Comments on: NASA images show thinning Arctic sea ice

The space agency and the National Snow and Ice Data Center are concerned over data showing smaller amounts of thick permanent ice and more thin melting ice caps.

[w00master]

I'd love to hear the responses from the Global Warming deniers. Come on, bring it.

[TinyIoda]

Im not sure anyones ever outright denied the existance (well in general anyways).. but the causes Vs natural cycles are still up in the air..

[yanchineseguy]

Even setting aside the argument of whether global warming is caused by human actions or not, I think we still should pay attention to it, and take appropriate action to mitigate the impact. Regardless of who or what is causing this change in climate, we'll still be feeling the impacts - whether it's rising sea levels, larger storms, or declining food production.

[mistergray]

Hopefully, these latest measurements do not include the blunder reported back in February...

Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- A glitch in satellite sensors caused scientists to underestimate the extent of Arctic sea ice by 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles), a California- size area, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said.

[Michichael]

Ok, here goes... IT'S NATURAL. "Scientists" are claiming there is a global warming trend based on less than 0.00000075% (if you estimate the earth to be 4 billion years old and this to be 30 years of data...) of the earth's weather pattern history.

Anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of astrophysics or geophysics will explain to you that the earth's rotation about it's axis is not perfect. No planet's is. Therefor, as we spin about our axis, the planet tends to "wobble" and have an increase or decrease in the angle that our axis is at in relation to the sun.

We're currently in a phase where the angle is decreasing (if you consider an angle between the equator and the north pole acute towards the sun negative, and that angel obtuse to the sun as positive). what this translates in lay-mans terms is the northern hemisphere is tilting more and more TOWARDS the sun, increasing the overall amount of solar radiation, such as light and heat, that the northern hemisphere absorbs. This translates to, *gasp*, less ice!

Now I'm sure you're familiar with the doomsday theories etc surrounding 2012 because of the Mayan calendars... the Mayan's saw what any astrologist has observed - that "tilting" will peak around 2012, and the earth's tilt will start reversing, meaning the southern hemisphere will start getting more and more light and the northern less and less. This will translate to "global cooling" for a few decades.

This has been "How not to sound like an eco-****" with your host, me. Enjoy.

Fun fact: the worst impact humans had on the environment was when we used synthetic chemicals that hurt the ozone layer over Antarctica. Greenhouse gasses, while they may have a LOCAL affect on the ecology of a region, do not affect the overall global climate in any notable way. Volcanoes and natural forest fires produce 85-95%, depending on the source you cite, of greenhouse gasses on the planet.

[MaggieRed]

This is a stupid report because this section of NASA wants more government money.

Think about it, with your brain that is. The Earth's climate is cyclical, and we've just come out of a warming trend for a last 10 years, so of course there will be more new ice less than a few years old.

Obviously the rocket scientist are too stupid to understand their own science or they are pandering to the political winds. You be the judge.

My guess is the latter.

BTW, you do know what NASA stands for?

[martin1212]

Michichael, you are talking nonsense. Which wobble are you talking about? The 18 year nutation which has a scale of 11 arcseconds (ie microscopic). Or the 26000 year precession which is far too long to have an effect on a timescale of years? Facts and references to peer reviewed articles please, not vague impossible to verify ramblings passed off as some kind of proof.

By the way, people who study this stuff scientifically are called astronomers, not astrologists. Sheesh.

[Michichael]

Forgive my typo, as the Mayan's had a large store in superstition they're qualified as astrologists, whereas physicists are astronomers.

[craigd999]

see my June 10th response. Amazing how easily one can manipulate the uneducated mind.

[mcolt12]

They better call Al Gore

[mjconver]

Warming, schwarming, what's the big deal? Buy some land in central Canada, your great-grandchildren will thank you.

[yanchineseguy]

The big deal, as you pointed out by the "land in central Canada" comment, is that melting ice that results in higher sea levels will have negative impact to current coastal areas. Maybe you don't care about that, but the people who live in those areas do. And your great-grandchildren who own the land in central Canada will still be impacted by that shift in population due to changes in available land areas.

[mistergray]

Secular sea level is rising a whopping 3 mm per year here on the Northeast coast of the US. (That's about one foot per century.) I think we are safe for the time being.

