Antarctica Larson C ice shelf close to becoming one of biggest icebergs ever - or not

Really? The entire ice shelf? It must be true, if the Christian Science Monitor says so:

Antarctica's Larson C shelf is about equal to the area to the state of Delaware. Its collapse might be imminent. 

JANUARY 6, 2017 —Scientists with the British Antarctic Survey now believe that the fracturing of the Larson C ice shelf from the polar cap is imminent, after a rift in the shelf grew vertiginously in the last month of 2016. 

The thread connecting Larson C to the rest of Antarctica is now just more than 65,600 feet long, surveyors from the Britain’s Project Midas say. 

Apart from the ice shelf being about equal in area to Delaware, not one of the statements is correct. They're not simply misquotes. The BAS scientists believe nothing of the kind - their article is titled Giant iceberg set to calve from Larsen C Ice Shelf, and that the calving is imminent. Surveyors from Britain’s Project Midas believe nothing of the kind either. They wrote: (my bold)

Larsen C Ice Shelf poised to calve. 

The Larsen C Ice shelf in Antarctica is primed to shed an area of more than 5000 sq. km following further substantial rift growth. After a few months of steady, incremental advance since the last event, the rift grew suddenly by a further 18 km during the second half of December 2016. Only a final 20 km of ice now connects an iceberg one quarter the size of Wales to its parent ice shelf.

No one but a moron could fail to grasp what those articles stated and meant. CSM author David Iaconangelo clearly isn't a moron, but is what might be euphemistically termed "economical with the truth".

Grist isn't much better - an editor retitles a "cross-post" and reorders images with captions removed to give a very different impression to the linked Climate Central article.

"Antarctica’s fourth biggest ice shelf is on the verge of collapse" shrieks Grist. However, the picture at the top of the page

.... is of the Larsen B disintegration in 2002. There's no caption, nor is it referred to in the text. Below the author's name is stated "Cross-posted from Climate Central". That link is to the article by CC author Andrea Thompson, titled Large Iceberg Poised to Break Off From Antarctica. Does she, or any of her quoted sources think "Antarctica’s fourth biggest ice shelf is on the verge of collapse"? No, this is just Grist once again changing a word or two, or misquoting a link or two, to push its catastrophic view of anything that might be remotely connected to what they think is the coming apocalypse. Also, that picture has been cropped to remove a distance scale at the bottom, as the Larsen B was about the size of the piece splitting from Larsen C. The scale might give the game away.  The one in the CC article, is captioned quite correctly The breakup of Antarctica's Larsen B ice shelf as it looked on Feb. 23, 2002. Click image to enlarge. Credit: NASA

The breakup of Antarctica's Larsen B ice shelf as it looked on Feb. 23, 2002.
Click image to enlarge. Credit: NASA

It's not a "cross-post" - Grist has altered the title, removed image captions, and reordered images from the CC article, to create the impression that the images are of Larsen C. Removing captions, editing images, and showing them out of context to create an impression not intended by the original author is more than breaking the rules of attribution, it's fraud.

Unusually, I find the CC article generally factual, informative, and links back up the text, though there are one or two disputed claims.

Author Andrea Thompson headed her article with this close-up image of part of the rift:

A large rift in Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf, photographed by NASA's IceBridge mission on Nov. 10, 2016. The rift surged ahead by about 10 miles in late December.
Click image to enlarge. Credit: NASA/John Sonntag

In the Grist "cross-post", that image follows a a paragraph about the disintegration of Larsen B, and has the caption "NASA". The intention is now obvious, and totally unforgivable.

On a more factual note, the rift is about 500m (metres, not miles) wide, 350m deep in the centre, and is currently about 80km long, according to Project MIDAS. Some articles say 80 miles, and if the scale on the graphic below, is accurate, 150 km would be more like it. Not that it matters to you maybe, but I'll check. It's not unusual for genuine mistakes to go unnoticed by authors:

Source: Project MIDAS

The graphic is of more than a little personal significance - I was born just about where the second "s" in Swansea is located top right (although Wales is a little further north, and a lot warmer than its position on that graphic.

I've read a few articles that say words to the effect that the rift has just been discovered (where did they get that?), but it's been monitored since 2011.

Even the BBC managed to get it right:

Huge Antarctic iceberg poised to break away 

An iceberg expected to be one of the 10 largest ever recorded is ready to break away from Antarctica, scientists say. A long-running rift in the Larsen C ice shelf grew suddenly in December and now just 20km of ice is keeping the 5,000 sq km piece from floating away.
Larsen C is the most northern major ice shelf in Antarctica.
Researchers based in Swansea say the loss of a piece a quarter of the size of Wales will leave the whole shelf vulnerable to future break-up.
Larsen C is about 350m thick and floats on the seas at the edge of West Antarctica, holding back the flow of glaciers that feed into it.
Researchers have been tracking the rift in Larsen C for many years, watching it with some trepidation after the collapse of Larsen A ice shelf in 1995 and the sudden break-up of the Larsen B shelf in 2002.

They even end the piece with

"We are convinced, although others are not, that the remaining ice shelf will be less stable than the present one," said Prof Luckman.
"We would expect in the ensuing months to years further calving events, and maybe an eventual collapse - but it's a very hard thing to predict, and our models say it will be less stable; not that it will immediately collapse or anything like that."
As it floats on the sea, the resulting iceberg from the shelf will not raise sea levels. But if the shelf breaks up even more, it could result in glaciers that flow off the land behind it to speed up their passage towards the ocean. This non-floating ice would have an impact on sea levels.
According to estimates, if all the ice that the Larsen C shelf currently holds back entered the sea, global waters would rise by 10cm.
All that is very much in the future. There are few certainties right now apart from an imminent change to the outline of Antarctica's icy coast.
"The eventual consequences might be the ice shelf collapsing in years to decades," said Prof Luckman,
"Even the sea level contribution of this area is not on anybody's radar; it's just a big geographical event that will change the landscape there."

Prof. Luckman is one of the Project MIDAS team, based in Swansea. I like very much "We are convinced, although others are not...". It shows some humility, the acknowledgement that it's a personal team view. A good note to end on.

UPDATE 10/1/2017

I've been scanning through articles on the British Antarctic Survey website. I've always thought
the BAS to be a reactionary and somewhat alarmist bunch. I had already noticed this, on the page referenced above:

Glaciologist Professor David Vaughan OBE, Director of Science at British Antarctic Survey, said, “The calving of this large iceberg could be the first step of the collapse of Larsen C ice shelf, which would result in the disintegration of a huge area of ice into a number of icebergs and smaller fragments.
“Because of the uncertainty surrounding the stability of the Larsen C ice shelf, we chose not to camp on the ice this season.  Researchers can now only do day trips from our Rothera Research Station with an aircraft nearby on standby.”

