3 days of minus 20 on an Arctic ice floe [where's the Global Warming?]

Los Angeles Times ^ | May 16, 2007 | Tomas Alex Tizon, Times Staff Writer

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Beaufort Sea, Arctic Ocean — FOR three days in March I camped on a drifting slab of ice, 200 miles north of Alaska, as close as I'd ever get to the top of the world and to knowing what it would be like to live on an ice cube.

The cold crept through my boots and socks, into my toes and up my legs. It numbed my fingers and face and froze the moisture in my eyes. It swept into my lungs.

My shelter was a plywood shack, which I shared with five men whom I seldom saw. Beneath us, under the ice, the ocean plunged 12,000 feet deep. One of my shackmates, as a way of warning, described what happened to a snowmobile that had broken through the ice. It sank, like a toy whirling through space, all the way to the sea bottom, where it presumably will rest in frigid darkness for eternity.

The message: Watch your step.

"You slip under, you're gone," said Lt. Cmdr. Gerard DeMers, the safety officer at the camp, which was built and run by the U.S. Navy.

To get there, I flew to Anchorage and took a puddle-jumper over the Brooks Range to Deadhorse on the outer edge of Alaska's North Slope. I met up with Times photographer Myung Chun, and we joined a couple of Navy officers on a Cessna to the Beaufort Sea. Leaving Deadhorse was like jumping off a cliff. We left behind every electronic tether — cellphone, Internet, television.

"No HBO," one of the Navy guys said, smirking.

Yet the severing was very undramatic from the air. I could barely discern where Alaska ended and the Arctic Ocean began. Both land and sea were covered with ice.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

fyi

Thought I should post this since the LA Times is always publishing the Global Warming Scare Stories...

[Darkwolf377]

Your alteration of the headline is misleading—there’s nothing anti-Global Warming Hysteria about an article that includes the line “ the fact that global warming is melting the Arctic’s ice cover”.

[billybudd]

Completely inaccurate headline. The headline mentions nothing about global warming and the author does not engage in any commentary about it. Why did you add that?

[Allegra]

Thought I should post this since the LA Times is always publishing the Global Warming Scare Stories...

Get this... Baghdad has been in the 70s during the day the last three days. In May.

This never happens.

It's approaching noon now and the temps are in the mid-70s. Usually at this time of year, the blast-furnace temperatures have arrived and settled in.

I don't hear anybody around complaining about this, either. :)

[CarrotAndStick]

If you’re looking for melting, the North Pole would be the wrong place to do so. The ambient temperature there never drops below freezing (0°C). Maybe the edges of the Arctic Ocean, but not the North Pole itself.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

I told you why in post #2,....geez...

[Darkwolf377]

Don't be so touchy. You posted another of their scare stories because they're always publishing scare stories?

I still don't get why you altered the title, which leads one to think this is somehow the PAPER saying that, which would be a revelation. Instead it's Just Another Global Warming Scare Story.

[Darkwolf377]

Don’t worry, we’ll soon find out that Al Gore MEANT Global COOLING, but George Bush so controls the media that...

[kbingham]

Global warming is not happening because Larry Elder says it isn’t. This position, at this point in time, given the evidence, is not tenable.

Physically, and chemically, we know that the consequences of having these gases in the atmosphere is that they will increase the energy in the atmosphere.
Simulations predict it.
The hottest days/weeks/years on record are those most recent.
There are phds who support the “inside job” 911 crap, so it doesn’t surprise me that you can find plenty of scientists who think we’re in a small cycle and that the planet is not heating up, or that it is heating up for an unrelated reason and will cool down soon enough. I think any such assertion is hogwash.

Maybe the sun is going through a cycle, but the sun doesn’t heat and cool in the long run. It heats. Our sun is the kind of star that gets hotter/larger as it ages, so in the long run, the sun’s heat will destroy the planet, and we just don’t have the kind of model to completely predict to the degree we would need to, how the sun will age exactly except to say, it’s going to get hotter; who can say, but once again, the idea that ‘nothing is happening’ isn’t tenable.

