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Newly Discovered Meltwater Streams Flow Beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet
The Telegraph reports that previously undetected streams of meltwater have been observed beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. "The streams of water, some of which are 250m in height and stretch for hundreds of kilometres, could be destabilising parts of the Antarctic ice shelf immediately around them and speeding up melting, researchers said.
However, they added that it remains unclear how the localised effects of the channels will impact on the future of the floating ice sheet as a whole. The British researchers used satellite images and radar data to measure variations in the height of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in West Antarctica, which reveal how thick the ice is." The paper itself is paywalled, but the abstract is available online.
It is when it is visible because of the lack of ice that some of the global warming deniers will wake up. Maybe.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
"newly discovered" != "new". Those streams may have been there for millions of years. They certainly were there when the continent was free of ice.
Jeepers. If this is how the correct side presents a counter argument, it's no wonder the retards are taking over our great country.
I know, the correlation/causation comment will come up, but you would never know the water temperature unless you got in the water and feel it for yourself over 2-3 decades of actually being in the water and knowing when to get in. I wouldn't call 250metres a stream, but other noticable thing is the way the weather has changed from a smooth transition to summer where it gradually got hotter to bursts of weather change where you will suddenly get days of really warm weather in winter and then back to cold and visa versa in summer.
I regularly goes for a swim or a surf on the east coast of Australia and for the last decade years the water has been really cold during seasons where I used to notice it was pretty warm. It has altered my whole habit of surfing. I used to go into the water around September and now it's late October. I love the waves but the goolie shock is just to severe. My mates would say the same thing and often the comment 'at least we know where the ice caps are melting to' would come up.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Well, if it's increasing in surface area, but decreasing in mass, that would be a problem.
I think the concern they're trying to address is the same as one of the arctic ice concerns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outburst_flood
I'm not saying that it's possible, or even probable. It's just an example of what destabilized polar ice can do. There's a whole lot of mass there.
Remember, the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami was caused by a 1,000 mile long rift shifting by 50 feet over a few minutes. If a sufficiently sized chunk (or chunks) of ice moved enough, there could be catastrophic effects for boating and coastal areas.
The long-term sea-level rise will be slow, and civilization will change around it. The short term effects of such events can be fast and catastrophic.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Altmetrics is a new-ish bibliometic service for scholarly journal articles, including Nature, which is where this was published. Altmetrics includes mainstream media coverage as as well as social media appearance counts e.g. SciBlogs, Twitter as valid data. Physorg is mentioned but I do not see Slashdot. We, the Slashdot collective, demand recognition!
* Unless we are deemed insufficiently social? Anti-social? Of course not.
** Altmetrics is beta-ish, possibly open source, so my indignation is mostly insincere.
tempus fugit
It's common knowledge that, unlike the arctic, Antarctic ice has been increasing.
As is often the case this common knowledge is actually a common misconception. While the sea ice is increasing, the land ice is shedding mass at an accelerating rate. Since the sea ice is already in the sea, it does not affect sea levels at all. Thawing land ice does increase sea levels, since it introduces water to the sea that used to sit on land.
and doubtless this Blogster has published his incredible finds that unseat what almost every climatologist in the fucking world says, right? I mean, you woujldnt just be buying into something that confirms your preexisting prejudices
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I understand your point of view. Do you have any observational data to counter those that I posted in links? The Scientific Method requires me to look at any counter-facts you can produce. So I'd be grateful if you have any additional data - especially data that could invalidate my current point-of-view.
that unseat what almost every climatologist in the fucking world says
Science is not performed by "consensus". There was a consensus against Galileo, but guess who was right? What matters are observations and explanations of the observations that account for all the known facts. "Almost every climatologist" simply believes the data they are given by people like James Hansen and Michael Mann - both of which have been tampering with the data (they remove "outliers" that don't fit their preconceived hypothesis - which is hideously anti-scientific). Fortunately the satellite data is harder to tamper with, and agrees with the raw terrestrial data that has not been tampered with. The site I linked to explains what it going on and demonstrates with the data. You can evaluate the validity for yourself. I'm not asking that you believe me. I'm asking you evaluate unbiased data from multiple sources for yourself.