In 2015 they said this:

The team, who continue to monitor the ice shelf closely, predict that a collapse could occur within a century, although maybe sooner and with little warning. A crack is forming in the ice which could cause it to retreat back further than previously observed. The ice shelf appears also to be detaching from a small island called Bawden Ice Rise at its northern edge.

"Within a century" - what's changed in the 19 months since that statement? Prof. Vaughan has dramatically changed his view - back in 2015:

Professor David Vaughan, glaciologist and Director of Science at BAS, says:
“When Larsen A and B were lost, the glaciers behind them accelerated and they are now contributing a significant fraction of the sea-level rise from the whole of Antarctica. Larsen C is bigger and if it were to be lost in the next few decades then it would actually add to the projections of sea-level rise by 2100.

On the same page - "within a century" and "the next few decades". However, contradictions like this aren't unusual on the BAS website. Members have very differing views, and careful reading reveals very different "facts" too. The thickness of the Larsen B shelf, which disintegrated in 2002, is given as 200 metres, and on one page a very unlikely and obviously incorrect 1km. That last article I quoted, actually a press release titled New study shows Antarctic ice shelf is thinning from above and below has this lead-in:

The Larsen C Ice Shelf — whose neighbours Larsen A and B, collapsed in 1995 and 2002 — is thinning from both its surface and beneath. For years scientists have been unable to determine whether it is warming air temperatures or warmer ocean currents that were causing the Antarctic Peninsula’s floating ice shelves to lose volume and become more vulnerable to collapse. This new study takes an important step forward in assessing Antarctica’s likely contribution to future sea-level rise. 

The research team combined satellite data and eight radar surveys captured during a 15-year period from 1998–2012. They found that Larsen C Ice Shelf lost an average of 4 metres of ice, and had lowered by an average of one metre at the surface. 

Lead author, Dr Paul Holland from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), says:
“What’s exciting about this study is we now know that two different processes are causing Larsen C to thin and become less stable. Air is being lost from the top layer of snow (called the firn), which is becoming more compacted — probably because of increased melting by a warmer atmosphere. We know also that Larsen C is losing ice, probably from warmer ocean currents or changing ice flow. 

“If this vast ice shelf — which is over two and a half times the size of Wales and 10 times bigger than Larsen B — was to collapse, it would allow the tributary glaciers behind it to flow faster into the sea. This would then contribute to sea-level rise.”
The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest warming regions on Earth, with a temperature rise of 2.5°C over the last 50 years.

"Air is being lost", "probably because of increased melting by a warmer atmosphere". Here's a plot of the "warmer atmosphere" since 1995:

Larsen C - GISS unadjusted data.

I don't think so. What's amazing, is that many glaciologists and climate scientists never keep up-to-date with the latest data, but rely on published papers, many of which are out of date within a few years. I read something a dated a few weeks ago by a glaciologist, publishing regularly in this field, who cited "the continuing warming on the Antarctic Peninsula". An Ostrich is a large flightless bird, claimed to occasionally put its head in the sand. Some scientists are sightless birds, with their heads continually in the sand. More on the "continued warming" (/sarc off) soon.

All you need to know about glaciers, or maybe not

I could dedicate an entire  separate blog to rubbishing Guardian articles about the environment, climate change and the like. But for now, it amuses me to just pick the worst articles for this blog. Take today's article for instance, by one Wendell Tangborn. Who he? The Guardian has a mini résumé:

Wendell Tangborn has worked with glaciers for 55 years, beginning with South Cascade Glacier in Washington in 1960. Currently, his main interest is mass balance. He has developed a computer model that calculates a glacier's mass balance from routine weather observations and has published over 40 papers in glaciology. He lives on Vashon Island in Washington State.

He's "worked with glaciers"? I'll let that one pass, but it conjures up all sorts of strange images...
I don't doubt he's published over 40 papers in glaciology, but a Google Scholar search reveals that most of them concern the North and South Cascade Mountains that stretch from just over the Canadian border west of Vancouver (Canadian Cascades), through Washington and Oregon and into northern California. He is not an expert on glaciers worldwide, as the record of his published papers shows.

Glacier melt shows a climate change tipping point. We must pay attention 

Fossil fuel burning must taper off dramatically and be replaced with renewable sources of energy if we are going to survive as a species on this planet 

Mountain glaciers and humans have coexisted for roughly 200,000 years, but that long idyll appears to be ending. The earth’s 190,000 glaciers, sentinels of climate change that appear to be more sensitive to the climate than are humans, are disappearing at an unprecedented pace, the canaries in climate change’s coal mine.

There is evidence for many glaciers worldwide being in retreat, and there are estimates, but no one actually knows how many. Wendell's being rather less than truthful by implying here that all are in retreat. To cap it all, the "canary in the coal mine" appears here too. That coal mine must have hundreds of canaries in it by now, put there by many dozens of claims about climate, sea-level rise, coral reefs, glaciers - the list goes on and on. They can't all be "the canary in the coal mine".

It is all being driven by human activities, and it has been happening for three decades. The fate of both humans and glaciers will depend on drastically reducing carbon dioxide emissions during the next decade. 

Most of the world’s glaciers began changing in the late 1980s from relative stability to negative mass balances. Mass balance is the difference between growth from snow accumulation and shrinkage from snow and ice melting. The relatively abrupt change to negative glacier mass balances strongly suggests a climate tipping point, when the climate changes from one stable state to another.

Total rubbish - it's been happening at an increasing pace since the end of the "Little Ice Age" in the mid 19th. century. The World Glacier Inventory says that systematic glacier monitoring on a large scale began in 1894. The World Glacier Monitoring Service published a comprehensive report in 2008 titled "Global Glacier Changes: facts and figures" available here. On page 14 of the pdf is shown this figure:

     Fig. 5.9 The cumulative specific mass balance curves are shown for
     the mean of all glaciers and 30 ‘reference’ glaciers with (almost)
     continuous series since 1976. Source: Data from WGMS.

It should be obvious that "Most of the world’s glaciers began changing in the late 1980s from relative stability to negative mass balances." is baloney. There was no "relatively abrupt change" at all, hence no "climate tipping point". This is not science at all - it's politics. Perhaps it's true of some, or even all of the glaciers he's studied - the list isn't very long, judging by the abstracts of his papers, and certainly far, very far, from global.

There are other compelling signs that a climate tipping point has been reached. One of the most critical is the loss of the floating sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean. In 2014, the late-summer extent of sea ice in the north polar seas was the lowest since satellite measurements began in 1979. Before 1979, evidence based on shipping and whaling charts suggests it has not been this low for at least hundreds of years. Paleo climatologists believe that Arctic sea ice cover last melted completely during summers about 125,000 years ago, during a warm period between ice ages.

More rubbish - in fact there is plenty of evidence pre-1979 that large parts of  the Arctic currently under ice were ice-free in late summer; newspaper articles and reports from ship's captains, whalers and explorers.