[plstudt]

Right on. Ice melting in your drink glass does not cause it to over flow. Some Greek guy did the experiment over 2000yrs. ago. Like wise melting Arctic sea ice does not change sea level beyond density variations driven by water temperature and salt density in the water. Only melting land based ice draining into the sea will drive up the sea level. 'course tectonic plate movement causes massive land surface rise and fall without any apparent reference to human presence or absence. Many ancient seaports along the Mediterranien shore are now many miles inland--without human action.

[BlackCloud_62]

Michichael: what makes you think the Mayans were superstitious, or just "astrologists" as opposed to astonomers. We really don't know that much about them. We DO know that they had an extremely accurate Lunar calendar, and could predict the movement of the planets with extraordinary accuracy. On the other hand, I haven't heard much of anything concerning their "superstitions."

mjconver: Warming... the big deal is that warm-climate plants, animals, and (especially!) insects will move further north, spreading tropical diseases into areas not accustomed to them. Besides the part about enormous amounts of our coastlines (like most of Florida) being under water! Not to mention other major, serious problems concerning changing weather patterns, droughts and floods in areas not used to it, massive population movements, etc., etc. Also, the soil in central Canada is not nearly as good as that in the U.S., as the glaciers from the last ice age pushed most of the best topsoil from Canada into the U.S. area.

[Pomie99]

I've been reading about Climate Change and Global Warming on http://eHeat.info
some of this really scary ! e heat the earths heating up !
Jerry

[BogusBasin]

But all the true "patriots" know global warming is a lie. By golly. Amen you betcha

[mistergray]

Right... the new red-white-and-blue is green. LOL

[dhaberer]

so, how do they have measurements from the 80's and 90's if they just figured out how to measure it last year?

[robpaulg]

This graphic was created by the agency run by James Hansen. He is a well known climate science fraud. I assume this is a totally bogus graphic as should anyone reading this.

[Dan Owen]

You call a well-respected NASA scientist a fraud without offering any link, reference or substantiation of any kind.

That is known as slander. I find your attack on him cowardly since you fail to offer any proof.

Have you been listening to too much of that drug-addled gasbag Rush Limbaugh? Just wondering.

Try rational thought it does wonders for your perception of reality.

Take care

[martin1212]

Hansen is a scientist who publishes in peer reviewed journals where has papers can be debated by other scientists offering data to disprove his theories. Since you know he is a fraud, presumably you could point to the paper where you have proved this. No? Didn't think so.

[brandonh33]

So all of you slam this comment for not having any sources, but while doing so provide no proof that this James Hansen isnt a fraud, take the popular jab that you radical liberals love to do at Rush Limbaugh who you have only heard when taken out of context, and ultimately go so low as to just publically call him a complete moron?

[BlackCloud_62]

A "well-known" climate science fraud? According to who? And where is your proof?

And for brandonh33: one can NOT "prove" a negative, logically. In other words, you can prove something exists, but can NOT prove something DOESN'T exist.

[rucknrun]

2008 was the coldest year in decades also the avg global temperature has dropped the last 5 years. There is a reason why most of these articles talk about Global Climate change and note specifically Global Warming. They don't know what is happening.

[Dan Owen]

Au contraire prickly pear. Nine of the ten hottest years on record have been in the last ten years. When you make up stuff and lie like that you show your 'flat earth' stripes.

You wouldn't believe in climate change if you lived at sea level and your house ended up under the rising sea level.

What good is a head if you keep it stuck in the sand?

[rucknrun]

I am not sure where you get your data but I got my information from the noaa website.

[rucknrun]

Now looking back at the site you are right it is the coolest in the decade but still one of the top 10 warmest ever. I probably live at 30 feet above sea level so I am aware of the issues. Plus if the Arctic melts it is not as big a deal as Antarctica melting.