I mean, you woujldnt just be buying into something that confirms your preexisting prejudices
If the observations are proof of Global Warming then I'm cool with that. However, the data I see (eg. that magnificent sinusoidal graph, or the satellite visual imagery of the massive Arctic ice cover) does not support this hypothesis. I would hope that you also take an objective look at the data I have linked to. If I'm wrong then I'm wrong - but I have not seen any recent data that supports the computer models of the 1990s. Hence, I *must* conclude what the observations are saying. After the mid-1990s there has been no substantial global warming. In fact, it looks like a slight cooling if the Southern Hemisphere data is combined with Northern data.
Sorry if that bursts your bubble. All I ask is that you look with fresh eyes and an open mind at the data I have presented. Or present counter-data if you have it. I simply hope to share with Slashdotters my discovering of *recent* observations and the impact this has on the older and possibly out-of-date Global Warming meme. I hope you check out the links I posted so you can make your own mind up. Thanks.
Slashdotters are smart people. All I'm doing is pointing them at some data they may not have seen before. They can make up their own minds as to whether that data is good or not - and whether the null hypothesis should be chosen over the Global Warming theory.
(although, apart from pollution, human emissions are fairly negligible compared to the other effects going on - such as the emissions from volcanic sea vents etc).
Interesting, how about this? Apart from claws and teeth, tiger related injuries are fairly negligible compared with other effects going on.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm
Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans?
What the science says...
Humans emit 100 times more CO2 than volcanoes.
Volcanoes emit around 0.3 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. This is about 1% of human CO2 emissions which is around 29 billion tonnes per year.
SplashMyBandit is obviously an AGW troll, even if he does recycle those old gems.
Fat cat scientists? Are you a fucking idiot? Check out the fat cats around the world - multilmillionaires, billionaires.
Bill Gates - computer scientist or businessman?
Businessman.
John Key, prime minister of New Zealand - scientist, or businessman?
Businessman.
Obama - scientist?
In fact, if you could list the scientists who are "fat cat" millioniares, I'd quite appreciate it. I'm waiting....
Antarctica is one of the major feedbacks:
[...]
Considering we're already experiencing major extinctions I'm not sure I want to stack ecological disasters.
I stole this Sig
And the area of the ice shelf at the Arctis is indeed larger (my numbers say 50%, 5.1 million square kilometers in 2013 instead of 3.4 square kilometers in 2012) than the year before, but it's still less than the long term average. This is at 13.9 million square kilometers for the years 1979-2000. So while 2012 might have been an extreme minimum, we are in 2013 still far away of any normalization.
Since the sea ice is already in the sea, it does not affect sea levels at all.
How does that follow?
I for one would like to live in a time where the antarctic is ice free.
Just imagine all the things we could find under there.
Animals, trees and all kinds of stuff just sitting there frozen.
Total mass of ice in the Antarctic continues to decline: http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm Temperature trends since the 90s indicate more gradual warming, not cooling. http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20121705-23396.html In the past, ice at the poles has never coexisted with atmospheric CO2 above 400ppm, a threshold that we just crossed. Time will prove you drastically wrong, but some of us are running low on patience for the trolling.
How doesn't it?
How do you propose sea ice would influence sea levels?
What Steve Goddard "forgets" to mention is that it's actually only the Antarctic sea ice that is growing, while the land-ice there is melting away ever faster...
And the 67% more ice in 2013 compared to 2012 still puts 2013 in 6th lowest position for arctic ice-extent in the observational record, curiously together with 2007-2008-2009-2010-2011-2012) - so it is lower than *any* observed ice-extent prior to 2007... Doing better than the single worst year on record is not proof that nothing's wrong, it's just proof of the fact that there are significant annual fluctuations in ice-extent, primarily due to short-term weather.
Average thickness and ice-volume in the Arctic are actually far more relevant measurements (as unlike "extent", they measure the *amount* of ice, not how thinly it's spread out) and those have been dropping almost without fail year after year after year...
