North Pole Summers Will Be Ice Free In A Decade

AP LONDON -- The North Pole will turn into an open sea during summer within a decade, according to data released Wednesday by a team of explorers who trekked through the Arctic for three months.

The Catlin Arctic Survey team, led by explorer Pen Hadow, measured the thickness of the ice as it sledged and hiked through the northern part of the Beaufort Sea in the north Pole earlier this year during a research project. Their findings show that most of the ice in the region is first-year ice that is only around 1.8 meters (six feet) deep and will melt next summer. The region has traditionally contained, thicker multiyear ice which does not melt as rapidly.

"With a larger part of the region now first-year ice, it is clearly more vulnerable," said Professor Peter Wadhams, part of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge which analyzed the data. "The area is now more likely to become open water each summer, bringing forward the potential date when the summer sea ice will be completely gone."

Wadhams said the Catlin Arctic Survey data supports the new consensus that the Arctic will be ice-free in summer within 20 years, and that much of the decrease will happen within 10 years.

Martin Sommerkorn of the World Wildlife Fund said the Arctic sea holds a central position in the earth's climate system. "Such a loss of Arctic sea ice cover has recently been assessed to set in motion powerful climate feedbacks which will have an impact far beyond the Arctic itself," he said.

He added: "This could lead to flooding affecting one-quarter of the world's population, substantial increases in greenhouse gas emissions from massive carbon pools and extreme global weather changes."

Global warming has raised the stakes in the scramble for sovereignty in the Arctic because shrinking polar ice could someday open resource development and new shipping lanes. The rapid melting of ice has raised speculation that the Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans could one day become a regular shipping lane.

The results come as negotiators prepare to meet in Copenhagen in December to draft a global climate pact.

Comments

[realpolitic]

10:24 AM on 10/22/2009

The new theme among deniers is to pretend the Catin expedition was somehow flawed or unscientific. Of course, they parrot whatever their right-wing sites tell them. The findings are of a very high percentage of thin, first year ice is backed by all the scientific organziations, including NOAA.

"In the past decade, the extent of multiyear sea ice rapidly reduced at a rate of 1.5 x 106 km2 per decade, triple the reduction rate during the three previous decades (1970-2000). Springtime multiyear ice extent was the lowest in 2008 in the QuikSCAT data record since 2000. "

"Recent estimates of Arctic Ocean sea ice thickness from satellite altimetry show a remarkable overall thinning of ~0.6 m in ice thickness between 2004 and 2008...... The total multiyear ice volume in the winter experienced a net loss of more than 40% in the four years since 2005 while the first year ice cover gained volume due to increased overall coverage of the Arctic Ocean. The declines in total volume and average thickness are explained almost entirely by thinning and loss of multiyear sea ice due to melting and ice export. These changes have resulted in seasonal ice becoming the dominant Arctic sea ice type, both in terms of area coverage and of volume."

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/seaice.html

Are those headlines scary enough?

[Richard2]

06:28 PM on 10/20/2009

So why didn't the Catlin Arctic Survey make a successful trip across the ice to the North Pole, as planned? Why did their most important scientific equipment fail to operate properly? How did they measure the depth of the ice?

[realpolitic]

07:24 AM on 10/21/2009

Well, their equipment may not be used to Arctic conditions, that although several degrees above normal must still be cold. Is it so hard to conjecture?

How did they collect the data? "The data, collected by manual drilling and observations on a 450-kilometre route across the northern part of the Beaufort Sea, suggests the survey area is comprised almost exclusively of first-year ice." These findings have been analysed by the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge, led by Professor Peter Wadhams, one of the world’s leading experts on sea ice cover in the North Pole region.


The team also dragged a radar system, SPRITE, which measured the thickness of ice every 10 centimetres of the journey. The radar signals were analyzed by a team at the US Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey led by Professor Wieslaw Maslowski.

The team travelled on foot, hauling sledges from 81°N 130°W, across 1,000-km of disintegrating and shifting sea ice, for around 100 days, in temperatures from 0ºC down to -50°C.

Yes, what could possibly go wrong! Sounds like a Club Med vacation!

I am sure R2 will agree, what dedicated scientists!


http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/routemap

[Richard2]

09:55 AM on 10/22/2009

Here are some comments about the Catlin Expedition, from the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/climatechange/2009/05/catlin_arctic_survey_success.html

There are many more credible experts about the Arctic than the people in the Catlin Expedition. It is a puzzle why the BBC wouldn't track them down. Perhaps their predictions would have been carefully worded, which wouldn't make for scary headlines.

