It is just plain amazing what a (political - and you know which one I mean) agenda can drive some people to do. Here's hoping that Lewis Gordon Puke, a bloke that has nothing better to do with his life, got triple hypothermia as a result! What a fool!

DENY DENY DENY THE GLOBAL WARMING LIE!

He would have had a harder time doing it in Antarctica where the sea ice is steadily expanding and temperatures are forecast at -108� F for today.
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=-78.44999695,106.87000275
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.anom.south.jpg

Perhaps it should be called "Arctic Warming" instead of global warming - except for the fact that temperatures are quite cold in Greenland too.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/station/04416/2007/7/17/MonthlyHistory.html

Seems like it would be a better idea to swim in water that is 90 degrees near the equator where it normally is only a mere 86. At least the scenery might be better.

The real question is were any polar bears harmed in this publicity act? And how many tons of CO2 were carelessly emitted into the artic to permit this "protest" to go forward?

It is an amazing feat of human endurance …but that is it….Just a stunt…
How much carbon was released in getting this guy and his entourage up to the north pole???
If you really believe in AGW this should be condemned as an idiotic use of resources. If you don’t believe in AGW it was just a stupid and dangerous stunt.
It seems we can do just about anything no matter how stupid to bring attention to AGW.
I got a great idea. How about we try to use science without the words, "IF", "possible" or "maybe" in the conclusion.

Hey Patrick, of course it IS cold in Greenland.. what are you expecting to hear? Hear that Greenland is baking? The thing is, it's been warming up progressively in such Island.. It's not gonna be -40 C one day and then all of a sudden temps will climb to + 10 C! That won't happen (or at least not any time soon).

AGW believers don't think the sky is going to fall like in The Day After Tomorrow. It surely can happen, but it will be much slower if it ever takes place... but, hey, I warn you and Ozinop as well, a +2 C anomaly in the mean temp of the globe is enough to cause big, big changes in the Earth.

It is just plain amazing that some people are keep shouting that global warming is a lie at each and every post..

Every newscast in the TV starts by telling that it's been record heat every day. Must be those bloody volcanos.. or the Sun.. or the rats.. decide already!

Oiz, that is some awfully thin stuff. I'm no expert, but I don't see any multi-year ice at all. That's consistent with the current near-record low anomaly. Notice that it's been bouncing around at or just above a new record low level for over two weeks now. That's a little unusual.

Patrick, summer in the Antarctic might be a better choice. Of course, the sea ice there is quite distant from the South Pole and its summer extent isn't of any particular climatological significance (although note that under present conditions it does mostly disappear in the summer). Er, what was your point? Maybe it would be less confusing if you just rocked back and forth while chanting like Oiz.

BTW, don't mistake "warming" for "warm."

Antarctica cooling? Ice caps getting thicker? FLAT WRONG: It was the warmest June on record at the South Pole.

Adam:

Yep, the TV newscasts always have all the right answers. If there are records every day, that's good enough for me. I actually think it is the rats that are causing the problems. Running around in their little rat suvs picking on the mice.

Emiliano:

So, uh, why did the AGW crowd flock to the movie? As I recall, we were treated to a bunch of theories as to why the movie was based in fact after it started. I know, I know, entertainment and all.

Steve:

Wow, great graph. A whopping 22 year mean. Huh, does that mean there ice before didn't change much or what? Strange how it goes decidely down after 2001.

I saw a picture on a different site that showed high hills in the distance with him in the water. The North Pole is nowhere near any land so just where was he? A phenomenal feat nonetheless, but he's misguided as to the cause.
And every newscast has record warming in it because AGW is the scare of the day and the MSM have bought into these AGW lies hook line and sinker. They could have done the same thing a hundred years ago if telecommunications were the same then.
Nothing new here folks, move on.

Reply, I believe that picture was taken when he was swimming around the Norway fjords, which he had done before this swim. Brett.

28 years, Darren, but that's OK. It means we didn't have satellites watching before that.

It is strange that it's started to go down so sharply since 2001 or so. The pace has outstripped the range predicted by the models; i.e. some sort of tipping point seems to have been passed. At the present rate of loss we could see an ice-free summer in 10 years or so. What then, do you suppose?

Antarctica cooling? Ice caps getting thicker? FLAT WRONG: It was the warmest June on record at the South Pole.

REPLY: Oh yeah, E? What was it -10F as opposed to -30F?....;-DDDD...

