Good news is rare when it comes to the Greenland ice sheet. Yet a model that accurately mimics the way the ice responds to rising temperatures by slipping and sliding into the sea suggests the resulting rise in sea levels may be smaller than feared.

In its 2007 forecasts of sea-level rise, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change famously excluded contributions from the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets because the physics were too poorly understood and complex to model. As a result, the IPCC’s estimate that seas could rise by 18 to 59 centimetres by 2100 is almost certainly too low. Indeed, levels are already rising faster than the models predicted.

Using data from the last decade, Stephen Price of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has shown that his modelled ice sheet moves in the same way as the real one does. In particular, the model accurately reproduces how disruptions to the edge of the ice sheet leads to a large initial movement, which is followed by several decades of smaller movement.

Best guess

Price has calculated that changes which the ice sheet experienced between 1997 and 2007 in response to a thermal disruption in the early 2000s will eventually lead to a rise of 0.6 centimetres. Assuming that similar thermal disruptions happen every decade, the moving ice sheet will raise sea levels by about 4.5 centimetres by 2100 (less than 2 inches).

That is about half of a widely quoted previous estimate of 9 centimetres, calculated by Tad Pfeffer at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and colleagues. But Pfeffer’s study was a worst-case scenario, in which all the processes driving sea-level rise were pushed to their absolute limits (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1159099).

Pfeffer says Price’s study is a more plausible estimate of what might actually happen. “They use a much more realistic scenario,” he says, “and their model is really grounded in physics.”

Wonderful leap

The model is “a wonderful leap forward,” says Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University in University Park. But he says the study does not come up with an upper limit on the sea-level rise, as Pfeffer’s worst-case scenario model did.

“In a warming future the [thermal] perturbations might become bigger, or even more frequent,” he says - something that Price’s model doesn’t consider.

Pfeffer counters that, while the pulses of warm seawater disrupting the ice sheet may well become warmer later in the century as global temperatures rise, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will have a bigger effect on the ice. “The response is dictated by what the glaciers are capable of doing,” he explains. “You can yank the plug out harder but it doesn’t make the water run out any faster.”

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.101731310

Of course since we are now a decade into a cooling period, expect the melting and sea level rises to be even less.

In Joe Bastardi’s recent Weatherbell posts he has mentioned the fact that the middle troposphere has cooled in the recent La Nina. This cooling is normal in La Nina. He has alluded to the fact that the tropical high troposphere is supposed to warm the most, as that is the region of greatest greenhouse gas trapping in the models.

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What does the data show us? The NOAA Angell radiosonde balloon data shows cooling in this critical zone near 200mb in the 20N-20S tropical belt since 1958.

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Some have suggested that the Angell data is an early version and we should use the Hadley upper air compilation. OK this is it. Not as much cooling but no warming in 33 years.

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How about the tropical surface?  The oceans in the models are supposed to warm from downward returning radiation supposedly trapped in the atmosphere. The central tropical Pacific ENSO regions are well monitored and the data is reliable and uncontaminated by factors like urbanization. Region NINO34 anomalies are used as the ENSO measure.

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Here is a plot of the NINO34 temperatures.

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We see the oscillations up with El Nino and down with La Nina but no real trend since 1979.

Of course that is the ocean surface data. Surely the heat must be trapped (somehow hiding) beneath. Here is a plot of the NOAA average temperatures in the top 300 meters of the entire tropical Pacific from 130E to 80W. Again a spike with the super El Nino in 1997/98 and the compensating dip with the subsequent La Nina in 1998/99 but overall no trend.

Enlarged.

Where is the beef?

How saving the planet causes famine: the climate crisis melts away but global food shortage is legacy of the foolish rush to biofuels.

Evidence for dangerous, human-caused global warming was always slim, now it lies cruelly exposed both by a cruel blowback and it’s not just coming from within the science.

A far more devastating catastrophe is unfolding and it is entirely the product of the mad rush to biofuels: third world famine. Today a whopping 6.5 percent of the world’s grain has been stripped from the global food supply. That’s the kind of catastrophic cut in food supply that triggers a tipping point so that Third World hunger explodes into mass starvation. Why did it happen?

Kyoto Protocol: The Trigger to Mass Starvation

What mechanism prompted mankind to instigate this genocide of the world’s poor? The Kyoto Protocol. International governments signed up to the idea that biofuels were going to be the better, cleaner, greener source for mankind’s energy needs in a new utopia predicted for us by ‘experts’ inside the United Nations.

