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.

Permafrost - the bottom line

In a recent post UNEP Report - Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost I identified a major contradiction therein, and debunked claimed "increases" in CO2 and methane over permafrost areas. I've been digesting parts of the leaked IPCC AR5 draft report, and found this in WG1 chapter 6:

6.3.3.2 Emissions 

.................. 

Over the past decades, however, there is no evidence for significant emission of CH4 from permafrost and hydrates (Dlugokencky et al., 2009). 

.... from the horse's mouth.

And a little further on this section:

6.4.3.4 Permafrost Carbon

Current estimates of permafrost soil carbon stocks are 1670 PgC (Tarnocai et al., 2009), the single largest component of the terrestrial carbon pool and higher than previously thought. Terrestrial carbon models show a land CO2 sink with warming at high northern latitudes, however none of the models participating in C4MIP or CMIP5 included explicit representation of permafrost soil carbon decomposition, which at a minimum requires sufficient vertical resolution in modelled soil carbon distribution and processes to separate surface pools from very old (Pleistocene) permafrost carbon pools. Including permafrost carbon processes into an ESM can change the sign of this C response to warming from a sink to a source in northern high latitudes (Koven et al., 2011). The magnitude of this source of CO2 to the atmosphere from decomposition of permafrost carbon varies widely by 2100 according to different model estimates: process-model estimates include 7–17 Pg (Zhuang et al., 2006), 55–69 Pg (Koven et al., 2011), and 126–254 Pg (Schaefer et al., 2011); estimates of uncertainty ranges suggest the source could range from 33 to 114 Pg C (68% range) under RCP8.5 warming (von Deimling et al., 2012), or 50–270 PgC (5th–95th percentile range; Burke et al., subm.). Combining observed vertical soil C profiles with modelled thaw rates estimate that the total quantity of newly-thawed soil C by 2100 will be 246 Pg for RCP4.5 and 436 Pg for RCP8.5 (Harden et al., 2012 in press). Sources of uncertainty for the permafrost C feedback include the physical thawing rates, the fraction of C that is release after being thawed and the timescales of release, possible mitigating nutrient feedbacks, and the role of fine-scale processes in determining the terrestrial response. 

Note the model results for emissions from permafrost to 2100: 7–17 Pg (petagrams), 55–69 Pg, 126–254 Pg, and the consequent estimated uncertainty range of 33 to 114 Pg C or 50–270 Pg C at the 5th–95th percentile range. What does this all mean?

They don't know.

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?".

UNEP Report - Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost

Before I get down to the nitty-gritty of the contents of the UNEP report I thought I'd share with you (I hate that expression btw) a little gem from "Beyond Zero Emissions", whose website proclaims

In partnership with the University of Melbourne Energy Research Institute we are undertaking the award-winning Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Project, which is putting together fully costed transition plans for getting Australia to zero emissions in ten years using commercially available technology.

In ten years - yeah right.

Prof Ian Simmonds on melting permafrost and the latest climate science.

Professor Ian Simmonds of the School of Earth Sciences at The University of Melbourne is an expert in climate science and atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane budgets. His recent research has focused on the dramatic record melting permafrost in the Arctic and extreme weather events relating to climate change. 

I'd say we've got the measure of the prof. right away, wouldn't you? What "dramatic record melting permafrost in the Arctic" exactly?

The permafrost has started warming at 50m depth by about 2 degrees. This is significant because the permafrost is very close to freezing and 2 degrees will start to thaw it and this increases the potential for chemical reactions and leakage of methane and carbon emissions from the frozen organic matter inside the permafrost. 

"Very close to freezing"? Very close to thawing, surely? If "2 degrees will start to thaw it" and it's already warmed by 2 degrees then it's at thawing point already innit? Except that at 50m depth it's not at -2 degrees and not close to thawing. If there's only "potential for chemical reactions and leakage of methane and carbon emissions" where's the "dramatic record melting permafrost" then?

Par for the course for this sort of article - the writer can't even see the built-in contradictions in what they write. Which brings me directly to a rather glaring contradiction in "Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost", in the executive summary right at the start.