Reduction of northern-hemisphere sea ice means that more incoming sunlight is absorbed into darker ocean water instead of being reflected by ice and then re-radiated into the atmosphere as heat. This, in turn, reduces the extent of the annual northern-hemisphere snow cover, which further accelerates global warming. A related effect that could be even more environmentally devastating is the release of methane from permafrost and seafloor hydrates as the ocean warms. Another tipping-point indicator is the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, which have shown signs of disintegrating during the past two decades. Just partial melting of these ice sheets will raise sea level several meters.

There is evidence that the warmer ocean water actually freezes quicker next winter precisely because it does radiate into the atmosphere, but not as heat, Wendell, but as long-wave infrared. He really knows his stuff, this Wendell.

He then says "Just partial melting of these ice sheets will raise sea level several meters". Depends just how much "partial" means, don't it? I've found out a little more about our Wendell - try this:

Tracking glaciers the Tangborn way 

Wendell Tangborn thinks he has invented a better mousetrap. He's still waiting for the scientific world to beat a path to his door. 

Sitting in a cramped home office overlooking the (rising) waters of Puget Sound, Tangborn talks about his plan to monitor 200 glaciers around the world to see whether or not — and, if so, how quickly — they're melting away. He has already done detailed reports on seven, including Juneau's incredible shrinking Mendenhall Glacier. He's working on 40 more, and hoping one or more foundations will supply enough money to hire the three people he'd need to keep track of all 200. 

People often cite the waxing or waning of glaciers to prove that the earth is or is not getting warmer. But according to Tangborn, no one is looking systematically at a large number of glaciers so that trends become obvious and the glaciers which are behaving contrary to the trends can be seen clearly as outliers.

What? "No one is looking systematically..."? The man's an ostrich with his head in the sand, or perhaps in a glacier crevasse. So in 2013 he'd reported on just seven glaciers out of his target 200. That target, using his own figure above of  190,000 would be just 0.1% of the total. Just how does he do it with his "better mousetrap"?

Basically, he uses temperature and precipitation data from fixed weather stations to calculate a glacier's "mass balance" — that is, the difference between the winter accumulation of snow and the summer melting of snow and ice. A positive balance means the glacier is growing; negative means it's shrinking. 

The program must be customized for every glacier. Tangborn must take account of the topography and total area of the glacier's surface. Once he plugs that into the program, he can sit in his office and get information that's as reliable as the data produced the old-fashioned way — the way he did it for many years — by climbing around on the ice with probing rods and shovels. 

For each glacier, Tangborn has to find a weather station that produces results in line with actual observations. That isn't necessarily the weather station right next door to the ice. Austrian scientists can't believe that Tangborn's using a weather station in Innsbruck to monitor the Vernagtferner glacier, which is 100 kilometers away, rather than a station close to the site. But, says Tangborn, somehow local weather phenomena keep the closer station from producing useful numbers.

This is clearly his "mass balance model", but he doesn't always use local weather data, but scratches around until he gets a fit with reality, or his reality at least. Innsbruck's elevation is 574m, the lowest point (the snout) of the Vernagtferner glacier is 2790m above sea level. He's using a weather station 100 km away, and more than 2000 metres lower, because "local weather phenomena keep the closer station from producing useful numbers". But it's the "local weather phenomena" which directly affect the glacier; no other weather phenomena can possibly affect it. Remember "He's still waiting for the scientific world to beat a path to his door.", and they haven't. I wonder why. Perhaps you can work it out for yourself.

Orrin H. Pilkey - is he for real?

Who he? He's a (retired) geologist and "shoreline expert" (veteran beachcomber perhaps?) but he has pronounced, and is still pronouncing on sea-levels worldwide, global warming and climate change. Perhaps studying geology somehow qualifies someone to comment on everything climatological, like one Nils-Axel Mörner, with whom you may be familiar. Wikipedia says

Pilkey began his career with the study of abyssal plains on the deep sea floor. As a result of the destruction of his parents' house in Waveland, Mississippi in Hurricane Camille (1969), he switched to the study of coasts.

Better late than never, I suppose, and I'd suggest the name "Waveland" might have hinted at something earlier. Perhaps I'm being unkind, but I'm in one of those moods where my wit has a pH of 2.0 and the sarcasm fairly flies from my fingertips. I know that sarcasm's considered as the lowest form of wit, but it's fun.

Anyway, I came upon "Sea Level Rise And The World’s Beaches" on Coastal Care, penned by said (retired) Professor Emeritus of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Nicholas School of the Environment, at Duke University, Orrin H. Pilkey himself. I thought "coastal care" involved not dropping litter and following the country code "take only photographs, leave only footprints", and resisting the temptation to vandalise wind turbines, you know, that sort of stuff. You might deduce that I came upon this gem of science and logic purely by chance, and you'd be right. He begins

Of all the various anticipated impacts of global climate change, sea level rise will likely be the first to produce a human catastrophe on a global scale. Heavily populated low-lying lands on deltas (e.g., The Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta) will be abandoned, displacing millions of people. Atoll nations in the Pacific (Tuvalu) and Indian Oceans (The Maldives) will disappear; major cities (Miami, Rotterdam, New York/Newark) will be building storm gates and abandoning the low-lying city fringes. Barrier islands lined with tourist facilities and high-rise buildings along the world’s coastal plains will either be abandoned or will be completely surrounded by massive sea walls. Development-lined beaches everywhere will be degraded and more than likely will be destroyed.

Rotterdam already has a "storm gate" known as the Maeslantkering, completed in 1997. It works automatically, with warnings to shipping issued a coupla hours in advance. It's worth a look - when it comes to protection from the sea, the Dutch don't piss about - they build big and to last. This gate is just the northern half of the barrier, the two gates pivot out to meet in the middle of the waterway, when water is admitted to the curved caissons so they sink to the bottom. To allow this movement, the gates are supported on huge ball-joints (nearest the camera); they're 10 metres in diameter and weigh 680 tons each.

Northern half of the Maeslantkering                                                             Source: Geolocation

... those little dots on the right of the grey control building in the centre are cars in the car park. The Big Apple should have had more than one decades ago. In Miami they're relying on the pirate ship at Disney World. A queue might develop.

I think the Prof might have just the teeniest chip on his shoulder about storm surge. He continues, after discussing the last ice age and the result of its termination on sea-levels

Sea level change is actually a combination of the change in the volume of the sea (eustatic change) and the local up and down movement of the land (tectonic change). The rise is primarily occurring because the ocean water is expanding (thermal expansion). As the warming atmosphere transfers heat to the surface waters of the oceans, the waters gradually expand. The upper 2000 feet of the oceans are involved in this process and even though the amount of expansion per unit volume of sea water is slight, the huge quantity of water expanding in the oceans leads to a significant increase in the volume of the sea and hence to a rise in the level of the sea.

