It looks as though there might be hope for the polar bears, yet. I found this little nugget on the Arctic Ocean circulation from a November 13, 2007 NASA release. I wonder why it wasn't widely reported in the MSM?

Could it be that it sent the wrong message? From the release: A team of NASA and university scientists has detected an ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation triggered by atmospheric circulation changes that vary on decade-long time scales. The results suggest not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming.

Whoa!!! Now, there's a news flash for you. Here's the kicker: "Our study confirms many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming," said Morison.

"While some 1990s climate trends, such as declines in Arctic sea ice extent, have continued, these results suggest at least for the 'wet' part of the Arctic -- the Arctic Ocean -- circulation reverted to conditions like those prevalent before the 1990s," he added.

However, the obligatory mention of AGW wasn't far behind: Morison cautioned that while the recent decadal-scale changes in the circulation of the Arctic Ocean may not appear to be directly tied to global warming, most climate models predict the Arctic Oscillation will become even more strongly counterclockwise in the future. "The events of the 1990s may well be a preview of how the Arctic will respond over longer periods of time in a warming world," he said.

Thanks, Brett, for providing an appropriate place to insert this little gem.

This is "alarming"!
Dr. Hansen refers to "we are loosing control" while talking about the melting ice.
I am not aware that we ever HAD control over this process of nature.
If we never had control ..... How can we loose it?

Another gem from NASA concerning the cause(s) of the dramatic reduction in sea ice in the Arctic last year. What's unusual about this news release is that it doesn't mention AGW. Evidently, these researchers didn't get the memo.

Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.

"The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century," Nghiem said.

This paper and the paper I have referenced in the previous post seems to indicate natural causes and not AGW for the problems that the polar bears are supposedly encountering.

Yes, we must hurry before the AGW hysteria is recognized for what it truly is, grossly exagerated.

Here is a perfect example of how innovation, technology and the free markets (not carbon credits or wealth distribution) can help with our energy concerns:

Tata Nano, world's cheapest new car, is unveiled in India.

http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/driving/article3164205.eceia

If the AGW alarmists could just be a little patient, take deep breathes and relax, they will see that we are making progress without forcing unfair, unrealistic policies or by suffocating the economy.

Conservation is the fundamental belief of Conservatism. To conserve means to preserve. This includes life, ability, freedom, prosperity, happiness, environment, etc. Many outlets give conservatism a bad rap, that we are greedy, that we dont care, that we hate the environment. All BS. We are just perhaps a little more rational than our fellow American liberals.

Thank you.

The Time to Act is Running Out

I did a google search on that phrase and got 4,700,000 hits.

Voting reform. Pink Salmon, AIDS, Healthy Teens, Y2K, Iraq, Palestine, death row, Kosovo, used cars, housing market, population, this weekend's sale at Best Buy, stem cell research, South Asian Vultures, DNA testing, Tuna, Chimpanzees, Toyota tax credit, Zimbabwe, justice, data protection, EA Reauthorization, innocent lives, men, North Korea, public libraries......

Yes, lets get hysterical about CO2. No doubt the next 0.0001 change in atmospheric CO2 concentration will destroy the earth. The declining temperatures of the last decade should make us all wildly panicked about global warming.

Hi Guy,

Oh Ducky Lucky and Chicken Licken the sky is falling the sky is falling. So we have pasted the tripping point and are now at the crises point. May be thats why its getting colder. Gotta credit him for pushing this in the face of so many things disproving him. The sky is not falling and the AGW crowd is tripping over them selfs to explain it.
1- No Tropospheric warming
2- Temperatures are not warming currently in the last 8 years
3- No Water Vapor increase
4- No increase in Hurricanes
5- No Hansen Super El Ninos'
6- Sea levels are not rising at an increasing rate
7- No Stratospheric cooling
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/12/17/reality-check-2-long-term-sea-surface-temperature-trend-anomalies-and-ocean-heat-content-trends/

There is also an interesting link between Dr. Hansen and Seinfeld.
Yes Ms. Fehlinger there are two! They both make a living working in fantasy worlds and are comics.

At least this time he actually looked at Ms.Fehlinger during the interview. It was a much better presentation. Kudos to him on presentation.
I liked when he said in the 50's the odds of an above average temp season was lower than today. He did somebody tell him he picked a year when we were in a cool phase???? What a shock. A true master of the obvious.
It seems he is learning from AL Gore. Maybe both presentation and science.

I wish he'd make up his mind, can humans control the ice melt or not? In one place he says no, in another yes. And I love the bit about weather being chaotic and climate not so much. Nice save, can't predict the weather but the climate, baaah!, piece of cake. I would also like to point out that he mentioned that the difference between full ice melt and not is only a couple of degrees. And that this melt will result in a several meter change in sea level. Therefore, as I understand it, at our present pace, we are likely to see this temp change and therefore the sea level will rise in short order. I think that he should start a countdown clock. Maybe he could put it at Times Square since he's in NYC.

