John … thank you for this … you put me in good company if you too were troubled by the NYT piece!

Look, I’m whacked out from too much time on this forum (full response just sent to Brian’s piece). I’m going to have to press on with other work now and not respond further on this theme, but as we’ll both be at the Crisis Forum conference in London on the 17^th November we can continue over a pint or a dram or whatever’s your inclination there. As he said, we have our differences, and these debates, but our general area of concern is shared, and so told Brian Orr I’ll buy him the first round, I propose him for the second, you for the third, and …

From: John Nissen [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 27 July 2012 12:56
To: Alastair McIntosh
Cc: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Greenland 150 years question .... disaggregated

Hi Alastair,

I too read the NTY headline and worried about the way they spoke of the 150 year question.  These are the notes I wrote this morning, about layers of denial, which all seem relevant to the discussion here.

[quote]

I find there is an article on the screen about the big melt, both Greenland and sea ice:

http://planetark.org/wen/66026

This refers to the sea ice news:

www.nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

There is still incredible denial.  The melting on Greenland Ice Sheet jumped from 40% to 97% in just a few days, reducing albedo markedly.  Yet somebody is saying that this happens regularly every 150 years, as if it’s just part of a natural cycle or a natural rare combination of circumstances.  There’s still no mention of sea ice volume.

The ThinkProgress blog has a posting on this “150 years”, as it appears in the NYT headline.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/07/26/591381/is-recent-greenland-ice-sheet-melting-unprecedented-absolutely-is-it-worrisome-you-bet-it-is/

I take reticence or lack of warning on an issue as a form of denial.

There are layers of denial.  First is the familiar chain of denial:

· denial of global warming

· denial that CO2 causes global warming

· denial of an Arctic warming trend

· denial that global warming causes Arctic warming

· denial of need to research into geoengineering

Second we have:

· denial of degree of Arctic amplification

· denial of the sea-ice mechanism for amplification

· denial of significance of the forcing effect of sea-ice retreat

· denial of the speed of sea-ice retreat

· denial of positive feedback and a sea ice tipping point having been passed

· denial of the data on sea ice volume

· denial of the trend of sea ice volume to zero

Thirdly we have denial of the ramifications of sea ice seasonal disappearance:

· denial of the greatly increased rate of Arctic warming

· denial of the danger of heightened disruption to the polar jet stream and weather patterns in northern latitudes, with resultant food security crisis

· denial of the danger of methane feedback

· denial of the trend of Greenland Ice Sheet melt

· denial of the danger from Greenland glacier acceleration and ice sheet destabilisation

· denial of tsunami and sea level rise implications

· denial of significant risk from disruption of the thermohaline circulation

And finally we have:

· denial that we face a planetary emergency because of the dire Arctic situation

· denial that there’s anything to do except continue on course of emissions reduction

· denial that emergency geoengineering is required to avoid passing a point of no return

· accusation that geoengineering is too dangerous

[end quote]

I am thinking of putting the list up as a comment on the ThinkProgress blog, so would appreciate your thoughts and criticisms.

Cheers,

John

--

On 27/07/2012 12:12, Alastair McIntosh wrote:

Hi Torsten Mark, Chris and all,

I’ve pasted Chris’s piece in above that of Torsten Mark as they both came in about the same time and had got separated.

Firstly, let me be very clear, Chris, that I am not in denial of mainstream climate change science. I am questioning an item in the Creed, not the evidence for God, if I can put it like that.

My understanding of climate science (as distinct from weather) is that 30 years is not long enough to say anything very much except where it steps outside of previously observed patterns. If this 150 year melt has been observed before, whether in 1889 or further back in time, that means that it is not necessarily unprecedented. This is an important point. When the news first broke I was quick to download the NASA map thinking, “this will be a great slide to use next time I speak about climate change.” I’m not thinking, “steady on … this does not yet meet my standard of rigour.” That does not make me a “disbeliever” even though some of you may think you scent a heretic. To me climate change is not a matter of beliefs. It is a matter of assessing the evidence, including being very aware of our own limitations in ability to assess such evidence.

