How many kilometres deep are the deepest ice cores? Around 3. The cylinders of ice date back nearly three quarters of a million years. So in that many years the ice sheets have never collapsed. The record Greenland ice core was 3084 metres (2003). Greenland and Antarctic weather differed, however scientists found similarities but separated by time. The reason why you never read, "fossil leaf stomata confirm ice core data, Sargasso sea floor cores confirm ice core data, etc." is because there are few if any non ice core data supporting ice core findings for either temperature or co2 levels. The best match that could be found was between cores from both poles, it wasn't a match made in heaven. By squinting hard and looking sideways, a bit of stretching here, smoothing there and LO! a bipolar seesaw. But nevertheless the IPCC finding it could be made to support data produced by virtual reality programs decided it was enough to launch an enormous propaganda campaign in support of an hypothesis in order to gain general acceptance of a new principal. Policy based on a weak hypothesis. Something never dreamed of before because of the obvious inherent dangers in such an action.
I digress somewhat.
Co2 is mentioned here because without it, understanding why ice core data has been politically manipulated in support of a false hypothesis is lacking. How did co2 arrive on the scene? Enter Hansen, virtual reality supremo. He modified the Fortrans (archaic programming language used by modelers) programmed weather forecasting software to project further into the future. A lot of assumptions and guesswork went into this and so remains. What the VR program came up with was an upward trend in temperature. Applying the low knowledge of known factors did not account for the VR trend. Looking outside the program for possible culprits, Hansen found co2 levels were increasing in Hawaii. He didn't look past the short term. He didn't question relevance, he carefully hammered the data and then, like a tailor-altered suit, it fitted and the game was on. Later, ice core data proved co2 goes up and down after temperature. In decadal terms there is no correlation. That would be enough to send any normal scientist back to ground zero but not Hansen. The factual data manipulations, the repealing of accepted laws, the tweaking of tens of parameters in the VR program, the rhetoric and shameful, ongoing ad hominem against foremost scientists objecting to his broken theory being hawked as valid give credence to the oft said suspicion.
Climate is not the agenda imperative.
How broken is Hansen's hypothesis? Current co2 has shown a consistent rise while temperature has danced all over the graph range. Should Hansen ever adjust his VR using correct co2 forcing values, temperatures would approach 6 degs or so higher than his produced graphs show. The alternative is to adjust down his idiotic values for co2 forcing in order to keep his temperature guesstimates in the realm of reality and that would kill the game because another forcing agent would be needed to fill the forcing vacancy thus created. Instead there has been deceit and dramatic data manipulation. To name but one, changing the processing mechanism and backdating the now more supportive values, if they weren't supportive overall they wouldn't have been used. That 1934 came up as the new record was irrelevant. There was a general heightening throughout the temperature records. Exaggeration, non existent storm frequency and strength increase, drought, floods, as well as colder winters, warmer winters, desertification, water shortages, El Nino variations, increased and decreased precipitation and a host of other weather manifestations ascribed to AGW (ditto for cooling in the 70s) as a matter of policy are all found in natural variation and readily explained natural causes. Every single weather event assigned to AGW has an alternative, real, scientifically valid explanation. What Hansen missed is that warmer water causes warmer air. Warmer water causes increased humidity. Warmer air holds more vapor, increased humidity causes warming, mainly solar driven ENSO phases drive water warming. A 1% increase in humidity would swamp the co2 effect to its rightful place in inconsequentiality. But we don't know for sure because we can't measure water vapor with anywhere approaching the necessary accuracy. Water vapor is not included in Hansen's VR because he believes the effects to be self canceling. Believes. And that is the foundation of IPCC dogma. Belief in supposition and visionary theorizing (ideology).
Back to the main topic.
Past temperatures reaching 3-7 deg C higher than today, co2 over 1,000 ppm for hundreds of years. I'd like someone to explain to me how anthropogenic emissions and all the other anthropogenic factors together with all of nature's confounders driving the atmosphere at a staggering, nay, terrifying ~1 deg per century is going to make a blind bit of difference to the ice sheet's normal surface melt-refreeze routine. Greenland's interior is thickening or thinning overall depending on which process of partial survey data you read or believe, they all have negative and positive attributes. The same for Antarctica's (18?) measuring stations. The temperature down there, around -30 to -70 C, has as much chance of melting as Ronnie Biggs has of being the next IPCC chairperson. Antarctica is like a different planet, always has been. It generates its own climate, always has done since its formation. So extrapolating data from ice cores from there, if the data are valid, perhaps informs what went on there in the way Hawaiian co2 measurements inform us of Hawaiian co2 levels.
Ozone affects the polar ice. It is an effective GHG, as well as blocking much of the incoming UV light, and by IR absorption warms the stratosphere. What this means for the polar weather is a marginal trend rise in temperature as the hole closes. After initially increasing storminess, calmer weather and smaller variation in temperature as the max. to min. range is reduced. We know already warmer means more precipitation so the closing hole will lead to ice sheet thickening. Although totally irrelevant to the rest of the planet, it will bias global temperature measurement upwards.
Greenland is a tenth the size of Antarctica. The inconsequential effects that affect down under have a larger effect on a smaller sheet. Greenland is far more vulnerable to oceanic variation, its centre being so much closer to the influence of water temperature. The vulnerability is manifested in surface melt amplified by other factors such as cloud cover and the Sun. Surface melt is historically normal as evidenced (smearing) and inconsequential to stability. Remember, ~740-800,000 thousand years with no collapse.