[Dan Owen]

Consider National Geographic (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html)

"? Average temperatures have climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius) around the world since 1880, much of this in recent decades, according to NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

? The rate of warming is increasing. The 20th century's last two decades were the hottest in 400 years and possibly the warmest for several millennia, according to a number of climate studies. And the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that 11 of the past 12 years are among the dozen warmest since 1850. "

[cgallaway]

Here's a question...how much will the waters rise? How many gallons of water will be liquid after all the ice melts? How much surface area does one gallon of water cover? How much coastal area do we have in the world? My uncalculated/uninformed guess is that if all the ice melts, we may see a maximum of 10 ft increase in sea level world wide. Just a guess. With the ice caps, the "problem" isn't just the air....the water (yes water underneath these ice burgs) are above freezing. Otherwise, the sheet of ice would extend to the bottom of the ocean, where crevices in the earth's crust allow heat to escape into the waters, essentially heating the water, thus melting the ice caps from the bottom, with no human input.

How exactly does anyone propose to stop the warming of the earth? The only true source of heat on this earth is the sun. Even if we were able to go to a zero emissions planet (no burning of any kind) we still gain heat from the sun....and entropy rolls on.

So, for those that are scared about the melting ice....should we throw some liquid nitrogen into the ocean? That would certainly kill a bunch of ecosystems. How else could we cool the water down? Remember, the motor of a big air conditioner puts out more heat than the air conditioner will remove from the system.

And, perhaps I don't quite understand....how does CO2 wreck the planet? By increasing temperature? How does it do that? CO2 is a chemical and by itself, does not produce heat. If you mean that the more CO2, the less volume of regular air (Nitrogen and oxygen) is available, you might be on to something, but CO2 does not create heat. CO2 usually carries, for a time, the temperature that itself was expelled at (your breath, for example, at 98.6 degrees F). But once outside of the expelling body, CO2 is just as succeptible to losing it's temperature as any other compound. Perhaps, since it is a small compound, it heats up quicker in the sunlight? Again, the sun is the source of the heat.

One final thought....historically, we are in between the 3rd and 4th major ice ages. Can't get to #3 or #4 without getting out of #1 and #2 first. And those happened long before the Industrial Revolution. If Global Warming were man made (I will cede the point here, the wordage and implications of it are man made, but I am talking about the condition that the wordage tries to convey) then we would still be stuck in the middle of the 1st major ice age. All those gulfs and valleys that shaped most of our countryside would still be covered in glaciers, from Canada down to the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri and Arkansas, rendering much of this continent inhabitable.

[Michichael]

The whole problem with CO2 is that it acts as an insulator where it collects in dense quantities - heat passes more easily through oxygen/nitrogen mixtures and heat radiates from the planet as into space. With a blanket of CO2 in the atmosphere, the heat transfers more slowly through. This means that if heat is produced at a constant value X and lost at a constant value X, there's equilbrium. However, with CO2 reducing the amount lost to, say, X/2, and heat is still being produced at X, you can see the purported loss of equilibrium which leads to issues with global warming/cooling, supposedly.

For the TLDR:
CO2 in and of itself doesn't produce heat, but it transfers heat slower than other gasses in the atmosphere.

[topfueldawg99]

If CO2 transports heat at a slower rate as Michicheal points out, and all the warming is generated by the sun except for the miniscule amounts transfered by machines, electricity and the likes, then wouldn't it be safe to say that CO2 will eventually buffer the earth from more heating in the long term? Maybe I'm not catching something here, could someone comment and please disregard my lack of knowledge on the topic.

[BlackCloud_62]

For your first paragraph, if both the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps (along with the many, many glaciers in other areas of the world) melted completely, the sea levels would rise up to 100 feet. In Venice, sea levels have ALREADY risen about 3 feet! Second, we can stop the warming by 1. planting millions of trees and stop cutting them down, and 2, distribute machines that absorb CO2 and Methane (methane gas being MUCH more of a problem than carbon dioxide). CO2 absorbs infrared (heat) rays from the sun, thus warming the atmosphere. Methane, however, absorbs 21 times the amount of heat that CO2 does. Since ocean temperatures have risen about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last 45 years (a significant amount), it greatly increases the possibility of the large amounts of frozen methane at the bottom of the oceans melting more rapidly and releasing vast amounts of methane gas.
Also, the water UNDER the Arctic icecaps CAN be below freezing, since salt water freezes at a lower temperature than fresh water. And the Earth has an internal heat source, it's "only true source of heat" is NOT the Sun... otherwise, the Earth would probably never have gotten out of it's "Snowball Earth" period, when the entire Earth (supposedly) was covered in ice.
Your last paragraph makes NO SENSE whatsoever!
For everyone else who doubts "global warming" (more aptly termed "man-made climate change," since it could result in another ice-age), check the FACTS more closely. For example, Antarctica has NOT been "gaining ice," but has been losing HUGE chunks of ice off the Ross ice shelf for years--and it's ice loss has increased by 75% in the last 10 years, melting almost as fast as Greenland's ice cap! (And the rate that Greenland's ice cap has added meltwater to the Atlantic has doubled in the last five years.)
As for the Arctic, it has permanently lost 20,000 square kilometers of ice between 1965 and 1995...and the permanent loss of ice has continued ever since.
WHATEVER happens due to man-made climate change in the next 10 to 100 years, WHY would we take such enormous risks by continuing to release unnatural amounts of gases into the atmosphere? We're playing a VERY dangerous game here--and I very much doubt we (or future generations) will be happy with the outcome.

