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Comments 80801 to 80850:

80801. Camburn at 12:01 PM on 1 July 2011
       Arctic icemelt is a natural cycle
       michael: Capt Larson made the voyage in 1944 through the northern route. Even last year his route was not passable. Live with it, it is history. IF you lived near the Arctic, you may know that the Canadian Coast Guard replenishes supplies on an annual basis to the northern stettlements. It has been doing this for decades. Just the way it is. During WW2, the Northest Passage was also sailed by German Warships......remember? If you don't you can look it up. Some simple history items are well known. How can I question cyrosphere? Quit easily. It is a graph posted with no supporting data prior to 1979. Sorry that my 3.5 prediction with the support of the Shindell/Schmidt paper, russtles your feathers it seems.
       Response:

       [DB] Assertions without links to sources will be disregarded.  IIRC, the Komet took the NE passage, not the fabled NW passage (so even that does not help you).

       BTW, Climate4you is a blind guide: it will lead you astray.

       "How can I question cyrosphere?  Quit easily.  It is a graph posted with no supporting data prior to 1979."

       Study this link for a history of Arctic Sea Ice, how to find the data on it...and how to properly analyze it.

       Or you can email your questions to the good people at the Arctic Climate Research at the University of Illinois here: cryosphere-science@atmos.uiuc.edu

80802. michael sweet at 11:50 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Camburn, I posted a response here.
80803. michael sweet at 11:48 AM on 1 July 2011
       Arctic icemelt is a natural cycle
       Camburn, You need to stop posting gibberish about things you do not know. This Wikipedia article documents that the entire Northwest passage was ice filled until 10 years ago. Your assertion that it has been passable by non-icebreaking vessels for decades is simply untrue. Capt. Larsens voyage has been replicated in recent years, in only a few weeks to make the passage, it is no longer remarkable for a light icebreaker to transit the NW passage. It is remarkable that someone who posts so little data is so fast to question scientists who actually measure the Arctic ice. How can you question that work when you have no idea how they measured it?
80804. GrahamC at 11:43 AM on 1 July 2011
       OA not OK part 1
       Doug, I still can't see justification for your claim that the fromation of calcium carbonate is a source of carbon dioxide, not a sink. Could you please explain it to me again, including the formation of the bicarbonate ions in your explanation?
80805. adelady at 11:42 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Eric "...the North Atlantic is particularly cold this year, and will not provide warm waters to increase melt." But the far North Atlantic is not so congenial. Check out this animation of DMI/COI SST anomalies for June as shown at the Arctic Sea Ice blog mentioned in the post.
80806. Doug Mackie at 11:33 AM on 1 July 2011
       OA not OK part 1
       We are gratified that some find this simplistic. However, the quality of comments at this blog and elsewhere suggests that there are many who do not find this chemistry simple at all. @mb: Yes you are missing something. You are missing the point of this post which is that just because you can write a balanced equation does not mean it is a correct equation. Your set of equations is: What do you think happens to the 2H+ ? Though we invoke it later ourselves, Le Chatelier's principle is no longer taught as such in most chemistry courses. Instead it is better to compare the equilibrium constant (K) with the reaction quotient (Q).
80807. Marcus at 11:28 AM on 1 July 2011
       Throwing Down The Gauntlet
       Eric. No need for massive flooding to provide Hydro-electric power. There are a number of hydro-power options that don't require large dams or back-flooding. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_hydro http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-of-the-river_hydroelectricity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microhydro_systems
80808. Dave123 at 11:26 AM on 1 July 2011
       2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
       I don't want to revive a dead thread, but I've noticed that the responses on 2-nd law violation tend to be a bit um... dry. So I thought of an analogy that might...err resonate. Consider pushing a child in a swing. You aren't strong enough to push the swing very far in one push. But each cycle of the swing you can push a bit more and the higher the child goes. The kinetic energy of the swing can greatly exceed what you've put in in any one push. However, eventually you reach a point where the energy you put into the swing is completely dissipated on any cycle.... the swing goes no higher. This isn't obviously an exact analogy, but reason you can have larger values of back radiation and surface emitted radiation than TSI is somewhat analogous to pumping a swing. Whether this will help people caught up in inventing their own versions of the 2nd law I dont know.
80809. Albatross at 11:23 AM on 1 July 2011
       2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
       Rob @179, "Your comment here contains a common theme that I see in those who wish to dismiss climate change as man made and a serious issue." It is interesting that you should post that. Earlier today I drafted a post but it was lost b/c SAFARI crashed on me. Anyhow, as you probably know Tamino has just posted a devastating refutation on one section of the NIPCC report. And that got me thinking about the fairly steady stream of papers being posted by "skeptics" (e.g., Norman)on this thread trying to convince people that there is nothing un-towards or unusual going on with the climate system. Let me just say that the framing and language has a certain tone to it that raised flags for me. So I went and cross-referenced some of the sources being referenced here by "skeptics" (see here, for example)and those that appear in the NIPCC report. Even just the most cursory of checks found that two of the papers being cited here (Herweijer et al. (2006), Hallett et al. (2003) to try and convince people that all is well are referenced in the NIPCC report and one of those (Herweijer et al. (2006)),appears in the section on extreme weather. A curious coincidence? Unlikely. And I for one am incredibly tired of people alleging to post here in "good faith" when all they appear to be doing is regurgitating stuff from a highly questionable political document prepared in the guise of science. And that said regurgitations do not even accurately represent the findings of the original paper or are not applied in context. I will also note that one of the papers that they (NIPCC; Idso and Singer) cite in reference to drought in N. America is being used for purposes not intended by the authors. I happen to know the authors of the paper in question and I know for a fact that they are not "skeptics" or in denial about AGW. So these it is worrisome to see Idso and Singer to misrepresent the science in papers that actually do not go against the theory of AGW. And worse yet, to see uncritical "skeptics" perpetuate the misinformation and distortion. If some people wish to deny the reality, the science, then they are welcome to do so, but please do not tie the rest of us to the train tracks.
80810. Camburn at 11:19 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       thanks for your patience db.
       Response:

       [DB] As long as discussions are productive, tangential to the thread post and comply with the Comments Policy, the moderators prefer to "let it ride".

80811. Camburn at 11:19 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Correction: Not Cryostat.......but Cryosphere today as to validity.
80812. Camburn at 11:12 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       scaddenp: I agree with you that ARGO is an extremely important development. The step jump in OHC is now well known and accepted as a splice problem. The data from ARGO should be much more robust than the XBT etc sets from the past.
       Response:

       [DB] Time to reel this thread in.  As a reminder, this thread is about Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt.  Other threads exist for the other topics.  Thanks to all for your understanding.
       

80813. Camburn at 11:10 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Michael: You don't seem to understand what I post, but that is ok. In the eye of the beholder. Scaddenp does, as no where have I asserted that the current ice is more than past ice. However, you might want to check what route the thin skinned vessels used. I believe you will find it is the southern NW passage, which has been low ice for decades. The Canadian Coast Guard makes an annual run in Sept to restock the northern settlements. Has been doing this for decades and decades. With that said, the conditions in the southern passage have become virtually ice free, which in the past was not a normal occurance. The voyage of Capt Larson was extremely remarkable when done, it would still be remarkable today on the path that he took. To give Cryostat full validty I would want to examine it's proxy material for conditions prior to 1979. Just because it is at that site does not give its proxy data credibility.
80814. scaddenp at 11:06 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Eric, it also looks like the Argo network may be the most sensitive instrument for climate measure that we have around. Should its measurements fail to show a signal consistent with climate theory in even 5 years would give me serious pause. Would you wait 26 years of warming on that too?
80815. scaddenp at 11:00 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Michael, I dont think there is any issue with fact the Larson was able to do an 86 day crossing of NW passage in 1944, in remarkably ice free conditions (especially compared to his 1940 crossing). What is of issue is that somehow this is evidence that arctic then had less ice than now.
80816. Tom Curtis at 10:54 AM on 1 July 2011
       2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
       Norman @178:

       "If one is looking for a small signal in noise your point would be most valid. But in this case I do believe the Eyecrometer and common sense are all that are needed to determine if climate (rainfall, drought, temperature extremes) is drastically changing for the worse."