Even if we reversed global warming today, thermal expansion of the oceans would continue for centuries and probably millennia to come. This is because the downward motion of water warmed by contact with the warming atmosphere into deeper waters provides momentum like the momentum furnished to an engine by a flywheel. As the cold deep water is thus warmed it expands. At the same time, the loss of the warm water at shallower depths causes the water column there to shrink. The expansion at depth is greater than the contraction in shallow water so overall the ocean expands and the sea level continues to rise and will do so for a long time.

Wait a mo' - let me run over that again - "the downward motion of water warmed by contact with the warming atmosphere into deeper waters provides momentum like the momentum furnished to an engine by a flywheel". Silly me thought that warmed surface water expanded upwards taking it's centre of gravity with it - very slow upward motion and therefore momentum. The next sentence is convolutingly fascinating - "the loss of the warm water at shallower depths causes the water column there to shrink". The warmed water's not lost, it's still there, above the as-yet un-warmed depths. The un-warmed deeper water is unaffected - no temperature change, no volume change. The depth of the colder layer is reduced, the water there doesn't shrink. Water column 1000 metres, top 100 metres expands to 100.1 metres, bottom 900 metres is unaffected, result 1000.1-metre depth. Call for a shrink.

After some discussion of melting glaciers and icecaps - in the Prof's icy mind, all are shrinking, none growing, he says

Sea level is dropping in Juneau, Alaska, because the Mendenhall Glacier has retreated away from the coast and the land is rebounding, having been released from the glacier’s weight. This is a widespread phenomenon in high latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere (e.g., Scandinavia) where the ice sheets of the last ice age have recently (in a geologic time sense) melted away. It is also happening in Greenland and the Antarctic where the land beneath the ice rebounds upward as the weight of the thinning glaciers decreases.

Ummm no. The Mendenhall Glacier has certainly retreated in the last half-century or thereabouts, but it's just 12 miles (19 km) long, and its weight isn't that great compared with the mountains it slides down, a mere pimple compared with the depth of the crust. In any case, glacial rebound is delayed by centuries after top weight is reduced, so the land rebounds centuries after "the weight of the thinning glaciers decreases". I though geologists had a good sense of the timing and delayed action of crustal processes, and of scale. The Prof obviously has some difficulty conceptualising both, not a good trait in a geologist.

After some discussion of how rapidly (who said?) rising sea levels are and will increasingly affect coastal areas, he says

The point is that a very small sea level rise will cause a large shoreline retreat. Sea level rise is not to be easily dismissed.

Yet in the December 27, 2010, issue of Forbes magazine is an article that argues sea level is not rising. Swedish geologist, Nils Axel Mörner has written a pamphlet entitled Sea Level Rise is the Greatest Lie Ever Told. These and many other expressions of skepticism about sea level rise are part of a larger deniers movement largely funded by energy companies and libertarian organizations. It’s hard to fathom how a 150-year record of tide gauges and 19 years of satellite measurements of sea level change can reasonably be refuted.

The amount of shoreline retreat rather depends on the profile of that coastline surely. I certainly agree with him on that last point, though - it's certainly difficult to fathom how such records can be refuted - scope for a few future posts there perhaps.

Newton is claimed to have said or written

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

IMHO the "great ocean of truth" is still eluding Orrin H. Pilkey (and many others, sceptics included), and he should continue his beachcombing in the hope of acquiring a little of Newton's insight, and a firmer grasp of what's beyond his experience and limited knowledge of the world and how it works. A little humility turneth away wrath perhaps, to mangle several epithets in one go. Over and out.

Do "warmists" inhabit a different planet, or just blind and deaf?

It's a good question - here are some hints as to the answer. HuffPo says "Global Warming Threat: Permafrost Thawing Across Siberia And Alaska Poses New Concern, UNEP Reports"

Permafrost lands across Siberia and Alaska that contain vast stores of carbon are beginning to thaw, bringing with it the threat of a big increase in global warming by 2100, a U.N. report said on Tuesday.

How can anyone come to that conclusion if they'd actually read the UNEP report, which said "Overall, these observations indicate that large-scale thawing of permafrost may have already started", and "Uncertainties are large, but emissions from thawing permafrost could start within the next few decades". May have, not has, and emissions could start within the next few decades. That "few decades" sounds like a solid scientific prediction doesn't it?

The Urban Times asks "How is Global Warming Affecting Alaska?", as if we and it's readers couldn't guess what their answer was gonna be.

The reasons for global warming have been thoroughly debated. While some experts argue humans are the root cause, others argue that the Earth is undergoing a natural climate shift that has nothing to do with the presence of people on the planet.

Whatever the reason, it is evident that global warming is taking place. In Alaska, for instance, the average annual temperature has risen just over three degrees Fahrenheit per year for the last 100 years. The resulting glacial reduction is visible to the naked eye.

They then show a photo of a glacier calving great chunks of ice into the sea, as if this is caused by higher temperatures and has never happened in the past, hint: RMS Titanic. I won't bore you with rest of the stuff and get on with my own picture; what's happening to temperatures in Alaska? I Just clicked on the GISS map somewhere in Alaska and then ran down the list picking out stations with a history to 2012 which is complete for recent years - no cherry-picking on my blog. Here are the charts, in the order they appear in the list. You're welcome to check for yourself using the links I've provided-  that's why I included them.

Notice anything about the years since 2000? If you do, and you deduce that temperatures have been dropping to or below those of the 1980s, you get full marks. You are now fully qualified to answer that question "How is Global Warming Affecting Alaska?".

A game of Consequences; A question of scale (4)

Consequences, schmonsequences, all is consequences. We've been told, indeed we've had it proved to us by climate models (pause for snigger) that it's the atmosphere which drives climate. While I'm prepared, like the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland, to "believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast", it's now well after breakfast, and that notion is an impossible thing to believe. The atmosphere is a major component of climate; the atmosphere transports heat and fresh water around the globe, dumping them where they're needed, and sometimes where they're not wanted, or at least in quantities that aren't wanted, or not wanted just now.

Blaming changes in the atmosphere for causing changes in the atmosphere is a circular argument, and leads nowhere but back to square one, and delusion, and vast expenditure on research that's leading nowhere, and vast costs to cure a non-existent problem, or at least a problem that can't be solved by mankind. I'm of the opinion that everything that happens in the atmosphere is climate. Clouds are climate, rain is climate, temperature is climate, high and low pressure systems and the consequent winds and storms are climate, and the greenhouse effect is climate.

Many climate scientists, and meteorologists, and glaciologists, and marine biologists, appear to me to be particularly myopic. Every day, or at least every week, we see the results of another "study" published; studies which usually set out to "prove" something or other, and which therefore have an agenda up front. It's all too often that agenda (usually driven by funding sources) which dictates the conclusions drawn. If the conclusions are a bit thin, because the data is a bit thin, or murky, or both, then often models are used, and the output from those models is hailed as "evidence". In all such cases, the results are published with many caveats; X  "could", "may" "might" cause Y. In some cases, even with caveats included, the scientists "spin" the results by applying a liberal dose of their own beliefs and prejudices, either in their published conclusions, or in press releases, or both. That's not science, it's advocacy, and it's dangerous advocacy.