Two global networks monitor permafrost status: the Thermal State of Permafrost (TSP) network measures permafrost temperature at various depths in 860 boreholes, and the Circumpolar Active Layer Monitoring (CALM) network measures the thickness of the active layer at 260 sites. The active layer thickness is the maximum surface thaw depth in summer . The TSP and CALM networks are the two components of the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P), under the auspices of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). The International Permafrost Association (IPA) currently coordinates international development and operation of the TSP and CALM networks for the GTN-P . TSP observations indicate that permafrost temperatures have risen over the past few decades. CALM observations are less conclusive due to the melting of ice layers and lenses in near surface permafrost, but show increases in active layer thickness at many sites. Overall, these observations indicate that large-scale thawing of permafrost may have already started.  

The "active layer" is the unfrozen (in summer) layer above the permafrost layer. Microbial decay of plant matter can only take place in that active layer when it's unfrozen. Temperature monitoring at depths well below the active layer says nothing about any actual increase in the depth of that layer, which is what indicates additional thawing and subsequent decay and release of (mostly) CO2. Yet the summary implies that warming at depth is a more conclusive indicator than CALM (active layer) observations which are "less conclusive"? This is clutching at straws big time. I hope those straws don't decay and release an element of objectivity and truth.

So "large-scale thawing of permafrost may have already started"? Here's the contradiction in the next-but-one paragraph (my bold);

Carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane emissions from thawing permafrost could amplify warming due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This amplification is called the permafrost carbon feedback. Permafrost contains ~1700 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon in the form of frozen organic matter, almost twice as much carbon as currently in the atmosphere. If the permafrost thaws, the organic matter will thaw and decay, potentially releasing large amounts of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. This organic material was buried and frozen thousands of years ago and its release into the atmosphere is irreversible on human time scales. Thawing permafrost could emit 43 to 135 Gt of CO2 equivalent by 2100 and 246 to 415 Gt of CO2 equivalent by 2200. Uncertainties are large, but emissions from thawing permafrost could start within the next few decades and continue for several centuries, influencing both short-term climate (before 2100) and long-term climate (after 2100).

However that's the dumbed-down version in the Executive Summary. The main report section 2.4 "Current State of Permafrost", after discussing changes and trends in atmospheric and permafrost temperatures states

Trends in active layer thickness are less conclusive, with some sites showing increases, but others showing no trend at all. Active layer thickness has increased in the Russian European North, but not in West Siberia (Mazhitova 2008; Vasiliev et al. 2008). Increases in summer air temperature have increased the active layer thickness on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (Wu andZhang 2010; Zhao et al. 2010). Although active layer thickness has increased in the Alaskan and Canadian interior, there is no obvious trend near the Arctic coastline (Streletskiy et al. 2008; Shiklomanov et al. 2010; Smith et al. 2009; Burn and Kokelj, 2009; Smith et al. 2010). Melting of excess ground ice might explain the lack of consistent trends in active layer thickness even though permafrost temperatures show clear signs of warming. Year-to-year variability in active layer thickness due to variations in summer air temperature also makes it difficult to detect long-term trends (Smith et al. 2009; Popova and Shmakin 2009). However, radar measurements near Prudhoe Bay indicate the surface has subsided by several centimeters since 1992, even though nearby CALM sites showed no obvious increases in active layer thickness (Liu et al. 2010, 2012). The excess ground ice in near-surface permafrost, if present, melts slowly over several years, the water drains away and the ground surface settles, a process that is difficult to detect using mechanical probing at CALM sites.

So there's a "lack of consistent trends in active layer thickness", which is the only sign that permafrost is melting on a large scale. Note that "Although active layer thickness has increased in the Alaskan and Canadian interior, there is no obvious trend near the Arctic coastline". That's it then? There's no mention of monitoring CO2 and methane emissions on the ground, in the air, or by satellite. If emissions are the bottom line then it's emissions which should be monitored above all else, something that would appear to be essential to my mind. Wait - aren't CO2 and methane already monitored by satellite? Wouldn't increasing emissions over permafrost areas show up, and wouldn't this report show them? Yes, yes, and yes to those questions.

