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Best Kept Secrets

October 8, 2009, 9:12 am

Some of the best kept secrets in today's world are not in the CIA, but in climate.  For example, I am sure you saw all the news a couple of years ago that Arctic sea ice extent hit an "all-time" low (by all time they mean since 1979 when we had satellites watching the ice).  But, did you know that on the exact same day, the Antarctic sea ice hit extent an "all time" high?  No?

OK, try this.  When people talk about rising oceans, only land ice matters (since sea ice floats, like ice cubes in your drink, their melting has no effect on ocean levels).  I am sure you have heard that scientists think that Greenland ice caps, representing 10% of the world's land ice, have melted at record high rates over the last couple of years  (yet again, keeping in mind the observation period is only about 30 years).  Did you know, though, that during the exact same period, Antarctic land ice representing 89% of the world's land ice has melted at record low rates?  No?  But the studies are done by the same people who did the Greenland work that were published everywhere.

You see, the press really can keep a secret nowadays.

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Category: Climate
  • hoglet

    I believe that the rise in sea levels would occur primarily from the seawater heating up and expanding. I may be wrong about this but I think even if the ice caps melted the rise in sea level would be negligible as even land ice displaces seawater as it's massive bulk pushes down on the land.
    I think the melting (yet also accumulating) glaciers and ice caps are a useful alarmist tool, though.

  • Maddog

    The real tragedy is the damage the pro-warmist scientists are doing by producing antiscientific crap like Mann's hockey stick graph and subsequent "rehabilitative" papers. By cherry picking data, keeping the data, analysis, and statistical evidence from the public, their peers and even the scientific peer reviewers they are eroding trust in science generally. The implosion could hurt climate sciences for years.

  • nom de guerre

    "there is no truth in 'pravda'".

  • Dr. T

    As far as I can tell, many humans have an innate desire to believe that we are a powerful but terrible species due to the effects of our advancements. (This probably is a reflection of their poor self-image. They believe that they are worthless lumps, and they want to believe the same of everyone else.) These people insist that humans are destroying the earth by polluting, cutting forests, disseminating toxic herbicides and pesticides, and burning fuels that will cause melting of polar ice. When confronted with evidence that those activities are, at most, minor nuisances to planet earth, they get defensive and unreasonable: they rant, rail, make ad hominem attacks, and start name-calling. No amount of evidence or logical arguments will sway them. (The media, recognizing this, conveniently help bury the evidence.)

    When I meet such people, my response is: if excess carbon dioxide will warm the planet and melt the poles, you can help prevent it by permanently refraining from exhaling. Thank you. I will enjoy your long silence.

  • Dr. T

    Hoglet:

    Perform the following experiment:

    1. Get two quarts of cool water and put it into a tall container. Mark the surface level. Drain it.

    2. Pour two quarts of warm water into the container. Note that the surface level is essentially identical.

    The thermal expansion of water is very small and is not enough to cause flooding. Global warming catastrophe-mongers go to any length to "prove" that burning fossil fuels will destroy the planet. Their deceitfulness is almost beyond belief.

  • Steve

    Dr. T,

    Isnt' your experiment another version of "weigh a pound of feathers and a pound of gold," the determining that their densities are the same because the weight is the same?

    Of course two quarts of warm and two quarts of cold water occupy the same volume... two quarts.

  • http://stfuretard.blogspot.com Retardo

    Not a physicist here, but water expands when it freezes, thus becoming less dense. That's why ice floats. Of course water also expands when it turns to steam, but outside of Al Gore's imagination the oceans don't boil.

    Also, two quarts of anything is pretty close to the same volume as two quarts of anything else.