The problem here is that the presence of ice as a coolant ensures that the temperature is always around the freezing point.
If the ice is gone there's nothing to clamp that temperature to any specific value and it can rise as it wants.

Incidentally, this is why average sea temperature is a very poor indicator for heat added to the ocean due to the cooling to a nearly fixed temperature which happens at the start of it's cycle. For a good indicator you need to looks at how much ice is melted, since that's where the energy is going at the moment.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

I don't know. Why do you ask?

What I meant by my post is that if we don't start seriously curbing CO₂ it may soon be too late to prevent major economical losses (or much worse). The not at all unlikely potential losses greatly outweigh economical losses caused by environmentalism. Even if that was not the case, it doesn't hurt to think what kind of planet we leave to the coming generations.

Hoping is a rather ineffective (and way too common) way to fix problems. We don't have to reverse our technological level, but use good sense and stop the mindless wasting. Taking care of one's neighborhood is important part of that, but not enough.

I recommend you to read Jared Diamond's Collapse if you're not already done that. He describes rather convincingly how many of the past civilizations were destroyed because they didn't understand or want to tackle environmental problems they (or nature) had caused. Modern civilization is far more robust than the one in the Eastern Island, but on the other hand the problems (not just GW) are global.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

People of the future will tend to be much better off than we are. Those "economical losses" may turn out be that people will have to live with 80-inch high definition TVs instead of 108-inch ones.

The situation is more complicated than that.
The entire Arctic lies in the negative energy flux high latitudes, meaning of course that the annual average heat energy lost to space is higher than insolation. A reduction of sea ice does reduce albedo and increases absorbtion, but it also increases radiation loss to space.

The high latitudes are where the excess heat energy absorbed at low latitudes is radiated to space to maintain the global heat budget. This heat is transported poleward by ocean currents and atmospheric circulation. By raising arctic sea surface temperatures some 40 degrees Kelvin, blackbody radiation is increased. Exposure of arctic surface water also increases downwelling, reducing the temperature of ocean bottom water.

My point is that the heat energy to melt Arctic sea ice is coming from lower latitudes. The exact consequences of an increase in exposed Arctic sea surface on the global heat budget is not yet known. This could well be a negative feedback responsible for holding the measured temperature increases below the predictions.

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"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - George Santayana

William of Occum would be pleased to hear that.. tell me more...




So am I to understand that all the excess heat that the AGW models predict is leaking into space through the poles?

Is that why the world is refusing to warm as predicted by the models?

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/c...TRY=1&SRETRY=0

Is that why in the U.S. the warmest decade was the 1930s and the warmest year was 1934?

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1139

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The Heavens Declare the Glory of Mathematics

So a scientific hypothesis should predict an observation, and also be falsifiable.

Darwins theory of organic evolution predicts speciation = speciation observed = theory validated.

AGW hypothesis predicts increasing CO2 will increase temperatures = temperatures fail to increase = hypothesis fails.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/...NTARY/10575140

shouldn't the increases in CO2 have done something significant?

maybe I am too simple to understand, or is AGW more scripture than science?

can you tell me what tests would falsify AGW?

or maybe there aren't any?

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The Heavens Declare the Glory of Mathematics

It helps to have an understanding of estimated temperature records from ice core samples going back a million years or so.

Basically what those records indicate, is that the Earths Temperature was not stabilized like it is now. It had wild fluctuations between hot and cold and these were not geographically set as to where.

About 10,000-20,000 years ago near the end of the ice age, the oceanic conveyor started up, which is what gives us the rather stabilized climate that we've been enjoying since then.

What global warming is doing, is speeding up the loss of the ice caps at the poles, which is already having effects on the oceanic conveyor.

Once the conveyor is gone, the GWT indicates that areas will have more extreme temperatures, both on hot and cold side of the scales.

The data gathered so far from modern/pre modern temperature records seems to be supporting this prediction of the GWT's, and thats not something even the deniers can hide from. Its happening now.