Canadian Geophysicist Norm Kalmanovitch is as concerned as many independent scientists at the alarming rate at which this international food crisis is now escalating.

Kalmanovitch is semi-retired now and not in fear of having his scientific career tarnished by blowback from speaking out. He argues that the facts easily demonstrate that the Kyoto Protocol is based entirely on fraudulent science.

Misguided Climate Scientist Primed the Politicians

Honest scientific inquiry serves the single purpose of advancing human knowledge and understanding free of any bias or ulterior motivation and it is clear that promoting “human caused global warming” a full nine years after the world had already started cooling serves no such lofty purpose.

Kalmanovitch accuses a small clique of self-serving climate researchers for violating the fundamental ethics of science protocol and propagating the false science that made the Kyoto Accord the international vehicle for crimes against humanity. Listening to his arguments you cannot help but see he has a point.

So what was the root catalyst for this cataclysm? Astonishingly, you can pin a lot of it on one well-intentioned but misguided do-gooder. His name: Professor James Hansen. Hansen was NASA’s bright-eyed scientist back in 1988. The eager climate modeler appeared before a Congressional Committee and prophesized that mankind would kill the planet if it continued to burn coal and gasoline at modern industrial rates.

Kalmanovich explains, “When you look closely at the climate change issue it is remarkable that the only actual evidence ever cited for a relationship between CO2 emissions and global warming is climate models.”

Hansen made unfounded and highly alarmist claims based on his computer forecasts. He predicted doomsday scenarios that panicked Congress and that wave of fear stampeded the world into believing in a non-existent crisis. Global temperatures have never rocketed as Hansen forecast. In fact all five global temperature datasets show zero net global warming over the past decade in spite of record increases in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels (climate scientists have now grudgingly conceded no statistically significant rise in temperatures has occurred since 1998 from their doomsaying). But once the stampede was launched it caused a rush to biofuels that stripped millions of crop acreage from the world’s food basket.

But more sickening is that many have made sizeable fortunes from trumpeting a short period of warming that lasted from (1975-1998); a vast international array of speculators in wind, solar, wave and biofuels alternatives are onboard the great global warming gravy train.

Hansen’s friends in the infant science of climatology have also fed well off government grants where the ‘[climate change’ industry generates tens of billions annually in this self-perpetuating Ponzi scheme that symbiotically melded the interests of speculators with climate researchers.

In effect, those great riches and shining scientific careers were together built upon exploiting a 0.6 C rise in temperatures that all but vanished in the first decade of the 21st Century.

Alternative Scientific Views Now Come to the Fore

But since Hansen’s watershed moment in 1988 the science has moved on and many independent scientists, not on the government grant gravy train, have cast their eyes over the numbers for carbon dioxide (CO2), the prime bogeyman of climate alarmism.

From physical measurement of the Earth’s radiative spectrum impartial eyes saw that the 14.77 micron band of the Earth’s thermal radiation accessed by CO2, is so close to saturation that it is a physical impossibility for any increase in that trace gas to have anywhere near the effect claimed.

Analysts then looked back at the natural warming since the 1830’s that ushered in the end of the Little Ice Age, a time 100 years before any scientist claims humans had impact on the climate. They say natural warming in the order of 0.5Centigrade per century. We can calculate this to show that the maximum possible effect from CO2 increases is just 0.1C per century of the claimed 0.6C per century of the observed temperature increase.

Hansen and his self-serving followers in climatology conveniently chose to ignore such inconvenient truths. Kalmanovich seethes,

“They falsely attributed the effect of CO2 to the full 0.6C and incorporated a range of wavelengths from 7 to 14 microns when CO2 only has an effect over a range from 13.5 to 17microns and the wavelength band is at least 80 percent saturated. Though never stated explicitly this formed the basis for the CO2 forcing parameter which Hansen used in his earlier climate models and is still used by the IPCC today with the basic formula of 5.35ln(2) = 3.71watts/m2 for a doubling of CO2.”

Like other independent scientists Kalmanovich saw that the fuss all stems from a 1981 paper by Hansen that was peer reviewed and published in SCIENCE magazine. Here’s where Hansen’s alarmist and skewed climate models captivated scientific literature on the matter. It is by repeated reference to Hansen’s original paper and his 1988 modification of it that the current climate change issue was premised.

In REAL Science Correlation Does not prove Causation

All the other evidence is either of warming or misrepresentations of the greenhouse effect but never of an actual relationship between the two other than a stated correlation stating that CO2 increased and global temperature increased and therefore CO2 caused the global temperature increase.

