Tuesday, April 28, 2009

No vote on climate change?

Maybe they saw this?

For a Democratic Caucus that has made the enactment of climate change legislation one of its highest priorities — Pelosi has called climate change the issue of her generation — the admission from a Democratic leader that the House may not vote on a long-awaited but controversial cap-and-trade bill this year is significant.

But it also speaks to how politically difficult a cap-and-trade vote could be. And it is a reflection of a reality in Congress: a cap-and-trade bill doesn’t have the votes to pass. While that could change in the months to come, few — if any — on Capitol Hill believe it has the necessary 60 votes in the Senate.


That's hard to believe but I will take all the good news I can get.

Maybe some of their staff has being reading:

The climate is cooling."

Or watching this.

Or reading:

Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.



Link to above.

Or have figured out the sun is the real problem.

Dr. Kenneth Tapping is worried about the sun. Solar activity comes in regular cycles, but the latest one is refusing to start. Sunspots have all but vanished, and activity is suspiciously quiet. The last time this happened was 400 years ago -- and it signaled a solar event known as a "Maunder Minimum," along with the start of what we now call the "Little Ice Age."

Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, says it may be happening again. Overseeing a giant radio telescope he calls a "stethoscope for the sun," Tapping says, if the pattern doesn't change quickly, the earth is in for some very chilly weather.


Link to the above.

Or decided that may some real scientists should be listened to?

At December's U.N. Global Warming conference in Poznan, Poland, 650 of the world's top climatologists stood up and said man-made global warming is a media generated myth without basis. Said climatologist Dr. David Gee, Chairman of the International Geological Congress, "For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming?"

I asked myself, why would such obviously smart guy say such a ridiculous thing? But it turns out he's right.


The earth's temperature peaked in 1998. It's been falling ever since; it dropped dramatically in 2007 and got worse in 2008, when temperatures touched 1980 levels.


Link to above.


Or have decided to wait for the hot spot to be found.

5 comments:

  1. From the Wiki on Artic Shrinkage:

    Arctic shrinkage is the decrease in size of the Arctic region (as defined by the 10 °C (50 °F) July isotherm). This is a change in the regional climate as a result of global warming. Recent projections of sea ice loss suggest that the Arctic ocean will likely be free of summer sea ice sometime between 2059 and 2078.[1] Because of the rapid response of the Arctic to global warming, it is often seen as a high-sensitivity indicator of climate change. Scientists also worry about the potential release of methane from the arctic region, especially through the thawing of permafrost and methane clathrates, which could be released to the atmosphere and accelerate global warming, as methane is a powerful greenhouse gas.According to Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), NASA satellite data shows that there has been a 50% decrease of perennial Arctic ice between February 2007 and February 2008.[54]

    While the cold winter did allow ice to re-cover much of the Arctic Sea surface area during the Winter of 2007/2008, conditions were far from normal as the pair of NASA images to the right reveals. The February 2008 ice pack contained much more young ice than the long-term average, and the total volume was arguably the lowest on record. In the past, more ice survived the summer melt season and had the chance to thicken over the following winter. In the mid- to late 1980s, over 20 percent of Arctic sea ice was at least six years old; in February 2008, just 6 percent of the ice was six years old or older.[55]

    NSIDC says

    Arctic sea ice extent during the 2008 melt season dropped to the second-lowest level since satellite measurements began in 1979, reaching the lowest point in its annual cycle of melt and growth on September 14, 2008. Average sea ice extent over the month of September... was 4.67 million square kilometers... The record monthly low, set in 2007, was 4.28 million square kilometers... the now-third-lowest monthly value, set in 2005, was 5.57 million square kilometers... The 2008 season strongly reinforces the thirty-year downward trend in Arctic ice extent. The 2008 September low was 34% below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000 and only 9% greater than the 2007 record... Because the 2008 low was so far below the September average, the negative trend in September extent has been pulled downward, from –10.7 % per decade to –11.7 % per decade. [2]

    Here's something a bit more substantial:

    September sea-ice cover in the Arctic Ocean projected to vanish by 2100Julien Boé1, Alex Hall1 & Xin Qu1


    The Arctic climate is changing rapidly1. From 1979 to 2006, September sea-ice extent decreased by almost 25% or about 100,000 km2 per year (ref. 2). In September 2007, Arctic sea-ice extent reached its lowest level since satellite observations began3 and in September 2008, sea-ice cover was still low. This development has raised concerns that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in late summer in only a few decades, with important economic and geopolitical implications. Unfortunately, most current climate models underestimate significantly the observed trend in Arctic sea-ice decline4, leading to doubts regarding their projections for the timing of ice-free conditions. Here we analyse the simulated trends in past sea-ice cover in 18 state-of-art-climate models and find a direct relationship between the simulated evolution of September sea-ice cover over the twenty-first century and the magnitude of past trends in sea-ice cover. Using this relationship together with observed trends, we project the evolution of September sea-ice cover over the twenty-first century. We find that under a scenario with medium future greenhouse-gas emissions, the Arctic Ocean will probably be ice-free in September before the end of the twenty-first century.
    More recently:

    Mon Apr 6, 2009
    LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Arctic sea ice, a key component of Earth's natural thermostat, has thinned sharply in recent years with the northern polar ice cap shrinking steadily in surface area, government scientists said on Monday.