However it's not as bad as it sounds, as our prehistoric hunter-gatherer ancestors live through both the kind of climate variable situation we are moving to-wards, and through an ice age.

We are a hardy species!

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There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives - US Army Demolitions School

I just saw Hayley's comet, she waved, Said "why you always running in place? Even the man in the moon disappeared, Somewhere in the stratosphere" - Shinedown

http://worldsofothersuns.home.comcast.net/

I doubt that there is any "serious" loss of ice at the poles. Certainly for the Antartica, there is no evidence of ice loss. In fact sea ice last winter was at it greatest extend.

This can be seen in the temperature records here:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/09/so...es-global.html



Our civilisation has much to fear from a new ice age. Glaciers covering northern Europe and North America would be devastating.

In contrast, a few degrees rise in termperatures will have a minor effect, despite what some would like you to believe.

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The Heavens Declare the Glory of Mathematics

That is not what I said, although it remains a possibility that increased reradiation is holding down average increases.

Excess heat energy is, and has always been, reradiated to space. This happens on all of the planets but is complicated on Earth by tectonic movements, liquid water, and life.

The IPCC has determined that increasing CO2 levels have reduced the reradiation of thermal energy causing global warming (which I prefer to call anthropogenic global surface warming). This trapping of heat will tend to be greatest at low to mid latitudes where the atmosphere is thickest and the energy balance is high. Normal heat transfer mechanisms will naturally be extended farther poleward to where this heat can be discarded (higher than 60 degrees latitude where the energy balance is negative).

The established thermal energy transfer mechanisms can, and no doubt usually do, include temporary storage capacity in the ocean bottom water currents that currently have a partial circulation period of about 1450 years. Some 250 million cubic miles of this water are currently within a couple of degrees of freezing. The thermal capacity of this water dwarfs the capacity of the warming atmosphere and ocean surface water. If for the last 10,000 years of the current interglacial this ocean bottom water has been cooling off, we are all in for a rude awakening when ocean currents change drastically and plunge the surface temperatures toward their typical glacial lows.

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"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - George Santayana

One should not forget the fact that people of that time had very different lifestyle and the human impact was much smaller, and the fact that Earth's climate has been unusually stable the time humans have had civilizations. We don't know what happens if temperatures jump many degrees in a century or less.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Two points, Antarctica isn't relevant for the Atlantic conveyor as that's driven by the Arctic ice, and if you look at the two pictures at the start of this article you can see for yourself whether it's serious or not.
Note that that picture is the situation 2½ years ago.

BTW. Denmark had the second record year in a row for average temperature in 2007, beating the previous record year which was 2006.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Enjoy it while you can! If the Atlantic conveyor shuts down, you're going to be reminded how far north you really are!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Re arctic ice: observations dispute your opinion.

http://climate-science.org/index.htm

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"To excel in physics is to embrace doubt while walking the winding road to clarity." - Brian Greene

When an IMAX team went to the Southern Ocean in 1999 to film a movie about Ernest Shackleton, they noticed many features distinctly changed since Shackleton's time.
And that is only about 90 years.

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

Too add to the evidence that others had about the Arctic conveyor. And to support what I stated earlier about earth having an oddly stable climate the last 10000 years because of that conveyor.

Here are the Ice Core Records That page has it own citations for additional information and verification.

Here is the graph showing the 18,000 year record itself, illustrating this stable period.

Additional on that page there are graphs following showing the last 200 year ice core record and 50 year record. You can see a significant break in the stable temperatures from about 47 years ago. Which coincides with the increased fossil fuel usage from the industrial revolution.

Kind of hard to ignore those facts.

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There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives - US Army Demolitions School

I just saw Hayley's comet, she waved, Said "why you always running in place? Even the man in the moon disappeared, Somewhere in the stratosphere" - Shinedown

http://worldsofothersuns.home.comcast.net/

From the same page you linked:

Seems the "significant break in stable temperatures" is a completely different method of measurement for temperatures.