       (my emphasis) "Drastically"? Who said anything about "drastically". My understanding of the science is that we expect climate change to drastically alter the frequency of extreme events when the Earth has warmed by 3 plus degrees by the end of this century, but that we are starting to see an increase already because the effect of global warming. Nobody claims that the effect is drastic as yet. Especially not Jeff Masters, whose question you quote, but whose answer you ignore:

       " However, I don't believe that years like 2010 and 2011 will become the "new normal" in the coming decade. Many of the flood disasters in 2010 - 2011 were undoubtedly heavily influenced by the strong El Niño and La Niña events that occurred, and we're due for a few quiet years without a strong El Niño or La Niña. There's also the possibility that a major volcanic eruption in the tropics or a significant quiet period on the sun could help cool the climate for a few years, cutting down on heat and flooding extremes (though major eruptions tend to increase drought.) But the ever-increasing amounts of heat-trapping gases humans are emitting into the air puts tremendous pressure on the climate system to shift to a new, radically different, warmer state, and the extreme weather of 2010 - 2011 suggests that the transition is already well underway. A warmer planet has more energy to power stronger storms, hotter heat waves, more intense droughts, heavier flooding rains, and record glacier melt that will drive accelerating sea level rise. I expect that by 20 - 30 years from now, extreme weather years like we witnessed in 2010 will become the new normal."

       (my emphasis) What is more, given that the rise in temperature that has driven the increase of extreme events has been small, and only occurred over the last thirty years, I do not expect an examination of individual phenomena to show a statistically significant trend. Some may, but many may not. But the conjunction of many slight statistically insignificant trends may well result in a statistically significant trend in the total number of extreme weather events. You keep on setting up this strawman of trends you can detect with an eyecrometre and of events completely outside the range of normal experience because on the real issue, the overall statistics of extreme events, you are taking a hiding.
80817. Chemware at 10:54 AM on 1 July 2011
       OA not OK part 1
       Weird - it displays correctly in the preview, but then dies when posted :-/ pps: try yet again: ^superscript _subscript
       Response:

       [DB] You were doing it right, but the WYSIWYG editor conjugates it.

