Anatomy of A False Panic
I am trying to keep most of my long climate posts off this site and over at Climate Skeptic. However, I have cross-posted this one because it is a good example for laymen of just what crap gets put forward in the media today about global warming. It demonstrates the gullibility of the media, the gross exaggerations that exist in nearly every climate catastrophe article, and, as an added bonus, demonstrates the scientific incompetence of the man who leads the UN, the organization that has taken onto itself the role of summarizing the state of climate science.
OK, here is a great example of the media blithely accepting panicky catsrophism where none is warranted (Link HT to Maggies Farm)
Scientists
welcomed Ban Ki Moon to Antarctica with a glass of Johnny Walker Black
Label served "on the rocks" with 40,000-year-old polar ice. But the
researchers delivered an alarming message to the UN Secretary-General
about a potential environmental catastrophe that could raise sea levels
by six metres if an ice sheet covering a fifth of the continent
crumbles.The polar experts, studying the effects of global warming on the icy
continent that is devoted to science, fear a repeat of the 2002
collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf. The 12,000-year-old shelf was 220
metres (720ft) thick and almost the size of Yorkshire."I was told by scientists that the entire Western Antarctica is now
floating. That is a fifth of the continent. If it broke up, sea levels
may rise as much as six metres," Mr Ban said after being briefed at the
Chilean, Uruguayan and South Korean bases during a day trip to King
George Island, at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. ...Eduardo Frei Montalva Air Force Base, a year-round settlement of
corrugated-iron cabins belonging to Chile, lies in one of the world's
worst "hot spots" "“ temperatures have been rising 0.5C (0.9F) a decade
since the 1940s.
I don't even know where to start with this. So I will just fire off some bullets:
-
Over the last 30 years, satellites have found absolutely no warming trend in Antarctica (from UAH via Steven Milloy):
- The tail is measuring the dog. The Korean station
couldn't possibly be more irrelevent to measuring Antarctic
temperatures. It is on an island labelled 26-34 north of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula in the map below. One might as well declare she is measuring temperatures in the continental US from Key West.
-
It is well known that the Antarctic Penninsula,
representing 2% of Antactica's area, is warming while the other 98% is
cooling. I discussed this more here.
Al Gore took the same disingenuous step in his movie of showing only
the anomolous 2%. The Antarctic Penninsula in the first graph below shows
warming. The rest of Antarctica shows none (click to enlarge)
-
The IPCC (run by the Secretary General and his organization) predicts that with global warming, the
Antarctic penninsula will see net melting while the rest of Antarctica
will see net increases in ice. The penninsula is affected more by the
changing temperatures of sea currents in the surrounding seas than in
global climate effects. For most of Antarctica, temperatures will
never concieveably warm enough to melt the ice sheets, since it is so
cold even in the summer, and ice sheets are expected to expand as
warming increases precipitation on the continent. -
Scientists studying Antarctica have been there at most a few
decades. We know almost nothing about it or its histroy. We certainly
don't know enough about "what is normal" to have any clue if activities
on the Larson B ice shelf are anomolous or not. -
The UN Sec-gen said that this ice shelf represented a fifth of
the continent. Here, in actuality, is the Larsen ice shelf. The red
box below greatly exaggerates Larsen's size, and Larsen-B is only a portion
of the entire Larsen shelf.
- The statement that the entire Western Antarctic is floating is
just absurd. God knows what that is supposed to mean, but even if we
ignore the word "floating", we can see from the map above we aren't
even talking about a significant portion of the Antarctic Pennninsula,
much less of Western Antarctica. Here are actual pictures of the 2002 event. (by the way, if ice is really "floating", presumably in sea water, then it's melting will have zero effect on ocean levels) - Such a feared collapse already happened 5 years ago, and sea levels did not budge. But
the next time it happens, sea levels are going to rise 20 feet?? Even
the UN's IPCC does not think sea levels will rise more than 8-12 inches
in the next century due to their overblown temperature forecasts.
As always, you can consult my my book and my movie (both free online) for more details on all these topics.
la petite chou chou:
Those pictures are pretty cool.
I love how easy it is for hard-core enviros to ignore facts...
November 13, 2007, 1:07 ammarkm:
And last of all, if floating ice breaks up, there's zero effect on sea level.
November 13, 2007, 4:13 amla petite chou chou:
Yeah, I was trying to figure out how floating ice in one piece was any different than floating ice in many pieces...Clearly it didn't add up.
November 13, 2007, 11:30 amAndy:
Considering that scientists only recently discovered the Tasmanian deep sea current, it boggles the mind how any declarative statements can be made about climate when we only know enough to know that we know next to nothing -- sort of like projecting Larsen B to the whole of GW. [/head shake]
November 13, 2007, 1:57 pmscraphoops:
“I was told by scientists that the entire Western Antarctica is now floating. That is a fifth of the continent. If it broke up, sea levels may rise as much as six metres,†Somebody needs to replace their scientists with one's that know ice floats.
November 13, 2007, 5:48 pmNeoLibertarian:
Actually, since in the last few degrees before freezing water expands, ice takes more space than water. That's why if you leave a closed container of water in the freezer or out in the snow, it often bursts when the water becomes ice. As a kid I remember seeing even a large, lidless butter tub full of frozen water that just split down the side (the ice could've gone up, but osmosis is not really at play that close to a solid state).
So really, unless I'm mistaken, the melting of floating sea ice could cause sea levels to drop, if anything. I could be wrong, I'm not a scientist, but it seems like this would be the case.
November 16, 2007, 5:21 pmJonas N:
NeoLibertarian,
No, the higher volume (=lower density) is the reason ice is floating. The net-effect is exactly zero! The disapearing ice volume you refer to is the volume you se above sea levels as long as its ice and thus floating
November 18, 2007, 4:14 am