[realpolitic]

10:16 AM on 10/22/2009

All the sources agree with the findings of the expedition that Arctic ice is at in thinnest, most vulnerable ever. According to a recent NASA study, (Richard2 likes to cite NASA data),....

"If you've been following the status of Arctic sea ice for the past few years, hearing scientists herald the potential coming of an ice-free Arctic summer may sound like old news. But according to researchers at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colo., this year, sea ice at the top of the globe may be even more vulnerable to melting than in the past."

In 2008, a research team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed the first map of sea ice thickness over the Arctic Basin.

As the 2009 melt season begins, satellite data show that the Arctic Ocean is covered mostly by first-year and second-year ice, which means the thin ice is less likely to survive the coming summer. "As the ice cover in the Arctic grows thinner, it grows more vulnerable to melting in the summer," Meier said.

http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2009-04/nasa-study-shows-thinning-arctic-sea-ice

[sonofsamphm1c]

05:24 AM on 10/19/2009

Arctic sea ice has been losing ground for a long time. It has two enemies. One is the obvious: warmth. The other is currents, When sea level pressure (SLP) is negative, the currents spin the ice around the arctic in such a way that less of it gets expelled out into the Pacific and Atlantic. For most of my life SLP in the arctic was negative, and vast amounts of multi-year ice was retained in the arctic. Starting in 1980, SLP flipped into a strong positive phase, and the assault on sea ice began. The red bars are positive SLP:

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/images/essays/atmosphere/A5.png

In the 2000s there have been a few blue-bar years. Despite that, the arctic was unable to regain multi-year ice. This why the focus on sea-ice extent is really meaningless flashes of hope for the deiers, If the arctic cannot rebuild multi-year ice, summer ice is eventually doomed,

[realpolitic]

08:36 AM on 10/19/2009

Yes, but rising air and sea temperatures are very important factors. "From August to October last year (2007), air temperatures over land in the western Arctic were also unusually warm, reaching more than 2 degrees Celsius (4 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 1978–2006 average….

http://climateprogress.org/2008/06/12/breaking-news-tundra-4-permafrost-loss-linked-to-arctic-sea-ice-loss/

According to NOAA: "While there is considerable interannual variability, an overall downward trend in the amount of perennial ice began in the early 1970s. This trend appears to coincide with a general increase in the Arctic-wide, annually averaged surface air temperature, which also begins around 1970. In recent years, the rate of reduction in the amount of older, thicker perennial ice has been increasing, and now very little ice older than 5 yr remains (Maslanik et al. 2007)."

In fact, now that the ice is much thinner it is more susceptible to oceanic circulation patterns.

"Many authors have recently acknowledged that a relatively younger, thinner ice cover is more susceptible to the effects of atmospheric and oceanic forcing. In the face of the predictions for continued warming temperatures, the persistence of recent atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns, and the amplification of these effects through the ice albedo feedback mechanism, it is becoming increasingly likely that the Arctic will change from a perennially ice-covered to an ice-free ocean in the summer."

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/seaice.html

[LeaderofMen]

03:22 PM on 10/18/2009

Get your tickets NOW! International tensions are gettin' ready to heat up (get it?). There's coal, oil and super-valuable minerals to be had. Once the ice melts in summer, those countries that border the Arctic and those who claim a 'little too much' of it are going to go head-to-head with each other. Those countries that want to use the Arctic as a short route across the top of the world are going to have to sign new treaties (or not!), fire warning shots over each others bows, get boarded by patrols, and find themselves sunk.

The resulting heightened tension is going to be spectacular. Get your tickets NOW!

[Alarmist]

10:03 AM on 10/18/2009

Waiting for Donald Trump to buy real estate there now, anticipating future golf courses.

[realpolitic]

10:28 AM on 10/18/2009

Yes, except it is all water now. He is too late!

[realpolitic]

03:49 AM on 10/18/2009

Deneirs like to pretend satellite temperatures record show no warming in the last decade. Phooey!!! They must get their science from fortune cookies!

For example, "different groups that have analyzed the satellite data to calculate temperature trends have obtained a range of values. Among these groups are Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH)."

"To compare to the increase from the surface record (of approximately +0.07 °C/decade over the past century and +0.17 °C/decade since 1979) it is more appropriate to derive trends for the lower troposphere in which the stratospheric cooling is removed. Doing this, through July 2009:"

"RSS v3.1 finds a trend of +0.153 °C/decade."