       ^superscript
       _subscript

80818. Chemware at 10:54 AM on 1 July 2011
       OA not OK part 1
       ps: try again: ^superscript _subscript
80819. Chemware at 10:52 AM on 1 July 2011
       OA not OK part 1
       Actually, your equation (1) is most likely wrong: carbonic acid is the likely product, and then you are into the full set of carbonate equilibria: Ca²⁺ + 2 HCO₃^- CaCO₃ + H₂CO₃     (1) CO₂ + H₂O H₂CO₃      (2) H₂CO₃ H⁺ + HCO₃^-      (3) HCO₃^- H⁺ + CO₃     (4) Adding CO₂ in eq (2) makes more H₂CO₃, which produces more H⁺ in (3) and (4), and drives the equilibrium in (1) to the left, thereby dissolving CaCO₃. ps: mb et al, the markups for superscript and subscript (which makes equations much easier to read) are: ^superscript _subscript
80820. scaddenp at 10:49 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Eric, well its good to see you do have some guidelines even if you would wait 26 years for the result. Wouldn't that be rather embarassing because if the theory is right, and we wait 26 years before doing something about it, then we would be rather up the creek by then and leaving a terrible legacy behind. As to what would convince me that something was seriously wrong (or more to the point,missing) in climate theory, well that is straight forward. Climate theory makes a large no. of predictions with varying degrees of robustness concerning a large no. of variables. A breech of any robust prediction means model fixing at very least. I would want to discover an unknown natural forcing before I started betting on it. The truly convincing step would be an alternative theory for climate, consistent with all known physics, that makes a better job of accounting for observations that our present one.
80821. michael sweet at 10:46 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Camden, the University of Calgary here summarizes Larsons expedition. It took him 86 days to make the passage in an icebreaker that had been equipped with a larger engine that year. At the end of July ice forced him to run up the coast of Greenland and not Baffin Island. He could run up Baffin Island today, a full month earlier. Last summer a fiberglass daysailer that was incapable of breaking 1 cm of ice made the passage in only about 21 days, after making the North east passage the same summer. The St Roch (Larson's vessel) was reported almost crushed by ice at Tuktoyaktuk and in the Bearing Sea in September. The Corsair 31 would have been destroyed by any ice at all. Find a reference that supports your posititon. The reference you have provided shows that there was much, much, much more ice in 1944 than there is today. If you cannot support your position with data stop posting gibberish.
80822. Tom Curtis at 10:37 AM on 1 July 2011
       2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
       Norman @177, your really do take the cake. You take a single example of a magnitude 5.4 earthquake, that located 15 kilometres from the nearest human inhabitation, which human habitation was a small village with a population of only 3,500; and because it didn't cause any deaths conclude that magnitude 5 earthquakes cannot cause natural disasters. Tell that to Newcastle. I'm sure the thirteen dead in "one of Australia's most serious natural disasters" will be consoled to no that only magnitude 6 plus earthquakes can cause natural disasters. Or tell that in Lorca, where the ten dead will no doubt be very consoled that the earthquake that killed them was 0.9 magnitudes to small to cause a natural disaster. Or perhaps you want to restrict the comparison to California, in which case you should reassure the people of Kern Valley, of http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/events/1955_10_24.php">Concord, of Daly City, and of Santa Rosa that their fatalities where illusory because their earthquakes weren't big enough to cause natural disasters. Or are they to early, before architecture caught up with life an an earthquake zone? Tell that to Whittier Narrows, Santa Cruz County, and Sierra Madre. As recently as 2005 people were injured by an earthquake below magnitude 5 in Los Angeles. Where somebody is injured, with a little bad luck somebody could have died. Your problem is that you keep on trying to load the dice for your argument. The vast majority of tornadoes (74%) are relatively undamaging EF0 and EF1. They cause just 4% of tornado related deaths, but if you are unlucky they can still cause fatalities. Even EF2 and EF3 tornadoes are unlikely to cause natural disasters. They constitute 25% of tornadoes, and cause 29% of tornado deaths between them. But EF4 and EF 5 tornadoes, just 1% of all tornadoes, are devastating, causing 67% of deaths from just one percent of tornadoes. If I where to apply your reasoning, I would exclude all but EF3 plus tornadoes from the comparison. Or I would exclude all supercells that do not spawn at least five tornadoes. If you have any intellectual integrity, that fact that you are resorting to such egregious cherry picking should be a warning to you that your approach to the subject is biased and that (consciously or subconsciously) you are trying to reach a pre-determined conclusion regardless of the data.
80823. Fred M at 10:35 AM on 1 July 2011
       Ocean acidification: Coming soon
       DB - Thanks. I tried that and it didn't work, but I'll try again. In case no-one is interested in my comments on ocean alkalinity, they can at least Google alkalinity to understand the main points.
       Response:

       [DB] Fred, I reset that account, so hopefully it will work for you.

       As to the alkalinity/acidity/basic/ph issue, that has been so rehashed here over and over again as to become an Internet law of it's own, like Poe's Law or Godwin's Law.  In this case we invoked the "Look!  A Squirrel!" Law, as the only point in raising it was to derail the discussion of the OP.

