ACTIC SEA-ICE –2023 Minimum–

The sea-ice seems to have passed its minimum extent for this melt-season, and the refreeze has begun.

Once again the sea-ice failed to melt away during the summer, which I wish it would do, if only to demonstrate no disaster results from it.

My personal assessment is that the arctic likely was largely ice-free during the Medieval Warm Period, and perhaps, briefly, as recently as 1817. (While this definitely has an effect on northern lands, the effect is mostly beneficent. For example, the Greenland Vikings were able to provide food and liquid water for livestock during the winter, at numbers unthinkable today: Several thousand cattle and roughly a hundred thousand sheep and goats.)

The entire theory that CO2 would cause the sea-ice to undergo a “death spiral”, and the resultant ice-free Arctic Sea would cause the planet to overheat and oceans to “boil” was and is poppycock, based on an idea our planet was and is terribly fragile, when our planet was and is tough.

If our planet was as delicate as some suggest, and able to be knocked out of kilter by the perturbation of a single “feedback”, it would have long ago since happened. The fact of the matter is that the “feedbacks” that exist on our planet tend to restore balance, and have done so over and over, despite terrific volcanic eruptions and meteor strikes and solar storms.

I am in no mood to lay out all the evidence for the above paragraph. I’ve been there and done that, and all it does is get me censored and shadow-banned. For example, back in 2015 I wrote a Post which recieved 2000 views the week I published it, which has now pretty much vanished from search engines:

ARCTIC SEA ICE -Not all it’s cracked up to be- (August 3-9, 2015 — Concluded)

The funny thing about that old post, now eight years old, is A.) It correctly foresees the current political nonsense and B.) I am personally rooting for less sea-ice, but for politically incorrect reasons.

The political nonsense basically boils down to a pseudoscientific sort of “Fake News”. The characters involved are well aware they mouth balderdash, but deem the scam worth the pay they recieve. They in essense have sold their souls.

Susan Crockford does a very good job of describing how “polar bear scientists” Ian Stirling and Andrew Derocher were able to get polar bears listed as “endangered” despite the fact polar bear populations were increasing and they were not threatened, and then used that “danger” to milk funding and please certain politicians:

Climate activists are silent on polar bears because their doom-mongering blew up in their faces

The divorce between the political narrative of “Climate Change” and the work of true scientists has gradually widened over the past 35 years, since James Hansen alerted congress to “immanent disaster” in 1988 (with “immanent” redefined since then, but still used by pseudoscience).

Increasingly there is little effort to be scientific at all, for “the science is settled.” There is no further work for scientists to do. All scientists may now depart. Only true believers are welcome to the trough brimming with tax dollars. But….the trough is threatened. The murmuring of taxpayers is increasingly a rumbling grumble, like a lion about to roar. Therefore, the politicians and pseudoscientists complaisant in this almighty scam are increasingly frantic. They are cats on a tin roof of their own making, and the heat is getting turned up.

There’s not much I can do about this messy situation. I gave my advice decades ago, and it was to be honest and tell the truth. “Stand by the truth and Truth will stand by you.” No one wanted to listen, and I was actually excluded from the parties. Now? Now I am not on the hot tin roof the cats are on.

Also, I get to ignore all the political hoopla and notice what is actually occurring, and must freely confess it is not what I expected.

The warming of the oceans, (likely due to increased seismic activity along the midocean rifts exposing lava to deep sea waters), is making a mess of certain cycles I would expect to see, had the AMO and PDO followed more traditional patterns. My predications are wrong. I can admit it.

There should have been a far greater “recovery” of sea-ice north of Siberia than we have seen. There is an actual tendril of multiyear ice in the East Siberian Sea, but it is tiny compared to what I expected.

Given time, I hopefully can explain further, but in a nutshell I’d say that if the lava-warming persists we may see less sea-ice next summer. It will have nothing to do with CO2, and by next summer, (should the political situation continue to deteriorate), I don’t think many will care all that much about arctic sea-ice. The Alarmists may finally see the low extents they have yearned for, but no one will give a damn.

Stay tuned.

MURMURINGS OF UPRISING

I was alerted early on, to the phenomenon of Oliver Anthony. I think he had a quarter million views of his song on YouTube, after two days. The song initially made me weep, at the same time it filled me with an angry resolve. In this respect it seemed very similar to the Austin Moody song, “I’m Just Saying”, which was also produced independently of the big music studios, and also swiftly passed a quarter million views on You Tube.

