Al Gore and Richard Branson continued their fact-finding mission to Antarctica yesterday by visiting the Weddell Sea.
Sir Richard Branson also blogged about the changes: “The planet is changing before our eyes. We are heating it up. The governor of Texas will say “this is an act of God”. In fact this is an act of man.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/map/images/fnl/sfctmpmer_01a.fnl.anim.html
global warming antarctica change in size
Awesome example of the Gore Effect. How does he do it?
It is uncanny isn’t it?
Wow, that map is something else. Why do they use that projection? It really got me thinking…
Take the warm spot in the Russian Arctic and the colder-than-normal spot directly south of it. Eyeballing it, the warmer-than-normal spot goes from Longyearbyen in Svalbard, Norway, to Norilsk in northern Russia. Follow the link for the correct distance (approximately 2,272 kilometers):
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/distanceresult.html?p1=737&p2=381
Now let’s examine the colder-than-normal spot just to the south. Again eyeballing it since there are no cities on the map provided, it goes from Minsk, Belarus to Irkutsk, Russia (Lake Baikal). Follow the link below for the correct distance (4,884 kilometers).
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/distanceresult.html?p1=285&p2=378
So basically, when the average reader sees the NOAA map, visually the width of these colder-than-normal and warmer-than-normal spots seems roughly equivalent due to the distortion of the projection used. However, in reality the colder-than-normal spot is more than twice as wide as the warmer-than-normal spot!
The projection used has a large distortion near the poles, for obvious reasons (i.e. the North Pole is a point, not a line the same distance around as the Equator!). Why use it for a purpose such as this, where many if not most laymen will assume these two areas are of similar size?
This is called a Mercator Projection. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercator_projection
When you map it to a sphere using Hansen’s data, you get impossible temperature discontinuities, which prove his fraudulent prevaricated data (whether erroneously interpolated, or blatantly prevaricated).
It’s not a Mercator Projection. This is a Mercator Projection:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/Mercator_projection_SW.jpg/450px-Mercator_projection_SW.jpg
With a Mercator Projection, Greenland looks as big as Africa (obviously it’s much smaller).
It’s actually an equirectangular projection. See here for how it distorts near the poles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equirectangular_projection
Interesting. I learn something new every day.
It’s amazing how the richer and more famous they get, the greater the degree of the addling of their brains. Does their “celebrity” give them the impression that they are some sort of God, and the minions hang on every word they say? It would appear so, and judging by the adulation they attract from a large majority of followers who are incapable of thinking for themselves, the AGW religion shows no sign of abating.
I’d suggest Branson sees merit in it because his Arctic flyovers can be touted as green fuel saving etc etc.
Gores just a Dag on the rear..like in a sheep pen dag:-)
This line in the linked article demonstrates the true agenda: “The quickest way of solving the problem is to tax all fossil fuels and distribute the taxes back to every man and woman in the country.” Sounds a lot like Edenhofer.
I say, you need to properly define the problem (i.e. make the correct diagnosis), then solve (treat) it in a cost-effective manner. The problem is dependence on foreign oil, specifically that which we get from unfriendly countries. This is a national security issue which drives a flawed foreign policy which is costly in $ and lives. The solution is simultaneous 1) retrieval of domestic oil, methane, and coal, and 2) govt funding of basic science research into new innovative cheap safe alt energy tech (at a fraction of the cost of subsidies of old obsolete alt energy tech – representative example being Solyndra). Green energy tech is decades away (best case scenario, so we might as well use the fossil fuels we got, and not self-impose economic disadvantage to China and the Pacific Rim) from supplying a large fraction of our energy needs in a cost-effective fashion. Subsidizing obsolete tech just delays the invention of better tech. We neither taxed nor subsidized the typewriter industry in order to spur the computer age. But we did help fund research & development. In the medical field, an effective albeit flawed system is the NIH funding research grants.
20 degrees above normal for the Arctic ?!?!?!? They show this on the surface temperature projection map of the globe, but surely it is fatuous isn’t it, considering that only last week crab fishermen off Alaska had to abandon cages “trapped in an early freeze-up”. See also this picture of the ice extent.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/NEWIMAGES/arctic.seaice.color.000.png
The truth of this is all too simple:
CO2 is a “trace gas” in air, insignificant by definition, 1/7th the absorber of IR, heat energy, from sunlight as water vapor which has 80 times as many molecules captures 560 times as much heat making 99.8% of all “global warming.” CO2 does only 0.2% of it.
Carbon combustion generates 80% of our energy. Control and taxing of carbon would give the elected ruling class more power and money than anything since the Magna Carta of 1215 AD.
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I reckon Branson’s up to something. I don’t know why, but this worries me.