I introduced this topic because it's central to how the role of the atmosphere is perceived; warmer air, and/or long-wave radiation from that warmer air is said to be warming the ocean. Poppycock say I - it's the ocean (and to a lesser extend the land) which gave the atmosphere that temperature in the first place. Heat is transported into the atmosphere by conduction and convection, by evaporation, and by long-wave infrared radiation, a small proportion of the latter being absorbed by greenhouse gases, the most important of which is water vapour, which the ocean (and to a lesser extend the land) put there in the first place, complete with the additional heat energy that water vapour molecules have compared to water molecules in liquid water and ice.

it's not necessary to be a climate scientist, or a physicist to understand these basic principles. it's only necessary to have a basic grasp of the relative sizes of all these factors to have a grasp on the fundamentals of climate. I said earlier that only a small proportion of the infrared radiation emitted by land and water is absorbed by greenhouse gases, the rest escapes to space, and the emitted radiation is just a part of the heat lost by the Earth's surface. Only about half of the radiation absorbed by greenhouse gases is re-emitted back down towards the surface, and not all of that is absorbed by the surface; some is reflected. The overall picture is of a great deal of heat being lost by the surface, much of that escaping to space, and a small proportion of the emitted heat finding its way back to the surface. That small proportion is what the hullabaloo is all about. That's why I introduced the topic of myopic scientists.

Given that the proportion getting back to the surface is relatively small, and that the effect of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is small in relation to its bigger brother (sister, sibling, mustn't appear sexist) water vapour, and given that human-generated  CO2 emissions are tiny compared with those emitted by plants, animals, and yet again the ocean, it's not surprising that many wonder what the fuss is all about. It is surprising that many climate and other scientists haven't yet grasped this question of scale at all. I read recently that some scientists were surprised to discover that it wasn't slightly warmer air which melted sea-ice, but slightly warmer water. Not surprising to me, as I and more enlightened and informed others know full well that air, even moist air, has a heat capacity hundreds of times less than the same volume of water; even less if it's sea-water. See A Question of Scale (2).

Marine biologists examine a tiny part of the Great Barrier Reef, see what they interpret as problems, extrapolate that to the entire reef and declare it doomed. I don't believe it. Glaciologists examine the snouts (lower ends) of a few glaciers, see that they're melting, measure the rate of retreat of the snouts, and ignoring those rates and whether the glaciers may be accumulating mass at a greater rate far above in the mountains, declare that they'll all have melted by Christmas. I exaggerate, of course (sauce for the goose, etc.), it was Christmas 2035.

There are only about 300 glaciers studied in detail out of a conservative estimate of 160,000 worldwide. It's that question of scale again. Scale also crops up in relation to individual glaciers. A paper breathlessly announces an "alarming rate of retreat of the Gangotri glacier" of 22.5 metres/year, and mentions the totally misleading "fact" of how many people in Asia "depend on its meltwater" (it's a perpetuated myth), They don't do the simple arithmetic and disclose that even if their "alarming rate" doubled or tripled, the 35 km glacier would still be there in a thousand years. They don't mention that temperature drops with height, so any retreat will slow down in time. They don't study the accumulation zone at the top of the glacier which dictates what the thickness of ice will be at the snout in 2000-or-so years time; it's too cold up there and it would take time to do, and would likely utterly destroy their blinkered conclusions in any case. They're seemingly unaware that the ice they're studying was formed 2000 years ago, and it's the mass and thickness of that ice which largely dictates what's happening at the snout today. Remember, air has little heat capacity, and it's more likely that less cloud/more sun is the a factor (rarely mentioned in the literature). Perhaps the cooking stoves of gaggles of glaciologists is causing what they've come to measure! See a Cool Look at Glaciers

By now you may have grasped why I'm a sceptic. I'm anti-alarmist, not anti-warmist. The warmists can believe what they like - in my opinion they're looking through binoculars. Do just that, lower them and see how much of the scene before you is captured in their field of view. They and the sub-class of scientists I've discussed here are myopic, and the only correction is scepticism and an understanding of scale, and a sense of proportion.

Matterhorn scientist disintegrating in the face of global warming - the true story?

Four days ago, I expressed my astonishment (I was more than just surprised) that a scientist could think that he and his team had done groundbreaking (it's a pun) research on how thawing/freezing processes were cracking rock and creating rockfalls on Switzerland's iconic Matterhorn. Those processes are well understood, and have been for at least a hundred years, Yesterday, while searching for more Matterhorn images for my collection, I came across a real gem on ABC News - Is the Mighty Matterhorn Mountain Crumbling?

To understand how climate change is helping destabilize one of the world’s most famous mountains, Stephan Gruber of the University of Zurich offers a culinary visualization.

Imagine a piece of bread – or perhaps even better, a thick cut of raw steak – in an oven. Put a stick of frozen butter on top of it. And then turn the oven on.

Apart from the fact that I can't imagine anyone in their right mind putting a slice of steak, let alone bread in an oven with frozen butter on it, I'll go along with the analogy for now. I'm like that, broad-minded and receptive. Read on (my bold)

Two things happen:

The outside of the steak begins to cook relatively quickly. The inside stays raw for longer.

At the same time, the butter begins to melt – and seep into the steak.

Now, imagine that the steak is the mighty Matterhorn mountain, one of the most picturesque in Europe (and, yes, some of you may know it better as Disneyland’s original rollercoaster).

Climate change works in three ways:

As the world gets warmer – as the oven heats up – the outside of the Matterhorn heats up (the outside of the steak cooks). That, by itself, slowly breaks apart the ice that holds the mountain’s exterior rock surface together. So we are beginning to see more rock falls than ever before. (In 2003, a massive rock fall stranded 50 climbers.)

Does heat "break apart ice"? No, it melts it, and climate change can work in another way which doesn't even enter the closed minds of some - the world might get colder. At this point we should remind ourselves what the heated-up "outside" of the Matterhorn looks like in summer, when Herr Gruber's limited view of "climate change" is heating it up. This photo is from 2007.

The Matterhorn - East face. Source: Free Wallpaper Pic

It's clearly summer, which can be deduced from the high Sun angle. What's all the white stuff clinging to the "heated up" rock faces? Is it frozen butter? I'm keen to hear more:

Then, the butter starts melting. The butter is actually that same ice that holds much of the mountain together. As it melts, it seeps down into ice that doesn’t see the sun – say, the center of the steak – and helps cook it from the inside.

Thirdly, slowly but surely, the oven heat finally reaches the middle of the steak. Climate change finally helps warm the inside of the mountain.

