As the breathtakingly ignorant deranged blogger in residence predicted, high pressure in the western Arctic has been compacting the ice thus and reducing extent. Red shows ice extent loss, and green shows ice extent gain.
Now compare (below) what happened during the same week in 2012, when a large cyclone broke up the thin ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, and overturned the water down to a great depth. This event sharply cooled the deeper seawater, and opened the door for the large increase in ice which has occurred over the past two years.
Just listen to those crickets…. Far, far more pleasant to listen to than the bleating and pontificating of the CAGW believers.
{crickets}
North of King William Island is all ice. The Northwest passage is closed.
“… in 2012 .. a large cyclone broke up the thin ice in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, and overturned the water down to a great depth.
This event sharply cooled the deeper seawater, and opened the door for the large increase in ice which has occurred over the past two years.“
That’s new Steve, thanks for the insight.
Just what I was thinking. Had not considered ‘overturned water down to a great depth’ before and consequent impact of this cooler (or hotter for that matter) water to greater depths on future conditions in the same location. Makes complete sense.
Similarly, I was speaking to a friend last night about the warmists’ necessity of subsidizing alternative energy and to my surprise he stated; the subsidies will only be temporary. I questioned his logic and he said to keep an eye on oil/gas prices. His theory was the warmists were pushing for continual rising oil/gas prices to eventually make those costs comparable to the currently higher costs of solar/wind. In doing so, fossil fuels (other than abundant coal – my friend’s theory could be an additional reason why warmists want to ban that cheap energy) would eventually cost as much as alternative energy which would give oil/gas no monetary benefit. Couple that with the negative campaign (dirty oil, big oil, etc) waged on fossil fuels, solar and wind use would become the predominant energy choice.
This theory made perfect sense after considering how persistent warmists have been in opposing the Keystone Pipeline. Why else would supposed environmentalist be against such a safe method of transporting crude oil other than their ultimate goal of artificially raising the cost of oil/gas? A pipeline would only lead to flat or lower costs of transporting crude to refineries and consequently, flat/lower costs of oil/gas. Rather than have to continue to subsidize solar/wind, simply make oil/gas as expensive and alleviate the need to subsidize alternative energy – i.e.- it all costs the same.
What my friend proposed blew me away as I had never before considered that artificially raising fossil fuel prices would make alternative energy appear more palatable. In my defense, it really hurts to think like a leftist.
Bottom line – Like churning seas impacting surface ice build-up in following years, I had never before thought of artificially raising oil/gas prices to even out the financial playing field of competing alternative energies…and as with Tony’s postulation…makes perfect sense.
Artificially raising prices is well known. They’ve been trying it for a while. But it’s not going to happen. The problem is that renewables are too expensive even with subsidies. The long term costs are too high. IOW, renewable energy has too high an upkeep cost. It goes beyond price. They keep breaking down and are unreliable. You can’t generate power when you need it. There’s a whole host of other problems.
Also, in this liberal Utopia, if people ever start switching, oil prices will drop like a rock regardless of what they do.
A little tidbit about the 2012 storm which NSIDC chose not to discuss. They talked about the warm water coming up from depth and melting the ice in 2012, but no mention of the obvious corollary that the water at depth cooled..