NASA Study Indicates Antarctica is Gaining More Ice Than It's Losing -

Rx_,

The link "https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/16/can-humans-melt-the-antarctic-icecap/" points to an article that addresses "Could HUMANS melt the ice", not "Could HUMAN activity increase solar absorption world wide". Difference between you using a pedal powered generator to make electricity to power a heating element to melt a piece of ice and you putting black paint on your roof to run water over (on a sunny day) to use the water to melt the ice.

Very good read and, more importantly, expresses just how massive the amount of energy we are talking about. It also explains why so many people grab onto sound bytes as the math itself can be outside of normal understanding.
 
I hope the Al Gores of this world are wrong. But I think we can all agree we would all like less pollution. Air pollution kills around 9,000 people a year in London alone. It seems like a good idea to look hard for cleaner energy sources. Since research is expensive, it won't get done unless people think it is sufficiently urgent to do it, so perhaps the Al Gores have their uses, even if wrong. I am not decided either way, although I usually find myself more often in agreement with those who say we must reduce man's carbon footprint than the other way. No-one can pretend they "know". The trouble is, we may only find out when it's too late to do anything about it.

It's interesting these new billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are coming up with ideas nobody has considered - such as moving heavy industry to another planet. Sounds crazy pie-in-the-sky, but so did going to the moon once. They have the money to do it. Yes they are businessmen, perhaps with their eye on the money they can make, but if they can clean up our planet, why not?

The old problem, as with any debate, is "who do you believe"? Nearly all the people arguing for one side of the other have some vested interest, so the argument is skewed from the start. Science is supposed to be free of bias and purely evidence-based. But unfortunately because human beings are involved, there becomes a "scientific orthodoxy", especially when vested interests are financing research to come up with results that vindicate their position. The debate is not over, but if the Al Gores are right, we can't afford to delay things!
 
The Antarctic Ice Sheet is an important indicator of climate change and driver of sea-level rise.

Here we combine satellite observations of its changing volume, flow and gravitational attraction with modelling of its surface mass balance to show that it lost 2,720 ± 1,390 billion tonnes of ice between 1992 and 2017, which corresponds to an increase in mean sea level of 7.6 ± 3.9 millimetres (errors are one standard deviation). Over this period, ocean-driven melting has caused rates of ice loss from West Antarctica to increase from 53 ± 29 billion to 159 ± 26 billion tonnes per year; ice-shelf collapse has increased the rate of ice loss from the Antarctic Peninsula from 7 ± 13 billion to 33 ± 16 billion tonnes per year.

We find large variations in and among model estimates of surface mass balance and glacial isostatic adjustment for East Antarctica, with its average rate of mass gain over the period 1992–2017 (5 ± 46 billion tonnes per year) being the least certain.
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https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0179-y
 
I hadn't realized there was that little change in mean sea level. Over 25 years the change attributed is between 3.7mm to 11.5mm. From what is shown in the news I'd have expected an order of magnitude greater change at least.
 
Mark_ said:
I hadn't realized there was that little change in mean sea level. Over 25 years the change attributed is between 3.7mm to 11.5mm. From what is shown in the news I'd have expected an order of magnitude greater change at least.
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That is the change calculated just due to melting of the Antarctic ice cap. The big rise is due to thermal expansion of the water which is why the rise in some tropical areas is so large.

It also takes many years for water from melting ice caps to distribute across all oceans. Water flows quite slowly with a few millimetres of fall across thousands of kilometres of distance.
 
G, you and I think of it differently. When it adheres to strict procedural standards and uses valid mathematical concepts, it is science. When it ignores data, uses models with questionable validity, and tries to use "consensus" rather than strict principles of cause and effect, then it is AT BEST on a fringe of science.

Science is not decided by consensus. The consensus was that the sun orbited the Earth and Galileo was a heretic. We all know how THAT turned out, don't we? Correlation is not proof. It is AT MOST corroborating evidence, but doesn't delve into issues such as common 3rd-event correlation, chance correlation, and coincidence. And when the correlation continues to diverge from reality (i.e. the models in use are continuously over-predicting the effect and are unable to correlate to current reality), there comes a point when you must do a strict analysis of the statistics. There is a computation called the "Standard Error of the Estimate" that tells you when you have crap results. When you have 7-fold (not 7%,... seven-fold) errors, the S.E.E. is not indicative of good data. You have a bad result. You need to step back and ask if that model is any good. And if that kind of divergence is what you get, the answer is NO.