Let me see, weather is the environmental events that occur week to week, over period of year, and therefore it is not a discernible pattern. The climate on the other hand, is what occurs in what?, 50 to 100 year blocks? Over a total period of a million years or so? Sounds like the same relational period as the weather to me.

Maybe Katie can send Chris's asserter/denier test to him to answer. Now that is something I would love to see.

Katie,
Shame on you for not letting Dr. Hansen in on my "TUNNEL" secret!! Don't you know Dr.Hansen is interested in ways to curb the tipping point? It is not what is in the pipeline it is what is in the "TUNNELS" in the form of KE. Here is the proof for you.
Enough to supply the USA with electrical power many times over! 3.050 Million Megawatts!
Since you need volume to get your answer, I made the assumption that the water is also 100 ft long. Kinetic Energy equals (1/2)m*v^2 so we got .5*299,025,900,000kg*(8.941 m/s)^2 = 149,512,950,000kg*79.941(m^2/s^2) = 11,952,214,735,950 joules.
BTW, thats for the entire 100 ft. So over the 100 ft, your 100 ft tall and 20 mile wide wall of water exerts nearly 12 trillion joules of electrical energy. If you want watts find out how long it took to go that 100 ft in seconds and devide the joules by that time. Then you have joules/second which equals watts. And watts can easily be converted into mega watts.

Hi Patrick Cyclonebuster,

A couple of questions. I'm having a tough time visualizing power lines running across the ocean, particularly during a hurricane. Please help me visualize that. Also, I'm curious if the folks in western Europe might be a tad upset if the energy gets taken out of the Gulf Stream?

Ok I see it talked about all over, but have yet to find the explanation in the past topics, so can someone point me to the topic that has this Tunnels idea in it?

Hi Patrick Henry: Great questions.

Patrick Cyclonebuster here.
They would run along the seafloor thus protected from hurricanes by the water above. They don't have to be electrical cables either. They can be fiber optic cables that can carry one MW of light energy in them later to be converted to electrical energy once ashore.No need to worry about corrsion using fiber optic cable in this manner.
The electrical energy needs to be close to a load source so by using liquid nitrogen to cool the internal power lines the power can be distributed longer distances. This technology already exists today and is used in many metropolitans.

"Also, I'm curious if the folks in western Europe might be a tad upset if the energy gets taken out of the Gulf Stream?"

I am curious as to why they are not a tad upset with us now for adding extra energy in the form of BTUs into the gulfstream thus creating their current weather patterns. All the "TUNNELS" do is remove that excess energy that we add to Gulfstream to restore things back to pre-industrial revolution conditions.

Any other questions out there?

My big problem with the interview?

Too much camera time for Hansen, not nearly enough for Katie.

Other than that, I was pretty much okay with what was said.

Paul,

"Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters."

This article seems to back this up.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/04/wbears04.xml

I've asked this before and I'll ask it again. If we go past the tipping point, then will the AGW enthusiasts shut their traps and no longer try to introduce all sorts of laws, taxes and restrictions? After all, it will be too late, right? The time to act is running out...? Oh, please, let it run out already!

Hi Patrick Cyclonebuster,

I think you need to come up with a better answer for the issue of taking energy out of the Gulf Stream. It is a no go if Europeans are afraid they are going to freeze.

Jim,

>1- No Tropospheric warming

Wrong. Check the MSU data again.

>2- Temperatures are not warming currently in the last 8 years

C'mon this has been debunked a number of times:

http://tamino.wordpress.com/2007/12/16/wiggles/

>3- No Water Vapor increase

AGU says:

"There have been several estimates of longer-term changes in tropospheric water vapor. The most recent global estimate shows an increase in precipitable water during the period 1973-1990, with the largest trends in the tropics, where increases as large as 13% per decade were found. A recent study of water vapor trends above North America based on radiosonde measurements from 1973 to 1993 finds increases in precipitable water over all regions except northern and eastern Canada, where it fell slightly. The regions of moisture increase are associated with regions of rising temperatures over the same period, and the regions of decreased moisture are associated with falling temperatures."

>4- No increase in Hurricanes

How does this disprove global warming or its cause, anthropogenic CO2?

>5- No Hansen Super El Ninos'

Ah, the "super El Nino" canard. You do know that the "prediction" was from a draft version of a paper Hansen circulated to colleagues and was absent from the final version, right? Here's what Hansen has to say about it:

"Super El Nino: lots of criticisms, especially implication (via question "Super El Nino in 2006-2007?") that I
am predicting a super El Nino in 2006-2007.

Present version should make clear that what we are saying is: Global warming has increased the east-west equatorial temperature gradient and that should increase the probability of a super El Nino. It is still a crap shoot, so it requires many rolls of the dice for empirical verification."

