I think the point might be that the oceans are not cooling as Rog has suggested. It would be convenient for Rog if they were.

Mike says:
Dan said, "This last year was the 4th lowest extent on satelite record."

So what was the satellite record saying 50, 100, 150, 200 years ago?

Unfortunately, the satellite remote sensing age started around the same time as the upturn in the 60 year cycle ~35 years ago. This has been a strong driving factor in the alarmism.

In the year 1806 whaling captain William Scoresby sailed within sight of the East Greenland coast...
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/the-arctic-voyages-of-william-scoresby/

Also this from Tony Brown

the story begins in 1817 when the Royal Society used the enormous resources at their disposal to investigate the claim that ;

THE ARCTIC IS MELTING

“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated….

(see additional*)

….. this affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.” A request was made for the Royal Society to assemble an expedition to go and investigate.

President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817, Minutes of Council, Volume 8. pp.149-153, Royal Society, London. 20th November, 1817.(from) http://www.john-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm

The quote from the Royal Society is fairly well known, however it is only part of the extract. The missing part –detailed under- heralded the start of modern arctic science.

*Additional…

”Mr. Scoresby, a very intelligent young man who commands a whaling vessel from Whitby observed last year that 2000 square leagues (a league is 3 miles) of ice with which the Greenland Seas between the latitudes of 74° and 80°N have been hitherto covered, has in the last two years entirely disappeared. The same person who has never been before able to penetrate to the westward of the Meridian of Greenwich in these latitudes was this year able to proceed to 10°, 30′W where he saw the coast of East Greenland and entertained no doubt of being able to reach the land had not his duty to his employers made it necessary for him to abandon the undertaking.

Dan McHale says:
the oceans are not cooling as Rog has suggested.

It's all a matter of which revision of the ARGO buoy sensor data you believe.

Josh Willis, the principle investigator on the ARGO project said back in 2007 that the data showed a slight cooling. So the higher ups decided a lot of the buoys must be wrong and threw out a lot of the data...

When that didn't work out and the remaining buoys continued to show a slight cooling, they 'translated' the data so that it now shows a slight rise...

Basically, they re-calibrated to the satellite altimetry sea-level data - which itself had been 'calibrated' to theoretical deliberations by the IPCC scientists on the basis of 'what must be happening due to rising carbon dioxide levels'. Unfortunately there is not one shred of empirical evidence that co2 has caused the increased forcing of around 1.7W/m^2 they claim it should have. In reality, any additional forcing from co2 could easily be negated by a slight shift in the latitude of the jet streams, which has actually been observed.

It'll make a fascinating case study for a historian of science in 20 years time.

Dan McHale says:
I seriously doubt sea levels are falling when Arctic ice can barely maintain, and is losing ground as a trend. This last year was the 4th lowest extent on satelite (sic) record.

Dan, how much do you think sea level would rise if all the ice in the arctic ocean were to melt? Clue-Bat#1, consider the annual variation in sea level when the arctic ice diminishes by ~70% from its winter extent to its summer extent. Here's another whack with the clue-Bat if you can't be bothered to get to grips with the calculator: Ice floats and displaces its own weight in water.

Edit to add:

So if you are going to join the dots, you need to consider that if a downtrend in Arctic sea ice doesn't affect sea level, and the new study shows Antarctic mass holding steady over the last 30 years, the alleged rise in sea level must be down to two factors:

1) The steric contribution (thermal expansion), due to the Sun being more active in the late C20th than it was over the previous 300 years of records, and:

2) The runoff from glaciers and rivers.

The problem with 2) is rivers are doing what they've always done and Greenland's mass hasn't been changing either, according to the geodesics satellites measuring small shifts in gravity. Or at least, until that data got 're-calibrated' too...

Which leaves us with 1). Coincidentally (not) the Sun has been very quiet these last few years, and sea level 'rise' has gone into reverse...

Edited by tallbloke on 02/21/2012 01:13:18 MST.

