Two years ago, Joe Romm announced the end of Great Lakes ice.
Two of the three highest ice years have occurred in the two years since Joe Romm announced the demise of Great Lakes ice.
Product – Product Search – Canadian Ice Service
“It’s becoming certain that, like the rest of the country, the Great Lakes are feeling the effects of climate change.”
It is becoming certain that fraudsters like Joe Romm are pushing an agenda.
Geez, Steve, do Romm and company actually believe the stuff they are pushing is true, or do they think regurgitating falsehoods is justified by what they are trying to achieve? I feel confident that a certain Administration holds the latter belief, but I am just not sure about people like Romm.
They know.
They are pushing a Political Agenda. The Climategate e-mails refer to The Cause.
Dr Happer was fired by Al Gore in 1993 just after Bill Clinton signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (12/06/92) and about a year before the treaty was ratified (21/03/94) by Congress. Do not forget that Al Gore Sr and Jr were financed by the Communist Armand Hammer and Clinton got campaign funds from China. In return Clinton gutted US manufacturing and gave China our technology. link Clinton also signed the five banking laws that collapsed the US housing market and the economy in 2008. link
Gail, It was GHW Bush that signed the treaty. Clinton was not inaugurated until 01/20/1993.
With effective memories as short as one week (and possibly much less in the case of hard-core libs), I don’t think it matters all that much what ‘they’ pump out to their sycophantic following.
What matters is at/just before election time is getting a message out, a narrative established which (1) turns out their voting base and (2) turns off the other party’s base (effectively suppress the vote) by turning off voters to the whole ‘messy’ process of politics. My $0.02 anyway ….
that’s quite an interesting chart, there seems to be a trend of increasing maxima since 1981. Something to worry about.
Climate is more or less cyclical. As Dr Robert Brown (physicist Duke Univ.) said it is a “bistable” chaotic system at least at present. (A third state is evident if you go back far enough in time.) It bounces around one ‘Strange Attractor’ and then if enough factors add up it switches (rather rapidly) to bouncing around the other ‘Strange Attractor’ For example the switch from the Wisconsin Ice age to the Holocen happened in a year!
Back to Dr Brown:
Dr Brown goes on to say,
as for the “bistable” bit — if you look back at the first figure, you’ll see only two states in the last 2 million years — warm phase (interglacial) and cold phase (glaciation). There is no evidence of a warmer phase than the warm phase! Not even back when the average temperature was some 3C warmer than it is today — and that’s as much as the worst case CAGW prediction — and stable. There is no “tipping point”. Even when previous interglacials spiked up 2C to 3C warmer than today, they didn’t stay there because the warm phase is unstable, or rather, it is very stable from above, not so stable to cold excursions.
Now this is something I know a bit about. Underneath this sort of behavior there is a very convoluted phase sheet with at least one fold and a surface or line of stability on a middle unstable sheet or branch. As long as one isn’t too near the folds, one is stable to temperature fluctuations that don’t “cross the line”. However, all things are not equal — something moves the Earth along these sheets over to the real tipping points — the ones that drop warm phase back down to cold or vice versa. The general trend of the Holocene has been cooling from the Holocene Optimum, and it is (as noted) not at all unlikely that we are near the tipping point — down — although we may have saved ourselves with CO_2 for at least a few centuries.
What might trigger a transition? Perhaps an extended Maunder minimum. Perhaps something else. Our problem is that we don’t know why the ice age ended. We don’t know why the Younger Dryas happened as a bobble after the world warmed up. We don’t know why the Holocene is warm or the preceding period of glaciation cold. We don’t know when, or why, the Holocene will end, or whether anthropogenic CO_2 is having any effect on this either way.
The number of things we don’t know that no climate scientist who is honest will claim that we know — is large enough to make me pull my little remaining hair and scream! And this is the basis of our settled science?….