On Torsten Mark’s point, I have not addressed most of Joe Romm’s points because they are not relevant to my central contention: namely, if this melting happened in 1889, we have to be wary in claiming that what has just been revealed this past week is “unprecedented”. The argument that NASA was clearly using the term “unprecedented” to refer to the satellite record seems to me disingenuous, as the satellite only goes back a little over 30 years, and so is clearly not going to say anything about something last observed in 1889. My sense is that NASA goofed their headline. What matters now is whether the data adds meaningful information, and the fact that it has drawn attention to the 1889 melt throws a spanner in the works, irrespective of whether previous melts happened every 150 years or not. My question would be: How much is know about that 1889 melt? Was it a once off lasting one year, or was there general warming around that time? The thing we need to remember is that all measured data from the Arctic is very recent. This is why, in my view, we need to be very careful of how we use it to drive policy, such as AMEG’s push on geoengineering.  That does not mean that I do not consider it important data. It is part of the jigsaw,

Finally, can I point out that the second link below to which Schmidt directs us as his preferred data source appears to be either erroneous or to have been pulled from the server. Also, the paper you cite on Greenland albedo (below) is a version as “resubmitted after review round” with no indication as to whether or not it was subsequently accepted for publication. I’m sorry, but this is about scientific standards.

Alastair

From: Christopher Shaw [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 27 July 2012 11:35
To: 'Mandy Meikle'
Subject: RE: The Greenland 150 years question .... disaggregated

Dear all and Alastair

I don’t mean denial in the Dellingpole sense, I mean denial of the implications of accepting what one’s eyes, ears and internet are showing. If climate change is no longer ‘something that is going to happen’ but is ‘happening now’, then, well certainly for me, that is quite scary. Will there be food in the supermarkets in 5 years time is the sort of question I am worrying about.

I do not understand why you need more science at this stage of the game, Alastair. 30 years of science has been ignored. People are responding to their immediate experience of an unravelling climate. I don’t have any scientific proof of whether or not the Greenland melt reported recently is a direct cause of anthropogenic climate change. That lacuna hasn’t changed my opinions one bit because of all the other evidence. I don’t get why it has shaken your belief so much.

Chris

From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Torsten Mark Kowal
Sent: 27 July 2012 11:19
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Greenland 150 years question .... disaggregated

Hi Alastair et al:

I second the point Chris makes. What gives?

But here is a fraction of the science:

You don't seem to pick up on the fact that Joe Romm has provided a detailed rebuttal of the NY Times story, citing data that was misunderstood by the authors of that story, explaining that ice core data shows that there is no 150 year cycle, rather that the last serious ablation before 1889, across significant portions of Greenland was in the Medieval Warming Period, and then thousands of years prior to that during the Holocene Maximum (when solar insolation was much higher, making that period unrepresentative of our climate to now). Gavin Schmidt in a comment posted on the NY Times story stated:

The NASA results are clearly unprecedented in the satellite record (and this is obviously what was being referred to), and come at the tail end of a strong increasing trend in summer surface melt area (as seen in data from the Steffen and Tedesco groups). However, we know Greenland was warmer than today at many intervals in the past – the Early Holocene (from isotopes and borehole temperatures), the last interglacial, the Pliocene etc. so there is no claim that this is something that has never happened in the history of the planet. Furthermore, the ‘every 150 years’ quote is very strange. The data on Summit melt layers – (discussed in the paper you reference http://www.igsoc.org/annals.old/21/igs_annals_vol21_year1995_pg64-70.pdf ) and more easily visible here: http://www.gisp2.sr.unh.edu/DATA/alley1.html  – indicates that the [1889] event was actually the only event in the last ~700 years, and there have only been 6 in the last 2000 years (4 of which were associated with the Medieval Climate Anomaly btw 750 and 1200AD). Hardly a frequently recurring ‘cycle’!

Why is this unconvincing? This shows that "the frequency with which Greenland record melt years are being established is exceptional. It clearly demonstrates that the Arctic climate is no longer in steady-state, whereby climate oscillates around some mean state and extreme events are relatively rare, but rather that Arctic climate is in a highly transient state, whereby progressively more extreme events are exceeded as climate trends in a given direction,” (James Colgan,University of Colorado - quoted here - http://www.climatecentral.org/news/global-warming-and-unusual-weather-pattern-yields-record-greenland-ice-loss ).

The key question is NOT "whether the last big melt, in 1889, was regional or global warming", rather, what are the trends?

A considerable volume of data describes the trends in Greenland surface albedo http://bprc.osu.edu/~jbox/temp/Box%20et%20al.%202012%20-%20TCD%20-%20resubmitted%20after%20review%20round%202.pdf (reflectivity of the Greenland ice sheet). Particularly at the high elevations that were involved in the mid-July melt event, albedo readings have declined to record lows. This is an indication that the ice sheet has been absorbing more incoming solar energy than normal. This comes two years after the 2010 record melt season. See http://bprc.osu.edu/wiki/Greenland_Ice_Albedo_Monitoring



According to  http://www.climatecentral.org/news/greenland-ice-sheet-reflectivity-near-record-low-research-shows "Box's research has shown that the change in the reflectivity of the Greenland ice sheet during the 12 summers between 2000 and 2011 allowed the ice sheet to absorb an extra 172 "quintillion joules" of energy, nearly twice the amount of energy consumed in the U.S. in 2009. This extra energy has gone into raising the temperature of the snow and ice cover during summer.

