Letters to the Editor
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Ice, ice, baby
But it does appear to be true that taken as a whole, Antarctica has cooled over the past 30 years. So how do believers in global warming explain that?
Computer models aside, I can't help but wonder that when one takes some ice cubes and puts them in a glass of water, the water cools as the cubes melt. And once the ice melts, the glass of water eventually isn't cool anymore. Maybe this is what's happening as ice continues to melt in the area and beyond? A short-term cooling trend?
Maybe the climate change skeptics/fossil fuel industry apologists are hoping the Yellowstone supervolcano will erupt, creating another ice age (and the effective elimination of the number one greenhouse gas emitter in the world, namely, us).
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Climate Change, not Global Warming
Idiots like this are a big reason why scientists now prefer to refer to it as Climate Change. As the overall average temperature of the Earth increases, localized effects can sometimes seem counter-intuitive. Climate Change is making weather more extreme, not necessarily simply making every place uniformly warmer. The global climate is too complex a system for such a simplistic outcome. Some winters may get colder, some blizzards may become larger, hurricane intensity may increase even as frequency declines or vice versa.
This guy's conclusions are on a par with the local idiot shoveling snow with a sign on her back saying "This is global warming?" They're mislead by the term and a lack of understanding about what's really happening.
And even if it were just a generalized warming, the temperature in your local area rising from 29 Fahrenheit to 32 doesn't mean it won't snow.
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Right on the money, Lynx
Couldn't have said it better myself.
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A very simple reason for all the contrarians about climate change
But don't you understand Lynx- being stupid is fun.
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UN = Good guys, Big Evil Oil Companies = Bad Guys
That's all you need to know. Follow this rule and you will always be safe.
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How about "Ray doesn't know what he's talking about?"
He says of the ice shelf,
In reality it and all the former shelves that collapsed are small and most near the Antarctic peninsula which...lies in a tectonically active region with surface and subsurface active volcanic activity.*
But the active part of the Antarctic peninsula is, well, not really part of the peninsula: it's the South Shetland Islands, about 900 km from the ice shelf in question and separated from the peninsula by a spreading ridge and the Hero Fracture Zone. (Look at image #5 from the BAS page that Andrew links to.) The Antarctic Peninsula used to be a volcanic arc, but went inactive over 3 million years ago. The Shetland Islands comprise the still-active section.
*Note that, after chopping a big piece out, it's still a confusing run-on sentence. Perhaps he needs to learn about commas before taking on global warming.
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Another Salon drive by shooting,
Gee Andrew,
I don't know why you don't look at the original reports and articles in Science and Nature first before pushing these Exxon blog drifts on us.
For instance I thought these recent Science notes are of more substantive interest:
Science 18 January 2008:
Vol. 319. no. 5861, p. 259
DOI: 10.1126/science.319.5861.259d
Editors' Choice: Highlights of the recent literature
CLIMATE SCIENCE: Whither Antarctic Ice?
Determining how much the Antararctic ice sheet may contribute to sea-level rise through global warming depends on an accurate and precise understanding of the mass balance of two broadly defined regions: the coast and the interior.
Essentially, the coasts appear to be losing mass while the interior is closer to being in balance, but considerable uncertainty remains in current estimates of mass change for the ice sheet as a whole.
In order to better constrain the coastal element of the problem, Rignot et al. have analyzed satellite interferometric synthetic-aperture radar observations of Antarctica's coastline from 1992 to 2006 to estimate ice flux to the oceans.
These measurements, which cover 85% of the coast, show that although East Antarctica probably is not losing mass, widespread losses in West Antarctica totaling 132 ± 60 Gt occurred in 2006, and that ice losses that year at the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula amounted to 60 ± 46 Gt.
Ice mass loss from the coasts increased by 75% over the period of the study.
These results highlight the importance of changes in glacier dynamics, which are so poorly understood that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could not include them in projections of sea-level rise in its 2007 report.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5861/259d
Science 11 January 2008:
Vol. 319. no. 5860, p. 153
DOI: 10.1126/science.319.5860.153b
News Focus: AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION MEETING:
Climate Tipping Points Come In From the Cold by Richard A. Kerr
AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION, 10-14 DECEMBER 2007, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5860/153b?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&andorexacttitle=or&andorexacttitleabs=or&fulltext=Antarctica&andorexactfulltext=or&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=10&sortspec=relevance&fdate=1/1/2008&tdate=3/31/2008&resourcetype=HWCIT
Unfortunately for you I suppose, it's a subscription site unlike Salon's open advert access.
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i can despise exxon without any help, but...
shouldn't we be looking at this 'cooling antarctica' a little more objectively?
exxon might be promoting useful counter-argument, even if by accident. so saying "it's from exxon" is not only not good enough, it harms your argument for 'cooling' by turning towards ad hominem.
it's easy to imagine atmospheric heat melting ice even if the underlying temperature is cooling slightly, it's just a matter of 'heat in - heat out' being positive. that's the important bit, not "exxon".
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Science versus the source of funding
I am with al_loomis here.
It is easy to simply disregard any research which is funded by your political opponents, but doing so basically destroys the whole basis of science.
It is the same thing that our anti-science administration does.
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Money Trail To Nowhere
I also agree. The money trail business is a poor and unecessary argument. It's too close to an ad hominem attack, and the science can totally stand by itself.
Frankly, it sounds like something out of the skeptics play book. They have an entire mythology about the “Global Warming Industry” - The Heinz foundation is co-opting NASA, the scientists hype the issue to get grant money, etc. Arguing that Exxon is to blame just invites a pointless tit for tat, to the exclusion of a real discussion about the science.
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Drive by shooting indeed.....
The ad homnium attacks continue. Unfortunately for Andrew fact and data will win out. That terrible "nest of deniers" at ICECAP present data, not opinions or chat. Incidentally, how about the NASA Aqua satellite data - showing negative,rather than positive feedback on water vapor. Positive is the assupmtion of the warming modellers. No doubt NASA has received money from Exxon over the years....also have fun with this:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html