80824. Camburn at 10:28 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Michael: One thing I have learned in all my years is to present evidence, and not inflict my interpretation of the evidence until the other person has read the paper. I do not want to taint your understanding. Once it has been read and digested by someone else, then we can have a good gentleman's discussion about what each understands. You are a smart feller, you don't need me to tell you what you should think of a link that I post for your knowledge.
80825. Camburn at 10:25 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Michael: I called the librarian at the museum to get permission to do what you asked. That permission was denied. Part of their revenue is sales of the logs. They want people to buy the book. I will not go against their wishes as I respect law. The book is worth the money and a very nice addition to any library. I gave you my reasons for my prediction, as crazy as you must think it is, of approx 3.5 for the low this year. We will see how close I come. I provided you links to published literature showing the varation in the Arctic Ice on a historical scale. We know it was not variation in TSI that caused the variation in the ice.
80826. GrahamC at 10:23 AM on 1 July 2011
       OA not OK part 1
       I agree, mb The whole bicarbonate equilibrium needs to be considered. Apply Le Chatelier and it's obvious that removal of bicarbonate will shift the equilibrium you've illustrated to the right, resulting in absorption of gaseous carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
80827. Chemware at 10:22 AM on 1 July 2011
       OA not OK part 1
       This is a bit simplistic. You really need to introduce the concept of chemical equilibrium: Ca²⁺ + 2 HCO₃^- CaCO₃ + CO₂ + H₂O followed by Le Chateliers principle: If a chemical system at equilibrium experiences a change in concentration, temperature, volume, or partial pressure, then the equilibrium shifts to counteract the imposed change and a new equilibrium is established. So that adding more CO₂ pushes the reaction to the left - thereby dissolving CaCO₃, ie: shells.
80828. michael sweet at 10:17 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Camburn, You have not even produced a single line from your book as evidence to support your wild claims. You tell me to buy and read an entire book without even citing a page that supports your position??? If you have no data to support your position you should admit it and stop wasting everyones time.
80829. michael sweet at 10:14 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Camburn, You have not summarized the data at all. I have provided you the data and summarized it for you. You link to a paper that does not even talk about the last 100 years when AGW has started its influence (since Bowhead whales were hunted out in 1910). You have not even said what you think is important in the paper you linked or how it applies to our discussion. What should I look for when I read it? Where is their graph showing "harmonic cycles" that apply on a yearly scale? You have brought nothing but gibberish to the table. We all know the indigeneous people will be severly affected. You are the one minimizing those effects. Your paper supports my position that the change is unprecedented. Try to find a paper that actually supports your position and not mine, it will be difficult.
80830. Camburn at 10:12 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Bowhead Whale Study: http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic49-3-235.pdf Michael: Here is the website where you can order the book. Funny how a voyage done in 1944 through the northern northwest passage, logged and completed isn't evidence. Vancouver Maritime Museum
80831. michael sweet at 10:07 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Eric, It is incredible to see how you can find optomism in this data! You should write a post for WUWT. Neven has done a much more through analysis than your unsupported eyecrometer and he thinks the sea temperature is warmer in the Kara Sea than 2007, and comparable elsewhere. We will have to wait a week for the NSIDC report to come out, they will have the true word. Why are you skeptical of the Cryopshere Today data, you rarely provide data of any type yourself.
80832. michael sweet at 10:00 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Eric, The Cryosphere Today graph has no attribution on their page. They are often referred to as the experts on this data by other experts like the NSIDC. I presume the graph is their own summary of their data. They carefully take all the records that are available and compile them into their graph. Places like Pond Inlet, Barrow and many other locations have long records. Data from explorers like Scott and whalers are also inlcuded. Ice in any local area will of course be more variable than ice in the entire Arctic Basin. (Iceland is not even in the Arctic Basin). It is common for there to be a lot of ice in Alaska when there is less ice in Svalbard and visa versa.
80833. Fred M at 09:50 AM on 1 July 2011
       Ocean acidification: Coming soon
       To RobP - I believe, Rob, that my discussion of ocean alkalinity was something every reader here would benefit from. I didn't see Camburn's misconception as a "provocation", because very possibly many readers believe that CO2-mediated ocean acidification reduces alkalinity (you could take a poll). The fact that it doesn't deserves attention. (I suppose I should ask whether you think CO2 reduces alkalinity - do you?). You're welcome to delete anything you want, but when you delete on-topic material of general interest from individuals reasonably well informed on the topic, you diminish the quality of what remains. I'll leave the rest up to you. For reasons known only to the gods of the Internet, I haven't been able to register here in my full name. Readers interested in ocean acidification can probably find my comments elsewhere via Google, or visit Judy Curry's blog for some of them. Fred Moolten
       Response:

       [DB] Fred, there is a Fred Moolton ID already in the system with a comcast email address coming from the same geographic area as you.  If that is you, try logging in under that name with the password you used for that.  I just resent that info back to that email address in case you forgot.

80834. Rob Honeycutt at 09:49 AM on 1 July 2011
       2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
       Norman @ 178... Your comment here contains a common theme that I see in those who wish to dismiss climate change as man made and a serious issue. We hold a train schedule in our hands that says that a train runs on these tracks on a regular schedule. We can hear a whistle blowing. We can see a light starting to emerge from the tunnel behind us. We can even feel the vibration of the track we're standing on. We can come up with lots of explanations for the signs we see. Could the schedule be a misprint? Maybe that's a factory whistle. Maybe it's a train on a different track. But the best research available says we are going to be hit by a train unless we find a way to get off the track we're on. But we have not been hit by the train yet. The argument you seem to be putting forth is that we shouldn't move until the train is about to hit us. Prudence suggests that one should move well before being absolutely positive so as to make sure you CAN move off the track. History tells us that "common sense" often fails us. This is why science has served humanity so well. It has told us the truth in spite of our common sense. Data is data. Physics is physics. Even if it looks wrong or if your "eyecrometer" can't detect it, proper analysis will properly inform us. Cows and deer don't move off the track until it's too late because they do not have the capacity we have to analyze a situation. Let's not willfully be a cow.
80835. Eric the Red at 09:41 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Phillipe, Sorry for the rant. Yes, 2007 saw an accelerated decline in June which has not occurred this year. Remember, the North Atlantic is particularly cold this year, and will not provide warm waters to increase melt. Michael, How did Cryosphere Today obtain its sea ice values? The sea ice off Iceland appears to be much more variable. http://www.arctichost.net/ICASS_VI/images/01.11.09.pdf
80836. michael sweet at 09:34 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Your anecdotal evidence is included in my graph. You will need to find data that supports your position. I cannot be responsible for your inability to support your position. In any case, anecdotal evidence is unscientific compared to the summary graph I have provided.
80837. michael sweet at 09:32 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       My computer will not open your link. Please copy the relevant data (as I did) and post it here. Please point out what you think is important, a link without description is against the comments policy. I will not think cycles that are more than 1,000 years old are important without substantial evidence. I have provided strong evidence of a change in the Arctic Sea ice over the past centuary, please provide similar evidence to support your wild claims.
80838. Camburn at 09:27 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       michael: I have given you the source of Capt Larsons logs. He made the voyage..his anecdotal is pretty good as it is observation. The RCMP is a very professional organization. You may purchase the log book from the Museum in Vancouver, British Columbia. They have an online area that allows one to have the book shipped.
80839. michael sweet at 09:23 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       My graph was from Cryosphere Today (linked in the main post).
80840. michael sweet at 09:22 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Camburn: includes observations from Capt. Larson's passage. You will have to provide actual data and not a reference to anecdotal evidence that you cannot show ("pay no attention to the man behind the curtain Dorothy"). If you cannot provide evidence to support your position you should go over to WUWT where you will be welcome. Here we want to see data. Rhis graph does not show the minimum, but it is clear what the trend is. Where do you see "harmonic trends" with your eyecormeter? I see flat before 1955 and unrelenting, exponentially increasing decline since then.
80841. Camburn at 09:17 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       This paper is one that examines long term Arctic Ice via the use of bowhead whale fossils. Dyke, Hooper, Savelle
80842. Norman at 09:08 AM on 1 July 2011
       2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
