Albert Einstein once said, “If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research, would it?”
It’s easy to jump to conclusions when you have little information. Good science doesn’t. Bad science does. Will you help the Cornwall Alliance bring good science to debates over global warming by your generous donation today?
That’s what’s happened with news about Arctic sea ice lately. Record shrinkage of Arctic sea ice “proves” manmade global warming. Or does it?
It seems intuitive: temperature rises, ice melts.
But there’s a problem. Shouldn’t “global warming” be—you know—global?
Yet while Arctic sea ice shrinks, Antarctic sea ice expands.
Ooops. Not supposed to be that way!
Unless the cause of Arctic sea ice shrinkage isn’t global warming.
As it turns out, that’s the case. Arctic sea ice extent has little correlation with global average temperature. But it correlates just fine with ocean and wind cycles.
On the one hand, there’s wind.
NASA, whose reports of this summer’s “record” sea ice shrinkage spurred the alarm, now admits that it was mainly cyclonic winds(not global warming) that pushed ice south into warmer waters.
On the other hand, there are ocean currents.
The warming and cooling of both poles goes in cycles. Even NASA, which released a study on Antarctic temperature histories in June, says Antarctic temperatures were once much balmier, yet right now Antarctica is at its coldest.
During the Holocene climate optimum, around 6,000 years ago, temperatures in the Arctic were 4 C higher than today and the Arctic Ocean may have been totally ice free during the summer. That this has happened before makes the melting of the Arctic sea ice not a particularly bothersome thing.
Hoffman recommends the Thermal Bi-polar Seesaw Model of polar temperature, according to which the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation transfers heat from hemisphere to hemisphere, cooling one pole while warming the other.
Doing that is a challenge. It costs us a lot of time and effort. Will you help?
Image courtesy of CNaene / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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