Just 12,000 years ago the Earth was in an ice age, and it has been emerging from it since, without the help of humans. It will continue to emerge from the ice age despite humanity's insane and obsessive desire to stop it.
Did you really just compare arctic ice falling into the ocean with 1000 miles of the ocean floor permanently shifting?
Only two people in this entire comment section have successfully dodged the global warming spin hucksters to note the following:
The mean annual surface air temperature of the Antarctic interior is -57C. Surface melt refreezes rather promptly. But ice is great insulation, and geothermal energy comes up from the Earth to melt the bottom of the ice sheet. This meltwater flows in streams and rivers across the world's largest continent until it becomes the world's largest rivers, inevitably finding the sea. This should be obvious.
This has nothing to do with industrial exhaust.
So chill out. (In fact, you don't have any other choice. We're entering another ice age. Wise up. Be prepared for a really shitty snow-heavy winter.)
Where did you get that information from, remember the earth is not the same as a year ago, things shift around a bit. What was happening a thousand years ago, why was it warm then? What was happening before that? Remember yours is the first generation to extrapolate what was going on, we have direct records. We have no direct records of what was really going on before then, and what if your wrong? Have you just made someone else poorer, or let them die? Just on a science jag.
I agree with education, from there we can alter paths from the brutish leading the world to enlightenment of all. I don't see that from warmists, and I don't see that from the Koch's or Adelmans. They all seem brutish.
The distinction is between ice caps on land vs. on the ocean. The arctic ice is already in the ocean, so melting it won't raise sea levels. But the majority of antarctic is is on land (same as Greenland), so melting that ice would raise global sea levels.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Once again, a denialist conflates seasonal *sea* ice with permanent *land* ice.
Be free people.
Freedom of conscience doesn't mean freedom from consequences, as much as we'd wish it so.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Ice shelves don't abruptly move that rapidly except in relatively small pieces (say, hundreds of metres long). Other than waves that might be hazards to ships in the immediate vicinity (within km), glaciers do not produce significant tsunami. Certainly not ocean-crossing ones. None have ever been recorded, as far as I know. The effects of increased melting in Antarctica will not be "catastrophic" on the same sort of timescale and abruptness as a major tsunami like the 2004 Indian Ocean one. They will be steady and long-term sea level rise over the next few centuries. That's catastrophic enough for coastal areas without exaggerating the risks. There is no sign of any subglacial lakes on the scale of glacial Lake Ojibway and Lake Agassiz, which were special cases because the glacial ice in Hudson's Bay dammed much of the central part of northern Canada. Those were HUGE lakes formed by the ice blocking the regional drainages. The 250-300 known Antarctic glacial lakes (and, yes, Antarctica has been well-surveyed) are individually smaller and aren't expected to drain at once.
Since the sea ice is already in the sea, it does not affect sea levels at all.
How does that follow?
If you put some ice in water and let it melt, the water level will remain the same. Even if you see ice sticking up out of the water when it floats along, the weight of it still displaces the same amount of water that the ice is made from.
This means that melting sea ice will not make the oceans rise.
You have no idea what you're babbling about. You assert things that have no scientific value.
You are a pro-pollution shill of no consequence. You fool nobody. You are the fool.
If these streams manage to tangle, there be hurricanes over the British soil!
For contrast, people who do know something about that which they speak.
http://phys.org/news/2013-09-newly-climate-action.html#nRlv
Fix your brain. Use a hammer.
"The streams of water, some of which are 250m in height and stretch for hundreds of kilometres"
WTF?
Since when did we start measuring rivers' height?
It's common knowledge that, unlike the arctic, Antarctic ice has been increasing.
As is often the case this common knowledge is actually a common misconception. While the sea ice is increasing, the land ice is shedding mass at an accelerating rate. Since the sea ice is already in the sea, it does not affect sea levels at all. Thawing land ice does increase sea levels, since it introduces water to the sea that used to sit on land.
