Scientists Release New Polar Ice Findings

Critics Say Flawed Catlin Arctic Expedition Couldn't Produce Reliable Scientific Results

(CBS)  Last spring, the Catlin Arctic Survey members set out to walk - and sometimes swim- the just over 600 miles to the North Pole, collecting data on sea ice.

But almost immediately, their radar and a sled loaded with water-testing equipment failed, reports CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer.

The team had to scale back its ambitions and measure ice thickness the old-fashioned way. In some places they found it was barely 6-feet thick, half of what they expected.

By May, the ice was on the move. One night, it was so violent the team had to break camp.

Finally, plagued with frostbite and frozen sleeping bags, they gave up only halfway to the Pole.

This week in London, Catlin released its results, fending off accusations that such a flawed expedition couldn't produce good science.

But for scientists who rely on satellite or submarine data, Catlin says its measurement is unique.

"The scientists really have a lack of what you might call relatively accurate absolute measurements, what they would call direct observations, made from the surface at the surface, down through the snow, ice cover and the ice layer below," said expedition leader Pen Hadow.

Eminent climate scientists agree that the data supports a growing consensus that the polar ice cap is in dramatic retreat.

"The conclusions from this work and from other measurements that have been done, and from new models, are that the summer ice will disappear within twenty to thirty years, and a lot of it will be gone within 10 years," said Professor Peter Wadhams, with the University of Cambridge Polar Ocean Physics Group.

The good news is that it will open up new shipping lanes. The bad news is that polar ice helps keep the planet cool by reflecting the sun. Once it's gone, it is likely global warming will speed up.

[doc_holliday76]

by robham777:
"It would be hard to compare the low of 24 to 23,22,21,20, etc... since the current low has persisted almost twice as long as any of those and some scientist believe the sun has entered a grand minimum cycle."
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The 11-year Solar Cycle has been longer and shorter at times, so a longer LOW right now has absolutely no bearing on what we will see a few years from now at the HIGH, or on the way UP!

No matter whether predicters are correct about it being unusually weak or stronger as they did a few years ago, the facts still point to stronger conditions during the next few years as we move away from the solar LOW, giving us more solar radiation which in turn will make believers out of many DENIERS as the surface temperature increases.



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The latest forecast revises an earlier prediction issued in 2007. At that time, a sharply divided panel believed solar minimum would come in March 2008 followed by either a strong solar maximum in 2011 or a weak solar maximum in 2012. Competing models gave different answers, and researchers were eager for the sun to reveal which was correct.

"It turns out that none of our models were totally correct," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA's lead representative on the panel. "The sun is behaving in an unexpected and very interesting way."

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/29may_noaaprediction.htm

[gramto8]

by nazdackster October 18, 2009 10:38 AM EDT
Oh, PUHLEEZE. You're going to rely on a chart ending in 2000? From NASA GISS, Hansen's outfit? It's hopelessly contaminated. Here is a small article showing the difference between "Death Train" Hansen's data set and all the other reliable ones:
_____________________________
BTW, if you look at the results, BOTH sets show an INCREASE in temperature of about 0.5 degrees in the intervening years of note.

[noloyalisti]

This is pretty much an open and shut case: the only "people" still denying global climate change are big corporations who like the status quo and the "scientists" being paid by them. Oh, and the morons who still watch Faux News. Faux News keeps you stupid.

[Ms_enza]

"Critics" being the less than 1% of scientists with less than 0.001% of the braintrust who are aligned with big business and the Republiscums.

[bruce691]

To Small businesses around the globe: The western economies are bought and paid for by large multinational corporations. They would like nothing better than to see you destroyed. They prove this by their tax policies of favoring themselves, putting YOU at a disadvantage. They are not thrilled about govt regulation, but they know it hurts YOU more than them, so it's o.k. Thats why, to them, global warming is a win-win situation. If global warming is true it will snuff out competition, that's YOU. If it's not true then they stop govts from taxing/regulating them.

