If I were to say, the Texas Rangers could win a World Series in 2008, baseball fans would laugh and say it's a "homer's wishful thinking." If I were to say it to someone who does not follow baseball, he or she might accept it at face value (given that it's just some guy talking). If this person heard it in passing from some talking head on TV, it would seem like a reasonable bet.
Few people follow Arctic ice conditions. This makes them susceptable to disingenuous reporting like this CNN piece. How bad is the distortion?
The ice retreated to a record level in September when the Northwest Passage -- the sea route through the Arctic Ocean -- opened up briefly for the first time in recorded history.
The first time? Really?
As the numerous sub pictures show, Arctic ice has been thin to missing before. The Northwest Passage has opened up before. Even the most inept reporter could search Google and turn up the Wikipedia page, which could serve as a jumping off point for verification...
Amundsen expedition
The Northwest Passage was not conquered by sea until 1906, when the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who had sailed just in time to escape creditors seeking to stop the expedition, completed a three-year voyage in the converted 47-ton herring boat Gjøa. At the end of this trip, he walked into the city of Eagle, Alaska, and sent a telegram announcing his success. Although his chosen east–west route, via the Rae Strait, contained young ice and thus was navigable, some of the waterways were extremely shallow making the route commercially impractical.Later expeditions
The first traversal of the Northwest Passage via dog sled[18] was accomplished by Greenlander Knud Rasmussen while on the Fifth Thule Expedition (1921–1924). Rasmussen, and two Greenland Inuit, travelled from the Atlantic to the Pacific over the course of 16 months via dog sled.In 1940, Canadian RCMP officer Henry Larsen was the second to sail the passage, crossing west to east, from Vancouver to Halifax. More than once on this trip, it was unknown whether the St. Roch a Royal Canadian Mounted Police "ice-fortified" schooner would survive the ravages of the sea ice. At one point, Larsen wondered "if we had come this far only to be crushed like a nut on a shoal and then buried by the ice." The ship and all but one of her crew survived the winter on Boothia Peninsula. Each of the men on the trip was awarded a medal by Canada's sovereign, King George VI, in recognition of this notable feat of Arctic navigation.
Later in 1944, Larsen's return trip was far more swift than his first; the 28 months he took on his first trip was significantly reduced, setting the mark for having traversed it in a single season. The ship followed a more northerly partially uncharted route, and it also had extensive upgrades.
On July 1, 1957, the United States Coast Guard cutter Storis departed in company with U.S. Coast Guard cutters Bramble (WLB-392) and SPAR (WLB-403) to search for a deep draft channel through the Arctic Ocean and to collect hydrographic information. Upon her return to Greenland waters, the Storis became the first U.S.-registered vessel to circumnavigate North America. Shortly after her return in late 1957, she was reassigned to her new home port of Kodiak, Alaska.
In 1969, the SS Manhattan made the passage, accompanied by the Canadian icebreaker Sir John A. Macdonald. The Manhattan was a specially reinforced supertanker sent to test the viability of the passage for the transport of oil. While the Manhattan succeeded, the route was deemed not to be cost effective, and the Alaska Pipeline was built instead.
In June 1977 sailor Willy de Roos left Belgium to attempt crossing the Northwest Passage in his 13.8 m (45 ft) steel yacht Williwaw. He reached the Bering Strait in September and after a stopover in Victoria, British Columbia, went on to round Cape Horn and sail back to Belgium, thus being the first sailor to circumnavigate the Americas entirely by ship.[19]
In 1984, the commercial passenger vessel MS Explorer (which sank in the Antarctic Ocean in 2007) became the first cruise ship to navigate the passage.[20]
David Scott Cowper set out in July 1986 from England in a 12.8 m (42 foot) lifeboat, the Mabel El Holland, and survived 3 Arctic winters in the Northwest Passage before reaching the Bering Strait in August 1989. He then continued around the world via the Cape of Good Hope to arrive back on 24 September 1990, becoming the first vessel to circumnavigate via the Northwest Passage[21].