Something occurred to me while I was writing my previous post. Surely microbial digestion of plant matter would produce heat, and act as a feedback, accelerating the melt? No mention of it in the report, but I did manage to find a reference in Amount and timing of permafrost carbon release in response to climate warming (2011), lead author one Kevin Schaefer, who also happens to be the lead author of the UNEP report:

A regional model projection with permafrost carbon predicts a complete thaw of permafrost in eastern Siberia by 2300, fuelled by the heat of microbial decay (Khvorostyanov et al., 2008).

I'm not just a pretty face then, I have some insight.

There's a distinct lack of data in these 30 report pages, and the maps are dreadful - here's the first intended to show the various areas of permafrost types (actual size, extracted from the pdf)

... and here's how it appears in the pdf - a scientific report intended for international consumption.

Here's one i found from the same original source, the International Permafrost Association.

Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)

Not difficult, is it?

So there we have it - an inconclusive report, despite what's being "spun" about it in the media and on the 'net. A big nothing.

How objective is the report's lead author, Kevin Schaefer? NBC News quotes him in "Melting permafrost being ignored at climate talks, experts warn"

"Permafrost has begun to thaw," lead author Kevin Schaefer, a researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado-Boulder, told a news conference in Doha.

You don't even deserve my bullshit button, Kev, you're putting politics above science. Your report doesn't say that - at best it's a gross over-simplification, at worst a lie, and you know it.

Permafrost - when does bullshit become lies?

It's easy to answer that question - when it's published by the Los Angeles Times, as in "Thawing permafrost may amplify global warming, U.N. reports". At least the title of the article is entirely truthful, but crap soon emerges from the frozen wastes of the author's mind. That mind is engaging itself with the just-released UNEP report Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost. The journalist Kenneth R. Weiss doesn't mess about - he's straight on the bullshit bandwagon with his first paragraph.

Think of broccoli that you’ve got in the freezer. As long as it’s frozen, it will remain stable for years. As soon as you pull it out, it’ll go mushy and soon begin to unleash the stench of decay.

That’s one way Kevin Schaefer likes to describe what’s happening to all the leaves and roots and other plant material locked in the frozen soils of the arctic tundra and forests since the last Ice Age.

"All the leaves and roots and other plant material"? No, just some of it, possibly - even probably.

As the planet warms, this permafrost is thawing, releasing huge amounts of carbon and methane, Schaefer explains in a new report. The United Nations Environment Program released the report Thursday to prod negotiators gathered in Doha, Qatar, to come up with a new international treaty to rein in rising greenhouse gases warming the planet.

"This permafrost is thawing, releasing huge amounts of carbon and methane"? No it isn't, as the report details and concludes. As "Schaefer explains in a new report"? No, he doesn't - the report's first conclusion states:

Permafrost around the world has begun to change, with TSP network observations indicating that permafrost temperatures have risen over the past few decades. CALM network observations are less conclusive, but show increases in active layer thickness at many sites. Overall, these observations indicate that large-scale thawing of permafrost may already have started.

"May already have started", and the report says nothing about the relatively small amount of existing thaw "releasing huge amounts of carbon and methane". Mr. Weiss is just making it up as he goes along. I'm not even going to display my bullshit button - this is waay beyond bullshit.

All this fuss is of course due to the assumption (which has merit, don't get me wrong) that the greenhouse gases released by decomposing organic matter in thawed permafrost would accelerate global warming, or whatever the fashionable term is nowadays.

I'm currently microbially digesting the organic matter of the UNEP report and will post on it ASAP, sans bullshit and lies of course. I'll end on a lighter note with a priceless quote from the report's lead author Kevin Schaefer.

“Once the organic matter thaws and decays away, there is no way to put it back into the permafrost,” said Schaefer, a scientist at the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center.

That's like saying that once you've spent your money there's no way to get it back. D'you mean the permafrost that's melted Kev? Gerraway.

"Thawing Permafrost" - more bullshit than I've ever seen in one article

The Sydney Morning Herald has broken new ground with more bullshit in one article than I've ever seen on one news webpage before. "Where even the earth is melting" wails Environment Editor Ben Cubby who's exercised his brain with the threat to mankind from thawing permafrost.

THE world is on the cusp of a "tipping point" into dangerous climate change, according to new data gathered by scientists measuring methane leaking from the Arctic permafrost and a report presented to the United Nations on Tuesday.