[doc_holliday76]

by bruce691:
"If global warming is true it will snuff out competition..."
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Typical foxnewsus propagandus junkie spewing the same rhetoric and carrying water for corporate America, since in your endless DENIAL you just fail to see the failures of the past 30 years of conservitard policies and ideology have made the corporatocracy the power it is today with endless GREED. Using and abusing our natural resources as quickly as possible with no regard to emissions or regulation, the wealthiest Americans and the corporate elite have been writing all the rules, and given the small businessman a distinct disadvantage.

It is those with true morals and a conscience to leave our planet in better shape for future generations by growing the RENEWABLE ENERGY ECONOMY of new entrepreneurs and leaving the antiquated methods of burning finite fossil fuels destroying our planet behind.

BIG BIZ is afraid of true competition, as can be seen by BIG OIL still salivating over corporate welfare from the American taxpayers, when they have been an established industry for over 100 years and have been making record profits at the middle class and small businessman's expense!

[on_alert247]

Why is anyone even remotely listening to partisan hacks like mcintrye and mckitrick, with no climatology training or experience?


Perhaps because the problem lies in the statistics used which McIntyre and Wegman found flawed. From the National Post "The recently released final report of a panel of three independent statisticians, chaired by an eminent statistics professor, Edward Wegman, Chairman of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Theoretical and Applied Statistics, has resoundingly upheld criticisms of the famous "hockey stick" graph of Michael Mann and associates.
The Wegman report, which was submitted to the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee in July, stated that our published criticisms of Mann's methodology were "valid and compelling" and stated that "Mann's assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis."

[doc_holliday76]

by on_alert247:
"From the National Post "The recently released final report of a panel of three independent statisticians, chaired by an eminent statistics professor, Edward Wegman"
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Again, both wegman and barton were GOP POLITICIANS trying to disprove global warming for the busheviks and BIG OIL, with their political agenda. Both mcintyre and mckitrick have no scientific background and certainly NO CLIMATOLOGY, and the "National Post" is hardly a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but just another propaganda outlet tabloid like foxnewsus propagandus, the rightwing arm of the republican't party!

[chelokee]

www.yoeddie.com

[jankebenzone]

by doc_holliday76 October 19, 2009 1:59 PM EDT

Yeah...yeah...yeah...blah...blah...blah....and I suppose you use data and figures from the consipracy theorist, glenn beck....or is it rush limpstick that whispers the research data from BIG OIL and the rest of the fossil fuel industry in your little ear?
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You suppose wrong just like the supposing done by so much of the agw crowd to draw their "scientific" conclusions. I did my own research using data from unaffiliated resourses which are unbiased in collecting weather, ocean and air movement info.

[noloyalisti]

The only people that don't like this are the big, rich, greedy corporations and their extremist apologists.

We need to stop wasting and consuming anyway, the planet cannot sustain our species for long.

[titletrack]

So, get off your computer and start saving. You can start by breathing less

[doc_holliday76]

by curse914:
"Loui, we are in a solar minimum. Look it up."
===================================================================



by louiville2_5:
"Ahhh but ALL the AGW alleged scientists say it (sun) is irrelevant that it is all manmade, so you are saying it IS the sun that has caused our climate change."
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Aaaaaah....it is YOU james louiville, that fell into the #### on that one!

Of course it's the SUN, because that is exactly what has been warming our planet Earth for 4.5 Billion years! Get a clue!

The problem that you and your ilk fail to comprehend, is the absorption of all that heat from the SUN (especially when ice/snow is melted and a darker land/sea is revealed beneath) and the inability for that heat to radiate back into space due to the greenhouse gases.

Since we're at the LOW for Solar Cycle 24, which is comparable to the LOW of Soalr Cycle 23 in 1995-1997 before all those much warmer years in the past 13 years, you and the rest of the DENIERS will get a huge dose of REALITY when the sunspots return, bringing with them CME's and solar flares to increase the surface temperatures past the 1998/2005 record temperatures!