And slowly but surely, the integrity of the mountain starts to diminish, both from the outside and from the inside-out.

In my total ignorance I thought it was rock that "holds much of the mountain together", but what do I and geologists know? There's more:

Before you think that this is some obscure thing that happens in places with very, very high elevations, consider this: The mountains where this is happening are located where millions of people – many in Asia – actually live.

Gruber recently released a study of how this happens – the first to show that typical patters[sic] of movement of ice exist on mountains like the Matterhorn.

That last sentence is a real killer - "the first to show that typical patterns of movement of ice exist on mountains like the Matterhorn". If they're "typical patterns" then they're already well known to exist, and they're well documented, so his study cannot be the "first". It's not "climate change" which melts ice in crevices on high mountains, it's the Sun, and it's the re-freezing at night in the summer, and in the winter which widens the cracks. Ice has a larger volume that the water which forms it. The writer himself needs a geography lesson - exactly how many of the "millions of people" are threatened in some way by rock falls at altitude?

Matterhorn disintegrating in the face of global warming - this is news?

The Independent, and cited researchers, have just discovered that freezing water weathers mountain rocks. This apparently is news. It is of course part of the Global Warming meme; perfectly natural and well-known processes that have been occurring since the earth solidified from a molten sphere are cited as evidence for "Global Warming" or "Climate Change". Not just any old "Global Warming" or "Climate Change", of course, which the earth has seen over it's non-molten history, but a new and dangerous kind which, if unchecked, will kill us all.

Matterhorn disintegrating in the face of global warming

With its four steep faces reflecting the compass points, the mighty Matterhorn has proven an irresistible and often deadly challenge to mountaineers.

But now, the mountain – one of Europe's tallest and most celebrated peaks – is falling to bits due to climate change, according to a new scientific report.

As with other Alpine mountains, experts have already documented the retreat of the peak's glaciers and the thinning of its permafrost in the wake of rising temperatures.

But scientists now say they have evidence that these rising temperatures are also prompting the physical disintegration of the mountain itself.

I first learned of frost-weathering of mountain rocks in primary school. I've been familiar with the term "frost-shattered rocks" for many decades. I've walked over mountain screes thousands to hundreds-of-thousands of years old. Scotland's mountains were once as high as the Matterhorn. The Matterhorn is ultimately destined to become deep-sea sediment. I love the "With its four steep faces reflecting the compass points" bit - how do they think the mountain got to be that shape? My school atlas from many decades ago has a picture of the Matterhorn, and an explanation for that shape - glaciers, ice, and freezing water. The normal becomes unprecedented, and history and past knowledge are dumped in favour of the "new discoveries". Not new, and you can't claim to have discovered something that's been common knowledge for several generations if not longer.

"There has been a big increase in the number of rock falls in the past decade that can't be explained simply by the fact that we're looking out for them more now," the lead researcher, Stephan Gruber, told The Independent.

His team's discovery of the key role that icy crevices play in the Matterhorn's decay suggests that global warming's deleterious effect on mountain ranges is greater than previously thought.

"We have shown the importance of icy crevices and the melting water entering them, in the process of rock falls," Mr Gruber said. "Unlike rock itself – changes to which take place over a very long period of time – just a few decades of temperatures rising by a degree or so are enough to affect the ice and water on the mountains."

"It's reasonable to expect the same processes are widespread elsewhere in the Alps at the same altitude," he added.

It's reasonable to expect the same processes are widespread elsewhere in the world and have been continuing since mountains and water and freezing temperatures came together in the same place at the same time. Climbers have been wary of ice-weakened rocks on the Matterhorn, in the Swiss Alps, and on mountains worldwide since people had the inclination to climb mountains other than to travel long distances. Here's the North face of the Matterhorn

The Matterhorn - east face. Source: Free Wallpaper Pic

See those grey mounds and slopes in the middle and foreground? They're screes - heaps of frost-shattered rock. Here they are in closeup

Screes on the slopes of the Matterhorn

They're covering the entire lower slopes of the mountain. There are buildings on them. A stream has cut its way through them. They've been growing for centuries at least. The mountain has that "four steep faces" pyramidal shape as a result of ice-weathering over millennia and longer.

"There has been a big increase in the number of rock falls in the past decade that can't be explained simply by the fact that we're looking out for them more now," the lead researcher, Stephan Gruber, told The Independent.

If they weren't "looking out for them" much in the past, how do they know there's been a "big increase"? There's been a big increase in unsubstantiated claims of the abnormal and unprecedented over the last decade too, but unlike these researchers and the Independent, I have been looking out for them. These guys need a reality pill. Reach for the Button:

Disconnects in Logic (6) - 34 "Is not nearly as much" as 502

Earthsky blogger Daniel Tennant relays some good news and some not-so-good news (but which does he think is "good"?)

Most sea level rise due to melting polar ice, study confirms   

Researchers report that Earth’s polar regions are losing 502 billion tons of water annually out of the total amount 536 billion tons lost annually worldwide.

Scientists published results in a February 2012 issue of Nature that reveal a detailed picture of how Earth’s glacier regions have changed over the last eight years. In previous publications, GRACE satellite data confirmed that Earth’s polar regions are the major contributors to rising sea levels. The recent publication focuses on the high mountain areas, such as the Himalayas and Andes, and shows that these ecosystems are remarkably robust: they are not losing nearly as much water to the ocean as the polar regions.

That's good news, I'd say, and an E grade for all the glaciologists and others who've been predicting the imminent demise of glaciers in "high mountain areas" for years. A little later, we're shown this graphic

Map showing the September ice extent in the Arctic in 1980, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. The magenta line indicates the median September ice extent for the period 1979-2000. Image Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center Sea Ice Index:

From simple visual evidence, if nothing else, it is clear that our polar glacier regions are depleting due to melting ice. 

Arctic report card for 2011

The "polar glacier regions", aren't shown, just the Arctic, and this is graphic data for sea ice, and has nothing to do with sea level. Sea ice has no net effect on sea level, freezing or melting. No glaciers are shown. It's certainly not clear from that graphic that "our polar glacier regions are depleting due to melting ice". Why were we given this irrelevant information and erroneous conclusion?

After this slip, band some details of how the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellites work, we get the "bottom line" (my bold)

Bottom line: A publication in Nature in February 2012 presents the results of an analysis of GRACE satellite data, showing that high mountain areas, such as the Himalayas and Andes, are not losing nearly as much water to the ocean as Earth's polar regions.

Shhuurely he means ice not water? If "the polar regions are losing 502 billion tons of water annually out of the total amount 536 billion tons lost annually worldwide" then how can the 32 billion tons from mountain glaciers be termed "not nearly as much" as 502 billion tons? The 32 is 6.8% of 502, or about one-fifteenth. Did he write this piece before he saw the figures? Was he disappointed when he saw them? Does his brain work logarithmically? Why did he spoil a perfectly good article with a superfluous add-on, an unsubstantiated claim, and a flawed sense of proportion (in the true sense)? Why do I get worked up about this kind of thing?

