NASA scientists now attribute Arctic warming to decadal trends having to do with ocean circulation and salinity, rather than anthropogenic global warming:
Reporting in Geophysical Research Letters, the authors attribute the reversal to a weakened Arctic Oscillation, a major atmospheric circulation pattern in the northern hemisphere. The weakening reduced the salinity of the upper ocean near the North Pole, decreasing its weight and changing its circulation.
“Our study confirms many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming,” said Morison.
This may help to explain why Antarctic ice sheets have actually grown thicker over the same time frame.
You know Lex, once Hollywood got involved science went out the window and emotion took over.Now the scientific community wants to put their face on the subject, but it’s too late.Ask any 3rd grader and they’ll tell you why the polar ice is melting, the sky is falling, and it’s all Bush’s fault!
Disgusting!
Of course those NASA scientists are doubting heretics, and must be globally-warmed at the stake.
Haven’t you heard? The debate on this is supposed to be over according to the true believers.
Sounds like the White House is still editing scientific reports. What I don’t understand is why global warming is the evil liberal issue for conservatives? If you watched NBC last week, GE is staking it’s future on conservation – can it be too long before the Republican party embraces climate change as well?
I dunno about the White House in this particular case Sanji – did you follow the link or is your own mind already made up?
I don’t think the issue is either evil or liberal, but I’m suspicious of how rapidly it’s gone from theory to doctrine, and how opposing perspectives are less rebutted than hushed. And as I’ve said here before, even given an anthropogenic element arguendo, for the kinds of monies people are talking about in both direct and indirect costs with minimal impact we could do a lot of tangible good in other places.
Worth noting that later in this same press release you’ll find these words:
“Morison cautioned that while the recent decadal-scale changes in the circulation of the Arctic Ocean may not appear to be directly tied to global warming, most climate models predict the Arctic Oscillation will become even more strongly counterclockwise in the future. “The events of the 1990s may well be a preview of how the Arctic will respond over longer periods of time in a warming world,” he said.”
In other words, this finding in no way contradicts the consensus view that things are heating up. It just points out that other processes are at work too. Duh.
I love Jules Crittenden’s comment not long ago to the effect that “the world gets warmer, the world gets colder, and nobody knows just why.”
There seems to be a growing group of the nation’s weathermen who are quietly saying that manmade global warming based on computer models is not believable, when they, themselves, can’t predict the weather accurately more than five days ahead of time. [I'd say, more than 24 hours ahead of time.] Then we have Coleman, the founder of the weather.com website, who announced just a few days ago that manmade global warming was ‘a scam,’ and that he was ‘appalled’ at the credulous public.
Me too.
Marianne Matthews
I could use a little global warming right about now… We just got 300 gallons of heating oil for $3.09 a gallon. If it is a cold winter we will need at least 5 deliveries of same… To make matters worse, my county taxes heating oil to the tune of 81/4%/dollar. In other words, the higher the price of heating oil, the more money they make.
I wrote my annual letter to my county legislator reguarding the immoral nature of this tax. Last year she had the nerve to write back and tell me “I feel your pain”. I kid you not!
This year I wrote to her and told her to not bother “feeling my pain” just take the tax off heating oil… Can you imagine how obscene it is to tax your constituents on heating oil? Surely the legislators of my county could come up with some other way to line their coffers than taxing people trying to stay warm…
Sanji – It’s good business for GE to invest in things like more energy efficient engines that save money for customers. It generates return on investment.
That says nothing about global warming.