I bring up the Arctic ice as it is related to warm oceans not displacement. I could say it's a barometer for a warming ocean but then you'll get the clue-bat out. Antarctica is a different story. It will be possible for it to maintain ice mass at the same time the oceans around it are warming - for awhile. The increased precip from warming is giving it more but warmer snow....but things are still warming so that scenario won't last. Same thing is happening in Greenland. Here's a quick read for others;

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/08/antarctic-ice-future/

I've come up with a closer to home metaphor for what heavier warmer wetter snow is like....and then as things warm afterward it collapses. I don't think that stadium design was falty as much as nobody saw the climate changing that much. Antarctica was known for its dry COLD climate where small amounts of precip in the form of snow lasted forever and could accumulate over time. That is changing to higher quantities of warmer wet snow just like in the midwest. At some point in the warming you get more rain and then things start to melt;

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/541437-metrodome-collapse-video-watch-the-roof-rip-open



This is also interesting in regards to sea level rise;

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/08/26/sea-level-rise-has-slowed-temporarily/

Edited by wildlife on 02/21/2012 01:51:52 MST.

Dan sez:
I bring up the Arctic ice as it is related to warm oceans not displacement.

And earlier he sez:
I seriously doubt sea levels are falling when Arctic ice can barely maintain, and is losing ground as a trend. This last year was the 4th lowest extent on satelite (sic) record.

Since he didn't understand that the melting of floating ice doesn't affect sea level, perhaps he doesn't understand that a warmer ocean is a thermally expanded ocean and that this accounts for around half the sea level change, currently falling - not rising, despite the allegedly melting glaciers and supposedly increasing sea temperatures.

Dan sez:
Antarctica was known for its dry COLD climate where small amounts of precip in the form of snow lasted forever and could accumulate over time. That is changing to higher quantities of warmer wet snow

Yeah Dan, Antarctica has 'warmed' from something like minus 49.9 to minus 49.7 in 30 years. I can imagine how much wetter the snow is there now. (not).

"I seriously doubt sea levels are falling..."

I vaguely remember Rog (or maybe it was someone else) saying that the sea level is rising, but it's because it's getting warmer. Water expands when it gets warmer. Not enough melted glaciers yet to be significant.

Jerry says:
"Not enough melted glaciers yet to be significant."

A thing to remember about glaciers is that when they are advancing, chunks fall off them into the sea. When they are retreating, chunks melt off them and fall into the sea then as well.

Jerry says:
"the sea level is rising, but it's because it's getting warmer. Water expands when it gets warmer."

And so now the level is falling, it's because.... come on now, join the dots, you're nearly there. ;-)

Here's the envisat unadjusted data:

.

That trend is about an inch in 55 years.

Al Gore lied.

Edited by tallbloke on 02/21/2012 08:33:08 MST.

@Rog - you make a huge hoopla whenever the word "denier" is used in context of climate change, and yet you use "alarmism":

"This has been a strong driving factor in the alarmism"

If one is considered offensive then both are.

Feel free to find a word which describes those who want us to believe that human activity is causing the world to warm up by 5C in a century and sea levels to rise causing mass refugee problems and so on and on (and on).

What is your suggestion?

What really is the difference those scientists who believe that global warming is caused by human activities and those who believe it is not?
Both groups would claim to be scientists and both use much the same data but just interpret it differently.
In other fields scientists with opposing views are still called scientists, so why should climate scientists be different?
Those who then take scientific opinion and use it for their own agenda are variously called politicians, technocrats, w@nkers etc

Scientists publish.

Not everyone with a graph and opinion is a scientist.

Has anyone ever used the term "Gore-ist", as in Al Gore?
Can be a verb: "Don't Gore the lack of data"
Can also be an adjective: "Quite a Gorey chap, isn't he!"
Endless possibilities, endless fun!

Rog, it's clear that I already said I'm using Arctic Ice as a barometer for warming. Sea level dropping goes in general with a cooling trend, and so if the Arctic Ice is not recovering then the oceans are not cooling as you say. I will take your insinuations that I don't understand the dynamics of sea ice as a character flaw in you. You keep talking about instruments being recalibrated but Arctic Ice loss in both extent and volume can't be hidden in misinterpretations of data as you like to do.