[sanenazok]

Even if these graphics are accurate, which they probably aren't since they purport to show ice ages in 1980 all the while the technology is only available now, this is nothing more than a blink in geological time. If they can extrapolate what the ice ages have been for something that is even slightly relevant, like a century or three, then it matters. Oooh ice has been shifting for the past decade. So what?

[brandonh33]

According to the oh so accurate data we had around 2000, radicalists were telling us that New York was supposed to be under water. Now, I havent been over there in some time but I think that they are doing alright.

Recently there as been much evidence (more than there has been to support global warming) supporting that the world is beginning to go into a cooling trend. Somehow the mainstream media must have accidentally looked over this, yeh that must be it. I personally do not even believe that we are having global cooling yet because of the lack of evidence, which should point out to you the amount of evidence we had towards global warming. Not a lot. I am in no way saying that there is no problem. What I am saying is that we should put more resources into research about the issue before we panic.

Boy would we look stupid if a certain President decides to base our whole economy on technology like impractical solar or wind power that we might not even need. Wouldnt it look worse if a certain President decides to tax emissions, crippling a large majority of an already suffering industry? This is just beginning. How about strict higher priced gas guzzler taxes ect aimed at GM who, correct me if I am mistaken, the government is pumping trillions of dollars into? Do they intend to cripple the industry they are trying to save? How does their logic justify this? How do they justify basing so many things on an idea that hasnt even reached the scientific level of theory? How do they justify labeling something FACT solely because it promotes their personal agenda?

[grayboe]

If you go to the story that is linked within this one you will see this. It states that at least once since 1979 there was actually less coverage than this year. Maybe we didn't get to see that chart because it didn't fit the global warming theory of the CNET writers. Why no mention of NASA not blaming global warming.

"It is the second-smallest amount of coverage since NASA began monitoring the situation in 1979. The Artic's sea ice coverage this September is about 33 percent below average, compared with the record low of 39 percent below average recorded in 2007.

At this time, neither NASA nor the National Snow and Ice Data Center have made suggestions as to the possible cause for the change. A thorough analysis of the data is scheduled to be released the first week of October, according to NASA."

[glenncz]

let us not forget that there is ice in antartica and that is growing at an enormously rapid pace. In fact I think it is about time we send some icebreakers down there or the penguins are going to starve.
Antartic ice is off the charts right now!
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg
Since there is much more ice in antartica than the artic we are now above the mean.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
So we are actually making ice rather than loosing it worldwide. But of course all the extra ice is from Climate Change not Global Warming, and we are responsible for that.
www.the-green-wind.com

[BlackCloud_62]

Ice could have been "growing" in Antarctica when you wrote that... since it was mid-autumn there, at the time, but overall, the Antarctic has lost massive amounts of ice--pieces the size of small States have broken off the Ross ice shelf, and the water melt from the continent has increased by 75% over the last 10 years. The Antarctic is melting--VERY fast, too!

[craigd999]

This is an clear attempt to turn an old story a new story. 2007 was a local minimum for arctic ice extent and has recovered somewhat in 2008 and 2009. It is therefore not surprising that >2-yr-old ice would be at a minimum two years later, in 2009. It is merely a reflection of what happened 2-years ago. The real story is the advancement in 2009 into historically normal territory.