Sea ice clearly affects sea level. Take a glass of water, put in two cubes, Mark the line. Add two more ice cubes. The water will rise.
If all the ice slid off Antarctica, the sea level would rise. Calving a greater total volume of ice bergs over a given time period will cause a rise in sea levels. But the easiest way to determine the overall effect of global warming on sea levels is to measure the mass of ice that isn't floating in the ocean. It's also worth noting that the total volume of water on earth doesn't vary greatly over time (yes, we lose some water vapor to space, and gain some from comets).
Of course, total ice volumes are a determining factor in the salinity of the ocean, which is also significant.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
you do realize the IPCC is backpedalling furiously on their dire predictions; their latest report essentially admits the billions of euros, yen and dollars spent on climate modeling have been wasted and the prediction are rubbish.
"I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence," said Dr. Richard Lindzen a top climate scientist at MIT. "They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase."
I thought we furloughed all those assholes!
Wrong country.
Affiliations Geography, College of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4RJ, UK Anne M. Le Brocq
School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK Neil Ross
Bristol Glaciology Centre, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1SS, UK Jennifer A. Griggs, Antony J. Payne & Martin J. Siegert
School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, UK Robert G. Bingham
British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge CB3 0ET, UK Hugh F. J. Corr, Fausto Ferraccioli, Adrian Jenkins & Tom A. Jordan
Environment Department, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK David M. Rippin
Keep drinking the cool-aid, their latest report doesn't "admit" what you claim here, not by a long shot - it actually states that they're even more certain now that most of the recent warming is caused by Anthropogenic CO2. What has happened is that the right wing climate denialosphere are spinning like they've never spun before, trying to deform and cherry-pick statements from the report into what they want it to say... And you're clearly lapping it up uncritically, probably because it reinforces what you *want* to hear...
And Dr. Richard Lindzen may be a "climate scientist" (I would certainly dispute the "top" prefix....), but he doesn't walk the walk like he talks the talk - he's always up for yapping away in the media about not trusting models & stuff, but when he actually goes about publishing articles, those recognise the reality of AGW... At this point, he's little more than a paid shill for the Oil industry...
What land is there in the Arctic?
Actually the significant part for me is the winter ice is not declining (as it must if Global Warming is true). I would expect a great deal of variability in summer ice - which is what we see. Small number statistics also increase the proportion of variability in the summer ice level from year to year. That's why it is the constant winter ice level that is actually the significant measurement, AFAIK.
You are correct about a mere missed prediction as not being evidence of fraud. I agree with you here. However, if you check the references I gave you will see articles covering the fraud (showing the raw data and the tampered measurements). I'm not telling you what to believe, I'm just pointing you in the direction so you can evaluate for yourself :) Is this not a better system? Thanks for presenting your numbers. Surely after 17 years we'd expect more of a downward trend by now, yes? Look not at the summer numbers (that always have big variability) but the winter ice cover. If Global Warming were true then the *winter* season cover would be declining, but there is *zero* evidence for this (AFAICS).
Oops, sorry, my point about 'winter ice' was for the Arctic. Thanks for your comments on the Antarctic - I'll look at the data. Meanwhile, would you agree that the assertion that the 'science is settled' does not appear to be true? and that more investigation is required before instigating energy policies that will hurt modern economies and cause all sorts of problems (from food price increases to deaths of old people from lack of heating)?
no, having read the report it is clear they is huge increasing discrepancy between the dire predictions of models and reality, ,they are indeed retreating from the fantastic and sensationist agenda-driven predictions they were paid to make
What land is there in the Arctic?
This bit, for instance.
Science definitely is performed by consensus. If there's a consensus on something, that's good reason to believe it, and scientists will build on that in further work. Naturally the consensus is always subject to revision, but it's very likely to be correct. If it's incorrect, it's likely to be in interpretation rather than measurement.
What do you think the scientific consensus that opposed Galileo was? He didn't get into trouble for heliocentrism, which Copernicus had already given good arguments for. Any educated astronomer would know of Copernicus and his theories. Moreover, the disagreements were about interpretations, not data.
