Now the point of posting this image and the quote from the daily mail is to query the part that I have emboldened in the quote below
The pictures, produced by Nasa, mark the first time in at least 125,000 years that the two shortcuts linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have been ice-free at the same time.
In 2005, the North-East Passage around Russia opened, while the western one, across the top of Canada, remained closed, and last year the position was reversed.
But the satellite data shows that the North-West passage opened last weekend and the remaining tongue of ice blocking the North-Eastern one dissolved a few days later.
Professor Serreze, of the U.S. government-funded National Snow and Ice Data Center, told a Sunday newspaper: ‘The passages are open. It is an historic event.
‘We are going to see this more and more as the years go by.’
I eludes me just how anyone can make such a claim with any level of certainty. But that is what we have come to expect from the propagators of the Warminist faith they love to cite such a short term phenomena as proof the AGW theory. But the facts are that even NASA can not say with any certainty what the ice conditions were like from year to year during the last 125000 years they simply do not have the empirical data to make such an assertion and have it taken seriously. However the true believers in the Green Religion (praise be to Al Gore, and his demi-Prophet Tim Flannery ) the events in the Arctic this summer are a signal to evacuate the coastal areas and build a beach house in the mountains.
What seems obvious is that if it warm enough during the medieval warm period to have a viable agrarian economy in Greenland then is is most likely that the Arctic seas would have been navigable at that time and we would just would not know about it because the only people in the region did not record their travels in writing. But of course that is just conjecture on my part and Just as possible as NASAs claim that the melting is unprecedented in 125000 years. The difference is though that I am not asserting my speculation as fact. The Warminists have no such scruples.
until next time Comrades
Filed under: AGW and climate change, Global Warming, God bothering, Green Hypocrites, Leftism, World Events | Tagged: The North West Passage
This is interesting Iain – you couldn’t possibly accuse the Daily Mail of left-wing bias!
nor am I doing so here Jason
Sorry Iain – I guess my point was that it’s not just the Fairfaxes of the world reporting on this stuff – it’s also notably conservative papers like the Mail. Guess I was trying to connect it with your other recent posts
Should have been clearer.
Well there is a common thread with my recent post insofar as they all point to the paucity of the actual empirical data when it comes to any claims about what the climate was actually like even just fifty years ago. Especially once you go to sparsely populated parts of the planet like the Arctic.
Okay, Iain, but it’s certain the NW passage was closed 50 years ago, as it has been throughout reliably-recorded history. Right? The Medieval Warm Period stuff you mention is just conjecture, really, isn’t it? I’d imagine NASA would have taken the data available into account before making this claim.
Otherwise, are you including NASA and the Mail in the “True Believers” camp now?
I must say, too – a beach-house in the mountains sounds like the best of both worlds
Sure on the NW passage being closed 50 years ago but there was no accurate measure of the extent of sea ice at that time though, which is my point . the quality of Empirical data is very vague pre satellite observations
I don’t say that MWP stuff is anything other than conjecture on my part in the post.
I live on a mountain so of course I look forward to the 100m sea level rise promised by the likes of the ABC’s Robin Williams because then i would not have so far to travel to the beach
you know he never promised robyn williams never promised that don’t you iain? he said that was a worst case scenario. which in the case of run away warming caused by feed back as we pass different tipping points leading to much of antarctica’s ice melting and thermal expansion of the ocean and coastal degredation is possible no matter how remote.
you also know that the sea levels have been more then 100m higher then they are now don’t you? and in the last ice age they were over 100m lower then they are now.
To put it politely – what a load of tosh!
Iain, science can still make pretty accurate observations of conditions in the Arctic (and elsewhere) prior to 1972. You yourself are quite content to claim that a Medieval warm period shows that the current warming is not unprecendented and therefore part of a normal cycle – despite the fact you don’t have good ‘empirical’ evidence of those temperatures given the modern recording of temperatures as done in the Arctic is a recent advance that didn’t exist in Medieval times.
Which means at the very least you’re being a complete hypocrite when moaning about a lack of empirical evidence in the Arctic when you refer to the Medieval period as a counter-argument.
I’ll go and have a look at what NASA are using to form their conclusion, but at the end of the day even if Iain is right (which he’s not) and the science used to calculate conditions pre-1972 is worthless (except when used to show Medieval warm periods etc etc) I’d much sooner take NASA claiming something without certainty than Iain Hall – along with 99.99999% of the rest of the population.
Rgrds,
PKD.
