Tree Huggers and Government

[The Medway Handyman]

Nah. Online learning

[geoff]

In message , "dennis@home" writes

CO2 dissolves in water to form carbonic acid, it is neither absorbed into or adsorbed onto it

no mistake

You on the other hand

f*ck me dennis, stop digging a deeper hole for yourself

[Roger]

The message from Huge contains these words:

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Geoff doesn't seem to have replied to this point so at the risk of generating more rabid remarks from Huge to me the implication in the program was that the error was not about tinkering with the detail but a complete failure to take orbital decay into account. Not the first time those in the field of satellite science have overlooked the obvious, the hole in the ozone layer springs to mind.

[dennis]

You really must have a chip on your shoulder. There are a lot of mechanisms for losing CO2 into the sea which is what was being discussed incase you failed to read the thread. Collectively what do you think 99% of the population would call that? Why do you want to argue technical matters which are of no interest to most people and are also irrelevant to what is being said?

Doing so in an attempt to score points as you are doing makes you look pretty stupid IMO. Anyone can google and find the wiki article you are getting all your quotes from, however it still doesn't answer all or even a few of the mechanisms which take CO2 out of the atmosphere and dump it in the sea.

I suggest you grow up and argue about something others actually care about. While you try and think of an abusive answer I will still refer to CO2 absorption as a collective for all the mechanisms rather than giving it a name.

[geoff]

In message , Roger writes

succinctly put

sorry, I was busy ripping the piss out of dennis

[nightjar]

What the programme failed to point out was that the error was discovered in

1998, so the data since then has included the necessary corrections and that shows that global average temperatures have stayed more or less static since then.

Colin Bignell

[nightjar]

...

Nor me.

It may well have been thinning longer than that, else why was the North West Passage not found until the early 20th century? Amundsen reported no sight of ice in areas that had defeated previous expeditions.

....

Indeed. You may find these graphs easier to read and there is a link to the raw data.

If we had a mini ice age we could at least burn fossil fuels with gay

However, a full melt is not really probable. The British Antarctic Survey reports that most of Antarctica has had stable temperatures for several decades. Perversely enough, that nasty hole in the ozone has been working to keep it cool. The exception is the Antarctic Peninsular, which has been one of the fastest warming parts of the globe over the past half century. So, the doom sayers can point at the peninsular and say 'look Antarctica is melting', while the BAS records show that the bulk of it is not.

Colin Bignell

[Roger]

The message from "nightjar" contains these words:

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Very probably, I was being cautious.

I am not sure I have ever read up Amundsens trip through the NW passage but he could have just been lucky with the weather. There has always been some year on year (or even decade on decade) variability. Franklin OTOH had the misfortune to be sent North in a particularly cold spell. I also seem to remember reading somewhere about a Canadian coastguard vessel (or similar) that took 2 years to get through the NW passage circa 1941.

I don't have a date for Amundsen but if it was post 1918 then it might have affected by the between the wars warming of the North Atlantic centred on Spitzbergen. Something I knew nothing at all about until I tried searching for arctic sea temperature figures.

indeed but there is just too much year on year variability to be sure. If you ignore the monster 1998 anomaly (ascribed to the mother of all El Nino effects) the trend still looks upward.

Greenland melting would be enough to consign most low lying land to the sea, much of London included.

The Antarctic is more complex. I tend to the view that if the temperature there does rise it may cease to be a desert and the increased precipitation may balance the increased melt. I can't see that working for such a small land mass as Greenland though which isn't a desert anyway.

However another point I came across while looking for sea temperature figures was that the majority of the annual sea level rise is apparently due to thermal expansion at the moment, not land ice melt.

[Andy Champ]

They didn't measure the thickness.

But they know when the harbours iced up, and when they freed, and that's probably as good a dataset as we need.

Andy

[dennis]

To prove what? When it was safe to travel? You need the mass of ice to determine how much energy is there. You don't know the mass unless you know the thickness.

[The Medway Handyman]

Visions of Viking types 400 years ago;

Sven; Olaf! The harbour has iced up.

Olaf; Quick, get the tape measure & did a hole! Someone in the future may want to know!

:-)

[Andrew Gabriel]

Sea temperature is thought to track solar output, with something of the order of a 400 year lag/damping factor.

[Edward W. Thompson]

Any measurement of 'first year' ice is likely to mean very little. First year ice forms and decays on an annual basis, if it doesn't decay then it goes to create multi-year ice. The meaningful data is of the creation or decay of multi year ice. It appears that multi year iceat both poles is decaying at a significant rate and that is what the predictions are based upon.

Increase of multi year ice=cooling Decay of multi year ice=warming

[Roger]

The message from Woland contains these words:

The Apennines peak at more than 8000 feet. There would have been regular snow much closer to Rome than the Alps 2000 years ago even if Rome was really as hot as you allege.

snip

And there was I thinking the Romans had invented central heating.

snip

No, they wouldn't want to add to global warming. How would you like crucifixion?