Scientists have been wrong on theories (phlogiston, anybody?), but I'm not aware of any case where a consensus has been thoroughly wrong on the data. Nobody knew how black-body radiation worked before Planck, but the observations were detailed enough for him to propose his famous constant.
I find the idea of scientists deliberately using unscientific data incredible. Scientists, as a rule, are aiming at the truth. They dislike being proven wrong. They don't, in general, knowingly risk their reputations by deliberately using bad data. (Scientists are not particularly well-paid, and value their reputations.) If the data were as you represent it, there would be large numbers of scientists pointing that out. Since I have not observed that, the odds that my personal examination of the data would show something climate scientists as a whole miss seem sufficiently low that I'm not going to bother.
If you can come up with a credible reason why all those scientists would be blindly using bad data, that would alter my opinion on whether to do my own examination. (The claim that they're faking things to keep the grants coming is not credible.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Fair enough :) I meant at the North Pole, but you rightfully pointed out what I had written was stooopid. Apologies.
Hmm... freshwater rivers have always flowed under the ice sheet. WOW..these stinking liberals.
Thank you for your comment. Please note that in a former career I was an astrophysicist publishing papers. When I was an Honours students I knew some of the best students faked their data for research reports (sure, the stakes were low, but it showed me that even some very good people do not possess the same ethics that you and I share - where it is unthinkable to be anything other than brutally honest).
Medical science is no stranger to fraud:
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
I might add that much of political "science" and social "science" are naught but obfuscation and fraud (I jest - kind of).
The claim that they're faking things to keep the grants coming is not credible
Really? I find your dismissal not credible. Working on acquiring and renewing grants takes up a significant part of any working researchers time. Missing out on too many grants means yourself and associates can miss many opportunities to continue your research (which is the thing you actually care about). Therefore, if you have to place emphasis some interpretation that sounds good to a grant committee then you'll do it.
Most scientists are more ethical than the average Joe. However, science has its fair share of charlatans, and a great deal more who don't intend to mislead but simply have an incorrect interpretation they they will defend *despite* the presence of contrary facts.
The site I referenced points out some of those scientists that selectively remove some data points. Without the data points you get Global Warming. Leave the data points in and you get normal variability. I'm not asking you to take my word for it (basing arguments solely on presumed authority should be avoided) - I suggest you review the evidence presented at that linked site, specifically the articles that show the data sets before and after James Hansen and Michael Mann adjusted them. Then you can make up your own mind as to whether the editing was 'creative' to reinforce a theory, or legitimate to remove outliers (always a dodgy thing to do without evidence of instrument or system malfunction; most of the time outliers should be left in an a robust fitting method used instead, such as 'least sum of squares' rather than the usual 'least squares' that has no robustness [is always skewed by outliers]).
I stand by my statement as a former research scientist. Science is not about consensus, it is about finding theories that match the observed facts (*all* the observations, not just the 'convenient' ones).
A fair number of individual scientists could be running a scam. I find it incredible that virtually all the scientists in the field would run a scam, and that there wouldn't be numerous peer-reviewed articles pointing that out. Yet, we find that 98% of climate scientist agree on it. If this were to be fraudulent, I think it would be unprecedented in the history of science. If 98% of scientists in a field were seriously wrong about the data, I think that would be unprecedented in the history of science.
Science is about observations and coming up with neat theories to explain it. However, to move on to new topics, we need to have some way of establishing what set of observations we can rely on and which theories are accepted (so scientists can either build on it or come up with more precise ways to break the theories). That would be consensus.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Hi David. A few scientists are indeed running a scam. They skew data (as the site I originally linked to analyses). Other scientists then take that skewed data (not realising it has been falsified) and run legitimate analyses on *bad data*.
Science is about observations and coming up with neat theories to explain it. However, to move on to new topics, we need to have some way of establishing what set of observations we can rely on and which theories are accepted (so scientists can either build on it or come up with more precise ways to break the theories).