Oh PS Iain…
However the true believers in the Green Religion (praise be to Al Gore, and his demi-Prophet Tim Flannery )
…again the mark of a denialist – the debate on the science is lost, so just resort to emotive hyperbole and factless smearing of AGW as some sort of religoius fanaticism – yeah, thats debating the science Iain!
Notallright
Look mate I heard him say in on Radio National and he was not qualifying his claim in any way whatsoever, that came later when he was quite rightfully pilloried for his alarmist claims. But do I have to spell it out that I was making a Joke? You know taking the piss? Really, that was indicated by the:_
Yes I know that So what is your point?
PKD,
Actually I don’t claim that at all just to refresh your memory here is what I actually say:
I’ll draw your attention to my bold where I point out that I am speculating and making NO claims of fact here. while there is clear archaeological evidence that there was an agrarian economy possible in Greenland in the medieval period my suggestion that the NW passage was open is just guesswork, but my point is that NASA is LIKEWISE speculating and engaging in conjecture to claim that it has never happened in the last 125000 years. I am not using the MWP as a counter argument other than as an example of plausible speculation made on limited evidence.
Yeah you do that and I guarantee that you will find that the data will be as i suggest sketchier and sketchier the further back you go in the historical record which means that it becomes less and less based on empirical data and more and more based on speculation conjecture and just plain guess work.
i realised you were most likely joking but i think:
1. you are taking him out of context
2. you don’t realise that even though it’s not likely it is possible.
my point was, regards water level rises, that 100m rises aren’t out of the ordinary. it is a worst case scenario but not an impossible one.
Williams never promised a 100mt sea level rise. He just said that it was possible.
Chuck your comment is yawn inspiring
That may be so Iain, but you said you heard him say it on RN when in fact he never said that. Emoticons or no emiticons.
Chuck
first you were yawn inspiring now you are being tedious.
Williams put the argument that if we don’t act now( on GHG emissions) that we could face a 100m rise in sea level within a century he was quite rightly pilloried as an alarmist for doing so, not the least because his dire prediction far exceeded the most claims of even Al Gore . Tim Flannery et al. The fact that he may never have said the words “I promise it will happen ” is of no consequence in this instance. I was of course paraphrasing his much mocked claims for the purposes of humour.
cheers
Yes, Iain. Like you say above:
that we could face a 100m rise in sea level within a century
Again, he said it was possible, but he didn’t promise as you stated he did.
If you are going to paraphrase someone, you shoudn’t misrepresent what they said like you have done here. From memory it was only Bolt and his readers who tried to mock Williams. When in fact Bolt was on the show because Williams wanted Bolt to clarify why he (Bolt) misrepresented another scientist’s work.
I think in wider circles (outside News Ltd blogs), Bolt was mocked.
Yep tiresome, and lacking a sense of humour.
Speaking of a sense of humour ?
Next thing the ‘alarmists’ are going to try, is the ol Dick Smith trick ?
Tow a supposed iceberg into Sydney Harbour ? Remember that ?
David
But we need the ice for our Gin and Tonics David !!!
“Yep tiresome, and lacking a sense of humour.”
I suppose having to answer a fair comment on the bullshit your Guru writes, would be tiresome for you Iain. He writes so much of it (bullshit that is)!
Emoticons are for children.
Craigy
emoticons are very good at filling the shortcoming of ordinary text when it comes to conveying mood I may be an old codger but even I can see that they are not just for children
Lighten up Craigy. Geez !!!!
The subject is serious enough. Can’t we have a laugh at the crackpots without copping a serve ? The amount of dollars, they are pulling out of our society’s pockets, if we took it all seriously (especially with the crackpot answers they come up with), we would jump off the nearest bridge !!!
David
Emoticons are for people who are unable to express themselves clearly with words, I avoid them mostly because they are lazy.
I am very light thanks David, although I have no idea what you are on about.
“pulling out of society’s pockets”
What are you talking about?
Perhaps more emoticons would help but I doubt it!
These “brilliants” are competing for research grants from all over the place.
These grants, a lot of the time, come from taxpayer dollars. Dollars, that don’t we agree, could be better spent in hospitals, schools etc ? As mentioned elsewhere, these researchers make their claims, as loudly, and at times, as wild as possible, so they will gain the attention of the bean counters, or the people responsible for issuing these grants. A prime example, is the article Iain presented last week, re the crank that suggested, (probably after years of being paid millions of bux to research the matter), that global warming or weather on the planet, is related directly to the sunspot cycle ? Pulease !
David, what would you replace ‘teh evil research grants’ with? Who would you have decided on where to spend the money?
