“Climategate” Gives All The Answers
Many were touting purported Arctic sea ice-melt as the surging sign of Anthropogenic Global Warming, or AGW. Brian Sussman, “ClimateGate: A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes the Global Warming Scam” … of AGW fanatics. Sussman describes how nobody officially measured Arctic ice until satellites became available in 1979.
John Daly, a former USS Skate crewmember in 1959: “the Skate found open water both in the summer and following winter.” Reports of the “least amount of ice in history,” corresponds only to the last 30 years. They don’t include personal accounts by Navy men made before there were satellites to map ice in 1979.
Open Water At North Pole?
In August 2000, the Russian icebreaker Yamal took some environmental scientists on an excursion into the Arctic. Arriving at the North Pole, they noticed expanses of open water. Photographs taken then became the subject of sensationalist reporting.
One scientist there, Dr. James McCarthy, an oceanographer and lead IPCC author exclaimed, “It was totally unexpected,” in relation to finding open water in the Arctic circle in a media report.
Eventually, the New York Times retracted the story. But McCarthy first started the scare. The media simply took his word at face value, assuming scientific credentials would support the story. A typical publicity stunt.
In 2007, many thought AGW caused the most expansive Arctic ice-melt, ever. But few remembered the typical Arctic-autumn refreeze. Just during 10 days in November, a NASA satellite recorded sea ice growing in the Arctic ocean at 58,000 sq.mi./day, equaling the size of Georgia (1).
Polar Mechanics Explained
The most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapor. And it represents over 90 percent of the natural greenhouse effect. However, in the Arctic and Antarctic, the air is extremely dry from extreme cold. It gives CO2 a much better chance to heat dry atmosphere than possible in warmer climates at lower latitudes.
John Daly’s, The Top of the World: Is the North Pole Turning to Water?, explains how cooling and warming of polar areas occurs. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, claims global temperature has risen +0.6°C during the 20th century [6].
To be attributable to greenhouse effect, warming has to follow the greenhouse “fingerprint.” Translating: strong warming at the polar regions, less warming in the tropics, and the least warming in equatorial ocean regions. There, water vapor saturates the absorption wavebands where changes in any of the other greenhouse gases has little additional effect.
Previous ‘claimed’ warming was based on thousands of weather stations worldwide. Most of those stations are located in cities where heat from buildings, roads, and other structures – directly causing URBAN HEAT ISLANDS (UHIs). This creates artificial warming-creep in long-term data.
Solar Radiation The Driver
In the Antarctic Peninsula, there was only warming in 2 percent of the continent, and cooling over 98 percent. Together with that, the global pattern of warming did not fit classic greenhouse “fingerprints.” The Antarctic shows no overall warming since reliable records began there in 1957.
Interestingly, during the very same period, Antarctic sea ice increased in area by about 1.3% per decade [2]. Results suggest both the Antarctic and Arctic are responding to regional factors, not global ones.
One crew member aboard the USS Skate at the North Pole and numerous other locations in 1959, said “The Ice at the polar ice cap is an average of 6-8 feet thick, but with the wind and tides the ice will crack and open into large polynyas (areas of open water), these areas will refreeze over with thin ice. We had sonar equipment that would find these open or thin areas to come up through, thus limiting any damage to the submarine. The ice would also close in and cover these areas crushing together making large ice ridges both above and below the water. We came up through a very large opening in 1958 that was 1/2 mile long and 200 yards wide. The wind came up and closed the opening within 2 hours. On both trips we were able to find open water. We were not able to surface through ice thicker than 3 feet.” [5]
The Sverdrup balance – Wikipedia on Ask.com, radiation chart shows as radiation moves into the infra-red, the ability of the deeper ocean to absorb heat rapidly diminishes. Once we move into the far infra-red where radiation from the greenhouse effect occurs, only the immediate surface ‘skin’ of the ocean absorbs that radiation. Energy collected from the greenhouse effect can only warm the top millimeter of the ocean, with most heat promptly lost again through evaporation.
The limits on thickness of ice are determined by how low the air temperature can get, and on how warm and fast-moving the subsurface water is. Temperatures measured in the Arctic show no recent warming, thus discounting the possibility recent thinning could be caused by atmospheric warming above the ice.
Rather, thinning of ice in the 1990s is clearly associated with a warming of the sub-surface ocean, seen by Science Ice Expeditions (SCICEX) data caused by the strong North Atlantic oscillation – Wikipedia on Ask.com North Atlantic oscillation – Wikipedia on Ask.com, NAO, increasing the flow rate of Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean.
It is obvious all data suggests nothing but natural cycles at work. Are “AGW” believers actually thinking at this point?
[1] James E. Hester, personal email communication, December 2000, from “Top Of The World”: Is The North Pole Turning To Water?,” John Daly, http//wwwjohn-daly.com/polar/arctic.htm.
[2] Cavalieri, D. et al. Observed Hemispheric Asymmetry in Global Sea Ice Changes, Science, v.278, p.1104, 7 Nov 1997
[5] Hester, James E., Personal email communication, December 2000
[6] IPCC WG1, Third Assessment Report, Shanghai draft 21-01-2001
[9] NASA GISS station temperature data from http://www.giss.nasa.gov/data/update/gistemp/station_data/
[16] SEARCH Science Steering Committee, Draft SEARCH Science Plan,
University of Washington, Seattle, 2000