The Scientific Method already counts for this. It demands reproducibility. Any scientist that does not reproduce results is relying on potentially bad data. It is a risk you have to take (I was an astrophysicist in a former career). It's ok to take that risk, you can't bootstrap everything from First Principles, but you must accept that the data and assumptions you are using may be incorrect.
The problem with the climate scientists is not that they are now wrong. The problem is that they dismiss dissenting views and data. That's when it turns from climate science into the "Climate Change Cult". *That* is the problem. In politics the same thing happens. The political Left may have many great ideas, but their fatal flaw is that they encourage every diversity except the one that actually matters, diversity of *opinion*. The Left are very ideological and dogmatic in their point of view, and this political outlook is what has tainted climate research to the point it is no longer conducted using the Scientific Method.
With regard to your 98% figure. Remember that the great Eddington dismissed Chandrasekhar on the theory of electron degeneracy in stars, which form "white dwarfs". Many scientists agree with Eddington, based on his track record and persuasive arguments. But it doesn't matter how many people were against Chandrasekhar, because science does not require consensus, it requires theories to account for *all* observations. Similarly, everyone was against Galileo, but it was the latter who was proved right (after being threatened by reputable researchers and the Roman Catholic Church). So yes, there have been historical cases were even more than 98% of scientists have been wrong. I believe the data are showing that the consensus on Global Warming is also wrong - based on recent observations. Please also note I can understand the basis for the Global Warming theory based on the data from the 1990s and rising temperatures there. The flaw is that scientists have been discounting the more recent data of the last decade and a half that shatter the models of the 1990s. As I said, it is ok to be incorrect a scientist - but it is always wrong to ignore increasing evidence that goes against your pet theory. That is the mistake James Hansen and Michael Mann did (and those turkeys manipulated data and fed that bad data to other scientists).
I hope that clears up your confusion about why it is entirely possible for a large number of scientists to get results based on bad data from fraudsters who contain the gates to the data (eg. those that collate and disseminate the terrestrial observations; the satellite data is harder to tamper with, and this has revealed the tampering in the published ground-based data).
Thanks also for being reasonable with your questions. Most who hear about the data that is shattering the false orthodoxy respond by slanders and assertions of craziness or stupidity or dishonesty. Once you become aware of this tactic of the political Left and their more extreme environmentalist allies then you start to see how labels and slander are used to shut down free debate that might present facts uncomfortable for their positions. Everyone cares about the planet, but the solution is to create and *revise* theories based on *new* observations, not cling dogmatically to a two decade theory that doesn't match observed reality.
I still don't get it. You say that (a) a few fraudulent scientists are acting as a gateway to bad data, and (b) I can look at the data and see for myself. It seems to me that, if I can look at data, numerous other scientists can too. Most of these are going to be honest (since most scientists are honest), and many are going to see the opportunity to write a paper that gets them some attention.
Grants aren't really a concern here; many scientists have their salaries (many are tenured professors, for example), and if I can find discrepancies in my spare time they can too, and write about it better than I can. Their papers will get out, somehow or other, regardless of any orthodoxy in established journals. Established journals, after all, like publishing exciting papers, and there's no way to stop papers from being published.
I'm doing sort of a meta-scientific analysis here to see if it's worth my time to look at your data. I'm making observations of the scientific community, which has some known properties, and figuring what my observations of the scientific community would be under certain hypotheses.
It's easy to find cases where the scientific consensus was wrong on interpretation (Chandrasekhar as you mention, Wegener and continental drift, etc.), but I'm not aware of any consensus being that wrong on the observations. (They have been wrong on details; Milliken's oil-drop experiment is the obvious example, but that wasn't that wrong.)
So, unless you can explain my observations of the scientific community, I'm going to continue to accept its consensus.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I still don't get it. You say that (a) a few fraudulent scientists are acting as a gateway to bad data, and (b) I can look at the data and see for myself. It seems to me that, if I can look at data, numerous other scientists can too. Most of these are going to be honest (since most scientists are honest), and many are going to see the opportunity to write a paper that gets them some attention.