    Thinner seasonal sea ice, which melts in summer and freezes again every year, now accounts for about 70 percent of the Arctic total, up from 40 to 50 percent in the 1980s and '90s, the researchers said, citing new satellite data.

    At the same time thicker ice, which lasts two summers or more without melting, now comprises less than 10 percent of the northern polar ice cap in winter, down from 30 to 40 percent. Just two years ago, the thicker so-called perennial sea ice made up 20 percent or more of the winter cap.

    Scientists have voiced concerns for years about an alarming decline in the size of the Arctic ice cap, which functions as a giant air conditioner for the planet's climate system as it reflects sunlight into space.

    As a greater portion of the ice melts, it is replaced by darker sea water that absorbs much more sunlight, thus adding to the warming of the planet attributed to rising levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere by human activity.

    "The ice cover plays a key role in the climate," Thomas Wagner, the chief snow and ice scientist for NASA, said in a conference call with reporters. "The thicker ice particularly is very important, because it's the thicker ice that survives the summer to stay around and reflect that summer sunlight."

    Walter Meir of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, added, "We're getting an ice cover as we finish the winter and head into summer that's much more vulnerable to the summer melt and much more likely to melt completely and expose that dark ocean."The decade-long trend of a contracting ice cap around the North Pole is continuing as well.

    The maximum extent of Arctic sea ice for the winter of 2008-09 was measured at 5.85 million square miles (15.2 million square km), the fifth-lowest winter peak on record. That tally represents a loss of some 278,000 square miles (720,000 square km), about the size of Texas, from the winter peak averaged from 1979 to 2000.The six lowest measurements since satellite monitoring began in 1979 have all occurred in the past six years.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The fact is that it is now expanding, and has now reached 1979levels. Is it thin? So what? As it chnages from a warming trend to a cooling trend you would expect it to be thin and thicken over the years.

    All this GW BS is about is giving the UN control over us and putting money in the friends of governemnt pockets.

    Now, go cower under the bed in fear of the world getting colder....

    ReplyDelete
  3. The fact is that it is now expanding, and has now reached 1979levels. Is it thin? So what? As it chnages from a warming trend to a cooling trend you would expect it to be thin and thicken over the years.What part of

    The maximum extent of Arctic sea ice for the winter of 2008-09 was measured at 5.85 million square miles (15.2 million square km), the fifth-lowest winter peak on record.
    do you find difficult to understand?

    It didn't expand, it's the 5th-LOWEST WINTER PEAK ON RECORD!

    THE LOWEST SIX MEASUREMENTS SINCE 1979 HAVE BEEN THE LAST SIX YEARS!

    All this GW BS is about is giving the UN control over us and putting money in the friends of governemnt pockets.For every complicated problem there is a solution that is easy, neat, and wrong.

    Now, go cower under the bed in fear of the world getting colder...No, you were there first to hide from the Islamofascists jihadis, you snore and your feet are even colder :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Perhaps you can't read:

    1/1/2009


    Thirty years of sea ice data. The record begins at 1979, the year satellite observations began (Source: Arctic Research Center, University of Illinois)Rapid growth spurt leaves amount of ice at levels seen 29 years ago.


    Thanks to a rapid rebound in recent months, global sea ice levels now equal those seen 29 years ago, when the year 1979 also drew to a close.

    Ice levels had been tracking lower throughout much of 2008, but rapidly recovered in the last quarter. In fact, the rate of increase from September onward is the fastest rate of change on record, either upwards or downwards.

    The data is being reported by the University of Illinois's Arctic Climate Research Center, and is derived from satellite observations of the Northern and Southern hemisphere polar regions.

    Each year, millions of square kilometers of sea ice melt and refreeze. However, the mean ice anomaly -- defined as the seasonally-adjusted difference between the current value and the average from 1979-2000, varies much more slowly. That anomaly now stands at just under zero, a value identical to one recorded at the end of 1979, the year satellite record-keeping began.

    Now. Go worry about something that might happen, Gobal Cooling.

    (see post for link)

    ReplyDelete
  5. BTW - Have you noticed how the FEAR SPECULATION is tossed in?


    BTW - 9/09, 10/09, 11,09, 12/09...then we will know how the ice ended for 2009.....

    ReplyDelete