Kalmanovich’s findings have been corroborated by a group of independent scientists calling themselves the ‘[Slayers’ who claim to have refuted the greenhouse gas effect.

They agree that correlation between temperatures and CO2 is easily refuted and they cite the same numbers used by the IPCC in the 2001 report.

That report shows cyclic warming and cooling trends that are completely out of step with CO2 emissions as explained by Kalmanovich, “it shows rapid warming from 1910 to 1942 with only a trivial 14 per cent increase in CO2 emissions. That is followed by 33 years of a global cooling trend with a 500 percent increase in CO2 emissions from 1942 to 1975.”

Greenhouse Gas Theory Falls Apart

Kalmanovich argues that is more than enough physical evidence to completely destroy the greenhouse gas theory. But that requires the doomsayers to accept numbers and scientific arguments that they have not yet been prepared to do.

The irony of this travesty is that Hansen himself never claims in absolute terms that CO2 emissions cause global warming. Kalmanovich notes, “Hansen instead uses the output from his climate models to make this claim absolving him of having his statements challenged.”

This technique was masterfully employed by Al Gore in his Inconvenient Truth in which he makes no claims directly but shows out of context snippets of evidence to make the claims for him.

Here is Kalmanovich in depth reasoning:

The satellite measurements of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) demonstrate that OLR is responding strictly to the fourth power of the Earth’s absolute temperature in perfect accordance to basic physics theory, but is in no way responding to the 57.1% increase in CO2 emissions from fossil fuels since 1979. This completely refutes the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, which is based on an assumed “enhanced greenhouse effect” from increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, but these satellite measurements demonstrate conclusively that this enhanced greenhouse effect from GHG emissions never actually existed!

This single physical observation makes the Kyoto Protocol completely fraudulent, and anyone promoting the concept of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels enhancing the greenhouse effect in support of this fraudulent Kyoto Accord, must be seen as complicit in this fraud.

Kalmanovich then reaches a devastating conclusion:

“This is not a trivial scientific error because over 6.5% of the world’s grain has been removed from the global food supply to serve as feedstock for the 85 billion litres of ethanol produced annually as fuel in accordance with the dictates of this fraudulent UN Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change.”

It is basic food staples that are being removed from the global food supply; the wealthier portion of the world’s 6.6 billion people end up paying substantially more for their food but the poor simply starve, making this Kyoto Accord a true “crime against humanity” and those who have fabricated the false science on which this crime is based are therefore guilty of being complicit in this “crime against humanity”.

Green Energy Promise Just a Pipe Dream

Americans are fast waking up to the harsh reality that this is all pain for no gain. There is stagnation in constructing conventional power generating sources in the wake of large government subsidies to wind and solar power generating facilities. That has dramatically increased power bills but has provided virtually zero additional peak power to consumers.

There is also a huge moral issue in the US. It removes more food from the global food supply than any other country in the manufacture of ethanol for fuel, making Americans key culprit in this crime against humanity. In the United States a staggering 39.7 percent of the world’s ethanol is created from crops that should be used as food.

The new moral question now to be posed is: if the US government was truly looking after the interests of the people then shouldn’t better investment ought to be made in natural gas and coal conversions to liquid fuels? That would bring the price of gas to under $2.50/gal. President Obama could then do away with subsidizing biofuels production, which only serves to raise the price of gas at the pumps and add to world hunger.

(The 85 billion litres of ethanol production comes from a compelling Marketwire article.

Why is 2011 the Critical Year?

Europe views 2011 as a critical year as member countries ramp up their production and use of ethanol to meet the European Union’s Renewable Energy Directive. In this year alone, Europe is expected to produce 5.4 billion liters of ethanol that is a 15 per cent increase over 2010 (see table).

The Global Renewable Fuels Alliance promotes “biofuels friendly policies internationally and represent over 65 per cent of the global biofuels production from 44 countries.” They predict only growth in this voracious business and if their numbers are correct, a death sentence is being issued on millions more
(Note that these are imperial gallons and not U.S. gallons. This is why the 2010 value of 18,934 million gallons is 85,763 million liters and not 73,653 million liters as would be calculated for US gallons). 

In this mad, bad crazy world western good intentions spawned a crime against humanity; the law of unintended consequences turned the Kyoto Accord into a perverse death sentence to millions. Now we must put an end to this genocide.

Madhav Khandekar is a former research scientist from Environment Canada and is presently on the Editorial Board of the international Journal Natural Hazards (Kluwer Netherlands). Khandekar was an Expert Reviewer for the IPCC 2007 climate change documents and his latest contribution to sea level rise is a Chapter (Global warming, glacier melt and future sea level rise) in the Book “Global Warming” published by Sciyo Publishers (Sciyo.com) October 2010. He is frequent contributor to stories on Icecap and NIPCC.

