http://twitter.com/billmckibben/status/226745773398818816
Let’s have a look at the Greenland Ice Sheet today. Ninety-five percent of the ice sheet is spectacularly white, except for one strip along the southwest coast. I fly over that section of Greenland on a regular basis, and the ice there is covered with very dark soot or dirt – which appears to have blown in from somewhere. The dirt absorbs sunlight and causes the melt, not the other way around.
McKibben really needs to stop lying to his readers. He is going to get a bad reputation.
//ARCTIC.IO/OBSERVATIONS/8/2012-07-21/5-N62.975535-W52.107188
Looks like plenty of room for spectacular resorts and golf courses along the west coast. Buy your beachfront property before it is too late!
It looks so got. I buy me some real estate and put in a banana plantation. Still too cold for growing bananas though. They’re quite frost sensitive so I don’t think Greenland would be the place for them. We have trouble trying to grow bananas here in New Zealand because of frosts as it is 🙂
Did you go to the link? It is run by Jason Box – full-on environmental activist.
He plots the albedo of Greenland in altitude bands from MODIS data. There is only 11 years of data. The albedo which has gone significantly outside his one-sigma band is in the 2000-2500m band and the 2500-3200m band. The current temp at Summit Station is -12C and has been around that for a while now. Using the Dry Adiabatic Lapse Rate we would expect to find the freezing level 6,000′ lower than Summit Camp ie at 4,500′ (about 1,400m). Using the Saturated Adiabatic Lapse Rate the freezing level might be as low as 2,500′ ( about 800m).
In the 500-1000m band the albedo is within one-sigma of the 11 year average, in the 1000-1500m band the albedo is about 2% lower than the previous 11 years. There is no 1500-2000m band, obviously Greenland has no terrain (ice) between those altitudes.
Do this pair of ‘climate scientists’ expect there to be a whole lot of melting going on above the freezing level? There might be some sublimation going on where it’s sunny.
Doesn’t it ever occur to these guys to wonder what’s really going on when something just doesn’t add up?
Seems to me exactly the opposite of what they think is happening could actually be happening.
And is there a possible callibration error issue putting a spanner in the works of MODIS data? Had it before with some of these other measurements of ice-loss!
Should have been.
Calibration or sensor error.
I wonder if they corrected IR reflectivity for solar azimuth
The notion that man-made CO2 is causing the Greenland ice sheet to melt is beyond ridiculous. The suggestion that Mother Nature could impact albedo levels is, of course, never considered by the “consensus” (e.g. non-skeptical) experts. Any warmth or melting ice on the planet must be due to CO2. This infallible methodology they call “climate science.”
The pseudo-scientific proclamations of uber-alarmists like McKibben are an indication of their growing desperation. Their pet AGW theory is collapsing, so they’ve embarked on a campaign to salvage it and their tattered reputations using any means at their disposal.
When the climate turns cold — and there are plenty of indications we are headed in that direction, perhaps within the next decade (see negative PDO and grand solar minimum) — we won’t have to listen to these babbling neurotics any longer. But that may be small consolation. The green energy policies of the eco-fanatics and AGW prophets of doom have been been very destructive and may soon threaten our power grid and industrial capacity. Will we have sufficient energy production to keep us warm or enough food to prevent us from starving if another Maunder Minimum or Little Ice Age arrives?
I read about this at WUWT….. what are they talking about the albedo being zero? We can see the white from here!!! And even the darker ice on the west side wouldn’t have an albedo of zero.
Let’s think. What physical substance has an albedo of exactly zero? There’s only one I can think of: imaginary unicorn farts. I guess a pile of monatomic carbon might get pretty close to zero, though. So, there we have it.
Lol, that’s the black body they’re always talking about!!!! Actually, upon further inspection, they’re not claiming zero…. well the non-lunatics aren’t. But, it still seems very off. http://www.meltfactor.org/blog/?p=514 Notice the reported albedo at 500-1000m. It is exactly the same as last year. But, this year, somehow that same albedo at 500-1000m means a significantly less albedo at 1000-1500m. That makes no sense.
Some comments were referring to the albedo as being zero, but I think that was based on a misreading of the graph scales. The scales start at 72%, not zero, which is, of course, bad statistical practice, but I still can’t believe that anyone would misinterpret that as zero.
Surely one of the first things you do when reading such a graph is to check the vertical scale.
Most of the ice sheet is zinc oxide white
Hey Peepul:
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“McKibben really needs to stop lying to his readers. He is going to get a bad reputation.”
Don’t forget Peepul:
McKibben is the dude Al Gore relied on as the ‘stimulus’ for An Inconvenient Truth.
I thought Al’s “stimulus” was an unwitting redhead in a motel room
That or Himself. 😆