If the worst nightmares of CAGW come true, and the world warms 3C by the end of the century, that is still a very good thing compared to the end of the Holocene. The latter is wrath-of-god fimbulwinter type stuff, with the temperate zone and breadbasket of the world reduced to an icy desert, with half of Europe, all of Canada and the Northern US, all of Siberia, all of Mongolia, half of China — all gone. In as little as decades. Only if we have a world-spanning civilization, with sound and reliable energy resources can we hope to survive and thrive.
The Koch brothers have been dumping their champagne buckets into the lakes at night, or something.
Look! Big Oil!
Crystal, no doubt.
Joe Romm said:
“Last year, only 5 percent of the lakes froze over –- compared to 1979 when ice coverage was as much as 94 percent.”
We can cherry pick too:
“Last year, 92 percent of the lakes froze over –- compared to 1982-83 when ice coverage was as low as 14 percent.”
Joe Romm, climate douche
It can be a lot of snow in the Great Lakes region.
Yes. Where I live we had over 158 inches of snow so far this year.
Winter started and will end up in the US in Buffalo?
http://www.accuweather.com/en/us/buffalo-ny/weather-radar?play=1
The White Buffalo is back again?
http://www.accuweather.com/en/ca/toronto/m5g/weather-radar/55488
Aren’t the water levels recovering as well?
The great lakes water levels recovered last year and the water temperature was lower than normal (less evaporation)
Dr Spencer had this June 30th, 2014 Lake Superior Water Level Sees Fastest Rise in 98 Years
Thanks, Gail. There should be less wintertime evaporation with the ice cover, and thus less lake effect snow, but my son in Michigan has been heavily blanketed with snow this winter.
James with the loopy jets the moisture can come from the gulf too.
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa.gif
The water temp may be lower because of ice from the previous winter not melting until June
I have read that that is in fact the case. You would almost expect that the freeze up in winter 2014 would leave colder lakes and thus a bigger freeze in 2015. That sounds a bit like feedback but it seems a mistake to expect unchecked feedback.
I believe they are at or above their long-term average on all of the Great Lakes. I live in Detroit, and both the local papers — Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press — have covered the recovery. Interestingly, neither went back to the shaman who were prophesizing that the Great Lakes were in permanent decline because of global warming.
Reblogged this on Climatism.
The title is misleading. There were several years in 1970’s with high ice cover.
Joe Romm Cherry picked the 1979 date in his comment to try to bolster his ridiculous assertion. Now SSG is doing so too by eliminating consideration of the 1970’s data in the bar graph, and commits the same error by saying “third highest on record.”
Why don’t you go to the Canadian Ice Service and find a chart that will go back further and then share that with us? Let us know what you find.
I just did:
There is the Graph Tony put up from http://iceweb1.cis.ec.gc.ca/Prod20/page2.xhtml?CanID=11080&grp=&lang=en
And also Ice Cover Graph – Historical Total Accumulated Ice Coverage
http://ice-glaces.ec.gc.ca/bg/20150323180000_CVCHACTGL.jpg
Bigger graph:
http://iceweb1.cis.ec.gc.ca/Prod20/page3.xhtml
Joel O’Bryan complained that “SSG is doing so too (cherry picking) by eliminating consideration of the 1970’s data in the bar graph” My point was that it does not seem like the Canadian Ice Service produces graphs that go back earlier than ’81 or so. So if Joel has a beef, he should take it up with the Canadian Ice Service.
http://oi57.tinypic.com/dc33vt.jpg
Ice has already appeared on November 26, 2014. The highest level of February 26, 2015 – 88%.
Please compare the average.
Of course that’s all CIS lists on their prepared downloadable graphics. But we also know from:
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/ice/imgs/IceCoverAvg1973_2014.jpg
…. that there was a 3 year period, 1977-1979, where there was also a stretch of high ice extents on the GLs. The alarmists frequently employ hyperbole to try to exaggerate their case. My point is the data is on the side of skepticism in this case. Using hyperbole, such as “highest on record,” does not bolster the skeptical case when there are records to refute that statement too. Science doesn’t need the support of hyperbole when standing on data. Leave climate hyperbole to the alarmist pseudoscientists and their media pundits.