Global warming, glacier melt and sea level rise: need for more realistic future estimates by Madhav Khandekar

There is now a heightened interest on the possibility of rapid melting of world-wide glaciers and ice caps ( e.g., Greenland and Antarctic ice caps) as a result of ongoing warming which could lead to escalated sea level rise in the ‘near future’. Sea Level Rise (SLR) is an important climate change parameter which is being intensely discussed at present in the context of human-induced global warming and the climate change debate. Many newspaper articles as well as science magazine articles often refer to world-wide glacier melts and the possibility of sea level rise of 3 to 7 ft (1 to 2m) over the next fifty to one hundred years.

Several recent observational field studies using sophisticated remote sensing technology have provided estimates of “ice sheet mass balance” of Greenland and Antarctic ice caps; these estimates suggest significant acceleration of ice mass loss in recent years (Rignot et al, 2011 Geophysical Research Letters) and conclude that future SLR will be dominated by melting of the two ice caps. Papers published in the last ten years using atmosphere-ocean general circulation models suggest thermal expansion as the largest contributor to future SLR, which is estimated to be in the range of 20 to 37 cm over next 100 years.

A recent publication (Vermeer & Rahmstrorf, 2009 Proc. National Academy of Sciences) obtains values of 1m and higher for SLR over the next one hundred years using an empirical model which links future warming of the earth’s surface to increased sea levels. These studies plus recent Hollywood movies like An Inconvenient Truth showing big ice-shelves breaking off and sliding down into the cold Arctic Ocean have created a perception that “ice caps and glaciers are indeed melting rapidly causing sea level to rise dramatically”.

How rapidly is the sea level rising at present? Let us look at some latest studies and numbers:

Some basic facts on sea level rise:

1. It is now generally accepted that global sea level increased by about 120 m as a result of de-glaciation that followed the LGM (Last Glacial Maximum) about 21000 y BP ( years Before Present). By about 5000-6000 y BP the melting of high-latitude ice mass was more less complete after which sea level rise was small and globally-averaged SLR over the last 1000 years and prior to the twentieth century has been estimated to be just about 0.2mm/year.

2. The 20th century SLR has been most intriguing and has sparked a large number of studies (see, for example, Khandekar 2009, Energy & Environment). The total SLR during the 20th century is now estimated to be about 1.6 to 2.0 mm/yr.

3. GIA (Glacial Isostatic Adjustment): This refers to the gradual springing back of the earth’s crust in response to the removal of snow loads since the LGM, especially in the region of Gulf of Bothnia (also refereed to as Fennoscandia) where the ice was as much as several km thick during the LGM and where relative SLR is still falling at the rate of about 5-10 mm/yr.

4. Recent satellite data using TOPEX/Poseidon satellite altimeter obtains a value of SLR about 2.8mm/yr and possibly higher. 

5. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in its latest (2007) document has estimated SLR to be between 14 and 41 cm (mean value 29 cm) under the A1B (greenhouse gas) scenario in which earth’s mean temperature is expected to rise between 2.3C and 4.1C over next 100 years. The IPCC 2007 projects SLR due to thermal expansion (steric component) as about 23 cm while the contribution due to melting of glaciers and ice cap (eustatic component) is estimated as about 6 cm over next 100 years

Several recent papers have provided SLR numbers which need to be examined carefully in the context of present debate on global warming and sea level rise. A paper by Holgate (2007, Geophysical Research Letters) analyzed nine long and nearly continuous sea level records over one hundred years ( 1903-2003) and obtained a mean value of SLR as 1.74mm/yr, with higher values in the earlier part of the 20th century compared to the latter part.

A comprehensive paper by Prof (emeritus) Carl Wunsch and co-workers (J of Climate December 2007) generate over 100 million data points using a 23-layer general circulation ocean model which include different types of data ( salinity, sea surface temperature, satellite altimetry, Argo float profiles etc) and obtain an estimate of SLR as 1.6mm/yr for the period 1993-2004. A more recent paper by Wenzel & Schroter (Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans 2010) analyzes tide gauge records over a period 1900-2006 and obtains a mean value of 1.56mm/yr with NO statistically significant acceleration in sea level rise. The latest paper by Houston & Dean (Journal of Coastal Research 2011) carefully analyzes 57 tide gauge records each with a record length of 80 years which include 25 gauges with data from 1930-2010.  This study finds no acceleration in sea level rise, but instead a small average deceleration of -0.0014 and -0.0123 mm/yr2. These latest findings appear to contradict the general perception that sea level rise is escalating at present.

