Real Climate Science

Seth Borenstein has taken Greenland propaganda to an impressive new level.

Greenland’s glaciers are melting like never before, especially Helheim – Los Angeles Times

Looking at his claims individually.

This is where Earth’s refrigerator door is left open, where glaciers dwindle and seas begin to rise.

Nonsense. Sea level has been rising for 20,000 years – most of the time much faster than at present. There is much less ice on Earth than there was 20,000 years ago – when New York and Chicago were under more than a mile of ice.

File:Post-Glacial Sea Level.png – Wikimedia Commons

By season’s end, about 440 billion tons of ice — maybe more — will have melted or calved off Greenland’s giant ice sheet, experts estimate.The average for this time of year is less than 18 billion tons.

Greenland’s surface has gained 160 billion tons of new ice this year, after gains of 500 and 540 billion tons during the last two years.  Average loss since the spring peak is 225 billion tons (plus calving loss) – not 18 billion tons.

2017      2018      2019

In one of the closest towns, Kulusuk, the morning temperature reached 52 degrees Fahrenheit — warm enough for shirtsleeves.

Meaningless out of context propaganda. The average summer maximum temperature there is 51 degrees. They have had 4,675 days over 52F since 1898. Highest temperature recorded there was 78 degrees on first seen on June 18, 1916. Summer daily maximum temperatures have been trending downwards at 2.4 degrees per century since the late 19th century.

Summer maximum temperatures at Tasiilaq are about the same as they were prior to the cold period from 1960-2000.

Average temperatures this summer have been about the same as summer 1916, but 1916 had a more warm days. This year only had one.

The Helheim Glacier has lost about three square miles of ice since 2012, while the Petermann Glacier has gained more than ten times that much.

Glaciers here do shrink in the summer and grow in the winter, but nothing like this year.

Incorrect. The Petermann Glacier is more than 100 feet thick at its terminus. There is no way ice that thick can retreat in summer, and has been growing steadily for the past seven years.

Photos near the terminus of the Petermann glacier

Greenland glaciers are melting at a very slow rate, if at all. Compare to 80 years ago when they were “facing catastrophic collapse.”

17 Dec 1939, Page 15 – Harrisburg Sunday Courier

By 1947, the Arctic had warmed 10 degrees, and scientists were predicting catastrophic sea level rise, unless they got money to start an international agency.

31 May 1947 – ARCTIC PHENOMENON – Trove

Summit Station, a research camp nearly 2 miles high and far north, warmed to above freezing twice this year for a record total of 16.5 hours. Before this year, that station was above zero for only 6.5 hours in 2012, once in 1889 and also in the Middle Ages.

Incorrect. Summit station never got above freezing this summer.

(24) DMI on Twitter: “??Var der rekordvarmt på indlandsisen i fredags? Nej!

According to NOAA, Summit camp was above freezing on six days in 2012.

The one thing with Seth Borenstein got right in this article is that Greenland was warm during the Middle Ages, when CO2 levels were very low.

TimesMachine: January 22, 1934 – NYTimes.com

Seth is keeping up the long tradition of Greenland fake news. According to the Guardian, next year is the tipping point and sea level will rise 23 feet.

Greenland ice sheet faces ‘tipping point in 10 years’ | Environment | The Guardian

So, the same story as 1952.

Dr. William S. Carlson, an Arctic expert, said to-night that the Polar icecaps were melting at anastonishingg and unexplained rate and were threatening to swamp seaports by raising the ocean levels.

February 16, 1952

18 Feb 1952 – POLAR ICE THAW INCREASING

What I find disturbing is not that Seth Borenstein is spreading misinformation – that is what journalists do for a living. What troubles me is that a small handful of scientists like Josh Willis, Tom Mote and Jason Box allow themselves to be used in misleading propaganda articles like this, over and over again.

The Greenland melt season has ended, with the surface mass balance showing a gain of 160 billion tons since September 1, 2018.

polarportal/surface/SMB_curves_LA_EN_20190823.png

Over the past three years, Greenland’s surface has gained 1.2 trillion tons of new ice.

2017      2018      2019

Experts in the press corps have generously interpreted the data for us, and determined that there is a climate emergency and it is President Trump’s fault.

Their highly researched journalism was based on a single incorrect temperature reading in the center of the Greenland ice sheet.

(24) DMI on Twitter: “??Var der rekordvarmt på indlandsisen i fredags? Nej!

Community

Their logo looks very familiar.

Barack Obama is so worried about sea level rise, he is buying a $15 million dollar home on the beach with his $200,000 salary.

Barack and Michelle Obama buying $14.85M Martha’s Vineyard estate

During the three weeks from August 8-28, 1936, Clinton, Missouri was over 100F every day, including ten days over 110F. The average maximum temperature was 109F.

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/all/USC00231711.dly

Temperatures have been plummeting since the 19th century, with this year (AKA “hottest year ever”) averaging more than twenty degrees cooler than 1936.  The only other year which came close to 1936 was 1913.

August temperatures were much hotter when CO2 was close to pre-industrial levels.

On this date in 1936, there were 100 degree temperatures from California to Pennsylvania. Seven states were over 110 degrees, and 24 states were over 100 degrees.