"UAH analysis finds +0.12°C/decade

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/14/cop15-whats-at-stake-in-c_n_321426.html?show_comment_id=32988083#comment_32988083

Thus, satellites show considerable warming, although slightly less than ground based systems. Also, satellites underestimate the warming because they do not take the considerable warming of the poles into account, which NASA does.

Read it and weep, deniers!

[realpolitic]

04:27 AM on 10/18/2009

Meant to say "Deniers like to pretend..."

[SvrWx]

10:36 PM on 10/17/2009

Weren't they saying this summer was going to be ice free? Man, if they can't get this summer right, why should I trust what they think is going to happen in 10 years? Forecasting weather past 48 hours is risky. Forecasting ice free poles in 10 years is foolish.

[shockmagog]

11:28 PM on 10/17/2009

Confusing meteorology with climatology is so last year with deniers.

Get with the times. Now it's, "what happened to the phrase 'global warming?'" or "it's too late to do anything about it, so just adapt."

[SFTor]

11:35 PM on 10/17/2009

shockmagog, in case you care:

I am not a denier. I am a skeptic. I am not a Republican. I am a liberal Democrat.

I believe there are reasons to be skeptical. Maybe in deep down you know what I am talking about. Maybe at least you will recognize that you can be skeptical to an idea that was originally conceived by Maggie Thatcher to combat the British Coal Workers Union.

[SvrWx]

08:03 AM on 10/18/2009

Just so you know, there is no confusion. But forecasting (That's what you do when you look into the future) 10 years out, some form of climate change when there are so many variables that affect climate, is foolish and not good science.

It's like meteorology (That dastardly comparison again) when the wxguessers forecast out 144 hours.

"A Butterfly flaps it's wings in South America".

[realpolitic]

01:50 AM on 10/18/2009

You deniers always have you countless strawman arguments.

[realpolitic]

02:42 AM on 10/18/2009

Meant to say "have your..."

[SvrWx]

08:04 AM on 10/18/2009

They are not strawman arguments. This is common sense. 10 years is a long time to forecast ANYTHING.

[SFTor]

08:35 PM on 10/17/2009

"The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds."

The US Weather Bureau, 1922

[shockmagog]

11:39 PM on 10/17/2009

“In 1922 some people thought the Arctic was melting away forever, and in the 1970s scientists were warning of an impeding ice age due to global cooling,” said (Competitive Enterprise Institute General Counsel Sam) Kazman. “Overheated rhetoric about environmental disasters has been around for a long time. Hopefully when the next story of impending doom hits the news, it won’t take 85 years to put the claims in perspective.”
http://cei.org/gencon/003,06235.cfm

CEI (The Competitive Enterprise Institute) has also worked to cultivate a relationship with John Stossel, the controversial correspondent for ABC-TV's 20/20 program. When Stossel came under fire in August 2000 for citing nonexistent scientific studies on a 20/20 segment bashing organic foods, CEI set up a "Save John Stossel" website to help him keep his job. Stossel returned the favor the following year by working with Michael Sanera to put together a program titled "Tampering With Nature" that focused on attacking environmental education.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Competitive_Enterprise_Institute

You are helping those who are working against your own best interests.

[sonofsamphm1c]

12:39 AM on 10/18/2009

Those pesky 1922 computers. The gerbils would die and all your data would end up in the poop tray.

In the 1970s the vast majority of papers on climate published in peer-reviewed journals by scientists predicted there would be global warming due to CO2 emissions from mankind's combustion of fossil fuels.

Newsweek is not a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The claim that 1970s climate scientists were screeching about an imminent ice age is an extreme distortion. The vast majority were saying there was going be global warming.

[realpolitic]

01:58 AM on 10/18/2009

That's fine and if I were a denier I may raise that point as well, but look at the NASA map of global land ocean temperature anomalies and see how much warmer it is today than in 1922. The link is provided. The problem with deniers is that whenever you have some question answered you never admit you may be making a mistake, you just go on to your next talking point given to you by some right-wing site.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/Fig1.gif

[guinganbresil]

11:32 PM on 10/19/2009

Technically, your map is for 1998 (not today), which was abnormally warm due to a strong El Nino.

Here is some more recent data:

http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html

Check out figure 7, TLT. The graph has a linear trend of 0.153 K/yr slope, BUT it you look over the last decade it is just about flat. What does that mean for the future? Not much. It could go up, could go down...

