Antarctic ice shelf melt 'lowest EVER recorded, global warming is NOT eroding it'

Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.

Changes over thousands of years are climate changes, 2010 to 2012 is just weather.

(Neither side of this argument have over 150 years of accurate weather records, so I do not have a side)

The deceptive part of this article is to focus on the Antarctic, which no one finds having big changes, and ignore the Arctic, which has had very odd weather.

 

I don't think ignoring either Arctic or Antarctic is good. Rather, both poles seem to play a intricate part in the global weather patterns. We are trying to unlock, learn to what extent this effect has on our weather. This will take time, more research and expanding our knowledge on how the ice belt grows in the Antarctic region.

Currently, it my be summer in the Southern Hemisphere, but in the Antarctic, its' a different story. The ice locked ships, crews, and passengers down there can attest to that.

DBCassidy

 

Once again, ENSO makes everything more complicated.

 

My point is that climate is NEVER about this year, that is weather. Show me a graph since 1014 and it will show any climate change that is happening. No one has been recording weather on Antarctica long enough to see climate change there,

 

Another climate denial source of questionable reputation for honesty...

"The science section of the site, with its much more piecemeal coverage than the technology sections, has developed a reputation for stories promoting Climate change denial and Climate change skepticism, under the editorship of Lewis Page, a Cambridge engineering graduate who served as a Royal Navy officer..."

From Wiki.

"First, The Register, a British website aimed at the information technology industry which regularly features inaccurate and misleading articles about climate change which it has scavenged from 'sceptic' websites such as 'Watts Up With That', covered the story on 23 March, under the headline 'Medieval warming WAS global - new science contradicts IPCC'."
Bob Ward: Another Researcher Falls Victim to the Echo Chamber of Climate Change Denial


I could cite more, but those that get it...get it.

Icarus

 

We have the ice core records that do give a fairly good idea of both temperature and co2 very far back. The longer back we look though the more the values are averaged. For ice extent we have about 35 years, plus some ship accounts, which are very brief.

 

Parts of grounded Antarctic ice are melting very fast and appear to have accelerated. Other parts show the opposite pattern. The place is large and varied enough so that it offers something for everybody.

Something for everybody who feels motivated to tell only part of the story, that is.

 

We often said in Oklahoma, 'If you don't like the weather, wait an hour and it will change." So can I can relate the varied conditions over Antarctica:

Personally, I think that place is for the Byrds:


Bob Wilson

 

Polar ice could be towed to an area with high freshwater demand. This has been studied at least since the 1970s. The transport cost could be lower than desalinization of seawater. That by itself is not a very strong statement, since desalinization is quite expensive. Anyway, the idea pops up from time to time.

I think that in any year the supply of polar ice is high, so this is not really a climate-change story. It is all about transport costs, and what you can sell the water for at the destination port.

 

Back when it was studied nobody was thinking about the environmental impact of hauling a huge ice cube into a temperate climate port. How much damage would a huge chunk of ice cause to a local port? That easily could be enough temperature change and freshwater insertion to question the effect on the destination.

 

Back in the fall of '11, a huge iceberg (part of the massive calf that calved off of Greenland the previous spring) grounded in front of the Port of St. Anthony in Northern Newfoundland, shutting the port down for several months. This was several months later than usual iceberg sighing off the coast of NL. We saw bergs all through the early fall. Usually you see them in July, another in the fall.

Icarus

 

FL, I really don't know and I don't presume that there would be no concerning effects. As far as freshwater melting into the harbor, we ought to be able to get some handle on that because many harbors get freshwater insertion 'the other way'. River outflow.

It is just a thing related to the earth's largest freshwater storage areas. They pop off into the ocean, and as the melt there, the freshwater value is lost.

I also don't know what is the salinity of the Antarctic sea ice that forms seasonally. One might presume very low, but that ain't data. Fill a ship with that stuff maybe?

 

The point I was thinking about was back in the 1970's, few would have considered the environmental impact over the economic impact. Now it could easily be the other way around.

 

Water from Icebergs
Watch A Tugboat Drag An Arctic Iceberg To Parched People Half A World Away [Video] | Co.Exist | ideas + impact

I don't think they really cared about the environmental impact in the 70s judging by the big switch to more coal for electricity.
Water Desalination Capacity Climbs on Power, Energy Needs - Bloomberg

Its really about how much it costs for the water. That tow boat needs diesel, while desalination energy can come from solar, wind, nuclear, natural gas, etc. This often makes the desalization less expensive than if you could tow. Back in the 1970s oil was less expensive, and solar much more expensive.

In 20 years I expect a great deal of solar desalinazation aided perhaps by electriicity, natural gas, and/or biomass.
Solar Powered Water Desalination Heats Up in Chile - WaterWorld

 

Back to the top, the cited study found that 2010 - 2012 La Nina melt was slow. The authors also said that they expect the next El Nino to be fast. More fundamentally that recent decadal melt trends are increasing. So, the canny PC readers might think about that.

A lot of science-based websites have weighed in on this, but if anyone prefers comforting messages from affinity websites, I can't stop ye. Everybody likes comfort.

Just to say, that once a big chunk of grounded ice melts, its sea level rise will persist. The Pine Island Glacier represents about 1 centimeter SLR. There are others of similar magnitude nearby. Maybe they won't fall off in the next few decades. But it they do, those billion dollar boondoggle satellites will tell the story first.

Then, we shall have to decide what to do about it.