So I guess it would be more accurate to say that this years Great Lakes Ice Coverage was the fifth highest on record and the third highest in the last 35 years. (seeing as the
coverage reached at least 88.75% on Saturday, Feb. 28) Thanks for the additional information.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/more-ice-great-lakes-now-during-2014-polar-vortex
Now, the big question. Has the Clime Syndicate changed how they measured the Great Lakes Ice Extent ?
I’m ten miles from Lake Erie and let me tell you, it is no warmer this year than last year. To be honest, we had constant snow cover from End of December to First week of March. That is unusual as we usually have a thaw in January and at least melt some snow.
Based on the on-the-ground observations, I do not believe the Great Lakes Ice cover could be that much less than last year. In fact, I was expecting another record.
I could be wrong. Yet when so many other numbers get adjusted by the Clime Syndicate to match the theory, I have to wonder if they quickly made adjustments to the Great Lakes Ice Extent measurement system after last year’s embarrassing numbers.
It would be most inconvenient to have 2 record Great Lakes Ice Extent years in a row……
I was wondering the same thing.
We know the ClimAstrologists declared the Great Lakes to be “Ice Free”on June 7th only to have people posting pictures of Icebergs on facebook pages.
June 10th http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/06/june-10-update-will-iceberg-on-lake-superior-last-till-july/
A photo from June 10th
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/lake-superior-icebergs-2.jpg
June 12th
June 13th Mile-long Icezilla Imaged by Landsat
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/06/mile-long-icezilla-imaged-by-landsat/
I wonder if it’s possible to do the “pixel-counting-magic” on the Great Lakes to see if there is some “official” numeric “jiggery-pokery” going on with the reported Great Lakes Ice coverage numbers.
Last summer was not that warm, and the Winter started off with a bang with the big freeze in November.
It just doesn’t seem possible that this year’s ice isn’t nearly the same as last year.
The lakes started out colder this winter however ice extent has a lot to do with wind.
Heck I saw Lake Jordan, the reservoir for Raleigh NC, freeze up with a thin coating of ice a few weeks back.
We had a relatively mild December in 2014 and I don’t think this January was quite as cold as last year. That might explain slightly less ice compared to last year, even though February this year was off the charts in terms of cold.
Shazam, this winter the cold hit the eastern Great Lakes hard, last winter it hit harder in Wisconsin and the western Great Lakes. That’s why last year, Lake Superior and Lake Michigan were more frozen than this year, and this year Lake Ontario froze more than last year.
Compare these pics: http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/glcfs/compare_years/
Morgan, you may well be correct. I thought that it was more brutal further north and I occasionally travel to Detroit and they suffered an identical winter to Cleveland.
Still and all, this http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2015/03/16/4190281_ice-jam-pushes-up-into-ohio-cemetery.html?rh=1 didn’t happen last year with the record Great Lakes ice.
The current state of climate science reliability is such that, like that of the liar-in-chief, even if they were to accidentally tell the truth, no one would believe them.
Gail,
I ran some quick calculations on the image you provided there. Assuming the average seagull ranges in height from 12-15 inches, comparing to the height of the ice to the water’s edge against it, I come up with that iceberg’s depth to be anywhere from 57.6 ft – 72 ft thick (ice is 7/8 as dense as liquid water, visible height to known reference, etc.)
Knowing this season’s Great Lakes’ ice has been mangled due to strong storm winds blowing it around, I would suspect there are likely some similarly thick ice packs out there.
We also can see that the temperature transect on Lake Superior is showing a marked decline in lower depths of the eastern half of the lake for today’s date (27/3) compared to last year’s near-record ice extent:
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/res/glcfs/compare_years/
That only portends more cold water at depth and less thermal retention going into the summer months.
Thank you,
It is not the ice cover but the temperature going into the next winter that counts.
These data should make people think, because if in October will be low solar activity the same pattern polar vortex appears again.
ren, what is your view of next year, (2015 -2016) with the California drought and what has come to be called the RRR. (Ridiculously Resilient Ridge)
Shows his (Romm’s) predictive ability to be near, if not at, zero …
What_an_idiot.