On September 1, 2001, Northabout, an 14.3 m (47 ft) aluminium sailboat with diesel engine[22], built and captained by Jarlath Cunnane, completed the Northwest Passage east-to-west from Ireland to the Bering Strait. The voyage from the Atlantic to the Pacific was completed in a very fast time of 24 days. The Northabout then cruised in Canada for two years before it returned to Ireland in 2005 via the Northeast Passage thereby completing the first east-to-west circumnavigation of the pole by a single sailboat. The Northeast Passage return along the coast of Russia was slower, starting in 2004, with an ice stop and winter over in Khatanga, Siberia—hence the return to Ireland via the Norwegian coast in October 2005. On January 18, 2006, The Cruising Club of America awarded Jarlath Cunnane their Blue Water Medal, an award for "meritorious seamanship and adventure upon the sea displayed by amateur sailors of all nationalities."
On July 18, 2003, a father and son team, Richard and Andrew Wood, with Zoe Birchenough, sailed a yacht Norwegian Blue into the Bering Strait. Two months later she sailed into the Davis Strait to become the first British yacht to transit the Northwest Passage from west to east. She also became the only British vessel to complete the Northwest Passage in one season.
On May 19, 2007, a French sailor, Sébastien Roubinet, and one other crew member left Anchorage, Alaska, in Babouche, a 7.5 m (25 ft) ice catamaran designed to sail on water and slide over ice. The goal was to navigate west to east through the Northwest Passage by sail only. Following a journey of more than 7,200 kilometres (4,474 mi), Roubinet reached Greenland on September 9, 2007, thereby completing the first Northwest Passage voyage made without engine in one season.[23]
The nod to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, while ignoring the University of Illinois is nothing new. UI presents inconvenient truths to scaremongering reporters. Check out Media Cherrypicking of the Areal Coverage of Arctic Sea Ice.
The exclusive reliance on the always quotable Mark Serreze pushes the story from the realm of reporting to editorial. Serreze went straight from grant support in grad school to grant support for a living, without once holding a real job, though it can be work securing those grants. Serreze is obviously quite good at it and has gotten better over time (I wonder if the shrillness correlates with the money in a statistically significant manner). Here's a list of grants secured by Serreze, according to Science Storm (don't know if this is all of them)...
Collaborative Research: Synthesis of Modes of Ocean-Ice-Atmosphere Covariability in the Arctic System from Multivariate Century-Scale Observations
Amendment Date: 2005-09-06; Funding Amount: $253,359Collaborative Research: A Land Surface Model Hind-Cast for the Terrestrial Arctic Drainage System
Amendment Date: 2005-07-06; Funding Amount: $486,850Collaborative Research: An Integrated Assessment of the Arctic Freshwater System: Analysis of Retrospective and Contemporary Conditions
Amendment Date: 2005-06-24; Funding Amount: $296,513LONG-TERM OBSERVATIONS: Collaborative Research: A Hydrological Observing System for the Pan-Arctic Landmass
Amendment Date: 2003-10-29; Funding Amount: $436,614Characteristics of Cyclone Development in the Arctic and Their Hydrologic Impacts
Amendment Date: 2003-03-26; Funding Amount: $252,919Characterization of Atmospheric Moisture Transport and the Freshwater Budget of the Arctic with an Improved Regional Model
Amendment Date: 2002-02-06; Funding Amount: $170,000Collaborative Research: Hydro-Climatology of the Major Eurasian Arctic Drainages
Amendment Date: 1999-08-05; Funding Amount: $361,791Contemporary Variability, Future Changes and Human Dimensions of Snowpack Water Resources Over the Western United States
Amendment Date: 1998-06-04; Funding Amount: $407,349The Utility of NCEP/NCAR "Reanalysis" Fields for Arctic Climate Studies
Amendment Date: 1996-08-14; Funding Amount: $219,747Collaborative Research: Atmospheric Controls on Northern Hemisphere Cryosphere Variability
Amendment Date: 1996-02-21; Funding Amount: $136,946Sea Ice Atmospheric Characteristics of the SHEBA Field Area
Amendment Date: 1996-02-08; Funding Amount: $89,934Atmospheric Water Vapor over the Arctic and its Relationships with Synoptic Variability and Surface Conditions
Amendment Date: 1993-08-03; Funding Amount: $161,644Atmospheric Water Vapor over the Arctic and its Relationships with Synoptic Variability and Surface Conditions
Amendment Date: 1993-08-03; Funding Amount: $161,644Summer Climate Interactions in the Arctic Basin
Amendment Date: 1992-02-12; Funding Amount: $115,846Observations in Support of Remote Sensing and Modeling of Arctic Sea Ice and Atmospheric Conditions
Amendment Date: 1991-09-30; Funding Amount: $83,938
Sorta makes ExxonMobile look like a bunch of pikers, doesn't it?