Yeah, sure, just like OJ didn’t do it, this could all be a run of bum luck or just a temperature local extreme, or a giant Al Gore conspiracy, but that’s not a very prudent position to take given the consequences, and especially given the evidence.

It may cool here or there esp as ice melts (endothermic process), but in the long run, ice melting leads to more heat, not less, even if the immediate consequence of melting is a local sharp drop in temperature.

You may win money at a blackjack table in vegas, but in the long run, you lose.

I can picture things getting hotter faster than anyone publicly predicts.

These sorts of negative feedback loops will run amock very quickly if the are going to run amock at all. And it seems to me that they are already starting; and this is really with most of the world not participating in this greenhouse death dance.

I don’t care. Even if the hottest days went to 150F by 2020, we wouldn’t all die. 3rd worlders will die en masse and the human population will undergo a much needed reaping, and a lot of plants and animals would die, but for the most part, things would endure the best they could and science will keep enough of us alive to keep pace with it.

Humanity will survive. But I don’t understand why so many people just completely deny that anything is happening. Do they honestly believe that it’s one grand lie by the ‘liberals’ or ‘al gore’ to make money/manipulate etc?

[Cricket24]

That was a good article. I know it’s hard to believe it was in the LA Times.

[patton]

In fact, I do believe that it is a grand lie.

[Right Wing Assault]

"We don't want you here," Campbell said with a weary grin. Just as he met us when we arrived, he saw us off. "Things happen when you're here."

Good send off for a reporter.

[Leisler]

All tyrannies are based upon umba gumba superstitions. Kings? Dukes? Earls? WTF, over! For millennium tyrants said that they were special, and deserved to rule. Ditto, Comrades, Ayatollahs, Aztec hart rippers. Always there is some 'special knowledge' penetrable by only the select which, in todays liberal thugs, is sad fact but true. Only they are able to see the future, and be trusted. Of course when one mentions decades if not a hundred years of predictions and statements, of programs and trillions of dollars wasted, I only get silence. Orwell knew that memory and history are liberals enemies.

[Eye of Unk]

This winter it was -45 where I live, 50 miles north of Anchorage Alaska. -20 isn’t all that bad if there is no wind.

[Izzy Dunne]

The ambient temperature there [ North Pole] never drops below freezing (0°C).

That's certainly news to me.

[Izzy Dunne]

the sun doesn’t heat and cool in the long run. It heats.

A silly statement.
I don't think anybody ever said that the sun cools the Earth. But it heats hot and it heats not-so-hot. When it's not-so-hot, the Earth loses the heat it gained last week or last year, and becomes cooler.

[CarrotAndStick]

Oops lol! The ambient temperature there [ North Pole] never drops below rises above freezing (0°C).

[Izzy Dunne]

we know that the consequences [...] .Simulations predict it.

Guffaw.

I once ran a simulation that predicted there was more gas coming out of a compressor than was going into it.

You may notice there's no patent on a gas-generating machine, though.

[Izzy Dunne]

There are phds who support the “inside job” 911 crap, so it doesn’t surprise me that you can find plenty of scientists who think we’re in a small cycle and that the planet is not heating up, or that it is heating up for an unrelated reason

If you accept the idea that Post-Hole-Diggers will support a concept because of a pre-existing ideology, then it's not that far a leap to apply it to the we're-all-gonna-die-so-let's-start-flagellating-ourselves crowd.

[SamAdams76]

Speaking of global warming hysteria, here it is the middle of May and I have to put on a heavy jacket to go outside here in New England. It is a cold, raw 42 degrees this morning and we will be lucky if the high temperature reached 50 degrees. It promises to be a cold, dank weekend as well.

Won't Algore send a little global warming our way? At least for the weekend just so I can have a barbeque and sit outside in my yard without freezing my butt off here in the middle of May!

[Izzy Dunne]

The hottest days/weeks/years on record are those most recent.

Because, in geologic terms, the only records are recent ones.

[Izzy Dunne]

the idea that ‘nothing is happening’ isn’t tenable.

I don't know of anyone who says that nothing is happening.

The thing is, it's been happening for millions of years.

It is foolish to think that the way it is today (or was last year) is the way it should be tomorrow (or used to be a hundred years ago). The Earth is not constant.