       DB @ 166 I do respect your intelligence and appreciate your thoughtful comments in my posts. On this issue I have to respectfully disagree with your point. If one is looking for a small signal in noise your point would be most valid. But in this case I do believe the Eyecrometer and common sense are all that are needed to determine if climate (rainfall, drought, temperature extremes) is drastically changing for the worse. Case of point. When you look at any of the global temperature graphs you can clearly use the "eyecrometer" to determine that the globe has warmed since the 1970's. You can roughly get a slope of that change by looking at the number of years and seeing the increase and looking at the type of line that is on the graph. People do have good skills at pattern recognition and for obvious changes one would not need a detailed statistical analysis to see any trends. That is my primary point of the links I post. If the weather and climate are changing so drastically because of the recent increase in global temperatures then the "eyecrometer" would certainly be able to see such changes without having to fine tune the statistcal mechanics to find these extremes. I posted various graphs of droughts over a very long period of time. The "eyecrometer" is sensitive enough to see if there are changes in intensity, frequency or duration of a drought cycle. If such changes are not so apparent by visual examination then how can the claim be made by Jeff Masters: "The pace of extreme weather events has remained remarkably high during 2011, giving rise to the question--is the "Global Weirding" of 2010 and 2011 the new normal? Has human-caused climate change destabilized the climate, bringing these extreme, unprecedented weather events? Any one of the extreme weather events of 2010 or 2011 could have occurred naturally sometime during the past 1,000 years. But it is highly improbable that the remarkable extreme weather events of 2010 and 2011 could have all happened in such a short period of time without some powerful climate-altering force at work. The best science we have right now maintains that human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases like CO2 are the most likely cause of such a climate-altering force." If 2010 extemes are so outside the normal they should stick out in the long term history of regional events as obvious exceptional events. I have done some regional droughts. The next attempt would be long term regional precipitation events (hundreds of years long if possible, then one can see if the nature of such events is cyclic...as Tom Curtis pointed out in a post, you need at least a couple cycles to determine if they are present) if such events are determined in the literature. Hopefully I am making a valid point on claiming the "eyecrometer" should suffice to determine extremes in a long term trends. I guess one more example would be Tom Curtis post about the modeled ENSO future predictions. The trend is upwards and I would not need Tom Curtis to generate Standard deviations from normal to see an upward trend. Maybe to get an exact slope you would but that is not the determination of this article. The claim made is that weather related events are more extreme and it would require a powerful climate-altering force.
80843. Camburn at 09:06 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       michael: I would suggest that you get a copy of Capt Henry Larson's log on his voyage traversing the NW passage in 1944. I cannot post a link to his log as it is not available on the web and the museum, the owner of said log, has not given me permission to scan and post it.
80844. Camburn at 09:01 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Philippe: I won't go into harmonics or cycles as most folks want to dismiss them. With that said, that is what I am using to base my low ice extent on. The area, volume etc. Cryosat, along with the Gatlin team has found ice thicker than previously thought unless one examines polar 5 data. The trend is as expected based on other criteria to me. The big elephant in the room is the amount of black carbon that China continues to spew. That has lowered ice albedo, and is ingrained in the ice itself. This has added to the degree of melt in a substantial way. BC is anthro in nature, so must be added to effect and cause. Shindell
       Response:

       [DB] I would caution you on hanging one's hat on the initial rollout of Crosat-2 data.  In software terminology, it is only a "beta".  As a test, consider that the design vertical resolution is in the millimeter range, while the product delivered to date has a horizontal granularity (it has very large pixels) in the kilometer+ range.

