(H/T – Allahpundit/Hot Air Headlines)
The New York Times has a breathless headline – “Arctic Melt Unnerves the Experts”. Let’s break out the chainsaw (gas-powered), shall we?
The Arctic ice cap shrank so much this summer that waves briefly lapped along two long-imagined Arctic shipping routes, the Northwest Passage over Canada and the Northern Sea Route over Russia.
I sure seem to recall the Soviets using the Northern Sea Route. They may have needed nuclear-powered icebreakers that were floating Chernobyls, but they used it.
Over all, the floating ice dwindled to an extent unparalleled in a century or more, by several estimates….
Astonished by the summer’s changes, scientists are studying the forces that exposed one million square miles of open water "” six Californias "” beyond the average since satellites started measurements in 1979.
Since when is 28 years of measurement evidence that it was a once-in-a-century retreat?
Scientists are also unnerved by the summer’s implications for the future, and their ability to predict it.
Any non-sports profession that accepts a 30% failure rate over 3 days is not something that I’d trust to predict 3 decades into the future.
Complicating the picture, the striking Arctic change was as much a result of ice moving as melting, many say. A new study, led by Son Nghiem at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and appearing this week in Geophysical Research Letters, used satellites and buoys to show that winds since 2000 had pushed huge amounts of thick old ice out of the Arctic basin past Greenland. The thin floes that formed on the resulting open water melted quicker or could be shuffled together by winds and similarly expelled, the authors said
OOPS! Guess it could have been something other than Gorebal “Warming”.
For one thing, experts are having trouble finding any records from Russia, Alaska or elsewhere pointing to such a widespread Arctic ice retreat in recent times, adding credence to the idea that humans may have tipped the balance.
Allow me to ReWrite™ that sentence to reflect a non-“religious” perspective – For one thing, experts are having trouble finding any records from Russia, Alaska or elsewhere pointing to either such a widespread Arctic ice retreat or lack of same in recent times, adding credence to the idea that humans may have tipped the balance nobody knows what is going on or why.
One more thing; sea ice is increasing in the Antarctic.
