XDA

Steve Goddard as a guest blogger at the very informative Watts Up With That has an excellent posting on the moving target that global sea ice has become through the Warmie apologists. The Arctic sea ice is almost at normal in extent, even though that normal is derived from an absurdly small period in time, 1979- 2000. Combine the Antarctic sea ice, which is way above normal, with the Arctic sea ice, which is slightly below, and global sea ice area is way above normal as well, about 600,000 square km., which is about the size of Texas. Area, I am told, is a more reliable measure than extent, except during the Summer.


This is not what is supposed to be happening according to the 'godfather' of the Warmie movement, the chief supporter of anthropogenic global warming alarmism, James Hanson, who wrote in the mid 80s the following:

"The surface air warming is enhanced at high latitudes [notice the plural]... partly because of confinement of the greenhouse warming to lower layers as a consequence of the atmospheric stability at high latitudes and partly because of the ice/snow albedo feedback at high latitudes."

Hanson's accompanying Figure 2-2 (a) shows that in both the Arctic and Antarctica, the expected temperatures were to be 5 to 8 degrees warmer. Both polar regions! Indeed, the 8 degrees was predicted in the South Polar region and North Pole was to be only 5 degrees warmer.

Yet this is what a typical Warmie site now shows:

...the scientific community has known for some time that that on a warming planet, sea ice in the global North (Arctic) is expected to melt while sea ice in the global South is expected to remain constant or even sightly grow.

Yeah, they've known for a long time that the Antarctic was not cooperating with the Warmie theories and computer models and they have recently changed the theory and 'improved' the models in response to empirical evidence and measurement and are now denying that their position was just years ago 180 degrees different. Who's actually corrupting science to serve a political purpose here? The Warmies or the Deniers?

Hanson said that the slight (1.5 degrees C) warming from doubling the atmospheric CO2 would cause three positive feedbacks, one of which was increased water vapor in the air, which water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas and it would warm things even more. Now apparently that only happens in the Arctic. I'm serious; this is what they say now:

Typically, warming of the climate leads to increased melting rates of sea ice cover and increased precipitation rates. However, in the Southern Ocean, with increased precipitation rates and deeper snow, the additional load of snow becomes so heavy that it pushes the Antarctic sea ice below sea level. This results in even more and even thicker sea ice when the snow refreezes as more ice. Therefore, the paper indicates that some climate processes, like warmer air temperatures increasing the amount of sea ice, may go against what we would normally believe would occur.

Yeah, in the North, the increased CO2 and water vapor therefrom melts the sea ice, but in the South the same increased CO2 and water vapor therefrom causes more sea ice to freeze. It's so simple when you're a climate scientist: If the empirical data causes one to doubt the theory, tweak the theory, even when it causes one to support absurd results. In other science it's more difficult; there, when the data destroys the theory, the scientists have to start all over again. The Warmie theory is more like a religion than science.

Labels: Global Warming: Disputed Revisions