I am more interested in the TTL channel. Do you know why? Where does CO2 affect the radiative balance according to the IPCC? Do you know what the climate models say about the tropical troposphere temperature trends? Look into it.

[guinganbresil]

11:37 PM on 10/19/2009

I apologize - I apparently cannot read... Your map is 2008.

However, I do not understand why your graph doesn't show the 1998 El Nino. It is very prominent in the satellite data.

[JShep]

04:44 PM on 10/17/2009

In discussions about climate change, there should always be a clear distinction whether it is about natural change or man-made change. Too often natural changes are presented as AGW, or the combination of natural and AGW are represented as entirely AGW. Another problem is the presentation of short term changes over several years as climate change, while true climate change occurs over many decades. Both these confusions appear to occur in this article as well as many others on climate change. I wonder if there would be as much support for the proposed cap & trade bill if its projected impact on temperature reduction were well publicized (I believe the more recognized climate models only predict a reduction of less than one degree over the next 100 years).

[sonofsamphm1c]

05:19 PM on 10/17/2009

We just experienced a very strong La Nina. It made things cold. How cold would it have gotten if there were no man-induced GHG emissions? As cold as 1910:

http://chriscolose.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/670px-instrumental_temperature_record.png

[SvrWx]

10:37 PM on 10/17/2009

It was a La Nina and then a very weak El Nino. That combined with no sunspots has given us a very cold period. And which is not forecast to start firing again. Maunder Minimum II...cold decades to come!!

[guinganbresil]

09:44 PM on 10/17/2009

A great example is "ocean acidification".

The least alkali waters are those upwelling from the deep thermohaline current - the water has not seen the atmosphere in 800-1000 years (pre-industrial!). It is used (see the recent "Acid Test" movie) to scare people about anthropogenic CO2... The two are not related...

It is like saying that AGW warms the ocean and parts of the ocean have reached 750F...!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_smoker

[fumes]

10:19 AM on 10/17/2009

say rp..

got any scary numbers?

0.07C does not runaway global warming make!

[realpolitic]

10:48 AM on 10/17/2009

Well, the 0.07C is considering the first year to be 1998, which was an extreme outlier year in terms of heat, and comparing it with a decade later. Tthroughout the decade temperatures never dropped far from that extreme year of 1998. if you make a comparisan from earlier in the 1990's to today, the difference would be much more pronounced.

As said,

"According to NASA, "The climate story of the decade is that the 2000s are on track to be nearly 0.2°C warmer than the 1990s. And that temperature jump is especially worrisome since the 1990s were only 0.14°C warmer than the 1980s. Global warming is accelerating, as predicted."

http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/07/very-warm-2008-makes-this-hottest-decade-in-recorded-history-by-far/


Thanks, my good friend Fumes!!

[Senseimilla]

05:12 PM on 10/17/2009

You really can't be serious...

You're saying the time of the Permian-Triassic was actually colder than today?

How far back do these records go?

I mean did we even have "thermometers" that measured "global average temperature" before?

The first THERMOMETER was made in like 1611... that's the first one with actually numbers to tell us what temp it is...

So before that... how did we get all these "global mean temps"? Tell me oh wise realpolitic...

[fumes]

11:14 AM on 10/17/2009

good saturday morning in sf rp! (i'm imagining you with a hot cup of peets by your side)..

still.. 0.2C is not a scenario outside the norm.

and if we can't handle global warming creeping up on us..

well maybe we should all die ya think?

[realpolitic]

02:14 AM on 10/18/2009

Fumes, thinks for the sentiment, but I am not even sure what peets is. Some kind of tea? Concerning warming trend of .2 C, the IPCC states "the linear warming trend over the past 50 years from 1956 to 2005 (0.13 degrees C per decade) is nearly twice that for the 100 years from 1906 to 2005. So the warming is accelerating and can not be explained by other than anthropogenic factors.

But let's not die yet. We contributed to the problem, I'll bet with some ingenuity we can help to remedy it.

[fumes]

11:08 AM on 10/18/2009

hi rp.. say i guess i'm still not scared of CO2.. can you help?

since 1880 the temp has gone up less than one degree.

less than one degree per one hundred years just isn't scary.

in fact it's what made the planet inhabitable for us in the first place!

peets is yummy coffee i think made right there in your town..

[SFTor]

04:50 AM on 10/17/2009

Here is something else I don't understand.