It the alarmists can claim a $10,000 honorium taints a skeptical scientist, what about this guy? I guess grant money is different. It's pure green, not tainted green.
So, by one-sourcing and minimal reporting, it the reporter lazy, incompetent, or biased? Well, I suspect the latter because of the following...
Serreze said those who suggest the Arctic meltdown is just part of a historic cycle are wrong."It's not cyclical at this point. I think we understand the physics behind this pretty well," he said. "We've known for at least 30 years, from our earliest climate models, that it's the Arctic where we'd see the first signs of global warming.
"It's a situation where we hate to say we told you so, but we told you so," he said.
This is at least an acknowledgement that someone, somewhere holds a different view. But, the reporter doesn't bother to track down anyone to support that view. We're simply to take Serreze's view that anyone who disagrees with him is wrong. Why? Because he says so. He understands stuff that we do not.
Jeeze, is Hansen giving lessons in this stuff? There's got to be a playbook, or maybe The DUmmies Guide to Climate Alarmism.
Well, as it turns out, there are dissenting views...
North Atlantic Warming Tied To Natural Variability
Arctic Ocean Circulation Does An About-Face
Reports of Record Arctic Ice Melt Disgracefully Ignore History
Arctic data cast doubt on climate change theory
The Changing Arctic from the November, 1922 Monthly Weather Review
I'm so tired of this crap. It would be humorous if not for the headlong plunge into socialism and marxism that the world and our country are taking in the name of saving a planet that's not threatened.
The only hope is for intelligent, informed people to learn the truth and spread the word. Global warming has become a religion for the secular left. It's time the rational right started evangelizing about the truth and saving the ignorant from the totalitarian elite.
What can you do? It's simple to contact your Senators and Congressperson to declare that you will not support them if they back any carbon taxes, cap & trade legislation, or other elements of the enviromarxist agenda. If it's a genuine GOP representative (as opposed to the RINO McCain type) who is inclined to oppose the leftist greenies, but is at risk of going native inside the Beltway, a little constituent encouragement can do wonders for the growth of a spine.
Also, we need to let McCain's campaign know that his Oregon global warming speech didn't earn him liberal votes, but is costing him conservative votes. Urge him to review the latest data and consider withdrawing judgment, or at least, action until more time has passed.
If we can keep the enviromarxists at bay for another five years, this issue is likely to fade towards irrelevance in the face of moderate to colder weather resulting from PDO and increased cloud cover from a weak Solar Cycle 24.
Libs like to talk about disappearing Arctic sea ice (ignoring growing Anarctic ice) as a sign of a tipping point for runaway warming. For me, the disappearing incandescent light bulb is the sign of a tipping point for runaway socialism.
You, my friend, are a God send. When I am ignorant on a subject, I only wish to learn more about it. Sometimes my ignorance in the first place ticks people off, but you took the time to help me.
Thanks alot. If there were a way to add you as a ‘friend’ on here, I would do just that.
That list of crossings of the NW passage needs one more:
In 1985 the icebreaker CGC Polar Sea (WGB 11) left from Seattle, travelled down the west coast, transited the Panama Canal, went up the east coast, then crossed above Canada breaking ice much of the way through the NW passage, then back around and down through the Bering Sea, then back to Seattle. It was a solo circumnavigation of North America.
Outstanding job of putting that info together.
Thank you, Entrepreneur
