review in this paper to a book by a physicist (Lawrence Krauss) that purported to solve, by purely scientific means, the mystery of the universe’s existence. The physicist responded to the review by calling the philosopher who wrote it “moronic” and arguing that philosophy, unlike physics, makes no progress and is rather boring, if not totally useless. And then the kerfuffle was joined on both sides."
"philosophy, unlike physics, makes no progress and is rather boring, if not totally useless."
I feel like I'm watching, "The Big Bang Theory" on TV.
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Post by icefisher on Jun 14, 2012 21:48:31 GMT
The ARCUS Sea Ice Projections for June are out. www.arcus.org/search/seaiceoutlook/2012/june
Keep in mind than unlike the poll in this discussion thread, the ARCUS projections are for the NSIDC September average for sea ice extent, rather than the daily minimal value. Thus the ARCUS values will be higher than the projected daily minimum. Also, these ARCUS values are subject to modification as the melt season progresses
It is interesting to note that all of the projected values are below 5.0 million sq km, and half of them are below 4.5. Its difficult to see whats interesting about that. After all last year NSIDC declared sub 5.0 values as the norm. Sort of old news. Its kind of silly making predictions on all this. Like Lonnie Thompson, NAS, he predicted the Andes glacier Qori Kalis would be gone by now 5 years ago. Worse there has been nothing published by Thompson on this. Steve McIntyre over at Climate Audit is beginning to drill into the selective cherry picking of what gets published and what does not. Until that problem is resolved we may as well be flushing billions down the toilet for all the good it does giving people money to try to extrapolate global information from a polluted population of studies.
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Post by neilhamp on Jun 15, 2012 9:40:42 GMT
If the mean ARCUS forecast turns out to be 4.5 then the actual minimum is likely to be at least 0.2 lower
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Post by icefisher on Jun 15, 2012 15:28:20 GMT
If the mean ARCUS forecast turns out to be 4.5 then the actual minimum is likely to be at least 0.2 lower The concensus is no record low this year it appears. Of course our own Greywhale here usually jumps in each year a predicts unusual weather patterns to produce one. It appears rather abundantly from the NSIDC graphs that year to year natural variation from regional weather patterns can exceed trend variation by 20 to 25 fold (and thats the range on a very short time scale). Namely . . . . It hardly makes sense to be spending money on annual prediction models when we can't predict the weather more than 2 weeks in advance. They should run their models for a 30 year prediction and then take a 359 month sabbatical and work on something else. . . .but you know how the government thinks. . . .full employment. . . .sort of the kind like they give you during a peacetime military. . . .dig a hole. . . .fill it back up. . . .dig it again.
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Post by thermostat on Jun 16, 2012 3:12:49 GMT
If the mean ARCUS forecast turns out to be 4.5 then the actual minimum is likely to be at least 0.2 lower Thanks for pointing that out neilhamp. The obvious significance here is that the concensus ARCUS projections are consistent with an ongoing reduction of Arctic Sea Ice, as is being observed. Further, the various Arcus projections on the low end are thus calculating a record sea ice extent minimum (but people always hope 'there won't be any math' and don't want to have to do that calculation, thanks for pointing it out).
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