[Zipperfish]

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Global warming thewory isn't provable. Then again, neither is gravity.

True, but they're not asking me to pay a gravity tax. Not yet anyway.

It's a bad example anyway gravity is observable. CO2 forcing a climate catastrophe is not. If you want to use gravity, here's a better one.

There's a theory gravity is folding itself at a sub-atomic level into a hidden dimension. This happens at something like 10 to the -17th power the size of an electron. Supposedly when they fire up the Cern Large Haldron Collider it could energize gravity and create mini black holes. Now there's no actual real world evidence for any of that, but they've been doing a lot of math. Computer models were involved I bet. Anyway...based on that theory what do you want to do about it? Suppose not turning on the collider could conceivably destroy the Western economy, and create vast hardships for millions of people. Would you turn it on?

They are going to turn it on btw.

Yeah the same when they first tested the atomic bomb. Some scientists thought it might start a chain reaction igniting the entire atmosphereof the planet. The point I was trying to make is that people that ask for "proof" of anthropogenic global warming, or "proof" of non-anthropogenic global warming are bound to be disappointed. Proof is an ideal, it's used in mathematics. In the real world we deal wiht uncertainties and probabilities, from quantum physics to bridge constrcution.

I'm a string theory sceptic, myslef.

[Zipperfish]

DerbyX DerbyX:

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Global warming thewory isn't provable. Then again, neither is gravity. They are theories. I believe it was Stephen Jay Gould who said that all theories are provisional. Theya re true until theya re replaced by a betetr theory.

It probably makes more sense to talk about things in terms of uncertainties and probabilities.

This article is predictvie. It doesn't say that the arctic ice has disappeared, it says that some scientists have a running bet that it might.

(I'm getting the extended far left screen when I post here is anybody else?)

A bit of a misnomer. Gravity can be demonstrated. They can make predictions about its behaviour and when those predictions happen it constitutes proof. As such its not a good example for comparrison to AGW. Now the constant attacks against evolution make a good example. Despite all the arguments to the contrary and the almost weekly proclamtions that scientists are abandoning it it droves it perserveres just like global warming.

Yeah, I have the same problem--prob'ly because of that monster image you posted, maybe? Sure you can predict gravity, but you can't prove that when you let go of somehting it will fall to the ground. All you can say is that it has happened every other time in every scientific experiment and point to a theory of why that is. But it is possible, though unlikely to happen in the lifetime of our universe, that 51%, insetad of the usual 50%, of the kinetic energy of molecules in a ball are all orineted upward, in which case the ball could fly out of your hand and straight to outer space.

So you can't say with certainty that a ball will drop from your hand.

[Joe_Stalin]

$1:

Fiery submarine volcanoes lurk beneath frigid Arctic waters
SCIENTIFIC PROBE
The Arctic seabed is as explosive geologically as it is politically judging by the “fountains” of gas and molten lava that have been blasting out of underwater volcanoes near the North Pole. “Explosive volatile discharge has clearly been a widespread, and ongoing, process,” according to an international team that sent unmanned probes to the strange fiery world beneath the Arctic ice. They returned with images and data showing that red-hot magma has been rising from deep inside the earth and blown the tops off dozens of submarine volcanoes, four kilometres below the ice. “Jets or fountains of material were probably blasted one, maybe even two, kilometres up into the water,” says geophysicist Robert Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who led the expedition. Canwest News Service

http://digital.nationalpost.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

Hot lava melts ice.
Al Gore 101 truths.

[Canadian_Mind]

due to energy dispersal magma at 3000 degrees might warm the water by a quarter of a degree by the time its effects gets to the surface.

[dino_bobba_renno]

Do you think if warmed up enough up there we could open a water park?

[Joe_Stalin]

Canadian_Mind Canadian_Mind:

due to energy dispersal magma at 3000 degrees might warm the water by a quarter of a degree by the time its effects gets to the surface.

Quarters add up over the years.

[N_Fiddledog]

robmik43 robmik43:

'Green'land sure is white... in the satellite pics that
have the dark purple ice.

You mean the one at this link, right?

June 28 2007 Arctic icepack compared to June 28 2008 Arctic icepack.

Greenland is white because it's snow on land. The ocean ice is colour coded according to depth. But yeah, I think I get your point. Listening to mainstream media reports suggesting Greenland is melting you'd expect to see more green.

I'm enjoying watching the ice pack melt. It changes every day. There is something interesting about Greenland though. The ocean ice pack on the east side has been noticeably smaller and more shallow since the record refreeze of 2007. It's the only area I can remember that was. I thought it would have melted by now, but it's still hanging in there.

[Zipperfish]

Joe_Stalin Joe_Stalin:

Canadian_Mind Canadian_Mind:

due to energy dispersal magma at 3000 degrees might warm the water by a quarter of a degree by the time its effects gets to the surface.

Quarters add up over the years.

So does CO2. What's your point?

[Joe_Stalin]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Joe_Stalin Joe_Stalin:

Canadian_Mind Canadian_Mind:

due to energy dispersal magma at 3000 degrees might warm the water by a quarter of a degree by the time its effects gets to the surface.

Quarters add up over the years.

So does CO2. What's your point?

Women made CO2 has .000000000000000000000000000000002% effect on global warming.
Man made CO2 has .00000000000000000000000000000000003% effect on global warming.

Anything else I can straighten you out on Zipper?

No need to thank me......................
Thats what I do .........................
Educate leftwing fiddlers ...............
and other bewildered lost souls..........

[Canadian_Mind]

Joe_Stalin Joe_Stalin:

Canadian_Mind Canadian_Mind:

due to energy dispersal magma at 3000 degrees might warm the water by a quarter of a degree by the time its effects gets to the surface.