Steve Bloom:

I suppose the dream of an ice-free Northwest Passage will come to pass. Good all around if shipping can cut thousands of miles off each trip. I fail to see the downside. Here is a great benefit for transportation and all the AWG crowd can do is wail like a banshee about how terrible it is and spread the deception that we, mainly in the Western world, are responsible for it and must be punished monetarily.

Steve:

I guess I don't suppose anything. Stuff happens. I think that things change and things adapt. We will adapt and change right along with them when it comes to pass. Having clear passage could be seen as a good thing.

Odd, you suggest a tipping point may have been passed in 2001. I wonder what it could have been? Any ideas? I note that there were sharp drops in 89, 93, and 95. Any correlations?

I suppose the dream of an ice-free Northwest Passage will come to pass. Good all around if shipping can cut thousands of miles off each trip. I fail to see the downside. Here is a great benefit for transportation and all the AWG crowd can do is wail like a banshee about how terrible it is and spread the deception that we, mainly in the Western world, are responsible for it and must be punished monetarily.

I'm reminded of several quotes, as follows:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
Upton Sinclair

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
Bertrand Russell

Complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers.
Grossman's Law

I'm reminded of several quotes, as follows:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

That would explain why the AGW fanatics have declared the debate over. If anyone has a monetary stake in this debate, there is your crew. I, myself, have no stake in this other than increased taxes.

How 'bout you, bt? How much does your livlihood depend on the outcome of this debate?

Paul:

LOL, very true, very true. Congress comes to mind with that statement.

BTW, thanks for the Michael Yon link on the other thread. He does good work. had seen a dispatch of his but did not know how to get more of them.

There's nothing statistically significant in those years, Darren, other than the obvious long-term decrease. As to what happened in 2001, I don't think the causes are entirely clear. If they were, they would have been incorporated into the models. It's generally expected that Arctic sea ice has a tipping point since it's year-round persistence is dependent on a (relatively) fresh water lens that will itself not persist if the ice goes, but exactly where that tipping point is and whether we're really seeing it now is unclear. Even if not, the models show it going by 2050 or so.

You may recall that in An Inconvenient Truth Al Gore made reference to freeing up previously-secret Navy records of sea ice, which was a big help to the ice modelers. The Navy did not release the data for a large chunk of the Arctic Ocean adjacent to Russia, though, which means that only the Navy's own ice modeler (Wieslaw Maslowski) has access to the complete picture. Interestingly, Maslowski is the one who first began talking about the current rapid decrease and that it may be the long-dreaded tipping point. I say long-dreaded, BTW, because once gone the sea ice will tend to stay gone (in the summer; a thin ice layer will always form in the winter), and this is will probably add greatly to summer warming of the big block of ice next door. That, in turn, could be very bad news indeed. Access to the Northwest Passage won't look like much of a benefit in exchange for even a meter of additional sea level rise.

Wow!!!
Brookline Tom--You can quote Bertrand Russell. You must be as smart as him. I better sign off now because I'm not smart enough to come up with a smart guy quote.

This item is obviously a hoax, based on manipulated film clippings made somewhere else.

BBC apparently re-checked it after initial publication. The story disappeared from their news pages within an hour.

Just a publicity-seeking stunt.

BT, those three quotes can also be applied to the AGW crowd, as pointed out by Paul. I also have no stake other than being forced to pay more unecessarily. Like it or not, we will be forced to adapt because this natural warming will continue on until nature decides it's time to cool down again. You don't have to like it or even believe that it might be natural, but the real science (that not paid for by those with an agaenda) says it's so. I'll go with their conclusions, not the scientists whose goal is to find (or manufacture) a link between this current warming and manmade CO2.

Hmmm...nothing stat significant huh? Wonder why it goes up and down like that then. I mean the years following, except after 2001, it seems to make a rebound. Maybe the sea ice has the dreaded millenium bug? Even the Navy's modeler probably does not have a great long-term understanding of the sea ice. I'm curious, why won't the Northwest passage be seen as a benefit if there is a 1 meter sea level rise?

Let's be sincere here, most of those who are concerned with an AGW problem are the same who decry oceanfront development. The sea rise will cause a redevelopment to occur away from the sea which is a good thing right? As far as peoples who are trapped next to the ocean, I'm not sure what to think about that. I have tried to find a population who are trapped in that manner, and I really can't find any. With 20' of sea level rise, there might be a bunch in a world of hurt. I'm guessing though that the change would be so slight on a yearly basis that the areas would adapt fairly easily.

Anonymous:
Antarctica cooling? Ice caps getting thicker? FLAT WRONG: It was the warmest June on record at the South Pole.

