Posted on 07/17/2011 9:44:23 PM PDT by smokingfrog
On a small, floating piece of ice in the Beaufort Sea, several hundred miles north of Alaska, a group of scientists are documenting what some dub an "Arctic meltdown."
According to climate scientists, the warming of the region is shrinking the polar ice cap at an alarming rate, reducing the permafrost layer and wreaking havoc on polar bears, arctic foxes and other indigenous wildlife in the region.
What is bad for the animals, though, has been good for commerce.
The recession of the sea ice and the reduction in permafrost -- combined with advances in technology -- have allowed access to oil, mineral and natural gas deposits that were previously trapped in the ice.
The abundance of these valuable resources and the opportunity to exploit them has created a gold rush-like scramble in the high north, with fierce competition to determine which countries have the right to access the riches of the Arctic.
This competition has brought in its wake a host of naval and military activities that the Arctic hasn't seen since the end of the Cold War.
Now, one of the coldest places on Earth is heating up as nuclear submarines, Aegis-class frigates, strategic bombers and a new generation of icebreakers are resuming operations there.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
If you want to look at more years or different dates there is the website. Knock yourself out.
I don’t remember computer graphics and satellite images being quite so ummm... robust in 1979....
I don’t know. Do you think the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences faked it?
“And now all of a sudden there are “climate scientists” instead of scientists.”
There’s a big difference. Climate science is a secular religion, in which skeptics are ostracized. Science depends on sensible evidence. Back when the study of weather was a science it was called “meteorology”.
A University embellishing data and creating fancy graphics to suit its own grants for the study of melting ice caps? No WAY! /s
(especially one from Illinois?)
Heck, it’s not like even NASA would use incorrect data for global temperatures.... would they? /sarcasm again
There were no color pictures like that in 79 from a satellite photo, and that was computer generated, there were not computer programs pumping out true-color or even 256 color at that time, much less that resolution.
Someone took a photo of the earth, and over-layed whatever graphics they wanted on to it. I could over lay stuff to make it look like the ice caps were growing into a face of Al Gore, that don’t make it real. (well, I couldn’t but my teen-aged son could).
In other words... it’s been ‘shopped.
It’s trivial to gussie up the presentation of any set of data using technologies that didn’t exist when the data were first collected — and so what?
What I’d care about is whether the data was gathered in the exact same manner in the two cases being compared. No fair having one set be created from manual visits and a second set being generated from a satellite without an attempt to reconcile discrepancies which the two methods will almost certainly introduce without resorting to something as crude as “hide the decline.”
“...........the warming of the region is shrinking the polar ice cap at an alarming rate”
What the hell is that? Can anyone define what an “alarming rate” is?
Alarming Rate |ah-lar-ming-rat|
1.) A change in condition that is required to cause panic and concern in people too stupid to realize global warming is a hoax.
2.) A notification of a change in condition deemed minimal by researchers which necessary to separate governments or universities from monies they possess.
“What the hell is that? Can anyone define what an “alarming rate” is?”
If these people are so smart, how do they plan on reversing it? Better still, what is their backout plan if they reduce it too much?
I doubt that those deposits are actually IN the ice. More likely UNDER the ice. But that means that at some time in the past there was organic matter (plants, animals...) where there is now ice. Which would show that having no ice in the polar region is a natural phenomenon and not caused by the hypothetical AGW.
“What the hell is that? Can anyone define what an “alarming rate” is?”
Anything less than growing.
Nobody can predict that this warming is bad, long term, i.e. centuries.
That's because they would be extremely embarrassed if anyone were to report what is going on in the Antarctic, which is much larger. They've probably been called on their “global” warming lies when it comes to the poles and now they are extremely happy to report on any warming in the Arctic without mentioning the Antarctic. Regional warming is a convenient way to ignore what's going on in the rest of the world.
The AGW hoax still seems to shuffle along like a rotting zombie corpse.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me 987,076 times, shame on me.
It would take a lot of work to “shop” every shot for nearly every day since 1979. Strange that they would do that and leave the “shopped shots” showing little to no change in Arctic ice too. Kind of a waste of propaganda effort wouldn’t you say?
ping to #34
Once you have an algorithm and a set of source data down you can crank these charts out at gigahertz speed. No need for manually touching up a whole series when a kink in the algorithm will touch them up for you.
I still don’t understand why they didn’t make them support their disappearing ice theory if they went to all that trouble.
It probably would be, but maybe I’m reading these wrong, the purple has declined significantly on those images, that would show a change in the ice.
And, of course I just glanced at them.
I am just one of those people who trusts nothing, and questions everything out of the Ministry of Propaganda (ie anything to do with the environment, climate or the EPA), and their branch that pushes such agenda (ie any of the federally funded universities that deals with climate).
If Al Gore and his ilk came out and said the sky was blue, I swear, I would go outside and look, and if it was indeed blue, I would head directly to an optometrist and get my eyes checked.
That sure isn't what I see. I see more open water around the perimeter of the ice cap but the pink and purple, the thickest ice, appears to encompass more square miles in the 2011 pic than the 1979 pic. A lot more.
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