This is a graph of temperature over the last 12,000 years from Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png

It shows that temperature has been higher than today on numerous occasions over this period, and that we are actually below average for the Holocene today.

I'm trying to make heads and tails of this. How does this square with the notion that temperatures are unusually warm at the beginning of the 21st century? It seems that temperatures are actually rather cool from a paleoclimatic history perspective, actually below the baseline for the period. Where am I going wrong here?

[Gasparilla]

07:50 AM on 10/17/2009

Your link shows nothing.

[realpolitic]

08:48 AM on 10/17/2009

Funny, how deniers always bring up something like that not because they really want it explained but because they somehow think it overturns established climate science. They are very naive!

[realpolitic]

08:47 AM on 10/17/2009

"The Holocene Climate Optimum warm event consisted of increases of up to 4 °C near the North Pole (in one study, winter warming of 3 to 9 °C and summer of 2 to 6 °C in northern central Siberia). Northwestern Europe experienced warming, while there was cooling in the south. The average temperature change appears to have declined rapidly with latitude so that essentially no change in mean temperature is reported at low and mid latitudes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum

The heavy black line you are looking at on the graph is an average of several temperature reconstructions some with very high anomalies and others with very low ones. The graph itself even says: "Note that the recent warming is too rapid to model on the graph." They did not attempt to show the most recent warming trend on the graph because it was too rapid to model! You can go back to your denying club now!!

[sonofsamphm1c]

11:09 AM on 10/17/2009

Funny thing about that era of climate history, nobody was drilling oil wells.

[realpolitic]

04:10 AM on 10/17/2009

Hardly a cooling trend, as deniers like to make believe....

According to NASA, "The climate story of the decade is that the 2000s are on track to be nearly 0.2°C warmer than the 1990s. And that temperature jump is especially worrisome since the 1990s were only 0.14°C warmer than the 1980s. Global warming is accelerating, as predicted."

http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/07/very-warm-2008-makes-this-hottest-decade-in-recorded-history-by-far/


Further, "The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported today that because humans are altering the climate with greenhouse gas emissions:"

"The ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1997. Global temperatures for 2000-2008 now stand almost 0.2 °C warmer than the average for the decade 1990-1999."

http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/16/sorry-deniers-hadley-center-and-wmo-say-2000s-are-easily-the-hottest-decade-in-recorded-history/

[Richard2]

10:26 AM on 10/17/2009

Freeze and melt. Freeze and melt. The Sea Ice in the Arctic and Antarctic freezes and melts, like clockwork. During September, 2009, two major events occurred in the polar regions.

In the Arctic, the melting of the sea ice caused the extent of sea ice to shrink to its minimum for the year. In the Antarctic, the freezing of the sea ice caused the extent of sea ice to grow to its maximum for the year.

In the Arctic, the sea ice minimum increased for the second year in a row, but remains below the "long term" average. The trend is for the minimums to move back toward the long term average.

In the Antarctic, the sea ice maximum was greater than the long term average, and was also greater than last year.

On a one year basis, both indicators showed an increase in sea ice extent compared to the previous year, 2008.

Neither indicator showed a year over year decline in sea ice extent.

Film of ice melting and freezing at eleven.

[realpolitic]

11:03 AM on 10/17/2009

Funny how deniers always give their opinions the same weight as the conclusions of climate scientists. It may have escaped the attention of climate scientists that ice, even at the poles, freezes in winter and melts in summer. Only now much more of it is melting in summers. As the article states, the ice in the Arctic is almost entirely fragile, very thin, first year ice. The Arctic waters are so warm, the older, thicker ice below the surface is disappearing.

R2 says "The trend is for the minimums to move back toward the long term average." We are not talking about stocks here." We are talking about the climate after the introduction of trillions of tons of anthropogenic heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Perhaps R2 should read the article again if he thinks the scientific consensus is that the ice is returning to the long term average. Rather, it will be completely gone in summers in ten years, as the article quotes scientists as saying.

http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/detection-images/climate-ice-seaice-extent-trend-sep08.png

In terms of Antarctica, "A NASA satellite has revealed more accurately than ever that polar ice in Antarctica and Greenland is melting from glaciers and ice sheets far faster than scientists had previously thought, a discovery that one UC Berkeley climate expert calls "ominous and distressing."


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/24/MNMM19R00D.DTL

[realpolitic]

04:03 AM on 10/17/2009

Deniers of the world unite! Glenn Beck would not be making millions unless so many followed sheepishly like you guys!!!!!

