Timothy Birdnow

Greenland isn't getting any greener. In fact, [link]ice growth is hitting a record pace this year as the supposed "melting ice sheet" keeps getting bigger.

So naturally the Gang Green and their media cohorts are saying Greenland is melting faster than Hillary Clinton's election prospects.

And even NASA has to admit the Antarctic ice sheet has grown. So to does Harvard University which does it's level best to spin this. Here is what they claim:

"The warmer, thus wetter, air provided the Antarctic with additional snowfall. This snowpack has been accumulating and compacting for thousands of years on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, causing a build up of ice [1]. The West Antarctic ice loss trend is new, abrupt, and began after the Industrial Revolution. Its tie to human activity has been demonstrated through a large number of both observations and theoretical models [11]."

End excerpt.

East Antarctic ice is primarily over land while the West Antarctic Ice Sheet floats on top of the ocean. There are numerous reasons why there would be ice loss in the west, among them undersea volcanism and pressure from the East ice shelf (which peaks at the center of the continent) forcing this floating ice to break off, much like a lady loses a fingernail when it becomes too long.

One must ask why WAIS is losing ice when the sea ice extent has grown to record levels in Antarctica. It certainly isn't greenhouse gas effects, which would display as warmer air temperatures. The average air temperature in West Antarctica is -26*, hardly balmy enough to melt the UNDERSIDE of the WAIS.

Realclimate, arguing that there has been warming in West Antarctica (perhaps one degree) defeats their ultimate point. Here is a graph they supplied:


















Common sense would tell us that a place that averages twenty five below zero cannot have ice melting from warm air. Ain't gonna happen, chum! The highest daily mean temperature is in December at a blistering +4.3*! Ice just doesn't melt under these conditions, at least not from warm air.

Ice CAN melt from high insolation aka warming from direct sunlight. Mars is a classic example of that, where the ice caps melt away in summer not so much because the temperature is high but because they are sucking up radiant energy through the lilliputian atmosphere. It helps that the polar ice is in large part frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice) which sublimates at a much lower temperature than water ice, but a good deal of water ice sublimates too. That may be what is happening to Antarctica, as decades of effort has been put into cleaning the atmosphere, thus reducing particulate matter that acts to reflect sunlight. But the question remains; why is sea ice growing so much when West Antarctica is losing ice?

Clearly this is a result of ice loss from the bottom up. That makes perfect sense if one thinks it is caused by undersea volcanism.

But maybe not. Perhaps the ocean water is getting warmer below the surface, and thus warming the floating ice of WAIS?

If that were the case then the sea ice should be struggling, but it isn't. Maybe the surface is cooling but the underside warming? Perhaps, but this warm water has to make it past the Circumpolar Current, which encircles Antarctica and helps to keep the continent at the bottom of the world so cold. That current goes almost 1000 feet deep and stretches over almost a thousand miles in width. It is sometimes refered to as the mightiest ocean current in the world. The idea that warming water below the surface is making it to Antarctica past this formidable barrier is hard to swallow, and it sure isn't skipping over the top.

So what does that leave us with? Something is warming the ice sheet from below, and yet we have no evidence of a warm current sneaking in under the ice pack. That means most likely volcanism is driving the ice sheet collapse, coupled with increased pressure from growing ice from the interior of the continent.

Interestingly enough, Greenland also is heated by under ice volcanism. Do you see a pattern emerging?

The Global Warming crowd is skating on thin ice with these. I almost feel sorry for them, because they are at a point where they just sound silly making unsupportable assertions. But then, they are dishonest, so I don't feel all that sorry for them.

Any honest assessment of Climate Change theory will lead a thoughtful person to realize what a farce this whole thing is. Sadly, too many young people accept it uncritically because they have been taught this all their lives and aren't exposed to the truth.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:54 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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