The weather man said “something is wrong” with the weather.

23 Aug 1936, 1 – The Morning Chronicle at Newspapers.com

Weather like that is incomprehensible now to most Americans, which is what NASA and NOAA are counting on when they try to erase it.

NASA 1999    NASA 2019

MASIE shows Arctic sea ice extent 9% less than the same date in 2012.

DATASETS/NOAA/G02186/masie_4km_allyears_extent_sqkm.csv

But NSIDC maps show 9% more ice than 2012.

2012   2019

Apparently an 18% discrepancy is close enough for government work, which will be used to make multi-trillion dollar superstition based policy decisions.

Greta Thunberg doesn’t go to school, because adults around her have convinced her the climate situation is simply too bad. Instead she is traveling on an expensive yacht to the US, preaching imminent doom as a “magnet for hope.” She has been told that children had a much brighter future when CO2 levels were lower, like a century ago. Greta believes greenhouse gases cause catastrophic heatwaves, natural disasters and disease, which will ruin her future..

It is easy enough to test that idea out, by looking at how children lived a century ago – at lower CO2 levels. On this date in 1916, children were out of school for different reasons. New York Public Schools were shut down due to a polio epidemic.

TimesMachine: Tuesday August 22, 1916 – NYTimes.com

Before the Vaccines: Medical Treatments of Acute Paralysis in the 1916 New York Epidemic of Poliomyelitis

The polio epidemic spread all over the country. This 1916 photo was taken in Billings, Montana. (At least the children didn’t have to face an extra 0.0001 mole fraction CO2 in the atmosphere.)

And what about the weather? On this date in 1916, there were 100 degree temperatures from Oregon to upstate New York. Adrian, Michigan was the hottest place in the country at 106 degrees.

States over 100F on August 22, 1916 : Michigan 106, Oklahoma 105, Arizona 104, Kansas 102, Louisiana 102, Ohio 102, Texas 102, New York 101, Utah 101, Missouri 100, New Jersey 100, Oregon 100 and Pennsylvania 100.

Ithaca NY was 101 degrees on this date in 1916. They have had a total of ten days over 100 degrees since 1895, all of which occurred more than 80 years ago.

All days over 100F at Ithaca, New York
7/3/1911    101
7/4/1911    102
7/5/1911    100
8/22/1916   101
7/2/1931    102
9/12/1931   100
6/29/1933   102
7/8/1936    101
7/9/1936    103
7/10/1936   102

The hottest August 22 across the US occurred in 1936. The average afternoon temperature across the US that day was 91 degrees.

Four states were over 110 degrees and twenty-one states were over 100 degrees on this date in 1936 : Missouri 112, South Dakota 112, Indiana 111, Arizona 110, California 109, Texas 108, Illinois 107, Oklahoma 107, Arkansas 106, Kansas 106, Kentucky 105, Michigan 105, Tennessee 105, Ohio 104, Iowa 103, Louisiana 103, Mississippi 102, Nebraska 102, West Virginia 102, Colorado 100 and Utah 100.

The second August 22 hottest occurred in 1938.

US August 22 afternoon temperatures have been declining since 1895.

The likelihood and areal coverage of hot weather has also been declining, with recent years among the coolest on record.

Two years after the polio outbreak of 1916, the deadliest pandemic in history killed as many as 40 million people, most of them young.

17 Oct 1918, Page 8 – Santa Ana Register at Newspapers.com

TimesMachine: August 21, 1998 – NYTimes.com

Greta is scheduled to speak at the UN when her yacht arrives, as their official science expert. In this role she replaces another high school dropout with a 450 foot long yacht.

To his credit, Leo DiCaprio always brings lots of climate models on the yacht with him.

Nothing Greta has been taught has any basis in reality.  The Greta situation is a good reminder of how evil the people behind this scam are.

In a previous blog post, I showed how the New York Times is hiding all the hot weather prior to 1960.

The New York Times has responded to this criticism, by stating that there isn’t much data in most of the world before 1950, due to poor station coverage.

This map from the NOAA Global Historical Climatology Network confirms the New York Times assertion.  Outside the US, there is very little high quality data prior to 1950.

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/daily/figures/station-counts-1891-1920-temp.png

Here in the US, the story is completely different. There was more data available every year of the past century than there was in 2018.

So there is no excuse for for them cherry-picking a start date of 1960 for US stations, failing to point out that the frequency of hot days has declined sharply in the US as CO2 has increased, and not mentioning that their projections of increasing hot days has no scientific basis.

But what they did get correct, is their assertion that the global temperature data prior to 1950 is inadequate for use in statistics, and shouldn’t be graphed. This is what I have been saying for the past dozen years, and I greatly appreciate them confirming my work.

graph.png (1130×600)

The pre-1960 data which the New York Times is hiding in the US shows that the past was much hotter. Without adequate coverage elsewhere, there is no reason to believe the same trend didn’t occur in other parts of the world. The New York Times is making a very strong argument against the credibility of the global temperature graphs – which serve as the basis of the EPA CO2 Endangerment Finding. This will be very helpful.