When Austin’s song first came out in May it, of course, immediately received the wrath of the so-called “left”, which is actually the entitled “elite” of the Swamp. Such “elite” are no more “left” than they are “right”. They don’t care about what the American “left” debates with the American “right”, for such rigorous debate involves a two-party-system, and the “elite” are know-it-alls who think they alone should make all decisions, for the rest of us. They are a one-party system, ruled by their personal greed. Therefore they think they alone should determine what music is popular. It irritates the heck out of them when “we the people” say their music sucks, and that we prefer a song like Austin’s.

I am fascinated by the push-back displayed by the public, when they ignore the “elite” and, in some strange manner, ignore the newspapers and the television and all other “authorities”, and make an unknown song a “hit”.

YouTube involves a great many small people publishing not only music, but criticisms of music. The criticisms are often called “reactions”, and simply involve between one and five people listening to a song, and pausing the song to state how they are moved, both positively and negatively. Often they state they are listening to the song for the first time, but quite often they are only pretending to listen to it for the first time. In either case, one gets interesting input, from people who are outside your ordinary contacts.

Because I developed the habit of listening to “reactions” during the time Austin Moody’s song rose upon the swells of popularity, I did the same thing for Oliver Anthony’s song. But Oliver’s song was different. It’s popularity did not stop growing at any normal level. After three days it was well past a million, and after four days it rocketed past seven million. After two weeks it was shooting past thirty million, and now, in its third week, it has past fifty million.

I have spent a surprising amount of time on Youtube for the past three weeks. It is surprising because I don’t approve of people who ignore fresh air and get too engrossed in their cell phones. But I have become one of those people. It is amazing how many people are blown away by this simple song. I have listened to over fifty “reactions”, from people here and in Europe, and only two were snide and negative. Many spoke of goose bumps rising on their arms, and many had facial expressions move from an expectation of some inferior music to the verge of tears, or actual tears. The reactions are amazing to watch, as is the Oliver’s backyard performance. Watch how the performer’s face gets redder as he sings, and how his fingers are shaking by the end. The fellow’s heart is in this song.

I just checked, and this single song now has 58 million views. This, I suspect, makes the “elite” very nervous. After all, they like to feel they control what is “popular”. Obviously, they don’t. In fact this song suggests that they themselves are unpopular. Very.

I’m not certain what comes next. This song seems to be like a wake-up call. It even may wake some of the woke. But what follows?

God knows. In the opinion of Oliver Anthony himself, he is just a little person, and God is responsible for his power. He has refused an 8 million dollar recording contract, stating the recording studios are even more sleazy than he imagined. When his song was used by Republicans, he stated his song attacked Republicans as well as Democrats. Obviously God chose him because he is not susceptible to seductions that might seduce me. But Oliver does not say what follows. We apparently need to wait on God for that.

But I will confess the song brought tears to my eyes.

At age seventy I'm no cry-baby.
In fact I laugh when perhaps I should weep.
I've been toughened by time, by men shady
and crooked, by hookers who slink and creep
And enslave the naive. I have been naive
Myself, and have felt indignant outrage
When I saw those who pretend truth deceive.
I should have seen it coming. Turn the page
And now I do see it coming, and laugh
At the awakening of a poor chump.
But now the chump's America. A wrath
Awakens in me. As I feel my heart pump
I see a kind people awaken from sleeping
And tears on my cheeks prove I'm not beyond weeping.

Despite the rampant jackals of ignorance,
The cynical demons all mocking hope,
Clodhoppers stomping the toes of my dance,
Filth sneering that to be pure's to be a dope,
God's still in control. He will use each soul
Like a marble in a game with billions
Of marbles. No one man will play the role
Of king, but a light brighter than the sun's
Will shimmer like the ocean's glittering.
God is tired of people mistaking 
Lone stars for His glory. He'll make men sing
Of His grace, and by abdicating
Their undeserved thrones and dropping to knees
Our world will know peace, and receive harmonies.
 

Hidden in the ruins that I've become
Is some gold. My ego may be shattered
But that snob deserved the boot. Now I'm numb
to flattery; vanities that mattered
Are boxed away like a little child's toys
When he grew up; I'm more whole without them,
And am strangely thankful when time destroys
My unbloomed buds, each on a thorny stem,
Dried and rattling in winter's cruel wind.
What good I have done is now long past
As are the many ways I have sinned.
I'm done with banality at long last,
And now can return to singing the song
That's been waltzing the highways with me all along.

GREENLAND MELT-SEASON ENDS

Greenland tends to accumulate more snow than it melts for ten months every year, from September through June. Only in July and August does there tend to be more melting than accumulating. (Not that there can’t be summer snows or winter thaws, but such events are brief and usually don’t alter the typical trend.) Only during the record-setting melt of 2012 did the thawing begin in early June. (Red line in graph to lower right, below.) Even in 2012 the “year” (Sept 1 to August 31) wound up with 40 more gigatons than it started with. On a more average year 380 gigatons accumulate, and last year (2022-2023) roughly 400 gigatons accumulated, and the year before (2021-2022 roughly 500 gigatons accumulated.

A this point it is important to visualize how big a gigaton is. A gigaton is a billion metric tons, and a metric ton is 2200 pounds. So, on your bathroom scale, a gigaton would weigh 2,200,000,000,000 pounds. Another way to visualize it is to picture a massive iceberg 2 miles long, half a mile wide, and 1100 feet tall. (With 9/10th under water, such a berg would still rise 110 feet above the waves.)

Imagine 400 such icebergs. That is how much snow has accumulated atop Greenland since a year ago, on September 1, 2022. So why are we worried about Greenland melting away? (Not that I am really worried, or that you are really worried, but we are suppose to be worried.)

Well, besides the snow falling on top of Greenland there is ice slowly flowing off of Greenland in the form of glaciers, and to achieve a “balance” (or equilibrium), glaciers must calve 400 gigatons of ice into the sea.

It is not all that easy to measure the weight of all the icebergs calving off Greenland, and the situation is exacerbated by the tendency of the press to become wild and to sensationalize the calving of glaciers, which makes glaciers shorter, and also to sensationalize the times the glaciers extend and do not calve, which makes them longer.

For example, in 2011 a fracture formed on Petersmann Glacier and roughly a gigaton of ice broke free, which was seen as a sign of global warming.

The loss of this ice is clearly seen by comparing a satellite picture from 2011 with 2012, however when we look at a current picture we see the ice has regrown past even the length it was at in 2011. (Hat tip: Tony Heller at Real Climate Science)

Oddly, the press now reports that the advance of the glacier is also a proof of Global Warming. Apparently the ice has advanced due to “more rapid melting”, or so they say. When pressed to give evidence of such melt, or evidence the glacier has sped up, or evidence the ice is not “grounded” on bedrock but now thinner and “afloat”, one discovers the press doesn’t like being pressed. They hand the ball off to a man in a white coat who self-identifies as a scientist, and who says it is so because he theorizes it is so, but also is unable to give evidence. Hmm. Could it be we are not dealing with true, scientific inquiry, but with a political narrative based around milking a cash cow?

Far be it from me to accuse anyone. I’m merely inquiring.

One fascinating difficulty the true scientists are wrestling with is the fact the continental crust beneath such massive glaciers is very plastic, and undergoes isostatic repression when weight increases and isostatic rebound when weight diminishes. Some of these responses are slow, but some are surprisingly nimble.

For example, the weight of massive glaciers may have depressed the rock bottom of Hudson Bay a half mile, and the subsequent recovery continues to this day in a manner that can be measured by a GPS, thousands of years after the ice melted. However using the same GPS, the retreat or advance of a glacier can be seen to have an immediate effect on the rock it flows over and beside.

This throws a wrench into the workings of calculating the mass of the ice upon Greenland. If the continent below is depressed a foot by the weight of the ice above, and the surface of the ice only lowers six inches, then the ice is actually six inches thicker though its surface is six inches lower. You can imagine how this complicates measurements, especially when the bottom of buried valleys lower as the sides grow, (a geological phenomenon which created amazingly steep-walled fjords in Norway.)

All we can be certain of is that what the snowfall totals show us. 2012 was an aberration. It has been far more common to see above average accumulation and below average melt over Greenland, during recent years, and the year that just ended was no exception.

To me this neither suggests warming nor suggests cooling. It suggests increased moisture. However to discuss the topic in such a sane and logical manner seems quite above the IQ of those whose intellects have been dwindled by greed to a single-minded focus upon squatting down to milk a cash cow.