Recent observations and studies of breaking of ice shelves and ice sheet mass losses must be carefully assessed in the context of Arctic climatology which is now identified as being linked to low frequency atmosphere/ocean oscillation with a period of 60-80 years. An excellent temperature dataset for the entire Arctic basin has been prepared by Dr Igor Polyakov (University of Alaska) for the period 1860-2005.

This dataset shows clearly that the Arctic was at its warmest in 1935 and 1936 and the present temperature in the Arctic is about the same as it was in the mid-1930s. Further, the Arctic witnessed significant icecap and glacier melting during the 1920s and 1930s as evidenced by the following commentary ‘The Arctic sea is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer, great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared (US Weather Bureau 1922)”.

Also, the temperature history of Greenland shows that the 1920s and 1930s were the two warmest decades over Greenland, in a long dataset from 1880 to 2007. These observations and the US weather Bureau report strongly suggest that the Arctic witnessed significant ice melt and icecap mass loss during the 1920s and 1930s, however, no detailed quantitative calculations (of icecap mass loss) were possible then due to lack of adequate remote sensing technology.

An estimate of sea level rise can be made by observing that from 1940 to 2010, global sea level has risen by about 13-14 cm. Of this rise, the steric (thermal) component of SLR can be estimated at about 6 cm while the eustatic (melt part) contribution is about 8 cm.  If these estimates are used to extrapolate SLR to 2100, we obtain a maximum of 12 cm of SLR due to the eustatic (melting) contribution, while another 8 cm or so due to steric (thermal expansion) contribution.

In summary, the estimate of over 1m and higher rise in sea level by 2100 (in next 90 years) seems unrealistic, when analyzed in the context of present sea level rise which is just about 1.5mm to 2.0 mm per year with almost NO component of acceleration. For the global sea level to rise by over 1m in the next 90 years would require acceleration (in sea level rise) of up to 0.28mm/yr2, which is almost two orders of magnitude larger than present. This seems highly unlikely at present given the fact that the earth’s climate has not warmed in the last ten years and further that the earth’s mean temperature seems to be declining at present.

There is a definite need to obtain more realistic estimates of future SLR than what are available at present.

May 10th, 11:16

In a landmark court ruling in New Zealand that will send tremors around the world, the once respected Greenpeace is stripped of its charity status.

High Court Judge, Justice Paul Heath made the groundbreaking decision today after overwhelming evidence was presented that proved that the organization’s illegal activities were motivated by zealous political advocacy and crossed the line of what charities are permitted to do.

In a story making headlines in the New Zealand Herald (May 10, 2011) climate skeptics around the world will now be consulting lawyers in their respective countries to assess whether similar legal challenges may be made against the disgraced former charity. Dr. Tim Ball, who is currently facing court proceedings from Greenpeace supporters in Canada, urged skeptics to “pursue this globally.”

Climate Courtroom Worm Has Turned

In the U.S and Britain environmentalist activists have for decades sought to influence policymakers by a swath of unlawful protests often involving criminal damage and trespass. Several prominent UN climatologists have long aligned themselves with and been apologists for the radical and unlawful acts of these environmentalists.

As a consequence of the shock New Zealand ruling Greenpeace’s political activities mean it will be de-registered as a charity and thus lose the prestige and tax advantages associated with that status.

NASA’s problematic climatologist, James Hansen, flew to London to be an ‘expert witness’ to testify in the defense of climate activists prosecuted for such crimes.

Hansen flew to the UK in the case of the “Kingsnorth Six”, who had climbed up E.ON’s coal plant. The six had used Greenpeace’s climate change defence - that their actions were designed to prevent immediate harm to human life and property from climate change - and were acquitted.

Judge Rules Greenpeace Acted Illegally

Justice Paul Heath’s decision was as the result of an appeal launched by Greenpeace after a 2010 ruling by the Charities Commission which found its promotion of “disarmament and peace” was political rather than educational. Greenpeace members were ruled to have acted illegally.

Justice Paul Heath pronounced:

“Non-violent, but potentially illegal activities (such as trespass), designed to put (in the eyes of Greenpeace) objectionable activities into the public spotlight were an independent object disqualifying it from registration as a charitable entity.”

Davey Salmon, Greenpeace’s lawyer in the action was crestfallen at the failure of his argument that such political advocacy was acceptable in 21st century. Read more here.