Timothy BIrdnow

Dan, it was more than just a couple of good years in Antarctica. Everyone concentrates on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which floats in the water and has lost mass, but East Antarctica has been gaining mass for years.It has been ongoing since 1992.

https://www.antarcticajournal.com/antarctic-ice-sheet-mass-gains-greater-than-losses/

"According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic Ice Sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to present. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.'

end

Icesat showed East Antarctic ice growing all long.

As for losses in the WAIS, we now know there is considerable vulcanism under the ice sheet. Oh, and we know there are glacial quakes hitting the Antarctic Peninsula which also breaks off chunks of ice.

As for water vapor what goes up must come down. And more importantly what goes up generally forms clouds, yet the Earth's cloud cover has been dropping for decades now, which suggests that there is NOT more water vapor in the atmosphere. (In fact the drop in planetary albedo from the reduction in cloud cover explains much of the planetary warming we see). Thermal gradients and the like a grand sounding things but in the end there MUST be increased precipitation or more clouds.

It isn't increased precipitation; we've seen drowning deaths drop in the last twenty years, and we would see more of them if the weather was getting worse and we were having more flash floods.

https://www.who.int/news/item/13-12-2024-drowning-deaths-decline-globally-but-the-most-vulnerable-remain-at-risk

There has been a modest increase in drowning deaths in the U.S. but the rest of the world has seen a decline, and drowning deaths in the U.S. can be attributed to population increase and people swimming where they ought not.

Climate Alarmists love to postulate positive feedback mechanisms and you do so here with claims the warmer air from carbon dioxide means more water vapor in the atmosphere. But again I say to you that what goes up must come down and furthermore an increase in cloud cover would act to cool the planet back down - just as it does on Mars when there is a dust storm (Mars is a big embarrassment to the alarmists as it has an atmosphere that is 95% carbon dioxide but the planet is colder than we should expect, mostly because the atmosphere is thin, but the atmosphere is thin because it is cold enough for the carbon dioxide to freeze into dry ice.)

The missing water vapor, lie the missing heat, is a real problem for the models. I would add the warming from carbon dioxide would show up as diurnal; it doesn't get as cool at night as it had. This shoots your theory about warming driving the water vapor into the upper atmosphere down.

One more thing; we've been pumping fossil water out of deep aquifers for some time now and that is water that was out of the hydrological cycle, yet we STILL see no increase in clouds or precipitation. BTW this fossil water should have a strong impact on the greenhouse effect as water vapor is the Earth's primary greenhouse gas.

Occam's Razor suggests that the lack of more precipitation and fewer clouds has nothing to do with CO2-driven warming but rather that the water vapor just isn't there. The simplest explanation is always the best - except, apparently, in climate science.

(There are a number of reasons why the cloud cover has reduced, some of which stem from artificial fire-suppression that has ended the really big wildfires, plus the war on pollution that reduced the amount of particulates in the atmosphere to help form clouds, to probably the Earth's axial tilt and a host of other things. Warming certainly isn't one of those factors.) BTW the decline in cloud cover began in 1818. https://iowaclimate.org/2024/09/27/the-recent-decades-of-cloud-cover-decline-may-be-a-continuation-of-a-trend-that-began-in-1818/

At any rate we simply disagree. I appreciate your politeness in this discussion. Cheers!

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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