What about the research money MacDonald’s spends on creating shit food, could that research money be better spent on healthy alternatives.
Sounds like you got turned down for a grant at one stage??
Et Mois ? Not likely, haven’t got the brains for that, and will be the first person to admit it Craigy.
I would suggest, rather than bureaucrats or our pollies, having control of the purse strings, panels of QUALIFIED & EXPERIENCED scientists, and other perhaps equally statused financial experts, have control of the cheque books. Would you agree, that there is a massive amount of duplication going on, in research in these fields. It really needs someone, or something to coordinate these efforts. Put all the experts into a massive lab, to get better bang for their buck. That’s how NASA did it, to get to the moon ?
Speaking of Mackkas, look just in the last couple of years alone ? That piece that Today Tonight did, a couple of years ago, remember that ? The hamburger that looked just as good 2 years after it was made ? The kid that lived on Mackkas as an experiment for a year, or whatever, and nearly died ? What happened ? Oh dear, looky here, Mackkas introduces a whole range of healthy meal choices OVERNIGHT ? There’s your classic example huh ? You can’t use Mackkas as an example either I think. There WE have the final choice. We chose either to eat the stuff or not. OUR CHOICE. Research dollars, and how they are spent, or allocated, ARE NOT !!!
David
We chose either to eat the stuff or not. OUR CHOICE. Research dollars, and how they are spent, or allocated, ARE NOT !!!
David
And yet people still make the wrong choice when it comes to eating fast food and eat the burgers instead of the healthy stuff.
Makes me think that if the layman in the street (like Iain) was indeed controlling the research dollars the money wouldn’t be spent any more wisely. In fact I’d bet it’d the money would be spent a lot LESS wisely!
So an invalid argument I’m afraid (but it was a nice one!).
Rgrds,
PKD
.
Hi PKD, welcome to hell ?
My point, perhaps lost in translation, is that the process of dispersing these massive funds has to be more transparent ?
Cheers
David
Aah ok, I see, so the people who distribute the funding should still do it but they need to be more transparent?
Well I don’t know if your Australian but in Oz we have a Department of Climate Change that does all that (www.climatechange.gov.au).
They produce annual reports that show how all the research cash gets divvied up. You can find the latest copy at http://www.climatechange.gov.au/budget/0809/pubs/ccbo-0809.pdf
I’m not sure how transparent you want it as you haven’t sepecifiec any expectations but that report seems transaparent enough to me, especially the tabularise summary of expenditure at the back…
Hope that helps?
PKD
.
More transparent, and more coordinated. The research is going on out there, in labs, and universities all over the world. Why aren’t they working together ? Once discoveries are made, they are shared, thru the scientific network, but they are not working together to make those discoveries. Scientists, instead of sharing the load, i.e. I study A, u guys study B C & D, and let’s get back to each other, and nut out the results ? That is not happening. They are all studying A, which perhaps may attract more money and FAME (?), if the answer is found ? A classic example of this is the study for the cure for AIDS ?
As for the Dept of Money, please. Every university campus in Oz at the moment, has people working on the problem. We used to call Budgets in Uni, dream sheets. That is exactly what they are, especially government ones.
I still think a panel, containing experts, in not only the science field, but also the economic field should be formed to oversee the research. Scientists are not accountants, and vice versa. Organisations such as the CSIRO are excellent examples of this. As for the upcoming argument of corruption, hmm, well that’s a risk certainly, but one worth taking ?
Everyone is going around in circles. It needs something to break that circle up, and point all these brain trusts, in the same direction, wind them up, and let go the button
David
“The research is going on out there, in labs, and universities all over the world. Why aren’t they working together ?”
They are working together.
Well now i AM confused!
Grendel is quite right and I don’t think any more needs to be said on that one…sounds like fear and paranoia are in the asendency there!
Where Grendel ?
They are all doing the same research, all trying to out do each other, in rushing to find an answer to the problem. Most times, forgetting the dammed question in the first place ? Look at the research in Global Warming alone. Some of the supposed answers, are just bloody bizarre !!! Sunspot cycle, give me a break.
The opposite is true PKD. Common sense is in ascendency here.
Show me the money !
I think your ‘argument’ is classic FUD – Fear, Uncertainty and Denial. I see no empirical(*) evidence to support your claims whatsover.
As Grendel said scientists do frequently work together in a co-ordinated manner.
Rgrds,
PKD
.
(*)To coin an Iain Hall term!
Actually FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. It’s too early in the morning dammit!
Why don’t we call that “an Iainism” ?