Not that you or Patrick Henry will ever stop bringing it up, but then you guys continually post things that have been proven false again and again.

>6- Sea levels are not rising at an increasing rate

Yes they are.

>7- No Stratospheric cooling

Now, that's just silly.

Wow, a short little list takes a long time to debunk, but maybe someone will pay attention. Better luck next time.

Patrick Henry,

I'm moving our conversation about the thermodynamics of AGW up to this thread, since our last one was getting stale. I was re-reading RealClimate's "Saturated Gassy Argument" piece justknow, and I noticed a line that I had probably read before, but hadn't thought about.

"What happens if we add more carbon dioxide? In the layers so high and thin that much of the heat radiation from lower down slips through, adding more greenhouse gas molecules means the layer will absorb more of the rays. So the place from which most of the heat energy finally leaves the Earth will shift to higher layers. Those are colder layers, so they do not radiate heat as well. The planet as a whole is now taking in more energy than it radiates (which is in fact our current situation). As the higher levels radiate some of the excess downwards, all the lower levels down to the surface warm up. The imbalance must continue until the high levels get hot enough to radiate as much energy back out as the planet is receiving."

So they are claiming that the assumption of an earth in thermal equilibrium is incorrect. I'm not sure who to ask for more information. Parick, I know you'll have something to say about this. Anyone else who knows, please help out.

Just to throw a log on the ol' fire...

Preliminary GISS data has 2007 as the second warmest year in a statistical tie with 1998 (my calculations using their data has 2007 warmer by about 0.002 degrees C). I expect a press release will follow within the next couple days.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/2007+2005+1998.pdf

Also, NCDC has their December and 2007 U.S. climate reports out:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2007/dec/national.html

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2007/ann/us-summary.html

No, Colorado is not displayed prominently in their December temperature analysis; Colorado has apparently had 20 Decembers cooler than this one. The U.S. average temp was "50th coolest" on record for the month. Looking at the January-December data, it appears 2007 was the 10th warmest year on record in the U.S.

Expect the global climate report from NCDC to be out in another week.

WHY DOES ANYONE LISTEN TO THESE PEOPLE? ALL THEY WANT IS FOR THE GOVERNMENT TO PAY THEIR SALARIES FOR STUPID UNFOUNDED SO-CALLED RESEARCH. THEY ARE ALL HACKS AND HYPROCRITS.

Patrick Henry:

Depends on how much energy we want to take out of the Gulfstream. That is the great thing about the "TUNNELS" they can "REGULATE" the amount of BTUs we want to exchange in order to "REGULATE" the climate including weakening any hurricane threatening the East coast and Gulf states if needed. In fact we can bring back more summer Arctic Ice with them if we want to or bring more snow to Europe while supplying all the electrical power the United States needs 3 times over if needed.
With CO2 we are unable to "REGULATE" climate things just get warmer. The "TUNNELS" ability to "REGULATE" BTUs while generating electrical power are the key to their succes.They can "REGULATE" BTUs independently of generating electrical power or vise versa or do both combined if needed.
What ever the case they produce electrical power 24/7/365 for the United States.This alone eliminates the CO2 problem and the planets fever.

PaulB:,Finally some one gets it! These people want us to believe there is an invisible thermostat in the sky,and that we control it.That's basically what they are saying.

And where are the natives? Surely they have an off the wall rant or two,they had plenty in the last 4 or 5 topics.Oh wait! Skeptics are stupid and Al Gore and James Hansen are gods.(angels singing)

Hi,
Can you explain how global warming fits into the news from the Middle East? No not war or oil but snow for the first time in history in Bagdad or the first snow with record low temperatures in the southern deserts of Iran? Why isn't this reported in the general media? Does it counter the political hysteria and make those seeking power through fear powerless? The strainge part is I believe that global warming is real, always have, I just don't believe the hysteria. We've known about it since the 70's but it only became a real issue when a certain political party had no platform to cling on to. I think everyone needs to ask themselves, "Why now? Why not in the 70's, 80's or 90's was it an issue?"

Here's the thing.

There's a company in Calif. - Nanosolar - that's apparently figured out how to print PVs on aluminum foil, thereby reducing the cost of solar electricity to about the same as coal generated electricity (they say). All of their production is sold-out through mid-2009 and nearly all of that is going to . . . Europe (especially Germany) where GW concern is apparently deeper and far more widespread.

Now, IF, instead of denying and resisting the whole GW thing, US politicians and industry had gotten on board with it, say, 10 or 15 years ago, the US would by now have developed all sorts of carbon-reduction technologies and products that we'd be selling to the rest of the world, thereby creating all sorts of new US manufacturing jobs and wealth, and thereby reducing our own "carbon footprint", reducing our dependence on people like Chavez and other foreign oil suppliers, reducing the value of their natural resources (and their geopolitical leverage), making China look really, really bad and avoiding all this talk of taxes (at least here). And profits would hav