Also, that page was last updated in 2000. Anything more current?

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Scienara: A rejection of reason and evidence.

I think the last publicized Ice Core readings were form 2000, if there are newer ones I can't find them. Doesn't mean there might not be any more recent.

Here is a more recent yearly Temp chart. Even if you use the smoothed out average there is a definite general upturn.

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There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives - US Army Demolitions School

I just saw Hayley's comet, she waved, Said "why you always running in place? Even the man in the moon disappeared, Somewhere in the stratosphere" - Shinedown

http://worldsofothersuns.home.comcast.net/

I actually prefer this graph:

http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/All_Comp.png

it's less scary for little children and actually showns that temperatures haven't increased much since, oh, 1998 despite a massive 3% increase in CO2 from 0.117% of the atmosphere to 0.12%


http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/...l_warming.html

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The Heavens Declare the Glory of Mathematics

I'd prefer this one from a -crediable- souce, NOAA, which does show just just a change since 1998. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate...ed-temp-pg.gif

I personaly wouldn't put any stock in what a science editor for a BBC news said.

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There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives - US Army Demolitions School

I just saw Hayley's comet, she waved, Said "why you always running in place? Even the man in the moon disappeared, Somewhere in the stratosphere" - Shinedown

http://worldsofothersuns.home.comcast.net/

Maybe those observations are not the last word:

http://ianmott.blogspot.com/2007/02/...-shinking.html

"...BBC article that claims that Arctic ice coverage is still receding.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4290340.stm

"September 2005 will set a new record minimum in the amount of Arctic sea ice cover," said Mark Serreze, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSDC), Boulder, Colorado. "It's the least sea ice we've seen in the satellite record, and continues a pattern of extreme low extents of sea ice which we've now seen for the last four years," he told BBC News.

The map showing the change from 1979 to 2000 appears to show incontrovertable evidence that the ice sheet is shrinking. But, luckily, I was able to check the 1960 edition of the Readers Digest World Atlas, prepared under the direction of Frank Debenham, OBE, MA, DSC(hon) Emeritus Professor of Geography at Cambridge, that has plotted the extent of this ice sheet 20 years prior to the first satellite scan.

And surprise, surprise, the large tongues of ice that in 1979 were protruding between Novaya Zemla and Severnaya Zemla, and on the Eastern side of Severnaya Zemla, that is not there today, were also not there in the 1960's.

The BBC map is not clear enough to be certain but it appears that there may have actually been some minimal expansion in the ice limit between Svalbard and Severnaya Zemla. The only portion that does appear to have receded is a small section in the East Siberian Sea.

So while a short, totally inadequate, sample period may indicate a receding Arctic ice sheet, the evidence over a 40 year interval makes it clear that THERE IS NOT THE SLIGHTEST ROOM FOR DOUBT THAT THIS CLAIMED RECEDING TREND IS ENTIRELY WITHIN THE RECENT HISTORICAL RANGE OF VARIATION.

Once again, we have so called "highly respected scientific teams" being caught out making extrapolations from limited data sets. It is not only incompetent but downright lazy to limit one's inquiry to the most convenient data sources. But when this is done in relation to a key evidentiary plank in the "Gullible Warming" debate it is inexcusable..."

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The Heavens Declare the Glory of Mathematics

I must be obtuse, as I cannot decipher anything significant from these graphs, except that maybe there is only limited correlation between CO2 and temperatures, and maybe there is.

This is capped off at the foot of the page with the unbelievable comment:

".....
As Wallace Broecker likes to say, the Earth's climate system is "an angry beast" and one that we should not be poking with sticks, which of course is exactly what we are doing with all our carbon dioxide and other GTG emissions. We don't know exactly when or how "the beast" will react, but we do know that it eventually will...."


an angry beast?

are you suggesting that the climate is an angry beast that should not be poked with sticks?

is this part of some weird earth worshipping cult?

it certainly doesn't look like science.