Scientists are writing papers that point out that the Global Warming consensus is wrong. They get labelled as "deniers". This is a classic tactic of the political Left and their allies (of which the environmental movement is an undeniable part), the tactic is: "Do not address the facts, but slander the message bringer".
For example, Richard Lindzen of *MIT* finds the IPCC report "hilarious":
http://dailycaller.com/2013/09/29/top-mit-scientist-un-climate-report-is-hilariously-flawed/
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/09/mit_scientist_says_new_climate_report_is_hilarious_incoherence.html
"You have politicians who are being told if they question this, they are anti-science. We are trying to tell them, no, questioning is never anti-science."
What matters is not whether there is or is not global warming. What matters is that a particular political view (which in this case, happens to come from the Left; but would be just as wrong as if it had come from the Right) is trumping science. The [Cultural Marxist] Politically Correct view is that there is Global Warming. Now that the evidence is against Global Warming there is no big pronouncement that the models were wrong. Instead, the Politically Correct terms is changed to the scientifically meaningless "Climate Change" (nb: the climate is *always* changing - being alarmist about this natural and normal process is anti-scientific, and well, political).
So, unless you can explain my observations of the scientific community, I'm going to continue to accept its consensus.
As you wish, but understand this is a *political* decision, and not based on the observed data. Like I said, look at that lovely sinusoid - alone it is enough to *destroy* the Global Warming hoax): http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/nasa-spokesman-reacts-to-the-spectacular-growth-in-arctic-ice/
And there are plenty more predictions of the Global Warming Theory that have not met observation (eg. *zero* hurricanes in the US in the last season; global warming theory predicted larger and more frequent hurricanes; then there was a record number of states in the US that had below average winter temperatures; then we have both the Arctic and Antarctica putting on more ice; sure, we have variability like my own New Zealand having a very warm winter this year - but one year is natural variation. When it is 15 years without global warming that is a trend.
A scientist must change their position based on *all* the observations. If the observations were for global warming I'd be more than happy to promote this theory. I have nothing ideological nor political against global warming theory. All I can say is that there are significant sets of observations that are against global warming - that means the theory cannot be accepted as is. Then I couple that with the fact that it is now known that scientists have been manipulating data (indicating that their case is very weak). That leads me to conclude Global Warming is, at best, an unproven and weak theory - and there is a higher statistical probability that the null hypothesis (no warming) is correct than the probability that warming is happening (when evaluating the untampere
I just looked at the sinusoidal graph you cited. It shows that ice coverage varies rather predictably by time of year. That's its main message. That doesn't disprove global warming.
It has lines in various pastel shades for the years 2005-2012. It's hard to pick anything out, since there hasn't been that much variance since 2005.
The 2013 line is near the top of the grouping, but not at the top. We've had more ice in this period.
In short, it tells us nothing about global warming. The effects are not expected to be monotonic, and none of the observations are. The graph covers nine years when the increase in world temperature has slowed. We've seen anomalous years, like 1998, when the global temperature spiked high, and for all I can tell we're looking at another anomaly.
The graph would have been much more indicative if it had extended back more than nine years. Global temperatures now are significantly higher than they were in the 1990s, for example. Showing polar ice for 2000, 1990, and 1980 would have at least added a little context.
Looking at this, it looks like the numbers of hurricanes have been on the rise in recent years. The number hitting the US is of no importance, since climate scientists haven't (as far as I've heard) been saying that hurricanes will necessarily hit the US. Most hurricanes never hit the US, and so it's better to look at total hurricanes.
The problem with your political accusations, aside from the fact that it's potential libel, is that they constitute a rather far-fetched theory to account for climate science publications and statements. Another hypothesis would be that the planet is warming up. This would account for the fact that publications say so, and if the deniers are simply bad or biased scientists that would account for their treatment.
You're saying that there is a cabal of politically motivated climate scientists that controls pretty much all funding and publication. That, as far as I've been able to tell, would be a unique phenomenon in the scientific community. I think it's much simpler to conclude that the planet is, indeed, warming up. Since your sixty-second study has proved to be basically meaningless, I'm going with that.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes