Monday, January 26, 2009

 

Antarctic Warming


The Warmie theory is that increased anthropogenic CO2 causes global warming and it is worse at the poles. Both poles. However, most of Antarctica, where the south pole is, was getting colder over the last few decades, as shown by measurements at the few places where people live in Antarctica (necessarily anecdotal) and generally over the continent as shown by the reliable satellite measurement. See the University of Alabama chart above. West Antarctica was flat (neither warming nor cooling) and East Antarctica was getting colder since 1979, when the satellite was launched.
Uh ho. That's not what the theory stated would happen. So the Warmie true believers first changed the theory. Here is what Warmie Central--Real Climate--said just a few months ago.


...we often hear people remarking that parts of Antarctica are getting colder, and indeed the ice pack in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica has actually been getting bigger. Doesn’t this contradict the calculations that greenhouse gases are warming the globe? Not at all, because a cold Antarctica is just what calculations predict… and have predicted for the past quarter century...

Bottom line: A cold Antarctica and Southern Ocean do not contradict our models of global warming. For a long time the models have predicted just that.

It was like PeeWee Herman saying 'I meant to do that' after he crashed his bicycle, except not as convincing.

Recently the Warmies have produced data which fit the original theory, that is, they have published a paper which shows warming in most of Antarctica after all. The data is cooked and worthless, in my humble opinion. Here is a sample of scientists who say similar things here, here and here, as well as a general uneasiness with GISS and NASA global temperature numbers.
The truth is that it's been getting colder over most of Antarctica (the Antarctic Peninsula is an exception, perhaps from volcanic activity) and that's not what the Warmie theory says should happen. When real scientists see that empirical measurements cause doubt on the theory, they look to see if the theory is valid. They don't change the theory and they don't create false data to support the theory. That's not science, it's fraud.
UPDATE: Christopher Booker in the Telegraph UK makes the same point (more elegantly). Best quotes:


....a team led by Professor Eric Steig, claimed to prove that the Antarctic has been heating up after all. As on similar occasions in the past, all the usual supporters of the cause were called in to whoop up its historic importance. The paper was published in Nature and heavily promoted by the BBC. This, crowed journalists such as Newsweek's Sharon Begley, would really be one in the eye for the "deniers" and "contrarians".

But then a good many experts began to examine just what new evidence had been used to justify this dramatic finding. It turned out that it was produced by a computer model based on combining the satellite evidence since 1979 with temperature readings from surface weather stations.

The problem with Antarctica, though, is that has so few weather stations. So what the computer had been programmed to do, by a formula not yet revealed, was to estimate the data those missing weather stations would have come up with if they had existed. In other words, while confirming that the satellite data have indeed shown the Antarctic as cooling since 1979, the study relied ultimately on pure guesswork, to show that in the past 50 years the continent has warmed – by just one degree Fahrenheit.
(Emphasis added.)

Labels:


Comments:
"A cold Antarctica and Southern Ocean do not contradict our models of global warming."

So both warming and cooling are evidence of global warming. If that's the case, the warming alarmists need to be asked what the evidence would be for global cooling?
 
Excellent question, Tom, if that really is your name. Thanks for the comment. Oh, and the sea ice around Antarctica has been increasing over the last two decades as well; further proof of the warmie theory no doubt.
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?