Did you watch the video? I don't care if you don't agree, but the guy is knowledgeable and articulate. He knows whatof he speaks. And his refutations of "consensus" climate science issues need to be heard.
 
The_Doc_Man said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA5sGtj7QKQ
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The video touched on how facts are being contorted to support "global warming" (or to be politically correct "climate change"). In my particular case, a professional journal that I subscribe to had an article that made the statement (paraphrased): "that Norfolk has experienced 14 inches of relative sea rise so no one can question the impact of climate change". (The article did casually include the word "subsidence" without any follow-up.)

Note that I emphasized the word "relative". I pointed out to the editor that seven (7) inches of that relative sea rise was the result of the land subsiding due to a meteor impact approximately 35 million years ago and that this fact should be made clear to the readership. The editor responded that no clarification was necessary since the focus of the article concerned how Norfolk was/will be adapting to sea level rise.

Consequently, without being transparent and disclosing the full truth, the readership of this journal has been be left with an exaggerated impression of sea level rise and with the misleading implication that Norfolk can be "saved" by simply "solving" global warming. The reality, Norfolk will continue to sink into the ocean.

An obvious question arises from this one example. How many articles written for the general population twist facts to imply the validity of "global warming"?
 
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Steve R. said:
An obvious question arises from this one example. How many articles written for the general population twist facts to imply the validity of "global warming"?
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I would say proportionately far fewer than those that distort the facts to refute the evidence for global warming (no quotes needed).
 
Patrick J. Michaels is the director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute. Michaels is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. He was a research professor of Environmental Sciences at University of Virginia for 30 years. Michaels was a contributing author and is a reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007
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You might not like this climatologists point of view but it's hardly "rubbish". If you support an opposing view the condemnations are swift and your grants dry up.
 
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AB:
I'm not denying any of his history that you quoted but its only one side of the story.
Partly to redress the balance, this is from wikpedia
Patrick J. Michaels (±1942- ), also known as Pat Michaels, is a largely oil-funded global warming skeptic who argues that global warming models are fatally flawed and, in any event, we should take no action because new technologies will soon replace those that emit greenhouse gases.
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Strange that the Fox network didn't mention his full background
Of course I'm sure that the funding he receives from industry has absolutely no impact on his views!
 
It did indeed - I didn't mention that word though I do have some sympathy with that viewpoint.

My take on the video was that it was at best a selective interpretation of the evidence available from someone whose working life has mainly been paid for by the fossil fuel industry. In other words it was little more than propaganda dressed up as objectivity. There was no attempt made by the interviewer to challenge the views expressed or to provide an alternative narrative for debate

For years, the tobacco giants employed scientists who were paid to deny the health issues associated with their industry. As with the Cato Institute (which Patrick Michaels directs) and which is funded by the Koch brothers, the payment was indirect but the links are undeniable.

Of course some models are wrong or inaccurate - they are models of a future.
Some predictions will be too large and others too small.
Nevertheless, the quality/detail of those models have improved significantly over time and will be further refined in the future.

The evidence is clear that there is significant warming globally and that the rate of increase is not declining. Fossil fuel use is a massive contributor to that rise. There are of course feedback loops and the complexity of the data means that at times there may appear to be conflicting evidence. That doesn't negate the overall evidence about global warming.
 
For years, the tobacco giants employed scientists who were paid to deny the health issues associated with their industry.
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That is the crux of the matter isn't it? A scientist can be influenced by the Koch brothers or by George Soros correct?

I would love to see a third party in this country. Until then we have that Hatfield's and McCoy's running the joint.
 
AccessBlaster said:
That is the crux of the matter isn't it? A scientist can be influenced by the Koch brothers or by George Soros correct?

I would love to see a third party in this country. Until then we have that Hatfield's and McCoy's running the joint.
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Yes of course they can, particularly those who work for partisan organisations.
However there a very large number of scientists who remain objective and whose conclusions can be trusted
 
On a side note, as long as the Presidency is determined by majority vote, precisely two political parties will have power. It really can't happen any other way, as a third party would by its very nature split votes off largely from one party existing party rather than both, thereby providing the party that WASN'T splitting its votes an insurmountable advantage.

A four-party system would result in either no one winning the presidency or else in two parties merging into one, with the results I mentioned above.

If you want more than two major parties, then we need to change how the President is elected.
 
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