If you have any of the answers, please let him know, I'm past caring.

Glaciers in Nepal - a Nepalling State of Affairs

Dawn.com laments the fate of glaciers in Nepal "Himalayan Sherpas lament climate change devastation", "one hour ago", meaning on 26th Feb 2012:

GATI, Nepal: Climate change is altering the face of the Himalayas, devastating farming communities and making Mount Everest increasingly treacherous to climb, some of the world’s top mountaineers have warned.
Apa Sherpa, the Nepali climber who has conquered Mount Everest a record 21 times, said he was disturbed by the lack of snow on the world’s highest peak, caused by rising temperatures.
"In 1989 when I first climbed Everest there was a lot of snow and ice but now most of it has just become bare rock. That, as a result, is causing more rockfalls which is a danger to the climbers", he told AFP.
"Also, climbing is becoming more difficult because when you are on a mountain you can wear crampons but it’s very dangerous and very slippery to walk on bare rock with crampons"” Speaking after completing the first third of a gruelling 1,700-kilometre (1,100-mile) trek across the Himalayas, Apa Sherpa would not rule out the possibility of Everest being unclimbable in the coming years.

The "lack of snow", courtesy of Google Maps. I know it's a winter scene, but if Nature and (un-)Scientific American can show "melting glaciers" in summer, what's sauce for the goose....



View Larger Map

"...it’s very dangerous and very slippery to walk on bare rock with crampons"” Then don't do it. I'll stop there because I don't want to mock someone who's clearly very passionate about his country and his fellow citizens (yes he does - Ed.), no matter what (Ed.) might say. However, note the wording at the beginning "some of the world’s top mountaineers have warned". Presumably they inadvertently used the word "some", because we hear from just one climber, and no others are quoted. Nit-picking again, though nit-picking is often valid criticism, as you'll hear.

The article continues

Research published by the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) last year showed Nepal’s glaciers had shrunk by 21 per cent over 30 years.
A three-year research project led by ICIMOD showed 10 glaciers surveyed in the region all are shrinking, with a marked acceleration in loss of ice between 2002 and 2005.
Scientists say the effects of climate change could be devastating, as the Himalayas provide food and energy for 1.3 billion people living in downstream river basins.
Environmental campaigners refer to the mountain range as the "third pole" and say the melting glaciers are the biggest potential contributors to rising sea levels after the North and South Poles.

By "Nepal's glaciers" they surely must mean all or most or even a significant proportion of Nepal's glaciers? No, they mean the ten glaciers surveyed over how long? The "30 years" over which they shrank by 21%? - no, between 2002 and 2005. Just four years, a period which ended 7 years ago. Soon after the mention of that period, the writer begins to lose the plot -"the Himalayas provide food and energy for 1.3 billion people living in downstream river basins". It's a strange and alien environment to site wheat fields and coal-fired power stations, but I think I know what he means. Nit-picking is fun.

Then we get to the real "message" in the missive - "Environmental campaigners refer to the mountain range as the "third pole" and say the melting glaciers are the biggest potential contributors to rising sea levels after the North and South Poles", potential maybe, actual  not quite. We now know that Himalayan glaciers have lost very little ice in recent decades. Glaciologists, or at least those who study the lower ends of very few glaciers and publish alarming reports about overall ice loss, which they know nothing whatsoever about, need a lesson in objectivity.

This bunch confidently assert that "Nepal's glaciers", by which they must mean all glaciers in Nepal, have "shrunk by 21% over 30 years". Whether they mean in mass, thickness or length I don't know, though I'm trying to find out.. This they base on a survey of 10 glaciers out of..... how many? Just this once (honest) I'll rely on a figure provided by the WWF "Monitoring the glaciers of the Himalayas", which is 3,252 glaciers, and at least gives the impression that someone's taken the trouble to count them, broadly agreeing with other figures I've seen. Have a look at that WWF article if you want, but it contains enough material for another blog post here, so beware. If you know much at all about the subject, be sure to put down any hot drinks, and don't read it with a mouthful of food. What we have then, is the equivalent of physicians examining just 17 of the 5,544 concert-goers in a full Royal Albert Hall, and assessing the health of the entire 5,544 from their data. This is modern science at its best. It's not investigation, it's extrapolation, and that's what's wrong with modern "climate science" (or at least the IPCC variety) in general.

Apa Sherpa (he must have a lot of relatives in the Sherpa family) made the news pages last year warning that Everest was becoming too dangerous and difficult even for experienced climbers. He's probably a nice sincere chap, but timing isn't his strong point - in the same reports we read that a 13 year-old boy had made it to the top with his father.

An estimated 200 people reached the summit on Saturday, the busiest day, when 13-year-old American Jordan Romero became the youngest person ever to climb Everest, tackling the mountain from the quieter north side.

The summer climbing season is a brief two weeks. Why so short?

Around 250 people scaled Mount Everest from the south side this year, Nepal's mountaineering department said Tuesday, as heavy snow brought the brief climbing season to an early close.

They said the weather on Everest had deteriorated since snow began falling on Sunday, ending a climbing season that has set a record for the youngest person ever to reach the top as well as the highest number of summits.

Don't reporters see that some claims are likely exaggerated or biased? Above base camp, air temperature drops by about 1°C for each 150 metres increase in height, meaning that five-or-so hundred metres higher it's never above zero. It's not "climate change" or "global warming" melting the snow and ice, it's very likely (>97% - I can use probabilities too)  it's a bit more sunshine , and possibly, just possibly, erosion cased by those 200 people who reached the summit. Even more (including sherpas) support these expeditions, and tramp the lower tracks.

What "climate change devastation" is being caused in Nepal? After all, the glaciers are disappearing before their very eyes in a shimmering heat-haze.

"Right from the beginning we saw the effects of climate change on tea plantations in Ilam district,” he said. "These areas would not normally get frost and it is destroying their entire crop. These are cash crops that employ thousands of people, even on one farm."

 Frost - you couldn't make it up.

No apologies for the Nepalling pun in the post title though. It's my blog, after all.

Updated 1st March with some details of the 2010 news article(s), and a little more of my devastating and incisive critique. It's St. David's Day, so iechyd da to all those who know what it means.

The Guardian shows its naked bias

The Himalayas and nearby peaks have lost no ice in past 10 years, study shows

"Meltwater from Asia's peaks is much less then previously estimated, but lead scientist says the loss of ice caps and glaciers around the world remains a serious concern"

The Grauniad (an affectionate, or otherwise, nickname for the Guardian, which in the days of movable type was prone to side-splitting typos) may sometimes display an apparent lack of bias in its reporting of environmental and climate science, but a sceptical eye can often spot the face behind the mask. It's so with the above article. Those worried or even alarmed about apparent (I choose the word with care) ice-loss worldwide should rejoice in the news about Himalayan ice. I see no rejoicing here; indeed there's a whiff of disappointment throughout.