       Adding to the calibration issues is a highly mobile, fractured and friable ice pack that is continuously shifting, adding to the issues in stitching together data from the separate flight paths.

       A layman interpretation is that the current realization of Cryosat-2 data is that it is nearsighted, needing visual corrections to come.  Future iterations will likely have improved discrimination capability as the stitching algorhythms evolve (it's eyesight will sharpen).

80845. michael sweet at 08:54 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Camburn, are you suggesting that "a long term sine wave shows hamronics" indicates that the sea ice low this summer will be less than 50% of the lowest level recorded before 1940 (see Cryosphere Today) and you think that is normal? Please explain how a sine wave harmonic could result in 50% of the ice melting when the trend was flat for decades prior to that time. Please refer to scientific sources for your data. Please support your reasoning with more analysis than your eyecrometer. Please stop poisoning the scientific discussion on this site with your wild, unsupported speculations.
       Response:

       [DB] "wild, unsupported speculations"

       The technical term, I believe, is "gibberish".

80846. Doug Mackie at 08:50 AM on 1 July 2011
       Ocean acidification: Coming soon
       Links fixed
80847. Norman at 08:45 AM on 1 July 2011
       2010 - 2011: Earth's most extreme weather since 1816?
       Tom Curtis @ 171 I would humbly disagree with your calculation. You are using a 5 magnitude (and stronger) earthquake as a disaster causing one to get the calculation of 4% of 2100 earthquakes led to disasters (86 disaster geophysical events in 2010). Yet in your post you show a 5.4 will produce little damage and not lead to a disaster (Borrego Springs Quake). I am not sure at what level in the 5's an earthquake will become a disaster if it strikes a populated area nor do I have the number broken down but it could be a safe speculation that as the magnitude goes up there are a lot fewer so most of the 5's may be lower non damaging earthquakes. For the US you state maybe 2 or 3 were disasters. In the US only 9 had a magnitude of 6 or more. If you go with the higher figure of a 6 magnitude or above earthquake as being reported as a disaster (some will hit in non populated areas) you get 173 for 2010. If the 86 listed geophysical events are earthquakes (a few could be volcanoes) then your number of earthquakes being reported as disasters is now very close to 50% which is the point I was making. Most disaster causing earthquakes are counted already and an increasing population, with higher propery values (disaster reporting is based upon number of people killed and a certain level of property damage) will not have much effect on the number reported. Whereas if only 8% of supercell storms lead to disasters but the potential is for a higher number, a higher number of wealthy individuals will increase the odds of a supercell being counted as a disaster.
80848. mb at 08:44 AM on 1 July 2011
       OA not OK part 1
       Something seems fishy here... I think the chemistry prior to Eq. 1 (ie, the formation of aqueous carbonic acid from dissolved CO2) could be written like: 2(H2O) + 2(CO2)_g <-> 2(H2CO3)_{aq} <-> 2(H+) + 2(HCO3)^{-}_{aq} Then 2 bicarbonates react with Ca ions to produce shells and returning only 1 CO2 to the atmosphere (the gas phase). Hence, if two CO2s go in, it seems like shell formation is a net carbon sink. Am I missing something?
80849. Philippe Chantreau at 08:42 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       There is no "slowdown." 2007 saw a sharp acceleration of melt in late june, which is not happening this year. There is plenty of weather yet to come that will determine what the minimum extent of September will be. Whereas the next few years might indeed be telling, I'm hard pressed to see how the past few weren't quite telling as well. "I know you modelers do not like to look at real data becasue it upsets your thinking." Gratuitous, baseless and insulting. You should refrain from such, the usual tone of your posts is much better.
80850. Eric the Red at 08:22 AM on 1 July 2011
       Websites for Watching the Arctic Sea Ice Melt
       Camburn, Based on the slowdown in Arctic melt compared to 2007 and 2010, and the cold North Atlantic, I so not share your sentiments. I do agree with your harmonics however. The next few years should be telling (not necessarily 26 Sphaerica).

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