[robham777]

It would be hard to compare the low of 24 to 23,22,21,20, etc... since the current low has persisted almost twice as long as any of those and some scientist believe the sun has entered a grand minimum cycle. The assertion of some scientist that the sun has been more active in the last century than in the previous 8,000 years could suggest some type of correlation.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=25538

"If our prediction is correct, Solar Cycle 24 will have a peak sunspot number of 90, the lowest of any cycle since 1928 when Solar Cycle 16 peaked at 78," says panel chairman Doug Biesecker of the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center.

The IPCC and AGW proponents have concluded that the sun's TSI out put could only account for about 5% of the anomalous warming trend of the last couple of decades, and that the spike in co2 is the more obvious culprit (even though co2 accounts for less than 0.0004% of the atmosphere it accounts for 95% of warming)

The planet has experience unprecedented warming over the last few decades and it may continue. If in spite of decreased solar activity, a cooling cycle of the PDO, and a cooling favorable tilt of the earth's axis the planet continues to warm then I will concede to AGW in a heartbeat.

P.S. it should only take a few more years.

[jcdugger1234]

"The good news is that it will open up shipping lanes." That was a joke, I hope? The bad news is that millions and millions will die due to lack of fresh drinking water...but the shipping lanes are now open! Unreal. I can't even believe they went there. Nice hard-core reporting CBS!

[Heathergreeneyes]

Let me see if I have this right. They went to measure thinning ice due to global warming, but they had to turn back because it was TOO COLD?

Does this sound odd to anyone else? Global Warming is melting the ice, but it was too cold for them to prove it!

You would think these professional climate scientist could at least dress for the weather!

[noloyalisti]

This is just another conspiracy by the educated, geologist and scientist, cultural elites. They just want to **** off the corrupt, moneyed right wing, god-fearing fascists running the big corporations. They just want to frighten us so they can stop us from driving our Hummers and Suburbans.

[gunnyh1]

Once again...inaccurate data being treated as 100% fact. I guess they have to keep the skewed information flowing in order to get money from grants etc. Gore was worth 1.5 million at the end of his Vice Presidentcy and now he is worth a cool $100,000,000.00...due to pushing inaccurate data as 100% fact. Just keep pouring the kool-aid and you'll find the fools to drink it.

[doc_holliday76]

Myth vs. Fact Regarding the "Hockey Stick"

MYTH #2: Regional proxy evidence of warm or anomalous (wet or dry) conditions in past centuries contradicts the conclusion that late 20th century hemispheric mean warmth is anomalous in a long-term (multi-century to millennial) context.

Such claims reflect a lack of awareness of the distinction between regional and large-scale climate change. Similar such claims were recently made in two articles by astronomer Willie Soon and co-authors (Soon and Baliunas, 2003; Soon et al, 2003). These claims were subsequently rebutted by a group of more than a dozen leading climate scientists in an article in the journal ?Eos? of the American Geophysical Union (Mann et al, ?Eos?, 2003). The rebuttal raised, among other points, the following two key points:


(1) In drawing conclusions regarding past regional temperature changes from proxy records, it is essential to assess proxy data for actual sensitivity to past temperature variability. In some cases (Soon and Baliunas, 2003, Soon et al, 2003) a global ?warm anomaly? has been defined for any period during which various regions appear to indicate climate anomalies that can be classified as being either ?warm?, ?wet?, or ?dry? relative to ?20th century? conditions. Such a criterion could be used to define any period of climate as ?warm? or ?cold?, and thus cannot meaningfully characterize past large-scale surface temperature changes.

(2) It is essential to distinguish (e.g. by compositing or otherwise assimilating different proxy information in a consistent manner?e.g., Jones et al., 1998; Mann et al., 1998, 1999; Briffa et al., 2001) between regional temperature changes and changes in global or hemispheric mean temperature. Specific periods of cold and warmth differ from region to region over the globe (see Jones and Mann, 2004), as changes in atmospheric circulation over time exhibit a wave-like character, ensuring that certain regions tend to warm (due, for example, to a southerly flow in the Northern Hemisphere winter mid-latitudes) when other regions cool (due to the corresponding northerly flow that must occur elsewhere). Truly representative estimates of global or hemispheric average temperature must therefore average temperature changes over a sufficiently large number of distinct regions to average out such offsetting regional changes. The specification of a warm period, therefore requires that warm anomalies in different regions should be truly synchronous and not merely required to occur within a very broad interval in time, such as AD 800-1300 (as in Soon et al, 2003; Soon and Baliunas, 2003).

