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Greenland Ice Sheet Not Covered In Soot

An anonymous reader writes with word of a a new study of the Greenland ice sheet led by Dartmouth adjunct assistant professor Chris Polashenski, which maintains that the darkening sensed there by satellites is not caused by dust and soot deposited by forest fires and industry, but rather by the slow degradation of the sensors on the satellites themselves. [Polashenski] and his colleagues analyzed dozens of snow-pit samples from the 2012-2014 snowfalls across northern Greenland and compared them with samples from earlier years. The results showed no significant change in the quantity of black carbon deposited for the past 60 years or the quantity and mineralogical makeup of dust compared to the last 12,000 years, meaning that deposition of these light absorbing impurities is not a primary cause of reflectivity reduction or surface melting in the dry snow zone. Algae growth, which darkens ice, also was ruled out as a factor. Instead, the findings suggest the apparent decline in the dry snow zone's reflectivity is being caused by uncorrected degradation of sensors in NASA's aging MODIS satellites and that the declining trend will likely disappear when new measurements are reprocessed.

3 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Then start fighting real pollution you moron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    But here is one thing *I* do know. Pollution is bad for us both economically and physically.

    Then why are you not fighting pollution, instead of CO2 which plants need to live?

    The whole problem I have with you WarmMongers is that you in fact have essentially ended the fight against real pollution to tilt against the CO2 windmill, all for the sake of making a few people (not you BTW) rich.

    The EPA flooded a whole Colorado river system with toxins but people like you won't say boo about that because the EPA is on your "side". I'll bet you totally ignored THAT story despite countless river species outright kills and hundreds of miles of riverbank poisoned. That you dare to speak against pollution is frankly sickening.

  2. Re:Retractions from the pro-Global Warming crowd? by TapeCutter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yes, they claim to have found a slight accounting error in the work that attributes the inputs for the observed sea level rise, it was found with new satellites, improved data resolution, and longer time scales. That small portion of the rise must now be accounted for 'elsewhere', it probably won't be until we make similar measurement improvements 'elsewhere'. Remove the politics and this paper is only interesting to beancounter geeks, it does not challenge existing theories or observations, let alone disprove them. Most importantly, it does not change the observed sea level rise.

    This paper is actually a continuation of the valuable and ongoing work that the 'climategate' beat up was desperately trying to discredit and disrupt via character assassination. ie - Robust climate data. Climate data sets are collected, cleaned, maintained and published by NASA and other organisations, here's a list of the main data sets used by climate researchers. The IPCC does not perform or fund research or data collection, it summarises existing peer-reviewed publications into various reports aimed at different audiences.

    Anyone who genuinely wants to debunk global warming should start here, trust me, climate scientists will respond with collective sigh of releif should anyone succeed.

    --
    And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
  3. Re:Retractions from the pro-Global Warming crowd? by BCGlorfindel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Anyone who genuinely wants to debunk global warming should start here, trust me, climate scientists will respond with collective sigh of releif should anyone succeed.

    RealClimate.org maybe wouldn't be the best place to start. There's a lot of very aggressively close minded chaps dominating the forums. I know, who'd have thought that could happen on an internet forum?

    Real climate is also co-founded by Michael Mann, whom I really take some issue with. Tell me I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill, but his paleo reconstructions of temperature have really bothered me in the past. Nothing to do with the results, not as much to do even with his methodology now that his later work is addressing and correcting problems. The presentation and usage of the 'hide the decline' trick in graphs is just disgusting. When your paleo reconstruction ends around 1900, just end the graph there. If your paleo reconstruction doesn't show the same temperature rise since 1900 as instrumental, then show that too. What you DO NOT DO, is paste in the instrumental record with a thick enough line to hide the paleo reconstruction since 1900. Even further, don't point to the overlapped instrumental part of the graph as startling and clear evidence of an abrupt trend in the data starting at 1900.

    If your wanting to have an open and honest discussion about the evidence, that's a difficult environment. Even scientists with a decent publishing record within the field like Lindzen are put under a microscope for criticism for not conforming to the 'consensus'. Even researchers widely embraced and accepted like Mauritsen have their results heavily disputed and interpreted there. When statisticians like McShane and Wyner take issue with the statistical methods in Mann and others work, Mann takes to his blog for the 'final' word while leaving out any response to their real and legitimate questions and arguments. I'm not anticipating that it's going to be a particularly receptive audience as you seem to believe.