Federally Funded Arctic Stupidity

 Federal report: Arctic much worse since 2006

By SETH BORENSTEIN | AP – 5 hrs ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal officials say the Arctic region has changed dramatically in the past five years — for the worse.
It’s melting at a near record pace, and it’s darkening and absorbing too much of the sun’s heat.

Right. NSIDC reported in their last Arctic Sea Ice News that autumn  freeze up was 40% faster than normal. It is pitch black in the Arctic, and ice extent is essentially identical to 1996.

The Arctic acts as Earth’s refrigerator, cooling the planet. What’s happening, scientists said, is like someone pushing the fridge’s thermostat much too high.

DMI reports that temperatures near the pole have been close to the long term mean for the past seven months.

“It’s not cooling as well as it used to,” Richter-Menge said.
The dramatic changes are from both man-made global warming and recent localized weather shifts, which were on top of the longer term warming trend, scientists said.

Right. Walt Meier at NSIDC says that it was warmer in Greenland 70 years ago.

The report, written by 121 scientists from around the world, said statistics point to a shift in the Arctic health in 2006. That was right before 2007, when a mix of weather conditions and changing climate led to a record loss of sea ice, from which the region has never recovered. This summer’s sea ice melt was the second worst on record, a tad behind 2007.

In other words, the trend since 2007 is upwards.

“We’ve got a new normal,” said co-author Don Perovich, a geophysicist at the Army Corps of Engineers Cold Research and Engineering Lab. “Whether it’s a tipping point and we’ll never recover, who’s to say?”

We do have a new normal. Climate scientists constantly making completely unsupportable claims while climate conferences are happening in exotic resorts. These people are hoping to keep the money flowing in and will say anything to maintain their lifestyle.

The report highlighted statistics to show an Arctic undergoing change:
—A NASA satellite found that 430 billion metric tons of ice melted in Greenland from 2010 to 2011, and the melting is accelerating. Since 2000, Greenland’s 39 widest glaciers shrunk by nearly 530 square miles, about the equivalent of 22 Manhattans.

http://news.yahoo.com/

Satellites are pieces of metal. They don’t find anything. People on the other hand often misinterpret data collected from equipment on satellites. Sea level has dropped dramatically since the start of 2010. This tells us that the net balance of ice is probably positive, not negative. It also tells us that the people making these claims are probably incompetent.

Multi-year ice has increased by almost 50% over the last three years. The ice is recovering, but they choose to ignore it.

http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20111004_Figure6.png

h/t to Ira