Besides, sea levels are not dropping, only the rate of sea level rise has decreased. And your exerpt from 1817 does not say much. A 2 year observation is mentioned and then some ice somewhere dissappears, which as we know, can be explained with shifts of winds with the oscilations, just like this year there is considerable ice in the Bering sea, but overall, ice extent is down.

As for the Antarctic, this read below is more interesting than your TOO general statement.... and I simply made a metaphor for warmer snow as I said, a fairly appropriate one at that;

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110410181313.htm

Edited by wildlife on 02/21/2012 13:08:53 MST.

The Antartic Larsen A and Larsen B glaciers have recently broken up

Although they won't effect sea level because they were floating, they are buttressing glaciers on land that are now moving faster and may also quickly break up

Interesting times we're in

I've been trying to follow what is going on in Greenland as well, and even get to loan a couple of large packs to a research team this Spring. I was aware of how the Petermann Glacier was changing in 2010 and just now was looking for updates. Here's the story for 2011 - yeah, sure sounds like things are cooling down!

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44353322/ns/today-today_news/t/second-giant-ice-island-set-break-greenland-glacier/

Stuart says:
What really is the difference those scientists who believe that global warming is caused by human activities and those who believe it is not?

One of them is right.

Name calling won't make any difference to that. Mother nature was able to change the climate by bigger amounts faster than we saw in the last 30 years long before man set fire to coal. Occam's razor says she still can. The debate won't really be settled until she shows us how fast she can make things colder again. Even then I expect the data manipulators will magic a lot of the natural variation away. For example the arctic ice bean counters have been busily re-defining what counts as arctic ice over the last few years...

Dan sez:

"And your exerpt from 1817 does not say much. A 2 year observation is mentioned and then some ice somewhere dissappears, which as we know, can be explained with shifts of winds with the oscilations,"


“The uncharted coastline of east Greenland became clear of ice around 1820, and in 1822 Scoresby, in the midst of an arduous whaling voyage, sailed along some 400 miles of this inhospitable landscape, charting it, and naming point as he went in honour of scientific and other friends, chief of which was Scoresby Sound, named for his father. Almost all his place names survive today.”

So we have clear evidence of substantial melt in the years prior to 1817, during 1817 around 1820 and that ice returned in subsequent years but then retreated again, as recorded here;

http://www.archive.org/stream/arcticgeographye00roya/arcticgeographye00roya_djvu.txt

“On the voyage to Greenland in 1828, Captain Graah fell in with the first ice in 58° 52′ lat. n., and 41° 25′ w. Greenwich, which is only 57′ s., and about 77 nautical miles to the eastward of Cape Farewell ; and he says, ” Since 1817, I do not know that the ice has been seen so far to the eastward of the Cape.” — ‘ Narrative of an Expedition to the East Coast of Greenland, by Cnpt. W. A. Graah, Royal Danish Navy,’ p. 21

Doesn't sound like a temporary inter-annual oscillation in arctic atmospheric circulation to me Dan.

Stuart says:
What really is the difference those scientists who believe that global warming is caused by human activities and those who believe it is not?

Roger says:
One of them is right.


Not necessarily. Could be a combination of both. Correct?

Camoron says:
Not everyone with a graph and opinion is a scientist.

At least the info and original research I offer in my posts holds more of substance and interest than your single liner attempted put-downs. Even Dave T is more inventive, if repetitive.

Nick says:
Not necessarily. Could be a combination of both. Correct?

Stuart set up the dichotomy, but yes, in principle you are right. However, my calcs and those of other researchers I work with say there is very little room for any anthropogenic addition to the natural variation.

For example, the new theory put forward by Drs Nikolov and Zeller on my website shows that for eight solar system bodies, the correct surface temperature can be calculated from two variables plus their regression constants; the distance from the Sun, and the mass of the atmosphere. Composition and albedo are thereby subsumed into the effect of gravity on atmospheric mass, which creates the surface pressure and density which determines surface temperature. Fluctuations within this overarching relationship would therefore be due to outside changes, principally solar variation.

Edit for name change, sorry Nick!

Edited by tallbloke on 02/21/2012 17:01:07 MST.