The scientists involved in extracting climate data relate that it has to be depicted in, I think, 100 year bites as the clearest resolution due to smearing. That means the bits from one year mix with previous years' snowfall. It blurs the record. It is believed it is due to surface melt and refreeze a number of times each century. At depth, the data are no longer valid due to pressure changing the physiology. This effectively demolishes any prospect of part century temperature spikes being observed either up or down. It also tells us surface melt is a lot less unusual than pessimists would have you believe. If it wasn't every century then parts of the record would give higher accuracy and show more variation than those blurred, meaning the temperature graphs are worthless as a yard stick for modern climates. I think this must also hold true for co2. The recent times co2 record at the beginning of the century shows high variability, with much higher than todays values at times. (Cherry picked data and heavy smoothing produced the IPCC tale of low levels.) If there is such variability, why doesn't it show in the ice core? Smearing and gas escape is the best guess. Sea bed and land held data, fossils, cores etc., conflict with the ice core story line. Could the ice core graphs be telling a different story to the one widely (ab)used as propaganda? Could it in fact tell us of melt and refreeze trends taking place over hundreds of years, heavier molecules sinking, co2 escaping to the air? Food for thought.
What is more disturbing is that right next door is Iceland, highly active tectonically and volcanically. Thought to be over a mantle plume that may extend under Greenland. Taking the plume theory to be valid, that means the plume could be moving perhaps due to lunar tidal and rotational forces. Perhaps the Iceland plume is expanding or shifting. Whatever, the S.E. of Greenland is lifting. If it proves to be geologic activity, we have something real and tangible to worry about, far from the co2 delusions. Geologic activity really could demolish part of the Greenland ice sheet in a few decades. I've seen it suggested that ice melt is causing rebound. I doubt sufficient mass is going, in view of increased precipitation, to cause 4-5cm per year. The hypothesis for increased glacial flow at the coasts, Hansen's lubrication due to surface melt, appears false because water flowing down crevices freezes. When a glacier slips it creates phenomenal friction heat, I've seen higher than 1000 deg mentioned, and this melts the glacier base producing a glacier face wide broad outflow until the glacer freezes itself to the rock again (slip-stick), when the outflow due to normal Earth heat resumes as a stream from the centre of the glacier's nose.
"AGW is causing increased volcanic activity". These people have no moral boundary as long as their interest is served.
The effects of a geological event causing melting would be less dramatic than Goresque co2 driven fantasies but it is a very real threat. I believe all the money being spent on dreamland research on our local ice sheet should focus on getting real (non IPCC) info on what is happening underground. Depending on findings, governments can then initiate defensive measures.
"In accord with scientific predictions it is entirely possible that, as redistribution of the Earth’s mass - induced by global expansion - disturbs the relative equilibrium of its crust, monumental forces in the form of increasing earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic activity will be unleashed. And the forecasts from some quarters are dramatic." :-)
Another proxy climatic indicator is the stable oxygen isotope record found in ice core analyses. The oxygen-isotope ratio in ice is determined primarily by the average air temperature during snow storms. An ice-core record, like tree rings, attains excellent time resolution and in polar ice caps retrieves atmospheric conditions for thousands of years in the past. But it might not be a good representation of average climatic conditions because snow accumulation is seasonal. It does not snow every day of the year, but rather in discrete events. The coldest events might not even be recorded in the oxygen-isotope record. And a change in direction of storm tracks could change the isotope signature without a change in temperature at the ice-core site.
"According to the ice-core samples, CO2 levels vary little over time," Dr. Jaworowski states. "The ice core data from the Taylor Dome in Antarctica shows almost no change in the level of atmospheric CO2 over the last 7,000 to 8,000 years – it varied between 260 parts per million and 264 parts per million.
"Yet other indicators of past CO2 levels, such as fossil leaf stomata, show that CO2 levels over the past 7,000 to 8,000 years varied by more than 50 parts per million, between 270 and 326 parts per million. We also know that there have been great fluctuations in temperature over that time period – the Little Ice Age just 500 years ago, for example. If the icecore record was reliable, and CO2 levels reflected temperatures, why wouldn't the ice-core data have shown CO2 levels to fall during the Little Ice Age?"
Holocene Geomorphic Activity
N. Atlantic hotspot
The Seal Nunataks
The Greenland-Antarctica Melting Problem Does Not Exist (pdf), (html). Cliff Ollier.
Images of the N.E.
Scientists working in the stormy and inhospitable waters off the Antarctic Peninsula have found what they believe is an active and previously unknown volcano on the sea bottom.
Vesteris Seamount is a solitary alkaline volcano in the Greenland Basin some 280 km NW of Jan Mayen.
It was recently active as was Jan Mayen.
Elsewhere, 1997. Researchers on a cruise have confirmed that a hot mud volcano on the sea floor between Greenland and Norway is oozing mud, seeping gas and spewing a gas-laden plume of warm water into the North Atlantic. Located 1250 meters deep, the volcano is about one kilometer in diameter. The flow of heat rising within the volcano (up to one or more watts per square meter) is one of the highest measured in the ocean, apart from the boundaries of tectonic plates [all around Greenland] or "hot spots" such as Hawaii.
This is in no way intended to detract from the excellent work done in recovering the cores, merely criticize their abuse by alarmists and their interpretation.
Core Issues