The garbage count begins to rise even before the text begins. There's an interactive graphic at the top "The permafrost carbon feedback loop", the first caption reading "More of the sun's heat reaches the earth because of human contributions to global warming". Really? How does that work, Ben? Do those "contributions" make the days longer and the nights shorter?

Source: SMH

"Permafrost thaws and is consumed by micro-organisms more quickly than soil closer to the surface". Really? Where did you get that from Ben? Just how is soil "consumed" by micro-organisms? Then a couple of actual facts "If oxygen is present, micro-organisms produce carbon dioxide. If not, they produce methane. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide". And finally "The released gases rise into the atmosphere where they amplify the effects, causing more permafrost to thaw" - you mean by allowing more of the Sun's heat to reach the surface, Ben? There's enough bovine excrement already to earn Ben and his article the button:

That's just for the graphic - much more textual bullshit emerges from the frozen layers of Ben's brain, seemingly in a feedback loop driven by alarmist drivel from a few who call themselves "scientists".

Human-induced emissions now appear to have warmed the Arctic enough to unlock this vast carbon bank, with stark implications for international efforts to hold global warming to a safe level. Ancient forests locked under ice tens of thousands of years ago are beginning to melt and rot, releasing vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the air.

"Appear to have" - have they or haven't they?

Until very recently permafrost was thought to have been melting too slowly to make a meaningful difference to temperatures this century, so it was left out of the Kyoto Protocol, and ignored by many climate change models.

"Permafrost emissions could ultimately account for up to 39 per cent of total emissions," said the report's lead author, Kevin Schaefer, of the University of Colorado, who presented it at climate negotiations in Doha, Qatar. "This must be factored in to treaty negotiations expected to replace the Kyoto Protocol."

What isn't known is the precise rate and scale of the melt, and that is being tackled in a remarkable NASA experiment that hardly anyone has heard of, but which could prove to be one of the most crucial pieces of scientific field work undertaken this century.

You mean no-one knows, Ben?

The findings, for now, are still under wraps. "But I think 'tantalising' is probably the right word," said Charles Miller, the principal investigator in NASA's Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment, or CARVE.

Not conclusive or even indicative then, but just "tantalising"? Charles means that he doesn't precisely know what the results mean. After a touching little anecdote concerning caribou and grizzly bears (scientists have feelings too, dontcha know?) Charles finally gets down to the nitty-gritty (or is it the nitty-slushy?).

"We're finding very, very interesting changes, particularly in terms of methane concentrations," he said. "When scientists say 'interesting', it usually means 'not what we expected'. We're seeing biological activity in various places in Alaska that's much more active than I would have expected, and also much more variable from place to place ... There are changes as much as 10 to 12 parts per million for CO2 – so that's telling us that the local biology is doing something like five or six years worth of change in the space of a few hundred metres."

You've just earned your self a button Charlie boy!

Is Charlie telling us that CO2 doesn't vary much from place to place? I have news for him which might be "interesting" in that it might not be what he expected - CO2 varies all over the globe. Locally it'll vary a lot more. "...that's telling us that the local biology is doing something like five or six years worth of change in the space of a few hundred metres. That's pure and unadulterated bullshit Charlie. Highly localised sources and sinks exist just about everywhere. That 10 or 12 ppm is, when compared with the global average of 395 ppm just a 3% variation.

The findings of the first year of the experiment are so complex that Professor Miller and his team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are still trying to work out exactly what they have found. The results are being kept secret, which is standard practice while the numbers are crunched and the work is submitted to a peer-review process.

They're still trying to work out what they've found - that means they don't know.

"What we can say is that methane is significantly elevated in places – about 2000 parts per billion, against a normal background of about 1850 parts per billion," he said. "It's interesting because the models are predicting one thing and what we are observing is something fairly different."

Is that it? A 6% increase over the global average? There's no such thing as a "normal background" - methane, like CO2, varies across the globe, so it's hardly surprising to find a slight elevation "in places", and not all places then? So there we have it - they went looking for additional methane and CO2 in places where they expected to find higher levels, and where higher levels must be found even if permafrost isn't melting much at all, and found a little more "in places". Earth shattering.