Chukchi-Beaufort ice extent comparison – why feature only the last 7 years? Answer: ‘The ‘low ice’ years of 2007-2011 in the Chukchi/Beaufort were a minor blip in the record that probably means very little’
Chukchi-Beaufort ice extent comparison – why feature only the last 7 years?
The most recent issue of Arctic Sea Ice News provided by the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) – the official US keeper of sea ice data – (July 17, 2013) included an interesting graph of sea ice extent in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas at July 12.
They present the data for 2007 to 2013, compared to the new 30 year average1, and note that the Beaufort Sea had “the most extensive ice cover seen there in the last seven summers.” It is also clear from their graph that the 2013 extent was virtually identical to the average in both regions (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. Graph of sea ice extent at July 12 each year from 2007 to 2013 from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, NSIDC. “Climatology” (last set of bars) is the 30 year average (1981-2010) extent at this date.1 It is clear from the graph that the 2013 extent was virtually identical to the 30-year average. Map from Wikipedia.
What puzzled me was why they featured only the last 7 years when satellite data go back to at least 1979. Is there something in that data they don’t want us to see?
There is no similar data in graph form available that I could find but there is the wonderful comparative sea ice mapping tool provided by Cryosphere Today, operated by the University of Illinois.
So, in the absence of numerical data to compare to the Fig. 1 graph, I chose visual data to ask the question: what could there be about the long-term record of Chukchi/Beaufort sea ice data that the NSIDC might not want us to know?
The ice coverage at mid-summer (July 12) provides a snapshot of what sea ice conditions are like for polar bears before the summer melt season gets into full swing, so this historical perspective is quite revealing. [See previous posts here, here, and here for more on Chukchi/Beaufort polar bears.]
I used Cryosphere Today to compare the sea ice extent and concentration values for 2013 on July 12 (which NSIDC tells us was virtually identical to the 30 year average) to selected years from 1981 (the earliest available) to 2012 (Fig. 2, click to enlarge, necessary to see the details).
Viewed together, it is apparent that compared to recent historical levels, only 2007, …
Federal Study: Fracking Process To Drill For Oil and Gas Does NOT Pollute
Federal Study: Fracking Process To Drill For Oil and Gas Does NOT Pollute
Fracking (or hydrologic fracturing)can be the key to Americas energy independence for the next century or more. Fracking involves injecting water, with sand and other additives, into shale rock to push oil and/or gas into accessible pockets. Improvements in technology allow drilling horizontally from a single, above-ground well,
reducing the above-ground hit on the environment. But environmentalist are trying to outlaw fracking because (they claim) it pollutes water, causes earthquakes, male pattern baldness, and wrote all the lousy scripts for all the disappointing movies so far this summer (OK I will admit it–I made up the last two).
CBS is reporting that a landmark federal study on fracking conducted by the Department of Energy, shows no evidence that chemicals from the natural gas drilling process, seeped its way up to contaminate drinking water aquifers at a western Pennsylvania drilling site.
After a year of monitoring, the researchers found that the chemical-laced fluids used to free gas trapped deep below the surface stayed thousands of feet below the shallower areas that supply drinking water, geologist Richard Hammack said.
Although the results are preliminary — the study is still ongoing — they are a boost to a natural gas industry that has fought complaints from environmental groups and property owners who call fracking dangerous.
Drilling fluids tagged with unique markers were injected more than 8,000 feet below the surface, but were not detected in a monitoring zone
3,000 feet higher. That means the potentially dangerous substances stayed about a mile away from drinking water supplies.
Recent shale oil and gas discoveries can substantially increase onshore oil production. The Bakken oil field located in western North Dakota, northeast Montana/Canada’s Saskatchewan Province is pumping 225,000 barrels of oil a day (it started at just 3,000 barrels per day in 2005) with estimates of a million barrels of oil production per day by 2020. A newer shale oil field, Eagle Ford
in Texas, is one of about 20 new fields so far that combined could increase the oil output of the United States by 25 percent within 10 years.
The Green River Formation located within Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah contains the equivalent of 6 trillion barrels of oil. The Department of Energy estimates that, of this 6 trillion, approximately 1.38 trillion barrels are potentially recoverable with today’s technology That’s equivalent to …
Warmists attack Reuters editor as skeptic
Warmists attack Reuters editor as skeptic
http://junkscience.com/2013/07/19/warmists-attack-reuters-editor-as-skeptic
David Fogarty writes at The Baron: In April last year, Paul Ingrassia (then deputy editor-in-chief) and I met and had a chat at a company function. He told me he was a climate change sceptic. Not a rabid sceptic, just someone who wanted to see more evidence mankind was changing the global climate. Progressively, getting […]…
In the New York Times, warmist Gary Paul Nabhan tries to sell CO2-induced food scarcity amid an “obesity epidemic” with a predicted record corn crop growing in the fields
In the New York Times, warmist Gary Paul Nabhan tries to sell CO2-induced food scarcity amid an “obesity epidemic” with a predicted record corn crop growing in the fields
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2013/07/in-new-york-times-warmist-gary-paul.html
Our Coming Food Crisis – NYTimes.com[Gary Paul Nabhan] The problem isn’t spiking temperatures, but a new reality in which long stretches of triple-digit days are common — threatening not only the lives of the millions of people who live there, but also a cornerstone of the American food supply….It’s now up to our political and business leaders to get their heads out of the hot sand and do something tangible to implement climate change policy and practices before farmers, ranchers and consumers are further affected.July 10, 2013: Exercise Up in U.S., But So Is Obesity: Report – WebMDWEDNESDAY, July 10 (HealthDay News) — Although Americans are exercising more, the obesity epidemic continues to expand, University of Washington researchers report….According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one-third of U.S. adults are obese, and obesity contributes to serious chronic illnesses, high medical costs and premature death.July 19, 2013: Corn Traders Most Bearish Since 2009 as Weather Aids U.S. Crop – BloombergCorn traders are the most bearish since 2009 as warm, wet weather in the U.S. boosts expectations that the world’s top grower will harvest a record crop.…
Charles Adler: The Global Warming Scare Is Dying — ‘Billions of dollars swindled out of ordinary people all over the world, in the interests of saving the world’
Charles Adler: The Global Warming Scare Is Dying
http://www.thegwpf.org/charles-adler-global-warming-scare-dying/
When historians look back at this era, they will write about the billions of dollars swindled out of ordinary people all over the world, in the interests of saving the world.
It’s been a tough week for the global warming purists.
They are getting blowback in Germany, where people are not only getting sick and tired of paying more for electricity — the same strategy that has been destroying the morale of Ontarians paying higher bills — but because people in rural parts of the country are getting increasingly restless as the government insists on building more of those wind energy monstrosities.
Let me begin with a quote from the German publication Der Spiegel:
“The goal is to get away from the turbulence found near the ground and to climb up into the Ekman layer, above 100 metres high, where the wind blows continuously. Up there, the forces of nature rage freely, creating enough terawatts to meet the energy needs of the global population hundreds of times over. Or at least that’s the theory.”
Yes, that’s the theory.
The big picture is this: All the theories about wind and solar energy have not been working out very well for the Germans. They’re paying through the nose for alternatives.
While it appeases green activists and pays handsome annual rents to farmers who agree to have turbines and solar panels on their land, those who are not directly involved in green subsidies are growing weary of all the theorizing.
Spain, as you know, is a country that hit the economic skids in the global crash five years ago and it still isn’t even close to recovery.
Debts are enormous and jobs are enormously scarce. Unemployment among youth is 50%.
And in recent days, the government has decided to massively reform its alternative energy program, meaning dramatic cuts in subsidies.
The green movement is complaining, as are, of course, the companies that have benefited from the subsidies.
But the government and taxpayers can’t take the balderdash any more.
Spain’s industry minister, Jose Manuel Soria, is telling them the government has no choice but to cut those subsidies.
He said, “If we did nothing, the only two alternatives would either be bankruptcy of the system or an increase of the price to consumers of more than 40%.”
You may remember Spain was seen as a …