Quarters add up over the years.

no, oceanic currents wash the "heated" water down into the north atlantic. The water will never warm beyond a small percentage of a degree no matter how much or how long the volcanoes down there continue to erupt. It woud take a catclysmic amunt of undersea volcanoes to melt the ice of their own accord, by that I mean they would release so many noxious gases that they would kill off all life on the planet. at whichpoint we wouldn' care about sea ice.

[Zipperfish]

Joe_Stalin Joe_Stalin:

Women made CO2 has .000000000000000000000000000000002% effect on global warming.
Man made CO2 has .00000000000000000000000000000000003% effect on global warming.

Anything else I can straighten you out on Zipper?

No need to thank me......................
Thats what I do .........................
Educate leftwing fiddlers ...............
and other bewildered lost souls..........

Though I do play a few instruments, the fiddle isn't one of them. But I appreciate your efforts to educate me. Good luck--I've never been very educatable.

[stemmer]

Consensus of scientists does not equate to scientific fact. Remember eugenics was believed by the majority of scientists in the early 20th century and eugenics was later adopted by Hitler...

[N_Fiddledog]

Somebody should really take issue with the title of this thread. Not because the North Pole can't melt, but because it happens all the time.

$1:

The New York Times provides us with another instance. (Gee. The New York Times. Again. How about that?) On August 19, 2000, the Times ran an article entitled “Ages-Old Polar Icecap Is Melting, Scientists Find”, which began as follows:

"The North Pole is melting. The thick ice that has for ages covered the Arctic Ocean at the pole has turned to water, recent visitors there reported yesterday. At least for the time being, an ice-free patch of ocean about a mile wide has opened at the very top of the world, something that has presumably never before been seen by humans and is more evidence that global warming may be real and already affecting climate. The last time scientists can be certain the pole was awash in water was more than 50 million years ago."

By now, you probably will not be surprised to learn that none of that is true: the North Pole is not melting, and open water at the North Pole is not at all uncommon during the summer.

The Time’s extraordinary, and extraordinarily wrong, claims were based on the eye-witness reports of two men, “Dr. James J. McCarthy, an oceanographer, director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University” and “Dr. Malcolm C. McKenna, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History” . McCarthy and McKenna both reported to the Times that they had been at, or very near, the North Pole earlier that month, and each had encountered open water, or the thinnest of ice sheets, where in earlier years they had encountered ice many feet thick.

According to McCarthy, encountering a “melting” North Pole made a big impression on his fellow passengers:

Recalling the reaction of passengers when they saw an iceless North Pole, he said: “There was a sense of alarm. Global warming was real, and we were seeing its effects for the first time that far north.”

Fortunately, not only ice gets thick at the North Pole. The following week, the Times had to run a retraction, of sorts, entitled “Open Water at Pole Is Not Surprising, Experts Say”, August 29, 2000:

"The ice covering most of the Arctic Ocean, several researchers said, is broken by long, wide cracks and gaping holes in many places, sometimes even at the pole, and especially in the summer. During a typical summer, 90 percent of the high Arctic region is covered with ice, with the remaining 10 percent open water. This has probably been true for centuries, they said, the result of motions in the ice sheet caused by winds and the force of ocean currents, as well as warming temperatures."

The original alarming proclamation had been trumpeted on page A-1, the front page, and was widely echoed throughout mainstream media. If you do a web search, you will find the article posted or quoted or cited at many websites now, without any indication that it was just about completely wrong. (Some sites do, of course, note the mistake; others have articles devoted to correcting it.) The correction received the same kind of attention in the rest of mainstream media as it did in the Times — which ran it on page D-3. And even the correction has been faulted for errors.

And we are not told if McCarthy’s fellow passengers expressed relief at finding out that their ill-advised expectations had allowed them to be needlessly alarmed, or if they felt they had been made to look the fool, if nowhere else but in the mirror.

Now, the alarmist McCarthy is not merely an oceanographer and a Big Brains Intellectual at Harvard, he is also “the co-leader of a group working for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is sponsored by the United Nations”. The IPCC is one of the world’s biggest coops of Chicken Littles. Unfortunately, mainstream media around the world is happy to announce their sky-is-falling scenarios whenever they come out — if not sooner. Witness a BBC article, October 28, 2000:

"A draft report prepared for the world’s governments says that the Earth may heat up much more than current forecasts suggest. The report, by scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), says average global temperatures could rise twice as much as they thought earlier. Polar icecaps could melt, raising sea levels. It foresees a possible rise of 6C above 1990 levels. Five years ago, the IPCC was predicting a probable maximum increase of 3C."

Notice the weasel words: the planet “may” heat up more than thought before; temperatures “could” rise twice as much as thought before; polar ice caps “could” melt; and, IPCC foresees — foresees? — a “possible” rise in temperature much higher than 1990 levels.

But... but... need this really be said?... but, the planet might not heat up more than thought before, temperatures might not rise twice as much as thought before, polar ice caps might not melt, and temperatures might not rise so much above 1990 levels.

But the title of the article, without weasel words, is even worse:

Global warming ‘worse than feared’.

Source

[Zipperfish]

Most of these news reports, at some time or another, reference the National Snow and ice Datat Center in Colorado. There official line is:

[url]According to scientific measurements, both the thickness and summer sea ice extent in the Arctic have shown a dramatic decline over the past thirty years. This is consisistent with observations of a warming Arctic. The loss of sea ice also has the potential to accelerate global warming trends and to change climate patterns.[/url]

http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20070810_faq.html

[tritium]

HO, HO, HO -- NO SNOW!