Get Your Bets Down on the 2008 Arctic Ice Melt

Common denominator--they all have to scare people into thinking that it is the end of civilization if they don't buy their theories. Since it involves scaring people, the media become willing accomplices.

The essential mathematics of the media: FEAR = RATINGS

http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/tes ... 20&sy=2008

More ice in the Arctic Ocean today than there was a year ago today. Must be global warming causing all that cooling.

I learned an interesting little niggle about reading those satellite pics. 2008 was a leap year, so to be accurate you have to add a day to 2007. So the truer comparison would be - THIS ONE.

If you look at THIS GRAPH showing the melt for the last 6 years you'll see the line tends to want to level out in September, so really there's only about 9 days left when any kind of significant disappearance of ice will happen, and if it does that will be from something freaky like a storm.

It is interesting to note though, much of the existing ice along the border is thin. If the warmists are right, maybe that will melt from the non-existent (so far) increased atmospheric warming this year.

If you look at THIS ONE, you'll see how much ice needs to vanish for that too happen.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... photo.html

True Wada, the Petermann glacier has a crack. It has for some time. Scientist Kondrad Steffen has been studying it since at least the 90s, and says ""The crack is not alarming... I would say it is normal."

They didn't just start to know about the Petermann crack, but we did just start to hear about it. Stories like this pop up when it starts to become obvious they can not show an increased Arctic melt for 2008. They're hysteria, filler articles.

We saw the same kind of (filler, scare articles) thing happen in July until the storm hit the Arctic and there was that sudden,large amount of vanishing ice to report as it broke off, and blew south. Pardon me, I should use the politically correct term. It melted.

Last night at the Democrat National Convention Al Gore said that within the first term of the next President (meaning before January 20, 2013) that the Arctic Ocean will be completely ice free during the summer months.

Comments anyone?

Nevertheless, I've found if you turn on your television set the next day after Gore speaks, you discover what he implied was what he actually said.

You don't know how many bar room arguments I've had with people who tell me the ocean is going to rise 20 feet in the near future, or global warming caused the recent typhoons in the Pacific because Al Gore said so, "and did you know he won the Nobel prize?"

Well, I see, according to the article below the ice melt for 2008 is over so I guess it's time to declare the winners of this little contest.

"Arctic Sees Massive Gain in Ice Coverage

Data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has indicated a dramatic increase in sea ice extent in the Arctic regions. The growth over the past year covers an area of 700,000 square kilometers: an amount twice the size the nation of Germany.

With the Arctic melting season over for 2008, ice cover will continue to increase until melting begins anew next spring.

The data is for August 2008 and indicates a total sea ice area of six million square kilometers. Ice extent for the same month in 2007 covered 5.3 million square kilometers, a historic low. Earlier this year, media accounts were rife with predictions that this year would again see a new record. Instead, the Arctic has seen a gain of about thirteen percent.

William Chapman, a researcher with the Arctic Climate Research Center at the University of Illinois, tells DailyTech that this year the Arctic was "definitely colder" than 2007. Chapman also says part of the reason for the large ice loss in 2007 was strong winds from Siberia, which affect both ice formation and drift, forcing ice into warmer waters where it melts.

Earlier predictions were also wrong because researchers thought thinner ice would melt faster in subsequent years. Instead, according to the NSIDC, the new ice had less snow coverage to insulate it from the bitterly cold air, resulting in a faster rate of ice growth.

Most concern has focused on the Arctic regions, rather than Antarctica. Recent research has indicated Antarctica is on a long-term cooling trend, for reasons which remain unclear.

Earlier this year, concerns over global warming led the US to officially list the polar bear a threatened species, over objections from experts who claimed the animal's numbers were increasing."

http://www.dailytech.com/Article.aspx?n ... d=y#340331

So then. The winners of this year's 'Predict the 2008 ice melt' contest are...drum roll please...

Noticeably Less Melt Than 2007