Microorganisms weren't invented by van Leeuwenhoek (sp?) - he just invented a way to see them. They existed long before him.

[HankReardon]

Western Ohio, May 18, 2007 it’s 40 degrees here this morning.

[Izzy Dunne]

It’s 41 here in coastal Maine.

[saganite]

It seems like you’re already in your own negative feedback loop. Asserting that the sun will only get hotter ignores history and scientific observations.

Your assertion that the human population will “undergo a much needed reaping” puts you squarely in the camp of those who think it might be a good thing to assist in that reaping. Altogether a post in the same vein as someone in Germany in the 1930’s asserting that those Jews should “undergo a much needed reaping”.

[IronJack]

maybe later ...

[cyclotic]

Southern Michigan 36F this morning at 7am.

It was 42 yesterday and I rode my bike 16 miles to the office. I’d kill for a quick shot of global warming.

[Smokin' Joe]

But I don’t understand why so many people just completely deny that anything is happening.

Few deny the Earth is warming just a little. But the real question is one of if the warming is a result of a gas in the atmosphere which has historically peaked 800 years after the temperature does.

Apparently, the increase in CO2 is an effect of the warming, not the other way around.

Mars is warming, too, and while I suppose one could make a case for the extreme impact of SUVs (there are two up there, sorta) chances are the effects are neither terrestrial nor Martian in origin, but from the likely source, the Sun.

Past climate cycles indicate that we are in a warming trend, one which started in the 1800s, and frankly, I am thankful we are. YMMV.

Humans adapt and thrive in these warmer cycles, not in the cold ones (when, incidentally, we would have to use more fuel to keep warm.)

If the liberals, environmentalists, and the rest really thought this was anything but a vehicle to cripple the industrial capability of the West, the restrictions cited in the Kyoto treaty would include all nations, not just those which have governments which are not openly Socialistic in nature.

Please relax and do more research.

[frithguild]

There are phds who support the “inside job” 911 crap, so it doesn’t surprise me that you can find plenty of scientists who think we’re in a small cycle and that the planet is not heating up, or that it is heating up for an unrelated reason and will cool down soon enough. I think any such assertion is hogwash.

I am sure you do. Just as sure as those who imprisoned Gallileo.

Maybe the sun is going through a cycle, but the sun doesn’t heat and cool in the long run. It heats.

So a billion year trend negates short term fluctuations? Is this proposition published in any peer reviewed publication? Where lese in science or nature do you see this type of pattern?

we know that the consequences of having these gases in the atmosphere is that they will increase the energy in the atmosphere.

When an automoblie crashes, you can observe the damage. How often is it true that the damage caused the crash?

These sorts of negative feedback loops will run amock very quickly if the are going to run amock at all. And it seems to me that they are already starting; and this is really with most of the world not participating in this greenhouse death dance.

You speak with such authority on this. Please teach me about negative feedback loops. Do you have any peer reviewed publications or recognized scholarly works discussing this?

So...now that I have asked some questions are you goint to call me names?

[TYVets]

It sounds like a lousy place for tourists.

Perhaps drilling for oil in the area might be a good idea.

[frithguild]

You know, I was going to make that oint, but I had to get some data entered for reports first.

Does anybody know how many tourists visited the Artic National reserve in any given year?

[dangerdoc]

It’s been warmer than now and cooler than now in the past.

It will be warmer than now and cooler than now in the future.

The sun’s life cycle is on a timescale that makes it insignificant to us.

Our contribution to total greenhouse gasses is insignificant.

We should still try to move past a petrochemical driven society because of who owns the majority of the petroleum.

All of these points are self evident..

[RC51]

150F by 2020,

Bwaahahaahahaha, hahaha ROFL, haha haha. Oh my god your such an idiot. hahahaaaa. Bwahahaaaa!

a global increase of 75 degrees plus ??? hahaaahaaaha, bwahahaaa. Your such a moron!

[Hiddigeigei]

Now! Now! Be tolerant. Remember, half the population falls on the wrong side of the bell curve. Besides, he may be drunk.

[SunkenCiv]

Shiver me timbers, literally. Thanks E. ;’)