“If the area of the Greenland Ice Sheet experiencing net melt expands to eclipse the accumulation zone of the ice sheet, the ice sheet will, by definition, be tipped into a state of inevitable decline,” said William Colgan, a research associate at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.... [..]  ......, Box said the new findings reveal that the normally snowy, windswept higher-elevation areas of Greenland are rapidly transitioning to melt during the summer in a similar manner to the lower reaches of the ice sheet. “It appears that we’re about to cross a threshold in summer . . . you might even call it a tipping point as we go into a net energy absorption” of the higher elevations, Box said. “Then we’ll see the melt area expanding abruptly and potentially covering the entire ice sheet in summer for the first time in observations.”

In the context of increased air temperatures, increased sea surface temperatures and unusual blocking patterns with settled high pressure systems, trends in ice reflectivity ensure that 2012 is almost certainly the harbinger of further unusual widespread melt events.

It is easy enough to do research on-line into the trends in all of these and their synergies.





There are now two positive feedbacks in operation:

The amplifying feedback mechanism of Greenland ice sheet melt + the feedback of infrared absorption by open water, resulting in the "albedo-flip effect", where loss of incoming radiation reflection by melted ice on land, and on the sea, mutually compound one another in the Arctic.

As reported by Hansen et al.: “… amplifying feedbacks make ice sheet disintegration necessarily highly non-linear. In a non-linear problem, the most relevant number for projecting sea level rise is the doubling time for the rate of mass loss. Hansen (2007) suggested that a 10-year doubling time was plausible, pointing out that such a doubling time from a base of 1 mm per year ice sheet contribution to sea level in the decade 2005-2015 would lead to a cumulative 5 m sea level rise by 2095.”

Is that useful?

Mark Kowal


At 09:59 27/07/2012 +0100, Christopher Shaw wrote:

Alastair - A question for me is why your attitude to the climate science can be totally overturned by this issue. It may or may not be caused by climate change. The science uses a range of different metrics to assess the impact of anthropogenic forcing of the climate. It is not – climate change = melting Greenland ice and nothing else. Something else is happening here for you Alastair – is it a form of denial formed out of panic?

Bemusedly

Chris

From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [ mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alastair McIntosh
Sent: 27 July 2012 09:36
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: The Greenland 150 years question .... disaggregated

Folks … the 150 years question that I’ve raised in the context of another debate that appears to have stalled is too important to leave in the doldrums. Let me therefore disaggregate this strand of the debate. The NY Times ran a potent critique of it, to which Joe Romm of Climate Progress has now responded below (see the NYT piece in Romm’s link, and with Romm’s piece, make sure you click “read more” to get the whole thing).

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/07/26/591381/is-recent-greenland-ice-sheet-melting-unprecedented-absolutely-is-it-worrisome-you-bet-it-is/

As it stands, I find Romm’s response rather underwhelming. The key question is whether the last big melt, in 1889, was regional or global warming. If it was regional, then there is no necessary conflict with global warming theory although doubt may be cast on the reliability of the Arctic as a global indicator. If it was global, then global warming theory as a whole may have a problem. The problem would be that if Greenland was able to surface melt in 1889 before the current high levels of greenhouse gases came about, who is to say that what we are seeing now is not also largely natural? Already the contrarian blogs are trumpeting this notion. Either way – whether regional or global - it all comes as a bit of a surprise, which is why the NYT has made a big thing of it.

If anyone out there has or can point to an informed perspective on this I’d like to hear … not least because I have to speak on a panel in the Edinburgh Book Festival next month about climate change, and this is precisely the sort of question that will come up and for which I currently lack a response more convincing than Joe Romm’s.

Incidentally, the political backdrop to this story could be relevant. I was in NY state 2 weeks ago, and in the sweltering weather and drought threating crops I observed little of the usual scepticism about AGW. This NYT story could therefore be read as an attemt to flip that drift back in the other direction … or eqally, it could be read as a simple unpaking of what the NASA spokeswoman had said. Either way, our concern should be with the truth(s) of the matter, and not with seeking to confirm prejudices, thus my interest in finding more science.

Alastair.

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