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?
One reason our work is so needed is that bad science proliferates about environmental issues— particularly global warming.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.
Blaming global warming for melting Arctic sea ice is about as logical as blaming a malfunctioning freezer for melting ice cubes—when the cubes were taken out and put in the sun!A curious fact about this year’s Arctic sea ice shrinkage is how late it came—mid-September—which is usually when ice starts to reform. This suggests that the ice present in July and August was very thin, not requiring much sun to melt. But ice doesn’t thin from the top, generally speaking, so ocean currents, not warm air, are the more likely cause of the thinning—and hence of the shrinkage.In an article for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, Doug Hoffman explained,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.
In addition, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a 30-year ocean current cycle, warms and cools the oceans. Cornwall Alliance Senior Fellow Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama/Huntsville and lead scientist on NASA’s Aqua satellite remote sensing program, believes the Pacific Decadal Oscillation can account for most of the twentieth century’s observed global warming.Finally, we have only had satellite measurements of Arctic sea ice in recent decades. “Record” thinning in that short record doesn’t mean much. In reality, this isn’t the first time the ice has shrunk this far. Numerous reports from the 1920s through 1950s tell of low Arctic sea ice, or even ice-free Arctic conditions.The Cornwall Alliance looks at the debate over global warming and its connection with environmentalism with a truly scientific view. We look not only to the raw climatology data, but also the economics, ethics, and politics of such things.Doing that is a challenge. It costs us a lot of time and effort. Will you help?
Image courtesy of CNaene / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