There's an obligatory picture of a an (apparently) melting glacier with this caption:

Hopar glacier in Pakistan. Melting ice outside the two largest caps - Greenland and Antarctica - is much less then previously estimated, the study has found.

That only interpretation I can put on that is that ice loss in Greenland and Antarctica is not "much less then previously estimated", but must be the same or more than previously estimated. However, the article, by omission, implies that the study didn't cover Greenland and Antarctica. The Grauniad agonises over melting icecaps, so why didn't they mention that the study was global? Perhaps it's that the study also revised estimates for Greenland and Antarctica - downwards from IPCC estimates, but similar to more recent estimates. Was the Grauniad disappointed?

Here's where their bias is revealed. We have what is being widely acknowledged as the most reliable estimates to date for the Himalayas

However, the scientist who led the new work is clear that while greater uncertainty has been discovered in Asia's highest mountains, the melting of ice caps and glaciers around the world remains a serious concern.

Are they really saying that the study reveals "greater uncertainty"? Check it out -

Recent contributions of glaciers and ice caps to sea level rise
Thomas Jacob John Wahr W. Tad Pfeffer Sean Swenson
Nature (2012)

Here's the abstract:

Glaciers and ice caps (GICs) are important contributors to present-day global mean sea level rise. Most previous global mass balance estimates for GICs rely on extrapolation of sparse mass balance measurements representing only a small fraction of the GIC area, leaving their overall contribution to sea level rise unclear. Here we show that GICs, excluding the Greenland and Antarctic peripheral GICs, lost mass at a rate of 148±30 Gt/yr from January 2003 to December 2010, contributing 0.41±0.08 mm/yr to sea level rise. Our results are based on a global, simultaneous inversion of monthly GRACE-derived satellite gravity fields, from which we calculate the mass change over all ice-covered regions greater in area than 100 km2. The GIC rate for 2003–2010 is about 30 per cent smaller than the previous mass balance estimate that most closely matches our study period. The high mountains of Asia, in particular, show a mass loss of only 4±20 Gt/yr for 2003–2010, compared with 47–55 Gt/yr in previously published estimates. For completeness, we also estimate that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, including their peripheral GICs, contributed 1.06±0.19 mm/yr to sea level rise over the same time period. The total contribution to sea level rise from all ice-covered regions is thus 1.48±0.26 mm/yr, which agrees well with independent estimates of sea level rise originating from land ice loss and other terrestrial sources.

"Most previous global mass balance estimates for GICs rely on extrapolation of sparse mass balance measurements representing only a small fraction of the GIC area, leaving their overall contribution to sea level rise unclear" - that's where the uncertainty was. I hope the Guardian writers' disappointment doesn't last - there's bound to be some natural disaster or extreme weather event soon soon to give an opportunity to wheel out and polish their now time-worn and expected phrase "while it's not possible to ascribe any particular event to [global warming|climate change|rising sea levels] (choose one)" ..... and go on to effectively do just that. Good old Grauniad - at least they're predictable, unlike climate or weather.

So predictable, in fact, that they have to wheel out a Bristol University glaciologist, Prof Jonathan Bamber:

"I believe this data is the most reliable estimate of global glacier mass balance that has been produced to date," said Bamber. He noted that 1.4 billion people depend on the rivers that flow from the Himalayas and Tibetan plateau: "That is a compelling reason to try to understand what is happening there better."

He added: "The new data does not mean that concerns about climate change are overblown in any way. It means there is a much larger uncertainty in high mountain Asia than we thought. Taken globally all the observations of the Earth's ice – permafrost, Arctic sea ice, snow cover and glaciers – are going in the same direction."

Notice that? He says that "the most reliable estimate of global glacier mass balance that has been produced to date" means that "there is a much larger uncertainty in high mountain Asia than we thought". Silly me thought that reliable estimates reduced uncertainty. It just proves that I'm not cut out to be a glaciologist, especially one who clearly thinks that the "rivers that flow from the Himalayas and Tibetan plateau" rely almost exclusively on glacier melt. See the end of my post A Cool Look at Glaciers for a published refutation of that myth.

The study clearly supports what many have been saying for years - that studies of (at most) a few hundred of the estimated 150,000 glaciers worldwide are almost worthless, like attempting to assess population health by visiting hospitals. Few glaciologists (at least the vocal kind) seem to be interested in other than "sick" glaciers. That's what's wrong with so-called "mainstream" environmental and climate science (and reporting) - accentuate the unusual and ignore the normal.

An Element of Surprise

I'm surprised at how scientists are often surprised, and sometimes even astonished. For example, researchers and marine biologists were surprised by the rapid recovery of nearshore environments along the US coastline of the Gulf of Mexico in the months following the Deepwater Horizon blowout in 2010. Marine biologists were surprised at the rapid recovery of bleached areas of coral along the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland, Australia. Others had been surprised at the extent of the bleaching in 2008. Scientists were "Surprised to Find Earth's Biosphere Booming" (abstract here) when they looked for the first time, though whether it was the scientists themselves, or merely reporters who were surprised, is a moot point . Scientists were surprised (some were astonished) to find an "ozone hole" (so-called) over Antarctica several decades ago, when they looked for the first time. Scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution were surprised to discover that some shell-building creatures unexpectedly build more shell when exposed to ocean acidification caused by elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2).

With all these expressions of surprise (most seem to be confined to press releases or interviews, may be a clue there?), it might be interesting to attempt to analyse the reasons. Had the scientists studied earlier oil spills and ecological impacts? If so why were they surprised at the rapid recovery? (I wasn't, but then I'm not a marine biologist). Large oil spills in colder waters were followed by rapidly reducing impact and fairly quick recovery. In the Gulf the water is much warmer, which should mean more rapid dispersion of the oil, and conditions conducive to oil-gobbling bacterial growth. Sea conditions also favoured skimming and collection of the surface oil close to the US coast, and rougher weather further out dispersed the oil. Perhaps they'd been influenced by all the reports of an ecological disaster which hadn't yet occurred in the first few days and weeks of the spill? Perhaps they just had pre-conceived notions of the likely extent of the damage and slow recovery speed. If so, they go down a notch in my estimation.

A Cool Look at Glaciers

Glaciers are the poster child of those who would have us believe that unstoppable global warming is in progress. We've been told that melting is accelerating just about everywhere, and that hundreds of millions will be affected in the future if glaciers continue to melt and reduce the boost they give to river flow in the dry season in areas like south-east Asia.

Glaciers hit the headlines in a big way in December 2009, when reports of a flawed prediction about Himalayan glaciers began to circulate on the internet. They quoted a statement in the IPCC 2007 AR4 report:

Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 

IPCC AR4 WG2 Ch10, p. 493