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/myths-vs-fact-regarding-the-hockey-stick/

[doc_holliday76]

See all 109 Comments
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What the hell is going on here, since there was just 122 comments, and now many are gone?

[au_fait]

Why would you go in May when ice sheets would be melting? Does not seem that the scientists who went on this expedition are the brightest. Why not go in dec, jan or feb?

[louiville2_5]

Yeah they (Catlin) really have nothing to say, they promised hundreds of thousands of data ice measurement points but only accomplished "39" ice measurements, from that they have concluded that the Ice cap is toast.

The reason was their electronic equipment froze which they told no one for 44 days. So they had to hand dig holes in the ice for measurement. Couple that with most of the ice they were on was "first year" ice and three months of melting took place as they collected this information (hardly a usable snapshot of data) and this report is JUNK!!!!

That and they left drums of airplane fuel on the ice along there purposed route that they had to abandon because they never made it, now poisoning the arctic sea, killing marine life.

Yep AGW ALL smoke and mirrors.

This is the kind of science that the MSM sees fit to print and the AGW self loathing crowd eats it up.

[troutfishyman]

by NatlAnthem October 18, 2009 11:44 PM EDT
Sorry to burst your CO2 bubble, Trout but looking at paleoclimate relationships of temperature to CO2 just don't support what you are saying.

http://bit.ly/wEsg7


Peer reviewed scientific data please, not links to a former TV weathermans blog. OK?

[troutfishyman]

by NatlAnthem October 18, 2009 10:26 PM EDT
Troutfishyman:


Isn't it worth it funding more research to get a better model, given that current results don't necessarily confirm an immediate doomsday model?




That is the little song and dance performed by the GOP and fossil fuel industry for about 15 years now. The studies are in. The empirical evidence is so strong now that even a blind man can see it, and growing stronger every year.

Research will continue, but the time for action is NOW.

[troutfishyman]

by NatlAnthem October 18, 2009 10:26 PM EDT
Troutfishyman:

I have no quarrel that CO2 is a "greenhouse gas", and that in a known closed system of moderate volume surrounded by a vacuum, that it will in fact absorb more heat than it will radiate. As I believe I can drop a car into the ocean and make a splash. But it is a question of magnitude. Hawaii is not afraid of my splash ... it is immaterial to their well-being.

The changes in our atmospheric composition, our ecology, our geology ... so many aspects of our Earth ... are so far beyond the magnitude of our CO2 output, that for us to base such significant global hardship, the burder of proof on the science is enormous too.






Well then, I suppose it is just a COINCIDENCE that temperatures started increasing at the same time as human CO2 output kicked into high gear. And had maintained this relationship as CO2 levels have increased. LOL

With regard to DDT, you are just plain wrong wrong wrong. DDT is highly toxic to aquatic organisms, and thins eggs in birds. Maybe you recall the bald eagle, how it almost went extinct, then recovered after the ban. No? Too young to remember? Sigh.... If you do not care about that, you should know that it has numerous negative affects on humans. With regard to cancer, it is classified as a probable carcinogen.




So if CO2 is not the cause, point to some definitive stuOf course

[doc_holliday76]

Paleoclimate findings by the IPCC before and after the Hockey Stick Controversy:

Before: 2001 (page 2)

" proxy data for the Northern Hemisphere indicate that the increase in temperature in the 20th century is likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years. It is also likely that, in the Northern Hemisphere, the 1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year."


After: Current SPM statement from 2007 (page 10)

"?Average Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were very likely higher than during any other 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely the highest in at least the past 1300 years. Some recent studies indicate greater variability in Northern Hemisphere temperatures than suggested in the TAR, particularly finding that cooler periods existed in the 12 to 14th, 17th, and 19th centuries. Warmer periods prior to the 20th century are within the uncertainty range given in the TAR.?