Posted On: Wednesday - October 4th 2017 7:31PM MST
In Topics: Global Climate Stupidity
See, polar bears eat a lot of seals, and these bears love to frolic on the ice. (Got it? Good!) A Zerohedge article a week back said "Inconvenient? Record Arctic Sea Ice Growth In September".
There are a few graphs that are fairly easy to read (ZH financial data graphs all seem to suck, so this is a pleasant change.) Interestingly, this amount of ice - let's talk mass here, as that MAY be what matters to the Global Climate DisrutpionTM Chicken Littles - cannot easily be measured. Is this extent of the Arctic ice just important as a measure of temperature just for that region of the earth? Wouldn't it depend on how thick it is, and what kind of ice, as any sea water kept under about 28 F (-2 C) will be frozen but temperatures deep in it could be anything in a wide range of values. They don't measure all that, because they can't,
Possibly area covered by sea ice could be important to any WORKING model of the earth's climate, as albedo (reflectivity of the surface) would be much higher with ice. That's what the Zerohedge graphs and climate scientists mean by "extent". They should say "surface area". Extent could mean some type of average of the most southerly range of the ice, integrated over longitude. What would that mean as far as climate observation is concerned? There could be holes more northerly.
I guess the total mass of ice would tell you the most about average temperature and other conditions in the region, but again, the thickness can't be measured easily via satellite, so we don't hear about it.
OK, why all this rambling about something climate scientists could probably explain lots better than Peak Stupidity can? The reason is that this is just observational data. Besides the fact, described in multiple posts with the Global Climate Stupidity topic key attached, that there is no working model of the earth's climate, this ice MASS observation is not even well-standardized or understood enough to CHECK any such models with. If you can't even get good measurements, how can you do science?
That'd be a good question for one Professor Peter Wadhams, as the article shows a tweet or slide from the guy predicting that the ice would "collapse" by last year. If you were hoping to kayak from south Hudson's Bay in Ontario over the pole for a fresh seafood dinner over in Nordvick, Russia, you may want to call your Eskimos and see if you can get a partial refund at least. At least the Ruskies can't invade this way either - they'll just have to keep on hacking.
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