REPLY: Oh yeah, E? What was it -10F as opposed to -30F?....;-DDDD...

Closer to -50 deg C.

Darren,

To hear the AGWers version, sea level rise (or drop) has never happened before. However, sea levels in South Florida were up to a half meter higher a 1,000 years ago than they are today. (Florida, unlike New Orleans, is built on a stable bedrock platform). Around 700 years ago, at the beginning of the Little Ice Age, sea levels began to drop up to a meter below what they are today. (Incidently, sea levels in the past have been up to 300 feet lower and 150 feet higher than they are now. That's just in the last million years or so.)

Hmmmm.... verrrrry interesting.

Darren, those details are all available at the NSIDC site if you want to know more. Regarding the noisiness, that's pretty normal for climate records. This particular one has a visually obvious long-term trend, although not all do.

I don't have the references at hand, but I can assure you that it's not controversial that even a meter sea-level rise in a century would far outweigh any benefits that might accrue. There's a vast amount of very expensive infrastructure right on the coast. Much of it (Manhattan, e.g.) could and probably would be protected using Dutch methods, but doing so would still cost a great deal. The loss of farmland alone in places like the SF Bay delta and Chesapeake Bay would be huge. Also, even modest sea-level rise greatly amplifies vulnerability to storm surge in low-lying areas vulnerable to tropical cyclones, e.g. Florida and Bangladesh.

Paul, I can't say that I have ever heard anyone say such a thing. BTW, I think some of your numbers are off on recent fluctuations.

Paul:

Do you mean to tell me that the earth and the seas existed prior to 1978?

My understanding, as told by the AGW crowd, was that history started in 1850 and nothing untoward occurred until 1978.

LOL, Thanks for the info.

Mr. Bloom,

Paul, I can't say that I have ever heard anyone say such a thing.

Say what? Oh, do you mean about AGWers and the lack of sea level rise? If you guys knew it has happened before, why the panic? Unfortunately, New Amsterdam's city planners didn't realize that sea level fluctuated when they laid out the city. However, that's no excuse for poor planning. If it cools off they're off the hook; however, if it continues to warm even to Medieval temps, someone might get their feet wet.

BTW, I think some of your numbers are off on recent fluctuations.

I'll assume that you mean the numbers for the last 1,000 years or so. If you could provide me with a reference, I'd appreciate it. The 1 meter below present 700 years ago comes from Nunn, 2000. The 0.5 meter higher reference comes from Froede, 2002.

Froede, C.R. Jr. 2002. Rhizolith evidence in support of a late Holocene sea-level highstand at least 0.5 m higher than present at Key Biscayne, Florida. Geology 30(3), p. 203-206.

Nunn, P.D. 2000. Environmental catastrophe in the Pacific Islands around A.D. 1300. Geoarchaeology 15/7, p. 715-740.

Hmm, citations without links. Sounds like those probably came from co2science. Be aware that they have a bad habit of misrepresenting the science. Anyway, Google Scholar is my friend:

The Froede paper appears to have been discredited; see here and especially here.

Regarding the Nunn paper, see here for a more comprehensive discussion. Note that the 700 year BP sea level change is described as regional and that there was no corresponding rise at the start of the MWP.

I believe the AR4 scientific report has global figures, but there's a brief summary of it in that last linked paper.

While we're on the subject, that 150 foot higher figure for the last million years is also incorrect. Such a level requires substantial reduction of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, and IIRC that hasn't happened since at least 3 million years ago (i.e., prior to the Pleistocene glaciations).

Mr. Bloom,

Your first reference in no way discredits Froede's paper as that study deals with Mid-Holocene sediments not late-Holocene. It was also conducted in the Mississippi Delta which has the built in problem of subsidence. Nice try. Now, on to the second reference. Again, this paper deals with the Gulf Coast and may have inherent problems not addressed in the study.

Nunn's paper was referenced by your supposed contradictory paper.

Meanwhile, the magnitude and timing of sea-level fall after around 800�500 cal. BP recognized on Rarotonga is similar to those recognized on many islands in western Polynesia and Melanesia, permitting another interpretation. According to Nunn (2000a,b, 2003) and Nunn and Britton (2001) the sea-level fall caused an environmental and societal catastrophe (the AD1300 Event) following the Mediaeval warm stage, and corresponds to an increased frequency of El Nino

In fact, Nunn reviewed their paper. What's your point?

I may be off somewhat in age for the extreme highstands. They were probably Pliocene and not Paleocene in age. Excuse me.