Greenland Ice Sheet saw Record Melt in 2010

[BlasterBates]

Internet poster suspects glaciers won't all melt away. I shall alert the Daily Mail immediately.

OK so I've written to the Guardian that an internet poster with out a scientific background reading an article from a news blog that he's now worried about the fate of the world, because some ice melted in the summer in Greenland.

[BlasterBates]

Easterbrook’s wrong (again)

First point, this is just a blog.

Easterbrook is showing how temperatures changed over the milennia.

Answering the research question is the recent warming unprecedented.

How did the climate change over the millenia.

The ice core just happens to be one piece of evidence. Easterbrook also shows evidence of glacial variations which fit.

You need to look at the evidence of temperatures and relate them to the time frame.

As to the question how has temperatures changed since 1850.

As you can see here from temperatures:

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/gr...eretal2006.pdf

Easterbrook's graph certainly isn't misleading.

Of course there is no satellite record, or temperature records stretching back thousands of years so you are always going to be using proxy data. So the blogger just states the obvious in "flowery language" about the proxy not being a perfect match for the global temperatures.

Unfortunately for Don, the first data point in the temperature series he’s relying on is not from the “top of the core”, it’s from layers dated to 1855. The reason is straightforward enough — it takes decades for snow to consolidate into ice.

As little as two decades actually, but it can be a lot longer. A statement like this is rather naive, without any reference to the data, just conjecture.

Then the blogger says this, which sums up his understanding of the climate change debate.

Whether temperatures have been warmer or colder in the past is largely irrelevant to the impacts of the ongoing warming.

So why did Michael Mann write several papers about it?

The blogger is a complete dim wit.

Surely you can do better than that as a rebuttal.

[Old Greg]

OK so I've written to the Guardian that an internet poster with out a scientific background reading an article from a news blog that he's now worried about the fate of the world, because some ice melted in the summer in Greenland.

Excellent - so we can go with the scientific consensus and get on with it. Unless it's a government conspiracy to raise taxes, but perhaps you're not one of them. Have read your link. Not sure how Civil Engineers got involved in this.

[Doggy Styles]

Here's another view on Greenland.

Easterbrook on the magnitude of Greenland GISP2 ice core data | Watts Up With That?

I'm not sure about his maths here:

"In just the past 500 years, Greenland warming/cooling temperatures fluctuated back and forth about 40 times, with changes every 25-30 years (27 years on the average)."

What's the difference between "back and forth" and "changes"? It's every 12/13 years, shirley?

[doodab]

Not sure how Civil Engineers got involved in this.

It'll be their job to build dams, flood defences, desalination plants and so on in order to combat the effects of climate change. One assumes they need reliable predictions of what is going to happen in order to plan for it.

[Old Greg]

I'm not sure about his maths here:

"In just the past 500 years, Greenland warming/cooling temperatures fluctuated back and forth about 40 times, with changes every 25-30 years (27 years on the average)."

What's the difference between "back and forth" and "changes"? It's every 12/13 years, shirley?

I depends if you're counting each change or each cycle. I expect this is cycles.

[Old Greg]

It'll be their job to build dams, flood defences, desalination plants and so on in order to combat the effects of climate change. One assumes they need reliable predictions of what is going to happen in order to plan for it.

But I don't see how their ability to build dams makes them authorities on climate prediction.

[doodab]

But I don't see how their ability to build dams makes them authorities on climate prediction.

Indeed, but you don't need to be an expert in climate prediction to know when something occurred which wasn't predicted or observe that something which was predicted didn't occur.

The point of this guys article seems to be that recent drought and flooding was predictable, with a high degree of confidence, using a model that assumes a linkage to the solar cycle, and asks the question why the various agencies involved in the climate change debate were unable or unwilling to make the same prediction. It seems like a reasonable question to ask, although the answer isn't necessarily "because they are wrong about global warming".

[Old Greg]

Indeed, but you don't need to be an expert in climate prediction to know when something occurred which wasn't predicted or observe that something which was predicted didn't occur.

The point of this guys article seems to be that recent drought and flooding was predictable, with a high degree of confidence, using a model that assumes a linkage to the solar cycle, and asks the question why the various agencies involved in the climate change debate were unable or unwilling to make the same prediction. It seems like a reasonable question to ask, although the answer isn't necessarily "because they are wrong about global warming".

So (question not necessarily directed at doodab) is the globe cooling (Easterbrook) or warming (Alexander)?

[Bunk]

But I don't see how their ability to build dams makes them authorities on climate prediction.

Hmm, people who build dams suggest that we're going to need lots of dams. How odd