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The Heavens Declare the Glory of Mathematics

When I was a kid we had the ~1965 version of the atlas your blog dude references in his attempt to challenge the recent observations of arctic ice. I remember being captivated by the same map of the arctic that he used as his source. It was pretty, but hardly the last word on the extent of arctic ice.



source

So, two blogs trumps NOAA and AAAS and a 1960 National Geographic map trumps actual satellite photographs.

... yeah right!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Looks like I've got that atlas (mine is a translated one, printed in 1964).

The map shows only the minimum pack ice line. It is obviously based on observations over many years. As you can see from the NSIDC site open and frozen regions vary a lot from year to year. For example, in 2005 the northeastern passage was open, but not in 2007 even though there was less ice.

You can also observe that the in last summer the ice line receded thousands of kilometers within the line drawn on the map.

It is certain that never in the 20th century Arctic ice coverage had been as low as in 2005. It is unlikely that in the preceding few centuries ice coverage has been that low because of the Little Ice Age period. Last year, the record was broken by about one million km², a deviation of ~3 million km² from average. Summer 2007 minimum was almost as far from 2005 record as 2005 record was from average. You can't possibly say that it is anywhere within the historical range of variation.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

There is room for reasonable doubt, no matter what the information source. It is drier all year, and Spring comes earlier where I have lived since 1975 = Jacksonville, Florida. This has not caused me a hardship, and most people are Ok. A local climate change has occured. I don't know who to believe globally. It appears both side of the debate stoop to serious exaggeration. Recently I heard the Arctic ice pack has recovered nearly all the ice it lost 2001 to fall 2007. The Arctic still has two months more to snow, before melting begins again. Has the new ice age began? Neil

All very reminiscent of the smoking/cancer of lung arguments of years ago. Smoking did not
"cause most smoker's any hardship" or so they said & firmly believed and "most smokers did not get cancer".
And so on for heart disease, emphysema, arterial disease. None so blind...etc.

Surely you mean a local climate change has been observed & you don't know who to believe globally. But have you studied the problem globally? Where did your hearsay evidence on the state of the Arctic ice pack come from?

EDIT got the answer to my last question, -- a guy named Watts

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com...fe-film-at-11/

Look it over & ask youself, would you buy a second-hand car from him??


Another local climate change , in Glacier National Park ?? Only 27 glaciers remain out of the 150 present in 1850.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacier...ark_%28U.S.%29

Neil, please look at the graph to which I linked several posts up. Compare the summer ice area (the green series) to the winter ice area (blue series) for the years after about 1970. It should be clear that the arctic ice recovers in area each year, and that the amount of recovery varies somewhat. Yet that summer ice area has a very steep downward trend. What that means about the quality (age) of the ice has recently been discussed in another thread on this board, but instead of rehashing that, I'll link you to what people who study it had to say about it yesterday.

You may want to check out the source page for that graph too.

Hi tojam: I looked at most of watt's website and I agree it is almost as biased as Al Gore in the opposite direction. I suppose many advocates are guilty of cherry picking, and pretending they did not observe data that supports the opposite view. Likely the truth lies close to the middle. There is however a desparate need to reduce our dependence on Arab oil, and slow the use of non-renewable resources, especially ones that release chemicals bad for human health. Neil

This comment inspired some fantastically amusing imagery.

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The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.

Arthur C. Clarke

The Brain Science Podcast

As the number of category 5 hurricanes in the last five years have exceeded the count in any prior decade, the metaphore is appropriete. Also, my Tornado chasing buddy has had more than triple the encounter rate he could chase down five years ago.

A couple of degrees does not sound like much, but when you start counting the calories in the soil and near the surface of the ocean, it translates to a LOT more energy potential while a storm is gathering.

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jwj

It's a big universe out there...is it really unwinding, really burning out?