[marshhen]

07:08 PM on 10/17/2009

And Al_Gore has made how many millions with his prediction that the polar ice caps will have been Ice Free by 2006? Who's the sheep again?

[sonofsamphm1c]

01:16 AM on 10/18/2009

Just a hint, read the work of scientists. If you can a scientific paper that predicted the polar ice caps would be ice-free by 2006, I'll eat Mt. Rushmore.

[realpolitic]

02:31 AM on 10/18/2009

Yours is just another straw man, if you know what that is?

[MacQ]

08:51 AM on 10/20/2009

Quick: send your money to Al. He will fix it so the earth's climate doesn't fluctuate.

[SFTor]

03:53 AM on 10/17/2009

Here is another BBC report on Dr. Latif's research. He seems to be saying that the climate is likely to be cooling.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/today/tomfeilden/2009/09/an_inconvenient_truth_about_gl.html

I suppose this report must be wrong too.

[realpolitic]

03:58 AM on 10/17/2009

Deniers simply do not read for the sake of comprehension, but for ideology. Prof. Latif, speaking about the Paific Decadel Oscillation, said,

"The strong warming effect that we experienced during the last decades will be interrupted. Temperatures will be more or less steady for some years, and thereafter will pickup again and continue to warm".

"Professor Philip Stott believes climate sceptics may seize on the research as evidence that the whole global warming hypothesis is fundamentally flawed: If natural cycles can interrupt, or even reverse climate change, maybe we don't need to take it so seriously."

"It's not a view shared by professor Latif, who points to the resumption of warming as the cycle completes itself in a few years. The best we can hope for, he says, is a brief respite from global warming."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/today/tomfeilden/2009/09/an_inconvenient_truth_about_gl.html

You deniers have to read just a little more closely!!!!

[Richard2]

08:10 PM on 10/17/2009

It would be nice if Dr. Latif would submit to some serious questioning about what he did say or didn't say. People can interpret his statements in widely different ways. It looks like some people are spinning his comments to suit their particular point of view.

[realpolitic]

02:41 AM on 10/18/2009

R2 never wants clarity, just to distort the picture and make it seem like Dr. Latif is anything but a firm believer in anthropogenic warming. I really do not know what deniers get this strain of intellectual dishonesty. It is really striking! Latif himself said: "The best we can hope for, he says, is a brief respite from global warming."

Latif said directly: "Media mistakenly think of global warming as "a monotonic process," in which "each year is warmer than the preceding year. There is almost no day in the year when I'm not called by some media person, OK. And so, they basically think about global warming as a kind of slowly evolving process and a monotonic process, OK -- so each year is warmer than the preceding year." He added: "However, we all know there is variability."

Latif: "[I]f my name was not Mojib Latif, my name would be global warming." Latif stated, "Everybody who knows me is aware of the fact that I am definitely not one of the skeptics, OK. And if my name was not Mojib Latif, my name would be global warming, all right."

http://mediamatters.org/research/200909240021


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/14/north-pole-summers-will-b_n_321778.html?page=2&show_comment_id=32966220#comment_32966220

[RomeoMD25]

03:34 AM on 10/17/2009

According to the greenhouse theory you hear from the alarmists, Earth should have been exceedingly hot. Instead, when CO2 levels were at their highest, global temperatures were no warmer than today or often lower.

Thanks to just the small amount of human-produced CO2 in modern times, forests and plant life has greatly benefitted. Remember that fact the next time you drive your car to work and feel "guilty". It is completely unfounded guilt, stamped into your head by the media and Big Environment propaganda. Every vehicle made in the last 30 years is equipped with a catalytic converter which converts harmful pollutants such as CO into NON-harmful CO2 and water vapour.

[realpolitic]

04:01 AM on 10/17/2009

"Global warming could sock Illinois right in the Corn Belt—to the tune of $243 million a year, a national environmental group estimated in a report released Thursday."
Romeo, the deny-bot, has been telling us how good the additional co2 in the atmosphere is for agriculture!

More discerning minds disagree!

"The Environment America study, based on government and university data, projects rising temperatures will reduce yields of the nation’s biggest crop by 3 percent in the Midwest and the South, compared to projected yields without further global warming."

"According to the report, Iowa would be hit hardest, losing $259 million a year in corn revenues."

"The nation overall would lose about $1.4 billion in annual corn revenue, the group said."

http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2009/apr/10/nation/chi-global-warm-corn_friapr10